Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Sixteen

“Mika Mikata.”

“That’s not a really southern Californian name, is it?” I said. “Perhaps it’s Mexican?”

“It’s Japanese.”

I could tell Sissi was stressed when she couldn’t be bothered to get my jokes. Best stay serious on days such as this.

“And what was she doing in the States?”

“It was an East-West Center arts council grant. She had a year to pursue her artistic bent.”

“Which was photographing roadkill?”

“Dressed roadkill. Sunglasses. Bermuda shorts. Little waistcoats.”

“And hats?”

“And party hats — colored ones.”

“Would have made nice postcards: Even the roadkill parties in California.”

“She had an exhibition of her photos.”

“And that’s what got your drunk detective on the case?”

“Nope. Evidently, in the States, roadkill has no rights. You can dress it up any way you like. She hadn’t broken any laws. People were outraged but you know how it is in the arts; the more controversial you are, the more famous you become. One high class magazine called her ‘the Caligula of on-the-edge photography’.”

“So where did the red-nosed policeman come in?”

“His name’s Gerry Moore. There were complaints that some of her roadkill wasn’t quite dead when she started dressing them up.”

“Oh, yuck.”

“One complainant specifically accused her of running over her cat on her motorcycle. When the owner ran out into the street to see what all the squealing was about, she found Mika fastening a pink tutu around dying Fluffy.”

“Did she do time?”

“We’re talking Los Angeles in the eighties here. Animal cruelty wasn’t high on the list of crime investigation. She was fined a couple of times but continued to gain notoriety from her slide show exhibitions.”

“And then she vanished?”

“No. On the contrary. She blossomed. She became a celebrity. She has an enormous cult following still. She’s got her own bilingual Web site and you’ll never guess what she calls it.”

“If it’s got the word ‘orange’ or ‘hat’ in it she’s mine.”

“Dressed to Kill.”

“You aren’t serious.”

“Deadly. There are quotations on there from famous artists calling her a genius and a guru. Andy Warhol said, ‘She has a visual grasp of death so vivid it makes you wonder whether she’s been there.’ Her site gets twelve thousand hits a day.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“It’s all there; the old nostalgic roadkill period with her doing V signs behind prostrated elk, crows in tiaras splattered across windscreens, upended coyotes in pale blue baby booties. Then there’s the less obviously dead roadkill pictures. Is the possum in headphones perhaps looking at the camera? Isn’t that a slight blur of movement from the snake in a stocking? I have to admit it all makes spectacular yet stomach-curdling photography. But then we get to the humans.”

“Oh, don’t tell me.”

“I don’t know how. Really I don’t. But she got access to morgues. Bodies laid out on their trays in bobble hats with streamers in their mouths.”

“No.”

“Striped football socks, boxing gloves — cross-dressing.”

“That’s got to be illegal.”

“Unless someone recognizes a near and dear one in a Madonna cone bra she could always claim it was set up, all done with actors.”

“But you think different?”

“I’ve seen actors die in TV dramas all the time, even ones who didn’t intend to. I have a nose for bad acting. These were definitely dead bodies.”

I’d read everything there was to read on criminology in Thai and English. I’d studied all the cases — the famous murders, the notorious serial killers — and one point that cropped up often was that the killers of people often began their careers by practicing on animals. Mika Mikata had started her apprenticeship in the public eye and been encouraged. She’d progressed with adoration through all the stages, and I knew there was only one more level. I knew Mika Mikata was either a potential or a practiced murderer. But there was no connection between her and our slain abbot and I could think of absolutely no reason why she’d come to our little nowhere village to do her nefarious deeds.

“Is that as far as the site goes?” I asked. “Cadavers?”

“There are three galleries. There’s the free White Gallery which is all mostly weird but innocent stuff. Then there’s the pay-to-view Black Gallery which wasn’t that hard to get into. That’s where I found the roadkill and the morgue pictures. But then there’s a members-only Orange Gallery.”

“Bingo. Can you get into that?”

“It’s not easy.”

“You’re the maestro of the Net.”

