Forests of the Night (22 page)

“I'm Parker Monroe. This is my land you're trespassing on.”

A flinch of surprise passed across the older man's face.

“Charles Monroe's son?”

“That's right.”

“Yes, yes, I was fortunate enough to know your father rather well. An excellent gentleman. That was a terrible business. The fire, all that.”

The young woman approached with the cell phone pressed to her ear.

“A funeral with all the trimmings. It's his son, for godsakes. Strings, harps, hell, whatever you can dig up.”

“I'm Otis Tribue,” the gentleman said to Parker. “I was informed my brother, Michael, was shot. Is that correct?”

“Yes, it is,” Charlotte said. “A rifleman in the woods.”

“A hunter?”

“More like a sniper.”

“It's Panther, isn't it? Jacob Panther, that goddamn Indian.”

“That seems to be the general view.”

He gave her a sharp look, then turned back to Parker.

“Is he going to make it? Did he survive?”

“No,” Parker said. “He's dead.”

The congressman slowly rocked his head back and gazed up at the sky, which was full of birds and tattered clouds, indulging in a moment of hammy grief. She could almost see him counting to ten before he brought his steely gaze back to Parker.

“And what brings you back to these hills, boy, after all this time?”

“Personal matters,” Parker said. “No concern of yours.”

The congressman's lips wrinkled at Parker's impudence.

Parker held steady under the politician's withering inspection. Finally the old man lost interest and caught his staffer's eye and sliced a finger across his throat. With a curt “ciao” she clicked off and stepped forward to do his bidding.

“If I believed in such things, Mr. Monroe,” the congressman said, stinging each of them with a final look, “I'd say this land of yours is cursed.”

Then he and his staffer stalked away toward the people in charge.

Parker and Charlotte were silent on the trek back to the car. Silent on the snaking drive down the mountainside. She watched the dashboard clock, its green digital numbers counting off the minutes till their reunion with Gracey. She was trying, with little success, to throttle back the wild swings of emotion, one minute a surge of giddy optimism, the next moment a blinding flash of anger or dread. Trying to restrain herself as her training had taught her to do in moments such as these, when she might be called upon to be the one reasonable mind at the gathering.

“Nice family,” she said. “Uncle Mike the airy-fairy hermit. High-and-mighty Otis, and his son Li'l Abner from Planet Weird.”

“That white pickup I saw,” said Parker. “We're being stalked, Charlotte. Somebody's trying to kill us, and you're making jokes.”

She looked over at him. His breath was ragged, his forehead gleamed with sweat.

“Relax, Parker.”

“Relax? What? You don't believe Uncle Mike?”

“That gibberish? Hell, I'm not sure who I believe anymore.”

“And Tsali's hatchet? What the hell's that about?”

“I don't know, but I suppose it means we're going to have to do what
Uncle Mike said, and go see that pageant. This is about more than Jacob Panther blowing up banks. That's for damn sure.”

“That's your professional opinion? We're not being targeted?”

“At the moment I just want my daughter back. I'm trying to keep my focus on that. I'm not discounting anything.”

She was silent for a while, watching the shadowy woods flash by. Only a few miles away was the tacky tourist strip, but the landscape up here was prehistoric. Fertile and lush, the trees and underbrush so dense they appeared impenetrable.

A forest very much like this one had been her refuge as a child in Tennessee. A vine-tangled realm of perpetual dusk where she'd hidden for hours, perched on rotting logs or sitting cross-legged on the beds of pine needles, plotting her escape from her mother's double-wide trailer. When she grew weary of fantasizing, her attention turned to the action close at hand. The fierce clash of ants and spiders and beetles and moths—the clandestine warfare of birds and creatures with teeth and claws. Predators and prey whose every second was an ordeal, a test of reflex and strength, a hunt for food, mates, supremacy.

What she absorbed in those lonesome hours in the forest near her home laid the groundwork for what minimal belief system she had. It was her conviction that on some level the human condition was forever rooted in that same unruly soil. A destiny based on dirt and blood and unceasing conflict. Try as we might to rise beyond the earth, lift our bodies into the faultless sky in airplanes and antiseptic high-rises, dress for the opera, pray to our civilized gods, pretend we've refined ourselves beyond those primal urges, still, the earth and its feral laws and endless skirmishes were rooted in our cell memory. As far as she was concerned, it was inescapable. Every corner of the world was as perilous and unpredictable as the forest floor. Our blood forever howled with its animal song.

And then out her window the blur of the forest gave way to Farris Tribue's curious face. She turned to Parker.

“I've seen that condition before.”

“What condition?”

