Forests of the Night (21 page)

Uncle Mike shook his head.

Charlotte stepped across the room and planted herself inches from the delicate man.

“Listen to me, Uncle Mike. If I find out you had anything to do with putting my daughter at risk or prolonging her distress, anything at all, I'm hiking back up here and I'm going to start by snapping little bones in your body and work my way up to the big ones till I get to your goddamn skull.”

“Your frustration is perfectly understandable.”

“You don't understand shit. You're some squirrelly creep who's been hiding from the world so long, you forgot there was one. Blathering Zen hocus-pocus like a wise old man on the mountaintop.”

Parker stepped to her side and drew her back.

“We better go,” he said.

“Yeah, before I really lose my temper.”

“When you see the pageant,” said Mike, “remember there are two sides to every story.”

She was already out the door, Parker just behind her, when Uncle Mike said, “Wait.”

They came back inside, and Charlotte saw his mouth had tightened into an anguished scowl and his eyes were fogged over as if he were revisiting some unspeakable vision from his past.

“Last chance,” she said.

He resurfaced by slow degrees, lifting his gaze and settling it on the open window beside her, the green view.

“All right. Although it was my fervent hope that you would unravel the truth in your own way, I'm afraid there may not be time for that any longer.”

“Go on.”

He glanced around the cabin with a vague longing, as if searching for some reassurance from his collection of keepsakes. He took a swallow of air and spoke with his eyes floating from object to object throughout the room.

“First, you should know that not everyone is as courageous as Diana. Some of us will never win awards for heroism. But I want you both to understand that in my way I've always done what I could to help.”

“Like what?” Charlotte said.

The old man stared down at the planks of his cabin for a moment, then drew a breath and brought his eyes to Parker, and finally to her.

“Sometimes a sin can dwell so long in a man's heart it burrows like a larva into the deepest tissues of memory. While it may have disappeared from view, it is always there, festering.”

“So let it out,” Charlotte said.

He licked his lips, and the hand that had been smoothing the air was now limp at his side.

“You're in mortal danger, Parker. Your daughter as well.”

“What about me?” Charlotte said. “I get a pass?”

“Not you. Just Parker and your child.”

“How do you know this?” Parker said.

“A year ago my daughter, Sissy, alerted me. I'd taken care to position her in a job where she could spy on my behalf, fearing this very thing might happen. In that year since she warned me of the danger, I have been searching for you, Parker, without success.”

“Why? Who's after us?” Charlotte said. “It's Jacob Panther, isn't it?”

“It is…” Uncle Mike closed his eyes and shook his head as if grappling with the dreadful words. “It is family against family.”

“What does that mean?”

As he opened his mouth to speak, something plucked hard at Charlotte's backpack and she staggered to the left. And as though a phantom had seized him by the throat, the frail old man was tossed backward against the wall. A ragged hole burst open in his chest.

From the shelf above, a stuffed owl tumbled down and landed at his feet. Parker took a step toward the wounded man, but Charlotte grabbed his arm and dragged him to the floor. The second shot tore into Mike's shoulder and sent him sprawling to his right, knocking over the makeshift desk.

Charlotte had the Beretta out and was on her hands and knees. She'd heard no rifle shot, so clearly the weapon was silenced.

Only one window of the four allowed a sight line on Uncle Mike—the one where she'd been standing. Rising from her position on the floor and peeping through the window, she made out a small knoll where pines mingled with boulders. Maybe a ten foot elevation above their own position, fifty yards off.

She scooted across the dusty planks and flattened herself against the wall beneath the window. She held in her mind a snapshot of the layout of the hill and the boulders, and spent a few seconds scanning it for the most likely sniper's nest. But nothing stood out.

Parker was on his cell phone, frantically punching numbers, apparently getting nothing.

She set her grip on the Beretta and drew a breath. Before she could take her shot, two more rounds shattered the computer and the far window.

Slumped on his side, Uncle Mike wore a vacant smile.

She glanced around at the flimsy, decaying logs that formed the cabin's walls. Hardly the Alamo. As isolated as they were, if the shooter had enough patience and ammo, he could riddle every square inch of the room. With only the eight shots in her Beretta, their best chance might come down to making a desperate sprint across open ground.

Charlotte rose up to the corner of the window. She inched her barrel upward, then brought one eye into the frame, cranked the pistol into position, and squeezed off two rounds, bracketing the hillside left, then right.

