Forests of the Night (26 page)

A second later they were rounding the corner of the building, Gracey leaning forward to see Steven in his director's chair, the cameras set up, the
light crew, the sound guys with their booms, all the others who were always on the movie sets, listed in the long roll of credits.

Peering out the windshield, she saw nothing but darkness, then the yellow flash of a pistol.

Lucy roared up to the back of a white car and slammed on the brakes. And there was Gracey's mother crouched down with a pistol in her hand, and her father lying flat on the sidewalk as the windows of cars exploded all around them. But Gracey wasn't sure. Was this real? Or was she seeing this because she'd been off her meds, somehow making this all happen inside her head and projecting it out on the world like her doctor said she did sometimes?

She stared out the side window and saw her brother, Jacob Panther, lying flat on his stomach, big ugly bullet wounds in the back of his head.

Lucy saw him, too, and moaned and just then the back window of the Lincoln exploded.

“Gracey!” her mother screamed. “Gracey, jump out, stay down. Jump out, sweetheart.”

But Lucy floored it, tires screaming, and there was nothing to do but hang on.

 

“Here.” Charlotte held out the Beretta. “Give me the car keys.”

As Parker raised himself up from the sidewalk, behind them a motel-room window shattered.

“Don't be crazy, Charlotte. It's too dangerous.”

“Give me the goddamn keys.”

He dug them out and handed them over.

“You can defend yourself, right?”

He took the pistol and rose up to a squat.

“Damn right,” he said.

“Keep him busy. All this gunfire, the sirens should be on their way.”

Charlotte scrambled to the Toyota, got the door open and the engine started before the shooter noticed her. She reversed, spun the wheel, slipped it into drive and hammered the accelerator, head down. She heard the heavy
thunk of two slugs hitting the passenger's side, but she was around the building a few seconds later.

The exit road made a long S before it reached the highway, and she could see across the bordering hedges that the Lincoln was already out on U.S. 19, traveling east. Only one shortcut she could see.

Charlotte cut the Toyota hard to the left, aimed through an open parking space between two vans, bounced over the curb and tore through the shrubs, and slid down a steep, grassy embankment to the highway.

Saved maybe a half a minute.

The two-lane highway was solid with traffic in both directions, but she flashed her lights, held down the horn and swerved in front of a delivery truck, and got the Toyota rolling east. About a half-mile behind the Lincoln. Only five or six cars separating them, no traffic lights for at least a mile. She mashed the gas and kept her hand on the horn and passed two dawdlers and had to slam the brakes for a semi that was stopped in front of her, making a left turn. Traffic was heavy from the opposite direction. No way to pass, so she cut right, bumped onto the rough shoulder, got a rear wheel caught over the lip of the ditch, spun on empty air for a second, then the tire grabbed, and she skidded back onto the road.

She could still see the Lincoln up ahead, caught in a slow stream of casino traffic. Passing three more cars, getting some angry honks, using her cutthroat Miami driving skills, Charlotte bulled ahead till there was only one car separating her from the Lincoln, maybe a hundred yards ahead.

As she pulled out to pass the final car, a pickup turned out of a side street into her path and Charlotte wrenched the car back into the right lane, but clipped a bumper on the pickup. The driver in front of her must've seen it all and, realizing Charlotte was out of control, pulled to the side to let her by.

She flattened it, flirting with eighty in a thirty zone and caught the Lincoln on the long straightaway just before town. Pumping her brakes in measured strokes, she closed the gap until she was riding the Lincoln's rear bumper.

In her headlights, Gracey was staring back at her. She was in the rear seat, talking fast, turning back to Lucy Panther, then looking out at Charlotte. Excited, but it was impossible to tell if she was angry or frightened or
what. Impossible to know if she was actually speaking to Lucy or someone else, maybe one of those rowdy characters who populated her head.

Then a moment later her daughter was leaning out of the rear window with a pistol in her hand. Her lips were moving fast and her face was contorted, as if she were screaming curses. Had to be hallucinating, or maybe they had mistaken Charlotte for the sniper on their tail.

Gracey's hair was whipping in the wind, a long streamer of blond. She raised the pistol and aimed at the Toyota, wagging it back and forth as if trying to scare her off. Then her other hand came up to steady the weapon.

