Authors: J. A. Kerley
We raced to Mobile General and found a P. Scaler was in room 231. Entering, we saw a small presence on the railed bed, eyes closed. A heavy bandage crossed her nose. Her eyes were purple-black with contusion and I saw stitches in her lip.
“You take it, Carson,” Harry said. “A solo.”
A solo was when only one of us handled an interview, usually when the person being questioned was ill or infirm or intimidated by cops. Going in alone offered a better chance of bonding.
I nodded and slipped into the room. Cleared my throat at P. Scaler’s bedside. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Oh my,” she apologized in a soft mumble, “I’m not dressed for visitors.”
I showed my ID and introduced myself. “What happened to you, ma’am? And please don’t talk if it hurts.”
She nodded toward a water cup on the bedside table. I filled it, angled the plastic straw downward, put my arm behind her back and helped her sit a few inches higher. Patricia Scaler seemed to weigh less than a pillowcase filled with straw. She took a few sips, nodded her thanks. I eased her back down.
“Silly, clumsy me,” she said, talking slowly. “Wearing high heels down stairs…heel caught, fell down the steps. Doctor says broken nose, some teeth to be replaced. Thank the Lord. I could have broken my silly neck.”
I heard a throat cleared at our backs and turned to see a slender MD at the door, Harry at his side. Harry pointed at the doc and shot me a come-hither nod.
“Excuse me for a moment, ma’am.”
“Of course, sir.”
I stepped to the hall. “What is it, Doctor?”
He looked uneasy. “Under those dressings it’s pretty easy to discern three contusions to the side of her nose. Ever see that before?”
“Sounds like knuckles. You’re saying she was beaten?”
The doc shrugged, looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure it would hold up in court.”
Harry stepped close. “When was she admitted?”
The doc looked to the chart for confirmation. “Eleven twenty. But judging by aspects of her injuries, I’d say she tried to tough out the pain for at least three hours before calling for transport. Maybe more.”
A simple toothache would send me racing for the oil of cloves and shortly thereafter to the dentist. I couldn’t fathom waiting for hours with three teeth snapped off at the gum line. It must have been agony. And that was without adding in the busted nose, another excruciating injury.
I stepped back into the room, pulled a chair to the side of the bed. Patricia Scaler’s eyes flicked to me. To the physician at the door. Back to me.
“What’s wrong? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I nodded. “It’s your husband, ma’am. I’m afraid that –”
“He hurt someone, didn’t he? He couldn’t help it. He was angry. He has to be alone when he’s angry. It was my fault. I made him angry.”
“You’re saying your husband hurt you, Mrs Scaler?”
“What? No one hurt me. I fell down the stairs.”
“You’re sure? It looks like you’ve been struck.”
Her small white hands knotted into fists. She pulled them to her chest, nails of one hand digging into the back of her other hand, as if in subconscious punishment. Tears poured down her face and on to her gown.
“It’s my fault, all my fault,” she murmured. Her eyes lifted to me. “Where’s Richard now?”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. “Mrs Scaler, I hate to be the one to tell you this…”
I left the poor woman weeping into a pillow, her small body racked with grief. I dropped further questions about the abuse, but was sure her husband had been the cause of injuries that would take cosmetic surgery to undo.
We walked into the path of three men in expensive business suits, the center man fiftyish, bald as a bullet, with badger-mean eyes under bushy black eyebrows. He was built like a guy who knew his way around a weight room. I felt an intensity coming from him, much like I’d feel heat. Or maybe it was the musk-heavy cologne that telegraphed his presence from a half-dozen feet away.
He held up his hand like a North Korean border guard. “What did you do in there?” he demanded, dark eyes flashing. “What did she tell you?”
“Who’s asking?” Harry said.
The guy snapped a card from the jacket of his pinstriped suit, jabbing it between Harry and me.
“I’m the Scaler’s attorney, James Carleton, III. Anything Mrs Scaler told you is –”
“Anything she told us is part of an investigation into her husband’s death,” I said, looking at lawyer-boy’s card like it had diphtheria.
“Mrs Scaler is an ill and injured woman,” Carleton snapped. “Anything she might have told you is subject to interpretation.”
