The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller)

by Lowe, Tom

  Dave said, “The dot is starboard, moving very slowly.”

  I dropped the sling and felt the stitches tug in my shoulder. I stepped to port side, braced the rifle against Jupiter’s bulkhead and brought the scope up to my eye. I found him in seconds. Recognized the baseball cap. It was turned backward so the shooter could see through his scope.

  Dave shouted, “Can’t see the laser dot! He could be sighted down on you.”

  I said nothing. Through the scope, I watched the shooter’s body language change. He spotted me, his movements quick. I figured I had maybe three seconds to get a shot off before he did.

  One-thousand-one. I felt Jupiter rise a half inch in a small swell.

  One-thousand-two. I lowered the crosshairs to correct for the boat’s movement.

  One thousand-three. The laser burst through my scope as I squeezed the trigger.

  The New York Yankees hat popped in the air propelled by a cloud of pink mist. The shooter fell dead.

  “You got him!” shouted Nick. He pulled himself out of the tannin water.

  “It’s clear,” I said.

  Elizabeth came up from below deck, holding Max in her arms. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice a mix between anger and compassion.

  “We’re okay,” I said, setting the rifle down.

  “I heard Nick, did you… did you kill him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will they keep coming, Sean? Tell me. How can we live like this? How can we look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?”

  NINETY-SIX

  For more than two hours, Nick, Elizabeth, Dave and I were questioned—questioned separately by five agencies. The hit parade of initials began with the FBI and ended with ICE, somewhere in between, we met the DEA, FLDE, a representative from the Justice Department, and two from Homeland Security. Toss in Detective Sandberg from Marion County, two investigators from Volusia County, and we had a who’s who from international, national, regional and local law enforcement.

  As Detective Sandberg was leaving, I asked, “Any word on Frank Soto?”

  He blew out a long breath and said, “He either was vaporized when that Navy fighter jet dropped the bomb, or he disappeared. We found nothing.” His eyes opened wider, glancing at Elizabeth for a second, and now taking in the full measure of what I’d done to the trigger man. “I’d like to tell you to take it easy, but I guess that’s not possible, not anymore. Be careful, O’Brien.”

  When most of them left, and after the ME had picked up the body from the Jackson Marine rooftop, Agents Tim Jenkins and Dan Keyes stood in Gibraltar’s salon. Dave sat at his bar, Nick and Elizabeth on the couch, and me sitting on a deck chair with Max in my lap. Agent Jenkins from ICE said, “You got lucky this time, Mr. O’Brien. If there’s one resource that’s infinite in Pablo Gonzales’ arsenal, it’s his manpower. You took out one. He’s got many more to take his place. How long can you keep firing lucky shots?”

  Dave stood. “Perhaps your energies would be better served following the GPS tracking lead that Sean left for you.”

  Keyes said, “That’s where Agent Flores and another two dozen agents from the FBI, ICE and locals have converged in the Tampa Bay area. They’ve been on a loose stake-out since we lost the signal from the tracker. We’re watching a former banana packing warehouse in the Ybor City area of Tampa.”

  I asked, “Why do they think Izzy Gonzales’ body is there?”

  ICE Agent Jenkins said, “That’s the general area where satellite tracking ended.” He displayed a GPS grid on the screen of his cell phone. It was a satellite shot of the warehouse. “We think the body might be in there. There’s a refrigerated truck backed up to a door, and there are two black Mercedes in an alley leading to the back door. For the last hour, we’ve had it staked. If we’re really lucky, we’ll find Uncle Pablo.”

  I said, “Dave, pull it up online.”

  Dave leaned over his computer, entered the password and username. In a few seconds the screen filled with black. “Looks like the tracker is still out of commission,” Dave said, shifting his weight in the chair. “Wait a minute… I’m getting a signal.” We could see the pulse of a white light blinking. There was no movement of the tracker.

  Jenkins turned to Keyes and said, “Let’s drive over to Tampa Bay.”

  “Hold up,” I said. “Dave, see if the city has surveillance cameras in that area?”