Charlotte cranked open her window and yelled out Gracey's name, but it had no effect. She flashed her brights, once, twice, three times. She caught a quick look of Gracey flinching and turning her head away, thinking at first the headlights had blinded her daughter, then realizing it was not that at all. Gracey was turning away, anticipating the concussion of the pistol shot.

As Charlotte nailed her brakes, her windshield exploded, and in the dazzling spray of glass she lost her grip on the wheel and the Toyota steered itself across the oncoming traffic, and she heard tires screaming but saw nothing for a moment as she slid sideways into a parking lot, spinning a full 360 and coming to a stop in front of a souvenir shop, where in her headlights a stuffed black bear stood on its hind legs, waving its giant paws at the chilly Carolina night.

With the rifle pressed to his right leg, he strolled back to his car, leaving the murder scene. He wasn't rattled as he'd been earlier in the evening, when Myra Rockhill blocked his shot. Nor was he disappointed by tonight's outcome. Even though the other targets had been arrayed before him briefly like a platter full of delectables, there was no profit in faulting himself for his mediocre shooting.

There would be time enough for the rest of them. Here in the mountains or back in Miami, or wherever on earth he had to go to finish the mission. He'd taken down Jacob Panther, and he'd had a decent shot at the Monroe girl, the crosshairs settling on the side of her pale face, but as he squeezed, he'd jiggled the weapon and missed. A little overexcited, perhaps.

But those jitters had passed, and now a satisfying peacefulness settled over him as he climbed into his car and headed back to the highway.

No hurry. Indeed, when he considered it more fully, it was actually preferable this way. One at a time, with breathers in between. A measured approach, no orgy of violence. Plant the seed of fear in each of them, let them marinate in dread, knowing he was coming ever closer. A nameless avenger.

At first he'd toyed with the idea of leaving notes. Words or phrases cut from newspapers. Or perhaps assume a titillating nickname. Taunt them
and toy with them as the Hollywood villains did. But after a few moments' consideration he dismissed the idea. He was by nature and by choice a drab and simple man. Such gaudiness was not his way, not his personality.

Better to be as anonymous and invisible as the air.

Another good reason to draw out the cycle of killing for as long as possible was his mother. Because when his mission was completed, and the last of them was dead, then the wire strung tight inside his chest, the wire that had been droning for weeks, would slow its hum and finally cease to vibrate, and in the ensuing stillness his mother's voice would regain its prominence. Her shrill nagging. Every hour, every day.

Not that he didn't love his mother, or pine for her, or honor her in her afterlife, but her harsh voice, which rose inside him at night when the house grew quiet, when he was sinking away into sleep—well, if he was honest, that voice distressed him, put unmanly flutters in his pulse.

A year after her death, his mother continued to badger him over the pettiest issues. She was forever after him to keep the toilets spotless, scrub out the tubs and sinks, floss his teeth at least once a day, clear the dead rats from the traps in the barn, all the obsessive trivia that had constituted her own daily routine for seventy years, the endless chores that consumed her right to the end of her days, when she lay on her deathbed in cancerous agony, and finally as she stared into the remorseless eyes of her Maker, and issued her last commands to those surrounding her deathbed.

In her dying moments, his mother had revealed to him the true nature of his ancestry and the ruinous toxin that streamed through the family's veins, revelations that he'd had no inkling of previously. And it was those final words of hers that launched this deadly quest. Their echoes that drove him every hour.

But even in the very moments after the good woman passed along those weighty revelations, as she lay panting for breath, her next admonition, the last words she spoke, concerned the health of his teeth and gums.

As he drove along the highway, staying well under the speed limit, he still felt in the meat of his hands the pleasant throb from the Heckler & Koch. True, all but one of his shots were errant, yet a kill had been achieved. A kill that was as crucial as any of the others. His mother should be pleased.

It was when he stopped for a traffic light that he heard her voice, hardly more than a tickle of noise in his ear. Had he flossed after breakfast this morning? Had he?

No mention of his shooting. Just the flossing.

Had he?

