The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller)

by Lowe, Tom

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “What did Soto tell you? Why did he choose the fairy on his arm?”

  “I don’t ask my customers why they want what they want. It’s none of my fuckin’ business, and it’s none of yours.”

  “When he pulled a pistol in the faces of a mother and her daughter, Frank Soto made it my business.”

  “Hey, man, I’m just an artist, not some shrink.”

  “And I’m just a guy trying to prevent a double homicide.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. We have reason to believe the asshole you inked will return and finish the job. People talk when they’re getting a tattoo. Sometimes it’s to help tolerate the pain of the needle, but most of the time it’s to give the artist a better understanding of the importance of a new portrait they’ll wear for life. What did he tell you?”

  Inkman was silent. His jaw line popped. A muscle moved like a worm embedded beneath his left eye. I said, “Your jewelry princess is a junkie. Did she get her morning needle in here? In that chair? You’ve got syringes in the garbage, and I’m betting those customers who walked out when I walked in bought more than incense. You tell me now. I leave. I won’t come back. Won’t come back with dogs, warrants and reasons.”

  His black eyes turned to marble. I said, “And now, Inkman, you have a chance to do something that can bring a fairytale ending to a potential horror story. You can be a silent hero. Prevent two innocent killings. What was his reason?”

  Inkman lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and leaned against the arm of the leather chair used by his customers. “The dude said he wanted the tat as a souvenir. Said he saw something down in the forest.”

  “Saw what? What forest?”

  “Ocala National.”

  “What’d he see?”

  “Some kind of religious ceremony. Said the women were dressed as fairies. Lots of drums beating all night. He said the women were like fireflies around the light of the bonfire. He mentioned he was on his way to meet somebody when he saw all these fuckers, Rainbow people, or whatnot. Anyway, they were pulling their beat-up vans and trucks way the hell down in the forest for a week of fire and drums. Looks like this guy sort of stumbled among them. Said he took some hits. Some kind of sage, sort of like acid, called it a salvia plant. But he said it was like nothin’ he’d ever done before, he thought he’d traveled back in time, you know like some fuckin’ land of druids. Said in that land women are for the taking. So he took one. That’s all he said. He took one. He wanted a tattoo to keep her close. Now what the fuck is that suppose to mean?”

  TWENTY

  Detective Lewis sounded guarded. Or maybe slightly annoyed when I called to tell him I’d found a tattoo parlor and now had a lead in the case for him.

  “What kind of lead?” he asked.

  I told him about my conversation with Inkman and said, “The only thing we have that connects Molly Monroe to Frank Soto before the take-down in the Walmart lot is the Ocala National Forest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Molly and her boyfriend, as you know, were there recently scouting for areas to release endangered butterflies. Frank Soto told this tat artist he was in the forest and met up with a group of free spirits, called them Rainbow people. They’d converged in the forest to sit around bonfires, dance and use some kind of peyote or something to take them on a trip without packing.”

  “Are they still in there?”

  ”I don’t know, but it’s worth checking out. The summer solstice, often called Midsummer’s Eve, just occurred. It’s a time of year with a long history of pagan rituals and fairy dances. Maybe there’s a missing girl, someone dressed in a fairy costume, a woman who met up with Soto and never made it back to her tribe.”

  “Far as I can tell, there’s no missing persons report coming from the national forest, but it’s not my jurisdiction.”

  “These Rainbow people could be too out of it to report the sighting of Haley’s Comet. Or maybe one of them told the ranger at the station something. Unless you tell me you have a whereabouts on Soto, it’s all we have that ties him directly to an area where Molly Monroe was before Soto showed up at the butterfly facility. It’s your case, and I don’t know the locals up here.”

  I heard a deep sigh. He said, “All right, O’Brien. I’ll talk with Marion County investigators. I have a friend in the department. I’ll give ‘em the heads up and see if they can find something in that place. What is it, like a half million areas of forest?

  “Biggest forest in the state. What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Sandberg, Detective Ed Sandberg, but don’t you start calling him. I’ll let you know if we find anything.” He disconnected.