  “Give me a minute to access and cross-check grids.”

  The two agents said nothing, eyes fixed on the computer screen.

  “Got it,” Dave said, the screen filling with a live video feed of the warehouse. “There are two cameras in the area, and we can take a peek.” Dave tapped his keyboard and cut from the front of the building, near the city streets, to the rear of the building, an alley and back parking lot in the foreground. The warehouse, two Mercedes parked next to a closed door, stood in the background.

  Agent Keyes said, “I can see two of the men on the eastern perimeter. Can you punch up the shot from the front of the building?”

  Dave nodded. “I can pull them both up, do a split screen.” He hit three keys. The left side of the screen filled with the building’s front, the right displayed the rear.

  Agent Jenkins pointed to the left section of the screen. There were two white vans parked along the street. “Some of our teams are in the vans. We have snipers on an adjacent roof, the Chiquita warehouse. A chopper is on stand-by in the event Gonzales somehow gets through our dragnet.”

  “Did anyone actually see Gonzales enter the warehouse?” I asked.

  “No,” said Jenkins.

  “Which means you didn’t have a tail following whatever vehicle transported the body to what I assume is a refrigerated warehouse,” I said.

  “Correct,” Jenkins said, “the signal from the tracker was intermediate at best for a while.” His eyes moved from the computer monitor up to me.

  “So nothing’s moved in the last hour?” Dave asked.

  Agent Keyes said, “Not since our team got there.”

  “It’s moving now,” I said as the pulsating dot began a slow circular movement from inside the warehouse.

  NINETY-SEVEN

  Dave’s cell rang. He mumbled a greeting, stood and stepped out to Gibraltar’s cockpit to talk with the caller. I studied the computer screen as the federal agents sent text messages, and made phone calls, their eyes shifting from the computer to the tiny screens in their hands.

  Dave returned and took his seat in front of the computer.

  “They’re going in,” said Agent Keyes, looking up from his iPhone.

  “Stop them!” I said.

  “Why?” asked Agent Keyes.

  “Because your men are walking into a trap.”

  “What? We have the warehouse surrounded. We can put five thousand rounds in that building in a matter of minutes.”

  “What do you see, Sean?” Dave asked.

  “A pattern.”

  “Pattern?” Keyes asked.

  “Yes.” On camera, I watched the federal agents begin their approach. One of the agents, I recognized. Her long, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Within a minute, I knew that Agent Flores would be one of the first to storm the warehouse. I said, “The movement of the tracker is going in a figure-eight pattern. It’s making a repeat loop.”

  “Maybe they’re moving the body,” Keyes said, “probably getting ready to load it into that refrigerated truck for shipment to the port or airport.”

  “Try railroad,” I said.

  “What?” Keyes asked.

  I pointed to the screen and said, “That’s a slow figure-eight pattern, like something you’d see with a model train. That old warehouse was used to store and ship bananas. Maybe some were imported from Colombia. Gonzales is orchestrating a bizarre and deadly game. ”

  “What the fuck are you talking about O’Brien?” Keyes shouted.

  Dave said, “Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the novelist. Sean sees more than a patt
ern in the movement of the tracker. We’ve profiled Pablo Gonzales, and we believe his psychosis is so delusional, Gonzales thinks he possesses some divine mandate to eliminate anyone who he believes repeats the sins of his or her forefathers.”

  “Call back your agents,” I said.

  Keyes said, “I’m going to need more than some half-baked profile to issue that directive.”

  “Then you’ll see a lot of your agents die,” I said.

  Jenkins squinted, staring at the screen. “I do see the tracker’s repeating its movement, maybe there’s something to this, Dan.”

  Agent Keyes opened his cell and punched numbers. “Use extreme caution approaching the building. There’s reason to believe you could be walking into a trap.” He listened some more and shook his head. “No, proceed with the take down.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said. “Toss in tear gas before you send in the troops.”

  “I don’t recall you graduating from Quantico, O’Brien.’’

  Dave said, “He went to tougher schools.”

