“Is your mother home?” Loretta asked the little boy.
Another pair of eyes, these about a foot higher up, came to the door.
“I’m Sheriff Dilly, ma’am.” She held her I.D. up to the woman, who frowned at it. “From Big Pine. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The little boy said something in Vietnamese, and the woman appeared startled. The door closed, there was some whispered conversation behind it, then it opened all the way, and the little boy scampered out and down the hall in his pajamas.
The woman, thirtyish, tiny, dark-haired, and pretty, was holding a sleeping infant against one shoulder. She stood back from the door and nodded and smiled us inside.
The dimly lit studio was small, sparsely furnished, but pin-neat except for the walls, which were covered with the crayon drawings of a child, who might have been one or all of the three children, aged three to six, who were sprawled on a floor mat in front of a flickering black and white TV, and whose eyes followed Loretta and me as we stepped inside.
The woman said something, and the TV was turned off.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Loretta told her, “but do you know a Long Van Doan?”
The woman smiled and shook her head. “No speak,” she said, and pointed to the hall.
Loretta smiled and nodded back, then said to me, “How’s your Vietnamese?”
Not as good as it had been, but I gave it a try, asking her what Dilly had asked and getting a lengthy reply I only partly understood.
I turned to Loretta. “It’s the wife. Her name is Tuyet Le. I didn’t catch the rest of what she said. It’s been a while.”
“Well...”
Just then a short, fat woman of about forty bustled into the room from the hall and grinned some gold at us. “Hi!” she said. “I Dao Thi. I help talk, okay.”
Loretta said, “Thank you.”
Dao Thi pointed to the other woman. “This wife for Long Van Doan. She name Tuyet Le.” She then said something to Tuyet Le, who replied with her eyes downcast. “She say she no see husband three, four day now. She say he go out, no come back.”
Loretta glanced at me, then back at the fat woman. “Is there someone who can watch the children?” she asked gently. “I think her husband may be dead and I want to take her down to the police station to look at the body.”
The woman’s eyes got big, but when she told Tuyet Le what Loretta had said, she seemed to take it matter-of-factly.
It was how they always seemed to take it.
As we waited for the fat woman’s mother to come to watch the children, however, tears began to leak down over Tuyet Le’s cheeks, and they didn’t stop for the rest of that night.
An old woman came, and Loretta and I quietly joked with the kids while their mother got ready. The oldest boy, who told us he was seven, looked like a miniature version of the corpse on the Mount Fear lookout bench, only alive — and about to age a lot faster than he should have.
Tuyet Le asked no questions while we were in the apartment, but once the four of us were in the car and on the way out of Portland, she began to talk from the back seat in a low monotone. Loretta asked Dao Thi, who sat beside her, what she was saying.
“Too much,” replied the fat woman. “She tell everything happen she and family.”
“Tell me.”
The woman sighed. “She say, come to United States two year ago. Stay camp in Thailand ten year, then come here two year ago. Whole family, come stay Texas. You know Texas? I have sister stay Texas. She no like, but husband no like come here.”
“What else does she say?”
She said something to Tuyet Le, who replied at length. “She say she and husband go stay Texas. He got brother stay Texas, too, but people no like, you know? Get fight all the time. People no like Vietnamese people come stay. Lotta trouble. Somebody set fire his boat.” She squawked a question at Tuyet Le, who replied quietly. “She say husband like have fishing boat, but people no like him have. Plenty trouble. Somebody set fire his boat. Tell him get out Texas, or maybe kill him. She say they go move stay San Diego. She have sister stay San Diego. Husband try to drive taxi, but get more trouble. Somebody beat him up, take money all the time. So sad story, you know? Get one baby die in Texas. One baby die San Diego. So sad, you know?”
Loretta glanced at me, then back at the road. “Very sad,” she said.
“She say they go move stay San Francisco,” the woman went on. “Husband try plenty job, but all the time get trouble. Somebody all the time want cheat him. Want fight with him. Tell him go back Vietnam. Go back Vietnam. All the time.”
“Does she say anything about having trouble here?” asked Loretta.
She spoke again with Tuyet Le. “She say they come here last month. She no like come — too cold, you know. She like go back San Diego, but he like come Portland. Drive taxi, and she scared stay San Francisco by herself. She want have restaurant in San Diego. Got plenty restaurant in San Diego. She want have one too, but never enough money to start. Husband want to save money for buy restaurant, but so hard, you know?” She spoke some more with Tuyet Le, then made sounds of exasperation. “You know what she say?”
“What?” Loretta asked.
Dao Thi sighed. “She say no have insurance, so what she gonna do now, husband die.” Neither of us had an answer to that, so we gave none.
The morgue, it turned out, was an adjunct of the Big Pine hospital. Once we were inside, Loretta took a still weeping but somewhat composed Tuyet Le by the arm, down the hall and to the cold room at the back of the building where her husband waited for her in a refrigerated drawer and where no translations were needed.
Five minutes later when they returned, Tuyet Le’s crying had become hysterical, and she’d begun talking wildly. Nothing Dao Thi said had any effect.
But then words seldom do in cases like that.
And then she semicollapsed, so we took her into the hospital and explained the situation to the head nurse, who led Tuyet Le to a room with a bed, where after a while she seemed to calm down.
In the hall outside, while a doctor looked in on her, Dao Thi told us, “She say she get fight with husband. Last time look at him, she mad with him for come to Portland. She tell him get out. She say so sorry now. She say she wanna die, too.” The woman sighed and looked at me. Her own eyes were wet. “So sad story, yah?”
I told her it was.
“So sad story,” she repeated softly to Loretta.
Who nodded and said, “Sad story.”
Things sorted out, after a bit, with Tuyet Le staying where she was for the night and Dao Thi staying with her, and then Loretta and I were back in her car and on our way back to my cabin.
“Poor woman,” she said as we headed out of town. “What will she do?”
I didn’t know, and said so.
“Poor woman,” Dilly murmured again. “I wonder...”
The radio in her dashboard came to life just then, and she answered it.
“Sheriff,” the metallic female voice told her, “you’d better get back to the station ASAP.”
“What is it, Mavis?” Dilly asked with mild irritation.
“Um... you’d just better get back right away.”
“Mavis?”
There was a slight hesitation, then Mavis said, “We got trouble, sheriff. Bad trouble.”
Loretta looked like she was about to question Mavis further, but she didn’t. She looked at me instead.
I gave her a no-problem shrug, and she smiled, turned the car around, and said, “I may have to put you on the payroll.”
I shook my head. “No way,” I told her. “Too many crises.”
Outside the sheriff’s station an ambulance and the county coroner’s sedan were parked.
There were also the same reporter I’d seen the other day up on the mountain and a small crowd of people being held back on either side of the door by a brace of stone-faced deputies.