Honestly, he couldn't remember if he had or not. A day so full as this one. A day of momentous actions. Deaths and escapes and near misses.

Plaque never stops growing, was her reply. It is always there. Always. Working below the gum line, eroding the solid bones. And the rattraps? Had he checked them today? Had he? Had he?

Outside the motel room a dozen blue lights were flashing. Charlotte sat in the chair at the desk and stared at the wall. Parker and Sheffield had been pacing the room, asking her questions, where had she gone, how the hell did the car get shot up, but she'd not replied. Couldn't find the words. Her own daughter had come within inches of killing her.

She wanted to bawl. Wanted everyone to leave her alone so she could dig under the blankets and sob. But they kept after her with their questions until she turned in the chair and looked up at the two of them and said, “The asshole is stalking us, Sheffield—he had our motel room staked out.”

“Okay,” Sheffield said. “I'm willing to entertain that possibility.”

“So who knew we were staying here?”

“Small town like this,” said Sheffield. “The fry cook at the Waffle House probably knew.”

“I don't think so, Frank. With all the feds coming and going, why would anybody notice us? No, there's only two people for sure who knew where Parker and I were.”

“Me,” Sheffield said. “That's one. So now I'm a suspect?”

“You and the sheriff. He was standing right beside you when we said the Holiday Inn.”

Sheffield shook his head and waved his hands, enough already.

“The sheriff, Frank.”

“Okay, okay, there's no denying our boy Farris is a little backwoods creepy. I give you that. But come on, Monroe, that doesn't make him a shooter. He's the law, for godsakes. What's his motivation? If he shoots down Panther, J. Edgar would rise from the dirt and pin a medal on him. He'd be on
Good Morning America
, talking to Charlie.”

“He was after us, not Panther. Panther got in his way.”

“Jesus Mother and Mary. I wish sometimes I'd done like my father wanted and gone into the ministry. Once a week, give a sermon, go home, and watch ESPN for six days straight. No hassles, no crackerjack cops to deal with.”

Charlotte said, “I got a strong reaction to the guy, Frank. A very strong reaction.”

“What? Like this Fedderman bullshit? Your Geiger counter clicking?”

“Go get him, Frank.”

“So you can interrogate him?”

“So I can take another look at him.”

“This may be Coral Gables PD procedure—hunches, gut instincts—but this isn't how we do things, Monroe. We like some shred of probable cause before we go off on somebody.”

“I been taking your shit, Frank, since this started. Do me this, okay?”

“Jesus Christ.”

When Frank was gone, Parker came over and sat near her on the edge of the bed. He held out his open hand.

“Jacob was holding this. It was on the pavement next to his hand. I'll give it to Sheffield if that's what you want.”

Lying in Parker's palm was a heart-shaped silver locket.

She hesitated, but Parker extended it to her and she took it and flicked the locket open.

“I believe it's the woman from the pamphlet,” he said. “Molly Tribue, wife of Sergeant Matthew Tribue.”

It was a miniature portrait in muted colors, the work of some journeyman artist who must have traveled those hills almost two centuries earlier.
Charlotte studied the woman with the chubby face, the tightly curled hair, the promiscuous grin.

She snapped the locket shut and handed it back to Parker.

“Your call,” he said. “Give it to Sheffield?”

“Put it in your pocket.”

He nodded.

“When Jacob was coming toward me, I saw something in his hand. A flash of silver. I thought it was a knife or gun. But it was that locket.”

“You weren't sure, so you held your fire. That's how you're trained.”

“I choked.”

“Look, you waited till the last possible second. And, Charlotte, he was already dead when you shot him. I watched it happen.”

“I froze,” she said. “I read his face, believed he was dangerous, but I didn't shoot until he was almost on top of me.”

“You're all knotted up. Thinking too much. And give yourself a break. Jacob wasn't just a random suspect. He was my son. Of course you hesitated.”

“Still,” she said. “My training. My instincts.”

“Tell me what happened, Charlotte, when you were chasing Lucy.”

She shook her head.

“Not now.”

“Knock, knock,” Sheffield said from the doorway. He waited a second, then said, “Sheriff Tribue has a couple of questions for you, Officer Monroe, if you'd be so kind. About the shooting. His people are giving us an assist.”

