Damaged Goods (34 page)

Hershel focused on the patio door, then scanned the back of Kyrellis’s house, searching for alternative routes. They would have to come through the patio door or walk around from the front. He guessed they wouldn’t do that; the front was exposed to the highway. Either way, he’d have Castor when the man got to his truck.

Floyd was warm beneath him, the black tarp soaking up the winter sun like a thirsty sponge. The car felt almost alive. He wondered what they were doing inside, and for an instant he considered going down to the house. What if Castor did kill Silvie here? Hershel would never forgive himself if he allowed that to happen. He let the gun drop an inch or two and looked more closely, trying to catch any glimpse of movement through the windows.

The patio door slid open, and Silvie stepped out. Her skin grayish, her gait stiff and halting. She looked around, as if sensing his eyes on her. But upon seeing Castor’s truck she started for it at a fast clip. Hershel stood, and she caught sight of him, wincing.

“Silvie,” he called in a hoarse whisper. She was about fifty yards away, and he instantly worried that the sound of his voice had traveled into the house.

She looked startled, then glanced over her shoulder at the patio door.

“Thank God you’re okay. Where’s Castor?”

“Hershel, get out of here.” Her face was set hard. Her backpack swayed at her knee. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Come with me.” He held a hand out to her as she approached, preparing to pull her to safety—to ensconce her in the armor of his truck.

“No!”

The resolution in her voice startled him.

“Just go,” she snapped, reminding him of someone chasing off an unwanted animal. “Kyrellis is dead.” A look of anguish crossed her face, making him wonder if she’d witnessed it. “I shot him.”

“You what?”

“I shot him,” she said fiercely. “Before he could give Jacob your name.”

“Silvie,” he said. “It will be okay. Just come with me. I’ll protect you.”

“I can’t.” She looked furtively at the house. “Jacob is coming. I have to go.”

“Please, just get behind the car,” he said, gesturing toward Floyd. “I’m going to finish this.”

“No!” Her blue eyes sent icy daggers at him.

“Get behind the car,” he demanded. “I’m going to kill that fucker.”

“You can’t do that,” she said through tears. “I … I love him.” She headed toward Castor’s truck. When she reached the passenger door she turned and looked back at him, her brows pressed together with worry. Then she climbed inside. A moment later Castor came through the patio door, carrying the small metal box that had consumed Hershel’s days since he’d met Silvie.

Hershel crouched and sighted the man with his rifle scope. He followed him along the pathway to his pickup, an easy target. One that he could hit in his sleep. He fingered the trigger, Silvie’s words swelling in his head.

“Now,” he whispered. But his finger would not obey his command. “Now,” he said again.

Castor started the engine, the back of his head squarely in the crosshairs of Hershel’s rifle scope. “Now.”

The truck pulled forward, and Castor made the same arcing U-turn that Hershel had. He sighted the man’s face as he came back in this direction. “Now.”

The truck turned down the lane between the greenhouses. Hershel laid the rifle across Floyd’s buckled hood and drew a breath.

Hershel lay on his sofa, his head aching in its familiar, maddening way. His muscles echoed the pain, now a day after he’d retrieved the Porsche and returned it to its dusty tomb. He’d paused to sit in it after backing it into the garage, running his fingers over the steering wheel. Its name had revealed itself as Silvie. The car would never be of use to him now. It would only remind him of their all too brief encounter and its tragic end. The haunted eyes of that little girl, and the sweetness of the woman she’d become. He thought he might sell the car. But something about the idea warned him that it would only add to his list of regrets.

He’d made two trips back to Kyrellis’s yesterday. Both with the flatbed truck that he kept at his auction barn, which he used to bring Floyd home. It was where the Charger should always have been. The work had served to keep him busy and postpone the promised emptiness ahead. After running the flatbed to the sale barn and hiking through the orchard for the second time that day, he’d stood in the driveway and bravely unsheathed the ruined car. Its windshield gaped at him in the cool evening sunshine. The brightness of the afternoon—its out-of-the-ordinariness—had already lent a surreal feeling to the events of the day. He went back over what had happened. Had he been able to carry out his plan, he’d be just hours from meeting Castor in the orchard. And, likely,
hours away from death. The car reminded him that he’d been there before, wandering the line between this world and the next. He tried the trunk, but the bent frame had sealed it tight. What secrets Floyd harbored would remain secrets for now.

Hershel hadn’t gone inside Kyrellis’s house on either of his trips. He knew that someone would find the body in time. A driver looking for a shipment of roses, perhaps. A friend, if Kyrellis had any. Hershel reasoned that he hadn’t actually killed the man—not directly. He told himself that he had nothing to fear from the law. If questioned, he would simply explain that he’d been at Kyrellis’s to collect the Charger. A buy-back. He’d taken the time to draw up a false receipt in case he needed to prove it. But, even as he prepared his story, the truth that he’d hastened the man’s death couldn’t be avoided.

As he listened to the tick of the kitchen clock in the empty house, he parsed Silvie’s declaration that
she
had killed Kyrellis. Had he misunderstood her? Had she said that Castor shot him, and somehow the shock of her leaving with the same man who had enslaved her caused Hershel to get it wrong? He’d gotten so many things wrong; it could be just one more item on that long list. And yet her voice, taut with emotion, rang so clear, even a day later.

One thing had become clear to Hershel, though. As he’d stood looking at Floyd, running his fingers over the crushed-in roof, he knew that he had not killed Albert Darling. Like the oily sheen of those things lost to him, there was also a void—a wide, empty space inside his brain—that by its very presence confirmed that some things never were. Whatever Kyrellis had convinced him of, however Darling’s body had come to him for disposing, a true killer would have pulled the trigger and killed Castor. He was not a killer. He had never been a killer.

