Mrs. Tebbe nodded. Now all Max had to do was think of his good reason. "You're certainly hostile today."
"I have a lot to do, Captain, and unexpected visits disrupt my schedule."
"No, no, this is more than your usual gruffness. Come on, Mrs. Tebbe, I thought we made some progress during my last visit. What's up?"
Her face softened a little. She reached to her intercom and asked Harriet to bring them coffee, then leaned back. "Maybe it's this band of little hoodlums. The camp's ablaze about the problem, but trying to get to the bottom of it is like trying to help a child with a toothache. The kid's miserable, but sure isn't going to help you."
"I read your report on the internee police's reorganization. They having any luck at all?"
"No, not yet, but it's not even three weeks old. And it has taken care of a lot of problems. The occasional squabble, public intoxication, et cetera."
"They haven't happened to come across any leads on Ataki...?"
"Is that the reason for the surprise visit, Captain? To see if we're being good little Americans and telling you everything we know?"
Now that was defensive. Did that mean Mrs. Tebbe had a lead or that she was just frustrated because she didn't? Harriet tapped on the door, then brought in the coffee service. Suddenly Mrs. Tebbe was backpedaling.
"Sorry, Captain, that was out of line. I suppose I' m just on edge. All morning I've had this feeling that something's up that I don't know about."
Max's shoulders tensed. "Like what?"
"I didn't really mean anything by that, all right? I'm just edgy, that's all."
"How's that Alma Curar fellow been behaving for you?"
Mrs. Tebbe's brow furrowed. "What?"
"David Alma Curar. Has he been dredging up any trouble?"
Max thought Mrs. Tebbe stirred her coffee a little too abruptly. "No, why?"
"I saw him as I was driving through. He had some odd to say. You sure he's not upsetting the residents?"
"He's just a peculiar man, Captain. He's harmless."
"Are you sure?"
Mrs. Tebbe tossed her spoon pointedly onto the saucer. "Captain, was there something specific you wanted to see me about?"
Harriet's voice crackled from the intercom. "Mrs. Tebbe, Disjunction Lake's police chief is here. He says it's urgent."
"Well, bring him in then."
As soon as Max turned and saw the chief, he knew Mr. Ataki had been found.
/ / / /
"A couple of teenagers discovered the body in the mountains about two hours ago, just a ways past the foothills. It was in pretty bad shape...well, you can imagine, after all this time."
"So you're assuming he died not long after the escape?" Max asked.
The chief nodded, his face the color of putty. This whole affair was clearly upsetting him, but he managed to keep his tone neutral. "I'd say so. Of course, the official word has to come from the county coroner."
"Any educated guesses as to cause of death?"
The chief smiled without humor, looking first to Mrs. Tebbe across the desk before answering Max. "His brain was gone. That might've done it."
"What?"
The man sighed, as if the attempt at glibness had drained him. "The skull was cracked open and the brain case was empty."
Max's ears began to buzz, but he could hear Mrs. Tebbe speculate, "But, an animal could have done that after coming upon the body."
"The body was buried, ma'am. Buried good, too. Those boys wouldn't have found it if their beagle hadn't started digging around the head."
"God in heaven."
"Yeah, God in heaven," the chief said. He looked at Max. "We're just a tourist town. The worst we had before you people took over was rowdy kids or a drunk fisherman. Merciful Savior ... I've never seen anything like that dead man."
Max was suddenly aware that he had already known that Ataki was dead. Something in him had known...for how long? His throat began to tighten. His chest drew into itself. The brain case was empty. He'd known that, too. But how? He heard someone scream and he jumped.
He saw Mrs. Tebbe and the chief look at him. "Are you all right, Captain?" she asked.
"I'm sorry. That cry startled me."
"What cry?"
"You didn't hear it?"
Mrs. Tebbe looked at the police chief as if to ask if he had, but he shook his head. Max shrugged and tried to respond normally through the incessant buzzing. "I guess you've got my imagination going, Chief."
"This is nasty news. I'm glad this'll be your mess soon and not mine."
The buzzing in Max's ears was so great now he could barely hear. Images began to swim across his vision, faces he almost knew, faces he should know. Ghastly. Withered. He stood up, said something about going back to Lakeside to begin his report, asking the chief to call him as soon as the coroner's results were in. He was amazed at his own ability to sound and seem normal. He could see that his feigned normality had fooled his companions.
Driving back, it was Annie's face he saw before him, Annie's mouth gaping and wailing, filling with blood.
Chapter 11
Tulenar Internment Camp
Afternoon. Second Quarter Moon.
The gongs sounded all through the camp, white funeral banners waving at every barracks in Block Four. Doris stood at the back of the little building that served Buddhist, Shintoist and Christian alike, according to their holy days. Today, the tradition was Shinto. It was just a matter of time before the procession would begin, the regaled priest leading the dead man and his mourners to the camp gates, endless blocks away.
So strange to see all this white. It almost hurt her eyes. The color was surreal to Doris's western mind, bizarre and out of place, made all the more so by the weeping mourners and the droning priest. What were they thinking? What were they thinking, the Asians, to use white as their funeral color? It blanched everything, seemed to drain the blood out of every face.
Doris didn't know how much longer she could endure. The service threatened to sink into her bones; the gongs and the bells and the stifling incense, the droning, monotonous chants. And she was being stared at. No one could seem to decide if it were appropriate or outrageous for the Center Administrator to be there.
