by PJ Parrish
“I’ve listened to you,” Barberry said, “but now you explain one last thing to me. Why do the tracks left at that cattle pen exactly match those custom-made boots I took out of Kent’s house?”
Louis just stared at Barberry. He didn’t know the answer. Even if he did, he would never tell this asshole.
“Detective,” Louis said, “we came here to get your help. If you refuse to do your job and Byrne Kavanagh dies, you will regret it. I promise you.”
Barberry moved his jacket off his shoulder and took a notebook from the inside pocket. “You say you checked this flower store to see if this Kavanagh guy was there?”
“Place was dark,” Louis said.
“What’s the owner’s name again?” Barberry asked. “I’ll run a DL and get her address for you.”
“It’s Bianca Lee,” Louis said.
“Don’t be surprised if no one turns up under that name,” Swann said. “She probably changed it.”
Louis turned to look at Swann.
Swann took a wipe at his wet hair. “If your name is too… if it—”
“Ends in a vowel?” Barberry said with a smirk.
Swann ignored him. “People come to Palm Beach to reinvent themselves, and that includes their names. Reggie’s real name is Kaczmarek. When he first got to Palm Beach, he legally changed it.”
Barberry gave a chuckle and wrote something in his notebook. “I don’t suppose you dickheads have any idea where we can start looking for this Kavanagh clown.”
“I’d send a couple of deputies over to the Lyons house to see if Dickie knows where he is,” Louis said.
Barberry snorted. “You want me to go knocking on a man’s door, with no probable cause, and ask him if he’s got his wife’s stud boy tied up in his kitchen?”
“I told you, he beat the shit out of Kavanagh last night.”
Barberry glanced at Swann, that nasty twinkle in his eye. Louis knew that going to the Lyons home was one thing Barberry wasn’t going to do.
“Why don’t you ask Papa Hewitt to help you out there, sonny? It’s his island.”
Swann turned and walked to the end of the hall. Louis watched him, then looked back at Barberry. He was probably going to blow any chance of getting Barberry’s cooperation, but he suddenly didn’t care.
“Look, you piece of crap,” Louis said, keeping his voice low. “I ought to take that fucking badge of yours and shove it down your throat and hope you die trying to shit it out.”
Barberry chuckled. “You know it’s against the law to use profanity against a cop.”
“You’re no cop,” Louis said. “That guy over there is twice the officer you’ll ever be, whether he ever puts on a badge again or not.”
Barberry lifted his hand and made an exaggerated gesture of looking at his watch. “You got thirty seconds to disappear from this hall, or you’ll be bunking with Kent.” He grinned. “Then again, maybe you’d like that.”
Barberry walked away, back toward his squad room. Louis stood there, feeling the burn creep up the back of his neck. He realized his fist was clenched.
“Louis, you okay?” Swann asked, coming up next to him.
Louis turned and left. Swann hurried to keep up as Louis went through the lobby and shoved open the glass double doors.
It was raining and windy. He stopped, fists clenched and rain stinging his face as he stared up at the halyards clanging on the flagpole. He looked down at the waxy bushes that circled the flagpole’s base.
Fuck!
He kicked at the nearest bush, scattering dirt and almost losing his balance. Then he jerked one of the plants from the ground and, in a spray of dripping mud, flung it toward the station doors. It smacked against the glass, stuck there for a second, then slid down the door to the sidewalk.
“Louis, stop!”
He spun toward Swann, chest heaving.
“We’re going to see Reggie,” Swann said calmly. He glanced back at the station doors. “And we need to go now.”
• • •
If Louis had ever seen a more pitiful image, he couldn’t remember it. Reggie behind the scratched Plexiglas, his hair pruned into a bad buzz cut, his eyes glazed, his lip swollen to the size of a plum.
Swann took the lead, slipping into the chair. “How you doing, Reg?” he asked.
