The Cutting Season

by Attica Locke

  Instead, she took him on a ride around the plantation’s perimeter, checking the fence line, making sure none of the locks had been broken, nor the fence posts disturbed, and when that revealed no signs of a security breach or a break-in, she took Lang all the way back to the main gate. He offered to send a squad car to patrol the area. Deputy Harris could sweep the farm road and the land around the plantation at least once an hour, but beyond that, the parish couldn’t spare one of its handful of deputies for duty through the night.

  That’s fine, she said.

  Exiting the golf cart, Lang said, “The knife is a match, by the way.” Caren shut down the cart’s engine, then turned to face the cop. “It’s preliminary, of course,” he said, “the coroner going by the photograph you gave.” He smoothed his tie and buttoned the front of his jacket against a cool October wind. “I still can’t imagine any reason why you would have kept something like that from law enforcement. Would have been nice to get a head start on the murder weapon.”

  “I wasn’t keeping it from you,” she said, to be clear.

  Lang raised a hand to stop her, to let her know a protest was neither necessary nor of any interest to him at this stage. “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on this, I am. But that stops here. I imagine you’ve sniffed around enough law books to know a thing or two about obstruction. Last I checked, you can go to jail for that.”

  He was pinching his lips together, eyeing her.

  She couldn’t tell if he was serious, if this man was seriously threatening her, or if this was meant as a test, a way to see how badly he could shake her, and what might spill out in the process. Lang took a step closer to the front of the golf cart, the lights making shadows under his eyes. “You’re running this thing, Tulane, you’re the one in charge here,” he said. “You give me every reason to trust you and that’s what you’ll get back. But if I think there’s more you’re not saying, I’m going to treat you like someone who’s hiding something.” There it was again, the ever-present sense with Lang that his mind was already made up, that he was merely filling in some image he was already carrying in his mind, like waiting on ink to dry. She knew not to give him more than he already thought he had on her. “Good night, Detective Lang,” she said, locking the gate behind him. Then she drove straight to Luis’s shed.

  She wanted those guns.

  The more she thought of how easily they could end up in the wrong hands—like the knife that cut that woman’s throat, a murder weapon stolen right out from under her—the more she wanted them in her possession and not someone else’s. She didn’t tell Eric what she was doing. She didn’t bother to call over to the library to let him know. She wasn’t sure Eric had ever seen a gun, save for in a courthouse, or at a conference on gun control maybe. Caren could handle a .22 from the time she was eight or nine. She and Bobby used to pop off bottles with his daddy’s pistol. She didn’t mind guns. They had their place, like just about everything else. And she was not about to spend another night out here in the dark unarmed.

  Luis’s shed was on the other side of the main house, and she reached it in record time. She parked at the foot of a poplar tree, backing up the cart in such a way that its headlights shone on the front of the shed’s wood door. Cradling the flashlight between her neck and shoulder, she fiddled with the lock on the door’s latch, accidentally dropping her keys in the dirt more than once. She looked down and saw that her hands were shaking.

  The door creaked when she finally got it open. She swung the Maglite, arcing its sharp white light against the shed’s walls. Overhead, a frayed string controlled a single bare bulb. Caren gave it a good tug. The shed, she could see, was extraordinarily well kept. She had Luis to thank for the clear path through the shovels and brooms and coiled garden hoses resting on their sides. It made it easy for her to make her way to the locked cabinet on the rear wall. Inside, she found the two weapons: a .32 pearl-handled six-shooter and a 12-gauge shotgun. She grabbed them both, along with a box of shells and round-nosed bullets, pausing long enough to load six rounds into the pistol before leaving the shed. She shoved the handgun into her jacket pocket. Outside, she laid the long barrel of the shotgun across the front seat of the golf cart. Then she drove back to the east.

  Somewhere on the drive, she reached into her pocket for her cell phone.

  Eric would be worried by now, she knew.

  Punching in the numbers, she looked down, briefly taking her eyes off the drive. When she looked up again, barely a second later, there was a figure staggering directly into her path. She slammed on the brakes. The cart screeched and bumped to a rough stop, and her cell phone went flying out of her hands, disappearing into the darkness. Her heart sank. Detective Lang was long gone. There were no cops out here. It was just her, the .32, and the man standing a few feet in front of her, bathed in the hazy light of the cart’s headlamps. He was white and slender, with a mess of hairs scratched across his chin. The true shape and color of his eyes were hooded by a baseball cap, but he still looked awfully familiar. She hopped out of the cart, her hand shaking, the skin of her palm slipping against the handle of the pistol. “Hey, wait a minute!” the man yelled, waving his arms. He stumbled backward, tripping over his feet and falling to the ground. He held his hands in front of his torso in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, hold on a second!” he was pleading. “Aw, Jesus, lady, don’t shoot!”

  The sheer fright in his voice stopped her.

  She lowered the gun.

  He still had his hands up. “I’m just trying to find my way out of here, I swear.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Lee Owens, ma’am. I’m a reporter.”

  Then, sensing that wasn’t going to cut it, he added, “I’m with the Times-Picayune.”

