Текст книги "In The Blood"

Автор книги: Jack Kerley

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter 19

I dialed the college, got the general switchboard, was shunted to Tutweiler’s office. He’d been a long-time friend and business partner of Scaler’s. We figured he might have something interesting to say.

I asked the female voice when Harry and I could come and talk to the Dean, suggesting fifteen minutes from now would be a good choice. I heard her muffle the phone with her hand, talk to someone, Tutweiler, I supposed. She came back on.

“Dean Tutweiler can meet you tomorrow after lunch, say one o’clock? He has fifteen spare minutes and wants you to know he’s a firm supporter of the police.”

“I was thinking more like within the hour.”

“He’s very busy,” she said. “He’s having a difficult week.”

“Not as difficult as his boss, ma’am,” I said, hanging up. I heard that drumming in my head again, like my irritation had developed a soundtrack. I frowned at Harry. “We have an appointment for tomorrow. Let’s go confirm it now.”

We passed the boundaries of the college minutes before coming to its buildings, the border denoted by plastic strips flapping from pine poles in the ground: surveyor’s stakes. A billboard-sized sign proclaimed we’d hit Elysium, after a fashion, providing a twenty-foot-long artist’s soft-edged rendering of the institution in the near future, a cityscape of architectural splendor and curving streets embracing dormitories for tens of thousands of the faithful. A white cross was displayed in the upper-right-hand corner of the signage like a beaming sun.

It took us another half-mile to get to the college, a cluster of boxy concrete buildings. As we drew close I saw a large white tent awning near a hole in the ground: the site of last week’s groundbreaking ceremony. Students, faces scrubbed and backpacks tight with books, wandered by. No one wore jeans or tanktops or miniskirts. I attended college in the early 90s, briefly at the University of South Alabama, then, more seriously, at U of A. Those venues seemed a world distant from this quiet campus.

We followed signs to the administration building, took an elevator to the top floor, entered an anteroom, behind it a wide room with a round cerulean desk at the end, making the receptionist look as if she were stuck in a big blue inner tube. We walked fifty feet of fancy parquet flooring.

The receptionist was in her late thirties, a bit chubby, with a small and pretty face beneath a swirling tower of golden hair.

“Can I he’p you gennulmen with –”

“Mobile Police,” I said. “We need to see Dean Tutweiler.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, but he’s not in his office.”

“But he’s in the building, right?” I said. “Or nearby?”

“Uh, yes, I think.”

I nodded toward the open door at her back. “We’ll wait inside his office, ma’am. Thanks.”

The office was more akin to a CEO’s sanctuary than a religious academic’s lair, though a massive podium in the corner held a huge leather bible, a purple bookmark tucked into some pithy passage. Turning back I heard approaching footsteps outside, followed by Tutweiler speaking as though giving dictation to be chiseled into granite tablets.

“Call the PR people and tell them to meet me at 11.45. No, make that 11.50. In the Mary Baker Eddy room. Tell them to start working up a statement on the school’s position vis-a-vis the enemies of Christianity and Truth. Richard’s enemies. They know the drill.”

Scaler veered from his receptionist and into the room, tall and dark and splendidly suited in the thin-lined black of a banker. He saw us and his eyes darkened at foreigners in his sanctum sanctorum.

“Can I help you?”

I remained seated and flipped open my ID wallet. “I’m Detective Ryder with the Mobile Police Department and this is –”

Tutweiler shot a not-subtle glance at his watch. “Can it wait, officers? I’ve got a meeting with the board and the faculty advisors group. The donors committee. Right now I’ve got to return a call to People Magazine.” He turned away, reached across his desk and lifted the phone. It was a fancy one with a shitload of buttons. I wondered if one of them was reserved for God.

“Please have a seat, sir,” Harry said, using his quiet voice. It’s about as deep as the Marianas Trench with the timbre of Thor’s hammer striking a small planet. “I promise this will be fast and easy and you’ll be back on track in a brief while. Is that all right?”

