Strawman's Hammock (16 page)

“Oh, yes! Lordy, lordy. She was a purty thang.”

A groan acknowledged that vision, and fear. What manner of witch could see the dead?

Hezikiah opened her eyes.

“She was purty. She was full o' life. Why cain't she rest easy? Can you tell me why?”

He trembled as he shook his head. “No! I cannot say it!”

Hezikiah chewed over the first of the pecan shells that daily stained her teeth.

“You wanta repent? You wanta 'pease her spirit?”

“Sí!”
He bobbed his head. “And make her a shrine.”

A bitter wind whistled through the cypress shack. A pair of shingles chattered on the roof. Hezikiah hesitated a long moment, which was in its own way disturbing. Her instincts had never been wrong before. She had always known what to do. A pair of bleach bottles clanged in the wind like windchimes. Just a pair of bottles broken at the neck and strung with a twist of clothes hanger. Their bell was jarring, dissonant.

“We used to make syrup, days like this,” the ancient woman declared absently. “Usta boil it in a open pot and pour it in whiskey bottles.”

El Toro waited for her prophecy or vision to pass. Hezikiah noticed him, finally.

“Whutchu doin' on my steps?”

He nodded to the crucifix still in her bony hand.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” Her fist closed like a talon. “You need to repent. Is that it? Repent?”

“Sí.”
His head bobbed like an apple in a barrel. “Repent. Confess! Give her peace.”

The witch cocked her head to one side to regard him. Bloodshot eyes.

“Take down yer britches,” she said finally. “I give you somethin' to repent about.”

*   *   *

Sheriff Lou Sessions was abiding by the letter of Judge Blackmond's ruling, if not its spirit. Barrett Raines, Cricket Bonet, and Midge Holloway were required by the sheriff to brief him twice weekly on their progress. Sessions had the three agents seated like satraps in his bunkered office, shivering in the insufficient warmth generated by a radiant heater thick with dust. Barrett had just presented the sketch of Jane Doe to the county's top dog. The sheriff seemed singularly indifferent to that effort.

“And where'd you get this?”

“Dr. Nguyen Tran.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Pound Lab, Sheriff. University of—”

“I know where the Pound Lab is.”

Cricket Bonet pointed a freckled hand at the composite. “Midge busted her ass to get us that sketch, Sheriff. Otherwise—it could have been weeks before our turn came.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful?”

“Courteous would suffice,” Midge replied cooly.

“My argument ain't with you, Midge.”

“Well, it sure as hell isn't with me.” Barrett stood from his folding chair. “Lou, did it ever occur to you that I might actually want to see you get credit for busting this case?”

“You do, huh?”

“It is FDLE policy
always
to give the sheriff credit, Lou,” Cricket pointed out. “That's how we stay so popular. Not to mention invisible to civilians.”

Lou allowed a grudging smile in reply.

“Fair enough.” He dropped the sketch into an outbasket. “I'll have 'em make copies.”

“You're welcome.” Midge's sarcasm gained no rejoinder. “And have you had a chance to go over the autopsy?”

“The dog's what killed her.” Sessions shrugged. “Why else would he have been watered? Why else would she have been left for him?”

“She could have been killed any number of ways before the dog,” Midge disagreed coldly. “But as it happens, the report confirms your first impression. The dog was responsible. He didn't go for her neck, at first. She was hung too high. So the animal fed first on her torso. The softer tissues. Shock and trauma followed. Essentially she bled to death.”

“Sounds about right.” Sessions nodded. “But 'til you get me a complete analysis of the DNA there's not much more here for me to use.”

“No?” Barrett tried to keep all vexation from his voice. “The woman had repeated cases of veneral disease. A recent episode of gonorrhea. Her vagina was lacerated, consistent with a repeated rape or abuse with an instrument. There was a residue in her vagina which turns out to be a plaster of local herbs and soil, administered apparently as a kind of home remedy.”

“That helps me?”

“Well, it is the year 2001, Sheriff. How many people still treat the clap with dog fennel, chinaberry root, and straw?”

“Not Gary Loyd. That's for damn sure.”

