The Little Death (41 page)

But the best drawings were of the land. A pink spoonbill in a blue stream. Russet cows against green palmetto palms. A lilac and dove-gray sky at dawn. A spiky green air plant lodged in the fork of a black-branched live oak. And a long-stalked plant with sprigs of red flowers, each blossom’s tiny devil face carefully rendered.

Louis turned the page. The portrait stopped him cold.

Red hair. Upturned nose. Haughty tilt of the chin. The face was younger and rounder, but the eyes, so cunning and clear, were the same.

God. Sam.

He held the book out to Aubry. “Do you know this girl?”

Aubry peered at the page. “That’s… what’s her name? She was the little gal who worked at Mary Lou’s.”

“Please try to remember, Mr. Aubry.”

Aubry scratched his head. “It was Susie or Sasha. No, I remember. Sosie. That was it. Sosie.”

Louis looked back at the picture, Swann’s voice in his head.
People come to Palm Beach to reinvent themselves, and that includes their names.
He turned to ask Swann if he knew anything about Sam’s past, but Swann had gone back out onto the porch.

“Did David know her?” Louis asked, turning back to Aubry.

“I suspect so, since he went down the road to Mary Lou’s often enough, and she was a pretty little thing,” Aubry said. “But if you’re asking if she was special to David, I’d have to say no. She wasn’t the kind of girl a boy like David would bring home.”

“Do you know anything else about her?”

“Her dad was a cutter in the cane fields but sliced his leg up in an accident and went to work in the refinery. I remember he got pretty sick with drink, so Sosie had to drop out of school to take care of him. That’s why she was working at Mary Lou’s.”

Louis had a memory of the sad houses outside Clewiston and of that little girl standing in the dusty parking lot of Mary Lou’s.

He could almost imagine what had happened. A pretty girl took up with the local prince. David couldn’t bring her home, so he met her in secret. What had happened that summer in Devil’s Garden, maybe no one would ever know. But David had died there, and Sosie had made it all the way to Palm Beach and transformed herself into Samantha Norris.

Had Sosie killed David? Had Sam killed the others?

But was a woman strong enough to behead a man? Then he remembered what Dr. Steffel had said when he asked her how much strength a decapitation would take. She had told him that if the blade was sharp and the person skilled, “a guy didn’t have to be Conan the Barbarian.”

Louis had been thinking about Reggie at the time. Now he was remembering the fierce power of Sam’s arms wrapped around his back as he made love to her.

He knew women could be cold-blooded killers, just like men. Battered women pushed to their limit. Women who partnered up with violent men. So-called black widows who murdered husbands for money. Even women who killed their own children.

But a woman who killed men out of pure blood-lust? A woman who tortured and decapitated with cold-blooded precision? There was nothing in any police academy book that talked about that kind of psychopathy. And nothing in his own experience as a cop.

Louis looked back at the drawing of the red-haired girl. The face morphed, and he was looking down into Sam’s flushed face as he entered her.

Die with me.

“You all right, son?”

Louis looked up at Aubry. “Yeah,” he said. He closed the sketchbook. “I need to use your phone again.”

He dialed Reggie’s number, arousing Mel from sleep. “Hey,” Louis said. “You awake enough to listen?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.”

“I think Samantha Norris is our killer.”

“Who?”

“The redhead in the
Shiny Sheet,
” Louis said. “You know. The woman I was…”

“Wait, wait…”

Louis could hear Mel fumbling. When he came back on, his voice was steady. “Jesus. You think she killed them all?”

“Yeah. It started with a boyfriend twenty-eight years ago,” Louis said, glancing at Aubry. “I don’t have time to explain it all right now, but I need you to go over to her house and—”

“I can’t see shit at night. You know that.”

Louis let out a breath. “Mel, is Yuba there?”

“Yeah.”

“Have her drive you to Sam’s house. It’s on South Ocean. I don’t know the address. But there’s a big iron gate and this old Spanish castle house—”

“Rocky, take a breath,” Mel said softly.

Louis ran a hand over his face and started again, giving Mel directions as best he could remember. “She’s probably in the guesthouse,” Louis said. “Just sit outside the gate and make sure no one leaves. Andrew and I are on our way.”

When Louis hung up, he realized Aubry was staring at him. He had heard everything. But Swann still didn’t know.

Louis went out to the porch, but there was no sign of Swann. The BMW was still parked in the drive.

Louis turned to go back in to see if Swann had slipped inside to go to the john. He froze. Swann’s raincoat was gone. So was the rifle.

Chapter Thirty-seven
 

Was it possible to go to hell twice in one life? What a stupid thing to think about now. But that was what was ricocheting around in Carolyn’s mind as she watched Sam pull Byrne from the Bronco. She hadn’t wanted to come to this place that first time—
God, had it been only two weeks ago?
—but it had taken all three of them to handle Mark.

She didn’t want to think about that night. And she had been able to stuff the memories in a box somewhere deep inside her, put on her public face, and go on. But now, back here in this place, it was all there again.

Mark Durand had been a mistake. The first time he had been in her bed, she had known that. His idea of seduction was to get drunk on Tucker’s bourbon, then bed her with a quick pawing and brute force. One night she caught Mark in Tucker’s office and called Bianca, telling her to cut him loose.

But Tink was on his appointment book for the next night. And that’s when everything went wrong.

The call had come to her private phone at midnight. It was Tink, wailing that she had killed him by hitting him with a lamp. Carolyn arrived to find Sam trying to calm a hysterical Tink. Mark’s half-naked body was on the bedroom floor. He wasn’t dead, but then Sam said something that made Carolyn’s blood go cold.