Reggie wiped a hand under his nose. “I’m okay,” he whispered. His voice was rusty with a cold. “I need money.”
“Money?” Louis asked. “You mean you need to buy things at the commissary?”
“Not things,” Reggie said. “I need cash to buy protection. They want money.”
Reggie put his hands over his face. His knuckles were raw, his nails dirty. Through the tinny speaker embedded in the glass, Reggie’s breaths sounded like a rattling of his rib cage.
“We’ll take care of the money,” Louis said. “But right now, I need to ask you some questions. Can you pull yourself together for me?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“What do you know about Bianca Lee?”
“The flower lady?” Reggie asked. “She… she does nice parties.”
“Did Mark Durand ever mention her name?”
Reggie closed his eyes, coughing softly. “Not that I can remember.”
“Did you ever see a red orchid in Durand’s possession?” Louis asked. “Or in your home?”
For a long time, Reggie just sat there, eyes closed, fingers laced at his forehead. It was so quiet all they could hear was the hum of the fluorescent light. Then the white noise of the jail started again—hollow male voices and the buzz and clang of steel doors.
“The night Mark met me at Testa’s,” Reggie said, “he had a red orchid with him. He dropped it during our fight.”
Reggie closed his eyes again, grimacing as if in pain.
“What else happened?” Louis asked.
“I was upset about him seeing those women,” Reggie said. “I asked him if he had a date that night and if the flower was for her.”
“What did he say?”
“He said yes, and I got mad.”
He went silent again, eyes closed.
“Reg, tell us everything,” Swann said. “We need to know everything you said that night.”
“I told Mark he didn’t understand,” Reggie said. “I told him that no matter what those women told him when he was with them, no matter how many gifts they gave him, he was no better than anyone else who provided a service to them.”
“What about the orchid?” Louis pressed.
“That’s when he got mad, and he told me I was wrong, that he was part of their world in a way I would never be. He said he was a member of the Orchid Society.”
“The Orchid Society? That’s how he described it?”
Reggie nodded again. “I thought he was lying, like people do when they tell you they belong to the Bath and Tennis.”
“But he never mentioned Bianca Lee as part of that society?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention any other women we haven’t talked about yet?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention the name Byrne Kavanagh?”
Reggie coughed and shook his head.
Louis looked at Swann. What else was left?
Swann leaned forward. “Reggie, remember the last time we were here, we talked about the expensive things in Durand’s bedroom?”
Reggie nodded.
“We believe Durand stole those things from the women he was with.”
Reggie sighed. “I’m not surprised.”
“You need to think, Reggie,” Swann said. “What else showed up around your house that didn’t seem like something Durand would buy himself?”
Reggie shut his eyes again. He was listing to the right, and Louis hoped he wasn’t going to fall off the chair.
“Come on, Reggie,” Swann said. “We don’t have much time here.”
“There was a Hawaiian shirt once, but I think he ended up using that for a… oh, wait.” Reggie rubbed his f
ace. “There was that god-awful painting.”
“Painting? What kind?”
“This horrible landscape,” Reggie said. “I found it in the back of his closet.”
“Do you think he could have stolen it from one of the women?”
Reggie shook his head slowly. “I doubt it. It was very amateurish, not anything the women I know would own. I thought maybe he bought it for me as a gift. So I stuck it back in the closet and prayed I’d never have to look at it again.”
Louis remembered seeing a Haitian painting in Durand’s room, once right after the search and again when he and Mel moved in.
“We need to know exactly what this painting looked like,” Louis said. “Was it Haitian?”
“I told you, it was an amateur thing,” Reggie said. “It was this vulgar cowboy painting with dogs and horses…”
“Cowboys?” Louis leaned in closer. “You need to think hard here. Did Durand ever tell you where he got that painting?”
“No, but I can tell you the name of the artist,” Reggie said. “It was signed in the corner. Archer.”