“The woman also was HIV positive.” Midge finished her summary gruffly. “I suppose were I a detective I might imagine someone wanting to wreak vengeance on a woman who gave him AIDS.”

“If Gary Loyd's HIV positive, we'll have his ass,” Lou agreed.

“Sheriff.” Barrett leaned forward. “I want to nail Gary down on this thing, I really do. For one thing, even if he wasn't at this particular scene, he clearly knew about the location. He may well know some of the other people who on some kind of periodic basis appear to have visited the scene. But I think it's very dangerous to try and hang this case on any single smoking gun.”

“That's a nice cover-your-ass.” Lou's chair squeaked in his dungeon office.

“Not at all,” Barrett responded quickly. “But take this business about venereal disease—that'd be enough motive for lots of men to kill, not just Gary.”

“And then there's the crucifix,” Midge chimed in.

Lou waved her off. “You already bent my ear on that one. If a Mexican did it, I'll be happy to run his ass in. But I don't know any Mexicans driving vehicles of any kind into Strawman's Hammock. Let alone a Humvee.”

“Well, you've lost the Humvee and everything in it. So now you're down to betting that something off the victim's remains will tie her to Gary Loyd.”

“Hair, fiber, semen. The girl did have semen, 'cording to your boy's report, Midge.”

“Semen, yes. And from more than one man.”

“So. She was gang-banged. Or pulling a chain. Doesn't mean Gary wasn't there to rape and kill her.”

“All her possible partners had that opportunity,” Cricket objected. “And supposing the sex was consensual?”

“Consensual?”

“All Midge can say is that there was intercourse with multiple partners. She can't say for sure whether the victim was raped. The signs consistent with rape are also consistent with vigorous sex. Or S&M.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Lou threw up his hands.

But Midge persisted. “It is a possiblity. Harder to make, I grant you, because of the condition of the body, but these photos…”

She fished a pair from the thick file on Lou's desk.

“… come from the extremities still handcuffed to the wall of the shack. See these bruises here? On her wrists? Those are handcuffs. But there are older wounds inflicted with much softer ligatures beneath and on her arms that I suspect are related to some kind of bondage scenario. That's just my guess. But definitely the woman had been tied up before.”

“So maybe this time things just got way out of hand?” Lou scoffed. “Is that what you want me to believe?”

“No, Lou.” Barrett tried again. “Midge is just trying to say how this thing might have started—how the victim might have met her killer. Or pissed him off. Or given him AIDS—who knows! But it does tell us this woman didn't mind walking on the wild side, and it implies that a number of probably local men can identify her if we
just get the damn picture out!”

The chair groaned under the sheriff's weight.

“There's one other detail in this-here report. Something I'm not sure that any of y'all FDLE sleuths happened to notice.”

Barrett took a deep breath before replying, “If you can help us, Lou, I'm sure we'd both appreciate it.”

“There's the straw.”

“The straw?” Barrett frowned. “You mean the straw in her vagina?”

“Nope. In her hair. And those welts you mentioned, Midge? Those long, regular ones along her arms? I've seen that kind of sign before. Comes from working in straw.”

“But there's straw all over the Hammock,” Bear responded.

“There's straw, yes. But what kind?” Lou rocked in his easy chair. “See, that's yellowheart pine on the crime scene. Loblolly. Original growth. That's what was mixed up in whatever godawful mess they found inside the victim. But the straw they found in her hair? Came off slash pine trees. Hybrid pines. Am I right, Midge?”

Midge was astonished. “I don't know.”

“No?” Lou rose from his desk. “But I do. Y'see, there's other folks in that Pound Lab besides gorilla hunters. And those folks, they gave me some real information. Something I can use.”

“Be nice if you shared the information with us,” Barrett remarked.

“Why we're havin' these little get-togethers,” Sessions smiled. “You look and you'll see that the straw in that girl's crotch came from the Hammock. But the straw in her hair didn't. Now, I'm just a country-boy sheriff, but I'm thinking to myself, what besides screwin' puts pine needles in a woman's hair? And what kind of work scratches yer arms? And then I ask myself, where can you find Mexicans working?”