“Jimm, I’ve been a fly on the wall at a maximum secure video conference link between members of the U.S. Homeland Security. I’ve seen the Queen of England in her pajamas sipping Horlicks on Skype. If I say something’s not easy, it’s not easy. But I’m working on it.”

“All right, one more question. What does she look like?”

“Mika? She’s gorgeous on her Web page photo but we both know what that means. Looking back at the early photos she was reasonably bland but bubbly. I imagine she’s in her fifties now, still going for that cutesy manga love doll look.”

“Any idea what she’d look like now without air-brushing?”

“Nong, the longer I spend with the Web Idol people, the more I understand that Granddad Jah could be Brad Pitt in three easy steps. Mika might be the plainest pig in the litter. I imagine she’s got that every-Asian face you could do anything you want with. Look, I’m sending the glamor photo and one of the early ones to your phone.”

“Thanks, Siss. Anything on the other murders?”

“You asked me about witnesses for the Guam swimming pool killing. The guy who got his hard hat painted orange. By the time Toshi had flown down, the local police had already done the interviewing. They still didn’t have a suspect. There was one possible eyewitness they hadn’t been able to locate. Some of the engineers said there’d been a reporter at the scene of the crime taking photographs. She had a Japanese press ID. They remarked on how quickly she’d been able to arrive there.”

“Any description for her?”

“Conflicting, he said. Some remembered her as young, others as middle-aged. Medium length hair. Toshi checked with immigration. There were no Japanese reporters registered around that time and none of the crime-scene photographs appeared in any newspapers.”

“What about Taiwan? You said there might be a lead there.”

“Detective Wing Shu’s promised to look through his files about the aviary killing. Actually he looks a lot better in his swimming pool photos.”

“Do whatever it takes, Siss.” Yes, ma am.

“OK. The picture’s have come through.”

And there she was, all cuddly and fluffed. I went through it all in my mind. Medium length hair. Young or middle-aged. That every-Asian face. It was impossible to describe to a sketch artist because the picture in the newspaper would look like everybody’s mother or sister or next door neighbor. It was a face everybody would forget. With a little bit of work it could be the rouged face of a reporter in Guam or the over-mascara’d face of a Hong Kong birdwatcher. They’d remember the bad make-up and sunglasses before they remembered the person behind them. But I was certain I’d seen that face unadorned. It was drawn and blotchy and an over-generous powdering had made it look older than it was. The gray wig had completed the trick but I’d seen through it, and I could see it now. Eyes always betrayed you. I could see her in her real Lacoste sports shirt, twenty times more expensive than a Bangkok rip-off. It was tucked into tight sweatpants that gave her two bellies. She’d smiled and complimented my awful Korean even though she probably wasn’t fluent herself. That’s why she’d had to check out when the Korean engineers moved in to the 69 Resort. They’d know she wasn’t one of them. Her cover would have been blown.

I don’t know why, or how, but my instincts rang loud and hearty that I’d met Mika Mikata that day.

“Are you sure?” Chompu asked.

“No. But put it all together. The 69 Resort is ten minutes’ walk from the hospital intersection and another ten to the Tiwa where the driver was staying. Her room was right there beside the road so nobody would see her come or go in her disguise. She was the right age and height and I’d bet my bottom she wasn’t Korean.”

“Actually, I meant are you sure you really want me to approach my volatile, uncooperative superior officer with a story like this?”

I could see his point. We were sitting on a bench in front of the four-meter white Buddha opposite the police station. Granddad Jah was pacing back and forth. I didn’t really have any physical evidence to substantiate my odd suspicions. They were based on a two-minute meeting at the 69 Resort and intuition.

“You’re right,” I said. “One step at a time. What if you handle it like this? The police get an anonymous phone call saying that a foreign woman at the 69 Resort had been acting strangely for several days. She’d checked in a day before the killing and checked out the day of the attack on Sergeant Phoom. You trace the passport number she gave the resort, find out it doesn’t exist…”

“What if it does?”

“Let’s stay positive, shall we?”

“Right.”