Louis looked at Swann. He looked like someone had just given him a kick in the gut, but the intensity in his eyes told Louis that Swann’s mind was already racing toward the cattle pen in Devil’s Garden.
“We need to go,” Louis said. “You hang in there, you hear me? I promise you, it’ll be over soon.”
“One way or another,” Reggie whispered.
Chapter Thirty-four
A single yellow floodlight was the beacon that led them through the driving rain to Aubry’s bungalow. His old Jeep was parked next to a small stable.
Louis and Swann hurried up to the porch. Louis knocked, the sound drowned out in the clamor of the rain beating on the tin roof. Finally, the door opened.
Aubry stood there, holding a beer. “What the hell?”
“Mr. Aubry, we need to talk to you,” Louis said.
“Must be pretty damn important for you to come all the way here on a night like this.”
“It is, believe me.”
“Well, get in here, then.”
They stepped into a dimly lit room, warm from a blazing fireplace and pungent with the scent of fresh pine. Next to the coral-rock fireplace was a Christmas tree decorated with carved wood ornaments and old-fashioned bulb lights.
Louis stayed by the door, dripping on the plank wood floor, Swann shivering behind.
“Come on in and sit down,” Aubry said. “You aren’t going to get anything wet that I care about.”
Louis sat on the edge of a lumpy sofa covered with a blanket. A small yellow mutt with large pointed ears and a long snout looked up at them from its place in front of the fire, then laid its head back down.
Aubry came out of the kitchen and tossed each of them a towel. “I’d offer you a beer, but this is the last one,” he said, holding up his bottle. “I was thinking of going up the road to Mary Lou’s for a six-pack.”
Louis dried his face with the towel. “We’re fine.”
Aubry sat down in a beat-up lounger by the fire. “So, what’s this about?”
“We have another missing man,” Louis said.
“Dead?”
“We don’t know. We’re hoping he’s still alive.”
“Well, you’re not going to find anyone out there in that rain tonight,” Aubry said. “So, I don’t know what help I can be.”
“Louis?”
Louis looked over at Swann. He first saw the gun rack with two rifles, but then his eyes found the spot of color on the wall next to the rack.
It was a framed painting of men on horses roping a red steer, with yellow dogs running in the green grass.
Louis turned back to Aubry. “You said David sketched. Did he do paintings, too?”
Aubry nodded toward the painting. “That’s one of his over there. I’ve got others. Why you asking?”
“One of his paintings turned up in Palm Beach,” Louis said. “And we have to find out how it got there.”
Aubry was silent.
“The last time I was here, we talked about David’s friends,” Louis said. “Could David have given one of his paintings to a friend?”
Aubry shook his head slowly. “David was pretty private about his art stuff. He never thought they were much good, and I told you Jim was funny about it.”
“Is there any chance some of his paintings could have been left in the house and his father or mother gave them away?” Louis asked.
“No,” Aubry said. “David was getting ready to go off to University of Florida, and he asked me to keep his art stuff. He wouldn’t have left any paintings inside the house for his father to find.”
“I know I’m grasping at straws here, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said, “but can you think of anyone who was around this ranch twenty-eight years ago who could have found their way to Palm Beach?”
“You never know what paths people are going to take,” Aubry said, “but the folks who were around here back then, especially those close to the family, they aren’t the kind of people who’d feel at home in a place like Palm Beach.”
Louis didn’t know where else to go with this. Why couldn’t he see the connection between David Archer’s world and Mark Durand’s? Who or what did they have in common?
“Louis,” Swann said, “we need to head out to the pen.”
“You fellas aren’t going anywhere in that fancy car you got,” Aubry said. “You’ll be caught in the mud for sure.”
“Will you take us?” Louis asked.
“Why? You think your missing man might be laying out there already dead?”
“It’s been twenty-four hours since he disappeared,” Swann said. “Two of the three victims were killed the same night they vanished.”
Aubry set the tray down and disappeared again down a hall. He returned wearing a rain slicker, boots, and a cowboy hat. He had a second rain parka for Louis.
