The second book was an old wire-bound red book. Its plain pages, edges tinged yellow with age, showed more drawings of horses and cowboys, but the craftsmanship had grown more assured. As Louis flipped through the pages, he could almost see the boy becoming the artist.
The other books were more of the same, the sketches becoming increasingly mature as David graduated from pencils to charcoal and, in the last book Aubry gave Louis, to pastel chalks.
There were a few portraits-leather-skinned cowboys, a Seminole woman in her rainbow-colored native blouse, and a good likeness of Aubry in a blue shirt that matched his eyes.
But the best drawings were of the land. A pink spoonbill in a blue stream. Russet cows against green palmetto palms. A lilac and dove-gray sky at dawn. A spiky green air plant lodged in the fork of a black-branched live oak. And a long-stalked plant with sprigs of red flowers, each blossom’s tiny devil face carefully rendered.
Louis turned the page. The portrait stopped him cold.
Red hair. Upturned nose. Haughty tilt of the chin. The face was younger and rounder, but the eyes, so cunning and clear, were the same.
God. Sam.
He held the book out to Aubry. “Do you know this girl?”
Aubry peered at the page. “That’s… what’s her name? She was the little gal who worked at Mary Lou’s.”
“Please try to remember, Mr. Aubry.”
Aubry scratched his head. “It was Susie or Sasha. No, I remember. Sosie. That was it. Sosie.”
Louis looked back at the picture, Swann’s voice in his head. People come to Palm Beach to reinvent themselves, and that includes their names. He turned to ask Swann if he knew anything about Sam’s past, but Swann had gone back out onto the porch.
“Did David know her?” Louis asked, turning back to Aubry.
“I suspect so, since he went down the road to Mary Lou’s often enough, and she was a pretty little thing,” Aubry said. “But if you’re asking if she was special to David, I’d have to say no. She wasn’t the kind of girl a boy like David would bring home.”
“Do you know anything else about her?”
“Her dad was a cutter in the cane fields but sliced his leg up in an accident and went to work in the refinery. I remember he got pretty sick with drink, so Sosie had to drop out of school to take care of him. That’s why she was working at Mary Lou’s.”
Louis had a memory of the sad houses outside Clewiston and of that little girl standing in the dusty parking lot of Mary Lou’s.
He could almost imagine what had happened. A pretty girl took up with the local prince. David couldn’t bring her home, so he met her in secret. What had happened that summer in Devil’s Garden, maybe no one would ever know. But David had died there, and Sosie had made it all the way to Palm Beach and transformed herself into Samantha Norris.
Had Sosie killed David? Had Sam killed the others?
But was a woman strong enough to behead a man? Then he remembered what Dr. Steffel had said when he asked her how much strength a decapitation would take. She had told him that if the blade was sharp and the person skilled, “a guy didn’t have to be Conan the Barbarian.”
Louis had been thinking about Reggie at the time. Now he was remembering the fierce power of Sam’s arms wrapped around his back as he made love to her.
He knew women could be cold-blooded killers, just like men. Battered women pushed to their limit. Women who partnered up with violent men. So-called black widows who murdered husbands for money. Even women who killed their own children.
But a woman who killed men out of pure blood-lust? A woman who tortured and decapitated with cold-blooded precision? There was nothing in any police academy book that talked about that kind of psychopathy. And nothing in his own experience as a cop.
Louis looked back at the drawing of the red-haired girl. The face morphed, and he was looking down into Sam’s flushed face as he entered her.
Die with me.
“You all right, son?”
Louis looked up at Aubry. “Yeah,” he said. He closed the sketchbook. “I need to use your phone again.”
He dialed Reggie’s number, arousing Mel from sleep. “Hey,” Louis said. “You awake enough to listen?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.”
“I think Samantha Norris is our killer.”
“Who?”
“The redhead in the Shiny Sheet,” Louis said. “You know. The woman I was…”
“Wait, wait…”
Louis could hear Mel fumbling. When he came back on, his voice was steady. “Jesus. You think she killed them all?”
“Yeah. It started with a boyfriend twenty-eight years ago,” Louis said, glancing at Aubry. “I don’t have time to explain it all right now, but I need you to go over to her house and-”
“I can’t see shit at night. You know that.”
Louis let out a breath. “Mel, is Yuba there?”
“Yeah.”
“Have her drive you to Sam’s house. It’s on South Ocean. I don’t know the address. But there’s a big iron gate and this old Spanish castle house-”
“Rocky, take a breath,” Mel said softly.
Louis ran a hand over his face and started again, giving Mel directions as best he could remember. “She’s probably in the guesthouse,” Louis said. “Just sit outside the gate and make sure no one leaves. Andrew and I are on our way.”
When Louis hung up, he realized Aubry was staring at him. He had heard everything. But Swann still didn’t know.
Louis went out to the porch, but there was no sign of Swann. The BMW was still parked in the drive.
Louis turned to go back in to see if Swann had slipped inside to go to the john. He froze. Swann’s raincoat was gone. So was the rifle.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Was it possible to go to hell twice in one life? What a stupid thing to think about now. But that was what was ricocheting around in Carolyn’s mind as she watched Sam pull Byrne from the Bronco. She hadn’t wanted to come to this place that first time-God, had it been only two weeks ago? — but it had taken all three of them to handle Mark.
She didn’t want to think about that night. And she had been able to stuff the memories in a box somewhere deep inside her, put on her public face, and go on. But now, back here in this place, it was all there again.
Mark Durand had been a mistake. The first time he had been in her bed, she had known that. His idea of seduction was to get drunk on Tucker’s bourbon, then bed her with a quick pawing and brute force. One night she caught Mark in Tucker’s office and called Bianca, telling her to cut him loose.
But Tink was on his appointment book for the next night. And that’s when everything went wrong.
The call had come to her private phone at midnight. It was Tink, wailing that she had killed him by hitting him with a lamp. Carolyn arrived to find Sam trying to calm a hysterical Tink. Mark’s half-naked body was on the bedroom floor. He wasn’t dead, but then Sam said something that made Carolyn’s blood go cold.
Well, maybe the bastard should be.
The details spilled out of Tink. He had called her vile names and said he couldn’t stand the feel of her wrinkled skin or the “old dead woman” smell of her body. Sam reminded them both that Mark had been demanding more money and that she suspected him of stealing a painting from her bedroom. But it was when Carolyn spotted Tucker’s Patek Philippe watch on Mark’s wrist that even she became convinced that he needed to be punished.
They tied him with Tink’s old Hermès scarves and dragged him outside. By the time Durand came to in the backseat of the old Bentley, they were in Clewiston. They let Sam do all the talking.
Where are you bitches taking me?
You’ve been a bad boy, Mark. But you do your job tonight, and you’ll get a nice big bonus.