  I said nothing. The split-screen on Dave’s computer showed more than two dozen agents approaching the building from all corners. I watched as seven agents, including Agent Flores stood at an entrance door to the warehouse, pistols drawn, and dark bullet-proof vests riding on chests, FBI white letters on black T-shirts. Two of the agents held sub-machine guns.

  “I’m putting them on speakerphone,” Agent Keyes said.

  “We’re going in,” said the tinny voice of Agent Flores through the cell speaker.

  Within seconds, all seven agents were in the warehouse. More stood at all exits. There was a long pause of white noise, as if the speaker phone was transmitting from the bottom of a cave. “Clear!” came distant shouts, and then Agent Flores was back on the line. “Place is vacant. You’re not going to believe this,” she said, amusement in her voice, “there’s a model train on tracks going from one end of the building to the other.”

  I glanced down at Dave. He cocked an eyebrow and lifted his eyes up to Agent Keyes. Keyes spoke into the cell. “Then where’s the GPS tracker?”

  “Somewhere on the train, I assume,” said Agent Flores. “Jake’s stopping the train to look in the caboose.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  “O’Brien, you’re a little over—”

  “Get them out of there! Send in the bomb squad.”

  “What’d he say?” asked Flores.

  “Where’s Jake?” Agent Keyes asked.

  “He just turned off the power to the damn train. Gary’s checking the cars on the track beginning with the caboo—”

  His voice was gone. Flattened by the roar of the explosion. I stared at the computer monitor as the warehouse disappeared. The screen became a bright flash of white light before the cameras captured a massive ball of orange flames roaring up against the cloudless, blue sky.

  NINETY-EIGHT

  Two days later, forensics investigators were still picking body parts out of the trees and power lines surrounding the warehouse. Nine agents died. Four others lay critically injured in hospitals. The body of Izzy Gonzales was still MIA, and his uncle, Pablo Gonzales, left no clues behind. It was as if he and his operation never existed.

  I walked Elizabeth down L dock to the parking lot and to her car. She’s stowed her belongings into a single brown suitcase that I had given her. As she opened the trunk, she turned to me. “I don’t like leaving you here. I feel as if I’m abandoning you.”

  “You’re not abandoning me. You’re saving a place for me when this is over.”

  “Will it ever be over?”

  “Yes. Listen carefully to me, Elizabeth. Go to Cedar Key. Follow the map I gave you. Remember to take the back roads, check your rearview mirror every few minutes. If you even have a hint that anyone is following you, call me. Here are the keys to the boat at the Cedar Key Municipal Marina. Boat’s called Sovereignty. Electricity and plumbing are on, but you’ll have to buy some groceries. Stay there. I’ll call you to let you know what’s going on and when I can join you. If I’m lucky, we’ll bring Sovereignty around the Florida Keys and up here to Ponce Marina soon.”

  “You saw what Gonzales did to those federal agents. You’re one man. How can one man beat this guy and his army? I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, too.”

  I kissed her lips and said, “Go on. I’ll be there. Just believe in that, okay? Don’t dwell on what ifs and those things we can’t control.”

  She tried to smile though eyes that welled with tears. “Please be careful, Sean. I dropped down on my knees last night and begged God to watch over you.”

  I said nothing as she got in the car, started the engine, bit her bottom lip and slowly drove out of the parking lot. I watched her pull onto Highway AIA and head north. Walking back to Jupiter, the dock master stepped from his office and greeted me. He was a portly man with a flushed, round face, T-shirt hanging over his belly, a stub of a yellow pencil wedged behind his right ear. “Sean, got something for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  He held out an envelope. “It came for you today. No return address. You don’t get a lot of mail, so I thought this one, with a handwritten address, might be important.”

  “Thanks, Darnel.” He handed me the envelope. My name and the marina address were written across the front in near perfect penmanship. The lettering was done in an old-style slant to the letters, the inscription drafted from the hand of an artist.

