I thought of how hard it was to pull off a wet sweatshirt.

“I can imagine it.”

“Except Baker wrapped prisoners and did things like add a bit of electricity to the mix. They got pain, he got pleasure, and no proof was ever left on the bodies.”

I pictured Baker’s system in my mind. “Because the wet blankets acted as a soft restraint. The prisoners didn’t flail around and contuse themselves.”

“Yep. Just laid there like screaming burritos.”

I shook my head. Saw Harry slipping on water at Scaler’s death scene. The wet floor at Chinese Red’s apartment. Glenn Watkins delivering the verdict of sea water and petrochemicals, like water found near boat traffic.

“You know where Baker lives, Ben?”

“Address is 432 Grayson Court. It’s along the Intercoastal Waterway.”

The waterway was a canal running through the southern half of Mobile county, heavily used by commercial traffic: barges, tows, shrimp boats. The water was often shiny with oil.

“Thanks, Ben.”

I hung up. Looked at Harry. Told him we were heading south.

Delbert “Boots” Baker lived in a ranch-style house on a short spur of the Intercoastal Waterway. It would have been a nice-looking place except for being entirely surrounded by hurricane fencing, the fence dotted with Keep Out and No Trespassing signs. I saw two security cameras pointing toward the street, knew there would be more. I looked for signs of attack dogs, but realized people with paranoiac, possibly psychotic personalities didn’t tend toward keeping animals. They were so inwardly focused that animals distracted them from themselves.

“Looks like Deputy Baker’s built himself a fortress on the water,” Harry said.

“A paranoid,” I said. “Worse, a paranoiac wrecking ball.”

We got out and walked the fence line. The adjoining property was a scrap yard, beater cars hauled or driven in on their last legs to be sold for scrap, hulking piles of metal stacked close to the channel and awaiting passage to China or wherever was using our cast-offs these days.

The house seemed empty of life, no curtains parting. I figured Baker was on duty somewhere, like the day he’d had the confrontation with Al Bustamente. The thought almost amused me until it led to two others: Had Baker been the one to attack Al Bustamente last week? It made sudden and perfect sense: a sociopath of Baker’s ilk would have felt the burn of Bustamente’s derisive words long after the confrontation. I figured Bustamente was lucky he’d only been injured and not killed.

And had Baker been standing in the prints, not because he was ignorant, but because he was trying to destroy evidence? That he knew – or had been part of – whatever had gone down at the house in the middle of nowhere?

I filed these thoughts away, stepping over pieces of metal and car parts that had drifted over from the junkyard, half hiding in the kudzu and poison ivy.

“Look at the back of the house,” I said, pointing.

We saw a pier on the water, a sleek, thirty-foot cruiser berthed against the pilings, a boat that could cross the Gulf like I stepped over a creek. I looked to a concrete pad behind the house, saw two battered five-gallon containers, the big blue plastic jobs, short lengths of rope on the handles. I had a similar container I filled with drinking water when camping in the Smoky Mountains.

“What are you thinking, Carson?”

“I’m thinking a short walk takes Baker to his pier, filling his jugs by setting them in the water.”

The rest of the scenario unfolded: Baker, with the help of one or two of his crew, soaking a blanket from the containers, wrapping Richard Scaler when he answered the knock at his door, immobilizing him for a nighttime run to the camp. Or perhaps Scaler had been lured to the camp, immobilized there. Water had pooled beneath Scaler, suggesting they’d hung him up – struggling, but making none of the marks of struggle to alert the coroner.

“Tutweiler and Chinese Red were immobilized for heroin overdoses,” Harry said. “But what happened to Scaler? Potassium chloride? An air bubble?”

Inject either of the two into the blood and bang, heart-attack city. There was virtually no way to discern that the death was anything but a cardiac event.

“Fits,” I said. “Or maybe Scaler had a heart attack from sheer terror, saving Baker a step. They whipped his back before he died, but once Scaler was in the air, he was helpless. Tie the gag in his mouth, ram the plug into his anus. Set out some candles for effect. There was nothing to be done about the water dripping off the blanket, but they probably figured it would evaporate before the body was found – a miscalculation inside a cool house.”

“Where do you think Baker is?” Harry asked, looking at his watch. “It’s late for him to still be at work.”

“He could be working a swing-shift. Or maybe he’s out torturing small animals, the kind of hobby he’d have, I expect.”

“This place makes my skin crawl,” Harry said. “Let’s bag it for now. But make a note to come back real soon.”

We pulled away, both shooting glances in the rear-views at Baker’s waterfront fortress.

“What’s the strangest thing about this case, Carson?” Harry asked when we were back on the main highway, simultaneously veering so close to a passing gasoline truck I could have leaned out and refilled our tank.

I thought for several minutes, tumbling pictures and events through my mind.

“Why the hatchet job on Scaler’s reputation?” I said. “If someone wanted Scaler out of the way, why not just have him popped with a contract hit?”

“Then he’d just be dead,” Harry noted. “Now he’s dead and discredited. The big question is…”

“Why discredited?” I said, looking out into the night sky. “It’s always ‘Why?’”

We got to the department’s parking garage. It was quiet, the night-patrol shift out on the streets, the detectives long home.

“You going home?” Harry asked.

“I expect it’s all that’s left for today. You?”

Harry blew out a long breath. “I’m going inside and sit at a computer. See if I can find anything else Scaler hid in the internet, in the Tower of Babel.”

“It’s a drudge job. Why not start fresh in the morning?”

“Morning’s hours away. If Noelle’s alive, she may not have hours. I gotta do it now, Carson.”

He exited the car, slinging his jacket over his shoulder and trudging toward the building. In the yellow half-light of the garage, he looked like an ancient soldier, sick to death of the battles, but knowing nothing else.

He also looked desperately alone.

Chapter 42

I woke up and shot a glance at my watch. It was 6.45 a.m. I unfolded from the hard office-style sofa and put my feet on the floor. Something tickled my thigh and I noted my half-hung tie flapping against my leg.

I blinked my eyes into operative mode and saw Harry across the conference room, bagged out in a chair, mouth open as he snored lightly. The computer monitor on the table displayed the screensaver, an undulating rainbow. I’d left off the chase at 3.45, Harry still running the search engine, plowing through years of Scaler sermons tucked away in various sites on the web.

I tip-toed out to the wide and deserted detectives’ room and brewed a pot of coffee. When I returned, Harry was back in position at the computer.

“You find anything else?” I asked, adding, “Good morning.”

Harry took the cup of coffee I’d brought, sucked away half. “The usual. It seems every time Dickie-Boy preached a camera was there to capture the great man’s words, sticking them on the web to bring his way and light to all. See enough sermons and you realize they’re basically all the same, he’s just mad about different things. You get the feeling that, at the heart of things, Scaler had little love or hope for humankind.”