Vargas dipped the pin again and leaned in close to the mirror. It hurt and his fingers were stained blue but he kept going.
He wasn’t sure if Byron would want him doing this, marking his body, but it was for him. He would understand.
Behind him, from somewhere in the shadows of the cabin came the drone of a man’s voice on TV. He didn’t turn to watch because he had seen it all earlier through the snowstorm of static. He had seen the pictures filmed from a chopper in the air, and he had been able to pick out the green and white trailer and cops swarming around it like cockroaches. He had seen the swamp buggy overturned in the water, and the gurney with the black body bag.
And he had seen her, seen the woman with the gold badge, and heard
the guy on TV say, “The suspect was shot and killed by Miami-Dade Detective Joe Frye.”
Talking about Byron dying like it was nothing.
At least Byron had gone out kicking, gunning that old buggy down the road, making them chase him. It must’ve been something to see.
The newscast was ending and he knew it was almost seven. It was dark now, too, but he hadn’t turned on any lights. He wasn’t that far away from the trailer. And he knew there were still cops there, probably looking for him now. But they would never find him out here
in the cabin, unless they knew where to come or asked Uncle Leo. But Uncle Leo wouldn’t tell them.
Unless Uncle Leo was mad at him now.
He felt his hand tremble as he carefully pricked his skin. He was tired. It had been over twenty-four hours since he had left Byron in the trailer and gone to see Uncle Leo. He was supposed to have brought Byron back to the airport, back to the plane and the money last night.
But he had kind of lost track of things since yesterday. He couldn’t remember the last time he
had eaten or slept. He didn’t even know where he had gotten the pens and the pins. Everything after the stop at the convenience store had been a blur.
Va
rgas stepped back from the mirror and picked up the candle, holding it close to his face. The teardrop on his cheek was finished.
He carefully dabbed the lit
tle dots of blood away with a piece of toilet paper then went to the TV, shutting it off. He set the candle on the wood plank floor near the bed and picked up the small cassette player and the tapes he had brought in from the Camaro.
He had some time to kill.
He sat down on the floor, stuck in one of the tapes, and leaned back against the bed. The dark cabin began to fill with the sadness of singing cowboys. He didn’t fast-forward it, like he usually did, to get to his favorites. He pulled out his knife and started sharpening the blade with slow, smooth strokes.
For the next hour or so, the music played.
Sometimes, if he liked the words, he’d sing along, softly, keeping time with the whetstone scraping against the blade, like the brushing sound drummers made with their cymbals. But mostly, he just listened.
They sang about lonely journeys ending under golden red skies. Broken hearts. Broken dreams. Building nests in the west with the stars peeping down. Pale Montana moons. Cowboy heavens. Silver-haired daddies.
He laid his head back on the bed, silent tears burning the tender skin under his eye.
He didn’t like remembering the days in the trailer
, but sometimes when the music played, he couldn’t help it. That’s where he had first heard the music, first met his heroes.
Long, hot Saturday afternoons watching the old westerns. Evenings filled with
Bonanza, Gunsmoke
, and reruns of
Have Gun Will Travel
, his mama's favorite.
Sometimes, when she was drunk enough, she’d talk about how handsome the cowboys were. How handsome
Paladin was. And sometimes she’d mention the summer she spent in Arizona in 1964, the summer before he was born. And she would talk about a man named Sonny.
Then one
night his stepfather put a bullet through the TV and the cowboys disappeared.
For months after, the music was the only sound in the trailer. Sometimes, he and Mama would sit on the porch, the sky ablaze with red and yellow, and they could hear the records playing inside.
Sometimes, if she remembered the words, she would sing along with them. But most times she just listened. Like he was doing now.
Once she had
pulled him out of bed in the middle of the night and tried to teach him to dance. But she had gotten mad because he was clumsy and sleepy and he had stepped on her new red shoes. And she had started hitting him, slapping at him, like she did sometimes in the middle of the night, just out of nowhere, just for nothing, crying and screaming about things he knew nothing about.
But he never got mad back. Not at her. She was like the music. Empty. Sad. Beautiful.
Then one day the music stopped.
He had been used to Mama going away for a couple nights in a row. He
knew she sometimes drove over to Fort Lauderdale to get what she called “a boost,” and sometimes she and a man would come back to the trailer and the man would stay for a few days, then he’d be gone. But when she went that last time, she didn’t come back.
