The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller)

by Lowe, Tom

  Elizabeth’s hand slid down the pole, her head turning toward the reporter, her mind struggling with the request for an interview. “There is nothing I can say right now.”

  The reporter smiled. “I understand… maybe I can ask you about a past incident when a man tried to abduct you and your daughter in a parking lot. Police say it was Frank Soto. As you know, he’s been on the loose since killing a guard… do you think he did this horrible thing to Molly and her boyfriend?”

  “Please, I have nothing to say.”

  I watched the other reporters start toward us. Soon, I knew, it would be a feeding frenzy as they battled to get crumbs before their news deadlines. I said, “Miss Monroe will give you a statement when it’s appropriate. So, please, give her some time and space until we know more.” Other reporters formed a semi-circle around us, cameras rolling.

  A tall man, unshaven, sunken dark eyes, camera hanging from his neck, pen and notepad in a hand with long fingernails, pursed his lips and said, “Understood, maybe we can get some details of the last few days to help us piece the story together. Had either you or your daughter been followed, maybe stalked is a better word.”

  “Right now silence is the better word,” I said, holding both palms out.

  “Who are you?” asked another reporter.

  “Sean O’Brien.”

  “Are you an attorney?”

  “I’m a friend of the family.”

  “What led them to the area where the bodies were discovered? Can you tell us what led police to the gravesite?”

  “A butterfly,” I said, reaching for Elizabeth’s arm and signaling for a deputy who was speaking into a radio microphone on his shoulder. He walked over to us while the media peppered more questions. I heard the sounds of cameras firing. I leaned toward the deputy and whispered, “Miss Monroe’s daughter is in a body bag headed for the medical examiner’s table… can you can do something to stop this?”

  He nodded and said to the media, “Okay, everybody, back behind the yellow tape. Give this lady some privacy because, right now, we are still questioning her. So you people will have to wait your turns, whenever that is. Everybody understand?”

  “Who’s a spokesman for the sheriff’s office?” came one question.

  “That’s Detective Sandberg, and he’s in the field with the sheriff. So when he returns, I’m sure he, along with Sheriff Clayton, will be briefing everyone.”

  The media broke away, some walking back to their air-conditioned cars and trucks, others interviewing volunteers searching for any eyewitness information. I heard a call come in on the radio hanging from the deputy’s belt. “Subject is headed for the river! We need a sharpshooter down here immediately. Better bring a four-wheel-drive.”

  A tall deputy, who’d recently arrived, still dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt said, “That would be me.”

  FORTY-THREE

  “I need to go,” I said to Elizabeth, touching her shoulders. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon. Maybe they’ve got Soto in their sights. Whoever it is, there’s a good chance he could be connected to Molly and Mark’s deaths. If it’s Soto, maybe I can learn something, possibly hear him confess and tell us why he did it. It’s a remote chance, but I’d like to be there when they pull him out.”

  “Be careful, Sean.”

  “The officers will stay with you.”

  “I never thought I was capable of feeling hatred this deep for another human.”

  I touched her hand and ran to the squad car where the sharpshooter deputy was standing, speaking quickly into a radio microphone. I waited for him to finish and said, “You’ll never make it out there in that SUV. You’ll sink to your oil pan. I have a Jeep. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Appreciate that,” he said, lifting a scoped rife from the vehicle.

  WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES, we’d almost reached the scene. It was wetland. Thick swamps, the muggy air filled with the scent of moss and rotting leaves. Orders came through the radio for the deputy to come as close to the river as possible, where the suspect was believed heading. We passed two cruisers, stalled, buried to their axels in black mud.

  The deputy sitting on the passenger side of my Jeep was Anthony Rodriguez. I’d briefly told him of my involvement in the case, and he told me he’d spent two tours of duty in Iraq before returning to Ocala and taking a job with the sheriff’s SWAT division. He was rated expert with the M-24 rifle. I could tell he was already slipping into sniper mode, becoming quiet the closer we drove to his possible target. I said, “One of the officers said the river was more than a half mile wide down there.”

