A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  “I don’t know. I doubt he was walking along the highway—maybe he comes from the fields. But why would he be out here late at night?”

  His eyes searched the field, the road beyond it. “Doesn’t look like he’s left a vehicle behind.”

  Jenner leaned over the fence.

  “We should have a look on the other side.”

  Rudge tugged uneasily on the wire at the top of the fence, then turned to Jenner. “Doc, you get on over and have a look around, I’ll see what I can find up on the shoulder here, on this side of the wire.”

  Jenner found a stretch relatively free of shrubs, pressed the fence down, straddled it, and climbed over.

  He looked up and down the bank, felt himself starting to slip, and took a couple of quick steps down, his foot sinking into the soggy mud of the drainage ditch before he hastily stepped up onto the field.

  Cursing, he shook the water off his foot, then straightened and walked on the edge of the field, adjusting to the squelch of water in his shoe. He looked back up at the fence and stopped: the area where he’d climbed over was bordered on both sides by pretty dense shrubs and grass, but the greenery toward the right of where he’d crossed had been trampled and crushed.

  Someone had been there, had stood there.

  Jenner moved along the field until he was level with the flattened area.

  There was no question, this was the area where…where what? Where the victim had been…forced to drink insecticide-laced wine? The whole idea seemed like a stretch—who would do that in an attempt to kill?

  Maybe this was not some big mystery after all. Maybe this was just a suicide: some poor bastard, drinking by the fence, finds the insecticide, decides to pull the trigger, can’t face the taste straight so he mixes it with the wine, chugs it down, staggers out onto the road, passes out, bang, that’s all she wrote. Maybe Jenner was overreaching with the blood spatter. Maybe Cooper and Martin were right.

  So where’s the bottle? Organophosphates can kill within minutes: if the man had drunk it himself, the bottle should be nearby.

  Jenner looked up the slope. Nothing up there.

  Maybe the bottle was out here in the field. He looked over to the workers—perhaps one of them had found it. After all, they’d been stripping up the row covers and had already processed this part of the field, so if there was a bottle, they’d have come across it.

  Unless he’d drunk it out in his car, out on the road.

  But again, no car.

  Chances were that he’d have originally come from the feeder road, walked across the field and up onto the highway.

  Jenner scowled—any footprint evidence would’ve been tamped into the ground during the day as the workers had worked their way along the rows.

  He turned to look at the slope again, and froze.

  Not three feet in front of him, he could see visible blood spatter on the crushed leaves and vines at the bottom of the rise up to the highway.

  “Rudge!” Jenner took out his camera and bent forward. There was a single clot of dark purple-brown blood, perhaps an inch across, gumming several leaves together. As he stared at it, his eyes gradually resolved a halo pattern of sparse, irregular droplet spatter on the stems and leaves around the clot.

  He knew that, reduced to two dimensions in a photograph, the pattern would be too spread out and uneven to be visible, but he was sure it was real.

  And at the very least, the DNA analysts would have a field day with that little puddled clot.

  A raindrop hit his cheek, and he looked up in surprise.

  Within seconds, the rain was pelting down from a suddenly black sky, thick, cool drops spraying down, spattering and ricocheting off the leaves and the grass; Jenner felt he could almost hear the strike of each separate raindrop as it crashed down and destroyed his evidence.

  Before he could even react, the central blood droplet was soaked, the matted leaves springing apart, the blood dissolved and cast off.

  Out in the field, the workers looked up at the sky, then back down to the earth, and went on with their work, pulling up the row cover hoops and bundling the plastic.

  CHAPTER 58

  Rudge was calling Jenner from the roadside, his jacket held tented over his head.

  Jenner scrambled up the slope and climbed back over the fence. The detective was waiting, his cell phone in his hand.

  “I found blood spatter down the side of the trench there. I lost it when it started to rain, but…”

  Rudge interrupted him with a wave.

  “They ID’d the crash victim. It’s Adam Weiss.”

  Jenner stopped. “The kid who called in the bodies?”

