Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness (39 page)

A
LSO BY
D
AVID
C
ASARETT
, M.D.

ETHICAL CHIANG MAI DETECTIVE AGENCY

Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness

Mercy at the Peaceful Inn of Last Resort

Last Acts:
Discovering Possibility and Opportunity at the End of Life

Shocked:
Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead

Stoned:
A Doctor’s Case for Medical Marijuana

INTRODUCING

If you enjoyed

MURDER AT THE HOUSE OF
ROOSTER HAPPINESS,

look out for the next
Ethical Chiang Mai Detective Agency novel,

MERCY AT THE PEACEFUL INN OF LAST RESORT

by David Casarett, M.D.

A WOMAN POSSIBLY CRYING

T
he frail woman sitting alone below in the courtyard was sad. That much, Ladarat Patalung could see. Ladarat could also see that the woman wasn’t Thai. She seemed to be European, in her fifties perhaps. A simple pale blue cotton dress with oversize buttons down the front and a plain gray cardigan made her seem doll-like, especially when viewed from Ladarat’s office window, two stories above. And like a doll, she was almost perfectly still. But every once in a while, after a surreptitious glance at the doctors and nurses and families around her, she would raise a fingertip to the corner of her eye—sometimes the right but more often the left—as if she was brushing away a tear as casually as she could.

“Khun Ladarat?” A gruff but amused voice gently interrupted Ladarat’s musings.

“There is something interesting out there in the courtyard? More interesting perhaps than the case of murder that we were discussing a moment ago?”

Ladarat Patalung shifted slightly in her chair so she would be less tempted to sneak glances at the sad woman. The possibly sad woman. Her visitor was correct, of course. However important a possibly sad woman might be, she could not be as important as the matter at hand. So Ladarat turned her full attention to the heavyset man who was sitting on the little wooden chair facing her desk.

As the nurse ethicist for Chiang Mai University’s Sriphat Hospital, Ladarat Patalung received many important visitors on many important errands. Indeed, it had been almost three months ago that this very chair had been occupied by the heavyset man who occupied it now. And just as it had then, today the chair meekly protested the bulk that it found itself supporting.

That bulk belonged to Wiriya Mookjai, a forty-two-year-old detective in the Chiang Mai Royal Police. She knew his age to the day because they had celebrated his birthday together with a meal at Paak Dang, perhaps the nicest restaurant in Chiang Mai, perched on the banks of the Ping River, which ran through the city. Like her late husband, Somboon, Wiriya had an expansive appetite. And at that birthday dinner, he had sampled a dozen delicacies for which Paak Dang was justifiably famous, including their
kao nap het
—succulent roasted duck over rice, drizzled with intensely flavorful duck broth.

And meals like that had perhaps given him a bit too much bulk. Her little chair was right to protest. It was far more accustomed to the weight of the nurses who more typically sought her counsel. But Wiriya was handsome and… solid. That was the thought Ladarat had whenever she saw him. That he was solid. Solid and dependable.

Those three months ago, he had come to ask her help when he had a suspicion—no more—that a murder might have occurred. And not just any murder, but a serial set of murders. Something unheard of in this quiet, sleepy city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

His suspicions had been correct, and they had solved the case—together—with Ladarat acting as a detective of sorts. An ethical detective, which was what the
Chiang Mai Post
called her.

And she and Wiriya had become something of a couple. More a couple than not a couple, if that made any sense. And now he often made social visits to her new office—granted to her because of her sudden fame and perhaps her new unofficial job title as nurse detective. But today, Khun Wiriya was here on business. Possible business.

Ladarat looked down at the pad of yellow lined paper that lay open on the desk in front of her, still blank except for today’s date written in a neat hand at the top of the page. It was ready to receive whatever thoughts might be worthy of writing down. But as of yet, she had no such thoughts.

