by Jack Kerley
“He was pretty eaten up inside, right?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“Pancreatic cancer? Terminal?”
Hemmings frowned and tapped Bailes’s gut. “Our boy here might have died of hepatic failure in twenty or so years if he kept drinking and drugging. Outside of incipient hardening of the liver, the guy was basically healthy, Carson. Who told you he had cancer?”
I re-ran Kirkson’s words in my head…
“Terry Lee visited here a week back and told me. He was crying like a fucking baby. I told him to man up, live the rest of his life like there was nothing to lose.”
I was sure Kirkson hadn’t been lying. The details were too real, plus Kirkson had the image of being bunked with an aroused Thunderhead Wallace to keep him truthful.
“That’s not the question,” I said. “The question is, who told Bailes he was sick?”
Hemmings shrugged, snipped off a stitch. “You gotta figure it was a doctor, right?”
“Dr Bascomb? Are you there?”
Dr Bernard Bascomb, senior biomedical researcher at New Zealand’s University of Auckland School of Medicine, was reluctant to turn his eyes from the slender ankles of his new research assistant. She was currently hunched over a microscope in the bright lab outside his office, her ankles trim and elegant and, given the ample revelation of calf beneath the back of her lab jacket and the floor, very European, though his researcher was obviously part Maori.
“Dr Bascomb? I say, are you there?”
The latter heritage was reflected in a darker skin tone, high-cheekboned facial structure, and her musical, integrated name, Alicia Apatari. She was a lovely creature who, at twenty-two, would consider him a doddering old clutcher, though he was barely sixty and could play badminton like a forty-year-old.
“Hello-oo…Dr Bascomb?”
He would have loved to have considered Alicia Apatari’s Euro-Maori ankles all afternoon, but Bascomb’s intercom was buzzing and the evil crone who intercepted visitors was yowling his name like a dyspeptic cat.
“Dr Bascomb…are you there? Doctor?”
Bascomb’s finger jabbed the response button. “What is it this time, Miss Trendle?”
“You’re there, then.”
“No, I’m not here. I departed a half-hour ago.”
A pause as she digested the information. Then, irritation. “You have a visitor. A Dr Matthias from the US. He said he had an appointment.”
Bascomb shot a glance at his calendar and winced. He was a day off.
“Yes, yes…send him in.”
The receptionist’s voice dropped to a whisper. “This Matthias, Doctor. Is he the one that had all the, uh, publicity a few years back? When he said American black people were…”
Bascomb rapped the case of the intercom with a chubby knuckle. “Is the machine not functioning, Miss Trendle? Or did I not make myself clear? Send Dr Matthias in.”
“To be sure.” The receptionist’s voice had gone sub-zero.
Bascomb’s hands swept over his desk, arranging and tidying. A messy desk suggested an untidy mind. And the mind about to enter his office had been – no, was – one of the most distinctive in genetics, no matter what so many others thought.
Idiots. Retrogrades.
“Hello, Bernard,” a voice said as a face appeared at Bascomb’s door, small and tan. The tanned flesh fit, Bascomb noted; Matthias’s retirement had taken him to one of the US states on the Gulf of Mexico.
“Kurt!” Bernard said. “Make yourself at home in my small dominion.”
Matthias entered. He wore a black suit sculpted to a hard, diminutive body, a jockey’s body, Bascomb thought. Would I be surprised if he rode into my office on a black horse? Probably not. Matthias’s pinpoint eyes were like green lasers behind gleaming wire bifocals.
Bascomb leaned over his desk to extend his hand, remembered Matthias didn’t like to be touched. He turned the motion into a shuffling of papers as Matthias sat in a wingback chair across from Bernard’s ample oaken desk. Matthias set the rattling brown briefcase down by his side.
“Excuse the clutter, Kurt. My needs exceed my space. A man of your distinction must have had a much larger office. I mean, must, uh, have a much larger office.” Bascomb reddened at using the past tense.
