Forests of the Night (5 page)

Jesus stared at the red truck in his headlights, his voice going quiet.

“You know that guy Ray Hamersley, the basketball coach the kid shot? Well, about a hundred years ago I played for him at Miami High.”

She turned to look at Jesus's profile.

“Junior year, he caught me smoking a Camel behind the gym, kicked my ass off the team right there. Did I go home and get a fucking gun? Let me think. No, no, I don't recall that. I think I went home and smoked the rest of the case and puked in the backyard and never smoked again.”

He looked at her and then turned back to the pickup in his headlights.

“It's what he does, Jesus. He's not a bad man. He does it because he believes in it, same as we do.”

Jesus turned in his seat, pointed at her face, and wagged his finger like she'd been naughty.

“Don't you be going over to the dark side now.”

She grabbed hold of Romero's finger and bent it backward, not enough to hurt, but close.

He groaned and pried loose from her grip.

“Okay, okay. You women, shit, first time you burned a bra, we should've been all over you. What were we thinking?”

“Too late now, Jesus.”

“Don't I know it. Don't I fucking know it.”

Charlotte opened the door and got out. Jesus popped a two-finger salute and rolled out the drive. She left the electric gate open, then squatted down to pat Max. The rest of the troop emerged from the shrubs purring and whining like they hadn't been fed. She gave each of them a stroke, then unlocked the door and the whole gang scampered inside around her ankles.

Charlotte threaded through the maze of hallways to the bright kitchen, set her purse on the granite counter, and peered out the French doors. Gracey and Parker were out on the patio tending a small bonfire in the brick barbecue pit. Floodlights off, the fire cast a rippling halo across the flagstones and the wide waterway that ran behind the house.

Parker and Gracey both held long twigs and seemed to be roasting marshmallows. Beside them stood a burly man with shoulder-length hair. He had on khakis and work boots, and when he turned to the side briefly, she saw on the back of his denim shirt some kind of colorful embroidered insignia. The firelight fluttered on his face, and though he was a hundred feet away in bad light, an old brain cell woke from its timeless nap and fired off a sharp tingle of disquiet.

Charlotte watched the man sip his beer. She burned the image on her retina, closed her eyes, and tried to summon a name, a situation, any distant echo of this man. Nothing came. Blankness. Then an ugly snippet replayed from one of today's videos, the trooper lying on his back, one hand rising like a feeble plume of smoke toward the downward slice of the blade.

She opened her eyes and stared some more. The guy was probably just
an electrician or plumber bidding on a job. Their house was eighty years old, ancient by Miami standards, and required constant attention. She was simply oversaturated with violent images, having a flash of paranoia.

After another few seconds, when no recollection hardened into focus, Charlotte turned to the counter, got out the cans of tuna, opened them one by one, and fed the tribe. When they'd taken their positions at their bowls, she poured herself a glass of cabernet and walked outside.

Parker was in his after-hours uniform. Faded jeans, boat shoes, and a T-shirt from his vast collection. This one, bright yellow with red lettering, was from Duffy's Tavern over in West Miami, a beer joint they used to frequent when they were first married and burning so many calories in the bedroom they could eat all the fries and greasy burgers they wanted.

He opened his arms, and Charlotte rocked in and out of his embrace, planting her shoulder briefly against his chest and managing a quick bungled kiss on the edge of his mouth. The prickly conversation she'd had with Jesus was making her feel ungainly and self-conscious. An impostor in her own life.

“Won the Drury case.” Parker made a self-deprecating smile.

“I heard.”

“Botched from start to finish. Metro should reprimand that patrolman, their crime-scene people. But they won't. A total mess—Miranda, everything.”

“Which you exploited successfully.”

Parker leaned away from her and squinted at the hint of disapproval.

“You okay?”

Gracey extended a twig capped with a fresh marshmallow and waved it near Charlotte's face. For the moment the sullen tautness in her cheeks had relaxed and she looked like the sweet, sincere girl she'd been a year earlier. Charlotte couldn't tell if this mood was genuine or not. Maybe Gracey was making progress, chanting some new mantra she'd learned from her therapist. Or more likely it was simply a short-lived burst of artificial serenity brought on by the miracle of pharmaceuticals. For the last year their lives had been ruled by the endless skirmishes between the drugs and Gracey's biology. Almost as quickly as they found a new pill that eased her back to normalcy, her condition mutated and the wild eruptions began again.

