Forests of the Night

by James W. Hall

  So she broke with chain of command and called Frank Sheffield.

  A couple of sentences into her explanation, Frank put her on hold and kept her there two minutes, three, while she stared at the thumbnail photo of Jacob Panther.

  When Sheffield clicked back on, first thing he asked was if she had her handgun nearby.

  “In the next room.”

  “It’s to be used for self-protection only. Okay? No heroes.”

  “You’re sending your people?”

  “That’s right. SWAT.”

  “Shit, Frank. By the time they get in gear, I could have a dozen Gables cops here. This part of town we’ve got less than a two-minute response time.”

  “Forget it, Monroe. This is ours. It’s already in motion.”

  “I’m going to catch shit from Rodriguez.”

  “Rodriguez will be fine. You called him first, did it by the book.”

  “How soon?”

  “Choppers on the pad, firing up. Perimeter’s going up right now. I’m already in my car—five, ten minutes tops.”

  For the last year Sheffield had been special agent in charge of the Miami field office. Ten years back she’d met him for the first time at a Miracle Mile bank robbery when the feds took over. Nice guy, not the usual stiff-backed hotshot. In fact, he was the only slacker she’d ever met in the FBI. Notorious for his maverick approach, his laid-back style. Everybody she knew in local law enforcement was amazed the guy hadn’t been canned long ago, and doubly amazed he’d been promoted to the top slot of one of the largest regional offices in the country.

  “Can you tell if he’s armed?”

  “You already asked that, Frank, and I said no, not that I can see.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let Parker in on it. No offense, but your husband’s liable to have Panther bailed out of jail before we can arrest the son of a bitch.”

  “This isn’t funny, Frank. My family’s at risk. My daughter.”

  At the groan of a floorboard in the hallway, she shot a look over her shoulder and in the same moment clicked her mouse to kill the FBI page. Nobody there. In that old house the oak planks were always creaking from the muggy air swelling the wood, the constant breezes stressing the rafters.

  “This is a bad dude, Monroe. Eight homicides.”

  “I’ve read the stuff on the site. I’ve got the picture.”

  “Blown five banks so far, every other month for the last year. We got half a dozen agents with the Southeast Bomb Task Force out of Atlanta working full-time on the guy. Those boys are going to be pissed we made the takedown.”

  “Got to wonder,” she said, “why the hell someone blows up banks.”

  “We’ll ask him in a few minutes.”

  Charlotte’s breath burned her throat. Chitchatting while FBI’s Number Eight was on her patio.

  “I got to go, Frank.”

  “Keep him distracted. Give him some wine, truffles. Whatever you people eat in the Gables.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Well, I guess this explains the airport thing.”

  “What airport thing?”

  “What, your power go off over there? A guy got assassinated at MIA this afternoon. Blowgun, poison dart. Eyewitness got a look at the boy who did it. Tall, heavyset, long hair. She thought maybe a Miccosukee or Seminole from the design on the shirt he was wearing.”

  “Why do you say ‘assassinated’?”

  “Dead guy was the son of some congressman, in town for some fund-raising thing. Gets whacked going down the escalator to baggage claim. Media’s playing up the political angle.”

  “A blowgun? You can’t be serious.”

  “Dart lodged in the neck. Unless the perp walked up and smacked him with a dart, which doesn’t seem likely, it was some kind of air-pressure weapon. Tribue went down—five, six seconds later, he’s cold.”

  “And that fits Panther’s MO, a blowgun?”

  “Not really. But he’s one of the names that popped when we ran the eyewitness stuff. Now here he is, standing in your living room eating liver pâté. So hey, two plus two.”

  “Bye, Frank. I’ll leave the front door open. No need for the battering ram. Parker’s touchy about that front door. You damage it, he’ll sue.”

  She slapped the phone down and turned to see Gracey in the doorway.

  “So who was that, your boyfriend again?”

  Gracey was holding a sheet of paper. The serene look had dissolved. Now her lower lip jutted, eyes frosted over as if the dizzy white noise was filling her head. In only a few moments her daughter had been swept up by the storm of molecules and mitochondria and assorted unruly chemicals. A cheerful, imaginative teenage girl body-snatched and replaced by a warped, fun-house-mirror version.

