Strawman's Hammock (17 page)

Barrett, Cricket, and Midge followed the game warden past the half-filled trailer and down a row of mature pines. A couple of hundred yards inside they found them, a crew of migrants racing to beat a coming rain, raiting straw like gold from the ground into heaps and pressing it by hand into portable balers.

The labor was arduous and simple. You thrust the pine straw by hand into the baler's roughly square mouth, leaned on the jerry-rigged lever to compress the straw into its shaped container. Once secured, bales were tossed onto narrow take-out carts that transferred them to the semitrailer where other Latin workers carefully loaded the finished product for transport.

There were probably a half-dozen balers working this morning, fed straw by perhaps twice that many rakers, men and women who pulled the straw into heaps beneath the shaded canopy. The laborers were all wearing flannel shirts, Barrett noticed. Something they would not do in hot weather. In hot weather balers and rakers stripped to the waist. That's when you saw the sign of pine needles scratching their arms and torsos. Which provided further evidence for Barrett that Jane Doe was killed sometime during the warm spell that had punctuated their November season.

“Cómo está?”
Barrett greeted the nearest Hispanic.

An upward lilt of the chin was the worker's only acknowledgment.

Then Jarold Pearson, to Bear's utter surprise, turned to the same worker.

“Quién es el jeffe? Por favor?
(Who is your boss, please?)”

“El Toro,” came the answer.

“When did you learn to speak Spanish?” Bear was amazed.

Jarold shrugged to hide a crimson face. “My wife was from Honduras.”

“I didn't even know you were married!”

The warden nodded. “Six years. Met her on a church trip. We'd go down twice a year, you know. Build 'em schoolhouses, clinics, and such. She died four winters ago. Want me to ask where we can find the foreman?”

“Thanks, Jarold. If you don't mind.”

The warden turned to a man baling straw. “(We are not INS, but we do need to speak to your foreman. Can you tell us where we may find him?)”

“Behind you.” A different voice, the English heavily accented but perfectly understandable. Barrett turned with Cricket and the game warden to find a man of average height, but his chest was enormous. And the skull, heavily browed, turreted back and forth as the foreman eyed the gathered Anglos. Just like a bull.

“What you want?”

“I am Special Agent Barrett Raines. And as Warden Pearson told your man here, we are not INS. We are not concerned with immigration.”

“(He says they aren't looking for illegals.)” The Bull relayed that information loudly to his workers.

“What was that chatter?” Cricket asked.

“He's just reassuring his people,” Barrett spoke up.

El Toro regarded Bear a moment.

“Hábla español?”

“Not as well as
mi esposa.”

A ghost of a smile seemed to threaten the Bull's face. He reached into his pocket. The tip of a jackknife's blade snicked open on the hem of his blue jeans.

“Easy, chief.” Cricket's hand went by instinct to his handgun.

The Bull ignored the warning, bending casually to cut a strand of offending wire from a bale of hay.

“Put away the knife for now, señor.” Barrett addressed the foreman in English.

“Sí.”
The knife disappeared. “And why do so many men with guns come to the pine trees? Out of work?”

An ugly laughter erupted, but forced, as if the men had long learned how to respond to El Toro's humor.

“Got a girl killed, señor.” Barrett closed the distance between himself and the barrel-chested Latino. “East of here. In an abandoned deer camp. We're hoping some of your people can identify her.”

“My people?” The foreman raised his eyebrows in an imitation of insouciance.

Bear didn't bite. “Mexican girl, we think. Eighteen to early twenties.”

Then Barrett showed him the sketch.

Suddenly every rake and baler was stilled. Like that moment when, before a heavy storm, birds quit their interminable chirp.

Barrett watched El Toro's face as he scanned the drawing. Nothing. Not a trace of interest or emotion shown No curiosity, either, which was not quite believable.

“I do not know her,” the Latin man declared.

“Have your men take a look, señor.”

He shrugged. “(They a have a picture. Some girl.)”

Barrett spoke up sharply. “(She is not
some
girl, sir. She is a Latin woman killed, we believe, by someone local. Perhaps someone who works here, beneath the trees.)”

