The Cutting Season (20 page)

He pulled his necktie from his pocket, sliding the ready loop over his head. “I’m just going to talk to him, get some information from the detectives,” he said, adjusting the knot at his throat, above which dark hairs were coming in on his chin. He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning, hadn’t thought the day would lead to this. “I don’t pay bar dues to the state anymore. I’m not licensed to practice here. But, hell, maybe they won’t ask. Later, I’ll make some calls, try to find him a real lawyer. If this is a murder rap, he’s going to need a criminal lawyer, Caren, not someone like me.”

He started for the doors to the station.

Then, he stopped suddenly. “You’re sure about this kid?”

“Yes,” she said, even though she wasn’t.

It was only a strong hunch she had that this case was going in a wrong direction. She waited in the parking lot while Eric went inside. She was not family or counsel and was therefore not allowed to see or speak to Donovan. Instead, she sat on the hood of her Volvo, resting her boots on the dented bumper. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Finally, she crossed to a pay phone outside the courthouse and called over to the kitchen at Belle Vie. The news about Donovan had spread, and Lorraine sounded alternately outraged and then helpless as she asked what they were doing with her Donnie. Caren related what little information she had, plus the fact that Eric was inside right now, talking to the cops. Lorraine seemed touched by Caren’s willingness to help Donovan, impressed that she’d known just who to call, telling her for the first time in four years, “I’m glad you come home, baby.”

Standing outside the courthouse, Caren smiled to herself.

“Thanks, Lorraine,” she said, touched.

Lorraine promised to keep everyone there in line until she got back. This, too, made Caren smile. She hung up the line, then dropped a few more coins in the machine, checking in with Letty at the plantation’s library. Twice, she tried to get a hold of Betty Collier, but there was no answer at her house at all.

Behind her, the doors to the courthouse opened.

Eric came out, breathless and worked up.

“They’re holding him on a trespassing charge.”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s all bullshit,” he said, walking toward his rental car, a blush-colored sedan that didn’t suit him. “They don’t have enough to hold him on a murder charge. They’re just buying themselves some time. They’re not setting a bail hearing until they can get an arraignment judge to the courthouse and that could be as late as Monday.”

Caren was walking a few steps behind him. “Trespassing?”

Eric opened his driver’s-side door. “Donovan seems to be under the impression that you were the one who called the police on him.”

“
Me?
”

“He didn’t even know they were Homicide. Before I got here, he had already told them he was on the plantation after hours the night that girl was killed,” Eric said, shaking his head at Donovan’s colossal stupidity. “He told them he’d copied a key, told them he was on the plantation without permission, working on some school project.”

“A
school
project?”

“He was in there digging his own grave for hours,” he said, nodding toward the courthouse and the sheriff’s station inside. “He got scared and just started talking.”

“Wait—Donovan said he was at Belle Vie on Wednesday night?”

She had been emphatic, indignant even, when she assured Lang that Donovan was most certainly not on the grounds the night Inés Avalo was killed. Donovan sat right in her office and told Lang and Bertrand that he wasn’t anywhere near Belle Vie, and she had backed him up. It was one more thing likely to turn Lang against her.

“He told the cops he was at school,” she said.

“He swears he
was
at school . . . at least by the time they think that woman was killed. He admits to being on the plantation but says he left before midnight and went straight to River Valley Community College, and he says he can prove it. He is adamant that he’s never seen the Avalo woman in his life.”

“I want to see the arrest report.”

She wasn’t sure they could get away with a trespassing charge, not without the owners of the property making some assertion that Donovan had indeed entered without prior permission.

“I don’t have it,” Eric said, arriving at his rental car.

“You didn’t ask to see the cops’ report?”

It came out rougher than she’d intended, as if she were challenging his skills, his knowledge of the very basics of criminal law. And it didn’t go over well with Eric. “Jesus, Caren, I wasn’t going to go in there asking for discovery items, and I’m not even the boy’s lawyer. I’m not licensed to practice here, and last I checked neither are you.” It was a warning to back off. Caren, stung, fell stone silent.

Eric stuck his key in the ignition. “That kid is in a lot of fucking trouble.”

He cranked the car’s engine.

Across the parking lot, Caren heard another car engine start in chorus. She turned to see a late-’90s Saturn four-door, marine-blue and dented across the front end. Lee Owens was behind the wheel. The
Times-Picayune
reporter had been sitting in his car for the better part of half an hour, she realized, the whole time she’d been waiting in the parking lot. He was wearing the same rumpled clothes from last night, the same ball cap with the name of a jazz club stitched in gray.
SWEET LORRAINE’S
in New Orleans. He’d been watching the doors of the courthouse this whole time.

