“Mr. Weston’s legs are somewhere around here, I presume.”
“Part of ’em are up on the canal bank. McCain couldn’t find the rest.”
This got Lawless’s attention, woke him up. “You can’t find his legs?”
“It’s not like we lost ’em or anything. They were never here.”
Lawless put in a call for Deputy Jensen, the CSI team, and the coroner. He told Cruff to stay with the workers and walked over to Weston’s body, where he was met by McCain, who, after giving him the up-and-down, had similar thoughts about his appearance as Cruff.
“Find anything?” Lawless said as he stared at Weston’s leg-stumps.
“Just his boots on the canal bank. I didn’t find his legs. Maybe they went in the water.”
Lawless used his radio again and requested a team of divers.
“This how you found him?”
“Of course,” McCain said. “We haven’t touched anything.”
“Do you know if his workers moved him?”
“I have no idea. They don’t speak English, and I don’t speak— ”
“Spanish. Right.”
Seeing the belt tied around one leg-stump, and noticing the direction Weston had been crawling, Lawless said, “Looks like he tied one leg off with his belt and tried to crawl to his truck.”
McCain snorted. “Maybe he was planning on driving himself to the hospital.”
Pulling out his little digital camera, Lawless took photographs of Weston and his tracks, then climbed onto the canal bank. He’d just started looking at the bloody cowboy boots when deputy Jensen arrived.
Lawless descended the canal, conscious of how dusty his shoes were getting, and asked Jensen to talk to the workers. She said something in Spanish and the two men exploded, talking so fast at the same time that Jensen had to stop them. After several minutes of wild conversation, she turned to Lawless.
“They said they showed up for work at the usual time, six-thirty, but Weston wasn’t there to meet them.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Very. They said he’s always waiting for them in the morning. I guess he’s tight with the payroll. Anyway, they said they waited around the shed for a half-hour but he didn’t show. They knew it was an irrigation day so when they didn’t see any water in the orchard, they drove out here to see if they could find Weston, or open the gates themselves. They saw Weston’s truck, then Weston, came back to the shed and dialed 9 1 1. They swear they didn’t touch anything.”
Lawless thought of a couple of other things for Jensen to ask them, but got nothing from it. Jensen took their names and information and let them go. Before leaving, one of them asked Jensen a question. She shrugged and said “No sé.”
“What was that?” Lawless asked.
“He wanted to know if I thought Mrs. Weston would run the ranch now that Mr. Weston was dead, or if she would sell it.”
“In other words, do we still have a job?”
“Right.” Then, noting his appearance, she said, “You look you had a rough night.”
Remembering that she knew, he said, “The damn dream.”
“You still can’t remember any of it?”
“No, and it’s getting worse.”
“What do you mean worse? If you can’t remember any of it, how could it get worse?”
“I’m not sure, but look at me. I look like hell.”
He walked away saying, “Thanks for your help, Deputy.”
She watched him leave and wondered what he did at night, if he had someone to tell him he’d better get going or he’d be late for work, or keep him warm in bed. If there was someone, she was doing a lousy job. He did look like hell.
Lawless was having a second look at the cowboy boots when the CSI team, crime photographer, and coroner arrived. Larry Brouchard and Phil Louper got out and found the body. The other guy, the short one, busied himself in the back of the truck.
Lawless climbed back down the canal bank, dirtying up his shoes some more, and met Brouchard at the corpse. Louper stood ten feet away, gawking.
The day was heating up and flies had gathered, finding good eating both in the sand where Weston’s blood had spilled and on his bloody leg-stumps; Lawless detected an unpleasant, slightly sweet smell he hadn’t noticed before.
Brouchard smiled at Lawless as if they were friends who hadn’t seen each other in long time, as if they weren’t now standing over a corpse with two bloody stumps for legs.
“Hello, Danny. Who do we have here?”
“This is Hank Weston. He owns this orchard. Or used to. I guess his widow owns it now. He was found this morning by his workers. This is what we have of him here. His boots and feet are up on the canal.” Lawless pointed. “The rest of him is missing.”