It would be a shame to waste a fresh page, so she wrote “Murder?” in small letters in the upper-right corner of the page, as a way of making some sort of progress in her note taking, yet without giving undue weight to that single word. Then she added a second question mark, and then a third.

Indeed, “murder” was just a possibility. Even less of a possibility than that sad woman sitting alone on a bench in the courtyard. So on the far-left side of the page, she wrote “Woman, crying.” Then three question marks, just for the sake of symmetry. So far, the left side of the page seemed to be drawing ahead of the right, as far as plausibility went.

“These are… murders, do you think?”

Wiriya shook his head, then shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what to think. Murder? Suicide? Kidnapping? All we know with certainty is that over the past three months there have been at least eight people, all foreigners—
farang
—who have received entrance visas through Suvarnabhumi Airport, but who haven’t left the Kingdom of Thailand through official entry and exit ports.”

They came but didn’t leave? It seemed a stretch—a very pessimistic stretch—to think of these as murders simply because—

Phhtttt.

Ladarat looked around, startled. And even Wiriya—normally unflappable—jumped just a little, causing the little chair to register yet another futile protest.

She had forgotten that they weren’t alone. A small bundle of wiry white and brown fur lay curled at her feet, with the approximate shape of one of those annoying piles of dust that seem to find refuge under sofas and beds and other large, immovable pieces of furniture. On occasion the ball of fur would assume the shape of what could charitably be described as a dog of an indeterminate breed. A little terrier and beagle and who knew what else.

And every so often, Chi—because that was the ball of fur’s name—would emerge from whatever dreams were entertaining him, raise his head, look around, and utter a sound like a wet sneeze. That
phhtttt
seemed to summarize his deep disappointment with his present company, which was clearly inadequate for a dog of his great intellect. Then he would go back to sleep, biding his time until his talents would be appreciated.

Chi was a therapy dog. Not an exceptionally talented therapy dog, truth be told. And he was rather fat, thanks to the doting attention and treats lavished on him by nurses and patients and the food stall vendors lining the sidewalk in front of the hospital. He was also quite lazy. So as therapy dogs go, Chi was not an outstanding specimen. But he was inarguably Chiang Mai University Hospital’s
only
therapy dog. And that uniqueness had perhaps led Chi to overestimate his importance and thus to underestimate the amount of work he needed to do to continue to earn his keep.

Ladarat was caring for him, since his owner, Sukanya, a pharmacist, wasn’t allowed to take him to the hospital pharmacy where she worked. So Chi was shuttled back and forth between them, with other hospital staff stepping in to take him for walks and on rounds to see hospitalized patients whose days might be brightened by his appearance in their doorways. Although sometimes it was difficult indeed to imagine why or how he could have that effect on anyone.

Phhtttt.

It was easy for dogs to feel they were special. Being a special dog didn’t necessarily come with special responsibilities. Chi just needed to wag his long-fringed tail frequently, looking cute. As position descriptions go, that would be very easy. Easier than being a nurse. Or an ethicist. Or a detective. And certainly much easier than trying to be all three.

Speaking of which, Ladarat was supposed to be at least one of those things right now. She looked down at her notes, such as they were.

“So perhaps they are still here?” she asked. “These tourists?”

It wasn’t unusual, Ladarat knew, for people to fall in love with her country, and to stay longer than they had planned. Perhaps that was what had happened to these people. They had just found a quiet bungalow in the mountains of the Golden Triangle, or on a beach on Koh Tao, or any one of a number of small, largely untouched towns and villages. They had found a village, and an embarrassingly cheap standard of living, and they had forgotten to leave.

“Ah, perhaps. But if they have made that decision to stay, they don’t seem to be telling their families of their plans. Indeed, it’s been either families, or”—he corrected himself—“the families of at least eight people so far, who have called various embassies to inquire about their whereabouts.”

“So you suspect… foul play?”

Wiriya grinned. “A detective is never so lucky as to stumble across two such enormous cases of foul play, as you put it, in one career. That would be unheard of. And greedy. No, I’ve had enough fame for a lifetime.”