  She checked his wallet, finding both an employee identification card for the Times-Picayune’s offices on Howard Avenue in New Orleans and a Louisiana State driver’s license, both bearing the name Lee Owens. According to his license, Mr. Owens was thirty-nine years old . . . and lying about his height. He was no more than an inch taller than her, and she was just barely five feet seven inches. He was sweating openly, and the front of his khaki pants were stained with grass and mud, and he said very little as she drove them back to her apartment, keeping his hands visible in his lap. The shotgun was resting upright between them, the .32 still in her right hand. Up ahead, she could just make out the honey-colored light shining from the library’s upstairs window. “How in the hell did you get in here, anyway?” she asked.

  “I came in with a tour . . . and then I just never left.”

  Great, she thought.

  That’s just great.

  She remembered the group this morning. He was the guy in the ball cap and khakis, the one who was taking pictures. “I guess I got turned around somehow,” he said. “I’ve been walking around in circles out here.” He looked up at the pale moon, the patch of stars behind the passing clouds, the only light this deep in the parish.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Anything I could find about the girl, I guess.” Caren felt him looking at her. But she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “The Sheriff’s Department isn’t saying much, no more than the basic facts. I thought I’d come take a look around the place myself.” He sighed, sounding frankly annoyed with himself, as if he’d only just now realized what a stupid idea this was. “This cloak-and-dagger, stakeout stuff, this ain’t my regular deal. I’m not exactly a crime reporter. I cover the sugar industry at the paper. I’ve been on the Groveland beat for a while now. So, yeah, when I heard about the girl out here . . . it definitely got me to wondering if there was more to it, if the company was having problems again,” he said. “I’m just out here chasing a story.”

  Caren slowed the cart to a stop, a few feet from the library’s front door.

  “You didn’t know her, did you?” he said.

  “No.”


  She cut the engine, grabbed the shotgun and the pistol, and waved him out of the vehicle. Owens, confused, looked up at the building, unclear as to what was going on, why she’d brought him here. “What is this place?” he said, meaning the library, the cake-top miniature of the main house, dressed in the same white with black shutters. He seemed to genuinely not know where he was.

  The library’s front door opened and Eric stepped out, fully dressed now in his slacks and shirt. Morgan, still in her nightgown, was a small shadow behind her dad. Eric looked at Caren, the guns . . . and Lee Owens. “Morgan, get inside,” he said sharply.

  “Mom?”

  “Get inside!” he yelled.

  She quickly disappeared into the house.

  Eric stood on the library steps, his eyes sweeping over this unexpected scene: a stranger, the guns, and Caren. “What is this?”

  Again, she waved Owens out of the golf cart.

  He slid out slowly, holding his hands out in front of him.

  She gave him a slight shove, touching him for the first time. The back of his cotton shirt was damp, almost cold with sweat. She nudged him into the library, following a few steps behind. As she crossed the threshold, she turned and whispered to Eric. “He’s a reporter.”

  Inside the front parlor, Owens removed his hat, as if he’d been asked over to tea, a gentleman caller meeting the family for the first time. He held out a hand to Eric, the de facto man of the house, making their acquaintance official. “Lee Owens,” he said. “I’m with the Times-Picayune.” Eric glared at him, keeping a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Owens gave Morgan a polite nod. By the door, Caren laid the two guns on the antique side table. The long barrel of the shotgun hung off the side. Then she turned to behold Owens in the light. Now that he’d taken off his hat, she could see his eyes for the first time. They were mossy green and clear as rainwater. His hair was a mess of sandy curls, pasted against his skin. “Look, I’d really appreciate it if you guys just let me out of here,” he said. “I certainly didn’t mean to cause any problems.”

  Flushed and overheated, Caren pulled off her jacket.

  “He’s just a reporter,” she said to Eric.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Owens reached for his wallet, in an effort to clear this up.

  The sudden movement was just enough to set Eric off. He lunged at the guy, covering the length of the room in a matter of seconds, until he was towering over him. Owens backed up quickly, defensively holding his hands in front of his chest. He shot Caren a look, begging for some help here. She sighed, feeling suddenly very, very tired. She walked up behind Owens and reached into his back pocket for his black leather wallet. From its folds, she produced the same bits and pieces of identification the reporter had shown her outside, including a credit card and a Subway sandwich card, creased and bent.

  Eric scanned the information, his head down.

  When he looked up again, he appeared not so much relieved as angry.

  He tossed the wallet to Owens, hitting him in the chest. “I nearly had a fucking heart attack, Caren,” he said, forgetting for a second their daughter standing just a few feet away. He slumped into one of the leather armchairs. Elbows on his knees, he buried his head in his hands. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, and she finally saw how scared he must have been when she hadn’t turned up again right away.

  On the coffee table, the cordless phone rang.

  “That’s Lang,” he said.

  Eric, it turned out, had panicked.

  When she hadn’t returned, he grew concerned. Morgan was acting more and more skittish in her absence, swearing she’d heard someone outside their window, footsteps, she said. Eric had called the number on Lang’s card, and now this was him calling back, checking to make sure everything was all right. Eric reached for the phone. But Caren got to it first. She let it ring two more times. “Answer it,” he said. Owens was wearing an expression both sheepish and genuinely contrite. “Please,” he pleaded. “I’ll go, I swear.”