Charlotte rose and Parker followed her to the door. Outside on the sidewalk they stood for a moment or two watching the techs work. Flanked by the two large poodles, Farris Tribue walked toward them across the parking lot.

“Those dogs go with him everywhere?” Charlotte asked Frank.

“Hey, it's a different world up here, Monroe.”

“So I've noticed.”

Touching the brim of his hat, Farris gave Parker and Charlotte a nod.

“Again,” he said. “I express my deep regret.”

“We gave our statement to Sheffield,” Charlotte said. The prickling on her shoulders had begun again. “But if there's anything else.”

“I would be intrigued, Ms. Monroe,” Tribue said, “to have your professional estimation of the shooter. Since you experienced his abilities firsthand.”

“Yeah, Monroe,” Sheffield said, with a droll look. “Give us your professional estimation of the shooter.”

She stared off at the Dumpster.

“He's an amateur,” she said. “And he got rattled.”

The sheriff took off his hat and wiped the inner band.

“And how do you draw that conclusion?”

“Guy puts Panther down with the first two shots, then started spraying rounds all over the place. Same as this afternoon. Is the guy just a bad shot? Or maybe he's some kind of gutless nutcase? He panics, then unloads his whole clip. I don't know. But my bet is, when you do the ballistics, you'll find the shooter tonight is the same freak who killed your uncle.”

The sheriff set his hat back in place. He looked at Charlotte, his eyes smoldering briefly, then fading like the glow of a lightning bug.

Sheffield rubbed at the gray stubble on his chin. He was looking haggard, the mountain air not treating him well. He hadn't been getting his eight hours, maybe a few too many rum-and-Cokes to knock himself out in the evening. Droopy lids, a slump in his shoulders, a downward slide in his mouth. Gravity winning this week's tug-of-war.

“So the gunman's not a master criminal,” Frank said. “Thirty years on the job, I still haven't met one of those yet.”

“From what I can surmise,” Sheriff Tribue said, “it was a bit chaotic at the time. If indeed that was the case, it strikes me as doubtful that even the most proficient marksman would have scored well in such fluid circumstances.”

“You're sticking up for the guy?” Sheffield said.

“I'm hypothesizing,” Farris said. “I believe it's referred to as playing devil's advocate.”

“Chaos or not,” Charlotte said. “Given the bad shooting after Panther went down, you can't even be sure Jacob was his real target.”

The two poodles sat down on the pavement behind the sheriff. Both of them looking at Charlotte as if they sensed something about her, some threat.

“So, big deal, the guy's a moron.” Sheffield gave her a sly look, having fun with this, then turning back to Tribue to see how the sheriff would come back.

“Moron?” the sheriff said. “Why would his intelligence be at issue?”

“I don't mean dumb, just sloppy.”

The sheriff turned his eyes toward the Dumpster.

Sheffield said, “So you satisfied, Monroe?”

“One more thing, Sheriff,” she said. “Who is Roberta?”

The name stunned him. His jaw muscles loosened, eyes slid sideways toward the dark, and a vein in his temple rose like a blue worm to the surface.

“Why do you ask?”

“Roberta Tribue,” Charlotte said. “Do you know her?”

Farris brought his eyes back from the darkness. The earlier emotion had drained away, and now his eyebrows were drawn close and his eyes had clenched and his lips puckered with restrained rage.

“Roberta Tribue was my mother. She died a year ago. Where did you hear her name?”

“Oh, I came across a pamphlet in a local bookstore that mentioned her. I understand she was something of a philanthropist.”

“You apparently have the wrong Roberta. My mother was as parsimonious as a stone. I doubt she spent a hundred dollars in her lifetime.”

“I'm mistaken, then.”

Sheffield looked back and forth between Charlotte and the sheriff, then cleared his throat.

“Look,” he said. “I know this is in poor taste, but truth be known, whoever the shooter was, I frankly don't give a rat's ass what his motives were. Far as I'm concerned, the asshole performed a valuable public service. He should be pursued and arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, yeah, yeah. But personally, just from this federal agent's point of view, I'm glad the dead guy's out of action.”