“Here’s what she told us, sport,” I said, taking the guy’s card, tearing it in half and pushing it down into his outer pocket. “She said she was being followed by a lawyer who lacked the hormones to grow hair and wore cologne that smelled like the underparts of a rutting hog.”
Harry stepped between us, always better at diplomacy. “Mrs Scaler told us she accidentally fell down some steps. We informed her that her husband was dead. She started crying. Anything else you need…sir?”
The guy’s lips pursed so tight I thought they’d invert.
“Well…we’ll just see about that.”
He pushed past, the two other legal types sucked along in his perfumed slipstream. I heard him rush to the woman’s bedside, his growls muted to murmurs of consolation. The door closed.
“Jeez,” Harry said, shaking his head as we continued down the hall. “What was that all about?”
“Damage control, I reckon. Let’s beat feet out of here.”
On the way back to the department I got a call from Dr Clair Peltier, director of pathology for the Alabama Forensics Bureau, southwest region, wanting to see me and Harry. We were minutes away and Harry shortened them by nudging a few lights from red to pastel green.
Harry and I sat across from Clair in an office of bookcases and bound files. A vase of flowers from Clair’s garden topped her impressive oaken desk, the scent of roses and lilacs masking the harsher scents of the morgue.
There was a time not long ago when Clair and I explored a physical relationship that had, after a blazing start, arrived at a quieter station. We were more than trusted friends, less than constant lovers. Contemporary culture hadn’t found a term for our relationship, which was probably good.
“So what killed the good reverend?” I asked. “Off the record.”
“Best guess? A cardiac event. The man was fifty-seven, overweight, and his muscle tone tells me he wasn’t into regular exercise. This was a sado-maso event, right? That in itself can be stressful.”
“You don’t suspect foul play?”
“The welts on his back and buttocks were superficial. There were no scrapes or contusions like you’d find in a scuffle. Outside of the nipples and back area, his body was unmarred. You find who the other party or parties were?”
I shook my head. “We’re waiting for word on latent prints. He was found in a church camp,
so all sorts of campers and counselors have been through. It was closed for the season for renovation.”
“So Reverend Scaler had a whole camp for his playhouse?”
“Swim, hike, make a leather wallet, get your butt whipped. Scaler must have been a happy camper.”
Harry’s phone rang. He excused himself and slipped into the hall. I studied Clair. Her eyes were as blue as the Caribbean and I wanted to dive into them and backstroke somewhere far away from the present. She stood and moved close. The familiarity of her perfume made me dizzy. Hearing no one outside the door, our lips touched.
“I haven’t seen you in weeks, Carson. You look strained, tired. I know you’ve got to be running on stress and adrenalin. Are you OK?”
I smiled, did a super-hero pose. “I’m immune to stress.”
“No one is.”
“I’m no more tired than you, Clair.” I nodded toward the room where the autopsies took place. “You get the victims after I do, right?”
“It’s different for me. I don’t have to look into their lives or hear their stories. I never find who they really were. That’s what you do.”
A recent memory moved me to the window, like my eyes needed real light. I let out a long breath and turned back to Clair.
“A couple weeks ago I went to a drive-by in south Mobile. The deceased was a nineteen-year-old
kid named Alphonse Terrell. When we found the body his thumb was in his mouth, his last instinct before dying.”
“I recall seeing the paperwork on the body. What about it?”
“My first case after I made detective was a woman named Twyla Terrell.”
“Oh Lord, Carson…was she the mother? Sister?”
“The mom. Mama had been shot by a boyfriend in the kitchen. I remember the kid, Alphonse, standing in the corner, a skinny twelve-year-old. Alphonse was sucking his thumb, Clair. Staring at his mother’s body, tears pouring down his face, sucking his thumb like a baby. I walked him outside, trying to say things with meaning and comfort, failing miserably.”
“That’s terrible, Carson. I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “Mama gets shot, sonny gets shot a few years later. It’s just the way things have become, Clair. Like leaving a legacy.”
Clair moved closer and took my hand. “It’ll get better, dear. We’ve had spikes in the homicide rate before. They always pass.”
“Of course,” I said, pressing a smile to my face. “Like bad weather.”
Harry appeared at the door and I turned to leave. As we stepped from Clair’s office she called my name. I turned to see her thumb and pinkie beside her head in that funny mimic of phoning. There was no humor in her eyes, only concern.