“The sheriff, his face. Close-set eyes, protruding ears, long, narrow bone structure. It's got a name.”

“What're you talking about?”

“A month ago we had a seminar at work. Genetic disorders. Things we might encounter on the street. Autism, Down syndrome, that sort of thing. The sheriff's face, that's a marker for one of them. Close-set eyes, protruding ears. I can't recall the name. It was something I'd never heard of before.”

“You saying the guy's mentally impaired?”

“No, with this one, you can be a carrier, have that appearance, but be okay yourself. That much I remember. Recessive genes.”

“How's that relevant?”

“I don't know. But the guy creeped me out. When we get back to the hotel, I'll dig around on the Net, try to find the name.”

“Creeped you out?”

“It's cop talk. You wouldn't understand.”

She meant it to sound droll, but it came out with a harsh tang. Parker flinched and was silent. Just like that, the tension between them was back. Or maybe it had never gone, and was simply dwelling beneath one layer of skin.

They drove through the town of Cherokee, past the tourist shops and casino. Kept going up U.S. 19, Charlotte staring out at the farm implement stores and more souvenir shops and mom-and-pop motels.

In her backpack Charlotte's phone sounded, and she dug it out and answered.

“This is the guy you talked to.”

“Which guy is that?” Charlotte said.

“Standingdog's cell mate. The one made you as a cop this morning. You left me your card, remember?”

The reception was scratchy, breaking apart, coming back.

“So what do you want?”

“I got a name for you,” the man said.

“I'm listening.”

Parker was staring at her, shrugging a question.

“Jeremiah,” said the inmate.

“And who is that?”

“He's the one you're after. He's the one that did the deed.”

“I'm dense,” she said. “You need to spell it out.”

“The handyman,” he said. “The fire at that goddamn summer camp.”

“Jeremiah?”

“Yeah, and there was another one, too. Boss of the operation. Mr. Big. He planned it, made it happen, but that guy got away clean.”

“You got a name for this Mr. Big?”

“Don't know. But those were the two that did it. Jeremiah and this other guy. Not the Dog. He just took the fall, don't ask me why.”

The connection broke. She held the cell phone in her lap and waited. But he didn't call back.

“Standingdog's cell mate,” she said. “He remembered a few things.”

“What?”

She repeated the fragmentary conversation.

“Call Miriam,” he said. “Dig up the trial transcript for Standingdog Matthews. Capital murder, it's got to be archived. Trial exhibits, appeals, the whole record. We need to know who this Jeremiah fellow was.”

“Miriam's got a lot on her plate already. I have somebody I can use.”

She called Marie Salzedo, Lieutenant Rodriguez's secretary who'd swooned over Sheffield. Beneath her bimbo act, Marie was the best researcher in the department.

“Awful quiet around here without you, Charlotte,” Marie said.

“Quiet's good.”

“You want to talk to the boss?”

Charlotte explained what she wanted. Had to spell out
Jeremiah
twice.

“I'm not all that busy. I can pull it while you're on the line.”

Charlotte waited. The reception was so good she could hear Marie's fingers clicking the computer keys. Explain that. Cherokee to Miami crystal clear. Cherokee to Cherokee was half-static.

“You still there?”

“I'm here.”

“A little longer. There's not much stuff. It was only a one-day trial. I'm running a search for the name in the transcripts. It's taking forever.”

Five minutes later, entering Maggie Valley, Marie came back.

“Sorry about that. Computers are bogged down today.”

“You find it?”

“Tribue,” she said. “Jeremiah Tribue, he died in the fire, him and a kid named Nathan Philpot and Charles Monroe. Does that help?”

Charlotte was silent for a moment, absorbing it.

“You still there?”

“Yeah, Marie, thanks. Do me one more favor, okay? E-mail me the link to the Web site you were just on, or cut and paste the files into an e-mail attachment, whatever's easier.”

“The whole trial transcript?”

“Yeah, and listen, see if you can dig up the police reports, too. Find out who handled it—State Bureau of Investigation, county sheriff's department, tribal police, whoever. When you find them, see if they'll fax you the background stuff. And there had to be an arson investigation, too. Scan it and e-mail it to me so I can get to it from my laptop.”

“I'll take care of it right now.”

“And listen, if you wind up talking to Carolina police, be nice. They're different up here. Not city folks.”

“I'm always nice.”

“I know that. Just be extra nice.”

“Not so Cuban, you mean.”

“You're a peach, Marie.”

“A peach?”

“You're sweet,” she said. “And oh, hey, one more thing. Call the North Carolina department of motor vehicles, see if you can locate a special application. Somebody requesting a license plate with the last four digits, 1773. Probably happened in the last twelve months.”