Before she ducked back down, she managed to glimpse the results of her shots. On the left she'd blown a gash into the trunk of a poplar tree, and on the right her shot had carved a chunk from a gray boulder.

Staying in a crouch, she heard no movement outside.

A bird was calling. Miles away a small plane droned. Cool air flooded through the cabin walls and, in the spears of sunlight dust churned.

Parker finally got reception on his phone and spoke to someone in harsh whispers. When he was done, he said, “Frank's on the way.”

She touched a finger to her lips.

She was listening to the crackle of leaves and twigs, a shuffling, uncertain gait that was drawing closer. She inched to the doorway and stayed in a crouch, a two-handed grip on the pistol. As the rustle approached, she held the warm barrel next to her cheek.

When the noise halted a yard or two beyond the door, Charlotte took a grip on the door's edge with her left hand, rehearsed a move in her head, gave herself a second more to still the rattle in her pulse, then threw open the door, flopped on her belly, and aimed out at an emaciated chocolate Lab.

She spun back to a position behind the log wall and stayed there while the dog wandered into the cabin and walked directly to a tin dish that sat in a corner and began to lap.

It drank until the bowl was empty, then turned, looked blankly at Charlotte and Parker, shuffled over to sniff at Uncle Mike's cooling flesh, then shook itself hard and walked back out the door and headed into the woods.

They waited another fifteen minutes in aching silence before hearing Frank Sheffield shouting and a herd of federal agents trampling through the woods.

The forensic techs were working the hill where the shooter had been, but from a quick look Charlotte could see there was little sign of his presence left behind: some crushed leaves, a heel print in the hard dirt. Large shoe, but the sole pattern was murky.

“So let's run through this one more time, shall we?”

Sheffield was sitting on a boulder halfway between the cabin and the shooter's lair. He was staring at the notebook in his hand. It appeared new, unused. He scribbled something on the first page and underlined it twice.

“So you two came up here to visit an old friend.”

“That's right. A friend from Parker's past.”

“And the victim is that old friend?”

Parker was taking a long look at the distant mountains.

“Frank, you can run us around this same track till Christmas, but you know damn well we're just going to give you what you already have.”

Sheffield smiled at his notebook.

“The victim in the cabin is the person you came to see?”

Charlotte sighed and recited it again. “His name is Uncle Mike. He and Parker's father worked together thirty years ago.”

“At this summer camp?”

“Exactly.”

Frank looked through the cabin door again, at his men probing the walls for slugs.

“And since you just happened to be in the area, you had a wild hair to come visit this guy. Social call, like for old times' sakes and all that. Sing a little ‘Kumbaya,' tell ghost stories around the campfire.”

“A wild hair,” Charlotte said. “Yes.”

“Didn't have anything to do with your runaway daughter.”

Charlotte was silent. She didn't need to tell him the obvious. Anything and everything they were doing had to do with Gracey.

Frank drew some more lines in his notebook.

“Frail old guy like that, living up here in his deerskin clothes, playing Davy Crockett. Boggles the mind. No heat, no electricity, no water.”

“You know everything we know, Frank. Now we're out of here.”

“The hell you are. You're not going anywhere till I'm finished. Got it, Monroe? In fact, your smug-ass attitude is starting to grate.”

Charlotte was about to bite back, but Parker brought his gaze from the mountain range and shook his head at her. Just play along, get this over with.

“So tell me again, if you'd be so kind, Counselor, about this white pickup you saw following you. You got a make, model, approximate age? Any distinguishing features? You know the drill. Dented fender, busted headlight. Anything that makes it pop from all other white pickups.”

“It might have been tan or pale blue,” Parker said quietly. “It might not have been following us at all.”

Sheffield sighed and glanced over at Agent Roth, who was supervising the forensic techs on the hillside.

“Uncle Mike,” Frank said. “That's the sum total of what you know about this guy? His name was Mike and he worked with your dad thirty years ago.”

“Jesus Christ, yes, that's all we know.”

“Just so we're a hundred percent clear on this, you're claiming you didn't come up here to meet him because he happens to be Michael L. Tribue, chairman of the board of Southeastern Trust Banks. The banks your son, Jacob Panther, has been blowing up. That had nothing to do with this little rendezvous?”

Charlotte made an effort to keep the shock from her face. Parker's lips drew apart as if he meant to bellow across the valley, but no sound emerged.

“Yeah, like you two didn't know.”

“Michael Tribue? You're sure of that, Sheffield?”

