The Little Death (40 page)
Can’t we find a man for her?
Good God, Carolyn, who would want her?
We can pay someone, can’t we?
It was Carolyn who had the idea that they find a way to organize and hide their affairs. It had been easy to lure Bianca into the proposition by giving her a healthy percentage. It had been easy, too, to find other women on the island willing to pay for sex, but it always came back to the three of them—Sam, Carolyn, and Tink.
The young men. There had been a succession of them over the last years—lifeguards, pool boys, waiters, personal trainers—it was never hard to find them in the island’s orbit. When the season ended and the mansions were shuttered and the women headed north to their summer homes, the men were sent on their way with bonuses.
And then, every fall, when the women returned, Bianca had a new bright shiny thing for them to play with.
Paul Wyeth had been an exception. He had gotten greedy and tried to blackmail them, threatening to expose Carolyn. Sam hadn’t hesitated. He was a coke addict, so it had been easy to lure him out to Devil’s Garden and kill him. Cutting off his head before she dragged him into the slough—she had done that only because there had been a certain symmetry to the act that appealed to her.
Sam never told Carolyn why Paul disappeared. Carolyn
never asked. But Sam knew she would someday collect on that favor.
Tink was crying again.
“He needs a doctor! Where are we going?”
Sam pressed down on the gas pedal, answering Tink with a roar of the engine. The Bronco lurched forward, fishtailing crazily before the tires caught harder ground. Carolyn let out a gasp. Byrne groaned.
Sam ignored them, more interested in the land before her as the emerging moon vanquished the darkness.
To the west, she saw nothing but swaying grass, rolling brush, and an occasional silhouette of an umbrella-shaped oak.
Far off to the east, she could see the lights of the sugar refinery. Even with the windows rolled up, the smell was there, that stink of burnt sugar.
With the bad smell came the memories.
Papa, limping from the old truck, his lunch pail in his hand, his bottle of rye tucked under his arm, his overalls drenched in the sugary, wet steam of the refinery. He never looked at her, never waited for an answer, but still, every day, he asked the same question.
How was school, Sosie-Mosie?
Mama, standing at the stove, her face still flushed and her mouth still raw from her afternoon visit from Mr. Cooley, the widower across the street with the retarded son. Or Mr. Thomas, the pig farmer who brought them chops for Easter. Or any one of her mother’s men, whose grunts and groans had stayed in her head long after their faces had faded.
Don’t tell your daddy. This is my secret, Sosie, our secret. You hear me?
The stink of the sugar was finally receding. The air grew clean, and the knifelike blades of the cane changed to soft grass and old trees.
David was there in her head now.
They were on his horse, riding through pastures, taking a different cow trail every time but always to the same destination, always to their secret place.
Do you love me, David?
Yes, Sosie, yes.
Why was he with her so vividly tonight? Over the years, he had come and gone, usually like a pale ghost, sometimes like flesh and blood. And in those moments, like tonight, she could feel the hard muscles of his back as she clung to him on the horse, see his sky-blue eyes and feel his soft, sand-colored hair. He had taught her to ride. He had taught her to use his whip so she could flick a tin can off a fence post. But it had been his hands she could remember best. Gentle enough to cradle baby chicks, powerful enough to wrestle a steer, skilled enough to bring his world to life on canvas.
And eventually, sweet enough to please her.
God, Sosie, I want you so bad.
Do you love me, David?
A loud groan drew her back. Tink was crying. Sam slapped the light on and looked in the rearview mirror. Byrne was awake now, trying to get out of Tink’s arms.
Sam reached into her jacket and dug out Bianca’s vial of Percocet. She tossed it back to Tink.
“Give him another pill.”
“No,” Tink said. “He’s already sick.”
“Give him another fucking pill!” Sam yelled.
The Bronco hit a large rock and reeled sideways,
spraying mud across the windshield. Sam hit the wipers and slammed on the brakes. The Bronco slid to a steamy stop a few feet from a live oak.
Carolyn spun to Sam, her hand still on the dashboard. “You could’ve killed us,” she said.
Sam didn’t look at her. She stared out the window, gripping the wheel. She knew exactly where she was.
“Stay here,” Sam said.
She pushed from the Bronco and slammed the door. It was windy and cool. She pulled her jacket tighter around her and trudged through the mud, her feet lost inside Hap’s stiff-ankled hunting boots.
She entered a dark tunnel of live oaks and stopped. This was the place, the exact place. But things were different now.
Cool, not hot.
Dark, not daylight.
She was forty-five, not seventeen.
The wild red orchids that he had scaled the trees to pick for her were all gone.
Sam dropped to her knees and closed her eyes. The tears burned hot.
I’m leaving tomorrow, Sosie.
But you said we’d stay here together.
I have to go to school.
David, you promised…
I never promised you anything, Sosie.
Things coming fast now, all of those memories, the bad ones now, coming in a mad rush, just like everything had come in a rush that hot day so many years ago.
The trembling of her hands as she buttoned her blouse back up. The sticky ache between her legs. The
hammering of her head. The nervous whinny of a horse. The rough feel of the jagged rock in her hand. The sight of his hair curled against the back of his tanned neck.
The crunch of the rock against his skull.
Red. Red. Red… a slow river of it on the green grass.
David? David?
One moment of blind rage. Then his lips gone cold. Her life gone cold. Everything frozen now, her heart and her head. Everything erased, the future, the past, and the fragile line she had always drawn between love and hate.
He had made love to her.
She had killed him.
And now, somehow, she had to forget him.
The horse stared at her with wild eyes. She moved to it slowly, placed a hand on its heaving neck. It stood still long enough for her to take the whip off the saddle’s horn. Then it jumped back and disappeared into the trees. Cradling David’s whip to her chest, she walked out of Devil’s Garden.
