She entered a dark tunnel of live oaks and stopped. This was the place, the exact place. But things were different now.
Cool, not hot.
Dark, not daylight.
She was forty-five, not seventeen.
The wild red orchids that he had scaled the trees to pick for her were all gone.
Sam dropped to her knees and closed her eyes. The tears burned hot.
I’m leaving tomorrow, Sosie.
But you said we’d stay here together.
I have to go to school.
David, you promised…
I never promised you anything, Sosie.
Things coming fast now, all of those memories, the bad ones now, coming in a mad rush, just like everything had come in a rush that hot day so many years ago.
The trembling of her hands as she buttoned her blouse back up. The sticky ache between her legs. The hammering of her head. The nervous whinny of a horse. The rough feel of the jagged rock in her hand. The sight of his hair curled against the back of his tanned neck.
The crunch of the rock against his skull.
Red. Red. Red… a slow river of it on the green grass.
David? David?
One moment of blind rage. Then his lips gone cold. Her life gone cold. Everything frozen now, her heart and her head. Everything erased, the future, the past, and the fragile line she had always drawn between love and hate.
He had made love to her.
She had killed him.
And now, somehow, she had to forget him.
The horse stared at her with wild eyes. She moved to it slowly, placed a hand on its heaving neck. It stood still long enough for her to take the whip off the saddle’s horn. Then it jumped back and disappeared into the trees. Cradling David’s whip to her chest, she walked out of Devil’s Garden.
“Sam?”
The voice snapped her back. It took her a moment to make out Carolyn’s form at the edge of the trees.
Sam rose, wiping her muddy hands on her jeans as she walked to Carolyn.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-six
They left their shoes, rifles, and raincoats on the covered porch. Aubry delivered a fresh tray of hot coffee and went to work on injecting new life into the dying fire. The room swelled with warmth and the smell of burning wood.
“Mr. Aubry,” Louis said, “may I use your phone?”
“Certainly,” Aubry said.
Louis dug into his wallet for the number and called the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Since leaving Barberry, he had discovered only two new pieces of information: the Orchid Society and David’s painting. Louis hoped it would be enough to persuade Barberry to spare some deputies and a couple of four-wheel drives for a thorough search of Devil’s Garden.
Barberry was off duty, and the swing-shift commander sounded stressed, mumbling something about an armed robbery and a chase, then telling Louis he would try to find Barberry when things calmed down. Louis tried two more supervisors, and after fifteen minutes of being on hold while one tried paging Barberry, Louis hung up.
“You could try Chief Hewitt,” Swann said.
“Not his jurisdiction or his case,” Louis said. “And I don’t think he gives a shit, anyway.”
“You need some fellas to search for your victim?” Aubry asked.
“Yeah.”
“My men could do that,” Aubry offered.
Louis looked up. The thought of putting civilians out there in this weather to search for a body, with the remote possibility of also coming across a killer, was crazy. But these were tough guys who knew their land and their rifles. And Aubry had that same look on his face now that Swann had that day back at Dunkin’ Donuts. He wanted to help.
“How many you got?” Louis asked.
“Twenty.”
“We’d appreciate anything they could do, Mr. Aubry.”
Aubry picked up the phone and dialed. Louis heard him ask for a man named Mike, and then he said, “Get the crew ready for a search. We got a lost man out there.”
Louis looked to Swann. He was watching Aubry, clearly still impressed with the man’s command of his world.
“I can’t keep them out too long,” Aubry said when he hung up. “Don’t want to put them or the horses at risk, but I can give you a few hours.”
“Thanks,” Louis said.
Aubry set his walkie-talkie on the table by the fireplace and disappeared into the kitchen. Swann, too restless just to sit and listen to it, went out onto the porch. When Louis went out to the BMW to get Byrne’s kitten, Swann was sitting in one of the rockers, staring off into the darkness.
The house was filled with the smell of chili cooking when Louis went back inside. He installed the cat in the bathroom with its litter box and dish of food.
By the time Aubry came out with a tray with three bowls, Swann had come back inside and was warming by the fire. Louis realized neither of them had eaten all day. Too hungry and too tired to talk, the men ate in silence, sopping up the chili with corn bread as the chatter of the walkie-talkie played in the background.
Every so often, Aubry would pick up the walkie-talkie to answer one of his men’s reports. The men had divided into teams of two, methodically checking each pasture. One team was checking the slough. But Louis knew the Archer Ranch was four thousand acres, and two of the bodies had been found off the ranch. The chances of finding anything were near zero.
Just before eleven, a report came in from one of the men that a horse had been injured and that the area around the slough was becoming too dangerous in the dark.
Aubry looked at Louis and keyed the walkie-talkie. “I don’t want anybody stranded out there. Bring them back in,” he said. “We’ll try again at dawn.”
Louis went in to check on the cat. When he returned to the living room, Swann was back at the wall, staring at David’s painting.
“That’s my favorite one,” Aubry said.
“Where did David do his painting?” Swann asked.
Louis thought it was a strange question. Aubry looked surprised, too.
“They’re oils,” Swann said. “Between that and the turpentine to clean up, it’s messy and smelly.”
“I let him set up a work space out in my stable,” Aubry said. “David stayed over here a lot.”
Louis turned back to the fire, for the first time noticing the three framed photographs on the mantle. The first was Aubry on a horse, the second a middle-aged couple and a small boy-Louis figured they were Jim and Libby Archer with a young David. The last was a hand-tinted portrait of a young man in a western-style dress shirt and string tie. Clear blue eyes, sandy hair, strong jaw, and cleft chin.
He picked up the frame and turned to Aubry. “Is this you?” he asked.
Aubry hesitated and shook his head. “David. Last picture taken,” he said softly. “Libby loved that picture best.”
Louis put the photograph back in its place. He heard again that love in Aubry’s voice, for both the boy and his mother. He saw again the sadness in the man’s eyes. Anyone could plainly see that David Archer was the image of Aubry. Louis thought about asking the question that had been in his head for days, but how did you ask a man you barely knew if he was the real father of another man’s boy?
“You want to see his sketchbooks?” Aubry asked.
Louis caught Swann’s eye. There was no reason to look at David’s work. No reason at all, other than to let Aubry share something he had kept to himself for almost thirty years.
Aubry went to a battered footlocker tucked in a corner and came back with an armful of notebooks. He handed Louis a tattered tan book that cracked when opened to the first page. It was lined, like it was meant for practicing penmanship, but it was filled instead with childish doodles of horses and dogs.