  Rudge nodded.

  “Jesus.”

  Rudge nodded again. “You got that right.” They started toward the car together.

  “Christ.” Jenner stared at him. “So it is connected…”

  “Looks that way.” Rudge shook his head. “The sheriff’s shitting a brick—we don’t like it too much ’round here when the white folks start dying.”

  “How’d they ID him?”

  “The kid didn’t call for his dad’s birthday yesterday, so they called him up but he didn’t answer. Then today they saw the news…NYPD e-mailed us his driver’s license photo. Halvorsen took a look at the autopsy photos—he and Bartley took the kid’s statement the other day; Bartley isn’t so sure but Halvorsen says no two ways, it’s Weiss. Mom and Dad are coming down to look at him and make it official.”

  They climbed into the car, silent in the drumming rain; both had seen too many parents identify too many children.

  Rudge popped the glove compartment, handed Jenner a fistful of McDonald’s napkins, then took a fistful to mop his own face.

  “So what now?”

  Rudge shrugged. “Now you’ll get to see Florida’s finest in action…”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Po-lice work, Dr. Jenner. Sheriff wants me to go to the kid’s home, see what I can see.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Maggie looked at the dog Jenner had brought in.

  Even to a dog lover, it was a ridiculous, stumpy-looking thing. There might have been a splash of corgi, or one of the uglier terrier breeds, but not enough to nudge him into any category either familiar or desirable. With his stubby legs and a conical head that sprouted from a body the shape of a pot roast, he looked more like a root vegetable than a dog.

  She smiled at him, ruffled his floppy ears, and gave him a treat. The treat disappeared in a snap, the truncated tail waggling like a coin-operated mechanical toy.

  Maggie shook her head. The dog was washed and fed, dewormed, brushed, as polished as he’d ever be. But he was also full-grown, bulky, and free of charm; in a word, he was pretty much unadoptable.

  Except.

  Her eyes gleamed.

  The dog would be the perfect pet for a bachelor.

  CHAPTER 60

  Rudge and Jenner ate in the parking lot next to the taco stand, in the pouring rain. They sat in the Taurus, the engine running, the AC blasting icy gusts of mold-scented air into the greasy fug of carnitas and refried beans.

  Their visit to Weiss’s shack had been uneventful. The cops at the Bel Arbre substation met them at the cottage with the landlord, an excitable little man who peppered them with questions about selling off the boy’s things to cover the rent and the cost of the front door, replaced just that morning.

  The cheap wooden door had been locked, with no evidence of forced entry through the door or windows. The place was no messier than any other apartment lived in by a twenty-two-year-old male. Nothing broken or obviously out of place. A good-quality wristwatch sat on the bathroom sink, and there was a laptop out in the open on the table.

  There was nothing to see, but the case was high-profile, so Rudge had called in Crime Scene. They left the uniforms at the cottage to calm down the landlord, who was convinced the criminalists would tear up carpet and cut out sections of wall.

  Before opening hi
s dinner, Rudge set Weiss’s notebook on the dashboard, open to a list of eight names. Six of the names were ticked off, and of those, four had been marked with a star: UFL Tomato, La Grulla Blanca, Pinewhite’s, Endicott.

  Rudge said, “They’re farms.”

  Jenner nodded.

  They ate in silence, listening to the rain on the car roof, occasionally glancing at the list.

  After a few minutes, Rudge maneuvered the rest of his last taco into his mouth, cupping his hands around the tin foil to stop the juices spilling down his shirt. He wiped the corners of his mouth, then blotted his goatee.

  “So, Jenner. Anything you want to share with me?”

  Jenner looked at him blankly. “Such as…?”

  “I see.” Rudge, nodding gravely, squeezed the damp napkin into a ball and pushed it into the paper bag. “Well, I think we need to have a little talk.”

  “A talk?”

  “Yeah. Time I straightened you out on a couple of things.”

  They pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the highway.

  Jenner leaned back expectantly. “Okay. This oughta be good.”