“Everyone knows I’m retired from the university life. I’m working for a private concern. And, of course, I have several patents that provide a bit of income.”
“Good for you, Kurt. We haven’t been face to face since…when? The symposium in Lucerne? Eight years back? You were still advising on the Human Genome Project, Kurt. I remember your monograph on the A allele and genetic drift. A triumph.”
Matthias backhanded the praise away, a man swatting a fly. “At the time. But the field evolves so fast. Unlike us, Bernard. We get stuck in…” Matthias paused, seemed on the verge of saying more, demurred, changed the subject. “Your email of last week said you were able to get the research I requested?”
“What there was. You’ve been seeking the same sort of research in Australia, I expect?”
“There’s a decent body of research over there,” Matthias said. “The Aborigines, you know. I also had a secondary interest in the country’s Asians. You know there’s a Chinatown in Sydney? A rather expansive one?”
“The Dixon Street area. You were there, I take it?”
“I had to do field research in the vicinity. As well as in the outback.”
“Who was your contact in Australia, Kurt? Marnick at the AGRF? Or someone from the U of Queensland?”
Matthias’s eye hardened. “I’ll keep that name confidential at present, Bernard. I hope you’ll understand. I intend to do the same with yours.”
Bascomb shrugged and looked away, thinking it perhaps wasn’t such a bad idea, given past events. He reached to the corner of his desk, pulling a four-inch stack of papers in front of him. “Some of your specifics, especially race-mixing, are not an area of official governmental inquiry, at least not in decades. There are some rather surreptitious references on miscegenation with the Aborigines, data acquired on the QT. But there’s a hefty dollop of other information. Bureaucrats love to amass data, don’t they?”
Matthias nodded. “Sometimes it’s even useful. Is there much on the Maori? Their diseases in youth and the infirmities of age?”
“Including some revisionary medical history. It was thought that Maoris didn’t suffer the ravages of diseases of the aged, but now it’s suspected that’s because the Maori don’t live to a ripe old age, statistically. Those that do have a significantly higher susceptibility to degenerative diseases.”
Matthias leaned forward. “Any personal thoughts on the racial anomaly, Bernard? Between the Maori and the European races?”
Bascomb tented his hands in front of his lips, sighed across his fingertips. “The Maori suffer from poor quality of overall healthcare, mainly. Another theory is that the European influx brought all manner of unfamiliar and destructive diseases to the native peoples. The diseases still affect the Maoris as a race; those with more Maori blood, naturally, suffer the most.” Bascomb pushed the file across his desk. “Anyway, you may wish to agree or disagree once you read the findings. Here’s everything from the Ministry of Health, plus information from the district health boards in Maori-heavy districts. Some of it’s confidential – bureaucrats again – and I blanked out the official letterhead so you’re not stopped at the airport and suspected of smuggling out state secrets. Though I expect you’d be in more trouble if the files pertained to breeds of sheep rather than humans.”
“Breeds of human,” Matthias whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Matthias said, waving away the question. “Just tasting a turn of phrase.” He tapped the sheaf of papers. “Individual health reports are defined by race?”
“Yes, almost always.”
“That will be helpful. Now, let’s talk a moment about ports, Bernard.”
Bascomb smiled. “The wines or –?
”
“The ship sort. I currently live near Mobile, Alabama, a very old port city. I’m interested in New Zealand’s ports, particularly the older ones. Where the European immigration occurred. Any immigration, actually.”
Bascomb shrugged. “Most of our English immigrants sailed from Liverpool. I’d guess the majority came ashore here in Auckland. But there’s New Plymouth, Port Chalmers, Wellington, and half a dozen other ports. You’d have to speak with a historian for exact dates and numbers of the influx. I can quickly connect you to one at the university.”
“Thank you, Bernard, that will be helpful. It’ll set me up for a few days of simple field work, collecting various samples.”
“Can you give me more input on your particular aspect of study, Doctor?” Bascomb asked.
