Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness

by David Casarett

  “Anyway, she did well and worked hard in school and went to a good college—Swarthmore—that is a good college? In the state of Philadelphia, yes?”

  Ladarat nodded, thinking it would be best to leave the U.S. geography lesson till another time.

  “So,” Sisithorn concluded. “She seems very strong. She has endured much tragedy in her life. This is very, very bad, certainly. But she is also very hard to… damage. I don’t think that bad memories of her time in the ICU would cause her to lose her head in such a way. Something must have happened.”

  So whatever had made her hysterical must have been very bad indeed. But what?

  Just then the door to Kate’s room opened. And a second later, it was obvious that they were not going to find out. Mr. Fuller was standing in the doorway, with meaty arms crossed over his big American chest. He didn’t even feign an attempt at a wai, even when Ladarat and Sisithorn offered their politest greetings. Instead he just began talking. Very quickly.

  “I don’t know what kind of place this is, that you would let people wander the hallways who’d upset my daughter-in-law like that. Don’t you have any control over who gets in here? Or who wanders around? Is this a hospital? Or just some slum where anyone wanders in?”

  He went on like this for a full minute, his big chest becoming even bigger as he talked, and his red face even redder. He was talking about security and “dangerous people,” and said in so many words that his daughter-in-law would be safer out on the street in New York than she was here.

  It was impossible to get a word in without being rude. Fortunately, he was talking too fast for Sisithorn to follow, so she’d assumed the fixed, false smile of ignorance: yim thak thaai. That means roughly, “I don’t know what’s going on but I’m smiling anyway, because… well… it can’t hurt.”

  But Ladarat was getting most of the message. It seemed that he thought that someone had done, or said, something to their daughter-in-law. This, despite the assurances of his wife, who, Sisithorn promised, had seen no one.

  Could Sisithorn have been wrong? Perhaps, but unlikely. Certainly her English was good enough to understand such a key fact.

  And of course they wouldn’t be able to talk to the wife, who presumably was back there in Kate’s room. They’d never squeeze by those broad American shoulders.

  This harangue was not helpful, but what to do? The American was causing a disturbance in the hallway, and a group of passing nurses edged away, smiling woodenly as they surreptitiously watched the American. Now the American was at risk of doing or saying something embarrassing, which she should try to prevent if she could.

  So she waited patiently for a break in his tirade and interjected smoothly, “Of course, you are right. We will ask security to watch carefully, and perhaps they could speak with Kate when she is able?”

  The American nodded, perhaps uncertain what this ready agreement meant.

  “That is good. I’m sure that Kate is too tired to have visitors right now, so we’ll come back.” She offered a wai and Sisithorn followed suit.

  She was surprised to see the American assay a clumsy attempt at a wai himself. Hands clasped as the Catholics pray, it looked more like an attempt at isometric calisthenics than a formal demonstration of respect. As a wai, it as an abject failure. Yet he was to be commended for trying. Wondering at the oddness of Americans, she took Sisithorn firmly by the elbow and led her down the hallway the way they had come.

  They’d walked perhaps twenty meters before her assistant spoke up.

  “Wouldn’t it have been helpful to talk with Kate?” she asked. “Surely we’d need to find out who she saw. What can security do without some sort of description?” She thought for a moment as they waited for the elevator. “We don’t even know whether she saw a man or a woman.”

  “He wouldn’t have let us talk with her,” Ladarat pointed out.

  “But how can you be sure? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Because he was angry. And he felt as though he should have been there to protect his daughter-in-law, but he wasn’t.”

  “So… he is making up for that by protecting her now? From us?”

  “Exactly so.” Perhaps that didn’t make sense, but Ladarat had a strong feeling. And her feelings were often right.

  “So what do we do? We have no idea who this person is. Or whether there even is a real person. Maybe it was just a… hallucination.”

  “Perhaps,” Ladarat agreed. Perhaps it was. But she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure Kate had seen someone, or something. And they wouldn’t begin to determine what that was until they talked with her. So there was no point in speculating about it now.

  It was only as the elevator doors were opening that she realized what had registered in her mind. Gripped in Mr. Fuller’s right hand had been a few pages of white paper, rolled into a cylinder. The relentless pressure of his meaty fist had begun to crumple it in the middle like a soda can. Those pages could have been anything, but Ladarat had a strange feeling that the big American had been reading the translation of his son’s medical records.

  She was tempted to go back to see if he had questions. That, after all, was their job. She hesitated, thinking, as Sisithorn stepped into the crowded elevator. But even if it was their job, he was too upset right now. Sisithorn looked at her strangely.

  “I forgot something,” Ladarat said simply. “We’ll meet later.” And the elevator doors closed.

  She turned away from Kate’s room and headed toward the other end of the hall. She had declined the elevator because there was something much more simple she needed to do. She needed to take the stairs.

  Smiling, Ladarat turned left and pushed through the door that led to the stairwell. She paused on the sixth-floor landing as the door swung shut behind her, enjoying the quiet. Of course the stairwell was empty. Thais never take the stairs.