“Damn sure,” Frank said. “Older brother of the congressman, uncle of the sheriff, which also makes him the uncle of our blowgun victim at Miami International. Pieces starting to fall into place for you now, Counselor? Your prodigal son coming into better focus?”

Charlotte stepped close to Parker and took his hand in hers.

“Just yesterday,” Frank said, “Agent Roth and I paid a courtesy call on the good gentleman. Bringing him up to speed on the bombing investigation. He was dressed in his Brooks Brothers pinstripes, spunky little bow tie, not this deerskin bullshit. Desk he was sitting behind had to be worth what I knock down in a year, and then, twenty-four hours later, we find he's been up here on the mountaintop dancing with wolves. Not that I'm making light of Mr. Tribue's death, but finding him whacked like this, well, it kind of snaps some of the pieces into place.”

Frank scribbled some more on his pad.

“What pieces would those be?” Charlotte said.

“Pretty obvious. The old man's bank turned Panther down for a loan, foreclosed on a relative's house, screwed him one way or another. Who the hell knows, but whatever it was, it pissed Panther off big-time and sent him on his bombing crusade.

“One by one he's been blowing up the old guy's banks. Then he finds, shit, that's not getting rid of his itch, so he whacks the nephew, Martin, and like we've all seen it happen plenty of times before, once the guy crosses that line, gets some blood lust going, Panther can't help himself, he's got to come up here and blow up the old guy himself.”

Charlotte held up her backpack and turned it around so Sheffield could see the two-inch gash the first slug made.

“How about us, Sheffield? It's just a coincidence Parker and I happened to be here? Maybe we were the targets.”

“Oh, come on. Your daughter's a runaway, and granted, that's a shitty thing. But it doesn't make the sun start orbiting around your navel.”

“After Uncle Mike was dead the shooter kept firing.”

“So? Maybe he wasn't sure he got him.”

“From the distance he was shooting his rifle had to be scoped. So he could damn well see what he was shooting at, and he saw the result. He put a second slug in Uncle Mike, and then he kept on firing.”

“So? Nothing weird about that. Guy didn't want to leave behind any witnesses. Maybe he knew it was his father in here, maybe he didn't. With a guy like Panther, I don't see that making a lot of difference.”

Parker stepped forward.

“And where does my mother's murder fit into your neat little package?”

“And Gracey,” Charlotte said.

Parker shook his head in disgust.

“And tell us, Agent Sheffield, in your vast experience with the patterns of criminal behavior, have you ever come across an offender with so many differing methods of attack? Jugs full of gasoline, blowgun darts with exotic poison, a hatchet, then a sniper rifle. It should be clear to you, as it is to me, that we're dealing with multiple parties here.”

Frank glanced down at his notebook, and his mouth twisted into a sour smile. He tore off the page he'd been doodling on and wadded it up and stuck it in his pants pocket.

“Oh, by the way,” Frank said, “we made some progress on that hatchet.”

“Yeah?”

“Turns out the weapon used in your mother's murder came from up here.”

“Up where?”

He told them about the missing ax from the Cherokee museum.

“It was in Tsali's hand?” Parker said.

“Yeah, stolen right out of the museum. You got any ideas how that might be relevant? I mean, that's what this place was called, right, Camp Tsali? I know the story about the guy, but is there a connection here I'm not seeing?”

Charlotte and Parker exchanged a glance, but neither spoke.

“Okay, fuck it, that's it,” Sheffield said. “I keep sharing all kinds of fascinating shit with you guys, expecting a modicum of professional quid pro quo, but what do I get? Dick.”

“We don't know what it means, Frank,” Charlotte said. “Something
occurs to us, we'll call you. We're not withholding. We're just absorbing.”

“Yeah, right.” Sheffield looked over at the knoll where his men were working. “So Sheriff Tribue said he wants to meet you two. Don't ask me why. You up for that?”

Charlotte took another look at her watch. Still over an hour until their meeting with Gracey.

“Why not?” she said.

“He's an odd duck,” Frank said. “Makes me look downright normal.”

Sheffield told them to wait there, and he walked over to the hillside and brought back a large, dark-haired man with a long, narrow face, prominent ears, and hollow eyes.

He was trailed by two white poodles, standards, though to Charlotte's estimation, they were considerably broader in the chest and heavier than was usual in the breed, as if they might've been mixed with mastiff or Great Dane.

Dressed in the local no-frills blue police uniform, the sheriff was stern-faced and walked with the ramrod formality of a revival preacher about to call thunderbolts down on his flock.