“Call me, Carson. Let’s get together soon, right? Talk?”
I nodded and turned away.
When we got to the car, Harry took driver’s position.
“Where to from here?” he asked.
“We find who Scaler paid to work him over. Given the money he had in his wallet, he could afford the best.”
“How come she left the money?”
“Either she freaked when her client’s heart popped, or took her money and a big tip. Scaler could have started the night with twenty grand in his pocket.”
We didn’t keep a list of dominatrix types, since they tended to avoid interaction with the legal system, particularly the high-money babes who kept a lower-than-low profile as they went about their business.
However, they generally set up shop in a part of town where clients could come and go without attracting attention from the neighbors, so we skirted the inner-city, looking for informants past and present. We passed by a half-dozen hookers lounging in the midday heat, trading tales and gossip in front of a payday loan store.
“Hey, Harry – looking goooood,” one of the hookers crowed, a tall transsexual-in-progress named Shanelle who resembled an Oriental Whitney Houston. We’d dealt with her a few times
as an informant, and Shanelle had taken an immediate shine to my partner.
Harry flicked a wave and a wink as we pulled over, causing Shanelle to shriek and fake an attack of the vapors, one hand palm-forward over her forehead, fanning with the other as she faux-fainted into the arms of her colleagues.
“Talk to you a minute, Miss Shanelle?” Harry asked.
Shanelle recovered, giggled, and strutted over like she was working a Paris runway. She was wearing a brief white top to display heavy silicone orbs, a black leather miniskirt high above the knobby knees, and plastic shoes like those Croc things, only with four-inch platforms. They were spray-painted metalflake gold.
I leaned out the window. “Hi, Shanelle. Love the shoes.”
Her false eyelashes fluttered like excited butter-flies. She tapped her toes together, looking down.
“You don’t think they’re too conservative, Carson?”
I shot a thumbs-up and a wink. “They’re sexy and sassy.”
Shanelle beamed and put a shoe on the window frame while bending to look at my partner. “What do you think, Harry? They pretty, ain’t they?”
“They’re lovely, Miss Shanelle,” Harry said. “But I’ve got a question even more important than shoes.”
“Anything for you, Harry Nautilus.”
“We’re looking for a dominatrix. Any around?”
Shanelle grinned and batted the lashes. “Harry, if you need a spanking…”
My partner sighed. “The person we’re looking for is probably one of the highest priced ladies in the market. A pro’s pro.”
“She ain’t in no trouble is she, Harry?”
“Not a bit. Just questions.”
“The girl you looking for. Is she black or white?” Shanelle asked.
Harry looked at me. I rolled the question over in my head. “Almost certainly white.”
“And real expensive, you said?”
“That’s what we’re thinking.”
Shanelle thought a minute, gave us an address not overly distant.
“Is that all you need, Harry?” Shanelle purred through the window.
“For now, Shanelle. But remember, Carson and I always appreciate you keeping your pretty eyes and ears open for any weirdness or –”
“Whoooo-eee,” Shanelle whooped like a crane, turning to screech at her cadre a couple dozen paces away. “Harry Nautilus says I got pretty eyes and ears.”
The girls called back taunts and howls. Shanelle said, “Bitches. They don’t understand what we got going, right, Harry?” She did kissy-mouth, complete with sound effects.
Harry sighed a final time and waved goodbye. Fifteen minutes later we were in a warehouse
district between the city and the bay. A small apartment held a few mailboxes by the front door, one of them assigned to M.L. We headed up the stairs, found a single apartment occupied the entire floor, the door built of cleated metal. Harry banged the metal, making a booming sound like a hammer on a ship’s superstructure.
“Police. Open up.”
We heard a rustle of motion, a door slam inside. We’d checked for a back exit, found none. “Police,” Harry repeated.
The door opened to reveal a powerful-looking woman in her mid thirties, a silky robe from her shoulders to the floor. I saw black boots sticking out, expected they laced up to her knees, standard fare. She was smoking a cigar and emitting smoke through chrysanthemum lips as red as blood. Her puffy explosion of jet-black hair was striped red down the center. The cat-bright eyes were large to begin with, further widened by make-up dusted with flecks of gold. Even with the robe it was apparent the lady had a splendid exercise regimen.