Blood Brother

by Jack Kerley

  I mimicked spitting out the gag. “Case closed,” I announced. “We can all go home.”

  Which is exactly what I did. It was one p.m. and I figured I’d done enough. I stopped at the library on the way to pick up books on playing the flute, creating with mosaic, identifying creatures of the woodlands, and Bolivian cooking.

  The following morning my still-on television woke me at seven. Though foggy with sleep, I performed my morning rituals, washing down my vites with Ginseng tea and downing a wheatberry salad I’d bought at the health-food store on my way to the library. It appeared I’d purchased eight of them. Despite my sluggishness I felt stress-free and had a leisurely drive to work.

  I walked into the detectives’ room. Harry shot me a glance, picked up the ringing phone. I watched him open his desk drawer, scrabble through it, shove papers aside on his desk as I walked up.

  “Paper,” he grunted, making the scratchy motion with his fingers.

  I pitched him a notepad and he wrote a few lines, saying uh-huh and gimme the name again and finally “I owe you one, Kiet.”

  He set the phone down. “That was Kiet Srisai at the Thai restaurant. He’s got a name and place for a guy who might have owned the burned-down house. He’s over in Mississippi, just across the border.”

  “I’m not driving all the way over there on my own.” I crossed my hands behind my head. “And you’re not allowed to deal with anything pertaining to the Bailes case. I’ll get the Dauphin Island cops to make the trip.”

  Harry shot a look over his shoulder at Tom Mason’s office. Tom was on the phone, turned away. Harry lowered his voice and leaned close.

  “I figure if we spend all our time on the way to Sippi and back talking about Scaler, that’s the case I’m on, right?”

  Chapter 29

  Chakrabandhu Sintapiratpattanasai blinked lizard eyes at me and seemed as puzzled by the English language as I was by his name.

  “No understand what you word say.”

  We were on a no-name strip of beach in Mississippi, west of Biloxi. The land stretched from the water north for a hundred miles before there was anything that could be charitably called a hill. It was the billiard-table flatness that had allowed Katrina’s storm surge to steamroll the communities for miles inland. Sintapiratpattanasai was a short man, heavy and square, with jet-black hair glistening with pomade. Even though the sun was high, he wore a dark three-piece suit, his tie tight to his thick neck.

  I put my badge wallet back in my pocket and tried rephrasing the question. “We’re trying to track down ownership of a piece of property. About a quarter acre that once had a house on it.”

  Sintapiratpattanasai frowned. “Ay-ker? Prop-tee?”

  I’d seen this act before and so had Harry. He pulled his handcuffs and nodded toward the Crown Vic.

  “OK buddy, put out your hands so I can cuff them and let’s take a walk to the car.”

  Mr S. startled back three steps, barked, “You from Mobile in Alabama. This Mississippi. You have no jurisdiction here.”

  “That solves the language problem,” Harry said.

  “We’re not here on any problem relative to you, sir,” I said. “We’re here about a property you own or owned.”

  “Where this property?” he challenged.

  I gave him the address.

  “Own four houses there for years. I rent to fishermen, shrimp fishermen.” He wagged his head. “Tough bidness. Fishermen move when Katrina blow houses down in Alabama. I buy houses here now. Do rent.”

  I’d seen Sintapiratpattanasai’s kind before. The archetypical slumlord, he’d buy houses or apartments on the cheap, fill them with poor like rabbits in a warren. Any repairs came late or never.

  “What did you do with the house?” Harry asked.

  “Sell.”

  I heard a roar of heavy motorcycles to the north and craned my head to a pair of riders on Harleys burning hell-for-leather along the road. The bikers seemed to be looking our way.

  I turned back to Mr S. “Who did you sell the place to, sir?”

  “Man come, say he need place. I sell. This two month back.”

  “What was the buyer’s name?”

  “I think. I remember in a minute. Or I have written down.”

  “Why did he need the place?”

  “He like to fish. Not boat, but fish…” Sintapiratpattanasai jigged his hands as if casting a rod. “He was soon retire and fish all day long. Use house for fish house, fix up.” He paused and recalled the moment. “Ten thousan’ dollar, for that place? He either sucker or using somebody else’s money.”