Tutweiler didn’t look like he was going to break into song, but he set the phone down and took the chair behind the desk, more a throne, actually, red velvet with gold leaf over embossed wood, the high back a carving of Adam and Eve holding hands in Paradise. They looked like adolescents. There was no serpent in sight.

Tutweiler angled his throne and leaned his head back, the better to display his imperious profile, half Caesar, half Heston. Harry said, “We’re trying to find out about Mr Scaler’s last few days and if you can help us with –”

“Reverend Scaler was his title. You could also use Doctor Scaler, another of his titles.”

I looked up. Tut was definitely getting on my nerves. “Reverend Scaler had an MD?”

Tutweiler narrowed an eye my way. “A PhD.”

“Impressive. From where?”

“The Southwestern Arkansas Institute of Bible Studies.”

“Forgive me for not recognizing the school, sir,” I apologized. “Is it an accredited institution, like, say, the Harvard Divinity School?”

Tutweiler’s jaw clenched. “The Southwestern Arkansas Institute holds the highest possible accreditations, those from God.”

“Of course,” I said, writing earnestly in my notepad. I wrote pompous pinhead asshole.

“Was anything bothering Reverend Scaler recently?” Harry asked Tutweiler. “We saw TV footage of the groundbreaking for the new structures. He seemed distracted, not his usual self.”

“I’m probably far better acquainted with Richard’s usual self than you gentlemen are,” Tutweiler sniffed. “He seemed fine to me. What makes you think otherwise?”

“For one thing,” I said, “he went five minutes without begging for money.”

Harry shot me a glance. Tutweiler reached for his phone.

“What’s the name of your superior?” he said, nose in the air. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

I jumped from my chair so fast it tipped over backwards. I slammed my knuckles on Tutweiler’s desk, leaning forward until the Dean’s eyes filled with my face.

“Here’s what you’re going to put up with, Brother Tutweiler. Right now no one knows the Rev. was hanging upside-down with whip marks scalded across his fat white ass. Or sucking a ball gag the size of a lemon. Or wearing lipstick and frilly women’s panties with a dildo jammed into his last supper. Those little details might never surface if we get some straight answers to our questions.”

Tutweiler turned white. The phone returned to the cradle. The Dean of Kingdom College stood and walked to the window, gazing over the spreading green commons four stories below. Students walked casually across the bright grass, as fresh and clean-scrubbed as if pulled from a casting agency for a Happy Days remake. Tutweiler sighed and turned to us.

“The past year – maybe longer – Richard seemed to grow more and more erratic. He stopped writing his sermons. He sat by the lake. He disappeared for days sometimes. It was getting worse.”

“How so?”

“A week before he was scheduled to address the National Fundamentalist Council, he told me to cancel the engagement. He’s been the keynote speaker for years, it’s always a powerful address, covered by the international media. He said he wasn’t going to deliver the speech. I was floored. It’s a huge event for both of our organizations. After the Reverend delivers his speech we always get huge…” he paused, winced.

“Donations,” I finished. “Don’t be afraid to say the word ‘money’, either, Dean. It’s the truth, right?”

“Yes,” he said, looking away. “Donations. To continue our many ministries.”

“Detective Nautilus and I heard Reverend Scaler mention an eye problem in the news clip. Macular degeneration? Cataracts? Something as simple as conjunctivitis?”

For the first time, Tutweiler looked totally perplexed. Dumbstruck.

“Dean?” Harry asked.

“I have no idea, Detective. I never heard him mention his eyes before or after that day.”

“It seemed a big deal at the time,” I prodded.

Tutweiler shrugged. “Got me. The whole eye thing came straight from the blue.”

We hammered at a restrained Tutweiler for a few more minutes. He had nothing earth-shaking to add, save for a solid alibi for the three days pre and post his boss’s murder, a symposium-cum-revival in Albany, New York. For verification he mentioned several congress people and aides. When we headed out, he made no mention of my behavior. His voice was subdued.