Sheffield made the introductions, and the sheriff nodded and touched a finger to the brim of his hat.

“Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, I'm sorry about your unfortunate brush with violence. This is not a customary event in our peaceful corner of the world.”

Charlotte accepted his stiff courtesy with a nod.

“Our condolences on your brother's death,” Charlotte said. “And now your uncle.”

The man was eyeing her with a faint lift of eyebrow, as one might appraise the value of horseflesh whose fitness was in question.

With a curt nod in her direction, he turned to Parker.

“So I understand, sir, that you're the son of Charles Andrew Monroe, Chief as he was known.”

Parker said yes, he was.

“I was nineteen that summer,” Farris said. “Just married with a newborn son. Those events stand out starkly in my memory. The idea that Standingdog Matthews would resort to such savagery was deeply shocking to us all—setting fire to your father's house, killing those others. I think our sheltered community lost its innocence that summer.”

Parker said, “I know I lost mine.”

As she watched the sheriff, the flesh on Charlotte's shoulders had grown cold and prickly. There was nothing in Tribue's expression that fitted Fedderman's coding list, and nothing in his strict demeanor she could put a simple name to—but the sensation was there, one she'd had only twice before.

Most recently when she'd looked into Jacob Panther's eyes a few days earlier—his cold, invasive stare. The other time was years ago, when she'd been one of several cops in the interrogation room when a middle-aged married man confessed to raping and murdering eleven adolescent girls in the course of a year, and after he finished his admission, he began telling knock-knock jokes, one after the other.

Charlotte swallowed back the knot in her throat and said to the sheriff, “Agent Sheffield seems to think your uncle's murder and your brother's are connected. That Jacob Panther is at war with your family. Is that how you see it, sir?”

Farris was about to reply, but Sheffield thrust a hand between them.

“Hold it right there.”

The sheriff eyed Frank uneasily and retreated a half-step.

“You're not part of this investigation, Monroe. Don't forget that.”

Charlotte caught a microexpression flitting across Tribue's face. His nose wrinkled, he flexed his levator labii superioris, alaeque nasi. For the briefest of instants his teeth were bared, brows raised then lowered. Equal portions of disgust and anger. AU 9 was Fedderman's code for it.

As his rage flickered, then dissolved into a serene facade, Charlotte had a tingle of recollection. Mildred Pierce on the stairway. Her fury revealed for that brief moment, then hidden again behind her lifetime mask of phony geniality.

It might've been taken for nothing more than a flash of testiness at Sheffield's pulling rank. But it looked like more to Charlotte. A lot more.

She stepped over to the larger poodle.

“Are they friendly?”

“Usually.” The sheriff's smile was still shaded with anger. Not as adept at masking his emotions as Joan Crawford.

“What are their names?” Charlotte patted the larger one's head. The dog bore her touch without response, staring ahead at the open field.

“They don't have names,” Tribue said. “They're dogs, not people.”

Sheffield suppressed a smile and shook his head.

“So, Monroe,” Frank said. “Where can I find you two if I need to get in touch?”

“You've got my cell number.”

“And locally?”

“The Holiday Inn.”

“Well, if anything comes to light on your girl's whereabouts, I'll call. Otherwise, you stay clear of the Panther investigation. You've got no official status here. And let me be clear, if you bump into the asshole and don't inform us immediately, you're going to have to start considering a new career path.”

He tried for some menace in his blue eyes, but couldn't muster much.

“Always a pleasure, Frank,” she said. “Always a pleasure.”

She and Parker were crossing the open field, headed for the footpath down the mountainside, when a black SUV, one of those engorged monsters with tires a half-story high, bounced over the rise and in a cloud of red dust skidded to a stop a few feet in front of them.

A man in khakis and a black polo shirt jumped out of the passenger's side and blocked their path. From his sun-spotted arms and crow's-feet, Charlotte made him for late sixties, but his hair was a perfect black and his dark eyes had the quick gleam of a man twenty years younger. He was a lean six feet tall with the self-satisfied bearing of a military man, or country squire.

Ignoring Charlotte, his gaze locked on Parker and he strode forward. From the driver's side, a woman half his age hopped down, a cell phone hard against her ear. She had whitish blond hair and was as wispy as an adolescent. In gray capri pants and a snug black top and backless sandals, she might've been heading for a luncheon at the country club.

“You Agent Sheffield?” the man demanded of Parker.

“That's Sheffield over at the cabin, jeans and white shirt.”

“And who, may I ask, are you?”