by Tom Lowe
The nurse smiled and did as ordered. Mrs. Brennen stared straight towards her son. The facial muscles were locked in a cruel vice grip, the mouth curved in a theatrical mask of sadness or horror as she was wheeled around and rolled into the distant catacombs of the estate.
I saw the boy guard enter the great room and whisper something in the ear of the security cowboy. He pushed the Stetson higher on his round head, nodded and marched towards the swimming pool. He came straight toward me.
“Excuse me, Mr. Brennen,” cowboy said. “I believe there is a mistake on the guest list. Mr. Hayes just arrived, he’s a little upset ‘cause he had to show an ID at the gate. Unfortunately, our new gate security didn’t recognize him.” Cowboy puffed up and turned towards me. “Mr. Brennen is this man part of the guest list?”
“No, he’s not.” The voice wasn’t from either of the Brennens. I knew who it was before I turned around and saw him.
Detective Mitchell Slater set a plate of half eaten pork ribs on the bar and used a plastic cocktail toothpick to pry a piece of meat from between his teeth.
THIRTY
Josh Brennen swallowed the remains of his drink and wiped his dark lips with the back of his wide hand. “You know this man?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Slater said. “Name’s Sean O’Brien. He’s a person of interest in a murder case my department is investigating.”
“You mean he’s a murder suspect?” Richard Brennen asked.
“He’s about as suspect as you can get. Ex-cop with a drinking problem and a thing for rough sex. Maybe he got a little too rough with a young girl. He figures if he can stir up enough diversion, then the state attorney won’t take it to a grand jury.”
Josh Brennen’s left jawbone moved like his teeth had come unglued. “So what the hell are you doing in my house, here with my friends?”
Slater said, “Probably followed me down, Josh.”
I said, “Don’t flatter yourself, Detective, but you did leave a trail.”
Slater looked at cowboy, then back and me. “What’re you talking about?”
“You haven’t investigated the obvious — where the victim’s lived. Who did they work for? Why were they killed? What’s the motive, Detective? But serial killers don’t need a motive do they? It’s about the power and the urge to dominate and kill. I find it interesting that these two victims were most likely migrants. Both probably working on a farm like this one and they died. No, they were murdered. Everything they dreamed about doing or becoming died in the hands of someone who enjoyed it. You’re not looking for cockroaches, you’re having drinks with them.”
Josh Brennen barked, “You’ve got thirty seconds to get off my property!”
I looked at Josh Brennen. His eyes didn’t break the stare, one lower lid drooping, runny with fluid. I said, “I can’t imagine someone trafficking in human beings as easily as a rancher sells cattle. That seems profoundly evil to me.”
“Daddy, don’t let this intruder get you riled up. Mr. O’Brien, I’m going to have you escorted off this property immediately.”
Slater said, “You’re outta line, O’Brien, and you’re about to be arrested.”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction both physically and socially. Break out the cuffs for me and the soundbite your candidate gives will be no comment.”
Renee Roberts, now looking a little more drunk, sauntered right toward me, her face glowing, damp from the humidity, her mouth puckered and blood red with lipstick and barbecue sauce. “Can a lady get a drink here?” she asked.
I started to walk around cowboy, and he stepped in my path. He stared straight at me, awaiting orders from either one of the Brennens. “Excuse me,” I said.
No effort to move. His breathing quickened, the gut moving like he’d just finished running up a flight of steps. I could smell the mints on his breath.
Josh Brennen said, “Why don’t you take our uninvited guest to pasture one? Show him the new stallion we bought.”
Cowboy reached out with one thick hand and grabbed me under the arm like he was trying to forcefully pick up a child. He squeezed hard, fingers digging deep into my left upper arm. I said, “Cute hat, bet your buddies with the spurs love you in it.”
He took the bait and swung at my head. I leaned back, his knuckles missing my face. Using both hands, I held his fist and leveraged it down with his weight the same time I was bringing up my knee. I hit him hard in the jaw. The sound was like wind catching a plastic garbage bag. I grabbed him by the ponytail and back of his belt, shoving him into the pool, the splash soaking a fat man holding a barbecue rib bone.