“Amen,” Tribue said.

“For chrissakes, Frank,” Parker said. “You can't take five minutes off from being an asshole?”

Frank bowed his head and raised an open hand as if he were swearing off glib remarks forever.

The four of them were quiet for a while, watching the tech guys down on all fours scouring the asphalt.

Charlotte caught Farris glaring at her with open contempt. That spike of rage at the mention of his mother's name was clear enough. But there was something else about him she was having trouble naming. Something gawky and incongruous, like an ill-fitting suit. Or maybe it was like that movie Gracey enjoyed so much, where the ten-year-old kid wakes up one morning to find himself in a body three times his natural age. Moving through the rest of the film in a clumsy Frankenstein walk.

“You sent me a note, Frank—what was that about?”

“Oh, that. It was nothing really. A guy was asking some questions about Parker and you, I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“What guy?”

Sheriff Tribue had turned his face toward his forensics people, but she could see his attention had not strayed from their talk.

“County chief of police over in Murphy. Guy named Brody Maxwell, he wanted to ream somebody a new asshole. I think that's how he put it.”

“Why?”

“Seems a friend of yours at Gables PD, a Marie Salzedo, called his office today, started bullying one of his secretaries about some police report Panther supposedly filed last year.”

“Marie doesn't bully people,” Parker said.

“Miami manners, then,” Sheffield said. “A little culture clash. In any case, this guy Maxwell had a bug up his ass and wanted to yell at somebody, so I thought I better give you the caution flag. He doesn't like out-of-town cops and their lawyer husbands running investigations in his neighborhood.”

“What crime was Panther reporting?”

“It was bullshit.”

“What was it, Frank?”

“Brody wasn't giving out lots of detail, but it was some loony horseshit about a murder conspiracy going on forever, somebody killing Cherokees. Unexplained disappearances. That kind of thing. Total wackjob.”

“Ah, yes,” the sheriff said, drifting back into their circle. He had his hat off again, fingering away sweat from his brim. “My department receives
that same report on a regular basis. Naturally we treat each one with the utmost seriousness, though they clearly spring from the deeply superstitious nature of the Cherokee people. ‘Please help me, Sheriff Tribue, my Uncle Joe disappeared, and we believe he's a victim of the ancient campaign against our people.' And then, more often than not, a week later we locate Uncle Joe sleeping off a two-week drunk in the Atlanta county jail. Personally, I believe the outbreaks may be related to the lunar cycle.”

The sheriff attempted a smile.

“Don't you just love getting out of Miami,” Sheffield said. “All this funky local color.”

“It's my daily reality,” the sheriff said with a meager grin. “To live among people who believe the wings of giant buzzards created the mountains and valleys.”

“You mean they didn't?” Sheffield said.

 

By the time the parking lot was clear of law enforcement, it was four in the morning. Parker took a long time in the bathroom, then finally lay down in the dark beside her.

“It's not too late. We could move to an inside hallway. It'd be safer.”

“This is fine,” Charlotte said. “He's not coming back.”

He was quiet for a while. Charlotte stared up at an orange stripe on the dark ceiling. The security lights sneaking around the curtain's edge.

“Are you all right?”

He touched her shoulder, stroked her bare flesh.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Considering.”

Parker shifted beside her, raised himself up on an elbow, and brought his lips to hers. They completed the ritual kiss. A few seconds longer than usual.

She lay flat on her back, staring up at nothing.

Parker's voice was quiet in the dark.

“I was terrified out there. I was frightened out of my skin.”

“Yeah, so was I.”

“And Jacob. That must have been horrible. Dying in your arms.”

“He's your son, Parker. You're the one I'm worried about.”

“Don't be.” He was quiet. She wondered for a moment if he was going to cry again. But when he spoke into the darkness, his voice was firm. “You and Gracey are my family. Biology by itself doesn't make someone a father. I didn't know the kid. I mean, let's face it, someone can't just walk into your life out of the blue and make claims on your emotions. It's not possible.”

It sounded like high-grade bullshit to Charlotte. Trying to argue himself out of the grief before it had a chance to take root. But who was she to argue? It was Parker's call. His way of dealing.