Five days later, a cop and woman
came to the trailer and told him that Mama was dead. They had found her in an alley in Miami. They didn’t tell him how she had died, but a few years later Uncle Leo told him she had been shot dead behind a bar.
Vargas stared at the log beams in the shadowed ceiling, his throat so tight he couldn’t swallow.
That had been the worst time of his life. Until now.
Suddenly the cabin was quiet and the music was gone again. It took him a moment to realize the cassette player had stopped
. For a few minutes he didn’t move then he slowly stood up, wiping his face with the back of his hand, smearing the ink.
Maybe when this was all over he would go out west. Maybe Uncle Leo would fly him to Arizona instead of Canada. Maybe things would be better out there.
But first he had something to do.
He stood up slowly, running a finger along the edge of the blade. Then he put it in its sheath and pulled on some clothes and shoes. He took an old hat off the rack, too. They might be looking for him now and he couldn’t afford to get caught.
He squatted and sorted through the cassette tapes on the floor, finally finding the one he wanted to play in the Camaro.
He left the cabin, huddled in his jacket, and started hiking back out to the road, where he had left the Camaro.
It didn’t take him long to get back to the car, where he had hidden it in some brush. He pulled off the branches and took a long look up and down the narrow road. The wind was whipping the trees and the darkness was dense there was no light anywhere to be seen.
In the car, he started it up and
slipped in the tape. It wasn’t the Marty Robbins version. It was his own version, recorded by him singing into the little microphone inside the cassette player. He had changed the words.
So we beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly.
And we wept in our grief as we carried him along.
For we all loved that cowboy, so brave and so handsome.
Yes, we loved that young cowboy, although he done wrong.
The sugar fields rose up around him, the wind-whipped cane stalks undulating like huge dark waves. The night sky was a black shroud with no moon or stars. The dark had a peculiar denseness to it out here, like it would absorb any kind of light or life.
Louis had driven northeast from Naples, finally hitting the deserted service roads that cut through the monotony of the cane fields. Then for an hour, nothing, just the walls of cane and the black night
. Finally, he saw a pinprick of distant lights that grew into a glowing cluster. As he neared, the lights and a building took shape, appearing like an ocean liner moving on the black sugarcane ocean.
The Bronco’s headlights lit up a
gate and a big sign that read CANE CORP. Beyond, Louis could see the refinery, a huge building that throbbed green in the orange glow of the parking lot lights. Boxcars sat empty on the tracks that crisscrossed the grounds. A slow trickle of men streamed out of the building and into the lot, disappearing into in to the night.
Louis picked up Joe
’s files from the passenger seat and got out. He could feel a misty rain on his face, but it was warm. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from the refinery. His nostrils burned with a sharp smell -- sickly sweet with an acrid undertone.
In the reception area, a security guy gave him a badge and pointed the way down a hallway lined with plaques and awards touting
the sugar industry’s contributions to Clewiston, “The Sweetest Town on Earth.”
At the end of the hall, Louis knocked on a door with a gold plate that read LEO RYKER.
He was about to knock a second time when the door opened. A short man with a lean tan face and thin red hair stuck his head out.
“Yeah?”
“Louis Kincaid. I’m here to see Mr. Ryker.”
“Well, he’s
--”
A voice from within the room
. “It’s okay, Rusty. Let him in.”
The man stepped aside and Louis went in. It wasn’t a grand office, not what Louis would have expected of a man who ran the second largest sugar cooperative in the country. A man who started out buying up muck land around Lake Okeechobee and now was worth ten million dollars and
was living in a mansion on the Naples waterfront. A man whose money had helped re-elect Reagan and was rumored to have the secretary of agriculture on his speed dial.
Louis had learned all of this from Joe. She had called her Miami office and
ordered up a quickie dossier on Leo Ryker. She had read it to him on the drive back to Captiva to drop her off.
“The guy came from the same stock as his nephew,” Joe had told him.
But as Louis considered the man standing before him, it was hard to see any connection between Leo Ryker and the professional loser Adam Vargas.
