The Little Death (17 page)
“I’m Burke Aubry, the foreman. You can speak to me.”
Louis came forward a few steps. “We understand the body was found by workers here. Can you tell us anything about it?”
“I already talked to that county cop,” Aubry said.
“You talked to Detective Barberry?” Louis asked.
Aubry hesitated and gave a curt nod.
“Mr. Aubry,” Louis said. “We’re not working with Detective Barberry. We’re private investigators. If we could—”
“I told you, I got nothing more to say,” Aubry interrupted. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you would just go away and leave us be.”
He started for the door.
“Mr. Aubry,” Louis said.
Aubry turned back, one hand holding open the screen door.
“Why didn’t you tell Detective Barberry about that other body five years ago?”
For a moment, Aubry didn’t move. Then he slowly let the screen close and came out to the edge of the porch.
“Five years ago, one of your men found a headless body just over the county line,” Louis said. “Why didn’t you tell Barberry?”
Aubry tilted up his chin, and the sun caught the mirrored sunglasses. “I didn’t tell him because he was disrespectful to Mrs. Archer,” he said.
Mel came forward. “Mr. Aubry, Barberry is a sonofabitch. He’s trying to make a case against a man we believe is innocent. These two murders might be related, and if they are, we might be able to prove our case. We could use your help.”
Aubry was silent, just staring down at both of them. “Thought you cop types all stuck together.”
“We’re not cops,” Louis said.
Aubry considered this for a long moment, then slowly came down off the porch. Up close, he was even
more imposing. His jeans were worn to white at the knees, his boots cracked with age. His denim shirt looked new, and there was a logo above the left pocket of a cowboy with the stitched words hunter whips. Around Aubry’s meaty neck hung a handsome multicolored scarf that Louis recognized as a Seminole Indian pattern.
“What do you want to know?” Aubry asked.
“Who found the body at Devil’s Garden?” Louis asked.
“Me and my other man,” he said. “We were rounding up some calves nearby.”
“Is that state land?” Louis asked.
Aubry nodded. “Yeah, Mrs. Archer sold off that parcel to the state about ten years ago. It’s about ten acres. They’re going to make a park out of it someday, I guess.”
“So, you wouldn’t normally be in that area?” Louis asked.
Aubry shook his head. “Nope. My men were just southwest of it. But one of the dogs smelled something and took off. We followed, and we got to that old cow pen down there, and the dogs were going crazy. I figured it was a dead boar, so we went in to pull the dogs away. That’s when we saw it.”
“You saw the body yourself?”
Aubry nodded tightly. “I told my man Dwayne to get the dogs out of there, and I radioed back to call the police.”
“Tell us about the first body five years ago,” Louis said.
“Not much to tell there,” Aubry said. “One of my men, Ron, was hunting down a cow—they wander far sometimes—and the dog had a scent, but it was just outside
our property and onto some state land. The state’s okay with us going, so Ron did. He found the body and called the Lee County folks, since that’s where he was.”
“The Lee County sheriff?”
Aubry nodded. “They asked Ron some questions for their report. We never heard from them again.”
“Does Ron still work here?”
“Nope. He passed on a few years back.”
Louis looked at Mel, but he didn’t seem to have any other questions, either.
“Is there anything else, Mr. Aubry?” Louis asked. “Any small thing you can remember might be helpful.” When the man didn’t say anything, Louis took a step toward him. “Mr. Aubry, the man they found five years ago—he had a sister. She’s still looking for him.”
Still, the man didn’t move.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said, and started away.
“Wait.” Aubry cleared his throat. “There’s something I didn’t tell the Lee County folks. I don’t know if it means anything now. I mean, I read in the papers that they never did find out who that man over in Lee County was, so I figured who would care?”
“His sister cares,” Louis said.