  “I was discussing work,” said Charlotte.

  “Yeah, right, Mom, whatever you say. But I don’t care if you have a boyfriend. Be kind of nice, really. Make you less boring. Give my life a little texture and dimension.”

  “There’s no boyfriend, Gracey. Now stop that.”

  She held out the paper and rattled it.

  “Dad said I should get you to sign this.”

  “It’ll have to wait.”

  “It’s so I can do a ride-along with a Metro cop. An eight-hour shift with a real police officer. Go into the ghetto, the down and dirty world.”

  Charlotte stood up, came over to Gracey, took her by the upper arm, and tugged her into the room. She leaned out, peered down the empty hallway, then shut the door.

  “Steven thinks I need more life experience. Breathe some exhaust fumes. Experience some hard knocks.”

  “Listen, sweetie, something’s come up. We can talk about this later.”

  “I’m your daughter,” Gracey said. “Don’t my needs count?”

  “Of course they do, you’re the most important thing there is, but…”

  “Yeah, right. You spend all day pulling winos out of Dumpsters, you don’t have a lot left for your family when you get home.”

  “Don’t say that, Gracey, you know it isn’t true.”

  “Steven had a shitty childhood. Mega personal pain. He thinks I’m too sheltered to be a real artist. I’ll never get the depth into my work without more heartache, struggle.”

  “Steven thinks this. Some friend from school?”

  “Spielberg, stupid.”

  “Oh, Gracey. Come on.”

  “Jaws, you know, Mom. E. T., Jurassic Park. Just the biggest movies of all time. That Steven.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Steven’s made me his protégée. He sees what I’m capable of. He’s chosen me.”

  Charlotte measured a breath. Stay logical, the shrink said. Don’t buy in to her fantasy. Keep showing her the real world, its shape, its hard contours.

  “You’ve spoken with him on the phone?”

  “We talk all the time. He’s considering me for a project.”

  Charlotte stopped, listened. She thought she heard the heavy thud of a helicopter but then wasn’t sure.

  “I have to go, sweetie. If you want to do a ride-along, I’m not ruling it out. But we need to discuss it.”

  “Rules,” Gracey said. “Everything’s against the rules. Rules, rules, rules. You know all the rules, don’t you, Mom? You got them all memorized.”

  “I know some of them.”

  “Well, Steven didn’t get where he is by following rules. No real artist does. They make their own. That’s what creativity is, Mom, in case you haven’t heard, breaking the rules. What you’re trying to do is suffocate me. Push all the air out of my lungs, sit on my chest, and turn me into some kind of mushroom fungus. A goddamn toadstool, that’s what you want me to be.”

  “Okay, I’ve listened to you, now you listen to me. Go to your room right now, Gracey. I’m not mad at you, I’m not punishing you, and I won’t try to keep you from doing what you want with your life, but right now, this second, you have to go to your room, lock the door, and stay there till I come for you. Okay
? There’s something going on. It’s a volatile situation, sweetie, and I want you to be safe. In your room. Now.”

  Gracey bent her arm backward and dug her thumb at her bra strap, tugging it back into place. The artless gesture of a child wrestling with a twenty-year-old’s body.

  When the strap was fixed, Gracey swung toward the built-in bookshelves in the corner of the room.

  “I told you what the bitch would say. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Gracey, stop that.”

  Staring at the bookshelf, she lowered her voice to a whisper, only a few words audible. “My life. Bruises. Haven’t forgotten.”

  Charlotte reached out for Gracey, then let her hand fall. Fighting the instinct to wrench her daughter’s arm, shake her hard, do whatever it took to drag her back from that dark oblivion.

  Gracey stared at the spines of the books and listened to the phantom voice, and nodded and mumbled some reply, then by slow degrees her eyes resurfaced and her gaze drifted from the shelves and settled on Charlotte. A grim mask tightening into place on her child’s face. Stanwyck, Bogart, the lifeless look.