Cowboy’s Stetson floated in the center of the pool while he thrashed like a drowning man to the far side. Josh Brennen let fly a drunken string of obscenities, and the band cranked up a rendition of Proud Mary.
I entered the cavernous great room, followed Renee Robert’s laugh echoing from the walls. Mrs. Brennen sat in the dark, the light from the hall dissecting her face in shadow, the stiff skin frozen in a mold as if she wore a mask from a Greek tragedy. I nodded and continued moving down the hall, which now seemed like a maze. I felt a mist from the wall of water. Saw a half dozen koi breaking the surface, their mouths sucking in oxygen and bits of food like doughnuts bobbing in hot oil.
The night air was warm and smelled of fresh-cut hay and jasmine. The taste of rain was palpable in the thick air. A whippoorwill called out in the dark, its night song tranquil and beckoning. I didn’t know where I’d be the rest of the night. At that moment, though, I felt like I’d just traveled back through the looking glass.
THIRTY-ONE
I saw a tall figure approaching. The figure wore a Mardi Gras mask and pushed a dressmaker’s dummy in a wheelchair down a dark, brick alley. Homeless people rummaged silently through garbage spilling from cans, the trash littering the alley. Smoke drifted up from crushed boxes and food waste smoldering in a steel drum. Two homeless men stood by the open barrel, warming hands black from street filth. I ran down the wet, timeworn bricks. Running toward a police car at the far end of the alley. The pulse of cherry red light bounced off a wall scrawled with graffiti and a body lying in the rain. I couldn’t get my footing on the wet bricks. Slipping. Falling hard. The taste of blood across my tongue.
I sat straight up in the hard bed. My T-shirt was soaked in sweat. I looked around to gain my bearings. Sheets of rain drummed against the window, and the bluish light cast from the Lakeside Inn sign illuminated the room with a surreal feel of calm in the blue eye of the storm.
Earlier, around ten p.m., I had to wake the desk clerk to get a room. It was now 3:37 a.m. The air conditioner rattled, blowing lukewarm air that smelled like it came from a blow dryer with a burnt hair trapped inside.
The thin blanket reeked of stale cigarette smoke and clothes that had been kept in the trunk of a car for weeks. I climbed out of the cot disguised as a bed and stood next to the window. The motel was 1950s circa. All twenty rooms faced the parking lot, a lot dotted with potholes and flattened beer cans. Cigarette butts floated in holes pooled in rainwater.
The taste in my mouth was similar to wet ashes. At that moment, I wanted two ounces of Irish whiskey. I watched the skinny fingers of rainwater roll down the glass. The letters in the Lakeside Inn sign pulsated vacancy in a neon rain.
Dawn was still a few hours away, but I knew sleep wouldn’t come again tonight. The funk of the room was oppressive with the yellow walls, the burnt orange carpet spotted with cigarette burns, and the smell of night sweats that Clorox couldn’t erase.
I washed my face, brushed the taste of fungus out of my mouth, dressed, tucked my Glock under my shirt, and stepped out into the rainy indigo night.
* * *
Twenty minutes later I was driving down a desolate country road, watching lightning rupture the dark, sending a strobe of light across the fields of tomatoes and cucumbers. I glanced at the windshield wipers for a moment, wondering where the killer was at that instant. I was now a bounty hunter with no contract e
xcept the one I made to the girl I’d found.
I drove toward the migrant camp. I didn’t know why, but I just drove in that direction. Maybe the closer I got to where I thought the first victim came from, the more I’d find something that would fit in the puzzle. I felt that Gomez, Ortega, Davis and the Brennens were part of the chain of events that caused the deaths.
I pulled the Jeep off the road, parked it behind a small clump of pines, and walked in the rain toward the camp. Even in the drizzle, I could smell the odor of burnt garbage before I got to the migrant camp. I pushed my way through a perimeter of wet banana trees and scrub pines. All of the trailers, except the one I assumed was a store, were dark silhouettes.