  “Did you use a lawyer, anything like that?” Harry asked, trying to find a paper trail. “Or handle the transaction at a bank?”

  “Man gave me money, I sign paper saying house his. No big deal need banker. Banker is bullshit, take money to watch you sign paper.”

  “You received a check?” I asked.

  Sintapiratpattanasai held out his right palm and jabbed it hard with his left forefinger. “Fuck check. Cash money.”

  I shot Harry a look. The transaction had all the signs of a street deal. Someone needed the property for a short time, paid for the privilege. But the deal was off the official books. The State would eventually find no taxes were being paid, check into things, but Sintapiratpattanasai had made his money, had a valid receipt, and the buyer had used the property and was long gone.

  “Did you keep a copy of the paper you signed?” Harry asked.

  “I keep everything so no get fucked by US government.”

  “Can we see the paper?” Harry asked.

  “Come in office and I find.”

  We followed the landlord to a large black Lexus parked in the shade of twin palms. He popped the truck to reveal a pair of orange crates stuffed with files.

  “Your office?” Harry asked.

  “I own forty-seven properties all down coast. I need to know who pays so no one get free ride. People try cheat me all the time. They don’t come to me, so I go to them.”

  I pictured Sintapiratpattanasai driving his files from place to place, checking names, making sure the rent came in on time. If not, there would be penalties, surcharges, evictions. All quite legal.

  Mr S moved to the crate tucked the farthest back in the truck. “These old files. Alabama. No more property in Alabama.” He snatched up a file, pulled out an envelope, found the receipt in question within the envelope. I took it and stared at the page.

  “It’s freaking indecipherable,” I said. “It looks like a damn prescription. I can read ‘Kurt’, I think. But the rest? Mathews? Masters? Martinas?”

  Harry took a look, shook his head.

  “The receipt is built to show nothing but a transfer of money from someone to Mr S for a quarter-acre parcel and four hundred-square-foot house, with six-foot-wide common access to a pier. Ten thousand dollars, paid in full.”

  “You see my name, don’t you?” the landlord asked. “All right and legal bill of sale?”

  “Clear as a bell,” Harry said.

  The landlord started to tuck the page back into the envelope. Harry reached out and tapped the man’s wrist.

  “We’d like a copy of the document, sir. Can we take it and return it after we inspect the page?”

  The landlord went to the back door of the Lexus. “I make you copy.”

  He opened the back door. A mini-copier was seat-belted on to the back seat, plugged into the outlet on the plenum. Beside the copier was a fax machine. On the other seat was a cooler. Lunch and supper, I figured, business on the fly. Sintapiratpattanasai pulled us a clear copy. It didn’t make the buyer’s name any more decipherable.

  We followed him back to the trunk. He folded the receipt, and slid it into the creamy white envelope. Harry noted the saw printing on the envelope, grabbed it from the landlord.

  “Did the buyer give you this envelope?” I asked. “Did it have the money inside?”

  “Already spend money,” Sintapiratpattanasai said, suspiciou
s of a shakedown. “Money all gone.”

  “Did this envelope come from the buyer?” Harry repeated. “Answer the question.”

  “Buyer man have money counted out and inside.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Harry said nothing. He simply passed me the envelope.

  “No,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to blot out the outside, inside and everything in between. “This isn’t happening.”

  It was a tithe envelope for Kingdom Church.

  Chapter 30

  “A coincidence,” I insisted on the way back. “How many zillions of sheep did Scaler have in his flock? They’d all have tithe envelopes, right?”

  “What are the chances of two outrageous cases connecting like that?” Harry countered.

  Harry was driving. After finding the envelope I wanted to shut my mind off as my eyes watched treetops and power lines make fast shapes against the sky. We were in farm country: melon farms, cotton farms, timber farms, now and then the stretching green baize of a sod farm.

  “Why would Kingdom Church buy a run-down house in the middle of nowhere, Harry? They’ve got a college, dorms, chapel, TV operation, three church camps, about a thousand acres scattered between Alabama and Mississippi. Why a quarter acre in the middle of bleak nowhere land?”

