“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, suspicious 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.