Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (24 page)

“Perhaps you can go ahead,” she said softly to Sisithorn. “You could bring the wife out here and we could talk in more quiet circumstances?” Sisithorn nodded, and then she disappeared into the ICU and the doors hissed closed behind her.

The man was looking at her strangely, with a mix of fear and respect that mystified her. Surely he recognized her? But then she realized that she’d put on her white coat for the meeting they’d just come from. Seeing her now in her professional outfit, the man was probably surprised. Perhaps he was intimidated, too. If he truly came from the hills, his experience with medical people would be very limited.

She greeted him warmly and sat on a chair nearby. Not too near, though. She sensed that getting close might spook him in the same way that getting too close to a wild animal might cause it to flee.

After greeting her, though, the man was silent and watchful. Not unfriendly, but cautious. And just like a wild animal would be, he seemed as though he’d be ready to turn and run at the slightest provocation. Ladarat guessed that a question—any question—might send him flying away. So she decided to talk instead. No questions or interrogation. She would just talk, and he could listen or not.

“I am here to see a man and his family,” she said. “It is a sad situation. A very sad situation. He was injured, you see, and was taken here. But he and his family are
farang
. They are not from here,” she clarified, unsure whether this man’s rural vocabulary extended to tourist words like
farang
.

Perhaps it didn’t. He was looking at her with a steady concentration that you might devote to thunderclouds boiling in the sky. A mix of fear and concern tinged with fascination.

“Have you heard of this man?” she asked.

In an instant he became flustered, looking down at the ground and then at the ICU doors, which remained shut. He rose to a crouch, and then stood up. But that put his head above hers, which was disrespectful, so he crouched down, bent almost double in a hurried
wai
. Ladarat stood, perplexed, and returned the
wai
.

Then he scurried quickly toward the long hallway, his bare feet slapping on the tile floor. She followed for a few steps, well behind him. Still perplexed by the departure, nevertheless she smiled as she saw that the long hallway was empty, just as she knew it would be.

But she didn’t have much time to ponder that brief conversation and its outcome. No sooner had the man disappeared than Sisithorn emerged pushing the young Mrs. Fuller. The American was looking up, and Sisithorn was leaning over and they were talking conspiratorially.

She needed to focus her attention. This would be a difficult conversation.

THE IMPATIENCE OF STEPPING-STONES

A
nd indeed it was a difficult conversation. But not nearly as difficult as it could have been. The young American woman Kate had a view of her husband’s chances that was realistic. Surprisingly so.

Perhaps her clear view of the future came from a lack of fear? You cannot plan well for a future that you’re afraid of, Professor Dalrymple tells us. And many people facing the loss of a loved one are crippled by fear. So much so, in fact, that they can’t imagine what life would be like without the person. So they hold on and they cling to the person’s life. They won’t let go, no matter how much that person—the patient—may be suffering.

But not Kate. No, she would miss her husband terribly, of course. Yet it seemed as though she was not afraid of what life would be like without him.

This young woman had been through so much in her short life that the prospect of losing a husband—although certainly tragic—didn’t fill her with dread. She knew in her heart that life would go on. So although they didn’t come to any decisions at their meeting, they had laid the groundwork, so to speak. And Kate would be able to let go when she needed to.

It had been time well spent. And work well done.

And yet as she sat in her small basement office, facing the remaining piles of policies that were waiting patiently for her eyes, it did not feel like work well done. Or it did, she supposed, but just not enough. The meeting had gone well, she knew. And it had gone well at least in part thanks to her efforts. She had done some good, and she had helped the Fuller family.

Then why did she feel as though she was failing? Or not failing, exactly. But she felt as if she had stopped midway through a project.

It was the same sensation she had when she bought a row of twelve stepping-stones for her garden. It was around the time of the last Royal Inspection three years ago, was it not? She’d placed seven of them exactly so, but then she’d been caught up in work. And those remaining five stones nagged at her whenever she saw them. She knew in her mind that they were not urgent, those stones. They could wait. Stones may not have much to recommend them, but they do tend to be patient. And yet their unfinishedness nagged at her. Every time she was in her garden, sitting at her little wrought iron table, they chastised her for ignoring them.

“We’re still waiting,” they said. Sometimes loud enough that she was certain the neighbors would hear.
Maewfawbaahn
certainly heard them. He would give those unfinished stones a wide berth in his perambulations and midnight prowlings.

But why should she be having this feeling now? As Ladarat asked herself that logical question, though, she knew the answer. She knew it with as much certainty as she knew what those stones were telling her.

She could say that she was an ethicist, and she was. But she was also a nurse, and nurses help people. That’s what we do, she told herself. That’s
why
we do what we do.

So she knew, just as she did when she left those stepping-stones in a neat pile on the patio, that the Peaflower case was going to nag her with the same insistence that those stones had.

Even more so, to be sure. There were men who were dying. And a woman who was getting away with murder. That was wrong, wasn’t it? As wrong as anything in the world of medical ethics?