“You think so?” El Toro replied in complete indifference.

“(I am sure you have papers, señor. But did you know that if your men do not I can send
you
back across the border?)”

Bear's threat was not entirely credible, but it had the effect he wanted. El Toro's open disdain faded with a degree of confidence. His face became vacant, impassive.

“(I did not hire these men,)” was all he said.

“The hell's he savin'?” Cricket could tell, even without translation, that Bear had quelled a Mexican rebellion.

“He's saying we can pass the picture around,” Barrett improvised.

“Tell him we don't need his fucking permission for that,” Cricket growled, to which the Bull offered a wide smile.

Not a single laborer recognized, or admitted to recognizing, the sketch of the murdered Latin woman. Some seemed barely to look.

“They're afraid to say anything,” Cricket told Barrett privately. “They're afraid of that damned foreman. You see him look at that sketch? Doesn't know the girl? Bullshit. He's a liar.”

“Yes, he is,” Barrett agreed. “And I've got a feeling there's a lot more to hide than what he knows about Jane Doe.”

“We could call in the INS. Threaten to deport 'em if somebody doesn't speak up.”

“You can only play that card once,” Barrett warned. “Let's just go easy. These workers know there's been a killing. They'll talk amongst themselves. Give it some time to percolate. In the meantime…”

“Meantime, what?” Cricket turned to see the new arrivals who blocked retreat through the row of pines.

A compact, confident man stood with his son, dressed well in pleated khakis and bomber jacket.

“Well, gentlemen.” Linton Loyd removed a pair of aviator glasses. “The hell gives you the authority to come out here?”

Barrett displayed the sketch. “You know her?”

Linton stood calmly. “Call Thurman, son. Tell him we got some trespassers out here.”

“That's a bluff, Mr. Loyd. We don't need a warrant to ask your workers, your son's workers, some simple questions. In fact, I don't need a warrant to question you, Linton. Or your son. You could call Thurman and waste us both a lot of time. Or, Linton, you might just cooperate.

“You want Gary off our to-do list? So do I. Let him answer some questions. What's wrong with that?”

“He's not answerin' shit.”

“It's all right, Daddy.” A gust of blue wind caught the straws clinging to Gary's receding scalp. “Ask anything you goddamn like, Bear.”

“Okay. Do you know this girl?” Barrett displayed the sketch to Linton's son.

Anyone watching would know immediately that Gary Loyd did in fact know the woman captured on paper before him. The ripple on his face, the suddenly averted eyes.

He knew her, all right. Barrett glanced for confirmation to Cricket.

Even so, Gary's was not the reaction of a sociopath. It was not the reaction of a man without empathy. It was the reaction of a man with a conscience. Was it a man in remorse? How did that fit Midge's profile of a coldblooded killer?

Barrett tried hard not to let generalities interfere with the specifics before him. There were many possibilities. Gary could be innocent of any wrongdoing. He could be innocent of the homicide, but know the woman's killer. Or perhaps the younger Loyd had simply taken Jane for sex.

“Never saw her,” Gary lied.

Barrett turned his attention to Linton Loyd, but the father remained as stoic and impassive during his son's interrogation as his bullish foreman had earlier.

“Who owns the baling company?” Barrett asked suddenly, and something like the tail of a whip seemed to strike the father's face.

“Gary does,” Linton spoke up tersely. “I'm just a silent partner.”

“Thought you started this business, Linton.”

“Daddy just owns part,” Gary spoke up. “I'm buying him out.”

“Any other details of finance you think will lead us to this girl's killer, Agent Raines?” Linton inquired.

“I just wondered,” Barrett shrugged, “how in a place this small, with all these Latinos buying phone cards from the same place up by the Piggly-Wiggly, getting their groceries from the town's one, solitary store, crossing each other's path day to day in these piney woods—why is it, d'you think, Gary, that not one of your workers can identify this woman?”

“I wouldn't know,” Gary responded guardedly.

Barrett smiled easily.

