“Well, that’s one problem, Sheriff,” Cricket replied patiently. “There isn’t anyone else to work for. You either work for the jefes approved by the local businessmen, or you don’t work at all. That’s the first problem.
“Second problem—it’s against the law. You can’t blackmail workers or extort them in this or any other state. What complicates enforcement, of course, and this is where the INS needs our help, is that most of these workers are undocumented. They’re coming across the river in Texas in droves, shoved into trucks and brought here more or less as a captive labor pool. Many, maybe most of the people you see working in those rows and rows of pine trees from Cross City to damn near Georgia are here illegally.”
“What choice do the strawmen have?” another sheriff spoke up. “Hell, they cain’t get the kids to do the work. They can’t get a black man to bale their straw. Not for any wage. Seems to me the Mexicans are saving our bacon.”
“They are,” Cricket agreed. “And in return for that they deserve the simple protection afforded every worker under the law. Even undocumented workers, gentlemen, are protected by the law.”
“So what do you need, Agent Bonet?” Buddy Wilson spoke up. “What can we do?”
“First of all, talk to your local businessmen. Just explain to them that rigged or extorted contracts have become a concern for law enforcement. Give them a chance to straighten things out on their own.”
“And if they don’t?” Lou grumbled. “Am I s’posed to be some kind of labor negotiator?”
“No, sir,” Cricket replied firmly. “You are to enforce the law. Best thing, if you find evidence or accusations of threats against workers, would be to contact the state’s attorney here in Live Oak. But you’re not going to hear anything, I can tell you right now, unless you take time to get to know the migrants under your jurisdiction. Get a handle on where they make their camps. Most importantly, get their confidence so that they can come to you to report the kinds of infractions we’re talking about. If you need help in this regard, or if you are unclear what the law requires, please do not hesitate to call me. I’ll assist you any way I can.”
“What about the illegals? Say we find ’em, we identify ’em. What do you expect us to do about that?”
“The INS right now simply would like to know how big the problem is. We have heard, for instance, that there are whole families of workers virtually imprisoned in deer camps out toward the coast, most of ’em on private land. Maybe even on the paper mill’s acreage, who knows? But we need to know the conditions in those camps. We need to get a rough idea of the numbers of families out there and find out whether they are camped voluntarily or under duress.
“I want to make clear that the state’s objective is not to find a way to kick a whole bunch of workers out of your counties, gentlemen. Our objective is simply to uphold the laws protecting these migrants and their families and, to the extent possible, make sure that they are not being extorted or blackmailed into accepting slave wages for their labor. That’s the deal. That’s what we’re about. Any questions?”
A few questions followed concerning procedure and jurisdiction. The sheriffs, ever wary of their turf, did not want their borders opened to INS agents or the FDLE. Cricket explained patiently that he had been sent to the region precisely to give the lawmen first crack at the problem.
“Nobody wants to come in here and do your job,” Cricket reassured the elected lawmen. But then he added, “However, this is a job that needs to get done.”
The meeting broke up without pyrotechnics. Barrett extended his hand to meet Captain Altmiller’s.
“Bear. How you like it down here?”
“Closer to home, Captain.”
“A politician’s reply,” Altmiller retorted.
The hell? Did the Old Man suspect?
Cricket Bonet barged over to end that speculation.
“Hullo, partner!”
“Cricket. Good job. You see him up there, Captain? Another month he’ll have ’em eating out of his hand.”
Cricket beamed. “And they don’t, they can kiss my—”
“No,” Altmiller warned. “Not here.”
“Let me take us someplace else, then,” Barrett offered. “They got a cheap steak at the Dixie Grill. You can fill me in on wha’s happenin’ in the big city.”
The three agents were almost out the door when a rasping challenge came from behind.
“Agent Raines.”
Barrett stopped and turned to face Sheriff Lou Sessions.
The sheriff’s pitted face was mobile.
“I hear you’re gettin’ tired of Live Oak, Barrett. Lookin’ for a change of scenery.”
