The Influence (19 page)

“Meanwhile, our livelihoods are heading down the crapper.” Jack shook his head. “We were doing fine. We don’t need anything working for us.” 

“We do now.” 

“We just need things to go back the way they were.” 

Cameron smiled thinly. “Not going to happen.” Jorge had moved next to him, and he could sense the others close behind. 

There were several more minutes of argument, but he wasn’t going to budge, they knew he wasn’t going to budge, and they knew there was nothing they could do about it. Eventually, Jack, Jim, Joe and Cal got back in their trucks and took off, purposely spinning their wheels in the dirt before they left, angrily trying to stir up as much dust as possible. Cameron had won, and he felt good, but when he turned back and saw the disrespectful expression on Jorge’s face, the smokehouse with its padlocked door behind him, that feeling leeched away, and he was left with nothing but a looming dread.  

That night, he heard noises coming from the smokehouse. He was asleep and in bed, but a muffled knocking woke him up. Even through the closed windows, he could hear the irregular pounding, and Cameron knew before he pulled aside the curtains and gazed down at the yard, that it was coming from the smokehouse. 

It was impossible, but it was not surprising, and though his heart was pounding, Cameron put on his pants and slipped into his boots, trudging downstairs and then outside. The noise was louder here but not appreciably so. It still sounded muffled, but its source was very apparent, and he could not help imagining that oversized corpse rocking back and forth inside the smokehouse, hitting the walls.  

Cameron shivered but not from the cold. Surrounding the smokehouse were all of his men and then some—even more than had been here in the afternoon, he thought. A handful were on their knees and facing the small building, like worshippers before a shrine, while several others were crossing themselves and muttering prayers. Even more than the noises from within, it was the sight of all those men in the moonlight that made him uneasy. 

Maybe Jack and the others were right. Maybe they should burn it. 

Jorge stepped in front of him, and Cameron jumped. He hadn’t even seen him walk up. 

Was that a smile on the foreman’s face?
 

It was too dark to tell.  

“I think you should go inside, Senor Holt. I will take care of this.” 

It was less a solicitous suggestion than a thinly veiled demand. Cameron wanted to punch Jorge in the gut and order that greasy motherfucker to just do as he was told and not try to use his little pea brain to make decisions on his own. But everything out here made him nervous: it was nearly midnight, noise was still coming from inside the smokehouse, there were far too many ranch hands gathered around. “Make sure you
do
take care of it,” Cameron said, trying to save face, and he turned on his heels and strode away, back into the house, where he locked the door, got in bed, closed his eyes and tried desperately to fall asleep, hoping against hope that he would not awaken until morning.  

EIGHTEEN 

Darla was up well before dawn, though she hadn’t fallen asleep until long after midnight. She knew the truth ahead of time, but, as she had the last four mornings, she got out of bed to check anyway, walking down the hall to Dylan’s room—where his bed was empty and his night light was off. 

He was still gone. 

Behind her, she heard a noise, and she turned quickly, hope overpowering reason for a brief fraction of a second until reality crashed into her. 

It was only Tom. 

“Go back to sleep,” he told her. 

“I’m not tired.” 

“You’re
always
tired.” 

She glared at him. “And why do you think that is, hmm? What reason could there possibly be?” 

He turned away, heading back into the bedroom. “Get some sleep.” 

“How can you sleep when Dylan is
gone?”
 

He swiveled around. “What are you saying? Are you saying I don’t care about Dylan?” 

“It’s your fault!” Darla screamed. 

Tom stared at her. “How is it my fault?” 

“You’re the one who wanted to live out here! I didn’t! I told you: no hospital, no fire department, no police…” 

“So you think—” 

“There’s not even a full-time police department looking for him! There’s sheriff’s deputies and rangers from…where? Willcox? Benson? Tucson? They don’t know Dylan! They don’t care about him!” 

“They’re looking as hard as they can. We all are. Everyone’s doing as much as they can.” 

“It’s not enough!” 