“We try to find witnesses who saw her disguised as Wu and then we somehow introduce Mika Mikata.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

It was. The opportunity presented itself sooner than we expected. We were interrupted by the ringing of Chompu’s phone and he was summoned to Lang Suan for a meeting. The new direction of events had prompted the return of the Bangkok detectives. They were more than miffed when they found out the local police had taken over the inquiry when all they’d been asked to do was report on events. Bangkok already had its suspect neatly wrapped so they didn’t appreciate having to come back south so soon. When they discovered that the Benz driver had already been interviewed and, upon seeing a photograph of the nun, had stated categorically that this was not the woman he’d driven, they were positively spewing stomach acid. They called an emergency meeting of everyone involved in the case, including poor wheelchair-bound Sergeant Phoom.

Nobody appreciated their condescending tone, particularly Major General Suvit, who’d been rather proud of the way he’d been handling the case since Bangkok had left it behind. Chompu informed us later that the meeting had twice erupted into a slappy, spitty shouting match. There were those present who swore the major general had reached for his pistol at one stage. The question of motive had come up from time to time. Who had a better motive than the nun? Why would a foreigner with no known connection to the victim just suddenly up and kill him? It was a question nobody could answer. Bangkok argued that murder never happened at random. Killers invariably knew their victims or had a personal stake in wanting them dead. That was the point in the proceedings when my interruption happened.

A female lieutenant entered the room with coffee, coconut biscuits and news of a tip-off. She handed the message to the major general and made the mistake of staying in the room. He told her they all had their coffee now, thank you, and asked her what she was still doing there. She’d probably asked herself the same question on a career level. She left. The major general read the note, then announced that someone had phoned in with information that there had been a woman answering the description of Ms. Wu from Hong Kong staying at the 69 Resort. She’d been seen carrying an expensive camera and, for good measure, driving a black Benz. Within seconds the room emptied, all except for Sergeant Phoom who had his elbows in forty-five-degree plaster casts and didn’t have anyone to push his wheelchair. He finished his coffee and had a double helping of coconut biscuits.

The receptionist at the 69 Resort was somewhat overwhelmed when seven police vehicles sped into the parking lot. She told them she had no idea who might have called the police and it certainly wasn’t her. There had been a guest, a Korean lady by the name of Do Ik. She’d paid on a day-to-day basis for her room and left unexpectedly on Wednesday. She’d tipped everyone generously and hadn’t caused any trouble. Yes, she did have a camera but she was a tourist. It was only natural. Considering the economic climate, it wasn’t surprising that nobody had moved into the Korean’s room since her departure, especially given its proximity to the main road.

The German saluted when the police parade marched past his room, and his unexpected girlfriend ran inside the cabin. The receptionist opened the door to the Korean’s room: B4.

“Has anyone been inside this room since she checked out?” one Bangkok detective asked.

“Yes, the cleaner,” she replied.

“Apart from that?”

“No.”

The room was a little cramped for an eighteen-man search but neither Bangkok nor Lang Suan, nor Pak Nam was prepared to yield the responsibility to the other groups. They settled on a delegation of two men from each section, a total of six. They all wore standard issue rubber gloves but they carefully lifted bedsheets and towels and opened drawers with the non-writing ends of pencils. By some incredible chance, it was an officer from the Pak Nam station who uncovered the only clue in the room. And what a clue it was. A clue so vital, in fact, that it blew the case wide open. What had, until then, been a domestic murder inquiry was suddenly of concern to the world.

Lieutenant Chompu, it was, who discovered the tiny scrap of paper that had evidently slipped down behind the cushion of one of the uncomfortable vinyl chairs. On it was a handwritten Web site address. Anyone who’d read Chompu’s pep-talk notes on the Pak Nam notice board might have recognized some characteristics in the style.

He’d disguised his handwriting as best he could but, as the Bangkok detectives took possession of the paper immediately, it was a connection that would never be made. Neither would anyone think to ask why the guest would write her own Internet address on a slip of paper. From the criminal point of view, there was a lot to be said for police non-cooperation.

We sat, the three of us, me, Granddad Jah and Lieutenant Chompu, at one of our beachside tables. An array of local food, bought from here and there, was covered in plates and clingfilm and untouchable in front of us. We had a bottle of 100 Pipers whiskey that Granddad Jah drank over ice, and me and Chompu drank mizuwari. That’s Japanese for ‘drowned to death in water’. But we still had a buzz going just from the lieutenant’s telling of events.

