Текст книги "In The Blood"

Автор книги: Jack Kerley

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter 26

“Bizarre,” I said, unable to pull my eyes from the screen. “Is that all there is?”

Harry held up a finger. “He’s got a coda.”

I turned back to the monitor. Scaler was dabbing his head and face with the handkerchief again. Beads of sweat had gathered in the thick folds beneath his tragic eyes. He tucked away the cloth and turned back to the watchdog lens.

“Excuse me. I wanted to get this recorded before my will failed. Sometimes the best place to hide a truth is in plain sight. Thus it will live in the Tower of Babel. I have made mistakes, I have walked a lie. I have been led astray by false companions over years. If I don’t falter, many things will soon come to light. I will tell you the truth through the Trinity, and what I now believe to be –” Scaler put one finger atop the other to indicate a capital letter – “the Truth.” He slid his finger down to the first digit, forming a cross. “The Way and the Light,” he whispered.

He stared at his gesture. His hands fell to his lap and he began weeping. I saw him reach for the white remote control and the video died.

“It’s cryptic deluxe,” I said. “The ravings of a madman?”

“Actually, it’s making more sense to me,” Harry said. “I think Scaler himself put the video on the web. Hiding his truth in plain sight.”

“The Tower of Babel,” I said, suddenly catching Harry’s drift. “His video tucked away with ten million others. One grain of sand in an hourglass.”

“But what’s this ‘truth’ he’s talking about?” Harry said.

“The parable, the analogy to the house…I figure house either pertains to himself, or to his empire.”

“I like the second one, myself,” Harry concurred, sighing and flicking the computer off. “The empire as his house of worship, the church enterprises, fits well with the parable house. But Scaler and the institution were pretty much one and the same, so it could be representative of both.”

“In either case, something’s been built on sand,” I noted. “But he didn’t know that until the ‘expert’ did work for Scaler, work seeming to undermine Scaler’s mysterious edifice. Is the expert Christ?”

Harry frowned and tumbled it through his head.

“Not making the nut for me. There’s something in it that doesn’t have the reverent tone I’d expect if Scaler was using Jesus as his expert.”

“It’s Richard Scaler, bro. The scuzzball would –”

Harry waved me silent. “For thirty years I’ve been looking at Scaler and every time I did I swear I could smell something bad in the room. But now that I’ve been through his sermons and tapes a dozen times…” He shrugged, like he couldn’t understand his coming words. “I believe he’s sincere.”

“Sincere?”

“The bible has passages of great compassion and love, often butted against passages of vengeance and pain. It seems to me that self-titled men of God define themselves through the passages upon which they build their theology. I don’t agree with Scaler’s selection. But I think the guy actually felt he was following scripture.”

“Scaler?” I scoffed. “He was an ignorant cracker bullshit salesman.”

Harry said, “A girlfriend gave me a book of poems by a guy from the sixties, Richard Brautigan. He had a short poem about a schoolroom where once a day the teacher pulled a red wagon across the floor and that was all the kids knew.”

I waved my hand in front of his eyes, said, “Earth to Harry.”

“Don’t you get it, Carson? If that’s all you’re taught, that’s all you know. Especially if it starts when you’re in the cradle.”

“You’re giving Scaler a pass because he’s been a preacher for fifty-odd years?”

“I give Scaler a semi-pass because I suspect he got pumped full of fundamental hate-ology as a kid.”

“Just because you start life as a blank slate doesn’t mean accepting what others write there.”

“I don’t understand that level of self-delusion, Carson, but I understand the process that creates it: Endless spewing of hate and aspersions. To deny a parental belief questions the entire family.”

“You think Mrs Scaler might help make sense of this?” I said. “Hubby’s weird monologue?”

“You’ve been there, so it’s your call.”

I pulled my black briefcase from beneath the desk. I kept my old Apple iBook in it, used the computer for moving files from work to home. I pulled out the computer and handed it to Harry.

“Let’s give the lady a show.”

The housekeeper led me into the Scalers’ home. She wore an apron and had a feather duster tucked in the strap. I was surprised to find the living room painted rose instead of the white I recalled. Accents were scarlet and sun-yellow, a bold deployment of color. I smelled fresh paint in the air. Saw ladders and drop-cloths.

