A False Dawn

THIRTY-TWO

I stood over the shoe for a closer look. Even through the rain had soaked the shoe, turning it dark red, this shoe was identical to the one Max had found. Here it lay, dirty and wet. I remembered what Leslie had told me about the other shoe missing from the evidence room. I used a small stick to lift the shoe out of its burial ground.

In the raw ugliness, I saw the hopes and dreams of a young woman left in a field. The glass slipper would never be returned and fitted on her petite foot, releasing her from bondage. That was the fairytale. The reality was a horror story. I lowered the shoe into the last bag I had with me. This shoe wouldn’t go missing.

When I entered the camp, Juan Gomez was coming out of the store. He held a Styrofoam cup of hot coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. He chewed and watched me walk up to him, holding the shoe in the bag behind my back. He was a bull chewing grass, staring at nothing beyond his limited vision.

My presence had a different effect on Silas Davis. He came out of the store, his eyes disbelieving and then glaring. His face snarled into a scowl. He bit into a beef jerky, ground it hard in his teeth, and washed it down with a Mountain Dew.

Davis said, “You some kind of psyco ex-cop? Comin’ in here all wet and lookin’ like a crazy fucker.” He crushed the can in his hand, tossing the can in the mud. “Hector ain’t here. So you lookin’ for somebody else to draw down on, huh? That why you got your hand behind your back?”

Slowly I held up the bag. Gomez looked like the last bite of doughnut wouldn’t go down his throat. “What’s that?”

“The woman who wore the matching shoe was murdered. This one came from your field. Less than fifty yards from where you two are standing.”

Gomez said, “We never seen it. Lots of red shoes. Lots of women. You won’t find our fingerprints on that shoe.”

“Maybe not. But this tells me she was here. It tells me you knew her. It tells me you both lied. I showed you a picture of her. How long did she work for you?”

“Did who work for us, man?

“You tell me!”

Davis bit into the beefy jerky, chewed, and said nothing. Gomez said, “No, we don’t know her, but there other camps besides this one. Many workers are women. Many coulda had red shoes.”

“She didn’t work the fields in a shoe like this. What kind of work did she do?”

Gomez said, “We don’t know who you’re talking about?”

“Yes you do! Her first name was Angela. I’m betting she was kept here against her will. What was her full name?”

Davis lifted a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began picking the meat out of his teeth. He said, “You can bet your white ass that my black ass would be burned if anybody tried to own anybody. Know where I’m comin’ from, dog?”

A dozen farm workers, men and women, walked past us. Heading for the buses. I noticed one man limping. I almost didn’t recognize him. He was the young man I’d seen yesterday, the one that stopped to speak with me, but never got the chance. His face was swollen, bruised in shades of purple. He looked at me for a few seconds before limping toward the bus.

I said, “Silas, you asked me if I know where you’re coming from. I think the image of that man tells me where you’re coming from. He needs medical attention. What happened to him?”

Gomez shrugged. “Probably got in a fight with one of his amigos. It’s something we have no control over. These men are highly competitive in the field. Each wants to be the next tigre. Sometimes they drink too much. Go crazy and start fighting.”

“I’m going to do three things—”

Davis interrupted, “Whatcha gonna do, ex-cop? Who you gonna call?”

“I’m calling an ambulance for that man. I’m running a DNA check on the toothpick you threw at my face yesterday. And I’m going to prove that one or both of you killed Angela.”

Silas Davis slowly removed the toothpick from one side of his mouth, looking at it like he was holding a diseased object.

Turning to walk to my car, I saw the second bus leave, filled with faces staring at the dawn. I heard Gomez open his cell phone. He spoke quickly in Spanish. The only words I could make out were something that sounded like ‘Santa Ana.’