“Can…all these sordid details…uh, can they…”

“Things may leak out,” Harry sighed. “But I imagine we can keep a lid on the worst aspects.”

The door closed at our backs. We went to the cruiser. Harry paused before he put the car in gear. Looked at me.

“Carson, did you plan that action in Tutweiler’s office? You looked about to jump across his desk and strangle him.”

“An act planned from the git-go,” I said, waving it off and hoping it sounded like the truth.

Chapter 20

We returned to the department, flipped a coin. I lost and had to write up the events of the day. I was feeling worn and bleary-eyed and it took an hour to document the case thus far. I made copies of the full materials and dropped them in the box outside Lieutenant Mason’s office, then wandered to the meeting room. The door was closed and I saw Richard Scaler sermonizing on the screen of the computer. The video was jittery. Though I couldn’t hear the audio, my mind heard his angry rants, the crowd amening Scaler’s every screeching condemnation of those not fitting the straitjacket confines of his theology.

When I entered the meeting room Harry sat forward and paused the action.

“A Richard Scaler film retrospective?” I asked.

“Tutweiler got me wondering who Richard Scaler really was. How the reality jived with my images of him. It’s pretty sad what I found so far. Wanna look?”

Though weary, curiosity pulled my chair closer to the screen. Harry tapped a key and the action re-started.

“This one I pulled off YouTube. Scaler preaching at a tent revival in Louisiana in the early sixties. The kiddie-preacher stage.”

The uploaded video was black and white, grainy, probably shot on what was called a super-8 camera, the film negative about as wide as your average lady’s pinky nail. Richard Bloessing Scaler was about seven years old, a little dab of pudge on a big broad stage. He danced, twirled, cajoled, all the while amening and hallelujahing in a comedic, high-piping voice. The crowd ate it up, some fainting, others speaking in tongues, others shaking as if standing in water while holding a shorted toaster. And always, moving through the crowd, the hat asking for money.

The film floated out of focus, re-entered on a scene that appeared to be backstage at the just-completed revival, billows of white cloth backdrop as Scaler’s parents sat in folding chairs, the young Richard between them.

“He’s got the spirit all the way through,” Daddy Scaler drawled. “They come from fitty miles to hear my boy preachin’ the Lord’s word.”

Richard Scaler Senior looked like a refugee from a Depression-era dust storm, a bone-skinny scarecrow with a nasal Oklahoma drawl. He wore overalls and a plain shirt, and I figured it was more costume than clothes, telling the dirt-poor audience he was one of them.

Mama Scaler was grossly obese; no way to gloss it, a lump. Her eyes seemed lost in her fleshy face. I felt sorrow at her condition until she looked into the camera. Her eyes were as cold and glittering as the eyes of a rattlesnake, and projected a force I could not explain, even through the bad lighting and grainy film. She stared at the camera as if determining whether to ignore it or kill it.

“How often do you preach, Richard?” the interviewer asked the chubby little kid.

“Every ni—”

“Two–three times a week,” Daddy Scaler interrupted, shooting a wide grin at the kid and patting him like an obedient retriever. “He’d preach day’n’night if we let him, but uh course, he’s got school an’ things.”

I’ll bet, I thought.

I saw Richard yawn and begin to slump, dead tired after hours of preaching and altar calls. His mother’s hand shot in from behind and grabbed the kid’s jacket at the shoulder blades, yanked him erect like a sack of meal. It was meant to be hidden, but Mama Scaler was unfamiliar with camera angles.

“Stand up straight, boy,” Mama Scaler side-mouthed. “An’ smile. These people are takin’ pictures.”

I looked at the seven-year-old and saw a wooden marionette. The camera scanned the departing crowd. The camera had lights and the faces looked back at the lights with confusion or fear or anger.

“I notice the crowd is all white,” the interviewer said. “Do you ever let Richard preach to colored audiences?”

