Forests of the Night (27 page)

Charlotte lay still and waited for him to pronounce the other name. But when he didn't, she whispered a question to him.

“And seeing Lucy again? How difficult was that?”

He lay still for a moment as if he were picturing her. Charlotte had only seen her for a few frenzied seconds, but her impression was vivid. Lucy Panther was not as exotic as she'd imagined. She had a well-structured face and flawless skin and lush lips, but it was her eyes, their dark primal energy, that set her in a class apart from the merely beautiful. A woman who could stir men in ways Charlotte could only guess.

Parker rolled onto his side, the sheets rustling around him, and he reached out beneath the covers and touched her bare upper arm. Keeping his voice low, he said, “The memories came back, yeah. But I was a fifteen-year-old kid. The world was simple. The feelings I had for Lucy were simple, too.”

“Nothing's simple anymore.”

“No, it's not.”

His hand roamed up her arm, smoothing his palm lightly across her skin, but she halted it with her own.

“I was wrong about Jacob,” she said. “He meant us no harm. He was coming here to explain things. The locket. Show-and-tell.”

“I know,” he said.

“And when he was done, they were going to hand over Gracey.”

“That's my guess, too,” he said.

“Lucy will bring her back tomorrow. She'll find a way.”

“I think she will, yes. I think you're right.”

“Unless she believes it was me who shot her son.”

“She knows it wasn't you. She probably knows who it was, and that's what she and Jacob were trying to tell us. Who it is, what it's about.”

“So we'll stay around here tomorrow and wait. Just sit in the room where she can find us.”

“I think that's our only choice.”

She released Parker's hand and reached out and drew his face to hers. And though she would never have believed it could happen, the day's horrors fell away as their kiss lengthened, and all the accumulated grief and uncertainty and frustration gave their hunger an urgency it hadn't had in years. Even with the name of Lucy Panther hovering over them.

The jealousy she'd felt for Lucy had been stupid, sophomoric. Everyone was the product of all the loves they'd known, all they'd lost and still hungered for. Knowing Parker's secret, his long-ago passion for that young girl gave a new dimension to this man she loved, and even if some part of Parker's desire for Charlotte was seasoned by his memories of Lucy Panther, it mattered not at all.

They came together with such fierce need that within seconds Charlotte lost touch with the disastrous day. His hands moved across her flesh lightly but with the craving of someone starved for human touch. The exact pressure and pace she longed for and that he had always been so adept at providing. But something more this time, something that seemed to spring from deeper within, as if their mutual need to obliterate the images in their heads, erase the bloody visions, had stripped away years of habit and restraint.

Sweaty and struggling for breath, they reached that familiar place together, then gradually they went beyond it to another altitude, a place where light and air and gravity dropped away entirely.

It was nine on friday, a sunny morning, the lawn glistening with dew, and in the Hensoldt telescopic sight of the Heckler & Koch, Congressman Otis Tribue's head was magnified so vividly that Farris could make out three dark hairs sprouting from the tip of his right ear.

Farris stood in his mother's bedroom, aiming out the open front window, sighting on his father's skull as Otis Tribue worked his way through a bucket of golf balls, driving them off the cliff edge into Raven's Gorge—showing off his manly swing for Shannon Muldowny.

One after the other the white orbs arced upward, then stalled and plunged into the steep valley, disappearing a half-mile below into the scrub pines and boulders.

The cliff edge where his father stood was fifty yards across the broad green lawn from the front of the Tribue home. Built eighty years before, the house was a brick two-story with eight white columns and a majestic front porch. A sunny, many-windowed dwelling with gleaming maple floors and elegantly detailed banisters and filigreed trim throughout. Lush views from every window stretched for miles. It was in that airy house Farris and Martin had been born and several generations of Tribues before them took their first and last breaths.

Adjusting his sight an inch to the right, Farris captured Shannon's pale blond hair in his lens. He centered the crosshairs on her thin, arching neck, the upper knobs of her spine. Shannon was a year younger than Farris, with a boyish build and shoulder-length hair and crisp blue eyes. A Boston native, Shannon had spent the last twenty years in single-minded devotion to the political career of Otis Tribue. Somewhere along the way Otis promoted her from his chief of staff to his full-time concubine, a nubile, city-bred replacement for Roberta Tribue, Otis's lawful wife and Farris's beloved mother.

Never legally divorced, Otis resided in Georgetown and ventured back to his home district only to campaign for reelection. It had been well over a year since Farris last saw the old man, though Otis was rarely out of his thoughts.

Farris despised the two of them—as much for their betrayal of his mother as for their current indiscreet displays of affection. That they would fondle and steal kisses on this land where Roberta's dying wails still echoed was an unforgivable blasphemy.

During the long torture of his mother's dying, as the tumor sprouted its poisonous vines inside her, her husband, the esteemed congressman, paid not a single visit, nor had he once inquired by phone about her condition.