Eric put his car in gear.

“Where are you going?”

“To check at the school,” he said. “To see if he’s telling the truth about any of it. If I’m going to call in a favor for him, then I at least want to know what the hell I’m talking about.” He was about to close the driver’s-side door. “You coming?”

She turned back to see Lee Owens leaving the parking lot. She saw the tail end of his blue Saturn pulling out onto Irma Avenue. “No,” she said to Eric, heading toward her Volvo. “I’ll meet you at Belle Vie later.” Eric nodded without asking any questions. She’d seen him this way before, calm and focused, intent on getting his mind around some complicated puzzle. He didn’t have all the wayward pieces at hand, but he seemed to grasp that something here was off. They pulled out of the parking lot at the same time, Eric turning left, and Caren heading to the right, pushing her eleven-year-old car up to fifty miles an hour, trying to catch up to Owens . . . just as the streetlight on Irma Avenue turned green. She followed him all the way out of the town of Gonzales. She wanted what Owens had, whatever secret knowledge about Hunt Abrams and Groveland’s many “problems” the reporter was holding in his possession.

They crossed the Sunshine Bridge over the Mississippi, Highway 70, and drove straight into the town of Donaldsonville, Owens turning onto Albert Street, then again onto Lessard, just a few blocks from the town center. She lost sight of him along the way, when her car got caught behind a truck traveling with a haul from a nearby farm, its bounty hanging out on all sides. She could smell the cane, like cut grass and sweet milk, damp and terrestrial, the scent of southern Louisiana. The truck’s tailwind blew through the open windows of her car. When she finally managed to pull around, she didn’t see the reporter’s car anymore. But by then, she thought she knew where Lee Owens was headed. She gunned her engine, trying to catch up.

15

T
he Feast of St. Joseph Holy Trinity Church sat on the south side of Lessard Street. Caren remembered it from the photograph, the one Detectives Lang and Bertrand displayed in her office, the snapshot of Inés Avalo and the dark priest, she in a bright dress, those star-shaped earrings catching the sunlight. She was smiling then.

The church was small and built of shale stone and painted wood. Its one front-facing window was a high arch of colored glass set in beveled panels, displaying the image of a cross beneath a yellow sun. Caren sat quiet for a moment, staring at the color and light, the way the shifting clouds made play of the sacred scene. She didn’t see Owens’s car, not on the street or in the parking lot next to the church, which was paved with crushed oyster shells and outlined by a rusting chain-link fence, the gate of which was propped open with a loose brick. She’d lost him somewhere on the drive. He was nowhere in sight. But as she sat now, alone in her car, he almost felt like an afterthought. Strange as it seems, she felt as if the church itself had called her here.

St. Joseph’s was not particularly pretty, but it was quaint and welcoming. The front lawn was dotted with wet, fallen leaves from a pecan tree overhead. The double doors were made of arched wood, with twin cast-iron knockers on either side. And just to the right, beside the church’s two front steps, sat a tiny, bare-limbed birch tree, its branches adorned with glass bottles of cobalt and sea green, red and ginger brown, all of them in the shape of old soda bottles. It was an unexpected sight, nestled here at the threshold of a Catholic church; it was the kind of thing you could still find in the back swamps, in the desolate, rural haunts of deep Louisiana, parts of which seemed untouched by time and the march of history. The origins of the bottle tree were African, Helen had once told her; it was a folk tradition brought to this country by slaves, who, working with whatever materials were at hand, devised a crude method of catching and trapping malevolent spirits, to prevent their passage through human doors. The colored glass chimed in the light afternoon wind, its empyreal music calling. Caren answered the sound by opening her car door.

She crossed Lessard on foot, stepping into a cold wind that wrapped itself around her arms and legs. Her cheeks flushed, and she felt a dull ache in her chest the closer she got to the front steps. She hadn’t been inside a church since her father’s funeral—a cold February morning during Morgan’s second year. After the church ceremony, she and Eric had stood awkwardly in the family home, where she finally met her brother and sister, and six of their kids, one of whom looked remarkably like Caren. They’d left before the food was served, when it was clear that her presence was making everyone uncomfortable. She had tried, at least. She had tried to do right by at least one of her parents. Missing her mother’s funeral was something Caren never got over.