Leo Ryker was in his late forties, tall and lean. He was wearing sharply creased khakis, a heavy gold watch, and a navy polo shirt with the Ralph Lauren logo over his left
pec. He worked out and was proud of the fact. His thick hair and mustache were variegated gray, his face sun-reddened, and his blue eyes shrewd. Leo Ryker looked like a man sure of his place on earth, the kind who didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought of him.
The wood-paneled office was like the man
—- polished, masculine, no-nonsense.
Except for the photographs.
Louis couldn’t help himself. He stared at them, at the photographs of the men holding up the heads of big black boars with long snouts and curling tusks. The men wore fatigues or T-shirts and ball caps and were holding crossbows or knives. Louis picked out the red-haired Rusty as one of the guys behind Leo Ryker in all of the photos.
Ryker saw him looking and smiled. “Ugly, aren’t they?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Wild boar,” Ryker said. “They’re considered a nuisance around here. Some things just need killing, right, Rusty?”
He had been hovering in the background and came to life at Ryker’s prompt. “Yes sir,” he muttered. “Hogs is stupid animals, sir.”
“Do you hunt?
” Ryker asked.
“Only when I’m forced to,” Louis said. He moved away from the photographs.
Ryker was looking behind Louis, to the door. “I thought there were two of you coming,” he said.
“Detective Frye couldn’t make it,” Louis said, extending a hand. “I’m Louis Kincaid.”
Ryker shook his hand with a tight, controlled grip then moved to his desk, motioning for Louis to take a chair in front of the desk. Ryker sat down. Louis remained standing.
“What is it you need to know about Adam?”
“Is this a good likeness of your nephew?” Louis asked, pulling the sketch out of Joe’s file and laying it on the desk.
Ryker looked at it. “That’s pretty close.”
“When is the last time you saw him, Mr. Ryker?” Louis asked.
“I haven’t seen Adam since he started working here in
...” He looked at the man leaning against the wall. “Rusty, you remember when that was?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
Ryker looked back at Louis. “I just remember his parole officer contacting me. So I put Adam to work at night cleaning equipment.”
“Have you had any contact with him since?” Louis asked.
“Once. About a month after he started, he asked me for some money.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“I didn’t want to, but I gave him a couple hundred. Adam doesn’t have much direction in his life. I try to help him when I can.”
“Is he still working here?” Louis asked.
Ryker looked at Rusty. “Do you know, Rusty?”
“No sir. You want me to call his supervisor?”
Ryker turned the phone around for the other man to use and looked back at Louis. “I have over two thousand people working here. I don’t keep in contact with Adam.”
Louis was thinking about Ryker’s dossier, the fact that the man had no wife, no kids,
no relatives at all.
“Why not?” Louis asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Adam Vargas is your only
relative,” Louis said. “Why don’t you keep in touch with him?”
Ryker stared at Louis. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”
Louis let it go. “What was your relationship with his mother?”
Ryker paused a moment. “His mother Zelda was my sister.”
Louis had a vision of the trailer back in Copeland. If Zelda Vargas and her son had ever lived there, he was sure Leo had never visited. Or maybe Ryker had lived someplace similar once and when he
made his money vowed he would never go back to Copeland or any other hellhole on the edge of the swamp.
Rusty hung up the phone. “He hasn’t clocked in for eleven days, sir.”
“Thank you, Rusty. Why don’t you wait outside. I’ll give you a lift home.”
Ryker waited until Rusty was gone before he spoke. “I knew Adam would blow it again.”
“Again?” Louis said.
“I took Adam in when he was thirteen, right after his crazy mother was killed,” Ryker said, leaning back in his chair. “The kid had no place to go.”
“How did that go?”
“He was moody, strange. I always thought Zelda was mentally ill. Maybe Adam is, too. He was always getting into trouble. Got caught shoplifting once.”
“Where was he living then?”
“With me, in my home. Adam ran off after two years. I didn’t hear from him until I got a call from some guy saying he was a parole officer and that Adam had put me down as a relative who would give him a job.”
“So you didn’t hear from him from the time he was fifteen until the time he got paroled from Raiford?”
Ryker started rocking in the leather chair. “No.”
“What about when he was arrested for the armed robbery at eighteen?” Louis asked. “He didn’t ask for help then?”
Ryker was working hard not to show it, but Louis could see it in every little movement of his body. The hunch of his shoulders, the jut of his jaw and the squint of his eyes. He was getting pissed.