  And yet… this particular stairwell was not quite empty. Just below her, Ladarat could hear the soft padding of rubber soles on the concrete steps. Those soles, and the feet to which they were attached, seemed to be moving quickly. Very quickly.

  Ladarat saw a man’s left hand on the railing of one flight as it turned the corner, then it disappeared. A moment later, it reappeared, attached to an arm that extended from a freshly creased white short-sleeved shirt. And on that arm was a familiar, oversize gold watch. Ladarat barely had time to consider where she had seen such an arm recently when the face of the young man who was a new father peered up at her quickly. Then his face disappeared and his feet seemed to redouble their efforts to move as quickly as possible.

  A REPORT FROM THE CHIANG MAI MEDICAL RECORDS CRICKET LEAGUE

  A few minutes later, down in the basement, Ladarat tapped lightly on the door to Panit Booniliang’s office in the rear of the medical records department. She had never been back here before, because she had always met the director of medical records at the front desk, from which he guarded his domain. But this afternoon there had been a pleasant young man stationed in Khun Panit’s usual place.

  She’d been taken aback at first—his resemblance to Panit Booniliang was so strong. It was as if the good director had lost forty years in a day. But of course, he was Khun Panit’s nephew, Chaow (which meant “quickness of mind”) Willapenna. Usually he worked in the far back, filing X-rays. But today he’d been promoted to the front desk.

  Farang could never appreciate the Thai penchant for nepotism, but it made a world of sense. If you hire someone from your family, you know exactly who you are getting. There are no surprises. And if there was one thing you could say for certain about Khun Panit, it was that he hated surprises. Which was why this conversation was likely to be uncomfortable. At least, it would be if her hunch was correct.

  Panit Booniliang came to the door and gave her a deep wai, which she returned. Surprised at the sudden escalation in formality, she took a seat as he closed the door behind her. This was indeed strange.

  The medical records clerk sat behind his desk and pu
lled a stack of medical charts toward him. As was his habit, he squared them with thin, elegant fingers, so that their edges lined up perfectly. Then he began to flick a corner of the top chart with a fingernail.

  Still he said nothing. He looked from her to the charts and back but didn’t speak. It wouldn’t pay to rush things, she knew. Khun Panit would speak up when he was ready.

  But her composure began to dissolve a moment later. As she looked at the stack of charts, she noticed that each one was thin. Very thin. There couldn’t be more than a few scant sheets of paper in each one. Just like the chart of the man, Zhang Wei, who had recently died.

  She had a sinking feeling as she realized that this would be a difficult conversation indeed. No wonder Khun Panit was so reticent.

  And yet… she felt excitement, too. This was a real murder mystery. Or it might be.

  She’d just reached that conclusion when Khun Panit began to speak. He was avoiding her eyes now, which confirmed her worst fears about those charts.

  And there was the fact that he was smiling. It was the smile known as yim yae yae, which meant, “I know things look bad, but getting upset won’t make things any better, so why not smile?”

  “I must admit, Khun Ladarat,” he said slowly, “that I doubted your idea that there might be murders.” He paused, flicking the corner of the top chart more frequently now. “I mean, murders involving this very hospital? Unknown to us? It was inconceivable.”

  He paused, thinking, as he squared the slim stack of files one more time.

  “And yet I did as you asked. And I found these.” He pushed the pile of charts toward her, as if they were trash he wanted to get rid of. And perhaps they were. They were evidence that the orderly world he’d created was beginning to fray around the edges.

  “There are eight charts,” he continued. “Eight separate people. All of them were brought into Casualty in the early morning hours. The first about five years ago. And the last—the man you asked me about—only two days ago.”

  That seemed impossible. Eight men killed?

  “But, Khun, how do you know that they were…” What was the word?

  “Connected?” He smiled sadly. “That is the term, I believe? You see, I am not a detective, so I do not have all of the right words as you do. But I think that is the word for which you were searching.” He smiled again.

  There was no malice in his teasing, she knew. He was actually paying her a compliment. She had uncovered these murders, and he was giving her credit.

  “I can’t be certain, of course. But it is not a coincidence. Look at the name on the top chart.”

  She did. It was Zhang Wei, the man who had died two nights ago. But… the date was wrong. The date was from two years ago. She looked at Mr. Booniliang, who nodded.

  She looked more closely at the stamp on the upper-left corner of the chart. It was for Central Chiang Mai Memorial Hospital, about two kilometers southeast, near the river.

  “Exactly so. Look at the next chart,” he suggested.

  She did. It was from about six months later, but bore the same name, and the stamp of yet another hospital.

  The real shock came with the third chart. She checked the stamp first—it was her own hospital. Three years ago. But with the same patient name.

  Quickly, she flipped through all eight charts and found three from her hospital.

  Mr. Booniliang looked grave. And he was no longer smiling. “I don’t know which is worse,” he said. “The fact that there were three deaths in our hospital, or the fact that there were five in other hospitals.”

  She thought about that for a moment. There was something about this that was nagging at her. Then she realized what was wrong.

  “There are three hospitals in this pile,” she said.

  Panit nodded.

  “Three deaths at our hospital, three at Memorial, and two at Changpuek.”

  Panit nodded again, looking worried.