“I know that!” he shouted back at her. “Don’t you think I know that?” He stepped toward her, pointer finger extended. “It’s
your
fault for telling him he could hike out there. I never said he could! He’s ten years old, for God’s sake. Who lets a ten-year-old traipse around the desert on his own? You were too lazy to watch him, so you let him just wander through the wilderness…” 

Darla burst into tears. “That’s not fair!” 

“You’re just like your mother.” 

“Go to hell!” She stomped down the hall, out to the kitchen, and was grateful when he didn’t follow her. It was still dark outside, the coming day little more than a white line at the edge of the eastern horizon, and she made some coffee and sat at the kitchen table sipping it, wondering where Dylan could be, praying that he was still alive.  

Tom woke up and came out for breakfast sometime after seven. Ordinarily, she made breakfast for them both, but today she didn’t, and he didn’t ask her to. He poured himself some cereal while Darla walked out to the living room, where she sat down on the couch and picked up the needlepoint pillow she’d been working on as an effort to distract her from her pain and keep her calm. 

She’d completed the purple petals of an orchid when there was a knock at the door. Gasping, she dropped her needlepoint. Tom emerged from the kitchen. Through the front window, she could see a sheriff’s SUV parked in front of the house. “Don’t open it!” she screamed.  

Tom opened the door. 

Darla was already crying. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Ingram?” A sheriff and his deputy stepped into the living room. 

“No!” Darla wailed. 

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.” 

Tom was crying now, too. Great hiccupping sobs wracked his body, and his shoulders slumped as though he were a human-shaped balloon that had just lost half of its air. She wanted to go to him, but she couldn’t move, and she heard through a wall of white noise that they had found Dylan’s body on a trail halfway up the mountain. 

One of them needed to identify the body. 

“Where is the body?” she heard Tom ask. 

The body? 

“Dylan!” she yelled. “He’s not ‘the body!’ He’s Dylan!” Now she did jump up and go to Tom. She hit him, pounding on his shoulders with her fists. “He’s your son! He’s Dylan! He’s not ‘the body!’” 

Tom grabbed her wrists to keep her from hitting him, and when Darla saw the devastation on his face, she stopped her assault, all the energy draining out of her. Slumping against him, she sobbed. 

“Where is he?” Tom asked, and she heard his voice through his chest, deeper than it sounded through the air. 

The sheriff’s voice was thin and tinny by contrast, far away from her. “They’re taking him to the morgue in Sierra Vista.” 

“Can’t we see him before?” Tom asked. “In the ambulance or whatever?” 

There was a pause. “It’s better if you see him in the morgue.” 

She didn’t like that answer. It made her think thoughts she didn’t want to think, and her mind started running down all the reasons it might be “better” for them to see Dylan in the morgue. Every scenario she could come up with involved injury, dismemberment and mutilation, things that could be cleaned up a little before viewing, and her sobbing shifted into overdrive as she imagined her son’s last moments of life filled with terrible suffering.
He died alone,
she thought.
In pain.
And she was filled with a despair so black and bleak that if she could have stopped living at that moment, she would have done so. 

But she didn’t die, and she let Tom take over, and she went with him to the truck, and they drove all the way to Sierra Vista.  

When they were finally let in to see Dylan, naked, covered with a sheet, lying on a silver table, it was far worse than she thought it was going to be. He hadn’t just had an accident; he’d been
attacked
.  

And partially eaten. 

As she’d expected, they’d washed him and tried to clean him up, but in a way that made it worse because the damage was clearly visible for all to see. The coroner tried to keep them from the worst of it, unveiling only her son’s head and letting the rest of him remain covered. But his face was half torn off, one eye missing, his throat slashed open, and at the sight of him, Tom started wailing, sounding to her like one of those Middle Eastern mothers ululating over the loss of a son. She herself was numb, and even as she identified the body— 

the body 

—as that of her son, Dylan Ingram, she was ordering the coroner to uncover him rather than pull the sheet back up over his head. She wanted to see. She wanted to know what had happened to her boy. 