  “This is about him, isn’t it? That phone call, how you’re acting. It’s about Jacob.”

  Charlotte glanced up at the ceiling, hearing it, the thrash of blades somewhere within a few blocks.

  “I know who he is, Mom. I’ve got eyes. I’m not a kid you have to hide things from. You should’ve come out and told me. But no, you think I’m this little girl in gingham frocks, some goody-goody you have to protect. Well, it’s too late for that. I can see who he is. I’m not stupid.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gracey.”

  “You’re such a liar. I just talked to him in the hall and asked him straight out, and he said yes. He admitted it.”

  “In the hallway? Just now?”

  “Goddamn it,” Gracey said. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me? You think if you ignore me, I’ll just go away. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? Well, okay, maybe I will. Maybe I’ll just leave. I’m wasting my time here anyway. The way you’ve tried to turn me into a privileged little brat. Always so goddamned worried about protecting me. Well, it won’t work, Mom. Know why? Because I don’t need any of this shit, and you know what else? I don’t want to be protected. Not by you. Not by anyone.”

  Gracey gestured at the room and the house beyond it, then her head rocked back, shoulders trembled, eyes blinking rapidly. A full-scale meltdown. The tears welling, quickly brimming over, her nose running. Gracey fragmenting.

  Charlotte put an arm around her shoulder, pulled her into a hug, spoke into her hair, into the smell of clover and rain. The girl shivered and twisted against Charlotte’s embrace, a token resistance, then she grew still.

  “Look, sweetie, I want you to stay right here in my office till I come back for you. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t move. You’ve got to promise me.”

  Gracey spoke through her tears.

  “I need to e-mail Mr. Underwood, tell him I’m going to do ride-alongs. He agrees with Steven. I need more seasoning, more bumps and bruises.”

  “Nobody needs more bruises, honey.”

  Gracey tore away from the hug, her eyes wild and scarlet.

  “What do you know? Driving around in your bulletproof vest all day, reading the rule book. What do you know about anything?”

  “Okay, fine, e-mail your teacher. Use my laptop. Just stay here till I come back. Promise me.”

  “Sure, Mom. Whatever.”

  Seven

  “He’s in the bathroom, okay? He had to piss. Jesus, Charlotte, what the hell’s going on with you?”

  She stepped over to the front window and tugged the drapes aside. Panther’s red pickup truck was still there.

  “Charlotte? Talk to me, damn it. What’s going on?”

  She swung around, brought her voice to a hoarse whisper.

  “FBI SWAT team is on the way. We’ve got a minute or two at most.”

  “What!”

  With a slash of her hand she silenced him.

  She gave him the two-sentence version. FBI Most Wanted list. Eight homicides. When she was done, Parker stared up at the glitter of the crystal chandelier. His lips parted but no words came.

  “Gracey’s in my office. You go stay with her, Parker, and I’ll keep Panther occupied till they get here.”

  Parker clamped his lips and shook his head.

  She gripped Parker’s elbow and tugged him toward the door.

  “Stay with your daughter. I’ll handle this.”

  He roused himself from his daze, stared at her hand, and shrugged loose.

  “No,” he said. “No fucking way.”

  She pointed a finger at him and he stared at it, bewildered.

  She angled away from the door, lowering her voice to an airless hiss.

  “This is my territory, Parker. When Panther’s in custody, feel free to take charge, habeas corpus to your heart’s content, but this situation right here, right now, this is what I’m trained for. This is what I’m about. Okay?”

  He stepped back from her, hand rising to brush his cheek as if a bullet had skimmed his flesh. She’d never pulled rank on him before or used her cop voice. Never tried it, never had to.

  Something shuddered in Parker’s eyes. Perhaps he felt the faint slip and buckle of the tectonic plates, no earthquake yet, but a crack in the foundation of their bond.

  Charlotte found a softer voice, as close to gentle as she could manage.

  “Go stay with Gracey. Please. It’ll be over in minutes.”

  “Okay, okay.” He showed his palms. “But no gunfire, right? Taking him alive, that’s the idea.”

  “Always is.”

  She shot a look at the door. Empty.

