Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  I usually spent Sundays with Tommy, but since he didn’t return my call I assumed we would cancel. I decided to just let it go. I didn’t have anything to do. The department didn’t have enough resources to work more than two detectives on the case. There were no detectives for night or weekend duty. I sat on the couch in my living room, listening to the clock tick.

  I walked over to my desk and got out the phone book. I looked up Kumaraswamy. There was only one listing. No surprise there. Rupesh Kumaraswamy. I jotted down the address. It was in one of the high-end developments on the east side of town: Ravensmere. I decided to take a drive.

  It took me twelve minutes to drive my rental over to Ravensmere. I parked it about a hundred yards from Lakshmi’s house. There I sat, unsure what I was going to do. It was a bright, crisp day, moderate winds, temperatures in the twenties. I kept the windows up, let the sun warm the car. I looked around at the houses, each a different style, from phony ski lodges to two- or three-story brick mansions with columns and gables to expansive stucco single-levels. There were no fences separating the houses. I remembered reading how this development had won a bunch of awards for landscaping. The idea was it was supposed to look like a golf course, with the lawns flowing into one another like the sweep of a manicured fairway.

  I sat there a half hour, an hour. Two different teams of landscapers descended on a nearby McMansion, four or five Hispanic guys in beat-up old pickups, carrying rakes and blowers and tarps. They waded into the shrubbery, getting the dead leaves and debris out and into the beds of the pickups. I wondered if these guys were getting time and half for working the weekends, Sunday no less. If they were getting overtime, they weren’t spending it on work clothes. Their jeans and hooded sweatshirts were tattered and filthy. Most of them had no gloves. Not one of them I could see was dressed warm enough for the job.

  The door opened at the Kumaraswamy house. Out came a stroller, one of those swanky ones with three big fat rubber wheels, the kind I couldn’t afford when Bruce and I were raising Tommy. Pushing the stroller was a copper-skinned man. He must be Rupesh, the overachieving husband. A good-looking man, tall, with glossy black hair and mustache. He wore a ski hat and a brown suede leather coat, down to his thighs. Behind him was an older woman, her silk sari incongruous beneath her ski parka. Next came an older man, tiny like the woman, wrapped up in a knee-length black wool business coat.

  I couldn’t tell which set of parents it was until Lakshmi completed the party. She closed the front door behind her and scurried over to her mother to adjust the scarf on the woman’s head. Next she attended to her father, pulling up the collar on his coat and buttoning the top button. Finally, she hurried over to the stroller, which Rupesh obediently stopped for her inspection. I couldn’t see through the plastic windows protecting the infant from the cold, but Lakshmi’s hands were inside the windows, making necessary adjustment to ensure that the infant was comfortable and safe.

  The family walked along the pathway to the street. They turned north. They’d be headed for City Park, which straddled the river. A paved pathway ran alongside the river for four miles. I got out of the car, strolling along behind them, being sure to leave a good hundred yards. Other neighbors were out strolling on the sunny Sunday afternoon, the temperature climbing up to freezing. Most of them gave me a friendly hello. That was what you did in Rawlings.

  I noticed a few of them gazed at me a little longer than usual. At first I thought it was because they didn’t recognize me from the neighborhood. Then I realized they were probably looking at the lump on my head, which was still visible, or my shiner, which was now a hideous purply green. I wondered whether they thought someone had beaten me up. I was feeling beat up.

  I followed the family down toward the river. Once they were on the river pathway, there were even more people out, and I felt like I was blending in better. The family walked along at a stately pace, stopping now and then on the path to look at one of the miniature rapids on the river, or one of the eddies where beavers had constructed their dams. Rupesh pushed the stroller while Lakshmi walked along with her parents. The young woman held her mother’s hand and her father’s. Every few minutes she ran up to stroller to make sure everything was okay.

  The family came to a bend in the river. Rupesh stopped the stroller, disentangling the infant from his straps and belts, lifted him out, and carried him over toward the water. The infant was wearing a one-piece powder-blue snowsuit. Rupesh placed him down on the sand and took his tiny hand. The wobbly infant walked along the sand until he came to the large river rocks leading to the water. The father bent down and took the child’s other hand.

  Holding the infant’s two hands above his head he half led, half carried the little boy across the rocks, which were three times the size of his feet. The boy picked up pebbles and, crying out gleefully, tossed them toward the river, the wood ducks cautiously paddling away. Lakshmi and her parents huddled close, smiling and laughing. I calculated the infant was twelve months, maybe fourteen.

  Grandma took a little camera out of her pocket, calling out her grandson’s name to get his attention. He turned and gave her a big smile as she snapped a few pictures. Lakshmi waved at her husband to carry the boy back to the path. Grandma handed Lakshmi the camera and she directed her family into the correct pose. She took one picture, then another, looking back over her shoulder to get the right light, motioning them first a little bit to the right, then a little more, then back to the left. I heard them all laughing, the grandparents mock lecturing her about her fussiness. I didn’t know any Hindi, but I understood everything they were saying.

