Strawman's Hammock (11 page)

“But this homicide took time,” Bear mused. “It took planning. And resources.”

“What resources?” she countered. “A shack. Some water. A dog.”

“How about the handcuffs?”

“Ordered from a catalog. Or anyplace that caters to sexual fetishes.”

“This is Lafayette County, Midge. Not Jacksonville.”

She smiled. “Just looking at the possibilities.”

“Well, let's see what we can do to eliminate a few. First thing I'm going to want is an identification for the victim. A name links to people and places. Friends. Family.”

Midge nodded. “I'll do what I can. But you know as well as I do, Bear, that if this young woman came here with migrant workers she's more than likely not going to have a fingerprint on file. She's probably not going to have a green card, either. No social security number. No dental or school records.”

“You got somebody who can reconstruct her appearance?” Bear asked. “Somebody good enough to give us a composite?”

“Nobody in our shop,” Midge shook her head. “And Tallahassee's crew are swamped. It'd be weeks. But maybe…”

“Come on, Midge.”

“I might be able to find somebody.”

Barrett knew better than to press. “Just see what you can do,” he urged.

“I'll need the sheriff's approval.”

Barrett chewed that one over a moment.

“Do it on my authority,” he said finally. “We've
got
to know what Jane looks like if we're to have a hope in hell of making an ID.”

“What about Lou?”

“Well. As General Powell used to say, it's a whole lot easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.”

Midge nodded. “I'll call our guy first thing.”

Barrett was not sure, even with a good reconstruction, how easy it would be to identify this young woman. There would be a great and natural reluctance for any illegally entered Latino to volunteer information for criminal investigators. A code of silence prevailed. And there was another factor, too. Women and girls in migrating communities were, in too many cases, valued only for their labor—for the beets they picked, the straw they raked. Women were abused by men in great numbers across all socioeconomic categories. But Latino women working as migrants from Florida to California were particularly vulnerable.

Would a family member or friend in fear of deportation tell Barrett anything at all about this particular victim? How could he gain their trust? How could he protect them? After all, a man or woman capable of this kind of violence would not hesitate to kill again.

Absent specific information about the victim or her killer, Barrett was left with general trends, general information, generally occuring patterns of behavior. He didn't like that. Generalities got you in trouble. Generalities were only useful to indicate the broad topography of an investigation.

They could not be used as a compass.

“That's enough in here.”

Barrett followed his forensic investigator into the fresh and welcome air.

“Hard to believe you'd leave an office in Jacksonville for this mess, Midge.”

She shrugged. “I like dead people.” She sealed a plastic bag. “Tell you one thing. Whoever's done this has done it before. Or something very much like it.”

Barrett nodded. “Occurred to me as well. I think we ought to fax the Bureau with all the details we can muster, ask them to compare the staging of this scene with others nationwide. Our killer might have a track record someplace else.”

But when suggested to Sheriff Sessions that federal authorities be asked to assist in his investigation, Lou went ballistic.

“The hell! What have I got
you
people down here for?”

Barrett stiffened. “We'll support you all we can, Sheriff. But the feds might have seen a case exactly like this that'd help us out. They may have a fingerprint on our Jane Doe. Hell, we might get lucky and get some DNA on the perp that shows up in VCAP's library.”

“You can run the DNA from right here,” Lou growled. “
I
can run prints through AFIS. That's all the FBI I goddamn need. What
you
need, Bear, is to sift this shit and bag it so I can go interview my suspect.”

“Whoa. Sheriff. Suspect? We don't even have an ID on the victim yet. We don't have a face that anybody can recognize. Give Midge some time, she might can get us something we can use.”

“I already got somethin' I can use. I got tire tracks to a Humvee. And I know who owns it.”

“Set of tracks doesn't give us much.”

“Puts Gary Loyd on the scene.” Lou bit it off.

“We don't know that. We don't even know the time of death for sure,” Barrett disagreed. “And according to Jarold, there've been three or four different vehicles coming back here for at least a couple of months. Most of 'em right up to the shack.”