She was careful to wipe her boots before going inside the chapel.

The doors opened directly onto the sanctuary, so that there was no place for Caren to gather herself, to prepare for what she saw when she stepped inside. Down the center aisle, just below the velvet-draped pulpit, was a casket. It was made of bleached pine, with rose stems carved on all sides. The coffin’s top was open, and inside, peaceful as a sleeping child, lay Inés Avalo. She was in a white lace dress that buttoned to her chin, covering the injury that took her life. She looked stiff in white, like a nervous bride, unsure of what awaited her on the other side of this one life-changing day in church. She was nearly swallowed up by the layers of pale satin lining the casket. But even from here, Caren could see her naked earlobes. The sight of them made her knees weak. She reached for the nearest pew to steady herself. She lowered her body onto the wood, hearing it creak beneath her. She sat perfectly still, as if she were afraid she might wake her.

“I thought you said you didn’t know her.”

Caren turned sharply.

She saw Lee Owens, sitting in the pew directly behind her. Like a good Catholic, he had removed his hat in the church sanctuary. With his free hand he swept a rogue forelock of his sandy curls off to one side. He had a nice face, kind for the most part. At least she could tell he felt a tinge of guilt for sneaking up on her like this.

“I didn’t know her,” she said softly.

Not really, she thought.

“You want to tell me why you’re following me, ma’am?”

“It’s Caren . . . my name.”

“I know,” he said. “I was just being polite.”

He leaned back against the rise of the church pew, smiling sociably, as if they were old friends. “Caren Gray, general manager and caretaker for the Belle Vie Plantation since 2005. Before that, you held a similar position at the Grand Luxe Hotel in New Orleans.” Then he added, “I knew all this last night.” He pulled an iPhone from his pocket, briefly checking the time before sliding it back into his khakis.

“Who’s following whom?”

Owens smiled. “Aw, touché.”

Then, sizing her up, he said, “You one of those who never went back?”

He was speaking of New Orleans, of course, and Caren sensed an unspoken criticism, a judgment that she, like so many others, was a fair-weather friend, a woman whose fidelity was only for the good times. He turned and stared solemnly down the center aisle.

Softly, he said, “She’s pretty.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Why? You’re not armed, are you?” With a wry smile, he raised his hands in mock surrender, showing his open palms. Caren didn’t think any of this was funny. “What happened in Florida?” she said.

She still had Inés’s earring in her pocket, the one she’d found in Hunt Abrams’s trailer.

Owens just sat there, chewing on his bottom lip.

“Last night, you said Groveland moved Hunt Abrams from Florida to Bakersfield and then Washington State. What happened in Florida?” she said, remembering what little she’d found on the Internet. “There was a girl who was hurt?”

“Wasn’t ‘hurt,’ ma’am,” he said. “She was beaten.”

“By Abrams?”

“That’s the way I heard it. He beat a woman for not clearing a row fast enough.”

The thought made Caren’s stomach turn.

“There were others, too,” Owens said. “Was a field-worker in Bakersfield just laid down in a tangle of grapevines one day and never got up. He’d been working ten hours in hundred-degree temps without a water break.” He glanced again at his phone, checking the time. “No one I talked to ever accused Hunt Abrams of being kind. But the company looks the other way because he’s made those guys a shitload of money. And, hell, he’s never been charged with anything. So, you know, they just keep moving him around if they have to. It’ll be interesting to see how they play this one, though. The problem for Groveland now is the timing,” he said, shaking his head.

The words had a strangely familiar ring.

She’d heard Raymond Clancy assert nearly the exact same thing, the day the body was found.
The timing couldn’t be any worse
, he’d said.

“I mean, they’ve got their eye on building a real deal sugar business for themselves down here. And I don’t imagine they want a murder investigation cropping up right now. They’ve already successfully passed phase one, buying up nearly every sugar mill in Louisiana. I mean, they’re about this close”—holding his right thumb and index finger about a hair’s width apart—“from controlling all the cane manufacturing in the state.” He sat forward then, rolling the bill of his cap between his hands. “Phase two, that’s coming, you watch. It’s all just a matter of time.”

Here he’d lost her. “What is?”

He smiled, cocking his head and regarding her as a skeptic might, as if he thought she was putting him on. But she genuinely had no idea what he was getting at.

“What’s a matter of time?”

“Oh, come on, ma’am,” he said. “You telling me you never wondered why a big ag corp like Groveland is bothering with five hundred acres in central Louisiana?”

“No,” she said flatly.