“I zeroed in on the chair,” he said. “I was able to palm the Web site address, but I thought I might be pushing my luck to slip the photo prints under the mattress. I mean, there were six of us in a room of two-by-two meters.”

“Do you think it’ll be enough?” I asked.

“To tie crazy Mika to Abbot Winai’s murder? It’s hard to say. They’re very likely to find camera footage of Do Ik passing through immigration and compare it with the Web site photo and say it’s a completely different person.”

“She used her real passport to enter and leave the country,” said Granddad.

We both looked up.

“What makes you think so?” I asked.

“She went to so much trouble to avoid showing her ID to the rental firm. By hiring a car with a driver, she didn’t need to leave her passport. And the resort didn’t check either. She came to the right area. Hotels here are so desperate to get paying guests they really don’t care who you are.”

“The passport theory would certainly make life a lot easier if it were true,” said Chompu. “But it still doesn’t tie her to the murder. Unless they can get a recent photo of Mika Mikata to the Benz driver or the 69 receptionist, there’d be nothing to connect her to the killing at all. It’s only your reporter’s nose that ties the two women together. There’s no evidence. There are no witnesses. No murder weapon’s been found. And, as our Bangkok friends would hurry to point out, there’s no motive.”

“So, we might still be forced to give up the photographs?” I asked.

“They’re not incriminating,” he said. “All you can see is a hand in an oven mitt.”

“Damn,” I said. “It should be easy now.”

“Look out! Mother at seven o’clock,” said Granddad.

“Hello, you conspirators,” Mair said. She’d snuck up on us from the beach side. She joined us, pushing me along the bench with her backside.

“What would we be conspiring about?” I asked her.

“I don’t know the details,” she said. “But I can see secrets floating around you. You have guilty auras. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“No,” said Granddad Jah. “You know what you get like after half a glass.”

“You see, Lieutenant?” Mair smiled at the police officer.

“A girl never really grows up. Her father’s always there to remind her of her morals.”

A few days ago she’d thrown herself under the counter to avoid him; now she was flirting with him. Mothers! We mixed her a drink so weak the soda bubbles were beside themselves in the search for whiskey atoms. We fell into a peaceful silence, staring at the little lights out at sea, bobbing along on their polystyrene rafts. After a few months of fishing, the locals became lethargic. They put together traps of fine mesh and suspended them from small foam platforms illuminated by gas lamps. The boatmen would come back the next day to see what their indiscriminate snares had collected. They took as many immature fish as they did squid and it screwed up the ecosystem. It’s illegal and irresponsible, but it’s terribly pretty. The pearl tears of lamplight dotted the surface of the water all around.

“I was talking to Auntie Summorn today,” Mair said.

See? A mere sip and she was about to confess to the police.

“How is she?” I asked, and elbowed her in the kidney.

“She was very well,” she said. “She was telling me about her son. I’m sure you’ve run across Auntie Summorn’s son, General…”

Chompu pepped up at the address.

“Mair, I — ”

“His name’s Daeng,” she continued. “He’s our local villain.”

“We know him very well.” Chompu nodded. “Very well.”

“Then you’d probably be surprised to hear he’s given up drinking and applied to enter the monkhood for a month.”

“And I’m thinking of having my left leg amputated because I’ve lost a sock,” was Chompu’s response.

Mair chuckled.

“It’s official,” she said. “He’s signed up for detox at Wat Ny Kow.”

“Then wonders will never cease,” said the policeman. “Whatever’s come over him?”

“Oh, I just think a man comes to a point in his life when he gets tired of running away from his conscience. All his past deeds catch up with him and…I mean, they’re coming from different directions, obviously, the conscience and the deeds, otherwise they’d be bumping into each other and complicating things. But that’s probably when his life turns around…because of all that jostling.”

Mair had a way with idioms. Chompu looked from me to Granddad Jah and we both shrugged.

“Well, then here’s to villain Daeng,” said Chompu, raising his glass and downing the contents. I clinked my glass against Mair’s and sniffed her cheek.