Aubry dropped his head for a moment. “Okay,” he said softly. “It was about a week after Ron found that body, and we were sitting around one night drinking. Ron got pretty drunk and broke down. I thought it was just, you know, having to see that body. I mean, I saw the one…”
His voice trailed off, and he wiped a hand over his face. “Anyway, the next morning, Ron came to me and
said he found a necklace near the body. He took it, and he said he felt real bad stealing something from a dead man.”
“Did you tell the police?” Louis asked.
Aubry shook his head slowly. “Didn’t see the point. I didn’t want Ron to get in trouble. The man was dead and buried. I didn’t know he had kin.”
“What happened to the necklace?” Louis asked.
Aubry hesitated. “I kept it. I don’t know why I did. But if you think it might help, I got no problem handing it over.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s at my place. It’s not far from Devil’s Garden. Why don’t you two ride over with me? We could stop at the old cow pen if you want.”
Louis was about to say that he and Mel had already seen it, but he realized suddenly that Burke Aubry could tell them more than any half-assed report Barberry had produced.
“We appreciate your help, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said.
It was only a mile or so to Aubry’s bungalow. They waited in the Jeep until Aubry returned. Aubry got in, uncurled his big fist, and dropped something in Louis’s hand.
It wasn’t just a necklace. It was a crucifix. And although Louis couldn’t be sure without checking, it looked like a match to the one Rosa said Emilio had given her.
“What’s the matter?” Mel asked from the backseat as Aubry started up the Jeep.
“I’ll tell you later,” Louis said, pocketing the crucifix.
They set off for the cattle pen, leaving the gravel roads
for the kidney-jarring terrain of the pasturelands. The warm air that rushed over their faces was thick with the smells of fresh earth, swamp water, and manure.
There didn’t seem to be any road, not even ruts. But Aubry obviously knew where he was going. As they bounced along, the landscape morphed from flat, yellow grass to clusters of humpbacked palmetto palms and then a gathering of live oaks. It was as if they had passed through three separate states in a matter of minutes.
“How much farther?” Mel shouted from the backseat.
Aubry pointed to a stand of trees in the distance. He said something, but his words were smothered by the wind. Finally, he pulled to a jarring stop.
Aubry hopped from the Jeep with the spryness of a much younger man. Louis and Mel followed. They trudged through heavy brush and waded across a shallow marshy river, its banks rimmed with cattails. The sun was low in the sky, giving Louis his only bearings. From what Louis could tell, they had come to the abandoned cattle pen from due south. There was no sign of the gravel road he and Mel had taken on their first trip here. From this direction, it looked very different from the rest of the land he had seen so far on the Archer Ranch. It was heavily wooded, mainly with the same live oaks he had seen back at the ranch house. But these trees were even larger, great, twisting black things swagged with Spanish moss, so thick and high that they blocked out the sun. It was like they had entered some strange primeval oasis.
“Where’s the road?” Louis asked, trailing Aubry through the high weeds.
Aubry pointed west. “Over that way. I brought us in the back, by way of one of the cow trails.”
“Cow trails?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, the ranch is cut through with scores of them. But you have to know where they are.”
“So, all the cowboys who work for you know how to get here without using the road?” Mel asked.
“Cowmen,” Aubry said.
“What?”
“Cowmen. We don’t use that word ‘cowboy.’ It takes a man to do this work. Got no use for boys here.”
They were at the back end of the old cow pen now. There was a small structure that Louis had noticed on their first visit. It was made of the same bleached wood as the fences, and its tin roof was rusted red. It looked like one good wind would blow it away.
“What was that for?” Louis asking, pointing.
“That’s where we did the branding, but this pen ain’t been used for near twenty years now,” Aubry said. He ducked under the rails, and they followed him into the large central pen strung with the yellow crime-scene tape.
“This is where we found the body,” Aubry said, pointing to the depression in the sand.
Louis couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses, but he heard the catch in his voice. Still, he had to ask.
“Can you describe things for us, Mr. Aubry?” Louis asked. “It might help.”