I started to cross the road, which was muddy and flowing in torrents of rainwater, when I saw headlights coming. I ducked behind the dumpster and waited. An old pickup truck lumbered into the camp, its tires splashing through the mud and water. The driver stopped in front of the camp store. When the passenger-side door opened, the interior light turned on, I could see that three men were in the truck. One got out and unlocked the door to the store, entering and turning on the lights. The driver then drove toward the two converted school buses parked in a clearing between the rows of trailers.
A second pickup truck, a new model, drove into the camp. I could tell that Silas Davis was behind the wheel. A Lincoln Navigator, driven by Juan Gomez, followed his truck. He parked in front of the store and got out. His cousin, Hector Ortega, wasn’t with him. Gomez entered the store while Davis went from trailer to trailer, unlocking each door. Even in the rain, I could hear him shout. “Let’s go! People, get the hell up!”
A minute or so later, weary farm workers, stiff and tired, spilled out of their housing, walking to the buses, their diesel engines idling, fumes belching an acrid smell.
The night was yielding to light in the eastern sky. I slipped into the tomato fields behind the trailers and went about fifty feet down one row. I wanted to retrieve a few soil samples to have them tested. Just maybe I could prove the soil from the shoe Max found came from here. A remote chance, but worth trying.
I took a Ziploc bag from my pocket, knelt down and used my fingers to scoop some of the soil into the bag. I moved a few rows over and scooped up a handful of soil into a second bag. The gray clouds moved like giant tumbleweeds rolling through the sky, their bellies blooming with the pulse of scarlet hiding the morning light. The clouds opened to reveal a hint of sunrise, a ray of illuminating rows of tomato plants that seemed to stretch to the ocean. Then the opening in the clouds closed and the shawl of a brooding storm closed like curtains drawing around the fields.
Some of the plants were heavy with green tomatoes. I saw areas where a few tomatoes had dropped from the plants, scattered down the long rows.
Something stood out among the green tomatoes on the ground. It was red. A woman’s shoe. At that moment, it looked so small and so abandoned in this field of a false dawn.
THIRTY-TWO
I stood over the shoe for a closer look. Even through the rain had soaked the shoe, turning it dark red, this shoe was identical to the one Max had found. Here it lay, dirty and wet. I remembered what Leslie had told me about the other shoe missing from the evidence room. I used a small stick to lift the shoe out of its burial ground.
In the raw ugliness, I saw the hopes and dreams of a young woman left in a field. The glass slipper would never be returned and fitted on her petite foot, releasing her from bondage. That was the fairytale. The reality was a horror story. I lowered the shoe into the last bag I had with me. This shoe wouldn’t go missing.
When I entered the camp, Juan Gomez was coming out of the store. He held a Styrofoam cup of hot coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. He chewed and watched me walk up to him, holding the shoe in the bag behind my back. He was a bull chewing grass, staring at nothing beyond his limited vision.
My presence had a different effect on Silas Davis. He came out of the store, his eyes disbelieving and then glaring. His face snarled into a scowl. He bit into a beef jerky, ground it hard in his teeth, and washed it down with a Mountain Dew.
Davis said, “You some kind of psyco ex-cop? Comin’ in here all wet and lookin’ like a crazy fucker.” He crushed the can in his hand, tossing the can in the mud. “Hector ain’t here. So you lookin’ for somebody else to draw down on, huh? That why you got your hand behind your back?”
Slowly I held up the bag. Gomez looked like the last bite of doughnut wouldn’t go down his throat. “What’s that?”
“The woman who wore the matching shoe was murdered. This one came from your field. Less than fifty yards from where you two are standing.”
Gomez said, “We never seen it. Lots of red shoes. Lots of women. You won’t find our fingerprints on that shoe.”
“Maybe not. But this tells me she was here. It tells me you knew her. It tells me you both lied. I showed you a picture of her. How long did she work for you?”
“Did who work for us, man?
“You tell me!”
Davis bit into the beefy jerky, chewed, and said nothing. Gomez said, “No, we don’t know her, but there other camps besides this one. Many workers are women. Many coulda had red shoes.”
