It was all way beyond me.

Harry walked to the front door, checked side to side. “The housecleaning lady’s booked. She’s not coming back, at least not for a while.” He ducked back inside, started a visual inspection. “Let’s you and me take the place apart. I’ll toss the back rooms.”

Harry stepped through the doorway and took a fast stutter-step, grabbing the door. He muttered, “Shit.”

“What is it, bro?”

“Water on the floor. I just about slipped on my ass.”

I walked over, saw a puddle about two feet around. I got on my hands and knees and sniffed.

“Weird,” I said. “It smells like sea water.”

I wondered if there was a broken pipe in the walls and what in the pipe would give leaked water the scent of the ocean. Harry stepped around the puddle and headed to the back bedroom. I returned to my inspection of the front room and the area around the body.

I found the guy’s clothes in a side closet, brown silk, custom made. No ID. I picked up the jacket and bingo, felt a wallet in the breast pocket. I shook the wallet from the clothing to the floor. Alligator skin and slim, a designer billfold. I riffled a corner of the bills and watched a parade of hundreds flash by, followed by fifties and ending with a single plebian sawbuck. Well over two grand.

I noted a driver’s license tucked in a pocket of the wallet, picked it free. I stared at the ID a long moment before walking back to the body. I spun the head to face me.

“Harry,” I called toward the back.

“What is it, Carson?”

“You ever wonder what TV preachers do in their spare time?”

Chapter 9

Waiting for the techs, we called the department to explain the situation. Tom Mason agreed that we had to inform Mrs Scaler of her husband’s death immediately. The news media would soon darken earth and sky like a plague of locusts. Better us than a dozen reporters at her door with clicking cameras and hollered questions. As soon as the body got into the system, the hunt would be on.

“You say it looks like an S&M situation?” Tom said. I could hear his grimace.

“Yup.”

“Hold that info tight for now and keep everyone close-mouthed. You’re looking for someone else who was there?”

“Someone had to haul Scaler in the air and stripe his back. I’m thinking a big, blonde Valkyrietype of dominatrix.”

Tom sighed. “This is the sort of thing makes me yearn for early retirement. Keep it all on the QT until we know more.”

Harry and I did a corny hands-in-the-air pledge and made the techs swear not to reveal details of the scene. It was pure theater, since the others had worked high-profile cases and knew that leaks did nothing but stir the media and impede the investigation. We were just reinforcing the closed-mouth ethos.

We released the scene to the forensics folks and went to the Scaler household. The holy man’s home was an imposing, white-columned antebellum structure a football-field’s length from the street, high wrought-iron fence in front, its own gated community. A sprinkler system was watering the grass, intermittent geysers hissing rainbows against the air. The wet lawn seemed luminous in the sun. I saw a swimming pool to the side, tennis courts beyond. Banks of azaleas blazed with color.

The gate was open and we roared up a tree-lined driveway, passing a five-car garage, four bays holding expensive vehicles, all shiny white and showroom clean, the fifth bay containing a golf cart with a fringed shade.

“That looks like about a half-million bucks’ worth of vehicles,” Harry noted. “Wonder what the cart’s for?”

“To drive to the street to fetch the mail,” I joked, then realized it was probably true.

We parked in a roundabout pinioned by a marble fountain spraying water a dozen feet into the air. The butter-colored glass and lead sconces framing the expansive mahogany front door were large as torpedo launchers. Ringing the doorbell felt akin to ringing the doorbell at Oz, except Oz’s doorbell didn’t bong the opening notes of “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

On-ward Chris-ti-an sol-di-ors, mar-ching as to war…

The soldiers marched three times before the door opened. Instead of Mrs Scaler, we found a nervous and diminutive Latina in her fifties.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “Mees Scaler has been take to the hospital.”

“What happened?” Harry asked.

“She fall down the stairs.”

“Where? When?”

“Las’ night. I was called to stay and watch the house. That’s all I can tell you. Mees Scaler ees at hospital called the general.”

We raced to Mobile General and found a P. Scaler was in room 231. Entering, we saw a small presence on the railed bed, eyes closed. A heavy bandage crossed her nose. Her eyes were purple-black with contusion and I saw stitches in her lip.

“You take it, Carson,” Harry said. “A solo.”

A solo was when only one of us handled an interview, usually when the person being questioned was ill or infirm or intimidated by cops. Going in alone offered a better chance of bonding.

I nodded and slipped into the room. Cleared my throat at P. Scaler’s bedside. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Oh my,” she apologized in a soft mumble, “I’m not dressed for visitors.”

I showed my ID and introduced myself. “What happened to you, ma’am? And please don’t talk if it hurts.”

She nodded toward a water cup on the bedside table. I filled it, angled the plastic straw downward, put my arm behind her back and helped her sit a few inches higher. Patricia Scaler seemed to weigh less than a pillowcase filled with straw. She took a few sips, nodded her thanks. I eased her back down.

“Silly, clumsy me,” she said, talking slowly. “Wearing high heels down stairs…heel caught, fell down the steps. Doctor says broken nose, some teeth to be replaced. Thank the Lord. I could have broken my silly neck.”

I heard a throat cleared at our backs and turned to see a slender MD at the door, Harry at his side. Harry pointed at the doc and shot me a come-hither nod.

“Excuse me for a moment, ma’am.”

“Of course, sir.”

I stepped to the hall. “What is it, Doctor?”

He looked uneasy. “Under those dressings it’s pretty easy to discern three contusions to the side of her nose. Ever see that before?”

“Sounds like knuckles. You’re saying she was beaten?”

The doc shrugged, looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure it would hold up in court.”

Harry stepped close. “When was she admitted?”

The doc looked to the chart for confirmation. “Eleven twenty. But judging by aspects of her injuries, I’d say she tried to tough out the pain for at least three hours before calling for transport. Maybe more.”

A simple toothache would send me racing for the oil of cloves and shortly thereafter to the dentist. I couldn’t fathom waiting for hours with three teeth snapped off at the gum line. It must have been agony. And that was without adding in the busted nose, another excruciating injury.

I stepped back into the room, pulled a chair to the side of the bed. Patricia Scaler’s eyes flicked to me. To the physician at the door. Back to me.

“What’s wrong? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I nodded. “It’s your husband, ma’am. I’m afraid that –”

“He hurt someone, didn’t he? He couldn’t help it. He was angry. He has to be alone when he’s angry. It was my fault. I made him angry.”

“You’re saying your husband hurt you, Mrs Scaler?”

“What? No one hurt me. I fell down the stairs.”

“You’re sure? It looks like you’ve been struck.”

Her small white hands knotted into fists. She pulled them to her chest, nails of one hand digging into the back of her other hand, as if in subconscious punishment. Tears poured down her face and on to her gown.

“It’s my fault, all my fault,” she murmured. Her eyes lifted to me. “Where’s Richard now?”