“Good. Find out who they are. I'll see them, too.”

“Sheriff, I—”

“You what? What the fuck is your problem, Agent?”

The activity that had so methodically proceeded in all grids of the crime scene halted abruptly
in medias res.
Technicians, forensics, photographers—frozen in their tasks with the sheriff's bilious challenge.

Barrett took a deep breath.

“I just don't want to lose a potential suspect, Sheriff. We go in now, we're just fishing.”

“I can fish.”

“What for?”

“Well, Agent Raines, for starters I'm gonna ask Gary Loyd if he's ever come out here for some Mexican strange.”

Barrett saw one of the FDLE team snap off her latex gloves; Irene Sanchez marched without a word toward the side-paneled truck. A long pause, then, before Cricket Bonet strolled over.

“Sheriff. Maybe you-all want to keep this conversation private?”

“Not likely.”

Cricket made himself at ease beside the county's top dog.

“All right. Then what makes you think Gary Loyd's a likely susect?”

“Why else would he be out here?”

“Shoot a deer. Whack off. Only one of which can be construed as a crime in the state of Florida.”

“You'a wiseass, aren't you, Bonet?”

“Wise enough to know that if you go looking for Gary Loyd you're better off with a warrant.”

“Judge Blackmond ain't gonna give me no warrant,” Lou scoffed. “Not off a week-old set of tire tracks.”

“Then let us dig,” Barrett rejoined. “If we get hard evidence that puts Gary in that shack, or anywhere near it, you can search his truck, his house, anything you need.”

“'Course, that would take some little time. Wouldn't it? To get me all those—those facts?”

Barrett faltered. “Some time. Sure.”

The skin across the craters of the sheriff's face stretched tight as canvas.

“You're not bought off here, are you, Bear?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Well, Linton Loyd's got to be a big part of your future, hasn't he? Maybe that's why you're wantin' to treat his boy with kid gloves.”

“You—!”

Barrett was moving toward the sheriff with damage on his mind when Cricket stepped in to intervene.

“Gentlemen.” Bonet turned to the county sheriff.

“So you're determined to interview this Gary Loyd?”

“Soon as I can.”

“Without a warrant?”

“The hell I need a warrant for? I'm just asking the man some questions.”

Cricket nodded. “All right. Mind if we tag along?”

A smile split Lou Session's cratered face.

“Hell, no. Be my pleasure.”

Six

Rolly Slade barely glanced at his son as Jerry slipped a magazine and a pair of floppy disks into his knapsack.

“Be a little late coming home,” Jerry announced on his way out the door.

Rolly was on the phone, hard in the market for another rottweiler. Jerry heard the talk—how the Slade family would get rich suing the county, state, and justice department for the wrongful death of the dog killed by Barrett Raines and that goddamn, grouper-headed warden. Rolly's peroration extended to a vaguely libertarian rail against all manner of authority. His son padded out of earshot down the short packed-dirt alley that led past their small machine shop to reach a chinaberry tree, under whose nasty shade the school bus would rumble to a stop.

Nothing like the doors on a school bus. Slap-slap. Jerry Slade nodded greetings and limp high-fives to the other sophomores in his class. There were no teenage spics on board, Jerry noted with disappointment, but a quartet of little señoritas, their hair tied in bright bows, their eyes deep and brown, always sat up front where Mr. Theo could keep an eye on them. And there was his special girl.

“Get youself a seat, Jerry.” Mr. Theo was riding his ass before he got halfway down the aisle.

Jerry flopped into a vacant, straight-backed chair. He opened the knapsack—

“What you got, Jerry?” A gaggle of teenage boys stumbled over each other to see a full-length glossy of Brittany Spears.

“She's hot.” A pair of feral eyes beamed across the aisle.

“Take it.” Jerry handed the poster across the aisle. It had not cost him anything. He had downloaded the pic from his computer.