“She didn’t work the fields in a shoe like this. What kind of work did she do?”
Gomez said, “We don’t know who you’re talking about?”
“Yes you do! Her first name was Angela. I’m betting she was kept here against her will. What was her full name?”
Davis lifted a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began picking the meat out of his teeth. He said, “You can bet your white ass that my black ass would be burned if anybody tried to own anybody. Know where I’m comin’ from, dog?”
A dozen farm workers, men and women, walked past us. Heading for the buses. I noticed one man limping. I almost didn’t recognize him. He was the young man I’d seen yesterday, the one that stopped to speak with me, but never got the chance. His face was swollen, bruised in shades of purple. He looked at me for a few seconds before limping toward the bus.
I said, “Silas, you asked me if I know where you’re coming from. I think the image of that man tells me where you’re coming from. He needs medical attention. What happened to him?”
Gomez shrugged. “Probably got in a fight with one of his amigos. It’s something we have no control over. These men are highly competitive in the field. Each wants to be the next tigre. Sometimes they drink too much. Go crazy and start fighting.”
“I’m going to do three things—”
Davis interrupted, “Whatcha gonna do, ex-cop? Who you gonna call?”
“I’m calling an ambulance for that man. I’m running a DNA check on the toothpick you threw at my face yesterday. And I’m going to prove that one or both of you killed Angela.”
Silas Davis slowly removed the toothpick from one side of his mouth, looking at it like he was holding a diseased object.
Turning to walk to my car, I saw the second bus leave, filled with faces staring at the dawn. I heard Gomez open his cell phone. He spoke quickly in Spanish. The only words I could make out were something that sounded like ‘Santa Ana.’
THIRTY-THREE
The cell phone seemed to ring for eternity. It was as if an ambulance in the distance never passed. The phone stopped ringing and I opened my eyes, sunlight pouring in Jupiter’s salon like a roving spotlight in sync with the boat’s rise and fall of gentle wakes kicked up by boat traffic. I had a headache, but I felt better than when I’d arrived.
Earlier that morning, a little after nine, I’d made it back to Jupiter, poured myself a shot of brandy for breakfast, peeled off the wet clothes, and stretched out on the sofa in the salon. If I’d had dreams, I didn’t remember them. And I didn’t want to. I rubbed my temples and looked at my watch. It was almost four in the afternoon.
I stood and picked up the phone from the table where I’d left it next to the bottle of brandy. Checking the caller ID, I didn’t recognize the num
ber. I played the messages back on speakerphone while I stepped into the galley and poured a glass of orange juice.
The first message was from Leslie Moore. “Sean, are you okay? Please call me as soon as you get this message.” The next two messages were from Leslie, too, essentially saying the same thing, but each time with more of an edge in her voice. It would have to wait. I needed a hot shower to cleanse dried sweat, dirt and human misery out of my pores.
* * *
A half hour later I checked the pencil camera between the books in the master salon. It was working flawlessly, the images beamed to my laptop on Dave’s boat. I would give Nick and Dave a lesson in video editing, should I need their help.
I fixed a turkey and hot mustard sandwich and took it topside. There were a few hours before sunset, and the first bottom fishing boat in the fleet churned slowly back into the marina. From the fly bridge, I could see tourists’ faces in various shades of sunburn.
I wanted to phone my neighbor to check on Max. I’d tell him I’d be home, but at that moment, I didn’t know for sure.
“Hey, you don’t invite me over for a beer. That’s a violation of marina manners,” I turned around to see Nick standing next to Jupiter’s cockpit with a beer in each fist. “So, I say to myself…self, you go on over to Sean’s boat and show him what neighborhood watch means.”
“Come on up.”
Nick grinned and climbed the steps, making sure he didn’t spill a drop of beer. He handed me a Corona and sat at the console. “Salute!” he said. After a long swallow, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sean, how long you been on your boat?”
“Just got out of bed. Slept for the last seven hours.”
“Sounds like you got some kinda jetlag. You been out of the country?”