“Don’t have another slicker,” Aubry said to Swann.
“No problem. I have one in my trunk.”
“You armed?” Aubry asked.
“I am,” Louis said, patting his belt beneath his windbreaker. “Andrew’s not.”
Aubry pulled two bolt-action rifles from the rack, made sure they were loaded, and handed one to Swann. Louis tried read Swann’s expression as he took the rifle. He knew the academy trained recruits in all weapons, but he doubted Swann had shot any type of gun for a good many years.
Louis put on Aubry’s slicker, and they left the house. Swann got his bright yellow raincoat from the BMW’s trunk.
It took them about ten minutes to get to the pen. For the first half-mile, the old Jeep slid over the sloppy ground with seemingly no traction. Then the tires hit something solid, and Louis knew where they were. Aubry was taking them in via the gravel road he and Mel had used on their first visit just two days ago.
Aubry brought the Jeep to a stop a few feet from the fence, the blackness before them pierced only by two foggy beams from the headlights. Between sweeps of the wipers, they stared at the labyrinth of fences.
“Let’s take a walk,” Aubry said.
They grabbed flashlights and stepped into the rain. Louis pulled up the hood of his parka. When he looked back at Swann, the fluorescent stripes on his raincoat sleeves and the words PALM BEACH POLICE stood out even in the dark.
They split up, Aubry and Swann heading to the left, Louis to the right. It was hard to hear anything over the steady beat of the rain and just as hard to see anything in the flashlight’s beam.
Louis walked slowly, sweeping the light over the dirt, searching for anything that looked out of place. A hump on the ground, a glint of a metal buckle, a gleam of pale, wet flesh. But there was nothing to see. Nothing to hear but the plink of rain and the occasional creak of a rusty gate in the wind.
Louis paused at the fence of the largest pen. He had a decent view, but he couldn’t see every inch, nor could he see what was on the other side of the small lean-to.
He loo
ked around for the gate that he had heard, and when he didn’t see one, he slipped through the rails and into the pen. The ground was mucky, and there was a smell in the air that seemed to grow stronger with every step.
Halfway across, Louis paused, struck with one of those weird feelings that he was being watched. He leveled the flashlight and made a slow turn, but he saw nothing but the cage of wood fencing.
“Andrew?” Louis called.
“Out here,” Swann said.
Louis saw him waving his flashlight, took a breath, and walked on. There was nothing in the lean-to and nothing on the ramp, ground, or rails to indicate that anyone had been here recently. He headed back to the Jeep.
Aubry was waiting for him, sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open and shaking rain from his hat.
“Where’s Andrew?” Louis asked.
Aubry gestured toward the darkness south of the pen. Swann’s light was a fading prick of white.
“Where’s he going?” Louis asked.
“Said he wanted to look at the stream,” Aubry said. “I tried to tell him that in this rain, his little stream was gonna be more like a lake, but he was intent on going anyway.”
“Christ,” Louis said. “I’ll be right back.”
He caught up with Swann on the muddy edge of a surging swamp. Swann had his rifle in one hand and was making slow sweeps of his flashlight with the other across the surface of the brown water. The hood of his coat had blown down, and his head was soaked.
Louis stopped about six feet behind him, on higher ground. “Andrew, get your ass back up here before you get eaten by a fucking alligator.”
Swann turned and trudged from the water. He pushed past Louis without saying a word or lifting his head.
“Andrew.”
Swann walked on.
Louis watched him for a few seconds, then looked back at the water. It was running fast to the south, carrying branches that floated downstream like gnarled brown fingers.
Louis pointed his flashlight downward. But even as the beam skated across the brown water, he knew that if Byrne Kavanagh was in there, they’d never find him tonight. At least, not the three of them alone.
Louis swung the flashlight over the brown water one last time, then headed back, using the beams of the Jeep’s headlights to find his way out of the darkness.