It was hard, actually, to imagine anything she’d spent less time thinking about.

“That farm back there behind your place, that’s just the start.”

“Of what exactly?”

“Well, ma’am, this parish sits at the center of a billion-dollar industry. That’s the bare-minimum value of sugar in this state. And Groveland wants it. They’ve been looking for a way in for years now. But Louisiana ain’t ever been too keen on corporate farming. That’s Florida’s deal, Texas and California. And so far, no family’s ever been willing to sell to them. But then they took over the Renfrews’ lease back there and pushed them out . . . and, see, that’s how it starts. ’Cause wait, just wait, one of these days some other family that’s broke and desperate, they’ll sell their land to ’em, and then all the rest of the farms will start to fall like dominoes. It just has to start somewhere. But no one wants to be the first asshole to sell to a company from out of state.”

Raymond Clancy
, she thought.

A few moments passed before she realized she’d said the name out loud.

So it was true, she thought. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together before. But now it seemed perfectly clear. Clancy was planning to turn Belle Vie over to the Groveland Corporation. That’s why the repeated admonition that she was not to mention a thing about a Groveland worker being killed. Not a word to the press, he’d said. He was on the verge of a sale. Owen leaned forward in his seat. “I’m sorry . . . what did you say?”

He lied to me, she thought.

The son of a bitch lied to me.

“Raymond Clancy,” she said. “He’s selling the plantation.”

“To Groveland?”

Owens already had a hand in his pocket, was already reaching for a pen and pad. He yanked off the plastic pen cap with his teeth, pressing her for more details. “Raymond Clancy isn’t exactly hurting for anything. Why is he selling the plantation
now
?”

“Why don’t you find out what Larry Becht was doing in Clancy’s office yesterday?”

He lied to her.

Hadn’t Bobby warned her?

She didn’t owe Raymond any loyalty, she told herself. She didn’t owe him anything. Owen was scribbling fast. “Becht?” She could tell the name meant something to him, had triggered some reporter’s instinct. A political consultant would have only one reason to be in Raymond Clancy’s law office. “Are you sure?” he asked, still writing everything down.

There were footsteps behind them.

She turned first, then Owens.

The black priest had emerged from a side hall, one that appeared to lead to the church’s small suite of offices. He was walking directly toward them, a few loose sheets of paper tucked under his right arm.

“May I help you with something?”

Owens stood, holding out a hand. “Lee Owens, Father Akerele. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yes, yes,” the priest said, receiving the man’s handshake warmly. “I remember, sure.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I have some time now. We can chat in my office. Ginny is not available, I’m afraid. She’s the woman who heads our ministry for the farmworkers, the migrants and their families. She’s been out in the fields, making rounds, checking up on everyone, the ones who worked the Groveland farm especially, the ones who knew Inés. A few of them are having a particularly hard time, as you can imagine. They come from all over, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Durango, even Zacapa, south of Mexico. But here, they’re family. Ginny is doing what she can to help. There have been a lot of frayed nerves, and a great deal of fear. She’s out this morning seeing about an attorney for some of the men on the Groveland farm.”

“An attorney, Father?” Owens said.

Akerele gave the reporter a curious look, as if he wondered whether Owens was deliberately playing dumb, baiting him in some way. “Well, surely it comes as no surprise to a man who covers the sugar business for a newspaper that a good deal of the men and women in the fields out there are lacking proper immigration papers. We are keeping no secrets here. The men simply want assurance that they won’t be put in jail just for speaking with the sheriff’s men. The church has encouraged everyone to tell what they know. But they need protection, Mr. Owens, in every way. People take advantage, you know. We’ve had to consult lawyers in the past, even in regards to wage disputes, times the workers haven’t gotten paid. It can be a danger for them to speak up.” He shook his head to himself, bowing slightly, so that Caren could see a part in the center of his close-cropped hair, like the plow line of a well-kept field. “I’ve been in this country for almost eight years now, and in all the years I’ve been ministering to the migrants, I’ve never seen it like this. I am afraid for them in a way I’ve never been.”

He sighed, shifting his papers from one arm to the other.

“Luckily,” he said, “Mr. Orellana has been cleared. He was working in town that day, at a second job, cleaning up a construction site. He had a very strong alibi.”

“Orellana?”

“Gustavo Orellana, Mr. Owens. He is a worker on the Groveland farm. I’m told that he and Inés had developed something more than a casual relationship.” Akerele pressed his lips together, declining, without being asked, to say more on the subject.