Mama Scaler backhanded the question away like it was a fly. “Negras is made by Satan an’ doan have the men’l powers to unnerstand the word a God Ahmighy. All they wanna do is stir up trouble ennyways.”

“What kind of trouble do they stir up, ma’am?”

“What kinda question is that? I’m not sittin’ here to be talkin’ ’bout no filthy negras.”

“It was just a question, ma’am,” the interviewer said. “Could you tell us how much the typical revival pulls in, and what percentage of the proceeds are yours?”

A look of disgust quivered through the flesh of Mama Scaler’s face. She looked at her husband and said, “Get ’em the fuck outta here.”

Daddy Scaler rocketed from his chair with his finger pointing.

“This goddamn interview is over right now –”

“They’re simple questions, Mr Scaler. Mrs Scaler? Might you know what percentage of the –”

Scaler pushed his hat at the camera lens. “Doan you be talking to mah wife out my permission. Git outta here right now. ZEB! ETHAN!” he called to someone off-screen. “Come kick these goddamn nigger-lovin’ Communists outta here!”

The camera shifted sideways. A flurry of grunts and curses and the camera fell to the floor, showing a two-second scuffle of shoes and boots. The screen went black.

Harry said, “The copyright on the full documentary the clip came from – titled God’s Country – is 1959. It tracks several revivals across the South. That’s where the film ends for the Scaler journey.”

“Little Richy would have been…”

“Seven,” Harry said. “And already a two-year veteran of the circuit.”

“It’s obvious Mama Scaler’s got spiders in her wiring,” I said. “Probably psychotic. Stuff like that can mess a kid up bad.”

“Your mom…” Harry said. “She was the opposite, right?”

“Scared of everything. It was righteous fear – my old man would explode if the temperature was a half-degree different than what he wanted. She made church mice look bold by comparison.”

A half-beat pause. “How do you think that affected you? Not just your mom, the whole childhood-fear thing?”

“Not as much as it affected Jeremy,” I said.

Jeremy was my brother. At age sixteen he’d killed our father and later he’d been imprisoned for killing five women, the crimes starting soon after my father had been torn apart in a woods. After years of living in an institution for the criminally insane, he’d escaped last year. I had nearly been killed trying to safely return him to the institution. The chase had ended in the revelation that Jeremy had not killed the women. Or at least that’s what I wanted to believe.

Jeremy was still out there, free, and I heard from him every three or four months, a brief phone call, a cryptic postcard. He never said where he was, I never asked. He was smart enough to stay outside forever, I figured. He was a genius at camouflage, exterior and interior.

“I guess I’d have to agree there,” Harry said. “At least, from what I know about your bro—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Harry. I’m done.”

He nodded. “Sure. Let’s get back to the Reverend Dick, preaching in 1995.”

Harry resumed his control of the keyboard, pulling up another video. The gestures were pure Scaler, dramatic and exaggerated, from his popped-wide eyes to his ten-league-boot steps. He’d yowl out a statement, cross the stage, yowl out another. His suit was white, his shoes were white, his belt was white, his shirt and ties were white. The only dark was hair and eyes. His body was about two decades older than the boy we’d just seen on stage, almost three decades younger than the body we’d seen cut down from a staircase last week. The body was also about thirty pounds lighter. I was surprised at how lithe and youthful Scaler was, and how good looking.

“Who built this country?” he railed at what appeared to be an audience of several hundred. “The Europeans who arrived on these shores? The people who were sent by God to build the greatest nation ever seen on the face of the earth, a shining star of freedom? Yes, the nay-tives were here, it’s true, can’t be denied. In-di-ans.” Scaler did a woo-woo-woo motion at his mouth to the delight of the crowd. He arm-flapped across the stage in a parody of pow-wow dancing, twenty feet of insult to the sacred rituals of others. “Were terrible things done to the In-di-ans in the name of Nation? Of destiny? Again, it can’t be denied. It also cannot be denied that the native tribes worshipped plants and animals and the heads of idols carved on poles outside of teeeeee-peeeees…” Scaler paused and glared into the crowds to let his words sink in.