“Funny.” Bear offered a smile. “I was just telling my boss I like it right where I am.”
“Way I hear it, you have aspirations for my job,” Lou grated.
“Pardon me,” Altmiller interrupted and extended his hand. “Henry Altmiller. Don’t believe we’ve met, Sheriff.”
“Never had the need.” Lou shook the offered hand peremptorily.
“Well, you’ll be reassured on our first meeting to hear that Agent Raines went to quite a bit of trouble to be assigned to the third district. From all reports he has no intention of leaving.”
“That a fact.”
“If I am incorrect, I’m sure Agent Raines will tell me. Barrett?”
Well, Bear thought. This was a hell of fix. Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t. Barrett almost took the politician’s way out. Almost.
“What the sheriff probably heard, Captain, is that I was approached by some folks to run for sheriff in his county. That’s next July, I believe, just to qualify. We’re barely into November. As of now, I haven’t even decided whether to follow up on the conversation.”
“Well. There you are.” Altmiller smiled congenially. “Seems fairly straightforward to me, Sheriff.”
“We’ll see.” When Lou straightened, his shoulders pulled in oddly, like a marionette’s. “And by the way, Barrett…”
One last, parting shot from the county lawman.
“I’m gonna find Rolly Slade’s goddamn dog.”
The sheriff stalked the five yards to his cruiser and left gravel spinning as he gunned the Crown Victoria out onto a blacktop city street.
Altmiller remained silent. So did Cricket. Barrett felt a tide of blood rising beneath his face.
Cricket spoke up to break the silence. “I can understand a man constipating over an election. But a goddamn dog?”
* * *
The dog was hungry. It had been three days without food. The water bucket was always filled; the rottweiler stood in a pool of its own piss. But a thick chain restrained him from the only source of food inside these corrugated walls. The food was strapped to the pine studs that were the shack’s interior skeleton.
When the sun heated the tin that pressed against the woman’s flanks she would arch away, the muscles in her belly contracting with the screams, curses, or imprecations that the dog, of course, could not understand and no one else would hear.
It was dim inside the shack, even in bright sunlight. Slits of light on beams moted with dust traveled across the interior, like cruel hour hands marking the terrified moments from morning to pitch-black dark. How many nights had it been? How many days? Hung on a wall with the dog howling at her, foam covering the pink of his gums, running over his bared fangs. Lunging at her from a fragile tether of chain. And then the man would come.
“(Mary, Mother of God.)” The prayers came erratically in a vulgar Spanish. “(Protect me, Mother. In my hour of need. Forgive my sins!)”
She was young, only nineteen, a firmly bosomed girl from Brownsville, a migrant girl from South Texas. If she had only stayed in the field.
But it had been so hard! The heat! The labor! Who could blame her for trying something else?
Her prayer disintegrated into a gargled scream. She had to hang for a minute, just a minute, even though the joints of her shoulders were near to dislocatio
n. The straps that tied her wrists to the shack’s vertical studs would not keep a determined hostage forever, so there were cuffs, metal bracelets anchored to the pine posts. Her feet were cuffed, too, in the posture of Jesus. Christ on a cross. Her own crucifix remained, a cheap thing drenched with sweat between her taut breasts. Her clothes were taken but the cross remained.
He had her pulled off the floor. She could feel herself suffocate. But by stretching her legs to the dirt-packed floor she could put some weight on her feet and feel air expand her chest. She would stay in that posture until the heated tin that pressed against her back and flank could no longer be borne. The dog howled and she screamed in reply.
Footsteps silenced the dog first. Then the girl. She heard the fumbled key. The padlock. The door. Sunlight barged in to the shack’s interior. The dog threw himself at the intruder.
“Fuck you.”
The chain jerked the dog a foot short of a man in gloves and overalls. The man set a pail wrapped in burlap and a pair of bolt-cutters carefully onto the dirt floor. He noted the dog’s water. Still a half bucket. The bucket was strapped to the side of the shed and filled from a connecting length of PVC that ran in from the handpump outside. It was the only way to manage the water, of course. He couldn’t trust the dog.