  As I pulled out of the Art House parking lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and could make out the silhouette of someone standing in the window looking at my Jeep. Beyond the OPEN sign, flickering neon with a burned out O, beyond the words on the window, I could see the look on Inkman’s face. It was an anxious posture, cell phone pressed to his ear, the red dot of a cigarette bouncing from his lips. Nick’s voice played in my head. “I told you how shit happens, remember?”

  At the crossroads, I drove right on Highway 40 and headed west toward Cedar Key. Thought I’d inspect the 41 Beneteau moored there before I took the job of delivering it to the new owner at Ponce Marina. Depending upon the wind, length of marina stops, I figured it would take two weeks to sail the boat to its new home. The money was good. The time at sea would be even better. I missed sailing. I’d take Nick and Max. Maybe Dave would join us. I began to let my mind wander at sea as I headed to Cedar Key, an island moored at a point in time that seemed ageless.

  LUKE PALMER THOUGHT SOMEONE was following him. He’d been living in the forest now for almost two weeks, digging for something he wasn’t sure he’d ever find. He had the feeling, occasionally, that someone was watching him from a distance. Almost like an inmate watching him across a prison yard. Shake it off, he told himself.

  He sat under a pine tree and sipped water from the half-gallon plastic jug he’d carried for miles. His mind drifted back to his years in prison. Finally gone from forty years in an eight-by-nine pen to a place so big there were more squirrels than people. Prison was constant noise. Here, the silence had a presence. He loved hearing the birds in the morning. Sleeping in the little tent was like the Taj Mahal compared to four decades on a hard cot.

  Maybe the hippies had pulled up camp in the forest. Saw enough of ‘em on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in the sixties. Little Charlie Manson wanted to be one of ‘em, but his spirit, like his body, never had been and never would be free.

  He thought about Al Karpis. All ten of Al’s fingerprints surgically removed in the thirties. If he were alive, what would ol’ Al do to hide his DNA today? Where the hell did they hide the loot? “Where’s the dough, Al? Huh? Dug more than fifty holes. Nothing. Nothing but blisters and a case of the shits from eating bad bologna.”

  He stood up, his back sore from digging, and started walking through the forest. Heading toward another huge tree in a place of ten million trees. His eyes scanned the shadows moving like apparitions over the scrub oak, the buzz of honeybees in the wild purple heather. He could see something a little different under the base of the next oak he was approaching. Fresh earth turned up. His mind raced, his eyes searching the woods. Palmer felt sweat rolling down his back as he walked faster to get to the next tree. He carried his gear, water jug tied to his belt and bouncing off a bad knee.

  He stopped. The earth was fresh. Someone had been digging here. Had they found Ma Barker’s money?

  SONSABITCHES! Watchin’ from somewhere. Picking a tall oak and digging. Had they found it? Was it gone? Gone for fuckin’ forever!

  He dropped to his knees beside the newly turned earth. He used his small shovel to dig. The sound of deerflies buzzed around his head. A fly with a green body landed on his hand. He smacked it and dug deeper.

  The smell came up
from the hole like the devil threw up in his face.

  He could see the tip of some kind of wing. Purple and gold. Protruding right through loose soil, like feathers from a grave. He used his hands. Shaking. The face of a girl appeared under a scoop of dirt. Black soil in her mouth and nose. Lips blue. He almost didn’t recognize her. It was the girl he’d met that first night he heard the drums. “When was the last time you were hugged?”

  Palmer felt nausea rising. He stood and vomited the rest of a bologna sandwich from his guts into the weeds. As he used the back of his hand to wipe his lips, a crow flew overhead, its mocking call sounded as if it would echo to the ends of earth.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Cedar Key may have broken off from Key West about the time Hemingway lived there, floated backwards in the Gulf Steam, and anchored itself away from the tides of change. The whole town feels like it should be on the national register of historic places. It’s an old fishing village that propped itself up recently, tossed out the dusty Sears and Roebuck catalogs, and invited tourists.

