Текст книги "In The Blood"

Автор книги: Jack Kerley

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter 34

On the way to the department I planned to stop at the health-food emporium and grab a toasted lentil something-or-other, but pulled into a convenience store and selected a pair of pink-frosted Krispy-Kremes. I’d been faithful to Fossie’s regimen for about a week – vites and grains and juices and teas – but figured a little processed flour and sugar wouldn’t be fatal. I poured two extra-large coffees for accompaniment. In the checkout line I noticed a familiar face on a tabloid newspaper beside the register: the face was Scaler’s, the rag was the World-Week News, which had never before met a Scaler idea it didn’t like.

The headline read: Reverend Scaler’s Death is S&M Scene!

The subhead read: Torture and Devil Worship and a Gay Black Lover.

A starburst in the corner read: A Tangled Web of Weird!

Uh-oh, I thought, reaching for a copy. What went wrong here?

Waiting my turn at the checkout, I sucked on one of my coffees and read. The tabloid’s story was basically true to the facts because they couldn’t be improved upon: one of the nation’s most arch-conservative, family-values-trumpeting moralists had died while being whipped by a gay black junkie prostitute. The candles at the scene were depicted as symbols of Satan. It was a leap, but then it was the World-Week News.

I set the paper beside my coffees. The clerk, a plump, hair-netted woman in her late forties, scowled at the paper as she rang it up.

“Can you believe that guy?” she said, not hiding the anger and betrayal. “All those years of pretending to be holy. What a scummy fake.”

I must have been under Harry’s more-generous influence and mumbled something about all the facts not yet in.

“They’re in enough for me,” she said, anger bright in her face as she handed me my receipt. “The people at my church got all his books and his sermons on CD. But not for long.”

“How so, ma’am?” I asked.

“Tonight we’re gonna light up a big bonfire to lay ’em all on.”

I left the place realizing Scaler’s reputation was as destroyed as if it had been ground zero at an H-bomb test.

When I hit the department Harry was mainlining coffee, chomping a danish, and trying to draw a connections line: who touched who when? None of the lines on the page went far. I waited for him to make reference to yesterday, but the event in my living room seemed to have disappeared as far as he was concerned; fine with me.

Tom Mason wandered over and held up a copy of the World-Week News, the Scaler edition.

“You guys seen this?”

I nodded. “Everything’s out. No more secrets for the Rev. His rep’s going down in flames.”

“I talked to a buddy in Miami where the rag’s written,” Tom said. “For this to hit stands today the story and pictures had to have been ready yesterday. Who leaked and why?”

I did the money-whisk. “The rag pays, people send the stuff in.”

Harry scanned the story, set the paper aside. “Scaler did everything in a big way. Same for his fall from grace.”

“He’s still falling,” Tom said, finger-twitching us to the window. Seeing a CNN van, we sprinted to the conference room and turned on the television.

“First this message,” the anchor was saying, ‘then a bizarre and provocative update on the death of famed religious leader Richard Scaler.”

“This ain’t good,” Tom Mason said.

After a minute of commercial the anchor segued to a local CNN stringer in Mobile, squinting into sunlight. Her hair was strawberry blonde, her face the shape of a heart. I saw our building in the background, MPD headquarters. The stringer lifted the mic to her lips, shook back her hair, a move I’m sure they teach in Reporting 101.

“Sources close to the deceased suggest that the Mobile Police believe the last person to see Richard Scaler alive was a black male prostitute named LaPierre O’Fong. It’s been suggested that Reverend Scaler died of a heart attack suffered during…erotic games. In another bizarre twist, O’Fong was one of the four addicts who died after OD’ing on uncut heroin earlier this week, adding yet another layer of infamy to the once-impeccable reputation of Richard Scaler…”

“They know everything,” Harry said, amazed.

“She said, ‘sources close to the deceased,’” I said. “That’s not the usual line when someone on our side is yapping. Then it’s a source close to the investigation.”

We heard a click as the intercom was activated. “Lieutenant? Lieutenant Mason? Chief’s on line one.”