  “Yeah. Flat and low. Not much wind today.”

  We heard the chopper hovering about a quarter mile directly east of where we were moving. The blue pickup truck, the one that I first saw transporting the dogs, was parked under a cypress tree, dark mud dripping from its fender wells. A man sat in the truck, cigarette smoke curling out of the open window. I recognized him as the man who was driving the truck when I first saw Bo Watson sitting in the passenger side this morning.

  As we churned through the mud, I spotted another pickup about thirty feet on the far right side from the dog truck. The other one was green, a Department of Forestry emblem on the sides. I remembered it, or one identical, the late afternoon I was at the gravesite of the teenager girl. The same shade of mud was splattered on the truck again. Ed Crews sat behind the wheel, speaking into a hand-held radio microphone. He wore dark sunglasses, nodded and waved when we passed.

  I turned to Deputy Rodriguez. “Whoever they’re chasing, I don’t want him to escape, but if we don’t have to take him out, that would be better.”

  “If he killed these college kids he deserves—.”

  “We don’t know if he did it. We do know he’s running from law enforcement. Maybe he did something that has no connection to the murders.”

  “I don’t like to think that way.”

  “I know. It can cloud your judgment looking through the scope.”

  He said nothing.

  “You can stalk a target you know is bad to the bone, someone who’s responsible for taking out one of your men, or a whole squad. You wait long hours for the bastard to show. Full body shot would be nice. You’ll take the head. You look at the leaves blowing in the trees, dust moving in the air—hell, some people think you can see air. You calibrate heat, wind, and trajectory—anticipate movement. You have more patience than most humans because you need it. You need it to assassinate another human being because you know that target is the enemy. Today, we don’t know that.”

  His head turned toward me. “Who are you? You talk like you’ve been there.”

  “Sometimes I’m still there. I used an M-82.”

  “Impressive weapon. One of the best. Right now I have a job to do.”

  “We all do. Finding who’s responsible for the deaths of Molly and Mark is our job. I believe it’s bigger than one man, Frank Soto. If we kill the worker bee, we’ll never be led back to the nest, and that’s where we’ll find our queen.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Luke Palmer scrambled down the muddy bank sloping to the St. Johns River. He could hear the posse coming closer. In minutes, they’d be charging through the brush. The only possible escape was directly in front of him—the river.

  The water was flat, but the river was wide. He remembered learning to swim in a river, the Mississippi, where he’d spent a summer living with his grandmother after his mother was arrested for drug possession and prostitution for the third time. Palmer took off his shoes. Stepped to the edge of the water, the river slapping his toes.

  SWIM! Just do it. You can do it. Not too damn old. GO!

  Palmer ran out into the water until he couldn’t touch bottom. He swam. The river water was warm. Sky a deep blue. It’s all about pacing. Steady strokes. Dogs will be here soon. Cops. Can’t spend any more time in a cell. SWIM!

  I DROVE MY JEEP THROUGH the bog, looking for patches of dry land, weaving around cypress trees an
d fallen limbs. We caught up with the sheriff and his posse following the dogs. Deputy Rodriguez opened the side door before I could stop. He jumped out with his rifle and ran, sloshing through knee-deep, tea-colored water to catch up with the others.

  I saw him go down.

  He looked back at me, the sun through my windshield splintering the pain and absolute horror on his face. I ran to him. He grabbed his calve and then fired a shot at something moving. I saw the snake’s body jump more than a foot in the air, the bullet tearing through its thick, dark olive midsection.

  The sheriff and a dozen men stopped. They turned and looked toward us.

  “Snake bite!” shouted Rodriguez.

  “Holy shit…” said the sheriff, shaking his head and running toward Rodriguez. The officers and Detective Sandberg followed.

  “It’s a cottonmouth moccasin,” said Sandberg, looking at the dying snake.

  The sheriff motioned to one of his men. “Bobby, call for an air-vac chopper with paramedics who know their shit about snake poison.”