“Totem poles were northwestern tribes,” I said. “They didn’t live in tipis.”

“Shhh,” Harry said, pointing back to the computer. Scaler shook his disgust at plant and animal and idol worship from his face, lifted his bible and pointed to it with a stern finger.

“When you worship false gods and idols, you anger the true God. He sends an army to smite you in the name of justice and redemption. Could that army be the soldiers of Columbus? The armies of Cortés? The God-blessed American cavalry rescuing women and children trying to pioneer the plains of this great land?”

“Yes,” the crowd roared. “Yes.” I could see the front rows of the audience. Several turned to one another, patting backs and shaking hands, transported in the bliss of Scaler telling them that what they’d wanted to believe all along was true.

“The same God who saved the children of Israel at the expense of the blaspheming Egyptians now comes to save the Christian children of the plains at the expense of the marauding infidel In-deee-ans?”

Yesses and amens and hallelujahs. Scaler raised a palm for silence. It took two seconds for the place to turn as still as a windless desert. He appeared in the throes of decision, then spoke in a stage whisper:

“I can’t he’p but think that this leads to an overwhelming fact: God lifts the righteous, drops the unholy. It’s how he makes his work known…So despair not for those fallen to the Lord’s swift sword…those of Sodom and Gomorra – they did not heed the lessons. Do not despair for those charred by God’s truthful lightning – they did not listen to His clear words. Do not despair for those who constantly beseech, ‘Help me, help me. Give me this, give me that…’ They have not heard the words of God, to lift thyself by thine own bootstraps…”

“Adidas 3:19,” I whispered. “Pull thyself up as you would thine laces.”

“For they have set themselves at odds with God and His works and His servants and messengers. For they have set themselves at odds with us!”

“Them and Us,” Harry said, turning off the computer with a sigh. “Can’t beat the old favorites.”

Chapter 21

After a night of the deepest sleep in a month I awakened to the sound of piccolos being assaulted by tubas. I pushed aside the curtains. Outside in the street was Miz Best and the improbable dog, Mr Mix-up. True to its multispecies make-up, the ridiculous beast was squealing one moment like a lap poodle, roof-ing the next like a basset.

I went to the kitchen and ate a banana – 100 per cent natural and organic – popped my B-vites and ginseng and turned up the TV to block out the idiot mongrel. Ten minutes later I was leaving, hair shower-wet, shirt unbuttoned, stepping into shoes as I walked out the door. Miz Best had walked to the beach and was on her return trip. Part of the dog must have been Lab, because it was sopping from a plunge in the water. It saw me and exploded from Miz Best’s hand, dashing across the sand like I was a bowl of gravy. It ran two circles around me, planted its feet in the sand, and shook. Water rained from every direction.

I looked at Miz Best. Her eyes were worried.

“Sorry, Carson. Mr Mix-up doesn’t usually go to strangers. You’re the first person he’s run toward. Mr Mix-up’s running out of days and we can’t find him a home. He’s too odd-looking, I think. You know anyone who wants a dog?”

I looked at the star-crossed critter, whomping its feet into the sand while its tongue lolled, alternately squealing and roof-ing, wanting me to touch it or whatever they want.

“Sorry, Miz Best,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets. “He’ll have to take his chances like the rest of us.”

On the way in I stopped at my standard convenience store. Having been made more nutritionally aware by Fossie, I got a banana and a Clif’s bar. My eyes did the usual scan of the newspapers. A headline caught my eye:

Rumors of Scaler’s Mystery Meeting Before Death

The subhead read: Famous Preacher Seeing Woman?

I sat out in my truck, chomping and reading. The details were squishy: police suspected Scaler might have met someone at the cabin that night, odds were it was a woman. But the copy made no mention of a dominatrix and the rest of the sordid actuality. I imagined an enterprising reporter had gotten wind that a couple of detectives wanted to question a woman in conjunction with Scaler’s death, put two and two together.

