“She’s fine, Harry. Hold on to that.”

“What did she ever do to anyone?”

“Keep it tight, bro.” I think he’d said the same thing to me a few days back. I hadn’t kept it tight at all.

Harry took a deep breath, began: “Assume the tithe envelope ties Noelle to some aspect of Scaler’s enterprises. That he or someone in the Scaler organization knew who was in the torched house. Maybe put them there. Someone who knew there was a baby out there that was, in some strange way, special.”

“And?”

“Now we’ve got a group of white supremacists who’ve kidnapped her. Possibly targeting her for death.”

“I read you,” I said. “But why didn’t the overseers giving the orders check with Douthitt before making the second, successful attempt? How did they know Noelle was still in the third incubator? Or in the PICU, for that matter? Doc Norlin said she was ready to head to the regular neonatal-care unit.”

“Another pair of eyes in the hospital?”

“Possibility,” I mulled. “But if Douthitt did the job right the first time, why not just use him?”

“That’s nuts-and-bolts stuff,” Harry growled. “We’ve got to come up with what’s underneath this vat of slime. Who’s keeping it cooking?”

“I think you’re on the righteous road, bro,” I consoled. “Every time we learn something, it’s touching the past. Did you get that Meltzer grew up in the county adjoining the county Scaler came up in? And how about Tut? He goes back thirty years with Scaler. Meltzer, Scaler, Tut…all about the same age, mid fifties. Carleton, too.”

Tom Mason knocked at the door. Tom frowned, held up a call message.

“I just got word that Dean Tutweiler’s dead.”

“What?” Harry and I said in unison.

Tom shook his head. “The Dean was found in his home about fifteen minutes ago. How about the two of you go take a look?”

Tutweiler owned an impressive multi-columned house in west Mobile, not far from the college. The house stood alone at the end of a street, an acre of yard surrounded by deciduous woods.

The uniforms who’d responded when the body was discovered by Tutweiler’s housekeeper – did everyone have a maid but me? – had the sense to realize the potential of the situation, choosing to call the death in on a personal cellphone and not over the air and thus susceptible to police-band-monitoring media types. There were no news vans, no neighbors milling on the lawn with cellphones in hand.

Clair was on the scene as the rep from the ME’s office, which showed the weight of the event. Clair only worked a scene if there was something new she might learn, or the case carried political or celebrity-style weight. Tutweiler, unfortunately, qualified as both.

Tut was sprawled in red silk boxers on a couch. His mouth was open, his tongue lolling. His eyes looked heavenward, which I found ironic. White foam had dried on his cheek. The living room boasted expensive furniture and decorations, but not a touch of personality. It was as if a door-to-door ambience salesman had sold the Dean a pre-selected grouping: the Yawn Suite.

Clair was standing by the body. She looked up from her notes. I saw a split-second struggle over whether to look concerned or nonchalant, opting for the latter.

“Hi, Carson,” she said, the blue eyes as dazzling as always. “How are you?”

“Engaged in the moment,” I said. “I’m here. What you got?”

“An OD by the looks. That’s so far. I’ll know more when we get him to the morgue. Check the pillow beside him.”

I looked down, saw a syringe and an umarked bottle of solution.

“That’s what makes you think OD? Maybe it’s medication of some sort.”

“Look here. His feet.”

I bent as Clair carefully spread the Dean’s long blue-white tootsies, the nails in need of trimming. I saw punctures between the digits. Clair said, “Standard low-profile junkie injection sites. He’s hidden them in other places as well.”

William S. Burroughs claimed being a junkie was no big deal if you had enough money to guarantee access to good dope. You were like anyone else, except you pumped a feel-good substance into your veins. Burroughs believed the deleterious effects of junk weren’t the drug’s doing, but caused by the typical junkie lifestyle of malnutrition and disease and living in a city’s danger zones.

“So our boy’s had a monkey riding him for a while?” I suggested.

“Years, maybe. His feet are riddled. Hips, too.”

“Is Tut married?” I asked, looking around. No sense of a woman’s presence, hardly a sense of a man’s.

Harry shook his head. “Everything on the web said he’s always been single. His standard line was that he was married to his service to God.”

Harry stood beside the couch, bounced up and down. I heard squishing. Harry bent and patted the carpet.

“There’s water on the floor. The carpet’s wet.”

I crouched over the carpet and sniffed. “Just like at Scaler’s scene and Chinese Red’s. I’m taking bets it’s sea water.”

No one bet against me.

I looked out the window, saw a dark-suited James Carleton stalking toward the house all by his lonesome, his deep-blue M-Benz in the drive. He stopped and talked to a group of uniforms for a few seconds, then pressed past, heading for the door.

No knock. He stepped inside like everywhere was his house. I turned, widened my eyes in false delight, clapped my hands.

“Look who’s here, Harry – Jimmy Carleton. Lookin’ good, Jimmy!” I brayed, treating the upmarket lawyer like the thirty-buck-an-hour ambulance chasers we schmoozed in the courthouse halls.

Carleton eyed us like something unpleasant into which he’d planted the soles of his five-hundred-buck Italian loafers.

“Nothing can be taken from this house without direct linkage to the scene,” he barked, cranking into payday mode, on the clock. “Any and all items taken must be entered in a –”

“How’d you know?” I said.

He scowled. I’d interrupted his cash flow. “Know what?”

“About Tutweiler’s death. No one knows but us chickens here on the scene. It hasn’t been broadcast.”

The face blanked. “I didn’t know until a minute ago,” he said. “I had some papers for Dean Tutweiler to sign. Official papers. I saw the cars, the police. I parked and ran up, heard the terrible news. It’s a horrendous shock.”

I couldn’t read his face. “Could you show me the papers?” I asked.

“Papers?”

“The ones you were going to have the Dean sign. You must have some papers in that fancy briefcase with a dotted line for the Dean to sign on, right?”

He pulled the case closer. “Anything I have in this briefcase is subject to attorney-client privilege.”

“I’m not looking for the secret recipe for Coca-Cola,” I prodded. “I’m just interested in seeing a dotted line ready for the Dean’s pen point.”

Carleton did what lawyers and politicians do when confronted by an unruly question: changed the subject, looking at his watch and shooting me a glare.

“I suppose this will be in the news within the hour, just like the sordid details of Richard’s sad death. Don’t you people have any clamps on your leaks? It’s a matter of humanity, for God’s sake.”

“Guess not,” I shrugged. “Do you know how the Dean died, Mr Carleton?”

“How would I know? I just got here. A heart attack, I’d imagine. The stress of the past week.”

Carleton retreated to the front porch as Harry and I inspected the scene. It seemed a typical OD, like Chinese Red’s. Only this one was a world away from the apartment in the Hoople, no matter how nicely the benighted Mr O’Fong, scion of the world, had appointed his small space.

“You think Carleton knew Tutweiler was dead? Harry asked when we finally signed the body over to Clair and her people.

“Interesting question,” I said.

I bid farewell to Clair, politely. As I climbed in the car I saw her shoot a glance at Harry. While yawning nonchalantly, he slipped his hand out the window and gave her some kind of signal.