Well, maybe the bastard should be.

The details spilled out of Tink. He had called her vile names and said he couldn’t stand the feel of her wrinkled skin or the “old dead woman” smell of her body. Sam reminded them both that Mark had been demanding more money and that she suspected him of stealing a painting from her bedroom. But it was when Carolyn spotted Tucker’s Patek Philippe watch on Mark’s wrist that even she became convinced that he needed to be punished.

They tied him with Tink’s old Hermès scarves and dragged him outside. By the time Durand came to in the backseat of the old Bentley, they were in Clewiston. They let Sam do all the talking.

Where are you bitches taking me?

You’ve been a bad boy, Mark. But you do your job tonight, and you’ll get a nice big bonus.

Carolyn had felt a tingle of excitement as they drove past the dark cane fields, like she was in some grand adventure. But when Sam slowed the Bentley and Carolyn caught her first look at the old fence, she knew it was no game.

Sam prodded the groggy Durand into a pen and ordered him to strip. When he refused, she pulled out a whip and, with one quick move, cracked it across Durand’s back. Carolyn backed up against the fence in horror.

But Tink…

Doped up on her Valium and vodka, she had watched with fascination at first, then broke into cheers when Sam started to crack the whip repeatedly across Mark’s back. Before it was over, Tink had wrestled the whip from her and took her own turn. By the time Mark had stopped moving, Tink had collapsed in the dirt, half laughing, half crying. Sam ordered Carolyn to take Tink back to the car and wait.

They sat silently in the dark of the Bentley. Sam finally emerged from the pen, the whip coiled around her shoulder. As she slid in behind the wheel, Carolyn saw her hands, red with blood.

Sam, what did you do?

Never mind. Let’s go.

It was two days later that Carolyn read the story in the newspaper that Reggie Kent had been questioned in the murder of Mark Durand. When Reggie was arrested, Carolyn finally called Sam. That was when Sam told her she had put a pair of Hap’s boots on Reggie’s patio.

Don’t worry, Carolyn. It’s all under control.

A moaning sound brought Carolyn back to the present.

Byrne was lying in the mud, holding his head.

“Keep the gun on him,” Sam said to Carolyn as she started toward the back of the Bronco.

Carolyn kept the gun down at her side. She had shot a gun before, back when her father took her out in the groves to practice on cans and bottles. But that was a lifetime ago. Tucker’s gun felt heavy and slippery.

Carolyn heard a thud and saw Sam coming around from the back of the Bronco. She was holding a whip in her left hand and a machete in her right.

“No, Sam,” Carolyn said.

Sam smiled. “I don’t think you have any bargaining chips here, Senator.”

She stuck the machete into a leather sheath hanging from her belt and looped the coiled whip over her shoulder. She pulled out a nylon cord and, kneeling next to Byrne, bound his hands in front of him. He screamed as the cord tightened around his broken wrist.

Tink dropped down into the mud next to him, crying.

Carolyn closed her eyes. There was nothing to do but go through with it now. She just had to get through this night and get back to the protection of the island. That was her plan, to do whatever she needed to do to survive tonight.

Tink started to wail. Carolyn’s eyes shot open.

“God damn it, shut up!” Sam yelled.

Suddenly, Sam stood up and looked at Carolyn. “Shoot her.”

“What?”

“Shoot the bitch! Now!”

Carolyn shook her head and started to back away. Sam lunged at her and wrenched the gun from her hand.

“No!”

A flash, a boom. Tink fell back into the mud.

Carolyn couldn’t move, couldn’t even pull in a breath. She stared at Tink, hair splayed in the mud, a small dark hole in her forehead. Her eyes were still open.

The jab of the gun butt in her stomach jolted her back.

“Take it,” Sam said.

“No, I don’t want—”

“I don’t care what the fuck you want. Take it!”

Carolyn took the gun with shaking hands. She watched through tear-blurred eyes as Sam went back around the Bronco and yanked Byrne to his feet. He stood there, wavering, his face white and slick with sweat in the moonlight.

Suddenly, Byrne swung his bound hands up. His fists caught Sam in the jaw, and she fell backward. Byrne began to run.

Sam stumbled to her feet, holding her cheek, her eyes raking the brush and trees. Carolyn saw what Sam saw: the white blur of Byrne’s shirt disappearing into the darkness.

Chapter Thirty-eight
 

Swann shifted the rifle from one hand to the other and kept walking. He could see nothing behind him but
the shrinking yellow glow of Aubry’s stable light. And he could see nothing in front of him but darkness. But he walked on, his step surer than it had ever been.

He didn’t know why he was going back to the cattle pen. He just knew he couldn’t sit there one more minute listening to the cowmen’s voices on the walkie-talkie.

A sliver of light moved across the ground in front of his feet. He stopped and looked up. The last of the clouds were drifting east, unmasking a full bone-bright moon.

He pushed off his hood. The cool air brought a clarity he hadn’t felt all day, and he realized that the hangover he’d woken up with that morning was finally gone.

Jesus, was that only twelve hours ago?

He moved on, grateful for the asphalt when he got to the two-lane road. He used the butt of the rifle to tap the mud from his shoes and looked down the road. It wasn’t far to the gravel road that led to the pen. Maybe ten minutes on foot.

The moon disappeared, cloaking Swann again in darkness. He stopped and reached into his raincoat pocket for his flashlight, but before he turned it on, the moon reappeared. He could see the sparkle of gravel ahead.