Free The Cutting Season by Attica Locke Page A

that’s causing us trouble. That rain came down hard last night, and as far as we can tell, washed out any trace of a workable crime scene. There’s no blood, no sign of a struggle, nowhere to start. That’s why the more information we can get from you folks about what you know or what you may have seen, the easier it’ll be for us to put this one down.” He smiled here, really selling it, his implied offer of something like a partnership, he and Caren playing for the same team. “If you could help us get a hold of Donovan—”
    “Don’t push it, Nes,” his partner said.
    Lang looked at Detective Bertrand, but said nothing.
    Then he looked again at Caren.
    “You’re Helen’s girl, right?”
    He smiled, not waiting for an answer. “It took me a minute to put it together.”
    Congratulations, she thought.
    She did not want to talk about her mother, not like this, and not with him.
    She glanced back at Morgan, who was folding the hem of her plaid skirt across the palm of her hand and kicking one of her sneakers against the edge of the stage. Caren felt tired all of a sudden, aware in every bone that her day had started at dawn. She saw that woman’s face again, those narrow, black eyes, that one, tiny star-shaped earring, the other lost along the way. She wanted to take her girl and go home.
    “She was a good woman, your mother,” Lang said. “Loyal.”
    Caren nodded vaguely.
    “Thirty-two years at Belle Vie,” he said, whistling at the breadth of it. “And Leland Clancy never had any trouble with her,” he said, glancing at Detective Bertrand, who was following this bit of the conversation with a kind of detached appreciation for his partner’s style and approach. “How long ago did she die again?” Lang said.
    “I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with your investigation?”
    “She must have missed you something awful when you went off,” the detective said. “Dillard, then two years at the law school at Tulane. You spent time out there working in a legal clinic, isn’t that right?” So Donovan’s wasn’t the only background they’d looked into, she thought. “Kind of strange, you not mentioning that fact.”
    “You asked me if I was a lawyer, and I answered the question correctly.”
    “Didn’t mention your mother working here neither.”
    “Didn’t think it was relevant.”
    “ ‘Relevant,’ ” Lang said, playing the word back to her. He glanced down at the tips of his black dress shoes, which were marred now with damp grass and dirt. He was still fiddling with the coins in his pocket. “Well, Tulane,” he said. “I sure hope you weren’t gone so long as to forget where you came from, what this land means for the Clancys, who’ve been very good to people like your mother, Ms. Gray, people like you. We’re hoping we can count on you to do the right thing here. Point of fact is, somebody killed that girl out here. Now, my gut on this deal is that we’re talking about somebody local, someone who knows the landscape out here, and who might well come back. We need all the cooperation we can get, and that includes getting a hold of Donovan.”
    “Dumped her here, you mean,” Caren said, correcting him.
    Detective Bertrand shook his head. “We considered that, ma’am.”
    “But thing is,” Lang said, “you already told us the gates were locked last night.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Every entrance, everything was locked, you said.”
    “Yes.”
    “Which means, ma’am,” Lang went on, laying out the facts as gently as possible, sensing he had not been as forthcoming as he should have been, like a doctor speaking of surgeries and pills and next steps, without ever mentioning the word cancer . The danger they were potentially in was a lot closer than she thought. “It means I don’t think we’re talking about someone getting inside these gates with a body, but someone who was trying to get out with it. That fence out there is, what, five feet?”
    “It’s four