Forests of the Night (34 page)

Two little boys. Two adolescents who didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Not a damn thing. Gracey had driven that goddamn camper while Lucy Panther bled from a gunshot wound, for chrissakes.

And then they were gone. Steven disappeared. She could feel it. Blink—he's not there anymore, whooshed away back to the Hollywood world he came from. And Joan Crawford, too. Not that she'd miss Joan particularly. Gracey wasn't sure about Barbara Stanwyck, but she listened and didn't hear anything except the sound of her parents talking and the wind rushing past the car and big trucks blowing by in the opposite direction.

Gone. Snap your finger, like that, it's finished. Her big movie break. Melanie Griffith, all that. Gone, gone, gone.

Spielberg, jeez, what was she thinking? He was just another spoiled kid who didn't know shit about real pain or danger or anything. Parents getting divorced? An unhappy childhood? You call that trouble? I'll show you trouble.

In only a few days, Gracey had changed and they hadn't. Simple as that. She'd moved on.

“Good riddance,” she said aloud.

Her mother looked back at her.

“Screw them,” Gracey said. “Screw all of them.”

“Who?” her mother asked. “Screw who?”

It sounded funny, that rhyme coming out of her mother's mouth.

“Screw who?” Gracey repeated. And she laughed.

A second later her dad joined in, laughing, too, and finally her mother.

All of them said it one more time, “Screw who?” Practically in unison.

Then when the laughing died down, her mother said to her dad, “I think it's time to call Frank.”

“Yeah, I'm still here,” Sheffield said. “Another bucket of shit hit the fan.”

They were passing through a town named Dellwood, about halfway between Asheville and Cherokee. The mountains starting to flex their muscles.

Charlotte asked what happened.

“Congressman Tribue died. I figured I should stick around, double-check a few things.”

“Suspicious circumstances?”

“You might say that.” She could hear other men speaking in the background.

“You can't talk now?”

“That would be correct.”

“Parker and I have something heavy to unload, Frank.”

“How heavy is heavy?”

“Trust me, this is serious weight.”

“I'm listening.”

“Has to be face-to-face.”

“Well, right now I'm out in the front yard at the Tribues' estate. Should be here the rest of the day. You know where that is?”

“Is the sheriff there? Farris?”

“Does the pope shit in the Vatican?”

“How about Roth and your other guys?”

“Yeah, they're around, why?”

“Can you keep Farris there? Make sure he doesn't go anywhere?”

“What the hell's this about?”

Charlotte looked over at Parker and gave him a reassuring smile. He returned it, but his had a forlorn edge. She'd given him a peek into the lower regions of her heart, and it had shaken him. Truth be known, it shook her, too, hearing herself say those things, knowing they were true.

“Give me the directions, Frank. We'll fill you in when we get there.”

 

For the rest of the drive, they were silent, Charlotte studying the
Tribue Project
pamphlet. Tracing the half-dozen branches of Tsali's family tree that sprouted from his one surviving son. Each branch ended abruptly, except for Diana Walkingstick and her son, Parker, and his offspring, Gracey.

An hour later, winding up the steep entrance drive to the Tribue estate, she said, “It's possible Milford called Farris by now, and he knows we're on the way.”

“So how do we play it?”

“Get Sheffield alone. Tell him what we know. What else is there?”

“He won't buy it, nobody in their right mind would. All we've got is a bunch of disconnected facts. A booklet with our names in it, a locket with an old drawing. No clear connection to Mother's murder. No connection to Jacob. Just a pound and a half of speculation. Nothing hard.”

“Gracey saw Farris shooting at her.”

“Put Gracey into the middle of this? You're not serious. And is Sissy a reliable witness? Not on your life.”

“Okay, look, I've been studying this booklet, Parker. And the way it seems, at least three-quarters of the people in this book, Tsali's ancestors, died before the age of twenty. Violent deaths, knife wounds, falls from high places. Gunshots. Disappearances are common. Three-quarters of them, Parker.”

He shook his head and half-closed his eyes, unimpressed.

“So you got a long history of accidents, high incidence of violent deaths, it could be random for all we know. Take that to a DA along with this crackpot tale, he'd laugh you out of his office, pure and simple. Who knows, maybe those death stats are the normal life expectancy for the tribe. These are hard-living people, not famous for their healthy lifestyles.”

“You don't believe any of this?”

“Oh, I believe it,” Parker said. “But we need something a little more concrete. Like a signed confession.”

“One look at Farris, you know that isn't gonna happen. Guy's got antifreeze pumping through him.”