And Wiriya was not being modest. If Ladarat had become a minor celebrity, Wiriya had become the toast of the town, as they say. He was given his own investigative division on the police force, and a promotion. Now he was Captain Mookjai. And—as he was today—Wiriya often wore suits that were neatly pressed. Several steps up from the rumpled trousers and shirts that had been his previous nondescript uniform.

But the best evidence of his fame, and by far the most treasured, was a letter of commendation from King Bhumibol Adulyadej himself. Ladarat knew that Wiriya kept that letter framed in his office for everyone to see. But she also knew that he kept a miniaturized version, folded up in his wallet and with him at all times.

“But,” he continued, tapping a pen nervously on his knee, “I’m worried.”

“Worried?”

“Yes, these people are all foreigners. They’re all wealthy, with homes and families and jobs. These are not the sort of people to disappear. At least, not the sort of people to disappear without a trace. And certainly not the sort of people who would disappear without any contact with their families.”

Dutifully, Ladarat wrote “Disappeared. No trace.” on the right side of the page. Then she added a question mark.

“No trace? No trace at all?” She thought for a moment, also tapping her pen. “But surely they stayed… somewhere? Perhaps somewhere in Bangkok?”

“It is difficult to trace the paths of these people. Very difficult. Even finding where they might have stayed in Bangkok is a challenge. But we do know that at least three of them—two Americans and one man from Germany—flew directly to Chiang Mai from Bangkok. We were able to get passenger manifests from Thai Airways so far. But for others who flew other airlines, or those who took a train or a bus…”

“Would a foreigner really take a train or a bus? That is so slow, and uncomfortable. Most tourists want to… get where they’re going.” Ladarat herself had thought of taking the bus to the ethics conference in Bangkok she would be attending on Friday, but she had balked at the time required. That was something better left to the young backpackers.

Wiriya smiled. “It’s true, that’s the case for many visitors. Tourists, as you say. But some tourists want to save money, and a bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai costs only two hundred baht. And others consider themselves travelers. They take the most difficult routes, by the most inconvenient modes of transportation.”

“And you know this because…”

“I know this because they often get lost, or lose their money foolishly, and show up at a police station in Thma Puok or Ang Thong or Kanchanaburi, asking for a ride home to New York City, or wherever they came from.”

Ladarat smiled. Yes, people traveled in Thailand with far more adventurousness than they did in many other countries. There were few dangers, and Thai people were generally very friendly and welcoming. So that led many travelers to take risks they wouldn’t take in, say, India or Cambodia.

“But you don’t think these missing people got lost?”

“No, we would have heard from them. Or their families would have. It’s true, one person just arrived in Thailand last week. She might phone her family any day now, perhaps saying that she was sick with a stomach infection and that she’s been in a hospital somewhere. But the first person on our list, he vanished three months ago. It is unlikely that he will suddenly reappear.”

Ladarat thought about something else. “These are all foreigners? Western foreigners?”

Wiriya nodded.

“Eeey. That is bad.”

And it was. Not just bad for tourism, but bad for the image of Thailand as a friendly, welcoming, and above all safe country. And Wiriya admitted as much.

“The director of the Department of Tourism asked me to look into this personally, and to help the families trace these people, if I could.”

The way he said that explained much of Ladarat’s feelings for this kind man. He did not say this in a boastful way, as many people might. Not: “The director asked me personally, because I am so important.” But rather: “I must do this because I’ve been asked. And I must do it conscientiously.”

Thinking about the implications of the Department of Tourism’s involvement, Ladarat wrote “Very bad for tourism” underneath “Disappeared. No trace.” Unsure of where this was going, she thought perhaps the result might become one of the strangest haikus ever written.

“And,” Wiriya added, “there is one more thing. One more… fact.”

Ladarat waited, her pen poised to record this fact, whatever it might be.