Matthias tapped his fingers on his knee. He seemed to retreat into himself for a long moment, then stood abruptly, picking up the dark briefcase.
“It’s probably safest that you don’t know, Bernard.”
“Kirkson was lying about Bailes having the Big C,” Harry said, rolling a pencil between his palms, taking a full minute to absorb the results of the autopsy. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“He wasn’t,” I argued, leaning forward, planting my arms on my desk. “You know me, I can spot a con’s lie before he even makes it up.”
Harry paused his rolling. Started it again. Said, “Usually.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we all have good days and bad days.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
“It means…” Harry stopped, blew out a breath. “Never mind.”
“Why would Kirkson lie?” I prodded.
Harry ticked off three answers on his fingers. “Because he didn’t know anything. Or to get you out of his face. Or to jerk you around. Or all three.”
The idea that a piece of talking excrement like Kirkson had lied to me sent a hot wave through my gut. I felt my fists tighten. I slammed one on my desk, sending a stack of files to the floor.
Harry studied the fallen paperwork. “Carson, you ever think about a vacation? Taking a couple weeks and running off to the Caribbean or something?”
“Why?”
Harry’s cellphone rang. He stared at the files on the floor and yanked the phone from his pocket. Spoke for a few seconds, then dropped the phone in his pocket and looked at me.
“That was Glenn Watkins in forensics. They need to see us right now. It’s about something at Scaler’s death scene.”
“Sea water?” I said to Watkins, standing in his office in the main lab at forensics. “How can you be sure?”
He passed over the report, a simple one-page sheet. “Standard-issue sea water, judging by algal composition and salinity. We’ve also got decent hits on petrochemicals, gasoline, oil. The water came from somewhere near boats, I expect. Marina, shipyard.”
“You were right, Carson,” Harry said. “It was sea water I slipped in at the cabin. Great catch.”
I’d been right, but had no idea what it meant. I shook my head and turned for the door. I remembered a question I was going to ask when I first saw Glenn on the scene.
“I thought you were semi-retired, Glenn, and just working in the lab a couple days a week.”
Glenn sighed, shook his head. “You didn’t hear about Al?”
“Al Bustamente?”
“He got jumped a couple days ago, beaten bad. Somebody snuck up behind him in the carport at his apartment complex. It was night. The assailant worked Al over with a pipe or blackjack, then ran off with his wallet. Broke both wrists, some teeth.”
“Keee-rist,” I whispered.
“Al’ll be back in six to eight weeks, but he’s hurtin’ right now. I’m standing in ’til he’s in the pink.”
I left, shaking my head at one more case of Evil overwhelming the Good. Passing through the pathology annex I saw Clair inside the second lab. I kept my head straight, as if reading maps in my mind and not noticing my surroundings. I made eight steps before I heard her voice.
“Carson? You got a few minutes? There’s something I want you to see.”
I started to claim a harried schedule, but followed her slender form into the lab, a wide room of counters and instruments, vials and tubes and things cooking over blue flames. My nose was assailed by a scent of decay hiding beneath antiseptics and deodorizer, knowing I’d smell it for an hour after leaving the building. I was never sure whether the odor had entered my clothes or my mind, but it lingered nonetheless.
She led me to an exam table. I beheld six feet of twisted cinder with a bulb on top, the former human being Harry had discovered staring from the remains of the coastal fire, though Clair didn’t know that. The cinder had been further mangled by an autopsy, or whatever opening a charcoal briquette was called. On a nearby table was a rolled-up towel. She nodded at the elongated cinder.
“This appeared, sent in by the county police over the weekend. The body was found near the Mississippi border in a burned-down shack in the swampy middle of nowhere.”
“I know the gentleman,” I said, “though we’ve never been on speaking terms.”
“What? How?”
I explained how the deceased and I had met. I didn’t go into the details of Harry’s treatment by Briscoe, or how my partner’s anger had resulted in an exploded melon not long thereafter.
“Then you know of the harpoon?”