His peers preoccupied, Jerry plunged a hand into a canvas knapsack. He came out with a camera, a Sony Mavica. It was a digital camera. He had stolen it from a tourist in Pensacola. Stuck with the older VGA technology, the Sony did not produce the awesome detail you could get from pixel-based competitors, but, hey, it was free. It had a ten-power zoom. And the Mavica had one other feature which for Jerry's purposes was very important: You could store the Sony's pictures on standard floppy disks. That meant you didn't need adaptors or SmartMedia cards or anything exotic to transfer your pictures from camera to computer. Just pop your three-inch disk out of the Mavica and slip it into a machine.

You got a Mac? A PC?

No problem. He could go either way.

It was a total improvement over the Polaroid. No film to worry about. No photo lab, like the Polaroid. But also no delay. Well, not much. The-FD51 model he acquired took five seconds or so to save its images to disk. Jerry would have preferred his instrument to process instantaneously, gratification being best when it was instant, but for now five seconds would do.

The teenager checked the camera's lithium-ion battery. Good to go. He then slipped the Sony into a pouch on the outside of his backback and looked for his newest subject.

She sat only three seats ahead. Isabel, he had heard the fifth-grader give her name. Like “Ees A Bell.” Jerry shook his head. If they couldn't speak the language, why the hell let 'em in school?

He peeked his canvas blind above the lip of the seat-back before him. The camera snugged into its velcro pouch peeked out through a hole which Jerry had cut for the purpose. The arrangement allowed him to take pictures unobserved. There was plenty of ambient light here. No need for a flash, which of course Jerry would not have wanted. He was pleased with himself. His arrangements. He could press the camera's actuator without even having to reach inside its marsupial pouch.

She was showing him her profile. He snapped a picture. Funny you still said “snap,” as if that archaic description of sound still applied. Jerry framed the girl, clicked. Another archaism. No buzz or snap or click with these cameras. No way. They were virtually soundless. So Jerry was not pleased when Harvey Koon, the class cretin, leered knowing and wise from across the aisle.

“Hey, Slade. You gonna be the next Spielberg?”

“Got a Sarah Gellar gallery for ya, Harvey.” Jerry lined up his next composition. “If you'll shut the fuck up.”

Isabel turned animatedly to one of her chums. A bow had come loose from her black hair. In the chatter of Spanish that followed she turned in her seat so that another brown-eyed girl could refasten that gay ligament.

How sweet.

Jerry eyed the scene through the wide display of his camera. You didn't even need to sight through an aperture, which was an advantage. She stretched her little arms in delight.

He selected the uncompressed mode for sharper resolution. Snap. Another picture destined for his hard drive. And then he could do anything he wanted.

The school bus rumbled over a cattle gap, which spoiled Jerry's clandestine session. Goddamn Theo. Couldn't drive worth a shit.

He could see her back firm and brown above her sundress. He needed to get closer. The next cattle gap, Jerry jostled foward.

“Por favor?”
He ignored the protest of a child across the aisle.

Isabel turned. The bright smile melted. She had seen this strange, bleach-haired boy with his black pouch. She knew there was a camera inside. It took her a while to realize that she was being taken into its silver-lined lens. This made Isabel afraid. Pictures are not for strangers, she had been told. And her grandmother agreed—the camera could take your soul.

Was this boy stealing her soul?

“Mistah Theo!” Almost the first words she learned in English rose shrill, even above the bus's multitongued racket. “Mistah Theo, Cherry's taking picture!”

“‘Cherry'!” Harvey's laugh bellowed from the back and Jerry's gut clenched into a knot.

“Little bitch.” He moved forward another seat only to find Mr. Theo's tired, gaunt face spying from the plattersized rearview mirror.

“Put that thang away, Jerry.”

“What thang'd that be, Mr. Theo?”

“Awright, youngun, I've had about enough o' you. We get to school, I'm a'turnin' you over to the professor.”

The school bus burst into laughter, this time at the driver's expense. The professor! He meant the principal, of course. The local principal, Alton Folsom, who, scared for his job, intimidated by parents and slavish to the local board, never meted out discipline in any hard measure to anyone.