  “So, you lived in the city most of your life?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Thought so. Well, Port Fontaine is different. Don’t let the Armani and Chanel stores down on the Promenade fool you—this is still small-town Florida, and everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jenner grinned. “I’ve seen stuff like that on TV.”

  “I’m serious. The whole of Port Fontaine—me, everyone at the municipal building, that fucker we just bought our tacos from—we all know all about your business.” Rudge turned onto the feeder road to the highway. “And don’t think I’m kidding.”

  Jenner was becoming wary. “Go on. This is interesting…”

  “Jenner, everyone knows you got with Chip Craine’s daughter.”

  Jenner froze. “But…but that was only…”

  “Last night? Sure, why not, whatever. But everyone already knows. Including the sheriff.”

  Jenner was puzzled. “So what if the sheriff knows? What, he’s going to enforce some weird sex law they still only have Down South?”

  “Weird sex law?” Rudge pursed his lips. “What exactly did you do last night?”

  When Jenner didn’t answer, he grinned, then said, “Y’see, this is what happens when you go poking little Jenner around without knowing what you’re getting into.” He shook his head.

  “Maggie Craine is a fine woman—very fine. And for that, by the way, mad respect.” Rudge paused, relishing his impending revelation. “But…she’s also Tommy Anders’s ex-wife.”

  “What? His wife?” Jenner couldn’t imagine Maggie and the sheriff in the same decade, let alone the same bed.

  “Oh, relax, player—this is years ago. She went away to college, grad school or something in New York, came back pregnant and single. She knew Tommy from the Polo Grounds—his daddy was a big deal back then. Tommy saw his chance, she said yes, and they got hitched. She dumped him a couple months after the baby arrived.”

  “Wow.” Jenner looked at the detective. “So why are you telling me this now?”

  “I figure it’s good to know when the guy you’re working for probably doesn’t like you too much.”

  “Are you warning me?”

  Rudge threw back his head and laughed. “No, doc, you’re on your own…Maggie Craine is a fine-looking lady, no doubt—you know Charlotte Rampling, the actress? That’s who she reminds me of. But just be careful with her, you know what I’m saying? She’s been with a few men here, and the landings are never easy—once I had to arrest her at that motel out by the Miccosukee reservation, had to take her out of there in handcuffs.”

  “Well, thanks for the heads-up.” Jenner looked at Rudge. “I don’t know what’s going on. I thought she’d have called me by now.”

  “You call her?”

  “No.”

  Rudge shrugged. “Well…”

  He grinned, then gestured to the road ahead. “It’s getting late—let’s hit the list. UFL first, then La Grulla Blanca on the way home.”

  “Why those two?”

  “Weiss may have visited these farms on Workers’ Solidarity business, but we know he’s been doing his own investigation, and these are the last names he wrote down.”

  Jenner looked at the list. “I’m betting he’s ticked off farms he’s visited, then…what, put asterisks next to the ones that made him suspicious?”

  “Maybe.” Rudge settled back against the headrest. “This is where it might get a little tricky. These are some big properties—big money here, know what I’m saying?”

  “UFL Tomato has been in the news all year. Workers want a nickel more a bushel, the company and the fast food chains say no way. Last November, the WSM held a meeting to organize the workers. Maybe twenty showed up; when they were all inside the WSM building, someone blocked the door with a chair and tossed in a Molotov cocktail.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, we figured it was UFL Tomato, but no one saw anything, no one said anything, and the fire marshal finally shit-canned it. We tossed it to ATF, but they had nothing to go on and buried it a couple months later.”

  “So UFL is high on the list?”

  Rudge shrugged. “Eh. Maybe. But you gotta figure it’d be a pretty risky play for a company already under the microscope.”

  “And the other three?”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  They drove on.

  CHAPTER 61

  The UFL visit could’ve gone better. The farm manager mistook Jenner and Rudge for a state inspection team due that day; he greeted them extravagantly at first, then, when the true purpose of their visit became clear, shunted them into an outbuilding, where they waited for twenty minutes until a foreman arrived with a pale, harried-looking lawyer sweating through his gray worsted-wool suit.

