Dawson’s blood raced hot through his head. This was the kind of thing that made him crazy. “He paid whom?” he asked fiercely.
“I don’t know,” Okoh said with a shrug. “Do you think I was there? They don’t do these things where everyone can see them, they do them hidden in some secret place.”
Dawson nodded. He had hoped that Mr. Okoh would have details, but that was too much to expect. People with no influence are not privy to influential transactions.
“Mr. and Mrs. Okoh,” Dawson said, “I am very sorry.”
He stood up to shake their hands once more, this time in sympathy. He couldn’t think of anything more to do. They smiled wanly at him, and he knew they appreciated the gesture, because in such affairs, gestures often mean more than material things.
Dawson sat down again and asked the Okohs to describe exactly where the tragedy had occurred. From what he gathered from their somewhat confused directions, the site was on the opposite side of the shack where Wei had carried his brother Bao.
Asking Mr. Okoh to establish his alibi might sound accusatory, Dawson knew, but it was a risk he had to take. “Please,” he said respectfully, “early Friday morning when Bao Liu was killed, where were you?”
Okoh didn’t appear to object to the question. “Maybe you don’t know what life is like for us poor farmers, Mr. Dawson,” he said. “We have to wake up very early every single morning to go to the farm. If the sun beats you there, you are too late.”
“Do you and your wife normally go to farm together?” Dawson asked.
Okoh nodded. “Yes, and sometimes my nephew John-before he goes to school in the morning.”
“The boy who brought the chair for me?” Dawson asked.
“Yes.”
Dawson wanted to check the veracity of the alibi with John, but not in front of his uncle. He would find a way later.
“Please, Mr. and Mrs. Okoh,” Dawson said, “if you will permit me, I want to ask you about Amos’s younger brother, Yaw.”
Now the man leaned back on the sofa, eyes to the ceiling, and said nothing.
“Mr. Dawson,” the woman said softly, “he has not been the same since Amos’s death. He loved his brother more than he loves me or his father.”
“I would like to talk to him,” Dawson said gently. “Is he around?”
She looked up as a shadow passed across the doorway, and there stood a sculpture of muscular perfection-a man of about twenty-eight, shirtless and constructed of granite and stone. He had a scar across his top lip that made it appear jagged. He looked at them, his expression as empty as a reservoir in a savanna drought, and then he turned and walked away.
“That is Yaw,” Mrs. Okoh said softly and sadly.
“Will he speak to me?” Dawson asked.
She shook her head. “He cannot, Mr. Dawson.”
He didn’t understand what she meant. “He is not allowed to?”
“He cannot speak,” she repeated, this time more emphatically. “He has been completely mute since Amos died two months ago.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dawson was puzzled. “Why has he not spoken?”
“His heart has been wounded,” Owura Okoh said. “He loved his brother more than anyone.”
Mrs. Okoh stood up, wringing her hands in a beseeching gesture. “Please, Mr. Dawson, talk to him. Tell him to unlock his tongue and forsake us no longer. Please.”
Dawson stood up quickly. “I will be back.”
Outside on the veranda, Smoothie was admiring her completed hairdo in a hand mirror.
“Did you see which way Yaw Okoh went?” Dawson asked them.
Smoothie made a face and rolled her eyes, but her hairdresser pointed to their left. Dawson ran in that direction, kicking up red dust as he looked right and left for a sign of Yaw. People stared at him in curiosity. Everyone could tell he wasn’t from around there, and now they wondered what his excitement was about.
Getting closer to a fringe of the forest, Dawson stopped to address two young men sitting idly on a half-finished wall of an even less finished house.
“Did you see Yaw Okoh pass here?” he asked.
They looked at him languidly. “Who?”
“Yaw Okoh. Tall man, very strong?”
They shrugged and shook their heads, clearly not the slightest bit interested.
Dawson retraced his steps, looking for an alternative route that Yaw might have taken. Although he seemed to have magically disappeared, it was simply more likely that he had gone another way and Dawson had rushed right by. Undoubtedly, Yaw knew the town inside out.
He walked back to the Okohs’ house. It would have been nice to be returning with a somber but now vocal Yaw ready to sit down and once again talk to his parents, but nothing was ever that simple.
Dawson looked up at the darkening sky, and a mob of dark rain clouds glared back. A wind was beginning to kick up dust. Just a few hundred meters before the Okohs’ house, Dawson saw John and four other boys about his age were trying to squeeze in as much soccer as possible ahead of the approaching downpour.
Dawson watched them for a minute, and then called out, “John!”
The boy turned and saw him, hesitated, and then trotted up.
“I like how you play,” Dawson said, smiling. “You dribble very well.”
He held up his palm, and John executed a solid high five. “Thank you, sir,” he said, grinning broadly. “I’m a good striker too.”
“Wow,” Dawson said, impressed. “But you’ll have to go inside soon because of the rain.”
“Yes, please,” John agreed.
Dawson slipped an arm lightly around the boy’s shoulders. “You’re growing very strong. You must work very hard.”
“Yes, please.”
“Do you ever go to the farm with your uncle?”
“Yes, please. I wake up early with him sometimes, and I help him for two hours and come back to the house and bathe myself. Then I go to school.”
“Good boy,” Dawson said, looking down at him. “Stay in school, okay?”
“Yes, please.”
“John, do you know about that one Chinese man who was found dead a few days ago not far from your uncle’s farm?”
“Yes, I heard about it,” the boy said, nodding. “One of my friends was watching when they dug him out from the soil.”
“At that time, where were you?”
“Please, I wasn’t at the farm because I was having fever. I stayed in the house.”
Interesting. “But your uncle went to farm that day?”
“Yes, please.”
“Did you see or hear him leave the house?”
John wrinkled his nose. “I think so, but I don’t remember so well, because the fever was making my head confused. My auntie was with me, and she said I didn’t even know where I was until all the fever came out of my body. Anyway, I think he left the house the same time as usual.”
“Which is what time?”
“Maybe…” John inclined his head. “Five o’clock? When we get to the farm, by that time it’s starting to get light.”
“I see. Thank you, John. You can get back to your match now.”
“Thank you, sir. Bye.” He skipped away, happy to return to the soccer game.
Dawson smiled after him. He was as straightforward as a preteen could be. Had he provided Owura Okoh his alibi? Not exactly. It was a conditional alibi, if such a thing existed.
Returning to the Okohs’ house, Dawson walked slowly with his hands thrust in his pockets and his head down as he pondered. Okoh, as gentle a soul as he appeared to be, had a powerful motive to kill Bao Liu. If indeed the Chinese man had caused the death of Amos Okoh after having dishonored the family name with the most repugnant insult possible, what reason in the world was left not to kill the man?
But Dawson’s mind vacillated like a pendulum over Owura Okoh as a suspect. Dawson’s head said, Altogether possible. His heart said, I can’t see him committing the act of murder. For the moment, the heart was winning the debate.