Aubry cleared his throat. “Well, like I said, we had to pull the dogs away first. That’s when we figured it was, well, it was a human we were looking at. There was blood everywhere. I mean, I’ve seen cows slaughtered, so blood doesn’t bother me. But this was…” He stopped, took off his sunglasses, and ran a hand over his face. “The head
was gone, and at first we thought one of the dogs had got it. But… well, it was just gone.”
“They found it later,” Louis said.
Aubry gave a tight nod. “That’s good, I guess.”
“Is there anything else you can remember?” Louis asked.
Aubry seemed to be staring at a spot on the ground. “The man, he was laying facedown, and he was naked. His back was all cut up like he’d been whipped.”
Louis flashed back to the two horses he had seen tied up outside the Archer house, to something coiled on the saddle.
“Mr. Aubry, do your men carry whips?” he asked.
Aubry nodded. “With all the trees and brush, ropes are about as good as skis in a desert. We use dogs and whips.”
“Did Barberry ask you about your whips?” Louis asked.
His clear blue eyes didn’t waver. “He saw that we carry whips, so he took the five we had. Then he asked me how many other men I had working for me. I said we had twenty all told. He ordered me to call them all in.”
“You were questioned?” Mel asked.
“Yeah, we were questioned.” He almost spat out the last word. “They made us all go in the bunkhouse, and they took statements. We were there all afternoon. Lost a full day’s work. Then about sundown, Barberry got a call. He came back and lined my men up and started yelling at them.”
“Yelling? About what?” Louis asked.
“Stuff like ‘You hate queers, boy? That why you whipped that little faggot to death?’ And then he—”
Aubry paused to draw in a deep breath. “Then he started in on Lee Marion, started accusing him of being queer. Lee’s kind of a little guy, but he sure…” Aubry paused. “Anyway, I almost had to pull a couple of my men off Barberry. Now, I had a tussle or two with the law when I was young, so I know you can’t win with those types. But that Barberry, he had no right to disrespect my men like that.”
Louis could pretty much imagine what had happened. Barberry had scored a lucky hit with Durand in the fingerprint database, and Durand’s record had popped up, complete with his prostitution arrest. From there, Barberry’s primitive brain needed little help in making the leap to hate crime. And Barberry was certainly mean enough to take it a step further and try to bait Aubry’s men with innuendo.
Emilio Labastide hadn’t been whipped, but the whip connection to the Archer men was too powerful to ignore. “Mr. Aubry,” Louis asked. “The twenty men who work for you now, were any of them here five years ago?”
“Almost all were. Except Ron. I told you that he died.”
Louis was quiet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aubry said. “But I know these men. These men work here and live here, some a long time. Some of them were here when Jim Archer ran things, and when Jim died back in sixty-five, they stayed on out of loyalty to Libby Archer. We’re like a family here.”
“People do things that surprise even their families, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said.
“I know that,” he said. “But you gotta understand
something. This place, this ranch, it’s almost like an island. We watch over each other here, and what happens in the outside world is almost foreign to us.”
Louis caught Mel’s eye.
“My men wouldn’t do something like this,” Aubry said. “And they sure as hell wouldn’t do it here.”
“Here? What do you mean?” Louis asked.
“Devil’s Garden,” Aubry said. “It’s Mrs. Archer’s special place—sacred is what she calls it—and all the men know it.” He shook his head slowly. “Not here.”
Louis watched him walk away, then turned to Mel. He could barely see him in the quickening dusk.
“Well, if nothing else, this trip got us twenty more suspects,” Mel said.
“Not if you believe that Aubry knows his men,” Louis said.
Mel shrugged and turned his face toward the faint ribbons of orange and pink resting on the dark blue horizon. Louis wondered if Mel could see the colors or if he simply sensed the beauty.
“You’re good at getting feelings about things,” Mel said. “What do you think happened here?”
Louis turned and looked back at the cow pen. The dark had descended, leaving only the black shapes of the fence and trees. All he could see now was a fluttering yellow tail of crime-scene tape.
There was no “feeling,” as Mel called it. There was nothing. Just cool air and silence.