  It was a painful process. Every question Rudge asked was run by the lawyer before the foreman could answer; the lawyer had no understanding of the day-to-day workings of the farm, and the foreman’s English was terrible.

  After half an hour, Rudge had had enough; he excused himself to use the bathroom.

  Jenner waited under the eaves of the grain house and looked out over the fields, watching the farm machines move slowly through the drizzle. Near the central farm buildings, most of the land was freshly tilled, dark and rich, and narrow red vehicles with insect-like limbs crawled across the soil, small groups of farm workers following like drones.

  Rudge called his name and they moved on, the lawyer, foreman, and detective all hugely relieved. There was one odd thing, though: Jenner had the distinct impression that two of the Mexican farmhands had been watching them. The impression deepened when they got back into Rudge’s car; one of the men pulled out a cell phone and made a call as he watched them drive away.

  North of Bel Arbre, the land got wetter. They crossed a low bridge over a channel dug through mangrove swamp, the twisted branches and trees knotted dense and thick, the water gray as old tin. The late-afternoon sun appeared in a fissure in the clouds; the rain-washed tarmac was sleek and black as a new tuxedo, the fields and trees streaming by on either side a vibrant pale green, as if they’d just burst from the earth.

  La Grulla Blanca was north of Bel Arbre, wedged between I-55 and the Everglades. They were waved past the gatehouse, under a high white arch painted with the farm’s name in block letters. They followed the long drive to the main farmhouse, a white clapboard affair with green shingle roofs and shutters, a deliberate echo of the Polo Grounds clubhouse.

  The drive divided the property into a big upper field and a smaller lower one. The property, built on earth dug to create a boat channel through the swamp, sloped gently down to the waterfront, hemmed in by the dense press of mangroves stretching off to the west, toward the Gulf of Mexico. Next to the farmhouse, at the top of the low rise, were two bunkhouses and the remains of a demolished barn.
The lower field tilted down to a boat shed and dock on the water.

  On the upper slope, there were two open structures with corrugated tin roofs over poured concrete floors; metal slop troughs lined the single full wall in each building. A smaller enclosed building nearby was a miniature of the farmhouse, with the same white clapboard walls and green-shingled peak roof, down to a small version of the tin rooster weathervane. There was a white picket fence around the building; as Jenner watched, a flap door opened and three small pigs trotted out. Everywhere, hoses sprayed mist for the pigs, which tromped the water into the earth and lolled in the cooled mud.

  They were met at the farmhouse by the manager, Mr. Brodie, a dour man in blue-and-white La Grulla Blanca–logo polo shirt and cap, and the farm overseer, Mr. Bentas.

  They introduced themselves, but before Brodie could even begin to speak, Rudge turned to Bentas and said, “Sir, I have to inquire if you have a concealed carry permit for that pistol.”

  Brodie flicked the back of his hand toward Rudge, as if he were waving away a card at a blackjack table. “Detective, of course Mr. Bentas is licensed. We have a problem with snakes here, copperheads and rattlers, especially in the cleared land, and last year we lost a pig to gators.”

  “Mr. Brodie, I support the right of our agricultural workers to superior firepower, I surely do. But the concealed carry permit? You’re telling me Mr. Bentas needs to get the drop on a gator?”

  “Glad to see you have time to joke, detective—you find this funny?” Brodie tipped his head to one side and spat, the white ball landing two feet from Rudge’s foot.

  Rudge stiffened and grew still, his eyes small and black in his wide face. His head dipped slightly and he peered up at Brodie from under a heavy brow.

  Brodie continued, “Mr. Bentas accompanies the payroll deliveries to the farm every Friday. He needs the weapon—Bel Arbre can be a dangerous town, particularly ’round payday. As you know.”

  He spat again.

  Jenner quickly said, “So, we’re here…”