Tom rolled his eyes. Flicked the phone to private. He said the word Yup five or six times, followed by an uh-huh. He hung the phone up.

“The Chief just got a call from the Mayor who just got a call from –”

“James Carleton the third,” I ventured, stepping into a wide-open space between words.

“That Scaler’s lawyer?” Tom asked.

“The one and only.”

“Mr Carleton is nasty upset at the news reports coming out. The report goes into stuff Mr Lawyer thinks could only come from the MPD.”

“Back in a few,” I said, sprinting toward the door.

I caught the stringer standing beside the news van and applying fresh lipstick in its side mirror. Her videographer was wandering down the sidewalk singing a Green Day song along with the iPod wired to his ears. The woman’s name was Nell Pomeroy; I’d met her when dating a local reporter a while back.

“Hi, Nell,” I said.

“Hey, Carson. How you doing?” Her eyes looked happy to see a potential leak. “Are you on the Scaler case?”

“I’ve got too many other cases,” I finessed, suddenly becoming of no interest to Pomeroy. She turned back to her lips, making a kissy face at her image in the mirror. It reminded me of Harry in the PICU.

“Could I ask where you got the details on Reverend Scaler’s death, Nell? I promise not to tell a soul.”

She dropped the lipstick in what was either a purse or a daypack. “Sorry, Carson.”

“I’m not asking names of sources,” I said, though that’s exactly what I’d hoped for. “But they aren’t inside the MPD or forensics, or the ME’s office?”

She thought, measuring words. “We’re getting stuff from several places. Nothing big came from the cops or the ME’s folks. I can’t say anything else.”

I loped back to Tom and Harry. Shook my head.

“Not us. Sounds like it came from someone with a line into the Scaler organization.”

Harry shook his head. “They’re the last group on earth who’d want Righteous Rev.’s legend besmirched. They have the biggest stake in Scaler having an immaculate legacy. And does anyone on the inside even know all the grim details?”

“Tutweiler,” I grunted. “I told him what happened, remember?”

“Tutweiler would be the last person in the world to expose Scaler,” Harry said. “Everything in Tutweiler’s life is Scaler trickle-downs. The guy made his living riding on Scaler’s coattails.”

“How d’you know that?”

“I’ve been back on YouTube, Carson. Scaler and Dean Tutweiler go back years.”

I nodded toward the conference room. “Show me.”

Harry pulled down all his downloaded material. He tapped the keyboard and Scaler took the monitor by storm, bible in one hand, microphone in the other, preaching at a ball field in a park, the stage over the pitcher’s mound, the crowd in the outfield.

“This is Scaler after leaving his small church up in Pickens County,” Harry said. “I guess it didn’t give him a big enough audience. He’s back on the salvation circuit, pulling the bucks with that big stage presence, Wayne Newton with a chip on his shoulder. Scaler’s sermons often veer close to white-supremacy rants. Watch this next scene…look close at the curtain behind Scaler on the stage. Every now and then a face pops through.”

I leaned close to the monitor. A woman’s face parted the folds of cloth behind the stage, mouth heavy with lipstick, almost a leering face, as if amused there was a party going on in the back, while up front the faithful were falling to the floor, speaking in tongues or offering afflicted parts up to the stage for Scaler to heal.

Harry said, “Here it comes…”

A face parted the curtain, eyes scanning the crowd as though counting money, the lips curling up in what? Amusement? Sneer? It was Tutweiler; no mistaking that square jaw and rack of white teeth. He turned his head backstage, behind the curtain, yelled something, grinned, let the curtain fall back in place.

“He looks like a happy man,” I said.

“He’s got an early seat on the Scaler gravy train,” Harry said. “Who wouldn’t be smiling?”

I shrugged. “What’s your point? Who cares if Scaler and Tut have been buddies since way back?”

“Remember Scaler’s weird tape: ‘I have been led astray by false companions over years’? Tutweiler’s been around for a long time. And I don’t think Scaler had many real friends.”