On Monday morning, after another difficult night of unrest, Hershel went to the auction barn. The day was as dark as his mood, a
heavy rain pelting his skin through the leafless tree branches. Its icy sting was punishing, but he neither put on the hat he carried in his hand nor turned back for his pickup. At the doorstep he sifted through his keys, calling out each one in his mind: truck, house, storage, post office, warehouse. How could he remember these unimportant keys now and not the other details of his past life? How had he broken his mother’s heart? How had Albert Darling departed this world?

Inside, he found the furniture that Stuart had received on Friday stored haphazardly. A china hutch and a bedroom set were both turned to face the wall. “I should fire that stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered. “How will anyone know what they’re bidding on if they can’t even see the damn things?”

Carl would have known that. He would have taken the time to think about the arrangement, placing it for maximum bidding potential. He would have put the dining set together—table, chairs, sideboard, hutch—so that a woman yet to arrive would see it and instantly fall in love. Carl had understood that auctions were an emotional affair. And his absence here was bitingly real for Hershel. They would never again work together in that comfortable side-by-side silence.

Hershel wandered into the concession stand, which stood quiet, everything washed and put away just as the girl had left it last week. By now Carl would have eaten the leftover hot dogs and started on the fresh ones. The cooker would be greasy and in need of another cleaning before the upcoming sale. The coffeemaker would be covered with brown splatters and used grounds. It was the only benefit Hershel offered—all you can eat and drink. And still he’d found the capacity to resent Carl for taking too much.

The idea was so absurd that Hershel almost laughed at his own meanness. Was anyone that stingy? It was funny, and it was sick. The epiphany that he’d valued all the wrong things in his life shamed him. And the nagging question that had pestered him all morning only grew in intensity. Why was he here today? Why was
he here at all? How could he imagine that life would just go on, as if nothing had happened?

He slid his hand into his pocket and ran a finger over Carl’s worn knife. It had become his constant companion. As he pondered whether to close his business forever—one last liquidation sale and be finished—someone knocked at the front door.

“C’min,” he called.

Two young Mexican men peered in through the door. “ ’Ello?” Behind them the rain was furiously hitting the ground, filling the parking lot with puddles and bringing them to life with motion.

“Can I help you?”

“Our mother,” one of the men called above the roar of pounding rain. “She sent us. You asked us to come?”

Yolanda’s sons; he’d forgotten his request of the woman in the migrant camp. He worried about how she was getting along and motioned the men inside. They introduced themselves in broken English. Manuel and Eduardo. They both stood barely five and a half feet tall, with wide, muscular shoulders and worn, calloused hands. Eduardo, the younger and darker of the two, wore his hair long and tied back in a ponytail. Manuel’s was cropped short in a crew cut, and he sported a gold front tooth.

“About Carl Abernathy,” Hershel said.

“Sí.”
They both nodded. “Carlos.”

“She said you were looking for the person who … who killed him.”

“Sí.”
He took care of our mother,” Manuel said. “He was a good friend to her.”

“His killer—” Hershel stopped. As far as he knew, he reminded himself, he didn’t know if Carl Abernathy was dead or just on a long vacation. He didn’t know that Kyrellis wasn’t at his nursery propagating roses as they spoke. He had never known about any photos, or the name of a Wyoming sheriff. He knew nothing.

The two listened intently, waiting for Hershel to continue.

“Forget about his killer.”

Eduardo shook his head defiantly. “We will find him and kill him.”

“No,” Hershel said.

“Those that did this will pay,” Eduardo said. His mouth had hardened into a grim line. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

“You don’t even know who did it.”

“Yes, we have an idea. The men that were here in camp—the new ones. They don’t like how Carlos spends time with our mother,” Eduardo said.

Manuel flushed and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“It wasn’t them,” Hershel said.

Eduardo shook his head. “No. But they know who it was. They
sent
who it was. They were getting even with Carlos.”

Hershel held his hands up in the air to stop the conversation. These two young men were going to kill someone in retaliation for Carl’s murder—someone who had nothing to do with it.

“Listen to me; it won’t bring him back.”

Manuel studied his boots as Eduardo puffed out his chest like a bantam rooster.

“You’ll only get yourselves thrown in prison, or worse.” Hershel thought of Yolanda the day she came looking for Carl and how she walked back down Scholls Ferry Road in the rain, her shoulders hunched, her face wet with tears. Her grief had touched him. “Think of what it will do to your mother.”

The two men fidgeted and glanced awkwardly around the building. Obviously his request would be ignored.

“I need help,” Hershel said at last. “I have jobs. If … you want them.”

They both took new interest.

“It’s hard work. Moving furniture. Boxes. Heavy stuff. It’s what Carl did for me … these past ten years.”

Manuel shrugged. “We are strong.”

“How long is the job?” Eduardo asked. “We prune grapevines in February, and we pick strawberries in spring.”

Hershel looked around at the giant warehouse that, despite its clutter, felt as vacant and lonely as his own house. What else had he to do? If he sold everything, what would be different about his life? Silvie would still be gone. His mother would still hang up when he called.

“Until I go out of business,” he said.

The two looked at each other, perplexed.

“There is no end. You work for me every day. Forty hours each week. Sometimes more. It depends on the week. Depends on the sale.”

“Ah,” Manuel said, a smile dawning over his face. “All the time. Like Carlos.”

“Yes. But … but I’m not hiring a couple of killers. You’ve got to leave this business alone if you want to work here. Agreed?”

They both thought on this a long moment—so long, in fact, that Hershel was ready to withdraw the offer. Finally Manuel stepped forward, nodded solemnly, and shook Hershel’s hand. Eduardo took his time, but eventually joined his brother. They each thanked Hershel quietly in English and again in Spanish.