The Little Death (39 page)

“It is, believe me.”

“Well, get in here, then.”

They stepped into a dimly lit room, warm from a blazing fireplace and pungent with the scent of fresh pine. Next to the coral-rock fireplace was a Christmas tree decorated with carved wood ornaments and old-fashioned bulb lights.

Louis stayed by the door, dripping on the plank wood floor, Swann shivering behind.

“Come on in and sit down,” Aubry said. “You aren’t going to get anything wet that I care about.”

Louis sat on the edge of a lumpy sofa covered with a blanket. A small yellow mutt with large pointed ears and a long snout looked up at them from its place in front of the fire, then laid its head back down.

Aubry came out of the kitchen and tossed each of them a towel. “I’d offer you a beer, but this is the last one,” he said, holding up his bottle. “I was thinking of going up the road to Mary Lou’s for a six-pack.”

Louis dried his face with the towel. “We’re fine.”

Aubry sat down in a beat-up lounger by the fire. “So, what’s this about?”

“We have another missing man,” Louis said.

“Dead?”

“We don’t know. We’re hoping he’s still alive.”

“Well, you’re not going to find anyone out there in
that rain tonight,” Aubry said. “So, I don’t know what help I can be.”

“Louis?”

Louis looked over at Swann. He first saw the gun rack with two rifles, but then his eyes found the spot of color on the wall next to the rack.

It was a framed painting of men on horses roping a red steer, with yellow dogs running in the green grass.

Louis turned back to Aubry. “You said David sketched. Did he do paintings, too?”

Aubry nodded toward the painting. “That’s one of his over there. I’ve got others. Why you asking?”

“One of his paintings turned up in Palm Beach,” Louis said. “And we have to find out how it got there.”

Aubry was silent.

“The last time I was here, we talked about David’s friends,” Louis said. “Could David have given one of his paintings to a friend?”

Aubry shook his head slowly. “David was pretty private about his art stuff. He never thought they were much good, and I told you Jim was funny about it.”

“Is there any chance some of his paintings could have been left in the house and his father or mother gave them away?” Louis asked.

“No,” Aubry said. “David was getting ready to go off to University of Florida, and he asked me to keep his art stuff. He wouldn’t have left any paintings inside the house for his father to find.”

“I know I’m grasping at straws here, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said, “but can you think of anyone who was around this ranch twenty-eight years ago who could have found their way to Palm Beach?”

“You never know what paths people are going to take,” Aubry said, “but the folks who were around here back then, especially those close to the family, they aren’t the kind of people who’d feel at home in a place like Palm Beach.”

Louis didn’t know where else to go with this. Why couldn’t he see the connection between David Archer’s world and Mark Durand’s? Who or what did they have in common?

“Louis,” Swann said, “we need to head out to the pen.”

“You fellas aren’t going anywhere in that fancy car you got,” Aubry said. “You’ll be caught in the mud for sure.”

“Will you take us?” Louis asked.

“Why? You think your missing man might be laying out there already dead?”

“It’s been twenty-four hours since he disappeared,” Swann said. “Two of the three victims were killed the same night they vanished.”

Aubry set the tray down and disappeared again down a hall. He returned wearing a rain slicker, boots, and a cowboy hat. He had a second rain parka for Louis.

“Don’t have another slicker,” Aubry said to Swann.

“No problem. I have one in my trunk.”

“You armed?” Aubry asked.

“I am,” Louis said, patting his belt beneath his windbreaker. “Andrew’s not.”

Aubry pulled two bolt-action rifles from the rack, made sure they were loaded, and handed one to Swann. Louis tried read Swann’s expression as he took the rifle.
He knew the academy trained recruits in all weapons, but he doubted Swann had shot any type of gun for a good many years.

Louis put on Aubry’s slicker, and they left the house. Swann got his bright yellow raincoat from the BMW’s trunk.

It took them about ten minutes to get to the pen. For the first half-mile, the old Jeep slid over the sloppy ground with seemingly no traction. Then the tires hit something solid, and Louis knew where they were. Aubry was taking them in via the gravel road he and Mel had used on their first visit just two days ago.

Aubry brought the Jeep to a stop a few feet from the fence, the blackness before them pierced only by two foggy beams from the headlights. Between sweeps of the wipers, they stared at the labyrinth of fences.

“Let’s take a walk,” Aubry said.

They grabbed flashlights and stepped into the rain. Louis pulled up the hood of his parka. When he looked back at Swann, the fluorescent stripes on his raincoat sleeves and the words
PALM BEACH POLICE
stood out even in the dark.

They split up, Aubry and Swann heading to the left, Louis to the right. It was hard to hear anything over the steady beat of the rain and just as hard to see anything in the flashlight’s beam.

Louis walked slowly, sweeping the light over the dirt, searching for anything that looked out of place. A hump on the ground, a glint of a metal buckle, a gleam of pale, wet flesh. But there was nothing to see. Nothing to hear but the
plink
of rain and the occasional creak of a rusty gate in the wind.

Louis paused at the fence of the largest pen. He had a decent view, but he couldn’t see every inch, nor could he see what was on the other side of the small lean-to.

He looked around for the gate that he had heard, and when he didn’t see one, he slipped through the rails and into the pen. The ground was mucky, and there was a smell in the air that seemed to grow stronger with every step.

Halfway across, Louis paused, struck with one of those weird feelings that he was being watched. He leveled the flashlight and made a slow turn, but he saw nothing but the cage of wood fencing.

“Andrew?” Louis called.

“Out here,” Swann said.

Louis saw him waving his flashlight, took a breath, and walked on. There was nothing in the lean-to and nothing on the ramp, ground, or rails to indicate that anyone had been here recently. He headed back to the Jeep.