I watched as the scene shifted to people walking across a field, past cars, folks eating chicken, drinking sodas and iced tea and lemonade. The camera panned past a small guy in a light-colored suit, the clothes making him a parrot in a field of crows. He was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck and spooning cake into his mouth, talking to those around him.

“Go back for a minute,” I said. “Freeze when I say freeze.”

Harry moused back the vid to the start of the scene.

“Just a bunch of crowd shots,” he said. “What are you –”

“Freeze,” I said, leaning forward. The guy in the suit had a half-dozen men around him, heads craned, as though between bites of cake he was giving out first-rate stock tips. I knew those guys, as a type, anyway: quintessential rednecks in white tees and Big Ben overalls, jeans and blue work shirts, mud-caked boots. They looked grown from hard soil, tight-eyed and grim. They’d been born with a grudge and life was a daily matter of nursing it.

I tapped my finger on the small guy with white cake stopped just south of his lips. “Seen that particular piece of hate before?” I asked. “Like maybe he was once a dozen feet from you?”

“Arnold Meltzer,” Harry whispered. “The head of the Aryan Revolutionary Army.”

“Not back then, I expect. But it looks like he might be finding the Scaler audience ripe for recruitment.”

“Let’s talk to Tutweiler again,” Harry said.

Chapter 35

Tutweiler was pulling into a parking slot as we arrived. Actually, Tut’s driver was doing the pulling, the Tutster in the rear seat and barely visible through the smoky windows of the black Yukon. His license tag read KING2. I bet I knew who KING1 had been.

The driver slid out, opened the rear door. Tutweiler scowled when he saw us pull in beside and get out. He looked at the driver.

“Go on along, Desmond. I’ll call the garage if I need anything more.”

Tutweiler turned the chiseled face to Harry and me. Something about the Tutster looked worn, like some event had drained fifty per cent of his air out.

“Yes, Detectives?”

“A few questions, Dean,” I said. “How long have you been with Richard Scaler?”

“We’ve been…” he paused, as if trying to decide something. “We’ve been friends for over twenty years.”

“Where did you meet?”

“A prayer breakfast in Jackson. Richard had been preaching a week-long revival. We started talking and I’ve been with him ever since. I started as an advance man, meeting with churches, setting up revivals, making sure we’d have enough seating when Richard came to town. It was an exciting time, doing the Lord’s work out in the fertile fields.”

I stared directly into Tutweiler’s eyes. “We’ve come upon what seems a fertile field in the Reverend’s oeuvre, a recent videotape where he speaks about something wrong with a house he built.”

Tutweiler did bewildered. “Richard and Patricia used the finest builder available for their house over in –”

“No, Brother Tutweiler,” I said. “House as a parable, a metaphor. Brother Scaler speaks of building under false pretenses, of false companions over years. Any idea what he’s referring to? Or who?”

“Richard never knew an enemy, he only knew souls. Richard Scaler saved many souls in his lifetime. Consequently, he had many friends.”

“How much do you make a year, Dean?”

The question jolted him from his reverie. The nose lifted into the air. “That’s my business,” he sniffed. “I run an institute of higher learning and am paid commensurate to my position.”

I figured a half-mil would be about right. With a shitload of perks worth another quarter mil, like the car and driver, paid for by the faithful. Maybe Scaler even cut Tutweiler in on royalties from souls saved.

Tutweiler broke off his pose and looked to Harry. “This video about false friends or whatever – I suspect the recent timing means it was created during Richard’s decline. When he was often distant, distracted. We’ve done much thinking about those days.”

“And what, pray tell, have we thought?” I asked.

“A good preacher speaks in word pictures, creating scenes in the minds of those who listen. But in the past year he sometimes lapsed into speaking of such images as if living them.”

“Like psychotic episodes?”

“Psychotic episodes. Yes, that could well be the answer. He seemed, well, almost delusional,” he said. “That’s the only word I have for it. I blame myself, of course.”

“For his delusions?” Harry said.

“I – we…those who loved him, should have confronted Richard about his problems. He was falling apart and we could have intervened.”