Though I had no love for Scaler and his hard-line, uncompromising ilk, I hoped the story would go no further. It would be tough enough on his wife to have the suspicion of an affair out there, far worse if the reality was known.

Harry had to prepare for a court appearance on one of the murders we’d investigated a couple months back. I was feeling more energetic than I had in days, wondering if all I’d needed was sleep, vitamins and a better diet.

I decided to head up to Holman Prison and confront Donnie Kirkson, the guy in Ben Belker’s surreptitious photos, the one biker who had any interest in Terry Lee Bailes.

At Holman, a guard was assigned to accompany me. After passing through a series of barred doors and gates, I stopped and looked out a grated window to the yard. It was like recess in one of Dante’s circles of Hell: a couple hundred cons, their shadows extended in the late-afternoon sun. Most had self-segregated into the three primary tribes: white, black and Hispanic. They were hanging out on tables or flipping a basketball or spotting one another while pumping iron. A trio of black guys jogged the perimeter, brown dust flapping from their feet as they padded by below, cutting a hard right to give wide berth to a man on a chinning bar.

The guy weighed three hundred pounds and was chinning all of them easily, his biceps as round as phone poles. His body shone with sweat and his shaved head glowed in the sunlight. I saw a slight black guy mince to the monster. The little guy made some form of entreaty to the hulk swinging on the bar. Without breaking his fluid motion, the behemoth said something brief and the little guy clapped and skittered away.

“Who’s that on the chin bar?” I asked the guard.

“Thunderhead Wallace. An’ it looks like he’s got a date for later.”

“Thunderhead?”

The guard grinned and clenched his fist, letting his arm dangle between his legs for a second.

“Boy’s got a wang that’d shame Johnny Wadd. Likes to polish the internal plumbing of a whole stable of punks. ’Bout the only time he ain’t fucking something is out there in the yard.”

“What’s he in for?”

“Accomplice on a bank heist put him here, but he also has priors for indecent exposure and bestiality.” The guard chuckled. “If you can believe it, ol’ Thunderhead got caught at a cattle farm –”

I held up my hand. “I’ll pass on the details. You know much about Kirkson?”

“A nasty little shit who hangs with the Aryan Nation types, thinks he’s something. The girl he took to the motel and soaked with alcohol? Same age as my daughter. I’d like to get Thunderhead to take Kirkson to a motel.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I said to him, feeling an odd notion bubble to the top of my brain, a thought encircled with inspirational light.

The guard looked from side to side. Didn’t see any supervisors.

“I mean ever’ goddamn word, buddy.”

I thought for a few more moments as we walked, pulled the guard aside before we got to the block. We spoke briefly, me laying out my case, maybe embellishing a few points. He took me to an office, set me in the chair, said, “Third drawer on the left, in the file marked Transfer Directives.” He added the word, “Hurry,” and stepped outside, looking up and down the hall before closing the door.

I was out in under a minute, patting my pocket. The guard was looking the other direction; he said, “I never saw anything.”

“Of course,” I said, following him to a holding area, a gray-walled ten-by-ten cell with a table and three chairs waiting. I sat and drummed my fingers on the tabletop while Kirkson was fetched from his cage. He’d added a few pounds since the photos with Bailes; prison food does that, starch and carbs. But he’d kept the muscle def; under his dirty yellow mullet I could see hard shoulders and a thick neck. His arms were ropy and heavily inked. He preferred to lean against the wall rather than sit. He lit a Marlboro. I asked him about Terry Lee Bailes.

“I’m not sure I remember that name,” Kirkson smirked, true to form.

“Come on, Donnie. Let’s not start our relationship on a false note. I’ve got pictures of you two together. What was Bailes like?”

Kirkson blew out smoke and grinned at the ceiling. The smartass was thinking deal time. This was a guy who’d plied a confused fifteen-year-old runaway with alcohol and taken her to a motel for four days. Now he expected us to fix things so he got time off for talking about Bailes.