And didn’t she have a responsibility to fix those wrongs if she could?

It was at this point that Ladarat realized three things.

First, she was almost certain that she was talking out loud. To the pile of policies closest to her on the desk. That was not good.

Second, she realized that she needed to solve the Peaflower case. That need had nothing to do with being a detective. She was not a detective. But she was an ethicist. And she did have skills of reasoning and deduction. And above all, she was good at watching and listening. She had an obligation to use those skills, just as she had an obligation to finish placing those stones.

Third, she knew there might be consequences. Khun Tippawan would not be pleased if she learned that Ladarat was ignoring her duties. And it was entirely possible that the director might make such a discovery tonight, if Ladarat did what she needed to do.

Ladarat looked at her watch and realized that she had been lost in this conversation with the stack of policies in front of her for almost twenty minutes. It was almost three o’clock, and she had made no progress on the policies in front of her, or the Peaflower case. Or even in figuring out what she should do.

Easiest, she knew, would be to reach out and take a policy from the pile. On top, right there in front of her, was the nursing policy about proper visiting hours and family comportment in the obstetrics unit. That was all she needed to do. So simple. She would open that policy and make sure that its approval dates were current.

Much more difficult would be to stand up, gather her things, and make the trip that her conscience was telling her she needed to take. More difficult by far.

Although she had made up her mind to reach for that visiting hours policy, a quote from Professor Dalrymple’s good book came into her mind. Unbidden, as usual. The quote simply appeared in much the same way that a text message appears on a mobile phone. Although much more welcome, and useful.

“When a nurse is faced with an ethical choice,” the professor counseled, “the option that is most difficult to make is generally the right one to choose.”

So. There could be little doubt, in this case, of which choice was the most difficult. There could be little doubt, therefore, about which choice was the correct one.

THE HOUSE OF ROOSTER HAPPINESS

D
espite the fact that she was certain what she needed to do, and despite the incontrovertible fact that she enjoyed the support of Professor Dalrymple herself, Ladarat was uneasy as she left the hospital. So uneasy, in fact, that she made her escape via the loading dock, where the Director of Excellence was unlikely to have spies.

Ladarat felt like a young girl sneaking out of her father’s Ban Huai Duea School in the middle of the day. Winding her way through the garden that led to the cricket field in back, then taking a left turn before she got there, disappearing behind the high wooden fence. She hadn’t done that often, and it had never been her idea. It was true, Siriwan had been a bad influence.

Now here she was, without her cousin to blame. Just her. It was just past three o’clock, and she was sneaking out of the hospital. And with a Royal Inspection on Monday.

But this was an errand Ladarat didn’t want to run at night. She suspected that this place of business wasn’t somewhere she wanted to be after dark. So it was worth risking the censure of Khun Tippawan. She would do what she needed to do, then go home.

Home… already Ladarat was thinking about dinner. Perhaps she would get something light.
Nam tok moo
, maybe. Grilled pork and lemon juice and toasted rice. Simple but hearty. And maybe Duanphen’s
kanom maprao
—coconut cake—for dessert as a special treat if this errand was as productive as she hoped it might be.

She was still thinking about
kanom maprao
, or maybe
glooai tawt
, weighing their relative merits, as she nosed the Beetle through the seedy back streets of Chiang Mai’s river neighborhood. She’d never been to this part of Chiang Mai before. As far removed as it could be from the touristy spots, or the university that she knew so well, it was just up against the river, near enough to the night market to walk to. Yet this was new territory.

She parked in front of a dusty antiques store that looked as though it hadn’t seen a customer since Rama VII was king, back in the 1920s. The fact that she’d never been here before didn’t bother her, nor did the neighborhood’s reputation. The fact that she had no trouble finding a parking spot, though… well, that was a little worrisome.

There were few people on the sidewalks, which was also a little worrisome. And those pedestrians she saw were almost all men. Americans and Europeans, of course. One rowdy group of young men with tight shorts that showed off muscular thighs. Australians.

And Chinese. Lots of Chinese. They made up perhaps half of the people she saw on her side of the street. They were dressed as businessmen mostly. Middle-aged, with a bit of a paunch. And she passed more than a few heavy gold watches on beefy wrists. She hoped they weren’t real, because in this neighborhood, you shouldn’t flaunt anything that you expected to still be wearing the next morning.

She’d heard the stories of these places. She’d heard about the videos of clients that were sold online, of course. And those who were blackmailed, and robbed, or worse.

All these men around here would risk that—and worse—just for… what exactly? She couldn’t understand it. What was the attraction?

These Chinese men in particular were probably all smart, successful businessmen. No doubt they had large brains. Yet tonight, at least, they were not using those large brains to think. Instead, they seemed to have delegated their thinking to another part of their anatomy.

Ladarat finally found a parking space that was perhaps half a dozen blocks from where she was going. She locked the Beetle—a precaution that she didn’t remember ever taking. It wasn’t until she started walking that she remembered the Beetle had two doors.