Brouchard’s eyebrows shot up, but he remained quiet as he looked between the body and the boots on the canal. He squatted for a closer look at the leg-stumps, waving flies away with a hand. Some didn’t budge, but others flew slowly off toward the canal, fat with blood. Sooner or later they’d make a nice meal for a dragonfly or a frog and Hank Weston would start working his way back up the food chain.
Lawless let the coroner look for a few moments, then asked, “What do you think about the wounds?”
Brouchard knew exactly what he meant. “You’re asking do these wounds look like the wounds on the man pulled out of the canal yesterday. From what I see here, they’re similar, but it’s hard to compare leg wounds with chest wounds. I’ll know better after I get him back to the lab.”
“Swell,” Lawless said, rubbing his chin.
Making a tsk sound, Brouchard stood and said something to Louper, who by now was looking over his boss’s shoulder, and followed Lawless to the canal. Lawless looked back, saw Louper crouched by Hank Weston’s leg-stumps, staring.
“Something’s wrong with your boy, that Louper guy,” he told Brouchard.
Brouchard stopped and looked. Frowning, he yelled at Louper. Then, to Lawless, “He does take a strong interest in his work.”
“He takes a strong interest in the dead.”
The photographer shooed Louper away from the body and began shooting pictures.
On the canal bank, McCain and Cruff were looking at the boots but moved off to the side to give Brouchard room. Brouchard crouched to look and Lawless moved to the canal. He stared into the black water and his stomach flipped. He searched his pockets for an antacid, hoping it was just indigestion, knowing it wasn’t. Brouchard joined him after a few minutes and Lawless led him away from the deputies.
“I assume you’re searching the canal for the rest of his legs,” Brouchard said.
“We’ve got divers coming,” Lawless said, popping an antacid and rubbing his stomach.
“Whatever cut Mr. Weston’s legs off was very sharp,” Brouchard said. “The bones appear to have been sheared. They certainly weren’t sawed through.”
Lawless jingled coins in a pocket and looked at his shoes, gathering intel for later repair work, then said, “That’s the way I see it, Larry. Just like Sanchez.” Then he added, “Answer me this Larry, why would anyone take the time to set up a thing like this? Why hack his legs off like this and leave him here alive? If someone had come along earlier, Hank Weston might be in a hospital bed giving a description of his attackers instead of laying in the dirt feeding flies. Seems to me that’s pretty sloppy killing, not to mention damned risky.”
“I don’t know,” Brouchard said. “I’ve never understood why anyone would kill another human being.”
Brouchard noticed the photographer was finished with Weston, and said to Lawless, “Well, it looks like the photo shoot’s over, so it’s back to work for me.” He walked off toward the body.
Lawless stopped him. “Wait a second, Larry. You haven’t called about the Sanchez case. When do you expect to hear back from the lab about the wound swab?”
“I put a rush on it, so we might hear from them today or tomorrow. If we’re lucky.”
“Too
bad it’s not like that TV show CSI, where they just give the sample to that nerdy guy and he gives them a color report in minutes.”
Brouchard smiled. “Yeah, it’d also be nice if every case was solved in an hour, minus commercials. A lot of that show is Hollywood, you know.” He left Lawless on the canal and went back to work.
Lawless watched him go, watched him put a fire under Phil Louper, who didn’t have things ready and who looked a lot like one of the flies that’d been feeding on Hank Weston’s bloody leg-stumps.
The photographer ascended the canal bank and began shooting pictures of the boots and surrounding area. Lawless, needing to get out of the guy’s way, walked over to McCain and Cruff.
“You two figure out who done it, Detective?” Cruff asked.
“I was going to ask you the same question. You guys have any thoughts on what happened here?”
Cruff said, “Whoever done this is one sick son of a bitch, cutting a man’s legs off and leaving him to bleed to death in the dirt.”
Lawless nodded. “Do you think his workers had anything to do with it?”