When Charlotte opened her arms, Gracey stepped in and embraced her with such simple warmth that, against her better judgment, all her caution and reserve dissolved and Charlotte felt a rush of unadulterated hope. Maybe this was it, the watershed moment when the storm finally passed and the sun broke through and all would be well again. She would have her Gracey back, the demon exorcised, not even a memory of its terrible possession lingering on.

Gracey drew away and gave Charlotte a cheerful smile.

“We're having white-trash hors d'oeuvres,” she announced.

Charlotte took the twig and had a nibble of the white foam.

“Oh, Mom, you're supposed to roast them first. I'll do one for you. Didn't you ever go to summer camp?”

“No, I didn't. I was deprived.”

Gracey took the twig back and walked over to the fire and held the white flesh near the heart of the flames.

The large man shifted in the half-light.

“Oh, I'm sorry.” Parker stepped beside her, lay a hand on her arm. “Charlotte, I'd like you to meet Jacob Panther.”

The big man nodded hello. His sandy hair brushed his shoulders, and his features were strong and distinctly mismatched. While there was a boyish smoothness to his skin, the sum of his features radiated the weariness of someone far older. His quiet blue eyes were heavy-lidded and moved with lazy ease. But the man drank her in with unsettling frankness. She felt the touch of his gaze like an insolent hand trickling across her cheeks.

His sharp jawline and finely etched nose clashed with the blunt chin, the wide, bullish forehead. Belligerence and gentleness in equal measure. Crude yet refined. A face at war with itself.

Now that she was only a few feet away from him, the tingle of uneasiness had grown to a bristling apprehension. She knew this guy from somewhere, and the bell it was ringing was sharp and discordant.

Charlotte managed a guarded hello and shook the man's thick hand.

She had a sip of wine and could feel Parker watching her.

The memory was there, hovering just out of view like one of those silly sayings trapped inside that fortune-telling eight ball from Charlotte's youth. Ask a question, turn the ball over, and wait for the answer to float up through
the thick liquid with the same painful sluggishness as this man's face and identity were emerging from the sea of memory. Maybe his was a face from the pages of the countless mug shots she'd pored over, or one of the black-and-white printouts handed around at roll call. Or perhaps it came from some other realm entirely.

Parker said, “I went to summer camp with Jacob's uncle. We were cabinmates. Jacob's passing through town and decided to look me up.”

“Tsali?” Charlotte was holding the stranger's solemn stare.

“Camp Tsali, yeah,” Parker said. “You know.”

Yes, she did. Knew it damn well.

“That's why we're doing marshmallows,” Gracey called over. “In memory of summer camp. It was my idea.”

Charlotte broke free of the man's eyes and smiled at her daughter. Then she turned to Parker. He was gazing off at the swirl of sparks rising into the humid evening, though she could see enough of his face to know he was transporting himself to that mountain retreat his father had run for twenty years. For a man so city-tough, such an uncompromising realist, Parker Monroe could turn into a dreamy doofus in a micromoment.

Mention summer camp and a blush came to his cheeks, a shy smile surfaced, eyes looking off toward those summery fields where his best self still drew the longbow and planted arrows dead center from fifty yards away. She'd heard it all. Seen the Kodaks. Even gone with him once up to the fog-shrouded Carolina mountains and hiked over cow pastures and streams and a bald precipice to reach the gravel road that led to the padlocked gates of Camp Tsali. The place had closed for good the night Parker's father died.

That day Charlotte and Parker had climbed the gates of Camp Tsali, hiked up the steep entrance drive through a green tunnel of pines, then wandered for hours around that ghost town of log cabins and weed-infested playing fields and Indian ceremonial rings. She'd listened to the stories, and was genuinely touched by Parker's zeal. It would be easy to mock the whole thing as a bunch of spoiled country-club boys dressing up in beaded loincloths and face paint, while in their spare time working on their backhands and chip shots. But Camp Tsali was anything but cushy. It was a hell of a lot more primitive than she could have handled at that age.
She would've bailed after a single night on those unforgiving cots, and peeing without privacy in open latrines. The Coral Gables holding cells had more creature comforts.

“Indian lore,” Parker said to Gracey. “That was the big thing. Tribal dances, songs, Cherokee history. Lots of woodcraft. How to survive in the wilderness. Which berries you could eat and which would kill you. Making fires, lean-tos, all that stuff.”

Gracey rolled her eyes and gave Charlotte a look. Here we go again. Stouthearted man time.

Charlotte returned the look, then had a sip of her wine and angled to the left of the fire for a better view of Jacob Panther. The name as haunting as the face.

“Jacob's a Cherokee Indian,” Gracey said. “Aren't you, Jacob?”