“Suggestions?”

“Get inside his house,” she said. “Locate the rifle he used on Jacob.”

“Come on. You're going to steal a weapon from the sheriff's house to run a ballistics test? Jesus, Charlotte. You're not thinking straight.”

“There's got to be something.”

“Give it to Sheffield. This is his world.”

“Sheffield,” she said and groaned. “God help us.”

He parked alongside a group of white Fords like the ones Frank's people had been using. Through the hemlocks and pines, she could make out a grassy lawn where the two white poodles and a half-dozen local police were milling around.

“You sure about this?” he said. “Nothing says we have to do it now.”

“Why don't you and Gracey stay in the car? I'll lay it out for Frank, then the three of us can chew it over later.”

“I got to take a whiz, Mom. Big time.”

“Can you use the bushes?”

“No way,” Gracey said. “There's snakes everywhere up here.”

Charlotte looked back at Gracey.

“I'm serious, Mom. I got to go like right now. I can't hold it.”

“Okay, so you go with her,” Parker said. “I'll handle Frank.”

Charlotte didn't like it, but Gracey was squirming, so she hitched her backpack over her shoulder and they set off through the trees to join the gathering.

Halfway across the field, the two poodles spotted them and trotted over and gave them all a good sniff. The dogs homed in on Gracey, nosing her
crotch, pawing her jeans for attention. She squatted down and they nuzzled her neck while she giggled and dug her hands into their coats.

A moment later Farris arrived with Frank at his side. Farris was dressed in black trousers and a dark collarless shirt. Frank sent Charlotte a strained and questioning look, but Charlotte made no attempt to respond.

“Once again,” Parker said, “our condolences for your loss, Sheriff.”

Farris bowed his head in mock gratitude.

“A release from his earthly pain. A better place and all that.”

Charlotte drew Gracey away from the dogs.

“Is there a bathroom we can use?” she said. “Gracey's in need.”

“Forensics are finished,” Frank said, “the body's out, you're free to go inside. Long as Sheriff Tribue says yes.”

Farris said, “I'll be happy to show you the way.”

“You're most gracious.” She shot Parker a parting look—make it fast.

Trailed by the dogs, they walked in silence across the terraced lawn, and Charlotte halted at the front steps. She looked back to see Frank listening intently to Parker's story.

“Mom, I gotta go. Come on.”

Farris raked Charlotte with a tight-lipped scowl, and for some reason she was reminded of the red-haired boy in Fedderman's videotape, the single scenario she'd gotten wrong. The kid aiming his pistol at that cornered cat.
Here, kitty kitty
.

“Down the main hallway,” Farris said, “second door on the left. That's the guest bath.”

She thanked him, and she and Gracey, trailed by the dogs, mounted the porch. When the two of them pushed through the screen door, the dogs halted outside.

Gracey went into the tiny lavatory, and Charlotte stood guard in the foyer, looking back through the screen. Parker and Sheffield were bent close, but when Farris arrived, they stepped apart and gazed out at the distant peaks. She tried to read Frank's face, but at that distance his features were a blur.

Some of the FBI guys were out near the edge of what looked like a ravine, while Farris's tribal police squatted down in the grass in the shade of a grove of poplars. It was a standard cooling-off time at a death scene. The work done, but nobody ready to leave the area quite yet.

The toilet flushed and a moment later Gracey reappeared.

“Better?”

“I heard a voice,” Gracey said.

“What voice?”

“Upstairs, a voice. Through the plumbing or something.”

“Gracey, come on, we're leaving. We can't stay here.”

“I recognized it. Lucy Panther's in trouble.”

Charlotte took Gracey by the elbow and steered her toward the screen door, but she yanked away.

“I heard her voice, goddamn it, in the pipes, I heard her groaning, Mother. I did. I'm not hallucinating, okay?”

She was halfway up the stairs before Charlotte recovered and followed.

When she made it to the landing, she found Gracey standing still with her head cocked to listen. The room at the head of the stairs was crisscrossed with yellow police tape.

“She's in there,” Gracey said and started toward the front bedroom.

“Gracey, we'll send Sheffield in. It's not our place.”

“You're a cop, right? Isn't this what you're supposed to do, save people?”

Gracey stormed past her and halted outside the door and tried the knob, but it was locked.

She pressed her ear to the wood.

“Listen if you don't believe me.”

Charlotte sighed and stepped beside her and flattened her ear to the door, and yes, there was a muffled grunt. Two feet away, the sound was lost.