Neither could she. She was intensely aware of how she was dressed, in her somber navy skirt and jacket. But she just couldn't wear white to a funeral. She just couldn't.
Good Lord, it was impossible to stay. Her heart would be crushed under the weight of Mrs. Ataki's stricken face. To have already witnessed the widow's suffering once this week was all she could bear.
What an inadequate surrogate she had been for Mrs. Ataki's only living family, her still-imprisoned son. But Doris refused to leave this woman in the hands of minor staff and had escorted her to Disjunction Lake's morgue. So pale and withered, like a flower left to die. All the way there. All the way back.
Doris saw the white-shrouded coffin hoisted by the pallbearers. The priest and widow moved forward, mourners rose like a pallid tide of death crested by the coffin, and the whole thing was coming toward her. It was too late to flee, but someone was touching her arm gently. Arthur Satsugai, wearing black, thank God, because he was in his collar.
"Are you all right?" he asked, and she nodded, but she used his arm for a crutch as they waited for the procession to pass. They tried to follow.
But Doris kept seeing Mrs. Ataki's eyes roll back into her head as the widow had collapsed to the morgue's flat gray floor. She saw herself again following the coroner into that cold, antiseptic room and the dead man's sunken face, the color of rotting straw. Buried for days, his brain case cracked and empty...
Doris's legs buckled. "I'm going to be sick."
Mr. Satsugai pulled her away from the tail of the procession and set her on the steps of the nearest barracks. He insisted she stay there while he knocked on the door behind her. But getting no response beyond the flapping of the funeral banners, he took it upon himself to enter, then returned with a hand towel, cool and wet. He sat next to her and laid it against her neck.
"Better?" he asked.
"Getting there."
Mr. Satsugai said nothing more, but curled his fingers through hers while Doris bent forward, letting him hold the towel to her nape. She fought against tears. She fought against a wrenching desire to lean her forehead to his shoulder.
"Mr. Satsugai..."
"Yes."
"Mr. Satsugai..."
He didn't reply right away. Then he said, "Call me Arthur. I want you to call me Arthur."
Doris's fingers curled all the tighter around his, but she couldn't raise her eyes to him. Arthur lifted her hand to his face, brushing her fingers across his lips before resting them against his forehead.
/ / / /
For the second time in sixteen days, Tsuko Ataki left camp. His cemetery plot lay just north of Monterey, not far from where the Atakis' ranch-style home sat boarded up and smeared with anti-Japanese graffiti. Mrs. Ataki was allowed to watch as the back of the hearse closed over her husband and disappear down the gravel road. Then the M.P.'s took her back to her barracks.
/ / / /
"What happens now?" Doris asked.
Her hands were unsteady around the coffee cup. She was still queasy and shaken, sitting with Arthur in her office. It was Saturday, she realized. Yet she had asked Arthur to escort her here instead of her little tar paper house. He sat at the side of her desk, one arm resting on the desktop as he leaned into his chair.
"I don't know."
She had hoped, on some level, that he would have replied, "What do you mean?" She wanted an out. She wanted a chance to say she was talking about the camp, talking about the murder. But he knew exactly what she was talking about, and now she had to continue. She concentrated on every sip of coffee for a while.
"I'm not very good at these things," she finally confessed, eyes fixed on her cup. Then she looked at Arthur. "I wasn't very good at them before Abel married me. After his death, I only seemed to get worse."
Arthur suddenly bristled. "This isn't a thing. You and I, we can't afford a simple thing. Look where we are, look at who we are. This is serious, Doris. You and I..." He took a breath. "Are we serious?"
"We don't need that question yet," she replied. "This is too complex to shove through the chute."
Arthur nodded, without smiling. His silence seemed intended to force more from her, but she wasn't ready for more, she wasn't ready to deal with what was happening inside her. Doris needed something to hide behind, and chose the biggest blind she knew.
"We're going to have to question those boys, you know. Somebody must be able to identify the gang members."
Arthur stared at her, the creases of his eyes hardening like ceramic. She wasn't sure if he was angry because she had changed the subject, or because he knew where she was going with it.
She said, "If we co-operate, we may be able to keep military involvement to a minimum."
"You can't honestly believe a handful of kids, whose greatest crimes have been graffiti and bravado, is capable of doing what happened to Mr. Ataki."
"Their greatest crimes are assault and battery. Three separate incidents. They even implied to two of the victims --"
"And you actually believe they murdered him."
Doris pushed her cup away and pressed her hands to the edge of her desk. "Those threats are sufficient to warrant questioning. Pierce is going to want those kids, he's going to want them badly. What else would you suggest we do?"
"Look in town! What about the hate group that's culling membership there? K.A.F.A. Keep America For Americans, isn't that their standard? Fully grown adults with enough animosity to do something every bit as repugnant as that murder."
"I'm sure they'll be questioned, too..."
"Are you?"
"Yes, I am. I promise you, I will not let this turn into a witch hunt. If those boys are innocent-"
"Don't make promises, Doris! When the military steps in, what good will your promises do?"
Doris leaned toward him. "I'm not impotent here, for crying out loud, I'm Center Administrator! And I can be a real bitch when I want to be!"
Arthur fell back, looking a bit surprised. Then, in the midst of his silence, he chuckled and his shoulders relaxed.