“No way. They were scared as hell,” Cruff said. “Besides, they don’t seem the type who could cut a man’s legs off and then act like they just found him, if you know what I mean. I’m not saying they’re stupid, they just seem like regular guys going to work. They don’t have that hard look to them.”
Lawless agreed. “I saw dog prints up here and down by the body. You guys see a dog when you got here?”
McCain answered, “Yeah, there was dog standing right by him when we got here.”
“He ran off into the orchard,” Cruff added.
“Did you get a statement before it left?” Lawless asked. Neither deputy smiled at his joke.
He glanced at the canal again, felt the knot in his stomach ratchet up a notch: the antacid hadn’t touched it. Grade school was a long time ago, but he was starting to remember when he’d felt like this before.
“Why don’t you guys take off. I’d appreciate you getting your reports done today.” The deputies climbed off the canal bank, happy to be on their way but not happy to be pushed on the paperwork.
Lawless watched the coroner and his assistants pack Hank Weston and his cowboy boots in the truck and drive away, watched the photographer finish up and leave, then watched the CSI guys work the scene for another half hour, poking around in the sand, taking turns telling bad jokes, looking for evidence that wasn’t there.
He waited patiently until they packed their gear and left; he wanted the scene to himself.
Lawless went to the irrigation gate, leaned against the cement box and looked at the scene, trying to imagine what might’ve happened. Hank Weston’s boots had been about ten feet from where he was standing, five feet from the canal. There were a lot of dog prints in the dirt next to the canal, as if the dog had paced back and forth there.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture the dog and Hank Weston, standing on the canal bank. Weston was smoking a cigarette, they found it in the dirt where he’d fallen. What would the dog have been doing? Sniffing around, waiting for something to do? Then what? The dog smells or sees something and becomes agitated? Starts running around?
Lawless concentrated. He could almost see the dog, hear it barking and growling. How long had Weston owned the dog? Long enough to trust its instincts?
His stomach tightened again and he got the distinct impression he should move, now, get as far away from this place as possible.
He opened his eyes and looked into the canal: the water had lost all color and light, becoming black as coal. He looked to his left and to his right, taking in the canal as it wound through the farmland and saw that it was no longer a moving body of water; it had become something else.
Instead of seeing a canal, an ingenious invention designed to deliver liquid gold that transformed a dry valley into one of the most productive farming regions in the world, he saw an enormous, black, vile snake, slithering its way through the countryside, stalking.
Instead of life-giving water, this snake carried poisonous venom and while he could not see the creature’s evil head and razor-sharp fangs, he knew they were there, somewhere, ready to strike.
And he knew, somehow, that this beast, this thing he saw before him disguised as a waterway, had everything to do with the deaths of Hank Weston and Jose Sanchez, men whose lives were snatched from them as they worked by the canals.
He also felt — knew — it would come again, looking for easy prey, just as the bullies had come looking for him on the playground so many years ago. But instead of stealing their shoes and pissing on them or throwing them in the weeds, instead of calling them names and hitting them in the face, this monster took a vital piece of them, an arm, legs, and left them bleeding and broken to die.
Feelings from his childhood came flooding back, everything he had tried to forget, thought he had forgotten; he heard the jeers, the name calling, the threats; he felt himself being knocked to the ground and sat on by the biggest and fattest bully; he felt his shoes being torn off his feet and heard them taking turns pissing or spitting on them; he saw the fences he had to climb to retrieve his stinking, wet shoes so he wouldn’t have to walk home in his socks; he saw his hand reaching into the trash can, digging around for his shoes; and he saw himself fishing them out of the toilet bowls filled with rank human waste.
He felt the fear, the humiliation.
Never again, he told himself. Never again would the bullies knock him down and take his shoes because he knew when they were coming, and he knew when to run.