Marie wanted to know if all this involved a Gables PD investigation.

“The plates, the trial transcripts, all of this relates to the murder of Diana Monroe. Parker's mother.”

“But Metro's doing the homicide work, not us.”

“We're assisting,” Charlotte said.

“Right, right. We're assisting. You think Rodriguez will buy that?”

“Better if he doesn't know what you're up to.”

“Roger that.”

“Thanks, Marie. I'll bring you back a souvenir. A jug of cider.”

“Make it a hundred proof, okay?”

After she relayed the information to Parker, he was silent, eyes fixed on the car ahead.

“Jeremiah Tribue,” she said. “Probably Mike and Otis's brother.”

“Could be another Tribue family altogether.”

“That a common name up here?”

“Not really. It's an old pioneer name.”

“So this is all connected. What happened the night of your father's murder and the fire, the banks blown up, two Tribues dead in one week. And Jacob Panther and us in the middle of it somehow.”

“Look, Charlotte, it's totally immaterial what some ex-con claims. If Jeremiah was Uncle Mike's brother, it wouldn't surprise me. But it doesn't mean anything. Standingdog killed my father. End of story.”

Charlotte grabbed her backpack from the floor and held it up. She stuck two fingers through the gash in the fabric.

“And this?”

“That wasn't Jacob.”

“Oh, come on. Think about it. How did we get to Uncle Mike's cabin? By following the bread crumbs Jacob laid out for us. He mentions Sequoyah Caverns to you, so we go there first. Maybe he was in the woods last night with his rifle, but Sheffield and his boys got in the way.”

That got Parker shaking his head.

“Sequoyah Caverns is plan A, Echota is plan B,” Charlotte said, “and just in case those don't work out, he gives himself a C. Gracey calls, tells us to go to the barbecue place. Jacob's pulling her strings. If we make it this far, then he knows where we'll head next. To that restaurant. Another ambush.”

Parker gave her a deadpan look. “That's not Jacob, goddamn it.”

“You're willing to bet your life on that?”

“I spent more time with him than you did. That's not Jacob.”

“What? Like five minutes more?”

Parker kept his eyes forward, but she could read the strain in his forehead and saw the muscles working in his jaw. As though the doubt had formed a lump that he was trying to grind away.

Charlotte looked out her window at the first trickle of summer tourists, families with young kids going in and out of souvenir shops along the strip. A steady stream of retirees heading toward the casino.

Then she remembered something else and dug the road map out of the glove compartment, checked the index, found the street, flipped the map over, and took a minute to locate it.

“What're you doing?”

“Make a U-turn, go back five blocks, maybe six.”

“That's not the way to the barbecue place.”

“We still got an hour. Humor me.”

He retraced their course west on U.S. 19 until she told him where to turn.

“One of the bomb sites,” she said. “It's along here somewhere. Water Street. I thought we should have a look, it's so close.”

“What's that going to tell us?”

“Jesus, Parker. You don't solve a crime without at least taking a look at the crime scene. I know, I know, that's Miriam's job, going out on the street. You just sit in your office all day and fiddle with your briefs and filings. But this is how we cops do it. We see things. Touch them.”

“Oh, come on. I get out on the street.”

“Yeah, on the way back and forth to the courthouse.”

Parker swerved the car over to the curb and slammed the shifter into park. His lips were flat, forehead creased with an anger as hot as she'd ever seen in him.

“Look.” He raised his finger and pointed at her. “I'm not going to argue with you. You're right. I'm not out on the street like you. But what I do all day, getting the words right on the page, that's just as important, okay? If the words aren't right, the sentences, the paragraphs, the fucking logic, then it doesn't matter if you have all the goddamn evidence in the universe on your side. You understand what I'm saying? It's the right words in the right order, just as much as it is hair follicles and fingerprints and DNA.”

She reached out and took hold of his finger and folded it down into his fist and she cupped it in both her hands.

“Okay, I'm sorry,” she said. “We have different skills, different points of view. You're right, I was needling you. I'm sorry.”

He let go of the breath he'd been holding, and gave her hand a half-hearted squeeze, then eased back onto the street.

They passed a hardware store, a hair salon, a bar, a tiny bookstore, and a burrito joint. Circled the block, then the next one.

One left turn and two stop signs later, they saw it on the left corner—the blackened shell of a two-story brick building. Parker drew up to the sidewalk. A couple of men in yellow hard hats prowled the edges of the site, drawing out spools of measuring tape and writing on clipboards.