“Is Mr Fossie around?” I asked.

“Mee-star Foss-see he ees een the room named Jim,” she said.

“Jim?”

“Si.” She began pumping her arms up and down.

“Ah,” I said. “Gracias.”

Wandering to the back of the house, I heard a moan and a squeaking sound and stuck my head in the exercise room, the gym. Fossie was sitting on a quadrilaterals machine, legs under the padded bar, trying to lift with the pin in the fifteen-pound block. He saw me and, startled, let the block clank down all of the four inches of elevation he had managed.

Fossie unwrapped himself from the machine clumsily as I pretended to look the other way. He did a couple of side stretches and a toe-touch attempt, making as if shaking off a major-league workout.

“She’s having the place re-painted?” I asked, nodding toward a stack of folded drop-cloths.

He dabbed his face with a towel and nodded. “The rooms have too many memories. Patricia wanted the change.”

“You’re spending a fair amount of time here, I take it?”

“I have the time, and it makes Patricia feel secure to have me here. At least until she’s better. How are you feeling?”

“I’m sleeping better. And I think some of my energy’s returning. It comes and goes.”

“Good. But returning your body and mind to a balanced state doesn’t come as quickly as getting a shot of penicillin for an infection. Regimen is the key. Keep taking the vites and avoid processed food. Don’t stay up late. I’ll drop off more vitamins when I’m out on Dauphin Island in a day or two. Maybe add a bit of Tibetan ginseng to the mix, perhaps some kelp.”

I nodded my thanks and started to climb the stairs, but paused.

“Mr Fossie?”

“Yes?”

“Have you had any luck looking for…” I ended the sentence with a raised eyebrow, got a look of guilt in return.

“I-I will. It feels strange to look through things that aren’t mine. Like I’m ransacking.”

“Don’t do anything that makes you feel ill at ease,” I said. “But you’re the one who wanted us to uncover more about Richard Scaler.”

He nodded and looked happy to retreat. I continued up the stairs and knocked on the door.

“Mrs Scaler? It’s Detective Ryder. May I come in?”

“Just a second, please.”

Her voice sounded as faded as the last time, a tired wisp of sound. The second-hand of my watch made three revolutions until I heard the voice again.

“Come in, sir.”

Patricia Scaler was a-bed, one that configured every whichaway. It was a huge bed, king-sized at least, and she had the head elevated. She seemed lost inside a fluffy yellow robe, the sleeves at her fingertips; her husband’s robe.

“How may I help you, sir?”

“I need you to help me make sense of something odd, ma’am.”

“Your words frighten me, sir. But I’ll do what I can.”

I pulled the laptop from my flight bag. “Are you familiar with sites like YouTube?”

“A warehouse for pictures? Richard mentioned it.”

“You’re basically right. YouTube is a huge data-bank, hundreds of thousands of videos that –”

“Who keeps all the videos?”

“Pardon?”

“Who sorts and arranges all the videos? Is it like the Mormons having all the names inside the mountain? And who sends you the pictures when you want to see them?”

“It’s all digital, ma’am. The videos are in computer code. They’re kept in computer memory.” I wondered if she’d ever used a computer.

“What a scary world it’s become,” she whispered. I wondered if I held up the granola bar in my bag would it frighten her? Behold the amazing concoction of grains and raisins! I also wondered if she’d ever been under the care of a shrink to help her counter her timidity.

I turned my laptop so Mrs Scaler could see the screen. She was emotionless as the odd video played, either thinking so hard it overwhelmed expression, or trying to blot out thought. When the screen faded to black, her hand reached out and covered mine.

“This, this storehouse…did it tell you how the pictures of Richard got there? Where they came from?”

“There are ways to prevent that sort of thing, though we’ll try. Did you understand anything Richard was talking about?”

“No. Richard was having…one of his bad days. Like I told you about.”

“Would you know the expert he refers to?”

“God? The divine specialist in everything?”

“Um, I get the impression this was someone your husband hired. A less omniscient expert.”

“I wouldn’t know, Richard was gone so often. He’d go out at night, be gone for hours. I was terrified the police would stop him. Then I wanted them to. To make him see into himself, to stop.”