  “To hide something.”

  “A baby?”

  He shot a glance over his shoulder. “Here’s the problem, Carson. I can’t work the Noelle case, just Scaler’s. But if they’ve turned into the same case…”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Mr…uh, Sinapir, Sentasipp…this is Detective Ryder. Stop the no-English riff. We spoke fifteen minutes ago. Did the cabin you owned have a harpoon or shark lance anywhere around?”

  I listened, hung up. “There was a bunch of old crap in the shack, to use Mr S.’s words. Fishing rods, a lead anchor, a life vest, and what he called a rusty spear on hooks over the front door.”

  Harry drove and thought for several seconds. “Maybe it’s the only weapon the cabin’s occupants have when someone shows up with bad intentions. Grab and stab.”

  “Yeah, but if the person or persons with bad intent have a more developed arsenal, like guns, the spear-thrower’s just taken his one shot.”

  “Forensics found footprints from the cabin to the pier, small, like a woman’s shoes.”

  Three had been found along a stretch of sand, washed over, as if obscured by someone dragging a tarp or blanket down the trail. If the obfuscation had occurred at night – like all else did – it would have been easy to miss a couple prints.

  I said, “Let’s say the woman is running from the inside action, bad things. Someone in the house throws the harpoon in defense. Meanwhile the lady is out the back door with Noelle in hand.”

  “She puts the kid in the boat. But something bad happens. Noelle washes out on the tide, floats to Dauphin Island.”

  I said, “Is the person in the shack the person who bought the place with cash in a tithe envelope from Scaler’s Circus of Worship, first name Kurt, second name indecipherable?”

  “The landlord said the buyer was an older guy in a suit. Smallish in stature. Shades. Hat.”

  “The landlord said it was a good suit, right?”

  “He said, ‘Man wear good suit, first-class.’”

  “Mr Landlord would know,” I said. “Clothes are important to him, part of looking like a business-man and not an itinerant slumlord.”

  Harry gave it some thought. “So the man who paid for the cabin using a tithe envelope from Scaler’s church might not be the man found dead inside?”

  “Clair said the body inside was a male in his mid twenties to early thirties. The landlord’s description fits an older man, but not Scaler.”

  Harry looked grim. “It’s all smoke and mirr—whoops. Train ahead. Looks like we stop a bit.”

  Freight-cars were pouring from the pine forest like they were being assembled in the trees and set on the track. The train sounded like it was going somewhere it wanted to go and I got out to watch, Harry following. We left the engine on to keep the AC pouring into the Crown Vic and stepped into the bright sun. I rolled up my sleeves, and sat on the hood to watch the four-engine freighter highball past, boxcars, tankers, hoppers, container flats – swaying and squealing and rumbling, the sound added to the staccato clanging of the crossing signal, a raucous cacophony of journey and commerce.

  On the other side of the crossing, in jittery motion, I saw two motorcycles roll up, with men riding tandem. Outsized silver-studded saddlebags were slung over the tails of the hogs, big-ass Harleys, and I could hear the unmuffled four-strokes over the howling clatter and metallic squeals of the train, the riders gunning the accelerators as if challenging one another to something. They wore full-face racing helmets, which seemed a bit odd. They appeared to be talking to one another, passing time as the train passed.

  “The end’s near,” Harry said.

  For a split-second my mind heard it as an eschato-logical statement, until I saw the rear of the train a few hundred yards up the tracks. I craned my head farther and saw a black pickup truck moving in on us from behind. Three men inside. Chrome light bar.

  Why was it so familiar?

  The motorcycles roared louder. The train squealed and shivered the earth. The trestle bells tore holes in the air. I took a final look across the way.

  What?

  The barrel of a short shotgun swung past the knees of one of the riders. He was off the bike and getting back on, probably grabbed the gun from the saddlebag. He held it close, hidden.

  The rear of the train clattered past. I spun to Harry.

  “Ambush!” I yelled. “Get in the car!”