Sheriff Sessions retrieved the sketch with one hand, handed it to Barrett. “'Bout five crews working at present. Gary Loyd's got a gang raking 'bout five miles out towards Oldtown. Back in the woods deep. 'Course
I
cain't go near the place.”

“Spare a deputy?”

Lou smiled. “Nope.”

“It would be better if we could work together on this thing, Sheriff.”

“What I thought, too. But the judge, why—he sees it different.”

“That's a pitiful fucking excuse.” The roots of Cricket's hair now sprouted in a scarlet scalp.

“What'd you say to me, Agent?”

Lou was coming to his feet. This is what the bastard wants, Barrett realized. He
wants
to make us fuck up.

“Agent Bonet made an excellent point,” Barrett intervened smoothly. “But it's no problem, Sheriff. I believe I know a man can get us where we need to go.”

Nine

Jarold Pearson knew exactly where Gary's latest crew baled straw.

“Land used to be owned by a dairyman.” The game warden picked up Barrett and Cricket at Shirley's Homestyle Cafe and loaded them into his Chevy off-roader. “St. Regis tried to buy it years ago. There was some kinda' bankruptcy. Gary got it on auction. Put it in pines. First stand to bale in the county.”

“So it was Gary's idea to get in the straw business? Not Linton's?”

Jarold nodded, his eyes steady and alert in their narrowed cranium.

“Linton's run that boy all his life. Took credit for everything Gary ever did, or tried to do. But this straw business—that was the boy's notion. The only thing, really, he can call his own. Half his own, anyway.”

*   *   *

Something like eighty percent of the land area in the county was now planted in slash pine trees. For years Barrett Raines had watched as farm and cattle land was replaced with long, regular rows of resined timber, cultivated mostly for conversion into pulp and paper products. At first the stands were seeded almost entirely by large milling companies—St. Regis, Buckeye—and these out-of-county employers were still the dominant economic force in the region, bigger by far than the prison.

But as grow crops like tobacco and peanuts and melons became less profitable, smaller farmers began to put their twenty and forty and then their hundred acres of fallow ground into pines. Within ten years or so, a cut of timber could be expected to yield a modest income. Nobody then was thinking about straw.

Straw served two basic consumers—plant nurseries needing mulch for their infinite variety of annuals and shrubs, and contractors needing material to control erosion along highways or large commercial sites. Nurseries preferred to get straw in bales. But unlike the eighty- or hundred-pound bale which used to be common in hayfields, pine straw was baled manually to produce a wired bundle barely twenty pounds in weight. A standard forty-eight-foot truck-hauled trailer hauled 912 bales of straw. Some owners extended their trailers to fifty-three feet. That bumped you up to 1008 bales of straw.

The landowner made anywhere from seventy to a hundred dollars for every hundred acres of pine he leased. The baling company made roughly a thousand dollars profit per trailer. The men and women who raked, stacked, baled, and loaded the straw got roughly a quarter a piece. Twenty-five cents for each bale of straw. You didn't have to be an accountant to figure out who made money on the deal.

The game warden's Tahoe rumbled out toward the city limit to pass the town's solitary and elevated water tower.
GO HORNETS
!!, read the scarlet scrawl.

Two miles later and seventy miles an hour, you could get dizzy watching rows of pine flash by. Flickering, almost. Like canned footage of a silent movie.

Other crops, tobacco, melons, required pipes and pumps for irrigation. But there was no irrigation to worry about when you planted pine trees; pines survived where anything else would parch. You put 'em down, mowed the long, straight rows until they got a start. Then you waited eight or ten years to cut your timber. That was about it. Until Linton and Gary Loyd started the business, no one gave a second thought about that other product of the pine tree, the needles that fell to sweetly carpet the ground below.

Barrett loved the smell of pine straw on the ground. The morning's cold, damp weather heightened the aroma. The norther that had blown in the evening before threatened rain. Barrett recalled Matthew Arnold's description: the air truly was low as lead. Jarold Pearson pulled the Tahoe off the farm-to-market road, skirting a culvert to park beside a semitrailer. A pair of Latin men tossed bales of straw from a narrow, two-wheeled carry-out into the trailer where a stacker packed the straw in tiers of gold. The workers kept their eyes caged.