  After four hours of inspecting Sovereignty, turning over her diesels, I gave the Beneteau keys back to the broker and walked to the Captain’s Table on Dock Street for a late lunch. I ordered Cedar Key steamed clams, which were cooked in white wine, butter and garlic, and took them outside to eat on the dock. I sat at a wooden table, the late afternoon sun spilling from crimson clouds in the west over the Gulf of Mexico. As I ate, five roseate spoonbills glided over the still water as if they’d been plucked from the clouds, their pink feathers shimmering off the flat ocean. A man in a kayak paddled toward the sun.

  I thought about what I would need to deliver the sailboat from here to Ponce Marina. The boat was new and had easily passed the bank survey. I’d buy two weeks of provisions even though the route would take us through a lot of excellent stopping points with rustic restaurants in places like Cabbage Key, Cayo Costa, Sanibel, Naples and Marco. We’d sail around the Ten Thousand Islands, turn north at Key Largo, head through Biscayne Bay and up the east coast to Ponce Marina.

  At this point, with Elizabeth and Molly under police watch and Detective Lewis working with Marion County sheriff’s office to probe the forest, there wasn’t much more I could do. Molly and Elizabeth were alive, relatively safe, and Soto was out of sight.

  After a few more days, if all was quiet, I’d take the job and bring the boat half way around the state.

  My cell phone vibrated on the wooden table.

  I wiped the butter off my fingers and answered. It was Detective Lewis. “O’Brien, just wanted to let you know that your hunch about the tattoo and the national forest paid off.”

  “Did you find Soto?

  “No, but we might have found his work. I was speaking with Marion County when they got a call about a body found somewhere in those woods. The locals there simply call the whole place—the forest. And they’ve had more than their share of bodies turn up in that place. A park ranger discovered a shallow grave. He called in to report that it looks as though an animal, maybe a possum, dug it up. They found a girl. No ID yet, most likely a runaway. She had been wearing a costume, fairy wings folded behind her back. Whoever buried her, laid her hands across her stomach, fingers laced together. Posed her. Weird bastard.”

  I said nothing. I thought about the tattoo I’d seen on Soto’s arm, and the one hanging in Inkman’s shop.

  “You there, O’Brien?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Cedar Key.”

  “You’re a hell of a lot closer to the crime scene there than I am down here in Sanford. I don’t think the M.E. has got to it yet. Supposed to be way back in the forest.”

  “Thanks, Detective.”

  “O’Brien, don’t go messing around up there. A few of those ol’ boys on the Marion S.O. have gotten real damn sensitive about all the bodies found dumped in the forest. You understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “Absolutely, Detective.”

  I looked at my watch and figured I had a couple of hours before sunset. Enough time to pay a visit to a place the locals call the forest.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Any illusions I had of sailing through the Florida Keys melted somewhere in the fantasy balcony of my mind as I came around a curve on Highway 40 and saw a police search helicopter flying above the treetops. In the distance, I saw two sheriff’s cruisers turn down a spur road leading into the Ocala National Forest. I could drive by, or make the turn. Choices—bad decisions that can haunt you for life, and all from making wrong turns. As I approached the dirt road, I slowed, thought about Elizabeth and Molly. Screw it. I hooked the turn, dirt and rocks flying up against the trees.

  Sunset spilled through tree branches, shafts of golden twilight penetrating the dark woods in pockets of flickering light. I kept far behinds the cruisers, catching the pulse of red and blue lights through the moving flash of green leaves and branches slapping against the Jeep. The road led on for three miles. It emptied into a wider dirt road. I saw that most of the tire tracks were to the right, or west, toward what was left of a sunset. I drove another two miles, followed the noise of two helicopters—one operated by law enforcement, the second operated by a television news crew.

  Another half mile and I saw five cruisers, emergency vehicles and one ambulance parked in a quarter-circle around a large oak. I pulled over, parking my Jeep behind two unmarked crown vics. As I started toward the crime scene, the police helicopter flew low heading toward the interior of the forest. The prop blast stirred up small dust devils over the dry roadbed. I walked around a dark green Department of Interior truck, wet mud in the tire tread and caked on the wheels.