  “It’s got to be more than that this time. You’ve got to protect him, Charlotte, you’ve got to be absolutely sure.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  Parker backed off to a harsh whisper.

  “Don’t let this get out of hand. Go the extra mile, okay? Promise me. You’ve got to promise.”

  “What the hell, Parker?”

  He dabbed his tongue at his upper lip and stared again at the empty brilliance of the chandelier.

  “That boy…” Parker swallowed and couldn’t go on.

  “That boy what?”

  Parker shook his head and lowered his gaze to hers. He shook his head another time as if refusing some command.

  “What is it, Parker? Talk to me.”

  “He’s my son, Charlotte. My flesh and blood.”

  It wasn’t Frank Sheffield’s fault. He repeated Monroe’s address twice to the airfield dispatcher and thought he heard the confirmation behind the layer of static. But the MTS handhelds the chopper personnel used were regularly desensed by the Nextel site a half-mile away from where they were stationed. Depended on the weather, number of cell-phone calls coming and going. Miami field office had been complaining to D.C. long before Sheffield took over. Memos and more memos. Get them better equipment or move the chopper field somewhere out of the dead zone, or else blow the goddamn tower.

  Finally, last year D.C. sent down two geeks to run a check with their spectrum analyzer. But after a week of crisscrossing the territory in question, the techies couldn’t identify any discrete interfering signals.

  “How about the Nextel tower?” Sheffield said. “You know, that twelve-story object that’s taller than anything within ten square miles. Bouncing a few thousand microwave signals every second. Think that might be it, fellas?”

  The techies couldn’t confirm it. They left, and no one got back to Sheffield. Papers shuffled. Budgets cut, funds diverted to more pressing needs. Same old shit.

  So tonight the chopper dispatched to Parker Monroe’s address hovered ten blocks east of its objective, and its enormous spotlight scanned the front and backyard of Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Silberman’s two-story Mediterranean, while seven black-suited, heavily armed federal agents battered down the heart surgeon’s
front door.

  Considering how fucked their radios were, it was a miracle the rapid-response guys got as close to the target as they did.

  With a steadying hand against the dining-room table, Charlotte said, “Panther’s in his late twenties.” Struggling with the simple math, her head so fogged. “So you were, what, fourteen?”

  “Fifteen,” he said. “It’s a long story, Charlotte.”

  He crossed the room and offered his arms. She hesitated, feeling her own geologic tremors deep beneath their common ground. She retreated a step, and Parker lowered his arms.

  “You’ve known this how long? For years? That you had a son?”

  “Not until tonight.”

  “He told you that? He told you he was your son?”

  “No one told me. I saw it in his eyes, his bone structure. Who his mother is, his age. Look, I’m just now sorting it out myself.”

  “So you’re not sure. You’re guessing.”

  “We don’t need a blood test. He’s my son, Charlotte.”

  Outside in the driveway, tires screamed.

  She got to the window in a second, yanked the curtains back, and caught a flash of the rear lights of Parker’s Mercedes swerving onto Riviera Drive.

  “Goddamn it.”

  Before she turned away, she saw, above the oaks and royal palms, a helicopter’s searchlight washing across a neighborhood at least a mile away.

  “Aw, shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

  She sprinted to the kitchen. Dug her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed Gables emergency. Getting Mary Troutman, thank God, a veteran of twenty years.

  “They’ve got the wrong address, so the perimeter’s off. And it’s not the red truck I told them he was driving. He’s in Parker’s Mercedes. Silver sedan, heading north on Riviera toward U.S. 1.” She spelled out Parker’s vanity plate, DFENDR.

  Mary kept her on the line while she patched into the FBI. As Charlotte drummed a finger against the stove top, Parker passed through the kitchen, heading down the hallway.

  With the line still empty, Charlotte grabbed the Cabernet bottle from the counter and took a slug. She put the bottle down, wiped her mouth, and craned to see from the kitchen window if the chopper was still there, but a hibiscus bush blocked her view. One of many chores Parker had been neglecting, working all that overtime to get a guilty kid off a murder rap.