“You inherited your father's hearing.”

“I told you.”

“Okay, step back.”

The girl dodged away, and Charlotte retreated two steps and threw herself forward, planting her kick near the knob. The door gave but didn't break. She repeated it and, on the third try, the edge splintered and the door flew inward. Gracey rushed inside with Charlotte two steps behind.

Spread-eagled on a double bed, Lucy Panther was naked, her wrists and ankles lashed to the posts, her mouth covered with layers of gray duct tape,
her head tipped to the side near a tiny sink. Her grunts had not made it beyond the door, but somehow they'd found their way down the pipes to the floor below.

She looked at Charlotte and Gracey with a composure that belied her situation.

Charlotte peeked out the edge of the front window and saw Farris and Sheffield and Parker engaged in conversation.

Charlotte hurried back to the foot of the bed and pried a green comforter from beneath Lucy's bound legs, then shook it out full length to cover her nakedness.

Lucy nodded her thanks.

Making a quick search of the dressing table for something sharp, Charlotte found nothing, then remembered the nail scissors in her bag.

When she snipped the gag loose, Lucy's first words were, “Get the hell out of here, both of you. He'll find you. Go now.”

Charlotte set to work on Lucy's right wrist. As she sliced the gummy fabric, Gracey said, “What happened, Lucy?”

“More than I can tell. More than anyone should have to hear.”

“Like what?”

“You need to get out of here. I'm serious.”

“So am I,” said Charlotte.

She tipped her bag to the side and showed Lucy the Beretta.

Lucy Panther said, “Last night I got the whole damn history lesson. Back to the beginning of time. You wouldn't believe the shit this family's been up to the last two hundred years.”

“Oh, yeah,” Charlotte said. “We've been putting it together ourselves.”

She had the right wrist loose and was working on the ankle.

“You know about Molly Tribue?”

“Wife of Matthew,” Charlotte said. “The soldier Tsali killed.”

“You hear about the whorehouse?”

Charlotte said yes, she'd heard that part, too.

The tape on the ankle was thicker, five or six layers deep, straining the scissors.

“The reservation was the Tribues' private hunting club, you know what I mean, one of those places where they stock all this wild game in a fenced-in
area. They go out with their high-powered rifles and bag a rhino. Only it was Tsali's bloodline they wanted.”

Lucy wriggled the right leg loose, and Charlotte moved around the bed to work on the other side.

“That gun loaded?” Lucy said.

“It is.”

“You're going to need it. Getting out of here, you're damn well going to need it. You can't trust Farris's deputies. Not one of them.”

Charlotte looked up and saw Gracey standing at the front window.

“Get away from there, Gracey, before someone sees you.”

The girl ducked aside and grinned.

“Nobody saw me,” she said. “Nobody but those stupid dogs.”

One of the poodles had begun a listless barking.

“Two more things I gotta tell you, in case I don't make it out of here alive,” Lucy said.

“Don't say that. You're going to make it.”

“The gun Otis used on Parker's dad, some old cheap-ass revolver, it's in that drawer over there.”

As Charlotte worked on the remaining tape, she heard a distant crow cawing and another answering back in a minor key. Outside in the lawn, the poodle continued to woof in a lazy tempo like the background bass of late-night jazz.

“Mike Tribue's the only one in the family worth a damn.”

“Far as the law's concerned,” Charlotte said, “Mike's an accomplice. He knew what was going on, but did nothing. He'd be treated the same as the doer of the deed.”

“That accomplice saved your life.”

“If he knew the truth, he should never have let it get as far as it did.”

“Old Mike was a gentle spirit,” Lucy said. “Men like that don't come at things like you and me, head on. They're roundabout. But that doesn't make them guilty. It's just a different approach. He sat on the sidelines, watching the rest of his family, knowing someday it might boil up again, and when it did, he came to me and Jacob and laid it out. I give him credit. Not much, but some.”

“And then he sent you off to do what he lacked the courage for.”

“Men do the best they can with the gumption God provided.”

Charlotte got back to work and stripped another layer of tape away.

“And the banks?” she said. “That was Farris and Martin, too?”

“Yeah, Jacob went and ran his mouth to the police about the Tsali story, and Farris got wind of it.”

“Why the hell blow up the banks?”

“Sons of bitches,” Lucy said. “Once Farris and Martin heard Jacob was yammering about that old conspiracy, those two boys figured a way to get Jacob on the run so nothing he ever said again would be believed. Or me either, for that matter.”