Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

they were hungry. It was just a game to them. They played with the chicks, annoyed them a little. And his chickens weren’t penned. He thought they had a right to run wherever they liked but the dogs couldn’t.
    “The people here were too polite or afraid to confront the thug with their suspicions. They talked to his mother but she’d long since lost control over her son. In fact she was afraid of him too. He lives in a cabin behind her house. He doesn’t work. He steals. He extorts money with threats. He’s a bad piece of work, Jimm. At our meeting we decided we should haunt him with the spirits of all the animals he’s killed. He’s a drunkard so it wasn’t so difficult to invade his dreams. At night, the voices of the dogs would come to him. Their shadows would pass his window but when he ran to the door there would be nothing there. Empty bags of pest killer that he thought he’d destroyed would return every morning on his doorstep. And there would be the howls, the incessant all-night howls keeping him awake. He’d walk around the hut with his gun but there would be no dogs, yet when he went back to bed, the howls would continue. He hasn’t slept for three nights.
    “Last night he didn’t drink any alcohol. This morning he went to Kor Kow temple to make an offering to Jao Mair Guan Im, the Chinese goddess of mercy. When he came back home he went to his mother and told her he’s being haunted and asked her what he should do. She reported back to us. She told us in another day or two he should be broken completely.”
    Mair had a smile on her face that wasn’t the old brand. It was fresh and alive and real. It was the smile I’d seen on Mayuri’s face that lunchtime: young and mischievous. It was the smile another Mair had projected to us little folk to illuminate tales. It was evidence that her embers were still burning.
    I walked back to room two and thanked the young father for his offer, but told him my mother had refused to sell at any price. The storm clouds had lingered briefly overhead, then labored on toward Burma without shedding a tear.
    ♦
    Granddad Jah was walking along the sand with his head bowed and his shoulders hunched. I caught up with him.
    “Sorry we didn’t show you before,” I said.
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think there’s much more to it. I apologize to the nun. It wasn’t her. This was, I don’t know, psychotic. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t a hit or a revenge killing. The photographs weren’t merely a record. If you were going to document a killing like this, you’d video it. You’d film the whole thing. Then you wouldn’t miss anything.”
    “With modern equipment you can stop at any frame and print it out,” I said. “The quality’s almost as good as a still camera.”
    “Then the expensive still camera is relevant somehow. It was as if she or he wanted individual works of art to show how clever they were. Wanted to show off.”
    “A sort of performance,” I said.
    I thought about the colors. They’d mesmerized me from the moment I’d first looked at the photos. Colors. Then the image of luminous green overalls seeped into my mind, facedown in an unfinished mosaic pool on a raft of blood. Orange hat and all. I took out my cell phone and pressed an old number.
    “iFurn executive line. I’m Dr. Monique – ”
    “Siss, it’s me. Listen, can you get back to Yoshi?”
    “Toshi.”
    “Toshi, right. Ask him if there were any suspects for the hotel murder in Guam, the guy who landed in the swimming pool.”
    “Are you suddenly taking me seriously?”
    “I’ve always taken you seriously, pee . And, while you’re at it, can you ask your alcoholic detective in California for more details about the weirdo who photographed road-kill? Ask him if the party hats were orange.”
    “I might even have another one for you.”
    “Another what?”
    “Orange hat murder. I got a message from Taiwan. A skinny Chinese inspector. I hope he didn’t doctor his profile photograph ‘cause if he did his real self must be hideous. He vaguely recalled a knifing at an aviary. They didn’t ever catch the killer. The peculiar thing was that she, the victim, was wearing an orange People First Party election rally hat, but she was a staunch Kuomintang , and their party color is blue. Originally they thought it was a political killing but nobody could see what was to be gained by it. She was an aviary worker. She