“Well done, Mair,” I whispered in her ear. She threw back half her drink and smacked her lips and fluttered her eyes.

“General Chompu,” she slurred, “do you know I once tied a police officer to a bamboo raft and set him off down the Kok River? It was — ”

“All right, girl. You’ve had enough,” said Granddad Jah, taking her half-empty glass. “She makes up stories when she’s drunk.”

“I do not. His name was Police Sergeant Major Grit Maleenon. He was naked because he — ”

“Mair!”

She grabbed back her glass and laughed. We were saved the rest of the story by the arrival of our truck. In fact, hearing Mair’s story might have been better. It was a moment I’d been secretly dreading, so I can’t imagine how Mair felt. Arny had invited his girlfriend (and I use the term with generous caution) for dinner. The spread in front of us was all cold. Arny was half an hour late.

“Ah! Cue for the handsome and discreet officer to depart,” said Chompu.

Arny and a big woman had emerged from the truck. They were half in shadow but she appeared to be wearing a parachute. Luckily it was white rather than camouflaged or we might have lost sight of her completely as they walked, arm in arm, across the car park. I leaned over the table.

“Not on your life, Lieutenant. Either you sit and eat with us or I’m telling the police ministry you lip-sync Maria Carey on duty.”

“Bitch.”

I felt Mair slide back on the bench and into the shadows. Granddad helped himself to a dozen or so new Pipers. The happy couple was holding hands by the time they arrived at our table. When Arny’s face nosed into the table-lamp light I could see the full beam of a smile and a touching look of pride as he dipped his head in the direction of his betrothed. I’d never seen that look before. Mair obviously noticed it, too. She leaned out of her shadow and smiled.

“Who do we have here?” she asked.

Arny’s companion stepped up to the table and pushed her hands together into a very respectful wai. We all returned it, apart from Granddad Jah who grunted and took a drink instead. She was a very handsome woman, dark from the sun, with a nose that I’d seen often on carved wooden native American sculptures. Her hair was as thick as tarmac and it hung down her back like a stodgy dark cape. Yes, her head was good. I’d give it an 8.2, but I couldn’t begin to score her body because of the parachute. It was somewhat worrying. It was as if she’d dropped from an airplane into a nearby field and hadn’t had time to untangle herself before dinner.

“Sorry we’re late,” said Arny, who for some reason had decided to wai us also. “We were arm wrestling about what we should wear to such a high-class dinner.”

He giggled. It was an Arny joke, made worse by an iron bar of nervous tension that was apparently welded to his spine. Granddad Jah didn’t help.

“Well, she obviously lost,” he said.

I turned to glare at my granddad and inadvertently kicked Chompu in the shin. He squealed. And that was the moment it could have all gone wrong. Arny’s face imploded, Mair’s smile became a patch of Scotch tape, and I fumbled desperately through my bag of journalistic tricks to find something diplomatic to spray on the scene. But then the girlfriend laughed. It was like the grand opening of a showroom of shiny teeth. Somewhere in the back of her throat they were smashing crystal glasses and chandeliers. It was the type of laugh that left you absolutely no choice but to join in with.

“I brought some real clothes,” she said. Her southern accent was musical and earthy as a saloon. “They’re in the truck…Unless you’d prefer to put it to the vote.”

Mair leaped to her feet and grabbed the woman’s hand.

“I’ll show you where you can change.” She smiled and we all applauded. All except for Arny who stood with his lips aquiver as the two women retreated into the darkness.

“I thought she looked nice,” he said.

I went over to him and hugged as much of him as I could.

“Nong,” I said, “you selected that dress for your lady friend, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You went shopping together and she let you choose a dress.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve got good news for you. Any woman who’d go out in public wearing that dress, just because you were sweet enough to buy it for her, has to love you very much.”