  The first explosion took out the passenger-side window as I was diving inside. The air filled with cubed glass. I hugged the floor, hearing rounds chunking into the Crown Vic’s chassis, the truckers firing from behind. The rear window crumpled. My legs were still outside and I drew them as close as I could while pulling myself inside with whatever I could grab. Harry had done the same on his side, simultaneously pulling out his weapon. His face was taut and I expected mine was the same. We’d fallen into serious shit.

  I stuck my head up, pulled it back. The bikers were crossing the tracks slowly, dodging the trestle gates. They could pull to the side and thump heavy rounds through the Crown Vic’s doors until Harry and I were more metal than meat. But I’d also seen a small gray structure on the far side of the tracks, a deserted gas station or something.

  “We’re trapped,” Harry said.

  “There’s a building over there,” I yelled. “I’ve got the wheel. Push on the gas.”

  Harry’s arm was trapped beneath him, but he jammed an elbow into the accelerator. The car lurched ahead, Harry’s arm slipping from the gas pedal. The car stopped dead.

  “Lay on it, Harry!”

  He flopped sideways and pressed his body against the pedal. The car made a grinding sound and roared forward. I felt the vehicle crunch through the crossing gates, felt the downgrade as we slammed over to the far side of the crossing. I jammed the wheel hard to the right, forgetting to tell Harry to roll off the gas. We were still accelerating when we hit the structure. I heard a thunderous crash. The engine roared, died.

  “Harry?” I yelled. “You all right?”

  I heard a grunt. “I can’t move, Carson.”

  If the bikers made a concerted run, Harry and I would be easy targets on the floor, deer in the headlights. Rounds started slapping the upper compartment, not the lower doors. I kicked open the door, slipped out, dropped. Another slug whanged off the roof of the Crown Vic.

  We’d landed in a defunct local station, slamming the wooden wall at enough speed to crash three-quarters through to the inside, dropping half the roof at the rear of the Crown Vic, a pile of four-by-four timbers that were keeping the first couple feet of airspace free of slugs. I heard Harry struggling in the car, smelled gasoline, burned rubber.

  A concentrated burst of fi
re tore into the broken wood around me. I fired from beside the lumber pile, no idea where the rounds went. I saw one of the bikes readying a run at us, the gunner thumbing red shells into the tubular magazine. The driver cranked the accelerator.

  I flattened on the concrete as the duo roared closer, the bike weaving to screw up my aim. A blast from the shotgun tore through shingles two feet from my head, filling the air with asphalt dust and wood chips. The gunner on the other bike was fast-firing a pistol.

  It was an insult, like the bastards had singled me out for all this bullshit. Every damn day was a fresh challenge from a new enemy. The guy on the bike fired until his magazine emptied, and I saw the driver skid-spin away as the shooter reloaded.

  I heard drums thunder in my head and felt an anger so hot it made my skin glow and my heart was roaring so loud it drowned out everything else in my world. I stood from behind the cover, the crap impeding my aim. I flicked the clip from the butt of the Glock, pulled another from my belt, heard a bullet tumble past my ear as the rider and shooter turned for another charge. The shot gunner pulled a blast high and to the side.

  “Carson!”

  I turned and saw Harry. He’d gotten out the car. I waved, turned back to the action.

  The Harley bore in, the shooter grinning as they approached, waving the muzzle side to side. I heard a puff at my right ear, then my left. I raised my Glock. I saw the shooter grin, he figured he had me.

  I pulled the trigger three times. As if in slow motion, I saw the guy in back touch at his side. He panicked and grabbed the driver’s arm, jerking the handlebars and sending the machine down. I saw sparks as pedals ground into concrete.

  I heard firing from behind me. Harry.

  A guy in the truck unloaded with everything he had, cover fire. Two others lifted the gunshot guy into the bed, one of them yelling, “It’s all right. I got you. You’ll be all right. Hang in there, brother.”

  The driver of the fallen bike was muscling it up, the passenger on the other bike racking the shotgun. I heard Harry laying out shots, glass breaking, a ricochet. Someone out front yelled, “Go!”