Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“Mr. B. Now Kampong Siriwongsri. Glass factory laborer by day. Second-shift security guard by night. He was on his way to work. His wife identified the body and they took him to the temple to get him ready. Mr. A apparently didn’t have anyone to love him, and don’t we know what that feels like. So the Ministry of Sport, Information and Culture has taken responsibility and arranged a cheap ceremony at Ong Deu temple.”

Siri’s mind suddenly jumped to his own death. Who’d take responsibility when he huffed his last breath? Who’d pay for his funeral at some nondescript temple? His friends were all broke. Would Judge Haeng discover some unmined vein of generosity and arrange for the Department of Justice to give him a state funeral? Some hope.

“So …” Dtui was still answering “… it all fits. Mr. B is riding to his second job when Mr. A drops out of the sky and lands on top of him: chances-eleven million to one against. A breaks B’s neck, buckles the bike, and kills himself. Case closed.”

“Except …”

“Except for why. But that’s the police’s problem, not ours, right?”

“Aren’t you just a little curious, Dtui?” “I’m peeing myself with anticipation.”

“Well,” he blushed. “That’s good. I mean, curiosity’s good in this job. Keep it up.”

The poor lady in the freezer had obviously been mauled. The wounds were over twenty-four hours old, and the insects and even her own cat had started on her before she went off from the heat. Her clothes were shredded and black with blood, while her skin was blanched white. There were bite marks on her body, the most traumatic of these being at her neck. Those areas of skin that hadn’t been bitten were raked with scratch marks.

“They found her in the bushes beside her shanty.” Dtui was behind the doctor as he stood at the open freezer, looking at the mess that Auntie See had become.

“Didn’t anyone report it when it happened? There must have been a hell of a lot of noise.”

“Nope.”

“What’s happening to people? Didn’t we used to care for our neighbors?”

“Perhaps they thought it was just a dog fight.”

But there was something wrong with that premise. Even before an autopsy, just looking into the dark freezer, he knew it wasn’t possible. From the size of the visible wounds, the separation between the individual claws, he had a strong feeling this was no dog attack.

The autopsy was new to all of them. Siri was in no position to read up on the latest forensic pathology techniques from around the globe. For one thing, they didn’t get a lot of useful information from the outside world. For another, all the advances were being made in the United States, and Siri’s English stank. He was fluent in Thai, French, and Vietnamese, but these had apparently filled up his language tank, and all attempts at adding English overflowed hopelessly.

But if the rest of the world ever learned Lao, he would certainly have become an authority on innovation in a morgue.

Here he was with a body covered in bite marks, and he needed to confirm whether they were from dogs. So with a modicum of genius, he sent Geung off to the kitchen with a requisition form and started to create dams with adhesive bandages around the most profound marks. When Geung got back, Dtui mixed a thick solution of agar, and they poured it into pools on Auntie See.

“Is this standard procedure?” Dtui wanted to know.

“Well, I hear they use plaster of paris in the West, but we can’t afford that. They don’t even have any in the ‘breaks and fractures’ department of the hospital. So we’ll have to see how this works. Just don’t get peckish and raid the freezer before they set.”

“I won’t.”

After a few hours, the agar was solid and looking pretty as birthday-party treats with little turrets of teeth prints. Geung moved them to the refrigerator, and they took Auntie See out for an internal examination.

As a New Year’s present, the Justice Department had furnished the morgue with a Soviet air conditioner so the men no longer had to work in shorts and undershirts. Dtui no longer had to stand in front of the open freezer door to cool off. But the stifling temperature outside that day had defeated ussr technology. There was probably a higher setting, but Siri couldn’t read Russian. So as they stooped over Auntie See, Mr. Geung had to constantly mop brows with a towel.

All they learned was that the lady had lost a great deal of blood. The attack was the probable cause of death, as she had certainly been alive when it began. Her bowels were a mess, but there was nothing life-threatening there. She was otherwise in good shape and should have been able to fight off any normal suburban predator.

Everything came down to the size of the wounds. That’s what continued to worry Siri. While Dtui typed up the report and

Geung scrubbed down the examination room, he studied the marks on the agar molds. He used a ruler to measure the size of the jaw and the spread of the claw marks.

By 11:30, when his assistants were in the dissection room labeling jars, Siri, for no other reason than the dream of the previous morning, had come to the illogical conclusion that Auntie See had been attacked and killed by a bear.

It was lunchtime. Civilai had carried his rolls down to the river-bank and was sitting on the log, waiting for his lunch partner to arrive. He was moderately engrossed in the Siang Pasason newspaper when Siri tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you mind if I join you?”

“Well, all right. Until someone better comes along.”

“Like Crazy Raj id?”

“He’d do. But see. He spends most of his days on his knees in the water.”

They looked out to the narrow band of river that remained at the end of the dry season. Rajid’s bald head poked from the water like a happy black penis. He was the town nutcase. Nobody knew which traveling Indian family had deserted him as a child some fifteen years before. He was just discovered one day sitting on the steps of the Black Stupa. Locals fed him regularly without question, and he repaid them by smiling and spreading his immutable happiness around Vientiane. He had no home and no need of one.

“In this heat, I envy the fellow.”

“It is hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

Siri sat and started to unwrap his baguette. Since their abortive date, Mrs. Lah had shifted her franchise from the hospital. His lunch now came from a Vietnamese woman at the end of his lane. She offered two choices: sweet or savory. He could never guess what was inside, just by looking. He was often

none the wiser after the contents reached his palette. Still, food was fuel.

“Anything interesting in the paper?”

Civilai laughed. Printed news under a one-party system rarely exposed, unearthed, or titillated.

“Czech skiing conditions are improving.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Football results from Albania. Part seventeen of Lenin’s life story. Our military attache’s in Cuba.”

“Anything about Laos?”

“Laos? Now you’re asking. Laos. Laos. Wait. Here. A photo of happy smiling farm workers in Savanaketh above a story of a bumper cabbage harvest.”

“They’re standing in a rice field.”

“Maybe they’re taking a break.”

Civilai scrunched up the newspaper and threw it over his shoulder. He was a brilliant man who tired easily of bull. He despaired of Laos’s potential that was being wasted by his plodding colleagues. But he definitely agreed that it was far better to be a plodding communist than a rampant capitalist.

He looked across the Mekhong toward the Thai fascists and bit into his homemade roll. In this heat, he lacked the enthusiasm to eat. There was so little meat on his bones, he was afraid that if he didn’t stop sweating soon, there wouldn’t be anything left of him. He smiled as he remembered his morning meeting.