Aubry was waiting for him, sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open and shaking rain from his hat.

“Where’s Andrew?” Louis asked.

Aubry gestured toward the darkness south of the pen. Swann’s light was a fading prick of white.

“Where’s he going?” Louis asked.

“Said he wanted to look at the stream,” Aubry said. “I tried to tell him that in this rain, his little stream was gonna be more like a lake, but he was intent on going anyway.”

“Christ,” Louis said. “I’ll be right back.”

He caught up with Swann on the muddy edge of a surging swamp. Swann had his rifle in one hand and was making slow sweeps of his flashlight
with the other across the surface of the brown water. The hood of his coat had blown down, and his head was soaked.

Louis stopped about six feet behind him, on higher ground. “Andrew, get your ass back up here before you get eaten by a fucking alligator.”

Swann turned and trudged from the water. He pushed past Louis without saying a word or lifting his head.

“Andrew.”

Swann walked on.

Louis watched him for a few seconds, then looked back at the water. It was running fast to the south, carrying branches that floated downstream like gnarled brown fingers.

Louis pointed his flashlight downward. But even as the beam skated across the brown water, he knew that if Byrne Kavanagh was in there, they’d never find him tonight. At least, not the three of them alone.

Louis swung the flashlight over the brown water one last time, then headed back, using the beams of the Jeep’s headlights to find his way out of the darkness.

Chapter Thirty-five
 

Sam eased off the gas as the sign for Clewiston came into view. The last thing she needed now was to be stopped for something as stupid as a speeding ticket. She had to be careful this time.

Not like that time five years ago, when, in her anger and impatience, she had sped through town in Hap’s big old silver Bentley. She had been lucky that night, lucky that no cop had stopped her; lucky, too, that Emilio had been so trusting.

Stupid boy…

Still, that was what had attracted her to him in the first place. He was beautiful, yes, but he wasn’t very smart, and that was what had led her to take him into her bed. He barely spoke English, but she didn’t want a man to talk. He didn’t want to stay and hold her, but she never wanted a man to linger after sex. He never asked about her life, but she didn’t want to have to tell him about her invalid husband. And best of all, he didn’t flinch when she asked him to put his hands tight around her neck during orgasm.

He never asked her for anything. So, she bought him an expensive gold crucifix to replace the cheap one he always wore. She had been angry when he told her he had given it to his sister. And when she bought him the second one and demanded that he always wear it during sex, she had enjoyed his embarrassment. He had been embarrassed, too, about the money when she offered it. But he always took it.

Stupid, stupid boy.

In the end, she was the one who was stupid. Getting giddy over martinis that day with Carolyn at Ta-boo, too impressed that she had been invited to sit at a coveted table by the fireplace, too needy that a woman like Carolyn would even have a drink with her. And then, brassy with booze, asking Carolyn if she had ever experienced “a little death” during sex. St. John Knitted-up Carolyn,
whose husband—everyone knew it—had been cheating on her for years. Cautious, controlling Carolyn, who had never had the guts to take a lover of her own but had listened to Sam’s stories about Emilio with animal eyes.

She brought Emilio to the Osborn house that same night. Lots of wine, a dimly lit bedroom. But Emilio, when he realized he was expected to bed two women, had balked and bolted from the house.

Stupid boy.
How dare he embarrass her like that in front of a woman like Carolyn Osborn?

When Emilio came to her the next night, saying he wanted out, she said she understood and offered to drive him home to Immokalee. But her anger built the farther west they drove, until finally, she steered the Bentley down a deserted road, and while seducing him one last time, she stabbed him. When he tried to run, she whipped him and, in a blind rage, cut off his head. She put the head in the trunk of the car.

Hands red with his blood, her body burning with a sexual rush, she drove back to the island, eased the Bentley into the huge old garage, and dead-bolted the door. The old car had stayed there for the last five years, untouched.

Sam turned left, heading south now through the narrow streets of the black neighborhood they called Harlem. Then the little houses fell away, and the lights of Clewiston dwindled to blurs in the rearview mirror. Now there was nothing but muddy pastureland, not even a rutted service road or trail. But she knew exactly where she was going.

She hunched over the wheel and peered up at the dark sky. The rain had stopped, and the last of the clouds were drifting east, leaving a pitch-black sky and a full moon.

Light. Yes. There would be light now. The cattle pen would be lit up like a stage.

She glanced over at Carolyn in the passenger seat, one hand braced against the dashboard, the other clutching the handgun. A striking image, Sam thought, Carolyn’s perfect red nails against the cold steel of her husband’s Luger.

Carolyn had begged her to keep this one simple, just find a deserted place in West Palm, put a bullet in Byrne’s head, and walk away. But that seemed so tame, so unimaginative. Why kill the boy if there was no pleasure to be derived from it?

“Sam, where are we going?”

Carolyn’s voice sounded funny, like she was straining to be heard through a static-jammed microphone. Sam knew what it was. This woman, this powerful woman, who had destroyed careers for the smallest political slight, who had sat across tables from world leaders, was not in charge. For once, she wasn’t the one in control, and taking away control, Sam knew, was like depriving Carolyn Osborn of air.

“I told you where we were going,” Sam hissed.

“This isn’t the same way we came before.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

A whimper came from the backseat. Sam glanced at the rearview mirror. It was too dark to see anything, so she fumbled for the switch to turn on the dome light. It was important to know what that loony bitch was doing every second.

Tink was cuddling a drowsy Byrne, stroking his hair and whispering nonsense.

“Tink, shut up,” Sam said.

“Leave her alone,” Carolyn said. “You know how she feels about him. Why did you even bring her?”

It was a good question. Tink had been a loose link in this chain, but Carolyn had always had a soft spot in her heart for the poor old thing.