“Actually, Clair, it’s a fish lance, used to kill sharks and marlins and whatnot. But it’s a harpoon at heart. Maybe someone thought our dead man was a whale.” I paused. “Was the sheriff here when you performed the autopsy, Clair?”
“We called and told his office the date and time. No one showed.”
“You sent the reports over, right?”
“The prelims were faxed as soon as they were done. I called Sheriff Briscoe personally to make sure they’d arrived.”
Briscoe. The racist bastard’s name bubbled in my gut. Flashed anger to my face, suddenly hot.
“His response?”
“He yawned into the phone. Said something about Katrina blowing some people over to Texas was the best thing to happen in a long time. That was basically the extent of our conversation. He sounded like what you’d call a major-league asshole.”
“He is, but he’s not my problem, thank God. Gotta go. See you later.”
I made it four paces. “Carson?” Clair called.
“Yes?”
“I asked you to call me a couple days back. In the past I would have heard from you within a half-day.”
I stared at her. “Half a day?” I said. “Is that my programmed response time?”
“I only meant…you’re usually so careful about calling back.”
I slapped my forehead in an exaggerated gesture. “Somehow I forgot to tattoo that on my arm: Call Clair now.”
“I didn’t mean for you to –”
“You want me to call you, Clair? You got it.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket, made an elaborate show of inputting her number. Across the room in the small utility office, her phone started buzzing.
“Hi, Clair,” I said, staring at the floor as if she wasn’t there. “This is Carson returning your call. I couldn’t do it within the time you wanted because I’ve got a dead preacher out there. This particular asshole was famous and politically connected and I’ve got to pretend like it’s a big deal. Oh, Clair? In addition to citizens stabbing and bludgeoning and shooting one another twenty-four goddamn hours a day, there are people putting babies in boats and setting them loose on the ocean.”
I flicked the phone shut. Looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“There. Are we all caught up?”
Chapter 25
I awoke the next morning to find the television on and a mustache drawn over my upper lip. I found a mascara pencil on the living-room table alongside a mirror. I vaguely recalled Clair wondering what I’d look like with a mustache, but that had b
een months back. I took my vitamins, brewed my tea, and ate two apples and a bowl of oatmeal, wondering if I should just throw out the bacon and sausages in my fridge; not on my healthy list. Or maybe toss everything and start anew by filling a trolley at the health-food store. As I ate, I listened to an Italian flutist on NPR. I found the sound lyrical and intoxicating, the most soothing sound I’d ever heard.
I whistled flute sounds all the way to HQ and was steeping a teabag when Harry arrived. He wore a red linen jacket over an iridescent green polo shirt, yellow pants, black running shoes. The ensemble was so loud I should have heard his approach.
“Is that tea?” he asked, aghast at the bag floating in my cup.
“Ginseng with rose hips. I’m off coffee. And I’m going to learn to play the flute.”
A pause. “Good, I guess. Got a minute? I want you to see a videotape I found on the web. I need your opinion.”
I followed my partner to the computer in the side meeting room. I saw blue sky through the window, a storm’s dark edge to the south. Harry took a chair and pulled the keyboard close. I watched over his shoulder as he went sailing through cyberspace.
We’d entered Scaler’s home and I saw Scaler sitting restlessly at his huge white desk. There was a blue mug on the desk, a white remote, and a spiral-bound report.
Scaler plucked a white linen handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. He tucked the cloth back into his pocket, subconsciously tugged his lapels straight, the final motion of a performer before taking the stage. He frowned into the camera, his face and voice subdued, like at the groundbreaking ceremony.
“A parable,” he announced. “I paid a man to do work for me. I had built a house and wanted assurance its foundation was solid.”
He stopped and gathered the handkerchief from his pocket again, dabbing a head shiny with sweat. He sighed and hung his head. All I saw was the crown of his head and eroding hair at front and back. When he lifted his head, a transformation, the sorrow in his eyes replaced with anger.