  I stopped and gazed up at the bare, fragile cottonwoods lining this stretch of the river. Looking more carefully, I noticed how many nests they hosted. I never took the time to look at birds or other animals. I saw squirrels scurrying around the water’s edge, carrying nuts, watching the people on the pathway. They were semi-domesticated, having learned to rely on the office workers who walked along the pathway on coffee breaks, luring them with peanuts. Menacing black crows cawed when the squirrels got too close. Off in the distance, on the other side of the river, a bald eagle soared motionless and serene above the activity down on the river.

  I started walking back toward my car, my head down, watching first one foot then the other hit the path, as if they were not my feet, as if I did not control them. I didn’t notice the other people on the pathway, except when an exuberant puppy on a leash scampered over to me, its tail swishing in delight, before the owner pulled it back with an affectionate correction.

  I looked behind me to see the Kumaraswamy family, but they had moved on and were out of sight.

  * * *

  I’d made a point of getting to work on time. In fact, I was at my desk by 7:57, a full minute before Ryan got there.

  “How was your weekend, Karen?” Ryan asked.

  “Good, thanks,” I said, reaching for a sincere smile. I was determined to start the week clean and cheerful. “How ’bout you?”

  “Great. Went out snowshoeing with the family yesterday.”

  “You put snowshoes on your baby?”

  “No,” he said, laughing. “I get to carry her. Kali made some kind of harness. She’s always making something like that.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “Well, partner, what’s up first?”

  “I’m hoping to hear something from Robin today about the DNA from under Hagerty’s fingernails. The only other thing we can pursue right now is Lakshmi Something. Let’s see if she can help us understand whether the Henley Pharmaceuticals angle can give us a motive for hitting Hagerty.”

  “I couldn’t figure out from Dolores Weston if Lakshmi’s really involved. We think Dolores was paying off Arlen Hagerty, but I don’t know how much Lakshmi knows.”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Just seems to me a little too cozy the state senator is in bed with Henley Pharmaceuticals, which happens to be subsidizing Lakshmi. I’d like to get Lakshmi to tell us her
version.”

  “Sounds good. Let me see if she’s in.” Ryan phoned her office. She picked up and invited us over to her lab.

  We parked in the faculty lot outside the Science building. The lot was only a quarter full. A light snow was falling. We headed for her lab on the second floor. From out in the hall, we heard her voice. She looked up and saw us standing in the hall.

  “Okay, Andy, you understand what I want?”

  “Got it,” the student said, heading off to his desk at the far end of the spacious lab.

  “Detectives, come in,” she said brightly.

  “Prof. Kumaraswamy, my name—”

  “Please, call me Dr. K,” she said. “My students say they find it much easier.”

  “Okay. Dr. K, Detective Seagate and Detective Miner,” I said to her.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you both.”

  “Nameste,” Ryan said to her, placing his palms together and bowing slightly.

  “Nameste, kaisī hai?” Dr. K said, breaking into a big smile.

  Ryan said, “Teek, āp sunāiye.”

  Dr. K said, “Mai thīk hū. Where did you learn Hindi?” I was relieved when I recognized English. I was thinking maybe I was having some kind of stroke.

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t say I learned Hindi. I picked some up when I did my mission in Delhi a few years back.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Dr. K said. “I know your church has been very active in my country for many years. You’ve done many excellent things, particularly in the Delhi area, where I came from a hundred years ago.” She had a full, round face, with puffy cheeks and a wide mouth highlighted by bright red lipstick. Her jet-black hair was pinned back neatly. Her luminous eyes were almost black, too, accented by long, fluid brows. She was wearing a white lab coat. With each phrase she spoke, her long fingers, adorned with false nails the same shade as her lipstick, fluttered. I counted at least ten rings on the two hands.

  “Dr. K,” I said, “we know you’re very busy, so let me try not to waste any of your time.”

  “No, that’s quite all right,” she said. “I assume this has to do with that murder?” She gestured for us to sit on two nearby stools.

  “Yes, it does. We’re trying to understand whether the Henley Pharmaceuticals deal has any relationship to the crime.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Detective,” Dr. K said, looking puzzled.

  “You know Senator Weston, is that correct?”

  “Yes, that is true. I have met her once or twice, in social circumstances. But I am not aware of the ‘deal’ you refer to.”

  I said, “You didn’t know Henley is considering building a facility here?”

  “Oh, yes, I had heard that the company might build here or somewhere else in this part of the country. Yes, I had heard that.”

  “But that’s all you know about that possibility?”

  “That is all I know. It would give me great pleasure, of course, if there were a Henley facility here. I would have much easier access to the kinds of resources that would be of great benefit to my research. In addition, it might make it less necessary for me to travel back East so often, which, I must tell you, I would welcome.”

  “Can you help us understand your relationship with Henley, Dr. K?”

  “Yes, of course. I was completing my doctorate at IIT—”

  “IIT?” I said.

  “Indian Institute of Technology. I’m sorry. It is my alma mater. During my final year there, I became acquainted with several representatives from Henley, who had read a number of the articles I had written. They were very interested in the work I was doing. They recruited me to their headquarters in New Jersey, where I worked happily for some years.”

