Tutweiler narrowed an eye my way. “A PhD.”
“Impressive. From where?”
“The Southwestern Arkansas Institute of Bible Studies.”
“Forgive me for not recognizing the school, sir,” I apologized. “Is it an accredited institution, like, say, the Harvard Divinity School?”
Tutweiler’s jaw clenched. “The Southwestern Arkansas Institute holds the highest possible accreditations, those from God.”
“Of course,” I said, writing earnestly in my notepad. I wrote pompous pinhead asshole.
“Was anything bothering Reverend Scaler recently?” Harry asked Tutweiler. “We saw TV footage of the groundbreaking for the new structures. He seemed distracted, not his usual self.”
“I’m probably far better acquainted with Richard’s usual self than you gentlemen are,” Tutweiler sniffed. “He seemed fine to me. What makes you think otherwise?”
“For one thing,” I said, “he went five minutes without begging for money.”
Harry shot me a glance. Tutweiler reached for his phone.
“What’s the name of your superior?” he said, nose in the air. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
I jumped from my chair so fast it tipped over backwards. I slammed my knuckles on Tutweiler’s desk, leaning forward until the Dean’s eyes filled with my face.
“Here’s what you’re going to put up with, Brother Tutweiler. Right now no one knows the Rev. was hanging upside-down with whip marks scalded across his fat white ass. Or sucking a ball gag the size of a lemon. Or wearing lipstick and frilly women’s panties with a dildo jammed into his last supper. Those little details might never surface if we get some straight answers to our questions.”
Tutweiler turned white. The phone returned to the cradle. The Dean of Kingdom College stood and walked to the window, gazing over the spreading green commons four stories below. Students walked casually across the bright grass, as fresh and clean-scrubbed as if pulled from a casting agency for a Happy Days remake. Tutweiler sighed and turned to us.
“The past year – maybe longer – Richard seemed to grow more and more erratic. He stopped writing his sermons. He sat by the lake. He disappeared for days sometimes. It was getting worse.”
“How so?”
“A week before he was scheduled to address the National Fundamentalist Council, he told me to cancel the engagement. He’s been the keynote speaker for years, it’s always a powerful address, covered by the international media. He said he wasn’t going to deliver the speech. I was floored. It’s a huge event for both of our organizations. After the Reverend delivers his speech we always get huge…” he paused, winced.
“Donations,” I finished. “Don’t be afraid to say the word ‘money’, either, Dean. It’s the truth, right?”
“Yes,” he said, looking away. “Donations. To continue our many ministries.”
“Detective Nautilus and I heard Reverend Scaler mention an eye problem in the news clip. Macular degeneration? Cataracts? Something as simple as conjunctivitis?”
For the first time, Tutweiler looked totally perplexed. Dumbstruck.
“Dean?” Harry asked.
“I have no idea, Detective. I never heard him mention his eyes before or after that day.”
“It seemed a big deal at the time,” I prodded.
Tutweiler shrugged. “Got me. The whole eye thing came straight from the blue.”
We hammered at a restrained Tutweiler for a few more minutes. He had nothing earth-shaking to add, save for a solid alibi for the three days pre and post his boss’s murder, a symposium-cum-revival in Albany, New York. For verification he mentioned several congress people and aides. When we headed out, he made no mention of my behavior. His voice was subdued.
“Can…all these sordid details…uh, can they…”
“Things may leak out,” Harry sighed. “But I imagine we can keep a lid on the worst aspects.”
The door closed at our backs. We went to the cruiser. Harry paused before he put the car in gear. Looked at me.
“Carson, did you plan that action in Tutweiler’s office? You looked about to jump across his desk and strangle him.”
“An act planned from the git-go,” I said, waving it off and hoping it sounded like the truth.
Chapter 20
We returned to the department, flipped a coin. I lost and had to write up the events of the day. I was feeling worn and bleary-eyed and it took an hour to document the case thus far. I made copies of the full materials and dropped them in the box outside Lieutenant Mason’s office, then wandered to the meeting room. The door was closed and I saw Richard Scaler sermonizing on the screen of the computer. The video was jittery. Though I couldn’t hear the audio, my mind heard his angry rants, the crowd amening Scaler’s every screeching condemnation of those not fitting the straitjacket confines of his theology.
When I entered the meeting room Harry sat forward and paused the action.
“A Richard Scaler film retrospective?” I asked.
“Tutweiler got me wondering who Richard Scaler really was. How the reality jived with my images of him. It’s pretty sad what I found so far. Wanna look?”
Though weary, curiosity pulled my chair closer to the screen. Harry tapped a key and the action re-started.
“This one I pulled off YouTube. Scaler preaching at a tent revival in Louisiana in the early sixties. The kiddie-preacher stage.”
The uploaded video was black and white, grainy, probably shot on what was called a super-8 camera, the film negative about as wide as your average lady’s pinky nail. Richard Bloessing Scaler was about seven years old, a little dab of pudge on a big broad stage. He danced, twirled, cajoled, all the while amening and hallelujahing in a comedic, high-piping voice. The crowd ate it up, some fainting, others speaking in tongues, others shaking as if standing in water while holding a shorted toaster. And always, moving through the crowd, the hat asking for money.
The film floated out of focus, re-entered on a scene that appeared to be backstage at the just-completed revival, billows of white cloth backdrop as Scaler’s parents sat in folding chairs, the young Richard between them.
“He’s got the spirit all the way through,” Daddy Scaler drawled. “They come from fitty miles to hear my boy preachin’ the Lord’s word.”
Richard Scaler Senior looked like a refugee from a Depression-era dust storm, a bone-skinny scarecrow with a nasal Oklahoma drawl. He wore overalls and a plain shirt, and I figured it was more costume than clothes, telling the dirt-poor audience he was one of them.
Mama Scaler was grossly obese; no way to gloss it, a lump. Her eyes seemed lost in her fleshy face. I felt sorrow at her condition until she looked into the camera. Her eyes were as cold and glittering as the eyes of a rattlesnake, and projected a force I could not explain, even through the bad lighting and grainy film. She stared at the camera as if determining whether to ignore it or kill it.
“How often do you preach, Richard?” the interviewer asked the chubby little kid.
“Every ni—”
“Two–three times a week,” Daddy Scaler interrupted, shooting a wide grin at the kid and patting him like an obedient retriever. “He’d preach day’n’night if we let him, but uh course, he’s got school an’ things.”
I’ll bet, I thought.
I saw Richard yawn and begin to slump, dead tired after hours of preaching and altar calls. His mother’s hand shot in from behind and grabbed the kid’s jacket at the shoulder blades, yanked him erect like a sack of meal. It was meant to be hidden, but Mama Scaler was unfamiliar with camera angles.
“Stand up straight, boy,” Mama Scaler side-mouthed. “An’ smile. These people are takin’ pictures.”
I looked at the seven-year-old and saw a wooden marionette. The camera scanned the departing crowd. The camera had lights and the faces looked back at the lights with confusion or fear or anger.