So cold was he to his estranged wife and so complete was his removal from family life that when Roberta died, Otis did not even make an appearance at her funeral, though four dozen white roses were sent in his name, a bouquet that in a fit of rage his brother Martin promptly carted outside and pitched over the edge of Raven's Gorge at almost the very spot where Otis Tribue stood at this moment, teeing up another ball and driving it out into that green abyss.

With two curls of his fingers, Farris Tribue could remedy this portion of his torment, and send the two of them pitching over the cliff. Their bodies would free-fall for half a mile and vanish into the pine and rocks below. Farris was confident the corpses of the two sinners would never be discovered. The canyon was so steep and impenetrable that, as far as Farris knew, no living soul had ever attempted to rappel its walls. Positioned as it was, almost dead center in the three hundred acres the Tribue family owned, it was as secure a dumping ground as any place on earth.

Out on the cliff edge, Otis handed Shannon the driver and she took her turn, teeing up a ball, setting her feet, and swinging with clumsy enthusiasm.

Through the sight, Farris watched as Otis stood behind her, smoothing a vain hand across his healthy mane. In a Washington salon it was tinted twice a month to the shade of a man thirty years younger. No doubt Shannon had canvassed a thousand registered voters to choose that exact hue.

Farris lowered his aim a fraction and lined up the crosshairs, his finger tightening against the trigger just as Shannon was taking a backswing. Timing the shot with her downstroke, Farris fired his weapon a half-second before the club head reached its nadir. With the highly effective sound suppressor, the blast was reduced to no more than a gentle clap of hands.

At Shannon Muldowny's feet the white ball disintegrated on the tee. With its sudden disappearance, the young woman's club whiffed through the air, and in her shock and loss of balance she staggered forward toward the precipice.

Otis Tribue stabbed out his hand and grabbed his mistress's arm and held her at the teetering edge, one of his cherished drivers slipping from her grip and disappearing into the chasm.

Farris stepped away from the window and lay the rifle on his mother's deathbed. Her quiet voice resounding in his ear, a chuckle of approval.

He had another use in mind for these two. Something far more inspired than a bullet through the skull.

Yesterday, when his father had arrived, he advised Farris that he'd scheduled his return to Washington in two days.

There was to be a quick, public funeral for his murdered son, then a couple of speeches to local VFW and Rotarian groups, a chance to bask in the pity of his constituents, and he would be off.

So Farris could bide his time at least for a little while. And though it was tempting to send the tumbling slug exploding into the old man's brain, Farris wanted his father to linger in some degree of pain approaching, if possible, what his own wife had suffered.

For Shannon Muldowny, Farris had another treat in mind. Retribution that perfectly matched her crimes.

Such brutish thinking was new to Farris. For all of his adult years he had lived a life of moral rectitude, abiding by the same law he enforced. It was only recently that he had discovered a profound and fundamental truth at odds with all he'd once believed. When a man's heart has been completely hollowed out by bereavement and he has made his unwavering pledge to follow those he loved into the endless hereafter, all one's petty worries and moral restraints evaporated.

With his mother gone, his cherished brother torn from him as well, Farris had lost forever the dual tethers that had anchored him to the practice of principled behavior. And what was left after those losses? His only remaining blood relations were a grimly defective son and a father who wallowed in self-indulgence.

There was no hope for Farris, no future he imagined or desired. Love was lost to him, joy of any kind had flown beyond his grasp. The ghastly knowledge his mother had given him in her last moments had seen to that. Farris Tribue had discovered himself to be a man poisoned by circumstance and history. For all these years, without his knowledge, a dark curse had festered in his blood. A silent worm gorging on his bowels.

But along with that dire knowledge came a liberation beyond any he might have imagined. He was now free to do and say whatever he would. Untroubled by inner commandments or the petty rules of law he was sworn by his profession to uphold. Emancipated of all earthly obligations.

Yet as emboldened as he was by his willingness to depart this world, he was nonetheless still dedicated to discipline and stealth. For he wanted to leave this earth with maximum effect. At a time and place of his choosing, he would pull down the pillars of the temple so when it collapsed around him, it would take as many of the guilty as possible.

 

“That's your idea of a joke, Farris? Shooting at your own father and his guest. What the hell is wrong with you, boy?”

Otis Tribue met Farris at the bottom of the porch stairs, armed with a nine iron.

Shannon Muldowny hung back a dozen feet, her flesh a deathly pale.
Gray trousers and a pink silk top, a sprinkling of gold and diamonds at her wrist and throat. Urban finery that was as grossly out of place in that rough country as she was herself.

“Amusing you, Father, was the last thing on my mind.”

At the hostile tone of Farris's voice, his two white poodles roused themselves from their slumber in the damp grass nearby and approached the group. Shannon gave the dogs a nervous look—as well she should.

“You owe Shannon an apology, Farris. She'll take it now.”

Farris's lips formed a smile, and he gave the woman a cold and empty nod.

“I raised a heathen,” Otis said, and waved his hand as if dispersing a foul gas.

“Any raising that was done around here, sir, was accomplished by a woman ten times your equal.”