With his heart pounding as it had years ago, sweating, Daniel Lawless leapt off the canal and raced for his car, sure he would not make it, that someone would find him later that day, headless or legless or half his body missing. He raced through the trees and thought he could hear, over the pounding in his ears, voices calling out to him, jeering and taunting:
“Hey faggot, what’re you wearing today, yo’ mama’s pumps?”
“There’s the pussy! Let’s see if he’s wearing panties!”
“I got sumpin’ right here to shine your shoes with, Shoe Boy!”
“Grab him, don’t let him get away! I’m gonna bust up his face!”
Shoe Boy ran, ran for his life.
Chapter 4
He didn’t get far.
Lawless pushed his Crown Victoria through Hank Weston’s orchard, throwing rocks and dirt into the trees, anxious to get as far away from the canal as possible. Terrified, he almost ran head-on into a Ford Explorer coming into the orchard. Cursing, he braked hard and his vehicle slid in the dirt, narrowly missing the Explorer and almost clipping an almond tree.
His terror became rage. He jumped out of his car and charged the Explorer, red-faced. Five feet away, he recognized the driver: Jimmy Busmur, a deputy who did double-duty as a diver. Next to Busmur, Garrett Vandertop, a rookie. Busmur’s eyes bulged, and he shouted through the open window, “Dammit, Detective, didn’t you see us coming?”
Lawless stopped, his shoes sliding in the dirt. He slumped forward with his hands on his knees, gasping for air. In his terror, he’d forgotten the divers. Struggling to regain his composure, he suddenly realized he would have to accompany the divers back to the canal, and he wasn’t sure he could do that.
Witnessing the detective’s odd behavior, Busmur said, “You okay, Detective?”
Hoping his voice wouldn’t squeak, Lawless said, “I’m fine. I guess I was thinking about something else and didn’t see you.” He blew out a big breath. “Wouldn’t the Sheriff love that, two department vehicles crashing head-on in the middle of an orchard.”
Busmur took him seriously. “No sir, I’m sure he would have our asses. You did request a team of divers, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” Lawless’s heart finally slowed. “Follow this road on up and around to the right. You’ll see the canal. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
The divers left, looking relieved.
L
awless caught up with them five minutes later; he needed time to compose himself and prepare to face the canal again.
He and the deputies climbed the canal bank. He looked at the water and was relieved to see it was just a canal.
He filled Busmur and Vandertop in on what he knew about the killing and told them what they were looking for.
“You never found his legs?” Vandertop repeated.
“That’s what he said, Garrett,” Busmur said. “Let’s get our gear and start looking.”
“You don’t need to go any further upstream than here,” Lawless told them.
“Gotcha, Detective.”
“How far down the canal do we go?” Vandertop asked.
“Until the canal passes under the next road,” Lawless said. “I’ll wait for you there.”
He left, driving through the orchard again, this time at a safe speed. Needing to relax and think, he flipped on his CD player: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Act II.
When he was sure he was alone, he put the car in park and examined his shoes. He didn’t think he had nicked or scuffed the polished leather — he was always at least partially aware of what happened to his shoes — but he wanted to make sure they didn’t need immediate attention. It turned out they were just dusty. The kit stayed under the seat.
Back on the road, driving and listening, he thought about his premonition — he lacked a better word for what had happened by the canal — and how he hadn’t experienced anything like it in thirty-some-odd years.
Before, they had been warnings of a personal nature: run so the bullies can’t pound you. It had to be different now, had to be about the job, these men who’d lost their lives in a violent fashion while working by the canals.
The next time it happened, if it did happen again, he would remain calm; he stood a better chance of getting something out of the premonition if he wasn’t running off in a full-out panic. He wasn’t sure he could do that, but he resolved to try.
He stopped where the canal passed under
Gates Road and crossed to the upstream side to watch for the divers. The canal was fifteen feet wide and full, the water almost reaching the top of the cement sides. Looking at the grille as he’d done the day before, he was certain a man’s leg could not pass between the thick, steel bars. A child’s leg maybe, but not a man’s. He saw an old tire and a small Styrofoam ice chest in the canal, but no legs.
Canals Page 4