“Sam?”
The voice snapped her back. It took her a moment to make out Carolyn’s form at the edge of the trees.
Sam rose, wiping her muddy hands on her jeans as she walked to Carolyn.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
They left their shoes, rifles, and raincoats on the covered porch. Aubry delivered a fresh tray of hot coffee and went to work on injecting new life into the dying fire. The room swelled with warmth and the smell of burning wood.
“Mr. Aubry,” Louis said, “may I use your phone?”
“Certainly,” Aubry said.
Louis dug into his wallet for the number and called the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Since leaving Barberry, he had discovered only two new pieces of information: the Orchid Society and David’s painting. Louis hoped it would be enough to persuade Barberry to spare some deputies and a couple of four-wheel drives for a thorough search of Devil’s Garden.
Barberry was off duty, and the swing-shift commander sounded stressed, mumbling something about an armed robbery and a chase, then telling Louis he would try to find Barberry when things calmed down. Louis tried two more supervisors, and after fifteen minutes of being on hold while one tried paging Barberry, Louis hung up.
“You could try Chief Hewitt,” Swann said.
“Not his jurisdiction or his case,” Louis said. “And I don’t think he gives a shit, anyway.”
“You need some fellas to search for your victim?” Aubry asked.
“Yeah.”
“My men could do that,” Aubry offered.
Louis looked up. The thought of putting civilians out
there in this weather to search for a body, with the remote possibility of also coming across a killer, was crazy. But these were tough guys who knew their land and their rifles. And Aubry had that same look on his face now that Swann had that day back at Dunkin’ Donuts. He wanted to help.
“How many you got?” Louis asked.
“Twenty.”
“We’d appreciate anything they could do, Mr. Aubry.”
Aubry picked up the phone and dialed. Louis heard him ask for a man named Mike, and then he said, “Get the crew ready for a search. We got a lost man out there.”
Louis looked to Swann. He was watching Aubry, clearly still impressed with the man’s command of his world.
“I can’t keep them out too long,” Aubry said when he hung up. “Don’t want to put them or the horses at risk, but I can give you a few hours.”
“Thanks,” Louis said.
Aubry set his walkie-talkie on the table by the fireplace and disappeared into the kitchen. Swann, too restless just to sit and listen to it, went out onto the porch. When Louis went out to the BMW to get Byrne’s kitten, Swann was sitting in one of the rockers, staring off into the darkness.
The house was filled with the smell of chili cooking when Louis went back inside. He installed the cat in the bathroom with its litter box and dish of food.
By the time Aubry came out with a tray with three bowls, Swann had come back inside and was warming by the fire. Louis realized neither of them had eaten all day.
Too hungry and too tired to talk, the men ate in silence, sopping up the chili with corn bread as the chatter of the walkie-talkie played in the background.
Every so often, Aubry would pick up the walkie-talkie to answer one of his men’s reports. The men had divided into teams of two, methodically checking each pasture. One team was checking the slough. But Louis knew the Archer Ranch was four thousand acres, and two of the bodies had been found off the ranch. The chances of finding anything were near zero.
Just before eleven, a report came in from one of the men that a horse had been injured and that the area around the slough was becoming too dangerous in the dark.
Aubry looked at Louis and keyed the walkie-talkie. “I don’t want anybody stranded out there. Bring them back in,” he said. “We’ll try again at dawn.”
Louis went in to check on the cat. When he returned to the living room, Swann was back at the wall, staring at David’s painting.
“That’s my favorite one,” Aubry said.
“Where did David do his painting?” Swann asked.
Louis thought it was a strange question. Aubry looked surprised, too.
“They’re oils,” Swann said. “Between that and the turpentine to clean up, it’s messy and smelly.”
“I let him set up a work space out in my stable,” Aubry said. “David stayed over here a lot.”
Louis turned back to the fire, for the first time noticing the three framed photographs on the mantle. The first was Aubry on a horse, the second a middle-aged couple and a small boy—Louis figured they were Jim and
Libby Archer with a young David. The last was a hand-tinted portrait of a young man in a western-style dress shirt and string tie. Clear blue eyes, sandy hair, strong jaw, and cleft chin.
He picked up the frame and turned to Aubry. “Is this you?” he asked.
Aubry hesitated and shook his head. “David. Last picture taken,” he said softly. “Libby loved that picture best.”
Louis put the photograph back in its place. He heard again that love in Aubry’s voice, for both the boy and his mother. He saw again the sadness in the man’s eyes. Anyone could plainly see that David Archer was the image of Aubry. Louis thought about asking the question that had been in his head for days, but how did you ask a man you barely knew if he was the real father of another man’s boy?
“You want to see his sketchbooks?” Aubry asked.
Louis caught Swann’s eye. There was no reason to look at David’s work. No reason at all, other than to let Aubry share something he had kept to himself for almost thirty years.
Aubry went to a battered footlocker tucked in a corner and came back with an armful of notebooks. He handed Louis a tattered tan book that cracked when opened to the first page. It was lined, like it was meant for practicing penmanship, but it was filled instead with childish doodles of horses and dogs.
The second book was an old wire-bound red book. Its plain pages, edges tinged yellow with age, showed more drawings of horses and cowboys, but the craftsmanship had grown more assured. As Louis flipped through the pages, he could almost see the boy becoming the artist.
The other books were more of the same, the sketches becoming increasingly mature as David graduated from pencils to charcoal and, in the last book Aubry gave Louis, to pastel chalks.
There were a few portraits—leather-skinned cowboys, a Seminole woman in her rainbow-colored native blouse, and a good likeness of Aubry in a blue shirt that matched his eyes.