“To see himself doing what?”

She looked away. “He’d come in and go to his bedroom. There was the smell of strong drink. And strange perfume. And smells I couldn’t identify, ugly things.”

“No one else saw this?”

“We’d do the show and he was Richard, then we’d get away from all the workers and audience and people from the college, and he became someone else.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. I turned the laptop off, waited for it to beep itself to sleep. I noticed Mrs Scaler’s mouth was less puffed, the damaged teeth attended to, perhaps with temporary crowns. She had put on a bit of make-up, giving her pale face a semblance of color.

“You’ve had dental work done, I take it?” I said, small-talk to fill the dead air.

“The restoration is just starting. But little by little God is fixing my body.” The eyes turned expectant. “Will I see you again, sir? I hope to.”

“I…truly don’t know, Mrs Scaler.” I stood.

“May I see you to the door?” she said. “I’d very much like that.”

“Certainly.”

“Let me visit the little girl’s room first.”

She sat up and tugged the robe tight, slipped her small feet into the slippers and padded off to a dressing closet. My gaze fell over her tight-robed derriere and watched it bob in a rhythmic motion before shame pulled my eyes away.

I took a final look at the room, saw a photo on a corner dresser that caught my eye, drew me over. I hadn’t seen it before.

It was an eight-by-ten head shot of a woman, typical portrait pic. A relative of Patricia Scaler, I figured; there was a family resemblance in the eyes and ovoid facial structure. But where Patricia Scaler was plain at best, the other woman was lovely, with a fairy-princess nose and straight and gleaming white teeth behind lips so full I wondered if they were enhanced. Her cheekbones were model-high, her jaw firm and symmetrical. Bright highlights shone in rich auburn hair. Her skin was firm and tight and she looked in her mid thirties.

Though the woman was – in the jargon – a hottie, the photo itself seemed cold and mechanical. There was a name printed lower right: Blackburn Studios.

I heard a throat cleared at my back. Mrs Scaler had returned so quietly I hadn’t heard her. She was in a loose-fitting pantsuit and watching me study the photograph.

“I, uh…”

“Don’t be embarrassed, sir. You’re a policeman. I expect you’re allowed to search my room.”

“I, uh, wasn’t searching, ma’am. I was just looking and saw the, uh…”

“The picture. It drew you in, right? Like it was calling you?”

“I have to admit it did.”

“That’s my sister. Isn’t she lovely?”

“She is rather attractive, Mrs Scaler.”

Her eyes fixed on me. There was something in them I couldn’t read.

“Rather attractive, sir? Some say she’s gorgeous.”

I smiled and set the picture down. “Your sister’s very pretty.”

“She has her pick of men, you know. A banquet. But she’s very selective.”

“Pardon me?” For a moment I felt as if I’d wandered into a chapter of Great Expectations, Miss Havisham speaking to young Pip. It fit in its own small and sad way, aspects of Mrs Scaler seemingly minted in Victorian times.

We walked slowly downstairs, crossed the room to the door. Patricia Scaler held out her hand. It was surprisingly firm and I figured she gardened.

“I wanted to thank you for your time, sir. I’m sorry you had to listen to the failures of the lives in this house.”

“May I make a suggestion, ma’am?” I asked. “I don’t mean offense, it’s just my take.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You can’t change the past, but you have a much different future than you did a few days ago. That’s the direction I’d be looking.”

I went back to the department and grabbed Harry. We had two more dominatrixes on our list supplied by Mistress Layla, one of them over in Pensacola. We did the visits and the interviews and came up empty-handed. We were running out of leads, and left with the horrible feeling that, unless forensics pulled some kind of evidence from the cabin, or someone unknown stepped forward with new information, the case would always have a question mark at the end.

We got back to town at seven in the evening. Harry tottered off for his fix of Noelle, and I stopped by a health-food store for organic brown rice and quinoa, another of Fossie’s recommendations. By the time I got home, I was too tired to fix anything and fell asleep on the floor watching Andy Griffith re-runs. Somewhere in the night I dreamed of the beautiful woman who was Patricia Scaler’s sister, jolting awake with her breath in my throat.