  I walked down the dock toward Jupiter, opening the letter and reading. I knew who’d sent it before I read the first line. The calligraphy was flawless, not unlike his art. I don’t know why, but I read his words aloud.

  Dear Sean: I hope this letter finds you well. I appreciate all you tried to do for me. If you have received this, it’s because I’m dead. I had given the envelope to a fellow at a UPS store, and paid him a little money to hold it for a week. If I didn’t return, he was to mail it to you. I thank you for all you tried to do to keep them from railroading me and locking me up for the rest of my life. I wanted to let you know where the money still lies hidden from the time the Barker Gang hid it. It’s buried near the biggest oak tree in the Ocala National Forest. The tree is exactly 1.9 miles due west from the head, the boil, of Alexander Spring. The money is on the south side of the tree, under a huge limb. There’s a slab of granite rock marking the spot. Take the money, you’ve earned it, and do something good with it. Maybe it’s carrying a curse, I don’t know. It was good knowing you. If heaven’s bus hadn’t pulled up, I would like to have gone fishing with you. But something tells me you’re the catch and release kind of guy, and I suppose that’s ok, too.

  Luke Palmer

  NINETY-NINE

  A week passed as the hunt for Pablo Gonzales intensified. Federal agents shadowed me from a distance. They tried to blend in, but were as obvious as clouds floating overhead. I swam in the ocean at night, my arm healing well. Elizabeth spent her days reading and sequestered on the sailboat in Cedar Key. I called her daily.

  I took a seat at a corner table in the Tiki Bar and waited to have breakfast with Dave. Under the paddle fans, two fishermen sat at the bar. A noisy family of tourists ordered breakfast a half dozen tables away from me. At the far side of the restaurant, a man dressed in a long sleeve denim shirt and shorts, sat alone, read the paper and tried his federal best to remain innocuous.

  Dave pulled up a chair, and I told him about Palmer’s letter. He asked, “Are you going back in the forest to hunt for it?”

  “Not now, not yet.” I looked in the direction of the agent. “Too many shadows trying to follow me.”

  “They’re trying to catch some of Gonzales’ dogs, seize them and hope to be lead back to Pablo.”

  “Their presence is having the opposite effect. Do me a favor and call whomever you still know at Langley or Quantico. Tell them to pull back their surveillance. They want to catch Gonzales’ dogs, but the pack won’t come around if there’s a constant federal presence.�
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  “I’ll do what I can. Not many of my colleagues left there anymore. There’s one, and he’s the guy you need now. Cal Thorpe.”

  “Thorpe is good, but at this point he would get in the way. I have a plan and for the first step at least, I can’t include him.”

  Kim Davis, her face tanned and radiant, stepped up to the table to take our breakfast orders. After we ordered, she folded her arms across her breasts and said, “Nick told me they almost sank his boat with a rifle shot through his bilge. The whole marina’s been upside down talking about this. Did they catch that Mexican drug lord?”

  Dave said, “He’s actually Argentinean, he moved his operation to Mexico years ago. Far as we know, he’s still at large.”

  “Sean, does this mean you’re not safe?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She looked up as a family entered and took seats at a table. Her eyes dropped back to mine. “You need to go wherever Joe Billie goes. Apparently, nobody can ever find him unless he wants to be found.”

  I smiled. “You have a good point.”

  “I’ll turn in your orders.”

  When she left, Dave said, “Word I hear is they believe Gonzales is deep in Mexico City. They’re not sure if he managed to smuggle his nephew’s body out of the country. For all we know, it could be iced down on a container ship bound for Cozumel or stored in some refrigerated unit around Tampa Bay.”

  “It’s amazing that no one knows anything. These people can’t just vanish into thin air.”

  “I do know there’s a directive from the White House to bring in Gonzales, no matter what it takes. We have some of our best moving through Mexico right now, turning over rocks, kicking in doors and generally using the same tactics Gonzales has used as we hunt him down.”

  “They won’t find him that way. His money buys the best protection—silence.”

  “Somebody will talk, they always do.”

  “I’ll try to draw out Gonzales.”