The expression on his face passed through confusion before finally alighting on joy. He laughed and I wrestled him down onto a seat. Granddad Jah fixed him a drink. By the time Mair and the girlfriend returned they were the best of friends. They probably had a lot of ancient pop songs in common; used the same brand of arthritis cream. But perhaps I’m being cruel. Arny rose to greet his lady love. She was wearing a nice shiny top that showed her toned shoulders, and huggy trousers. She certainly hadn’t let herself go since the competition days. I found her rather attractive myself but I’d never admit that to Ed’s sister. Her name, we learned, was Kanchana Aromdee, nickname, Gaew, and she was one of the most interesting women I’d met in a life spent meeting people. Even Granddad Jah took a shine to her. She entertained us with her anecdotes and listened attentively to ours. All the while she held Arny’s hand and smiled at his profile when he spoke.

The Pipers were down to a dozen, and we’d eaten, and the time had tumbled on by and nobody seemed in a hurry to go home. Mair told some of her most bawdy and hilarious stories, fired by the taste of whiskey on her lips. She let slip the odd curse that drew censure from Granddad and consternation from the gallery. We talked about our Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and how we could turn its fortunes around: how we’d be the Club Med of the Gulf in six months. At one stage, Chompu had received a call from Major Suvit telling him that Mika Mikata had, in fact, traveled to Thailand on her real passport to attend an international photographic symposium in Haad Yai. Our own Pak Nam fell almost to the decimal point directly between Haad Yai and Bangkok. We toasted Granddad Jah and made him an honorary Police Major General for the night. Chompu let him wear his hat. Gaew lip-sticked an insignia on his coral white undervest and he didn’t put up a fight.

It was almost midnight when I got the call I’d been hoping for. I staggered down to the water’s edge to leave the noise of the party behind me. I sat on the sand and listened. I heard calls for my return to the table but I ignored them. Crabs were sizing me up but I didn’t care. I listened and I cried and I said thank you and returned to the table where Gaew was demonstrating an unbreakable armlock on the lieutenant. Mair asked me why I’d been crying and all attention turned to me. During the meal, we’d briefly talked about the killing of the abbot and the subsequent investigation, and now I had what I hoped would be the final kill.

Sissi had found a way, via impenetrable firewalls through invisible wormholes…and various other jargon I’d not understood, into Mika Mikata’s Web site. There, she’d found the most horrific gallery of murder masquerading as art: the step-by-step pool murder of the orange-hatted worker in Guam, an underwater assassination in the Great Barrier Reef set amid some of the most glorious colored corals and sea creatures, the aviary slaying in Taiwan, and the recently posted killing of an abbot in Thailand. In an attached blog, some arty farty pseudo-poetic nonsense about destiny. A location pinpointed on a map. A vague sense that saffron was calling to her. That her inner soul and the whim of the orange hat would finally come to select the perfect tableau to showcase her art. Mika Mikata was a dead duck. The Juree family had its first notch.

That night, as I was filling in the details of my story, I paused to consider the victim for once. Abbot Winai would undoubtedly have seen this as his karma. He’d probably visited the moment during meditation, walking on that path beside the flowers at that particular time when Mika Mikata passed by in her rental car. He probably knew before she burst through the hedge, before she forced him to don the hat. There had been no fear in his eyes and that would have been a terrible disappointment to the crazy Japanese, the woman who crafted death.

Sissi had posted the link to the members-only Orange Gallery on the Sangka Council’s Web site. It couldn’t be traced back to her. She knew the outrage would fuel its way to the police ministry and the case would explode in the media. Everyone was looking for something exciting to nudge the yuppy rebellion off the front pages. Somehow, Mika Mikata would be punished for her cruelty.

Our resort was quiet. Everyone had gone to bed. The table was littered with bottles and plates and topped by Gogo with sauce around her mouth. The cleanup could wait. I kick-started the motorcycle and rode into Pak Nam to deliver my exclusive. It was a ghost town. The light above the 7-Eleven bathed the street in puddles of red, green and orange. As I passed, I saw the cashier yawn into a magazine. There was another light from the upstairs window of a PVC pipe and pump store, one more at the intersection. It stretched the shadow of a threadbare cat into the shape of a giraffe. But the Internet shop was as dark as Nintendo Kong’s banana cellar, as quiet as Atlantis after the last of the Gorgon invaders had been destroyed.

I took off my shoe and rapped against the shutter. The sound echoed around the town like a lone Pamplona bull charging through the streets, but the only reaction was a faint “What do you want?” from above the cafe.