  Caren sighed and finally answered the phone.

  “Sorry,” she said straightaway, before reporting to Lang that the previous call was a mistake.

  We’re all fine, she said, before hanging up.

  Eric shook his head in anger. “What is wrong with you?”

  She didn’t want the cop in her house, she said.

  Which made no sense to Eric, who had no idea what was at stake.

  He stood and stalked out of the room. Owens bent down to pick up his wallet, sliding it into his khakis, which were faded and worn. He set his ball cap back on his head and tipped the bill in her direction, a thank-you for the small act of kindness.

  She drove him all the way back to the main gate, idling the golf cart while she unlocked the metal bolt. Owens stood directly behind her. When the gate creaked open, she turned to him and said firmly, “You never saw me, understand? We never spoke.”

  “Fine with me.”

  He slipped through the opening between the gate and the fence. The only cars in the parking lot were her Volvo, Eric’s rental, and Donovan’s late-model Acura, still parked in the same spot since this morning, before the cops took him away. Owens said his own car was parked on the highway, where he’d left it so it wouldn’t be spotted anywhere near the grounds after hours. It was at least another mile and a half to walk, in pitch darkness, but he would have to navigate that on his own. Caren closed the gate, securing the metal latch.

  There was one thing she wanted to ask him, though.

  Through the white bars of the fence, she called out to him. “Hey, what did you mean back there, what you said about Groveland having problems again?”

  Owens turned back to look at her.

  The night silence between them was briefly filled with the soft rustling of cane leaves in the distance. Owens scratched the stubble on his chin. “Hunt Abrams, the farm manager over there, he’s not local, so you know.” He took a few steps closer to Caren, lowering his voice even though they were, pray to God, the only two souls out here. “They’ve moved him around a bunch of times,” he said. “Bakersfield, California, their operations in South Florida. He was only six months at a fruit-processing plant they own in Washington State before they moved him out here, to this start-up.” He nodded in the direction of the sugarcane to the south and west, swaying over the fence.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, still not getting the nature of the company’s “problems.” Owens seemed initially inclined to leave it alone, to keep his mouth shut. But then, looking at her, he changed his mind, deciding to trade one act of kindness for another. A pretty lady out here, he said, you ought to know who your neighbors are.

  “Word is, ma’am, he’s got a bad way with his workers,” he said, his breath visible and snaking through the bars of the fence, almost touching her on the other side.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, let’s just say some of his people don’t make it out of the fields.”

  Caren got a sudden image of those church ladies at dawn, the black priest, and the candlelight vigil, remembering how the women had taken note, literally, of Hunt Abrams’s every move, documenting it, as if for some future purpose. Had they known then that there was more to this story, that Abrams was a man who ought to be watched closely? Owens seemed to think so. “But you didn’t hear it from me,” he said. He made a show of pressing his lips together, as if he’d already said more than he should have. Then, with a tip of his cap, he bid Caren good night, before turning and starting his long walk down the winding farm road.

  13

  “I want to see it,” Eric said.

  The rain had started in again, falling in black sheets against Morgan’s bedroom window. He’d waited until she fell back asleep, watching from the doorway as Caren held her hand in the dark, as their daughter’s breath deepened and she curl
ed herself into a tight, soft ball. Caren kissed her on the forehead and then started out of the room. When she stepped into the hallway, Eric grabbed her by the wrist. “Caren,” he said. His tone was soft and forceful and quietly intimate, so that she wasn’t clear if the touch was meant to signal aggression or affection. His eyes were sunken and blood red.

  “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “Morgan’s shirt,” he said. “What did you do with it?”

  She stared at him for a moment.

  “I got rid of it,” she said, meaning the bloodstain. The light from her bedroom across the hall outlined the hard angles of his face, the tense, squared shoulders, but she could not, in shadow, read his expression with any precision. She heard the rain pattering on the roof and the bullish sound of his breathing. “I washed it,” she said.

  “I want to see it.”

  “I washed it, Eric.”

  “I want to see it!”

  She sighed, glancing over her shoulder. The door to Morgan’s room was still open. Eric made a move in that direction, but she stopped him. She knew where the shirt was, knew every detail of her daughter’s room, even in the dark. He waited for her in the hallway, watching through the door as she went straight to the top drawer of the bureau beside Morgan’s bed. The shirt was folded neatly. She walked it to Eric in the hallway. He unfurled it right away, snapping the fabric, holding it in front of his eyes. Dissatisfied with the light, he walked into Caren’s bedroom. There, turning the cotton over in his hands, he asked her, “Where is it?”

  “It was on the sleeve, on the left side.”

  Eric inspected the white sleeve, his eyes finally coming to rest on the grayish half-moon shape where the stain used to be. He studied it for a long time, and then looked up at her. This time, by lamplight, she could see his face clearly. He let out a long sigh. “You know what Morgan told me, when we were in the car today, when it was just the two of us? She told me she never saw any blood.”