Louis was about to say that he and Mel had already seen it, but he realized suddenly that Burke Aubry could tell them more than any half-assed report Barberry had produced.
“We appreciate your help, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said.
It was only a mile or so to Aubry’s bungalow. They waited in the Jeep until Aubry returned. Aubry got in, uncurled his big fist, and dropped something in Louis’s hand.
It wasn’t just a necklace. It was a crucifix. And although Louis couldn’t be sure without checking, it looked like a match to the one Rosa said Emilio had given her.
“What’s the matter?” Mel asked from the backseat as Aubry started up the Jeep.
“I’ll tell you later,” Louis said, pocketing the crucifix.
They set off for the cattle pen, leaving the gravel roads for the kidney-jarring terrain of the pasturelands. The warm air that rushed over their faces was thick with the smells of fresh earth, swamp water, and manure.
There didn’t seem to be any road, not even ruts. But Aubry obviously knew where he was going. As they bounced along, the landscape morphed from flat, yellow grass to clusters of humpbacked palmetto palms and then a gathering of live oaks. It was as if they had passed through three separate states in a matter of minutes.
“How much farther?” Mel shouted from the backseat.
Aubry pointed to a stand of trees in the distance. He said something, but his words were smothered by the wind. Finally, he pulled to a jarring stop.
Aubry hopped from the Jeep with the spryness of a much younger man. Louis and Mel followed. They trudged through heavy brush and waded across a shallow marshy river, its banks rimmed with cattails. The sun was low in the sky, giving Louis his only bearings. From what Louis could tell, they had come to the abandoned cattle pen from due south. There was no sign of the gravel road he and Mel had taken on their first trip here. From this direction, it looked very different from the rest of the land he had seen so far on the Archer Ranch. It was heavily wooded, mainly with the same live oaks he had seen back at the ranch house. But these trees were even larger, great, twisting black things swagged with Spanish moss, so thick and high that they blocked out the sun. It was like they had entered some strange primeval oasis.
“Where’s the road?” Louis asked, trailing Aubry through the high weeds.
Aubry pointed west. “Over that way. I brought us in the back, by way of one of the cow trails.”
“Cow trails?” Louis asked.
“Yeah, the ranch is cut through with scores of them. But you have to know where they are.”
“So, all the cowboys who work for you know how to get here without using the road?” Mel asked.
“Cowmen,” Aubry said.
“What?”
“Cowmen. We don’t use that word ‘cowboy.’ It takes a man to do this work. Got no use for boys here.”
They were at the back end of the old cow pen now. There was a small structure that Louis had noticed on their first visit. It was made of the same bleached wood as the fences, and its tin roof was rusted red. It looked like one good wind would blow it away.
“What was that for?” Louis asking, pointing.
“That’s where we did the branding, but this pen ain’t been used for near twenty years now,” Aubry said. He ducked under the rails, and they followed him into the large central pen strung with the yellow crime-scene tape.
“This is where we found the body,” Aubry said, pointing to the depression in the sand.
Louis couldn’t see the man’s eyes behind the sunglasses, but he heard the catch in his voice. Still, he had to ask.
“Can you describe things for us, Mr. Aubry?” Louis asked. “It might help.”
Aubry cleared his throat. “Well, like I said, we had to pull the dogs away first. That’s when we figured it was, well, it was a human we were looking at. There was blood everywhere. I mean, I’ve seen cows slaughtered, so blood doesn’t bother me. But this was…” He stopped, took off his sunglasses, and ran a hand over his face. “The head was gone, and at first we thought one of the dogs had got it. But… well, it was just gone.”
“They found it later,” Louis said.
Aubry gave a tight nod. “That’s good, I guess.”
“Is there anything else you can remember?” Louis asked.
Aubry seemed to be staring at a spot on the ground. “The man, he was laying facedown, and he was naked. His back was all cut up like he’d been whipped.”
Louis flashed back to the two horses he had seen tied up outside the Archer house, to something coiled on the saddle.
“Mr. Aubry, do your men carry whips?” he asked.
Aubry nodded. “With all the trees and brush, ropes are about as good as skis in a desert. We use dogs and whips.”
“Did Barberry ask you about your whips?” Louis asked.
His clear blue eyes didn’t waver. “He saw that we carry whips, so he took the five we had. Then he asked me how many other men I had working for me. I said we had twenty all told. He ordered me to call them all in.”
“You were questioned?” Mel asked.
“Yeah, we were questioned.” He almost spat out the last word. “They made us all go in the bunkhouse, and they took statements. We were there all afternoon. Lost a full day’s work. Then about sundown, Barberry got a call. He came back and lined my men up and started yelling at them.”
“Yelling? About what?” Louis asked.
“Stuff like ‘You hate queers, boy? That why you whipped that little faggot to death?’ And then he-”Aubry paused to draw in a deep breath. “Then he started in on Lee Marion, started accusing him of being queer. Lee’s kind of a little guy, but he sure…” Aubry paused. “Anyway, I almost had to pull a couple of my men off Barberry. Now, I had a tussle or two with the law when I was young, so I know you can’t win with those types. But that Barberry, he had no right to disrespect my men like that.”
Louis could pretty much imagine what had happened. Barberry had scored a lucky hit with Durand in the fingerprint database, and Durand’s record had popped up, complete with his prostitution arrest. From there, Barberry’s primitive brain needed little help in making the leap to hate crime. And Barberry was certainly mean enough to take it a step further and try to bait Aubry’s men with innuendo.
Emilio Labastide hadn’t been whipped, but the whip connection to the Archer men was too powerful to ignore. “Mr. Aubry,” Louis asked. “The twenty men who work for you now, were any of them here five years ago?”
“Almost all were. Except Ron. I told you that he died.”
Louis was quiet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Aubry said. “But I know these men. These men work here and live here, some a long time. Some of them were here when Jim Archer ran things, and when Jim died back in sixty-five, they stayed on out of loyalty to Libby Archer. We’re like a family here.”
“People do things that surprise even their families, Mr. Aubry,” Louis said.
“I know that,” he said. “But you gotta understand something. This place, this ranch, it’s almost like an island. We watch over each other here, and what happens in the outside world is almost foreign to us.”
Louis caught Mel’s eye.
“My men wouldn’t do something like this,” Aubry said. “And they sure as hell wouldn’t do it here.”
“Here? What do you mean?” Louis asked.
“Devil’s Garden,” Aubry said. “It’s Mrs. Archer’s special place-sacred is what she calls it-and all the men know it.” He shook his head slowly. “Not here.”
Louis watched him walk away, then turned to Mel. He could barely see him in the quickening dusk.
“Well, if nothing else, this trip got us twenty more suspects,” Mel said.
“Not if you believe that Aubry knows his men,” Louis said.
Mel shrugged and turned his face toward the faint ribbons of orange and pink resting on the dark blue horizon. Louis wondered if Mel could see the colors or if he simply sensed the beauty.