  Bo Watson said, “I have a snakebite kit in the truck. I’ll call my son.”

  Rodriguez sat down on a fallen log and rested his leg. I used my pocketknife to cut through his jeans. Two puncture holes in his leg oozed blood. I used my belt to tie off the circulation. “Look at me.” His frightened eyes attempted to find mine. “Try to keep you heart rate slow… stay calm as you can. You will be okay, understand?”

  Rodriguez nodded. I said, “My Jeep is fifty yards to the west. Somebody can take it and get this man to a clearing so the chopper can land.”

  “Where’re you going?” asked Sheriff Clayton.

  I lifted the rifle from the stump where Rodriguez had set it down. “I’m going with you. I was a shooter—a sniper in the Special Forces.”

  “You’re not a sworn officer.”

  “Used to be. You can deputize me, Sheriff. Sounds like the dogs have come to an impasse. My guess is they’re at the river’s edge. We’d better move.”

  PALMER WAS NOW ALMOST half way across the river. He swam using a sidestroke. He looked behind him and saw the dogs at the shore, one dog stepping in the river and running back to the bank. Then Palmer looked towards the opposite shore.

  He stopped swimming.

  An alligator, wide as a kayak, slipped down from sunning on the bank and started toward Palmer. A smaller alligator, at least seven feet long, followed the larger one.

  Palmer looked toward the dogs. The cops were there now. He saw the wink of the sun against handcuffs, badges and guns. He could see his life back at San Quentin. No damn choice, he thought. Gotta swim toward the cops or get ripped apart by gators.

  Palmer turned around and swam with all the strength he had left. His arms ached. His head pounded. He churned the water. Arms moving in powerful strokes. Legs kicking. He swallowed a mouthful of river water. He glanced back over his right shoulder and could see the alligators coming closer. Ma Barker’s money must be cursed. Gotta be something wicked about it. SWIM!

  “HE’S COMING BACK this way!” said the sheriff.

  Bo Watson said, “And look at what the hell’s following him. No man, I don’t care what he’s done, deserves to be eaten alive.” He hushed the dogs. All of the deputies and Detective Sandberg stood on the embankment, no one sure what to do.

  The sheriff said, “Let’s call in the chopper. Have ‘em hover over that guy. Might scare the damn gators off.”

  “No time,” I said, climbing the highest outcropping of rock. “I’ll try for the gators.” I opened the two metal stands that supported the rifle, stretched out and reclined flat on my stomach. I fit the stock against my shoulder, loaded a bullet into the chamber and sighted the man through the scope. I looked at the river’s surface for a sign of wind direction. Looked up at a cypress tree. Wind from the northeast—three miles an hour.

  “That’s a shot of over a hundred yards,” said Detective Sandberg.

  The sheriff said, “Radio for a boat outta Hontoon Marina to get up here fast as possible.”

  “The big gator’s twenty feet away from the subject!” one deputy shouted.

  “The other gator’s gaining fast!” another man said.

  The dogs whined, the drone of the chopper coming.

  PALMER LOOKED TOWARD the shore. Never gonna make it. Too tired.

  He saw the flash of sunlight reflecting from something a man held sprawled on an embankment.

  A man with a rifle.

  Must be a scope on the gun reflecting light. Too tired to think straight.

  Palmer swam and prayed that the man was aiming for the gators swimming closer to his kicking legs.

  I BLOCKED EVERYTHING OUT. Heard nothing. Focused all though the scope. I saw the panic on the man’s face, the fatigue in his sloppy strokes, the twin V ripples caused by the approaching gators. At this angle, I’d have to shoot left of the man’s head, four inches over his moving shoulder, to hit the largest gator coming up behind him.

  Focus. Hold the breathing. I moved the glass away from the man’s head and found the closest alligator. It pushed its tail harder. Quickly gaining on the fledging man. Less than ten feet away. I had one chance. One shot each. I sighted the crosshairs, positioned them right between the wide, knobby eyes of the biggest gator. I squeezed the trigger. I moved the glass to the second animal and squeezed the trigger. Both gators went down, heads exploding, leaving a trail of blood and brain matter.

