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 except 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?”