“What was who like?” Kirkson said.

When I said nothing, Kirkson sneered. “What’s in it for me? You better be talking time off. Big time off, you got that?”

“I can find others who knew Bailes,” I said.

“Sure,” Kirkson taunted. “That’s why you’re here. I’ll say it one last time: What’s in it for me?”

I pulled a trifolded page from my pocket, snapped it open. It was yellow, a page from a carbon duplicate form. It was a bogus transfer, a cell-reassignment form. I’d filled it out all by myself, signing the warden’s name with a big wardenly flourish.

“What’s that?” Kirkson grinned. “The deal that tells me I’m outta here in six months? It fuckin’ better be.”

I handed Kirkson the sheet. He was still grinning as he started reading, but was staring wide-eyed and gap-mouthed by the time he reached the warden’s sig at the bottom.

“You…can’t do this,” he stammered.

“It’s already done, Donnie,” I said, my turn to smirk. “Your new bed is being made as we speak.”

“My lawyer won’t let –”

I leaned against the wall and folded my arms. “You’re between lawyers, Donnie. Remember? One quit in disgust. Then you fired two in a row. It’ll take days for the court to appoint new counsel. Sleep tight.”

“It’s a fucking set-up. A lie!”

I shook the page in the air. “Official form, official signature.”

“No way. It’s like a death sentence!”

“Not if you play your cards right, Donnie-boy,” I crooned. “I suggest you shave your legs, practice your pucker, and invest heavily in Vaseline. Or maybe motor oil. Word has it Thunderhead Wallace likes to drive all night.”

“You filthy son of a bitch. You BASTARD!”

“Hey!” the guard outside yelled. “Keep it down, Kirkson. Or you’ll go back to your cell. I hear you’re getting a new one.”

“On your way to your new cell, Donnie…” I said, putting the page in my pocket like I was preparing to leave, “you might want to stop at the commissary and get that Vaseline. They sell it in fifty-gallon drums?”

“THIS AIN’T AMERICAN!”

I reached out and hooked my finger into Kirkson’s front pocket and drew him so close I could smell the fear rising from his armpits.

“Really, Donnie? In my America, thirty-one-year-old men take fifteen-year-old runaways to a shelter or a social worker, they don’t fill them with vodka and take them to a motel.”

I poked Kirkson backward with a stiff finger. He grunted, spun away, and sucked the cig to the filter, squished the butt on the floor. When he turned his eyes showed surrender.

“Terry Lee was a fuck-up, all right? He was like a big stupid kid. Why you need to know about him?”

“If he was such a fuck-up,” I asked, “why were you friends with him?”

Kirkson shrugged, studied the floor. He actually seemed confused by my question.

“I always kind of felt sorry for Terry Lee. We both had shit for families. He was so fucking ugly and always trying to be cool and say the right words and act like some kind of stone killer, a mad dog.”

“He wasn’t?”

“Terry Lee Bailes was a Chihuahua with a loud bark. He looked the look and talked the talk, but he couldn’t walk the walk. Underneath all that leather and ink was pure chickenshit.”

It didn’t make sense. No chickenshit would slip past hospital security, steal a kid, then, cornered, try to leap to a grisly death. I put my hand on the chair behind Kirkson, leaned close.

“Bailes tried to steal a kid from a hospital, Donnie. When someone got in his way and the event went south, Bailes grinned and tried to jump out a fifth-floor window. No second thoughts about taking the long dive to the bottom floor.”

Kirkson looked at me. “Wait a minute. You mean you didn’t find it out?”

“Find out what?”

“When you did the thing with the…” Kirkson made a knife-cut motion from his groin up to his neck.

“The post-mortem?” I said. “The autopsy? Those things take a few days to get to, Donnie. Thanks to great citizens like you, there’s a stack of dead bodies at the morgue. It’s a take-a-number operation.”

He grinned. “That explains it.”