“I can see this was a grave mistake,” his father said. “We'll be moving to a motel in town, so as not to intrude on your tender sensibilities.”

His father turned toward the porch.

“I know your secrets, old man.”

Otis halted and came around slowly.

His father's mouth twitched, but his eyes remained dull and vacant. The politician in him could will his face to play a host of tricks.

“I saw you speaking to Parker Monroe yesterday. That must have aroused some poignant memories.”

“I don't know what your game is, boy, but I'm not having any of it.”

“Did you realize, Father, that Parker Monroe is married now to a police officer named Charlotte? They have a daughter who is sixteen and apparently suffers from psychological instability. Now, isn't that ironic? Wouldn't you say, Father? Very ironic.”

“This conversation is at an end.”

“I know everything, Father. Every last secret.”

Otis blinked, then turned to stare out at the rim of the gorge.

“Your mother told you wild stories.”

“Wild, perhaps, but completely credible.”

“Your mother lived in the foul dust of the past.”

“You may try to wave this all aside, Father, like a puff of smoke. But it
can't be done. Whether we're mindful of it or not, our history lingers about us. Some of us taste it in every breath.”

“Horseshit. We're two centuries removed from all that nonsense.”

Shannon stared at the two men, her fine-boned face tightened into puzzlement.

“When you're ready to discuss this, Father, you know where to find me.”

Farris turned away and the two dogs trooped behind him to their work zone, where Farris and Martin had long ago erected a mannequin that they used as the dogs' target. Today the effigy was dressed in blue-jean overalls and a white shirt and baseball hat.

Some years earlier, it had been Martin's idea to train attack dogs. He cast about for weeks before settling on that particular breed. Martin found it amusing to be a breeder of poodles.

With their white coiled fur, expressive eyes, and long, narrow snouts, they appeared deceptively harmless. A deception, Martin liked to say, that just might prove useful one day.

After a regimen of rigorous schooling and highly selective breeding, Martin corrected the poodles' passive streak until this current crop of canines was every bit as fierce as any pit bull. Though Farris was slow to warm to the enterprise, eventually he came around, and now that Martin was gone, the dogs quickly transferred their loyalty to him.

Outwardly the pair was quiet and subdued. Visitors to his home rarely noticed the difference between his dogs and ordinary poodles. They relaxed around the canines, admired their poignant brown eyes and their soft coats, which were scented of freshly mown hay. And the dogs displayed a fondness for humans, licking faces, nuzzling. But all that folderol would cease in a heartbeat if Farris commanded the dogs otherwise.

On that early June morning, with Otis and his whore looking on, Farris retrieved the dummy's head, replaced it on the slender neck, wedging the ravaged fiberglass skull back into its slot, then reset the baseball hat at a jaunty angle. With a hand sledge Farris fixed the mannequin's feet to the soft earth with stakes. To knock the target over, the dogs had to be moving at a decent clip and then leap high, throwing themselves in tandem against the chest.

While Otis and Shannon huddled on the porch, whispering amid sips of morning coffee, Farris led the dogs across the lawn so he was in full view of the front porch.

Farris commanded them to sit and they obeyed promptly, with their eyes fixed on Farris's every move.

For a signal, Martin had long ago settled on a simple salute. The inside edge of his right hand raised to his forehead and chopped forward a few inches in the direction of the target.

Now, as Farris raised his hand, the two animals quivered with excitement. After holding them for a few moments more, Farris sent his salute toward the dummy, and the dogs broke into casual lopes across the grass, just as they had been trained, no snarl, nothing savage in their demeanor to arouse suspicion or alarm, no sign that this was an attack until it was too late.

When the poodles reached the mannequin, they sprang in unison, high and hard, and knocked the dummy flat. Then the dogs heaved forward and fastened their jaws onto the throat and face and shook their heads from side to side. Five seconds, ten at most, and it was concluded. The mannequin's head broke loose and spun away across the grass and lodged against the base of a sugar maple. The dogs trotted away from the decapitated dummy and lay down to lounge beneath the white, quivering blossoms of a dogwood tree.

“I wonder about your mental health, Farris,” Otis called.

Farris stood for a moment, holding his father's stony gaze.

“Are you ready to discuss this matter, sir?”

Otis spoke a few words to Shannon and stood. He was wearing black jeans and a blue work shirt and boat shoes, the attire of a man who labored at appearing more youthful than he was.

Otis joined him on the lawn, and they strolled in silence toward the cliff edge. The congressman still clutched his nine iron in one hand and swung it idly, clipping the tips of the grass and beheading dandelions.

When they were safely out of Shannon's hearing, Farris halted and looked out at the distant mountain ranges. The sweet green zest of spring was spreading across the peaks. Two hawks coasted high over the adjacent valley. On another day earlier in his life, Farris might have drawn in a
lungful of that unsullied breeze and absorbed a strong dose of vitality from it. But now the endless spread of wilderness that stretched before him was a lifeless canvas, flat and dull and devoid of interest. Nature's redemptive power, which had always sustained Farris in his darker moments, had lost its sway.