His chest had been clawed open on the right side, and chunks of his arms and legs had been eaten away. There were fingers and toes missing, bite marks all over his flesh, and though his belly button was gone, the little birthmark above it was still visible. 

It was the birthmark that sent her over the edge. She remembered looking at it as she diapered him, as she kissed his little baby tummy, as she rubbed him with lotion. She understood, in a way she hadn’t until that moment, all that she had lost, all that would never be, and she broke down, throwing herself on top of him. 

She remembered someone pulling her off, remembered someone taking her away, remembered voices yelling, voices soothing, but that was all she remembered because afterward there was only darkness.  

NINETEEN 

Lita wrote out a receipt for the six jars of honey she’d delivered, then handed it to Ben, thanking him for the sale, and walked past the other customers and out the door of the grocery store without looking back.  

She didn’t relax until she was in the truck and driving past the gas station, onto the street. This was not the first time she’d gone to town and found everyone acting weird. It was nothing specific, nothing she could put her finger on, but she knew her neighbors, knew when they were behaving differently, and lately they’d been…well, behaving differently. Just like Ben. He and the other customers in his store this morning had exchanged meaningful glances when she’d said certain things, things that, as far as she could tell, had no relation to her or each other. They thought she hadn’t noticed, but she had, and it made her feel more than a little uncomfortable. It was as though they all had some secret they were keeping from her, knowledge that they shared but were actively trying to keep from her. 

Her friends had been acting that way, too. She could understand Darla being distraught after all that had happened, but she had been acting strange
before
her son had disappeared. JoAnn and Lurlene, as well. 

Lita drove past the Ingrams’ house, saw Tom’s pickup in the carport. Darla had left town to stay with her mother in Oro Valley, but Tom had stayed, ostensibly to work, and she felt a deep profound sadness for her friend. Dylan had been a great kid, and Darla was a wonderful mother, completely devoted to him. How was she going to cope with his loss? How was she ever going to adjust to a life without him? 

Lita couldn’t imagine. 

But she didn’t like the fact that Tom was still here. He should be with his wife. Darla needed all the support she could get. A tragedy like this could take a huge toll on a marriage, and the thought that her friend might lose her husband as well as her son made Lita feel even more depressed than she already was. 

Her mind wandered again to the increasingly odd behavior of…well, almost everyone she knew. Something was going on, and Lita had no idea what it was. She wondered why she was being kept out of the loop. Did it involve her? The more she thought about it, the more bothered she became. She thought of just coming out and asking JoAnn and Lurlene what was going on but was pretty sure she wouldn’t get a straight answer.  

Not only curious now but genuinely annoyed, she decided to put pressure on the weakest link, and instead of heading home, Lita turned back around and drove to the laundromat, parking on the street in front instead of in the lot behind the building. There were loads in two of the big washers, but no one waiting for them to finish, their owners apparently having gone elsewhere rather than sit in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs arranged against the opposite wall. Lurlene was the only one in the laundromat, seated in the back at her desk, reading a romance novel. 

“Hey, stranger,” Lurlene said. “Your washer go out?” 

“No—” 

“Dryer?” 

“No, I was at the market and thought I’d just stop by and say hi.” 

The two of them shot the breeze for a few moments, but to Lita, the conversation seemed slightly strained. It was probably due to her more than Lurlene, but there were questions she needed answered, and she brought the talk around to her market visit again, and explained how Ben and his customers had all seemed wary around her, as though afraid of giving away some secret they had sworn not to reveal. 

“Huh,” Lurlene said. “That’s weird.” 

“I get the same feeling when I talk to you now, too. You and Darla and JoAnn.” 

“Well, Darla—”  

“I know,” Lita said. “But this started before that.” She faced her friend head-on. “What’s going on around here?” 

Lurlene tried to look as though she didn’t know what Lita was talking about. “Going on?” 

“Lurlene…” 

“Really. I don’t know.” She smiled, as though this was all a big joke or misunderstanding, but the smile was tight.