“How ’bout you? You need water?”
He strolled over to the girl.
“No! No, please! Let me go. I beg! I will not tell anyone!”
He offered a bottle of Perrier. “Take it.”
She took the water from the bottle’s offered nipple like a foal sucking from its mama.
“That’s enough.” He threw the bottle toward the dog, who tore the plastic containers to pieces. Then he pulled a knife from his pocket.
She screamed.
“No, no. That’s not how it’s gonna be.”
He took off a glove to open the knife’s blade, then donned the glove and withdrew to cut the strand that bound the burlap sack.
The sack dropped to reveal a pickle bucket. He hefted the bucket. Strode purposefully to take a position just to one side of his chained trophy.
“No!”
He hoisted the bucket above her head. Tipped it. Blood splashed scarlet off her skull.
“Nook!”
It ran off her matted hair. It coursed over her shoulders—
“Please!”
Down her back. Between her breasts.
The dog’s rabid howl stopped short as he lunged for the target just across the dirt-packed floor. Only the chain was there to jerk him short.
The girl was choking, too. She had swallowed some blood.
The man paused to let her get her air before taking something else from his windbreaker. It might not be obvious from first appearances that the well-machined lump emerging from that nylon pocket was a camera.
“Get her, boy.”
“No!”
She thrashed against the wall. For a moment he was concerned that the tin might actually break free. She would be exposed, then. Open to the outside world. But it was too late to worry about that. The dog lunged again and again, jerked short each time by the chain, his ass skidding across the pawed dirt. Her smell maddened the animal. Her stink.
He framed a shot carefully. Actuated the camera’s lens.
“It won’t be long,” he promised, backing outside. A box of sunlight silhouetted him briefly at the door. Just an outline in black, like a stick man scissored from tar paper. The door closed, the silhouette vanished, a padlock snicked home.
There were no lines of light on the floor or walls now. Only the animal’s and the girl’s labored breath filled the interior. Nothing else. The girl sobbed, then, quietly.
Had he gone? Had she survived the ordeal?
But a groan of metal and a square of new light appeared. A window. The dog’s chain snaked beneath the wood-shuttered window through a cutout at the bottom of the tin wall to anchor on a post set outside the shack. That had been purposeful. So that he could cut the dog’s chain safely, from outside.
He fitted the bolt-cutter’s jaws over a link of tempered steel.
“What—? What are you doing?”
He could hear her inquiry floating from the interior, weak in the heavy air. He strained over the cutter’s long handles. The jaws snapped suddenly, like a turtle.
“Sic ’em,” he commanded loudly.
The steel links chased away. The chain rattled wildly. The mastiff inside bounded like Grendel to take the meat hanging bloody and helpless on the opposite wall.
The camera captured frame after frame from the vantage of the shack’s shuttered window. It was important, the photographer told himself, for people to see. To set an example. When it was all over he tasted copper in his mouth. A lethargy fell. As if he needed a nap.
He always expected it to be better than this. It never was. He straightened stiffly. It had taken longer than he planned; the sun was already sneaking below the pines. He was pocketing his camera when some shadow cast swiftly from behind; the change in light alerted him, some fleeting interruption of the failing sun.
He traded the camera for a handgun. Stepped around to the front of the shack. Nothing moving. No one in sight. But he knew who it was who had cast the shadow, the wraith hidden now in an impenetrable shield of vine and briars and pine. How much had the interloper seen? Or heard? That was a problem he would need to solve. He returned to the shack’s shuttered window for a final view. The dog was still busy. He’d like to stay and watch that. But already it was getting hard to see inside the rustic chamber. And there was another pair of eyes, he was sure, who longed to see his handiwork. Should he remain? Kill two birds, as it were, with one stone?
He looked west. The sun was well below the pines now. He’d better leave. It was a long and circuitous walk to his vehicle, and it was not safe to be alone in Strawman’s Hammock after dark. Not with the bogey man about.