  “And how did you come to Central Montana State?”

  “I was very content there, in New Jersey. My husband was with me, and my parents, as well. But I wanted to get into academia, and Central Montana was kind enough to offer me a very attractive deal.”

  “I imagine with your credentials you could have gone to a number of more prestigious universities.”

  “Yes, Detective, I think that is true. But Central Montana created a position for my husband and is giving me a salary that enabled me to bring my parents along, as well.”

  “What is your relationship with Henley now? Did you leave on good terms with them?”

  “Yes, I would not have left them if it meant I could not continue my work, and Henley has been extremely generous to me. They have purchased the equipment I use now, and I have full access to the scientists I was working with when I lived in New Jersey.”

  “Dr. K, do you have any problems fitting in here in the Biology Department?”

  “You mean because I am Indian?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I meant because you have less teaching to do and get other perks?”

  Dr. K paused, her face clouding. “Let me tell you a little about my background. I was born in a cardboard shack in a shanty slum of Delhi. My mother gave birth to eleven children, of which six survived the first year. My father was a janitor for the Indian National Railways. He cleaned the toilets for tracks 6 and 7. My mother took me and my brothers and sisters with her to the garbage dumps, where we scavenged for waste paper, iron-scrap, and glass pieces, which we sold that night for a few rupees.

  “In addition, we gathered food that had been discarded. We brushed off the maggots and worms and flies and ate it as we worked. If there was any left over, we brought it home to eat when my father returned from his job. There were no toilets for us to use, but that was not a problem because we worked in a garbage dump.

  “Every morning, the trucks lined up for more than a mile, waiting to unload the new garbage. The boys would climb up onto these trucks, hoping to find some valuable items before the truck dumped its contents. Sometimes, the boys would slip and get stuck in the garbage, then be crushed when the garbage was emptied. That is how I lost my brother Haroon. That name, by the way, means hope.

  “Do you see this?” she said, pulling back the sleeve of her lab coat. Her forearm was covered with ragged scars, each some three inches long. I couldn’t tell what had made them. “I got this from two dogs that were more hungry than I was.

  “When I was ten years old, a nun from a Catholic mission in Delhi selected me to attend her church school. I had never attended school before. She gave me a uniform. I sat with other young girls in chairs at desks in a clean room with a blackboard up front and maps of the world on the walls. There was a bathroom with flush toilets. We had books and pencils, and there was a computer in the classroom. I had never heard of a computer.

  “I learned to read and write in Hindi, then in English. I had food to eat. When I returned to my family in the afternoon, my belly was not rumbling from hunger, as were those of my siblings. This nun enabled me to attend a university in Delhi. I studied and was admitted to the graduate school at ITT, which is the most prestigious university in India. And I came to the United States.

  “I have two goals that drive me in this life. The first is to ensure that my parents, my siblings, my husband, and my son do not go to bed hungry. Ever. My second goal, Detectives, is to unlock the promise of stem cells.” She looked at each of us in turn. “I am absolutely convinced stem cells will enable us, one day, to eliminate the terrible diseases such as Parkinson’s and MS that devastate the lives of so many, many people around the world. And—I know this sounds vain, and I ask you to forgive me—I am absolutely certain I will play an important role in unlocking the key to stem cells.

  “So, you ask me whether I have any problems fitting in here with my colleagues in the Biology Department. I am, of course, aware that some of my colleagues are envious of my working conditions—my light teaching load, my graduate students, my equipment, my salary. But to be perfectly frank with you, Detectives, I take no interest in such petty things. God has given me certain aptitudes. I do not know why. And God has given me some years here in this life. I do not know how many. I can only believe tha
t my purpose is high, and that the proper thing for me to do is to work diligently to accomplish that purpose.

  “I wish none of my colleagues ill; several of them I like very much and consider my friends. I am glad to know them and work with them. But they are not why I am here. In this life, I exist to fulfill my two goals. And that I intend to do.”

  “Dr. K, we want to thank you very much for spending the time with us this morning.”

  “It was my pleasure, Detective Seagate. And a pleasure meeting you, too, Detective Miner. I hope I have answered your questions satisfactorily, and I invite you to get in touch with me again if you wish to talk further.”

  “Thank you, we’ll do that,” I said as Ryan and I rose and left the lab. When we got back to the cruiser, a light dusting of snow had covered it. Ryan swept the snow off the windshield and back window as I fired the engine and put on the defroster and the rear-window defogger.

  We waited a minute for the car to warm up. I said, “Her story about growing up in Delhi, you buy it?”

  “I’ve seen it. Those scars on her arm? Packs of dogs roamed through those shanty towns and the garbage dumps. Those wounds were never treated. They didn’t have access to doctors. They didn’t even have bandages or clean water. I’ve seen kids dying from infections they got from feral dogs and rats.”

  “What’d you make of the story about her involvement with Henley?”

  “I think she was telling the truth. She didn’t try to cover anything up. She basically said, yeah, I make better money because I’m smarter than the others and I work harder. I didn’t hear anything made me think she’s involved in something dirty with Henley.”