  Both back doors on the ambulance were wide open. Officers and forensics investigators worked the scene, along with three detectives, the constant sputter of police radios jarring in this place of trees and silence. I watched as two paramedics lifted a gurney, the white sheet pulled from head to toe. Protruding from beneath the folds in the sheet was the tip of her clothes, a cream-colored dress maybe.

  I went closer, kept near the trees and watched as investigators took pictures and filled bags with dirt. Then I saw something that made my stomach tighten.

  Two wings. They looked fragile. Delicate. A man wearing gloves lifted the wings from the grave. They were a royal purple trimmed in shades of gold and green. They were broken wings. I thought of the image on Inkman’s wall—the image on Soto’s arm. The strobe of police lights—white, blue and red, spilled across the wings as the investigator examined them. In the heavy twilight, they reflected light like a canyon delivers echoes, haunting, distant, physically there but yet somewhere else.

  Two plainclothes detectives were questioning a man wearing a forest ranger’s uniform. A time like this was the only moment I missed carrying my badge. All access permitted. Now it was hard to get through the stage door. I stepped around a green forestry truck and lifted the yellow police tape. I approached the crime scene as I’d done with hundreds like it in the thirteen years I worked homicide for Miami-Dade PD.

  “Can I see some ID?” The question came from a rookie officer who stepped over to me with a notepad in one hand and pen in the other.

  “I’m a consultant,” I said nodding.

  “Consultant?”

  “Working with Detective Sandberg. Where is he?”

  “Umm, he’s on the other side of the ambulance talking to someone.”

  “Thanks, Officer Davenport.” He glanced down at his name badge as I walked around the ambulance.

  The detective I assumed was Sandberg seemed to be ending a conversation with a man in a park service ranger’s uniform. They shook hands and the detective walked over to three members of the forensics team. Two women carried paper bags of evidence, loading them into the back of an unmarked car. One investigator handled clear plastic bags that looked to carry dirt and partially digested food. They seemed to be in deep discussions, oblivious to me, so I walked up to the man in the par
k uniform.

  He was tall. Could look me in the eye, which he did. Probably outweighed me by twenty pounds. He had a hawkish face, with dark bushy eyebrows, and eyes to match. His name pin read: Ed Crews. He introduced himself as a district ranger, and said he had worked the Ocala National Forest for seven years.

  “Did you find the body?” I asked.

  “I saw buzzards circling. Wondered what had died, so I stopped my truck on the service road and found her in that hole.” He pointed to an excavated grave under a large live oak. He said, “What a shame. Just a kid. We have coyotes in the national forest. I thought maybe one of them had been digging up the body, but I’m not sure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, about an hour before I saw the vultures, I’d spotted a guy on foot. He was a guy I’d seen in the forest earlier, an ex con. Said he was looking for Civil War artifacts. A little while ago, he was walking like he was in a hurry. Older guy. White hair. He had a water jug tied to his belt, carried a backpack, and some kind of steel rod. I just mentioned this to Detective Sandberg.”

  “What’d the rod look like?”

  “Like the T rods that septic guys use to probe for concrete tanks in the ground.”

  “Did you stop and question him the second time you saw him?”

  “Started to, we try to keep the squatters out of here, but it’s like trying to patrol the border between Mexico and the U.S., almost impossible. It looked like he was on his way out, and I wanted to see what had died. We have a hell of a problem with poachers killing deer. Sometimes they’ll wound the deer and it’ll take a few hours to die. Then the vultures start circling.”

  “Did you see any animal tracks, you know, coyote imprints at the gravesite?”

  “After I leaned over and stared into that hole, and saw the face of the young girl, I ran back to my truck. Radioed headquarters, and waited in my truck ‘til police got here.” He gestured to his green truck, the side of a door marked U. S. Dept of Forestry. “I’ve been here for almost two hours, and I tell you one thing, I’m ready to get home.”