“My error,” Ryker said calmly. “He did ask if I could get him out of it. Wanted me to make restitution to the store.”
“You can’t buy your way out of armed robbery,” Louis said.
“This was a small store on the reservation. I was told the Seminoles didn’t want to deal with a nontribal offender and had turned him over to Broward County for prosecution. They said they would drop the charges if they got reimbursed.”
“How much?” Louis asked.
“Excuse me?” Ryker asked.
“How much was the restitution?”
Ryker took a long time answering. “One hundred and eighty-three dollars.”
Louis stared at Ryker, but he was seeing a flash of a younger Vargas, walking through the gates of
Raiford, easy prey for men like Byron Ellis, and worse. For less than two hundred dollars stolen with a toy gun.
“I had to teach him a lesson,” Ryker said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Did he contact you from prison?” Louis asked.
“He wrote letters.”
“Did you read them?”
“I threw them away.”
“Did he keep writing?”
Ryker sat forward. “What can that possibly matter?”
“We don’t always know what matters,” Louis said. “Did he keep writing you letters?”
“Every week,” Ryker said.
“But you haven’t seen him since he got out?”
“Only when he took the job and that one time when I gave him that money. That’s all.”
“Do you even know where he lives?” Louis asked.
“No.”
“We found out he had been staying in an abandoned trailer in Copeland,” Louis said. “You know anything about that place?”
Ryker looked surprised. “Copeland? That’s where he was living when Zelda died.” He shook his head. “Like I said, he’s probably nuts.”
“Is there anywhere you can think of that Adam would go now?” Louis asked. “Some place he may have lived when he was younger?”
“No.”
“Do you know a man named Austin Outlaw, Mr. Ryker?”
Ryker stood up slowly. “No.”
“What about a Byron Ellis?”
“No.”
Louis pulled a small snapshot of Yancy Rowen from the stack of papers and held it out to Ryker.
“I don’t know him either,” Ryker said.
“How did you know this isn't Ellis?” Louis asked.
Ryker hesitated. “I just assumed it
was.”
“You said
‘I don’t know him either’." Louis said. “Which tells me you knew it wasn’t Ellis. Which tells me you know what Ellis looks like.”
Ryker
’s blue eyes sparked with anger but his voice was calm. “You misunderstood.”
Louis glanced at the photographs on the wall then walked to them. “It takes a real man to hunt wild boar, doesn’t it?”
“It takes a certain kind of man,” Ryker said.
Louis faced him. “But a real man, right?”
“That’s an old-fashioned way to put it, but true enough,” Ryker said.
“I don’t see Adam in any of these photos,” Louis said. “Did you teach Adam to hunt?”
“He didn’t want to learn,” Ryker said.
“Suppose that was because he was gay?”
Ryker didn’t move. But in his eyes, Louis saw first disbelief, but then hard realization of a truth that he hadn’t seen coming but should have.
“Byron Ellis and your nephew were lovers,” Louis said. “They kidnapped a boy and killed six people. And we’re trying to figure out why.”
Ryker straightened his shoulders. “I can’t help you. You need to leave. It’s late.”
“Just one last question, Mr. Ryker,” Louis said. “When we called, why didn’t you ask us why we wanted to talk about your nephew?”
“I just assumed he was in trouble again.”
“But you never asked what he did this time.”
“I didn’t care what he had done.”
Louis picked up a pen from the desk and scribbled down the phone number for the sheriff's department on a pad of paper.
“If Adam doesn’t know he’s wanted, he will soon. If he contacts you, we’d appreciate it if you’d call us.”
“He won’t come to me,” Ryker said.
Louis tossed the pad on the desk. “I think he will.”
He turned and walked out. Ryker was lying but Louis wasn’t sure about what
. It was obvious he didn’t care for Adam Vargas, but there was something wrong with the other answers. And Ryker knew who Byron Ellis was.
Louis walked toward the parking lot, digging for Joe’s keys. As he neared the Bronco, he saw a woman standing under an aluminum rain shelter, near a sign marked EMPLOYEE SHUTTLE.
She was young, wrapped in an old brown raincoat, her head bare. As he walked past, she looked up at him and gripped her plastic 7-Eleven bag tighter. She was striking looking, her black hair long and straight around her round, brown face.