I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. “Mrs Scaler, I hate to be the one to tell you this…”

Chapter 10

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.