“You didn’t do anything for your good friend,” I said. “Why?”

“Richard had his delusions, we had ours. Our delusion was thinking he’d return to the Richard we knew.”

“Did you know Scaler was beating his wife?”

I expected a What, me? moment. But instead we got closed eyes and a slow-shaking head. “There were times when Patricia was late to a taping; twice she was limping, once the make-up person worked half an hour to cover a bruise on her cheek. She said she’d fallen, bumped into the car door. I didn’t want to believe…” his voice trailed off. “Maybe it was part of Richard’s increasing anger. Or his delusions.”

We said we’d be back with more questions. Tut seemed happy we were leaving. He turned and began striding to the building.

I said, “Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?” Spoken over his shoulder like he had to keep moving or turn into salt.

“Have you heard anything from Arnold Meltzer lately?”

He froze. Turned. Gave us a full frown with pursed lips.

Said, “Who?”

“Nothing. Just a name.”

Harry got behind the wheel and we pulled away from Kingdom College. Harry shot me a look.

“Indeterminate on the Meltzer ref, maybe he knew it, maybe not. And judging by the age of Scaler in that last video, Tutweiler was with the Rev. for more like thirty years. But what I really found interesting was how the once-immaculate Reverend Scaler seems to have gone from having a few problems to being angry and delusional.”

I nodded. “The man’s not even alive and he’s falling apart.”

Chapter 36

“Where to next?” I asked Harry. He pulled a notepad from his pocket, studied a list of connections.

“A biker wannabe tried to abduct Noelle. Bikers tried to kill us on the return from meeting Sinta-pirininni, checking into Noelle’s start-point. Meltzer controls at least one biker gang. Do you think Ben Belker would have any more info on Meltzer?”

“You can bet he’ll have whatever there is. And it’ll go back years.”

While driving to Montgomery, Harry never mentioned the shrink or intervention or anything related, and I didn’t volunteer info, choosing instead to watch the scenery flashing by. I didn’t know if Kavanaugh was required to report to Tom Mason the details of our truncated session, but I’d done my part by showing up.

We pulled into the strip mall where the SLDP offices were located. Again, I saw the hulking bubba type smoking in a battered pickup in the parking lot, hat low over his eyes. Same plaid shirt, same hard arms blue with tattoos. Same look shot our way.

I’d called and Ben was waiting. He brought Harry and me to his office, closing the door. “We know less about Meltzer than most of the movement leaders. He holds some of the ugliest ideas in a movement filled with ugly ideas, and he has lots of protection.”

“We’re interested in his past. Where’s Meltzer from?”

“He grew up in Noxubee County in Mississippi. Strict and confining childhood, from what I gather. His father was an itinerant preacher and handyman, more the latter than the former. Daddy Meltzer had odd ideas on child-rearing, and was prone to dress little Arnold in girl’s clothes and make him stand one-footed on a stool when he misbehaved. His mother worked as a clerk at Wal-Mart and didn’t seem to have friends. Little Arnie was very bright, but had a speech impediment that may have affected his schooling. His grades were poor.”

It amazed me how many serial killers and sociopaths had the same strange item in their backgrounds: dressed in clothes of the opposite sex.

“In high school Meltzer formed a group called the Alliance, a white, male-only club with secret passwords and handshakes and rituals. It seems adolescent, but…”

“But it gave him something he could control,” I finished.

“The recruits to his club were ignorant and poor. Arnold preferred strong, mean-spirited chest-thumpers. Together they made brawn powered by brains and beat the shit out of anyone who looked at them sideways.”

“He built a tribe,” Harry said. “When they became a tribe, they stopped being lone outcasts and losers, and became a force to be reckoned with. All held together by whatever ideology Arnold invented.”

Ben nodded. “Meltzer grew the Alliance like kids in 4-H grow gardens. After a few years it was a submerged but potent presence throughout a dozen surrounding rural counties; warriors for the white race. In his early twenties Meltzer branched out, writing and printing hate literature. Booklets and pamphlets and such. He’s authored several books. Meltzer’s managed to stay under the national radar, but if there’s a hate site on the web, chances are it’s traceable to him. Either he runs it directly, or has sponsorship.”