“Wouldn't be because you told them to keep quiet, would it, Gary? Or your foreman here? Mr. Bull.”

“His name is Roberto Quiroga,” Gary replied woodenly. “I don't know anything about a bull.”

Linton's jaw was white. “Is this the way you'd go about bein' sheriff, Bear? Comin' out here like this?”

Barrett found that the slow anger that had simmered even at this man's deer camp was now come to a boil.

“The fuck ever gave you the idea you were above the law, Linton?”

“You can't talk to me like that.”

“Hell I can't. You are attempting to influence an officer of the court, did you know that?”

“Bullshit.”

“But I'm about to let you off the hook, Linton. If I do ever decide to run for office in this county—that's
if
—I will be asking for your vote, and that is
all
I'll be asking.”

Linton spit a brown stream into the dirt between them.

“Easy to say now.”

“Yes.” Barrett felt the tension in his chest suddenly ease. “It is.”

Linton Loyd turned on his well-booted heel.

“We've wasted enough time here, Gary.”

Barrett watched as Linton and his son disappeared into a blind of needles and straw. Roberto “the Bull” Quiroga remained sullen and vacant from the box baler.

“They're hiding something,” Cricket declared.

“Yes.” Barrett nodded.

But what?

Within minutes Jarold was leading Barrett and Cricket out of the field. When they cleared the pines, Barrett took Jarold aside.

“What was your impression of Gary's foreman?”

“Bluffing. Hiding something.”

Barrett paused to consider that description.

“Jarold. I'm going to need your help.”

“Yes, sir.” The warden didn't hesitate.

“Can you keep an eye on Señor Quiroga? Nothing intrusive. Just see where he goes. You run into Latinos downtown or out here, just keep a friendly conversation, see what comes up.”

Jarold nodded. “I can do that.”

“You think the foreman might be tied to the killing, Barrett?” Cricket asked.

“I don't know.” Barrett shook his head. “I just got a feeling that we might have rattled his cage.”

“I'll keep an eye on him,” Jarold reaffirmed.

“Good.”

*   *   *

By the time Barrett and his companions returned from the Linton's straw-lease, Laura Anne's day was half over. It had begun routinely enough with Laura Anne picking up her folder for the day's assignments and heading for homeroom. A mere week of substituting put her back in the saddle. The rhythm of classes and buzzers and students claimed Laura Anne's entire focus. For hours she did not even think of the restaurant. That illusion rarely lasted. The restaurant had a way of intruding into her teaching day.

Laura Anne had to give a pair of young managers the responsibility of keeping the restaurant afloat during her leave of absence. The cell phone was a godsend, linking the owner to her young protégés, allowing her to send and receive messages and voicemail. Not to say there weren't snags. Splinter Townsend tried to charge thirty cents more a pound for mullet in Laura Anne's absence than he would have offered to her face. When notified of that increase, Laura Anne called Splinter directly and told him if he couldn't keep a decent price she'd just start buying direct from Esther down at the Bay and wouldn't that just upset a nice business relationship?

Splinter suddenly found profit in his originally agreed-upon price. Laura Anne could not help but notice that during her second-period class, Splinter's sophomore son kept looking over Edwina Land's shoulder during their algebra quiz. Like father, like son.

Third period was free—a curious term, for there was nothing free about it. When fully employed, Laura Anne used to cram lesson plans or practice sessions into her planning period. As a sub there were somewhat diminished responsibilities. She was headed for a cup of coffee in the lounge when a familiar voice stopped her.

“Hey, Laura Anne, is that you?”

Annie MacGrue was the elementary school's librarian, the only other African American on campus.

“Annie B. Yes, I'm here subbing.”

Annie cocked her hip coyly. “Don't tell me you're gonna give up the big money for a county paycheck? Don't even tell me that!”

“Actually, I'm considering it,” Laura Anne admitted.

“Our gain if you do,” Annie beamed. “Say, I'm just over here robbin' some toner for our Xerox. Why don't you come on over and let me show you my library?”

“Annie, that'd be nice. Long as I'm back in time for fourth period.”