  “Hot damn!” shouted the sheriff. “You hit both of ‘em in less than three seconds. Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?”

  FORTY-FIVE

  When the man was about twenty feet from shore, two deputies waded out into the river and waited for him. The man swam a final stoke and tried to stand. His legs gave way and he fell, face-down in the water. The deputies fished him out, like lifting a man who’d been baptized in a river. They held him by his upper arms and carried him the rest of the way to the shore. As they cuffed him, he collapsed in the mud, shaking and spitting water that he’d swallowed.

  He lay on his side, breathing hard as the sheriff approached. Bo Watson held the dogs back at a safe distance. I came down from the embankment and watched. “Read him his rights, Barry,” the sheriff said. After rights were read, the sheriff grunted. “What’s your name?”

  “Luke Palmer,” the man said, through a hoarse whisper.

  “Mr. Palmer, you’re one lucky fella. You came seconds from being ripped apart by two big gators in the middle of the river. Nobody would have ever found your body unless they looked for your smallest, indigestible bones in gator shit up on the bank somewhere. That man over there, Mr. O’Brien, saved you life.”

  Palmer said nothing. He looked at me and then at the sheriff.

  The sheriff glanced across the river then down at Palmer. “So since we saved your life, I’d say you owe us one, big time. Now why don’t you go on and tell us how you happened to kill those college kids. I know things happen, things come up and people act accordingly. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances in their deaths, self-defense. We’d like to hear it, like to hear it from your point-of-view.”

  Palmer sat up on his knees. He slowly stood. “I didn’t kill nobody.”

  “We have a water jug found near the bodies. We have some of your clothing here on the bank. Looks like dried blood to me. And we have that spear thing you’ve apparently been toting. They’ll tell us the rest of the story.”

  Palmer said nothing, his breathing still heavy. Detective Sandberg stepped up to Palmer. “The St. Johns River has a way of settling debts. Like the sheriff said, you’re a lucky man. I remember driving across the State Road 44 Bridge, which crosses this very river not too far from here. From top of that bridge, about a month ago, saw a deer trying to swim across. Made it half way before a gator took him under.”

  Palmer slowly looked up, his dark eyes locking on the detective’s face.

  “I only mention this because you buried the deer on top of those kids. Why’d you do i
t? Thought it’d hide the smell of decomposing human bodies, huh? Did you kill Mark first and then rape Molly before killing her?”

  “I didn’t kill or rape nobody.”

  “Then why’d you run from us?”

  “I saw who did shoot those kids, but I figured the law wouldn’t believe me. Heard the dogs and helicopters, and thought I’d move on.”

  Sandberg’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, then, who killed them?”

  Palmer took a deep breath, water dripping from his hair and down his face. A white heron flew low across the river. “I can recognize him if I see him. Dark skinned dude, a little guy. Sharp dresser. Smoked a cigar. He was with two others. They had their backs toward me, but the one guy’s face I did see. And, if I see it again, I’ll recognize it. I saw him in the backseat of a car that comes and goes in here.”

  “Comes and goes where?” asked the sheriff.

  “I’ve seen it on a back dirt road between that bombing range and Juniper Springs. A black Ford SUV, usually three men. The one always in the backseat was the shooter.”

  “You say his skin is dark, a black man?” asked the sheriff.

  “No, like the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in some of the gangs.”

  Sandberg said. “You mean prison gangs, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long were you in for?”

  “Forty years. San Quentin.”

  “Why?”

  Palmer hesitated, his eyes scanning the officers in the background. “I killed a man in self-defense.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened here, with the college kids. Maybe one of ‘em came at you with a knife, again self-defense. Where’s the gun you used?”

  “I didn’t kill them. I don’t own a gun. Couldn’t buy one if I wanted to.”

  The sheriff sighed. “Makes no sense to run unless you have something to hide. We’ll find it, whatever it is.”