  “Khun?”

  “Yes?”

  “How big is your cricket league?”

  “We have four hospitals,” he said sadly.

  “So at least there is one hospital where these deaths are not happening,” she said. “That is cause for some relief.” Ladarat was duly relieved.

  But then she noticed that Panit did not look relieved.

  “Well, you see, my friend at that fourth hospital just had gall bladder surgery, so he was not able to help me.”

  They both sat there quietly, pondering that information. But she wanted to be certain.

  “So you mean to say that you inquired at three hospitals and there were suspicious deaths at all three?”

  The medical records clerk nodded. “That is what I mean to say.”

  “Ah.” It was the only reply she could think of.

  There were half a dozen hospitals in or near Chiang Mai. There was Lanna Hospital and Siamriad to the north along Route 11. And McCormick Hospital, to the east of the river. And those were just the ones that were very close.

  She looked at the medical records clerk, who was still nodding. “So you see? This is a problem, Khun. A big problem.” He paused. “If you doubt me still, look at the names of these men’s wives.” She did, flipping through the stack as she had before, but looking this time at the line on the first page that listed the patient’s next of kin.

  She looked up again at Panit, who was once again wearing the yim yae yae smile.

  “Eight men with the same name…” she said.

  “Married to the same woman,” he finished her thought.

  “Peaflower,” they said in unison.

  Suddenly very serious, Panit Booniliang leaned across the desk. “You must find her,” he said. “You must find this woman. She kills a man regularly. So she will kill another very soon.”

  Ladarat nodded uneasily. Khun Panit’s hard work had confirmed her worst fears, but it hadn’t done much to help her solve the case. The stakes were higher, certainly. But her job wouldn’t be any easier.

  She thanked the medical records clerk and made her way out past his smiling nephew. Out in the hallway, though, her thoughts turned back to the conversation she’d just had. She thought, too, about her observation that her job hadn’t gotten any easier. She thought about that very hard, in fact, as she made her way down the hallway to her office.

  But this wasn’t her job, was it? It was not. She was… unqualified.

  A simple look into medical records was one thing. But a murder? A serial murder? Eight men? As Khun Tippawan would no doubt tell her, she was a nurse, not a detective.

  She should call Khun Wiriya. She should let him know what she’d found. And she should tell him that she could no longer help. She would tell him what she knew, and then she would go back to being a nurse ethicist.

  A HIGHLY INEFFICIENT WAY TO CATCH A CRIMINAL

  But things did not work out in the way that Ladarat had planned. Not quite. She had tried to call Khun Wiriya, but he hadn’t been in his office. His secretary gave Ladarat the detective’s mobile phone, but he didn’t answer that either. She left a message, and then—what else?—went back to work.

  There were seventy-three policies left to review, and not nearly enough time. She couldn’t afford to spend precious hours on a murder investigation for which she was so poorly equipped. As she worked her way through policy after policy, checking expiration dates, she moved them from the left side of her desk to the right. Each wave of migration from west to east across her desk gave her a tiny but noticeable breath of satisfaction. And then she’d turn to the next one in line.

  Yet she found that she could not keep herself from thinking about this Peaflower murderer. Indeed, in the gap of concentration that opened as each policy passed from one pile to the other, she thought for just a second about her investigation.

  During each momentary respite between policies, her thoughts circled around one very simple question. What would make a person kill again and again and again like that? But no answer came to her. So she would
move on to the next one.

  Eventually, though, her thoughts began to follow one another down a common path, and that path led her back to the question of Peaflower’s motives. At some point after the twenty-ninth policy but before the thirty-fifth, she began to wonder if her focus on life insurance was incorrect. Sometimes, she knew, when you see a problem initially in a particular way, it is hard to set that initial impression aside. It becomes part of the way that you see the world.

  Is that what she was doing? Had she become nearsighted, looking only for Peaflower’s financial gain? Was it a vendetta after all, as Siriwan had suggested? Her cousin was a woman of the world and surely would know about such things.

  Or perhaps—just perhaps—this wasn’t murder at all. Could there be another explanation? Could there be a simple explanation that didn’t involve murder?

  As Professor Dalrymple warned her readers, a nurse must always take a step back and look at ethical problems—and patients—with fresh eyes.

  That was what she must do now. Reevaluate.

  And that was precisely what she was trying to do when the phone on her desk rang, startling her out of her reverie. The official Sriphat Hospital Policy on the Appropriate Care of the Elderly Patient slid out of her right hand and fluttered under her desk. Reaching one hand for the phone and extending the other under the desk, she answered as she scrabbled blindly for Policy No. 04-5829.

  But she stopped scrabbling and straightened up as she heard the voice of Khun Wiriya. He sounded tired. Tired and… beaten down.

  He must have a very hard life. Always chasing bad people. That must be debilitating. Always thinking about the worst in everyone. That must be even worse.

  And in that moment, she realized that she was being selfish. How could she think of abandoning the job that she had begun? This was something she had committed to do. So it was her responsibility. She had to finish.

  And that is why, as she told Khun Wiriya what she had found, she found herself falling into the role of a detective.

  “So what does this mean?” she asked when she’d finished.