Chapter 27

My sleep was as thick and juicy as a thirty-dollar steak, eight hours’ worth. In the morning I drank tea on my deck, though I couldn’t tell what kind, the writing on the package so artsy as to defy translation. I ate something rectangular made of lentils and popped my vitamins. I got a call on my way in, a number I hadn’t called before, no ID on the phone. I pulled to the side of the road and popped it open.

“Ryder.”

“Detective Ryder, this is Archie Fossie.”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m over at the Scalers’. I-I found something in Richard’s office. It seemed kind of hidden.”

“I’ll stop by.”

“Can I meet you on the corner? I don’t want to alarm Patricia.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Fossie was on the corner when I arrived, pacing in circles beneath a magnolia tree. I swooped up, pushed open the passenger door.

“Get in, we’ll take a ride.”

He slipped in my truck. “I told Patricia I was going for a walk. I should be back soon to prepare her meals for today.”

“What’d you find?”

“Just a phone number. It was on a Post-it, like you suggested. Stuck under the monitor on Richard’s computer.”

I looked at the number. A cell. It probably didn’t mean anything, but what seemed an out-of-the-way location might pan out.

“You thought to look under his monitor?” I asked.

“Richard spent hours at his computer, writing books and sermons. I figured anything he needed would be close at hand. You supplied the idea, I just did the looking.”

I pocketed the Post-it. “Miz Scaler mentioned Richard going out late at night, returning hours later. Ever see that?”

“Three weeks ago. I came in the morning before going to my office. Richard pulled in behind me in one of those huge white cars. He looked half crazy and his clothes were rumpled, his, uh, zipper down. His pants were stained.”

“What happened?”

“All I wanted was out of there. I asked him if he’d kindly take a bag of fruits and veggies and a couple of prepared dinners into Patricia.”

“And?”

“He asked me if I was having a relationship with her – not using those terms. My mouth fell open and I told him no, of course not.”

“What happened from there, Mr Fossie?”

“He started laughing, a filthy, dirty sound, and said he could understand, because it was like…like fucking cold grits.”

I thanked Fossie and dropped him back on the corner. “Keep looking, Mr Fossie,” I said. “It’s what we need.”

“It makes me feel like a creep. A spy or something.”

“You’re working for the good guys. And by the way, I’m sleeping again.”

He smiled for the first time, flicked a wave, hustled back toward the Scaler edifice.

I got into the office to find Harry at the coffee urn and studying doughnuts. Though it was Sunday, half of the detective’s desks were occupied, the price of a murderous season.

“You should eat more oatmeal,” I advised. “A healthy mind and body and all that.”

Harry leaned low over the pastries to scrutinize a danish. “I’m sure these sprinkles are organic.”

“I just got some info from Fossie,” I said, digging in my pocket for the Post-it. “Probably nothing, but worth a try. I put him on scoping out the Scalers’ place, an inside man.”

Harry gave me a frown, like he did after I mentioned my little scam at the prison.

“How’d you pull that one off, Carson?”

“Fossie’s been giving me a little advice on a healthy diet. He prescribed some herbs to help me sleep. It’s working.”

Harry nodded. “My aunt takes that herbal stuff and it did miracles for her. What’s Fossie think this number means?”

“He’s got no idea, but he found it –”

“Harry! Carson!”

We turned to see Tom Mason leaning out his office door with phone in hand. “Got a body at 513 Broad Street,” he called. “The Hoople Hotel.”

I jammed the Post-it back in my pocket. “Ah, the Heroin Hilton. Let’s go dance with the roaches.”

We were at the Hoople five minutes later, Harry wheeling the big blue Crown Vic half on to the sidewalk and shutting down the screamer. Two radio cars were on scene, and a crowd was gathering, vacant-eyed homeless types shambling beside gum-chewing hookers dressed like Whore Barbie. Streetwise studs with white tees and sideslung caps watched from a distance, afraid of getting nailed on outstanding warrants. When I stepped from the car a crack vial crunched under my heel. The air smelled of stale beer from the bar across the street.

We ducked past a uniform and into the Hoople. It was a resident hotel mainly occupied by old-line junkies who worked sporadic, low-pay jobs and needed a place to crib and fix and stay out of the way of normal people.

