Tom walked to his window. “You’re probably right, Carson. But we’re gonna do our job because that’s what we do, right?”

I shrugged. We did our job all the time and nothing ever changed.

Harry chimed in. “What about the baby snatcher? I want to stay close.”

“You want to take it, Carson?” Tom asked. “You’ve been handling it so far. Or should I assign it to someone else?”

“Give it to Barret and Osborne. I’ll fill them in on what background we’ve got. It’s a freak thing. They’re all freak things these days.”

Tom said, “You don’t think the guy specifically targeted the boat kid?”

“Noelle,” Harry corrected.

I said, “There’s no way a brain-dead fuck-up like Bailes could have known which kid to pick. You got a half-dozen infants in the sick-kids ward, another dozen in the regular paed unit. Bailes called the kid a clone and a mutant in his rant, like maybe he saw Star Wars a few hundred too many times. Or maybe he thought the hospital was breeding them. You can’t get into a psycho’s mind, Tom. When Bailes got caught he made an I’m-a-tough-guy speech to the camera and tried to take the gravity elevator.”

“Carson’s right, Tom,” Harry said. “I can’t see how Bailes could have been looking for a specific kid. It had to be pluck’n’run, a random grab.”

“Give the goddamn case to Barrett and Osborne,” I said. “If we’re gonna pursue the Scaler investigation, we haven’t got time for –”

“I want the abductor case,” Harry repeated.

“It ain’t gonna happen, Harry,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The shooting, remember? Departmental rules are clear.”

Harry looked at me. “Carson? How about it? You can work Noelle’s case, right?”

“I’m working the Scaler case if that’s what Tom wants. We’re working the Scaler case.”

Harry’s eyes were no longer looking, they were pleading. I dropped my head, muttered something that must have sounded like surrender.

“OK,” Tom said, holding up his hand to indicate discussion over. “Carson’s got the baby snatcher case. But that can of worms isn’t high priority as long as Scaler’s in the air, no pun intended. That’s the case I need shed of right now.”

We left Tom standing at his window and hustled toward the garage; it was time to pick up our tack hammers and beat on the Great Wall of China, trying to reduce it to rubble. We climbed into the car. Harry looked my way.

“Thanks for taking Noelle’s case, bro. It makes me feel a lot better.”

I turned to my partner, pulled my mouth wide with my fingers, blinked my eyes and waggled my tongue. I said, “Gaaaaa. Gaaaaaaa.”

“Uh, what’s that mean, Carson?”

“What real choice did I have?” I said.

Chapter 19

I dialed the college, got the general switchboard, was shunted to Tutweiler’s office. He’d been a long-time friend and business partner of Scaler’s. We figured he might have something interesting to say.

I asked the female voice when Harry and I could come and talk to the Dean, suggesting fifteen minutes from now would be a good choice. I heard her muffle the phone with her hand, talk to someone, Tutweiler, I supposed. She came back on.

“Dean Tutweiler can meet you tomorrow after lunch, say one o’clock? He has fifteen spare minutes and wants you to know he’s a firm supporter of the police.”

“I was thinking more like within the hour.”

“He’s very busy,” she said. “He’s having a difficult week.”

“Not as difficult as his boss, ma’am,” I said, hanging up. I heard that drumming in my head again, like my irritation had developed a soundtrack. I frowned at Harry. “We have an appointment for tomorrow. Let’s go confirm it now.”

We passed the boundaries of the college minutes before coming to its buildings, the border denoted by plastic strips flapping from pine poles in the ground: surveyor’s stakes. A billboard-sized sign proclaimed we’d hit Elysium, after a fashion, providing a twenty-foot-long artist’s soft-edged rendering of the institution in the near future, a cityscape of architectural splendor and curving streets embracing dormitories for tens of thousands of the faithful. A white cross was displayed in the upper-right-hand corner of the signage like a beaming sun.

It took us another half-mile to get to the college, a cluster of boxy concrete buildings. As we drew close I saw a large white tent awning near a hole in the ground: the site of last week’s groundbreaking ceremony. Students, faces scrubbed and backpacks tight with books, wandered by. No one wore jeans or tanktops or miniskirts. I attended college in the early 90s, briefly at the University of South Alabama, then, more seriously, at U of A. Those venues seemed a world distant from this quiet campus.

We followed signs to the administration building, took an elevator to the top floor, entered an anteroom, behind it a wide room with a round cerulean desk at the end, making the receptionist look as if she were stuck in a big blue inner tube. We walked fifty feet of fancy parquet flooring.

The receptionist was in her late thirties, a bit chubby, with a small and pretty face beneath a swirling tower of golden hair.

“Can I he’p you gennulmen with –”

“Mobile Police,” I said. “We need to see Dean Tutweiler.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, but he’s not in his office.”

“But he’s in the building, right?” I said. “Or nearby?”

“Uh, yes, I think.”

I nodded toward the open door at her back. “We’ll wait inside his office, ma’am. Thanks.”

The office was more akin to a CEO’s sanctuary than a religious academic’s lair, though a massive podium in the corner held a huge leather bible, a purple bookmark tucked into some pithy passage. Turning back I heard approaching footsteps outside, followed by Tutweiler speaking as though giving dictation to be chiseled into granite tablets.

“Call the PR people and tell them to meet me at 11.45. No, make that 11.50. In the Mary Baker Eddy room. Tell them to start working up a statement on the school’s position vis-a-vis the enemies of Christianity and Truth. Richard’s enemies. They know the drill.”

Scaler veered from his receptionist and into the room, tall and dark and splendidly suited in the thin-lined black of a banker. He saw us and his eyes darkened at foreigners in his sanctum sanctorum.

“Can I help you?”

I remained seated and flipped open my ID wallet. “I’m Detective Ryder with the Mobile Police Department and this is –”

Tutweiler shot a not-subtle glance at his watch. “Can it wait, officers? I’ve got a meeting with the board and the faculty advisors group. The donors committee. Right now I’ve got to return a call to People Magazine.” He turned away, reached across his desk and lifted the phone. It was a fancy one with a shitload of buttons. I wondered if one of them was reserved for God.

“Please have a seat, sir,” Harry said, using his quiet voice. It’s about as deep as the Marianas Trench with the timbre of Thor’s hammer striking a small planet. “I promise this will be fast and easy and you’ll be back on track in a brief while. Is that all right?”

Tutweiler didn’t look like he was going to break into song, but he set the phone down and took the chair behind the desk, more a throne, actually, red velvet with gold leaf over embossed wood, the high back a carving of Adam and Eve holding hands in Paradise. They looked like adolescents. There was no serpent in sight.

Tutweiler angled his throne and leaned his head back, the better to display his imperious profile, half Caesar, half Heston. Harry said, “We’re trying to find out about Mr Scaler’s last few days and if you can help us with –”

“Reverend Scaler was his title. You could also use Doctor Scaler, another of his titles.”

I looked up. Tut was definitely getting on my nerves. “Reverend Scaler had an MD?”