Forests of the Night (36 page)

More than sixty skulls were found among the refuse at the bottom of Raven's Gorge. Shattered human bones of every sex and age, and even the recent remains of a young woman from Congressman Tribue's own staff. A mass grave of such proportion that it would take years to excavate and sort out.

Before they returned to Miami, Charlotte and Parker went to meet Shelley Tribue. Margie Hornbuckle, his caretaker, led them out to a sunny field where they found Shelley sitting in an old lounge chair that someone had dragged into the middle of the meadow.

The gangly young man had a drawing pad balanced on his knees and was using a box of colored pencils to draw circles on the white sheet.

“He says that's his father,” Margie said. “The boy can't get enough of drawing his father.”

The circles were the size of quarters, and there were two dark dots in each one that Shelley must have intended to be the vacant eyes of Farris Tribue.

“He misses that man already,” Margie said. “Don't ask me why.”

Officer Charlotte Monroe went back to work with Dr. Fedderman and applied herself to becoming one of his disciples, learning his mystifying muscle groups so she could teach others the skills she still didn't fully believe she possessed. It was the bargain she'd made, so she honored it, but her heart wasn't in the daily grind of videotapes and flashing microexpressions. The detailed diagrams of skinless faces, with strands of muscles and tendons and branching nerves, all to be memorized.

She decided she owed them a year. After that she would press the button on her ejection seat and parachute back to the streets. There'd be pressure for her to stay, but she could handle that. In the meantime, she watched faces for eight hours a day and learned what they asked her to learn.

In early July, Marvin Drury, the teenager Parker had successfully defended in the Miami High coach's shooting, was involved in another incident.

A math teacher tutoring Marvin in summer school pissed the kid off and took two rounds in the shoulder for his misstep. The teacher survived, but Marvin was charged with attempted first degree. The boy's mother pled with Parker to take her boy's case, but Parker informed her that he wasn't that kind of lawyer. Second chances were within his province, but beyond that he would not go.

In early July, Charlotte found a camp for Gracey out on Key Biscayne. Not a sleepover place like Camp Tsali, no charismatic director, but a good-hearted woman who specialized in artistic types. They would be performing
Othello
for the closing ceremony, and after a week of grueling auditions, Gracey won the female lead.

When the kids weren't rehearsing or memorizing lines, they swam in the Atlantic and learned to scuba dive. Gracey seemed okay with it, as okay as she was with anything. Not ecstatic, not glum, but going dutifully each morning and coming home each afternoon smelling of salt water and sunscreen.

The beaded disk arrived in early August. It appeared in Charlotte's mailbox at the Gables police department. The envelope was flimsy and water-stained. It was addressed in a scrawl that was barely legible, like the quaking hand of someone two hundred years old. No address, no zip code. Simply: T
O
C
HARLOTTE
M
ONROE
, B
ELOVED
W
OMAN
. C
ORAL
G
ABLES
P
OLICE
D
EPARTMENT
. The disk was woven with a different design than Diana's. A face
with two large blue eyes staring out at the world with such simple wisdom that Charlotte could only wish that one day she might approximate such sight.

 

Middle of August, there was a hurricane out in the Atlantic. Harold, a Category 4, spinning their way. The TV weather guys were hyped. Its path looked like a direct hit on Miami, so Gracey's dad was putting up the aluminum shutters. Him and the guy he used for yard work. Hernando Gonzalez, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, a Cuban rafter who'd made it across the ninety-mile stretch of open ocean so he could live in Hialeah with his cousins and do tree-trimming for her dad and people like him.

Gracey thought he was cute. Tall with long lashes and a funny smile. That smile would start to take shape on his lips, then he'd swallow, his big Adam's apple bobbing, and he'd made the grin disappear like he was afraid someone might see how happy he was and deport him back to Cuba.

She was in her room studying Shakespeare. Trying to get her lines down. But something was nagging at her. How could Othello be so stupid as to fall for Iago's bullshit? How could Desdemona love a guy that completely dumb? But she was trying to make herself believe it. Iago keeps whispering and whispering into Othello's ear, making him crazier and crazier. Okay, so that was something she could identify with. A start.

Working on her lines while out her window Hernando Gonzalez and her dad did the shutters. Her part had her saying:

She understood some of it, the divided duty part anyway. Boyfriend versus Dad. But the rest was giving her trouble. Looking out the window at the skinny Cuban guy with those lashes. Then coming out of the goddamn blue, there was Steven Spielberg. After all these months of silence, then bang, there he was again like nothing had ever happened.

Telling her about that scene with Lucy sprawled naked on the bed. Wasn't it better that she was naked? Didn't that scene have a little extra oomph? Didn't it? Come on, Gracey, admit it. I was right, wasn't I?

What it had was a little extra tit, Joan said, if you call that oomph. But Joan sounded meek and far away, like her heart wasn't in it anymore. Off in the clouds. And Barbara Stanwyck said, now, now, don't let them bother you. Do your lessons. Read your play. Shoot higher, girl. Tits and ass, explosions, all that thrill-a-minute carnival ride bullshit, that's written
by
little boys,
for
little boys. You're a woman now. So start acting like one. 'Cause that's how it is, right? You act a part well enough, you become that person.

But Gracey didn't buy any of it. Not even the woman thing. As nice and supportive as Barbara Stanwyck was, Gracey told her, along with the others, that she was busy. She had work to do. A play to memorize. A part, a good part, juicy, something to sink her teeth into. Shakespeare, for godsakes.

And that boy out her window, there was him, too. That funny smile he had. Smiling, but sad somehow, like there were things he'd seen he'd never get over. Gracey knew about that. Oh, yes, she knew all about that.

As usual I'm indebted to many individuals who helped in the creation of this book. I relied extensively on the extraordinary work of Paul Ekman for the facial coding information. Dick Heidgerd, a solid friend from forty years back, provided abundant assistance on legal matters.

C. Walton Johnson was my inspiration in so many matters having to do with the natural world of North Carolina, Cherokee Indians, and summer camps. His memory sustains me in so many ways that it is impossible to note them all. I also must give credit to Reynolds Price, whose masterful novel
The Tongues of Angels
was a guide back to those early days of Camp Sequoyah and its powerful role in my life and the lives of so many young men of that era.

And as always, Evelyn, my wife, sacrificed much during the months of the creation of this book. Her steady and clear advice, her literary perception, and her rigorous honesty kept me marching on the right path.

This book is dedicated to her father, William Francis Crovo, a man who had a stong passion for Native Americans and the natural world. I am grateful for the wisdom and generosity of spirit he imparted to his daughter, for it is through that legacy he bestowed on her that I am lucky enough to know him.