Four
Lou Sessions worked out of an office contiguous with the county’s jail in a three-story building rigged for the purpose. It used to be a firehouse, this building. The rising doors that once portaled a pair of fire engines were converted, now, to harbor the country’s cruisers and to provide a sally port to the jail.
Barrett Raines pulled his unmarked Impala into a visitor’s slot before the facility’s side-street entry. A wooden door, peeling paint, beckoned from just off a weed-splintered sidewalk. He rapped on the locked door of the jail and waited just long enough to start to sweat when he saw a deputy peer out through a cracked pane of glass and the barrier of a window unit whose compressor, cutting in and out, begged along with Agent Raines for attention.
Barrett heard a key turn in its lock.
“What you got, Chief?” A deputy unfamiliar to Barrett opened the door with his foot, his hand ladled over a Glock that Barrett noted was unstrapped in its holster.
“Word with the sheriff, please.” Barrett displayed identification. “Agent Raines.”
“Oh, yeah,” The deputy caught the door with his gun hand. “Come on back.”
Barrett followed the younger man past a pair of high-ceilinged rooms littered with unused desks and chairs. Barrett saw an Olympic bar loaded with rusted weight and left to bend on a cheap bench and narrow rack. A Coke machine promised relief from that recreation. The deputy’s fist flashed out to bang the coin return, but without a pause in stride turned Barrett into a narrow hallway that dropped down a half-step into what might fairly be described as a bunker.
A series of four wide, short hallways converged to provide a jerry-rigged office space. Everything Barrett could see was gotten secondhand or improvised. A mailbox converted with a pair of welded plates and a padlock served as an evidence bin. A sofa rescued from Goodwill was pulled up alongside. A pair of deputies were processing what looked like traffic tickets in folding chairs that slipped under metal desks salvaged (Bear had been told) from Eglin Air Force Base.
“Get some funds for remodeling, we’ll move upstairs,” the deputy explain
ed. “Most of us look for that to happen in our next life.”
Barrett smiled. The Third Judicial District was characterized by counties chronically short of resources. There simply was never enough money for law enforcement, or for schools. For anything.
“Wait here.” The deputy deposited Barrett in a crowded hallway rigged as office space.
Hell of a place to work. Bear gathered his impressions privately: A damp cement floor spidered with fractures. A box fan. A pair of computers glowed on a laminated desk. A dispatcher’s radio buzzed static from its own niche opposite. Barrett spotted a pair of mobiles deposited casually beside the deskbound wireless, their charging plates exposed for insertion into a cruiser’s rejuvenator. A VCR propped atop a barstool on the far side of the radio, its too-short cord swaying upward from the stool’s advantage to reach a TV wall-mounted below a ceiling Barrett guessed to be at least eleven feet high. On its screen an unrecognized starlet squawked to Regis Philbin regarding her latest tabloid ambush, while down the hall Barrett could hear, if not see, an investigator responding by phone to what Bear guessed was a reported burglary. It was hard to hear anything clearly. In addition to the investigator, the dispatcher, the roughhouse greetings of passing deputies, and the talk show’s endless chatter, Bear could make out the nasal drone of a meterologist.
A cold front was expected, apparently. And rain.
There was exposed wiring up and down the hall and the twin computers required three-plug adaptors to draw current from outlets at least forty years old. A grid of text on the monitor nearest Barrett caught his attention, a shift schedule, looked like, while on the neighboring desktop a screen saver rotated from sylvan forest scenes to beachside bikinis. Barrett was wondering why Lou would risk a display of calendar girls in a workplace so vulnerable to charges of sexual harrassment until it occurred to him that there were no women down here. In fact there were no women in uniform anywhere. The secretaries and dispatchers, all women, were segregated in a single, carpeted office at street level.
Well. That was one way to avoid friction.
“Agent Raines.”
Barrett turned to see Lou Sessions leaning on the wall.
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