Mel sat up in the seat and adjusted his sunglasses. The yellow lenses maximized contrast, so Louis suspected Mel could see pretty much what he himself could see: a T-section stop sign, a cluster of gigantic live oaks swagged with Spanish moss, and miles of pastureland.
“Why’d we stop?” Mel asked.
“We’re here.”
“Where the hell is the town?”
“There is no town.”
Mel surveyed the empty pasture and blew out a sigh. “Fucking Barberry. He knew there was nothing here. How are we going to find this damn cattle pen?”
Louis spotted a small sign in the weeds on the other side of the road. He got out and went to it. MARY LOU’S STRAIGHT AHEAD. He hadn’t noticed any stores as they drove in. Back in the car, he turned the Mustang around and headed back north.
“We giving up?” Mel asked.
“Not yet.”
A quarter-mile down the road, there was another sign with an arrow pointing right. The small cinder-block building sat back from the road in a dusty parking lot. There was an empty rust-pocked pickup truck at the lone gas pump.
“You coming in?” Louis asked as he parked.
Mel was squinting at the store. “Bring me a Coke.”
The interior of the store was dark after the brightness of the sun, a cramped warren of shelves holding canned goods, cereal, motor oil, and baskets of mangoes and blackening bananas. A skinny girl of about ten in a dirty sundress and dusty bare feet was staring longingly at a display of penny candy. Louis spotted an old cooler in the back and got a Coke. As he passed the girl, he paused, fished in his pocket, and held out a quarter. The girl hesitated, then took it.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome.”
At the counter, Louis waited until the man behind the register was finished ringing up a six-pack of Tecate beer for an old fellow with a biblical beard.
“I wonder if you could help me out,” Louis asked as the man handed him his change.
“You lost?” the man asked.
“Sort of. Did you hear about the body they found out here last week?”
The man glanced at the old geezer, who was staring out the door at the Mustang. “Everybody around here heard about it,” the counterman said.
“Do you know exactly where it was found?” Louis asked.
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Why you wanna know?” the old man asked.
“I’m helping the police with the case,” Louis said.
“That so? Then how come you don’t know where the body was?”
“I’m not looking for trouble. Just a little help.”
The old man held Louis’s eye for a moment, then turned away. So did the guy behind the counter.
Louis picked up the Coke and pushed through the door. Back at the Mustang, he handed the Coke can to Mel.
“Any luck?” Mel asked as he popped the top.
“We’re on our own.”
Louis noticed the little girl coming toward the car, carrying a small brown bag. She stopped before Louis, her jaws working a wad of bubble gum.
“I know where they found it,” she said.
“Where?” Louis asked.
The girl looked at Mel and back at Louis. “Five dollars.”
Louis laughed. The girl didn’t break a smile.
“I tell you where it is for five dollars,” she repeated.
“Mel, give her five bucks,” Louis said.
“Forget it.”
“Give her the money.”
Mel grunted, dug in his pocket, and held out a bill.
The girl started to grab it, but Mel pulled it back, holding it just out of her reach.
The girl pointed south down the road. “Go past the sign for Devil’s Garden. The next road you come to, turn left. Take the road to the end. The pen is there. But it’s real old, and you have to look hard for it in the weeds.”
“You gonna trust this little extortionist?” Mel asked Louis.
“Give her the money,” Louis said.
Mel handed over the five. The girl stuffed the money into her dress pocket and ran off, her bare feet kicking up dust whirls in the still air.
Louis got back into the car and headed south. He almost missed the turn. The car left asphalt for rutted gravel. The trees grew thick overhead, an arching tunnel of live oaks. They passed a sign that read state land archer preserve.
The gravel road ended abruptly in some high weeds. Louis stopped the car. About fifty feet ahead, he saw a spot of yellow-crime tape hanging limp on old wood.
“Why’d you stop?” Mel asked.
“The road ends. I don’t need a flat out here. Let’s walk it.”
Louis shut off the engine. An overwhelming quiet surrounded them, as heavy as the humid, still air. Then came the metallic whine of cicadas.
“Watch your step, Mel,” Louis said. “The ground’s pretty rough.”
The pen was a skeleton of rotting old wood. Its shape was hard to discern in the chest-high weeds, but it looked to be a series of fenced areas fronted by a narrow incline that rose about six feet from the ground, like it was meant for loading animals. Louis’s only frame of reference for what he was seeing was a couple old westerns. Hud came to mind, and that scene that had always bothered him, the one where the cowboys were talking about having to shoot their diseased cows, and the stupid animals were crammed into a pit, bumping into each other with panicked eyes.
Mel came up to his side. He pulled a handkerchief from his pants and ran it over his glistening bald head. “Does this look as bad as I think it does?”
“Yeah. Looks like it was abandoned a long time ago.”
They picked their way through the weeds and into the first section of the pen. The ground was sandy dirt, and the high sides of the gray wood made the space feel like a large wooden cage.
The cicadas stopped screeching. The quiet flowed in.
“See anything useful?” Mel asked.
“Not really,” Louis said, his eyes scanning every inch of the fences and sand. “Just some rusted chains hanging on a gate.”
They went into the next section, but it was the same as the first. A narrow passageway led to another pen. It was a maze of rotting wood, weeds, and sand. Then, suddenly, the space opened. They were in a large pen, maybe thirty feet square, with a small listing lean-to tucked in a corner. Another ribbon of limp yellow tape hung from the fence.
Louis went to the center. It looked like a portion of the sand had been scooped out with a shovel.
“This is where he was killed,” Louis said.
“How can you tell?” Mel asked.
The sun was starting its descent. Louis figured Mel couldn’t make out any details now. “It looks like the crime-scene guys might have taken soil samples.”
Louis scanned the ground. It had rained during the last week, so there was nothing left of the prints Barberry had mentioned. There didn’t even seem to be any evidence of blood.
Louis stood still, listening. No sounds now. Even the birds had retreated to their night roosts. There was no feeling, either. And he had always been able to get a feeling about a murder scene in the past. It was nothing he could put his finger on, nothing he could articulate. And he never told anyone about it. But he had learned to trust the weird vibration that sometimes came when he stood in the place where a person had taken his last breath.
But there was nothing here. Except for a strange feeling of something old and buried. Like an abandoned grave or-
“I can’t see it.”
Mel had spoken in a whisper. Louis turned to him.
“Can’t see what?” Louis asked.
“Reggie. I can’t see a guy like him coming out here and whacking off someone’s head. A guy like him wouldn’t even know this place was here. Shit, we barely found it.”
Louis was quiet. He had been thinking the same thing. But how much did Mel really know about this Kent guy?
Louis went over to where Mel was and waited until Mel had lit his cigarette. “What are we doing here, Mel?” he asked.