“Sponsorship?” Harry asked. “Like advertising?”

“He lets the owners run it free from his server network, offers graphics that put more slick in the sick. He promotes products on the sites. He also sponsors recruiting rallies and even retreats, if you will, where strategy and tactics are discussed. Like what politicians might be useful to the movement – again, under the radar – and deserve help getting elected.”

Harry suppressed a shiver. “You mention Meltzer writing books. Books I could find at the library?”

Ben reached to the bookcase on his wall, plucked out a softcover volume. He tossed it to Harry, who studied the cover.

“I saw this at Bailes’s trailer.”

“It’s a classic,” Ben said. “If you’re into Aryan supremacy.”

Harry held the book up for me to see. Slaves By Nature was the title, emblazoned above a color cartoon of blacks grinning, dancing, eating watermelons and, obviously from the position of the feet under a bush, having sex. The subheading was The Truth at Last!!!

Harry opened the book and started reading:

“The black race is not a true race as such, but a subspecies that, when properly trained, is best suited for menial labor and low-thought operations such as simple assemblage in factories. As for constant revisionist bleatings about the injustices of ‘slavery’, both history and biblical reference instruct us that the Negro actually thrives in such an environment, needing constant oversight and a firm hand in matters of discipline. In this case slavery, far from being an impediment to development, actualizes the Negro…”

“That was Meltzer’s first effort,” Ben noted. “He’s penned a dozen others, all basically the same, all standard fare for the Aryan library.”

Harry tossed the book on Ben’s desk. “Meltzer make money at this?”

Ben shrugged. “Not a lot, given the limited market. But he also sells T-shirts, posters, flags, key rings –”

“Key rings?”

Ben scrabbled in his desk, tossed me a stamped-metal medallion with a key loop. I stared at it, a swastika over a WP: white power.

“Yours for $18.95 plus shipping and handling,” Ben said. “Everyone who’s anyone in the movement has a Meltzer key ring.”

“Costs maybe a buck to make,” I said. “Nice margin on Aryan nick-nacks.”

“As long as there’s a difference between races, Meltzer makes money on this shit. But it’s his dope muling that brings in the big bucks. Of course, he keeps himself removed from the drugs.”

“This rabbit ever pop from his hole?” I said.

Ben said, “Funny you should ask. Meltzer’s making a guest appearance tonight at a white-power rally near the border. He’s been uncommonly visible the last couple of weeks, this being his third rally in as many states. It’s unusual.”

“This like a Klan rally?” Harry asked. “Sheets and secret handshakes and burning crosses?”

Ben grinned. “Times have changed. Picture a rave, only with lots of hate and a median IQ of about twelve.”

“You have informants at the rally, Ben?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We know time and location, but penetrating a Meltzer rally is nigh on impossible. The only people invited are the inside crowd who know one another. They’re suspicious folks. Or maybe a better word is paranoid.”

We raced back to Mobile with the lights flashing. Harry had a late-afternoon meeting with the District Attorney’s office about an upcoming trial. We discussed Meltzer on the high-speed run, wondering whether to pity the little boy in a dress made to stand one-legged on a stool, or hate what he’d become. Harry grudgingly opted for the former, I voted for the latter.

I dropped Harry at his car so he could run to the DA’s office. He leaned back in the passenger window.

“Where you heading, Carson?” he asked.

“Home,” I said. “Maybe take the boat out, paddle a bit.” I yawned against the back of my hand, did a tired look. “Or maybe I’ll catch a full night of Z’s, be fresh and ready in the morning.”

Harry looked dubious. “You’re not thinking about Meltzer’s rally tonight, are you?”

“Was it tonight?” I yawned.

“You’d get your ass caught. With no one to pull the wolves off your back.”

“Jeez, bro…” I shook my head. “You think I’m nuts or something?”