He nodded and smiled at the girl and she answered his smile with a gesture so provocative not even Stanwyck would have dared to use it.

Basking in Panther's gaze, Gracey stroked a fresh marshmallow against her cheek and in her sauciest voice she said, “Wouldn't it be nice for your lover to have marshmallow skin? So soft and powdery.”

Charlotte flinched and spoke her name in warning, but Gracey ignored her.

“Your skin's already beautiful,” Panther said. “Better than any marshmallow.”

With a sly smile, her daughter turned away, giving Panther a full view of her ample profile. She wore a tight gray top that left a five-inch band of flesh exposed at the rim of her black jeans. A dress code ordained by the reigning pop diva. She had Parker's pale gold hair, which was parted on the side and hung straight to her shoulders. More Veronica Lake than Stanwyck. She'd inherited Charlotte's nothing-to-brag-about hazel eyes but little else. Lately, Gracey had been making droll remarks about getting lucky in the boob department—taking after her daddy's side of the family.

It was true enough. In the past year Gracey had begun to assume the figure of Parker's mother, Diana, a sinewy, athletic woman with wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and inexplicably heavy bosoms. But the hormonal gush that was reshaping Gracey's body had yet to touch her face. Her complexion was as flawless as warm crème brûlée. And her childish, pudgy
cheeks and trusting eyes seemed absurdly at odds with what was appearing below.

Charlotte thought of her as treacherously beautiful, but still thankfully lacking in the vanity of most teenage girls who were so endowed. The boys at her school had gotten the message and were calling nightly. Polite enough when Charlotte answered, but in a hushed fever to get past the gatekeeper and whisper their secret charms in her daughter's ear.

“I noticed the plates on your truck,” Charlotte said to their guest. “I take it you're from Daytona Beach?”

He looked at her, but the question tripped nothing in his eyes.

“You'll have to excuse Charlotte,” said Parker. “She's a cop. Spends her days interrogating people, she comes home, can't turn it off.”

“It's all right,” Jacob said. “No, I'm not from Daytona. I move around. I'm a traveling man.”

Gracey drew another marshmallow from the fire. She plucked at the shriveled black mess and pinched a bit into her mouth. Charlotte caught her eye and waved her back over to join in, but Gracey shook her head and resumed her scrutiny of the blackened goo in her hand.

Pressing his beer bottle to his sweaty cheek, Panther smiled at Charlotte. Though there was nothing overtly wolfish in the grin, his eyes lingered too long, becoming familiar, challenging.

“You have anything in mind for dinner?” Parker asked her.

“If you mean am I cooking, the answer's no. I'm done in.”

“I was thinking of Norman's. A little celebration. Wouldn't need a reservation on a Thursday this early.”

Jacob Panther turned from them and gazed out at the swath of moonlight on the polished water of the wide canal. The embroidery on the back of his shirt was red and black, a series of concentric circles, some interlocked, some broken, like a maze seen from high above.

Charlotte stared at his broad shoulders, urging the recollection up through the murky depths.

Nudging her arm, Parker gave her a quick “What's wrong?” wave of his hand. But Charlotte just smiled and looked away.

“When we go to Norman's I get the yellowtail snapper with garlic mashed potatoes,” Gracey said to Panther. “It's the best. Norman always
comes over to our table. He's cute. I'd
so
marry him. He could cook for me every night.”

The big man nodded, still wearing the bold smile he'd given Charlotte.

As she studied the man's profile, his identity finally began to clarify, a shape congealing from the fog. Of course, of course. Jacob Panther. Sweet Jesus Mother of God.

“You know you look like somebody,” Gracey said. “Doesn't he, Dad? Doesn't he look like somebody we know? I can't think who.”

Panther turned slowly from the darkness.

“I get that a lot. I must have a common face.”

“Anything but,” Charlotte said quietly. Parker heard and turned in her direction. She set her wineglass down on the arm of a lawn chair, saying, “Norman's sounds fine. I just need to freshen up. Back in a sec.”

Parker shot her a puzzled look, but she didn't field it, didn't even hold his eyes for an extra tick, not wanting anything to trigger Jacob Panther's sensors.

Charlotte ambled to the kitchen, then, when she was certain she was out of sight, she jogged down the hallway past the master suite to the back guest room where she stored her work files and her laptop.

She sat down at her desk, switched on the IBM, opened the DSL connection, and a second later she typed in the Web address for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With two clicks she was looking at a thumbnail photo of the man on their patio. He hadn't even bothered with an alias.

Though the FBI didn't number them anymore, counting down from the top of the page their blond guest held the eighth position on the Most Wanted list.