I saw a young uniformed officer at the desk counter, keeping the clerk from bolting. The clerk was Hispanic, in his thirties, maybe four-foot-ten and ninety pounds. His anxious eyes told me his immigration status was nebulous. Harry asked for directions and the uniform turned to point at the rickety steps leading upstairs.

“Third floor, Detective, room 321, about midway down the ha—”

That was all the clerk needed. He dropped low and bolted, trying to squeeze past us and out the front door. Harry’s hand flashed out and grabbed the guy by the back of his collar. When Harry lifted, the clerk was suddenly in the air, feet still running as Harry whirled around and set him down in the opposite direction, where he ran into a wall, just like a cartoon.

Helping the guy up, dusting off his shoulder, Harry said a few words in Spanish, telling Mr Jaime Critizia we were not going to inform La Migre – Immigration – unless he repeated his attempt at running.

The guy nodded acceptance and collapsed into a metal chair. We headed upstairs to the third floor, saw an open door midway down a hall less than two shoulders wide, a uniformed cop leaning against the wall, Officer Jerry Gilmore. He looked up, shook his head.

“Add another one to the year’s growing list of corpses, guys. Someone called it in anonymously just a few minutes ago. Me and Ryan were down the street, ran over. Found the guy inside, still warm.”

We peeked into a linoleum-floored room scarcely larger than a parking space. Surprisingly, the room was clean and tidy and recently painted. Two large philodendrons perched atop a table by a window, probably the only window in the place that had ever been washed. I saw a painting on the wall, an inexpensive copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The place resembled the digs of a fastidious college student, not a room at a low-rent sleeper.

Across the room the view wasn’t so pleasant: a body on a single bed, a bronze-skinned male in his early forties or thereabouts, jeans, no shirt. His head was shaved. His eyes were open and so was his mouth, a strand of dried vomit tracing down his cheek and throat to the sheet. I figured he’d been a good-looking man in life, his body lean, his features strong and chiseled and exotic.

At the head of the bed, beside a grated window streaked with grime, Sergeant Orville Ryan stared down at the corpse while scribbling notes in a spiral-bound pad almost lost in his plate-sized paw. Somewhere in the room I discerned the dank scent of the sea.

“What is it, Orv?” Harry strode over and looked down at the corpse, said, “Oh,” like things were self-explanatory. I wandered in and saw the cheap plastic syringe on the floor beside the bed, the blackened spoon used to heat the drug, melt it into water or spit that would liquefy it for sucking it up the needle. I snapped on latex gloves as I crouched, lifted the body’s arm and looked at the inner section from bicep to wrist, saw a webworm of scabs and collapsed veins, the stigmata of a veteran junkie.

“Looks like a classic OD,” I said, trying to hide the hopeful note in my voice. If the death was accidental, it wouldn’t fall under our aegis.

“Dead on,” Ryan said, looking up over the reading glasses perched on the tip of a bulbous nose. “He was aimed this direction, just a matter of time.”

“You knew the guy, Orv?” Harry asked.

“Name’s LaPierre O’Fong, officially.”

“O’Fong?”

“To hear Red tell it, years back someone on the Irish side of his family married the Chinese side and somehow – as a joke or maybe meaning it for real – the family changed its name to O’Fong. It got into official records and stuck.”

“That’s some kind of family story,” Harry said.

“He came from some kind of family, to hear him tell it. He went by Chinese Red, or just Red. He’d been on and off smack for twenty-plus years; on, mainly, starting in his late teens.”

I studied the guy’s features closer, saw Asian genes in the delicate nose, almond eyes. He wasn’t Caucasian or African or Hispanic or Asian, but somehow he was all of them and more. His open eyes were staring at the ceiling, like watching a movie in a theater where only the dead got tickets.

“Chinese makes sense,” I said, looking at the face. “Where’s the Red come from?”

“Red’s natural hair was the color of rust. He’d started shaving his head because of me,” Ryan said. “When I’d see that red rug ducking down an alley I’d pull over and roust his junkie ass.”

“You didn’t like him, Orv?” Harry asked.

“I liked Red plenty, Harry. Smart guy, sharp. I wanted him to clean up full time, maybe do something right for the next forty years. Every time I’d roust him I’d give him the speech, pass over a list of detox centers. He’d climb free of the shit, fall down two months later. I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d cleaned up again. Guess it didn’t last.”

“How’d he make his living?” I asked.

“Car detailer, when he was clean.”

“And when he wasn’t clean?”

“He hustled. It was another thing I’d roust his ass for; leaning a wall by the docks, winking at rich white guys in Lexuses. He was a good-looking guy. It made scoring off horny old guys pretty easy.”

“Bust him lately?”

“Not in three–four months. I hoped he’d seen the light.”

“He hustle down here by the docks?” Harry asked.

Ryan nodded. “Red preferred being where he could walk to the water. He liked to watch the ships come and go, said the water felt like home.”

“He had fish genes, too?”

“Red called himself a breed of the world, Harry. Said his daddy’s side of the family was Australian Aborigine-Irish-Italian and his mama was Thai and Chi and Russian and French. He said the ocean touched all those places so the ocean was as close as he could get to home.”

“A genetic smorgasbord,” I said. Chinese Red’s multilateral heritage was nothing new in a port city like Mobile; I figured the world’s ports were the planet’s most efficient melting pots.

“The ocean was home?” Harry said. “That’s kind of poetic.”

“There was poetry in Red’s soul, Harry,” Ryan continued. “Like he’d made peace with his life, and just wanted to enjoy it, the dope notwith-standing. A shitty end to a life that might have had some promise.”

Ryan pushed up from his crouch. He nodded to the cop at the door. “Tell the bus drivers they can have the body, Jerry. Chinese Red has sailed for home.”

The bus attendants came for the body. They grunted the dead weight from the bed toward the gurney.

With Harry looking between the body and Ryan, I saw a blue denim pant leg sticking from the shadows beneath the bed, a dark spot on a rolled-up cuff. I tweezed the pants out with my fingertips. When I saw the familiar stain I pulled latex gloves from my pocket and snapped them on.

“What is it?” Harry said.

“Blood,” I said. “A decent amount on the pants. Dried, but I’m sure it’s blood.”

I got down on my hands and knees. Pulled a white wad from beneath the bed.

“Got a T-shirt, too. Same stains.”

Harry looked between the deceased and the clothes. “I don’t see any wounds on the body. Let’s get the clothes to forensics. Have them verify the blood’s his when they get the chance.”

When I stood I felt dampness in my knees. Looking down I saw wet splotches.

“The carpet’s soaked,” I said.

“Piss, I expect,” Ryan said. “Red’s bladder let loose before he fell on the bed.”

I leaned my nose close to my wet knees. Sniffed. I expected to smell urine, but didn’t.

“It smells like sea water,” I said, befuddled.

“What was that?” Harry said.

“I said it smells like –”

“No. From outside.” Harry canted his head toward the open window.

“Dead guy! Dead guy!” A woman screamed for a second time. “There’s a dead guy in the street!”

We ran down the stairs, followed the woman’s screams around the corner. We saw a body face-down in an alley, hands splayed like the guy was hugging the pavement and kissing its surface. I slid up beside him like a ballplayer sliding to home plate. I pressed the back of my fingers to his neck, felt nothing. Harry had his phone out to call for assistance.

“They’s a man dead over here!” a male voice howled. I saw a head sticking from the vestibule of a ragged building, waving at me, at Harry, at anyone watching to please come help. Ryan and the uniformed officer came from the Hoople, looked our way with confused faces. I did a palms-up gesture of helplessness.

Another shriek of despair from across the street. A woman came running from an apartment. “My boyfriend won’t get up. I don’t think he’s breathing. Help me!”

“What the hell is going on?” Harry whispered, watching a brace of radio cruisers screaming on to the far end of the block.

“I don’t know,” I said, my heart thumping just under my chin. A little girl wandered up, not over eight years old. She tugged at the back of my pants.

“Mister? Mister?”

I turned and looked down, tried to affect a smile. “We’re pretty busy here, dear. What is it?”

She pointed toward the next block over. “They’s a man laying on the steps in front of my house. He look like he sleeping, but he won’t wake up. Why he doin’ like that?”