Forests of the Night (6 page)

“So I hear you're one tough son of a bitch,” Jacob said.

“What?” Parker stiffened.

“You're a rough-and-tumble guy.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“That's what Uncle Thomas said. Lots of fistfights, hell-bent to prove yourself. Chip on your shoulder.”

Parker poured the dregs of his beer onto the dying embers.

“That's what he said. Don't turn your back on Parker Monroe. Only makes sense a guy like you would turn out to be a lawyer.”

Parker was floored.

In a profession so shamelessly belligerent, he'd always prided himself on the opposite virtue, an unassuming manner, a quiet though tenacious passion for fairness. In the courtroom he adopted an old-fashioned pace, dawdling, meandering. Unfailingly serene and polite in cross-examinations. When he had no choice but to object to a prosecutor's line of questioning, he was courteous to a fault. No irony, no sarcasm, 100 percent sincere. A twenty-first-century Atticus Finch. And that, he believed, was the source of his success. He was a man out of time. His hyped-up adversaries with their eye-gouging tactics didn't know how to respond. Next to Parker either they
came across as grossly aggressive or—by trying to compete with his approach—they assumed a laid-back pose that struck juries as totally bogus.

“Win at any cost.” Jacob was still smiling. “Hiking, felling trees, rope climbing, starting campfires, whatever it was. Had to do it bigger, better, faster. Super gung ho.”

“Funny,” Parker said. “I don't remember it that way.”

“Like you needed to prove yourself to all those other rich snots, you being the owner's kid. You had to make up for it some way. That's what Uncle Thomas said. I'm just repeating.”

Jacob sipped his beer and stared out at the moonlight glazing the canal.

“I remember a couple of fights. No more than anyone else.”

“No need to be defensive. I don't believe he meant it as a criticism,” Jacob said. “I think he admired you for it, 'cause that's how he felt himself. Out of place. Not one of those prep-school types with their silverware manners. Then, of course, he was the token redskin, all those boys spying on him day and night, trying to see if he pissed and shit like regular human beings.”

“I suppose that must've been hard.”

“Being a fighter,” Jacob said, “sometimes it's the only way to survive.”

Parker waited for him to continue, to make his point, but Jacob went silent, and his face turned again to the water.

“What's all this about, Jacob?”

The big man glanced his way briefly, then looked back into the glittering darkness.

“Looks to me like you're still that way, Parker. Gung ho, competitive.”

Jacob Panther gazed across the canal at the McCollums' brightly lit backyard, their Great Dane enlarging the excavation it had been working on all week. When he turned back to Parker he had a quiet smile.

“You in some kind of trouble, Jacob? Because that's what I do. I get people out of trouble.”

“I know what you do.”

Parker could see that Gracey was transfixed by the conversation. Allowed to stay and witness an unguarded adult encounter. It was one of the areas of disagreement in child rearing between Charlotte and him. Parker argued they should treat Gracey as an equal, include her as much as possible
in family decision-making. Charlotte lobbied hard the other way. Wanting to prolong the girl's childhood as long as possible. Adults ran the show, children followed the rules. Lately it had turned into a good cop, bad cop situation. Parker the permissive one, Charlotte the enforcer. Gracey sensed it, and was exploiting the friction between them to negotiate herself the best possible outcomes. Daddy's little bargainer.

“You're not passing through town, are you? This isn't a social call.”

“No, it's not.”

“Well?”

Jacob glanced at Gracey for a moment and his face relaxed.

“You got yourself a handsome family. You're a lucky man.”

Then he stepped close to Parker and spoke with such grim authority that Parker felt something lurch and stumble in his gut.

“You're next.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Parker set his beer bottle on the edge of the barbecue pit and took a moment to gather himself.

“This have something to do with your uncle Thomas?”

“Thomas, no.” Jacob's eyes flashed to Parker's. “The spider dragged Thomas off to the darkening land.”

Parker repeated the phrase to himself, fetching through the fog of years.

“Thomas is dead?”

“Well, you remember
something
they taught you at camp.”

Tilting his head back, Jacob looked up at the first faint stars.

“Heart attack, six years ago. Too much whiskey.”

Parker chose that moment to pose the question he'd been wanting to ask since Panther showed up at his door.

“And your mother, Lucy? How is she?”

“I'm forbidden to speak of her.”

“Whoa,” Gracey said, coming closer. “What's that mean?”

Without taking his eyes from Jacob, Parker said, “It's a Cherokee thing.”

“Forbidden to speak of her. Like what, she's being shunned or something? Kicked out of the tribe. She did something bad?”

“Not shunned.” He looked at his daughter, reached out and lay a hand on her shoulder and maneuvered her to his side so the two of them were facing Panther. The man's face had lost the last wisps of amusement. A defiant stare emerging as though he was daring Parker to explain this to his daughter.

Even though it had been almost thirty years, the words came easily, those strange, foreign lessons imprinted in his marrow.

“The Cherokee are one of the few cultures where women have as much power as men. Women were held in such high regard among the Cherokee people that long ago, if a woman's name was so much as mentioned when warriors went into battle, the fighter's resolve was thought to be seriously weakened. So the warriors on the edge of the battlefield were forbidden to speak the names of women.”

“Cool,” Gracey said. “That's a tribe I'd like to belong to.”

Jacob looked around at Parker's home, at the canal, the palm trees rustling. Then his eyes drifted back to Parker.

“You ever been back to Tsali?”

“Once.”

“Log cabins are still standing,” Panther said. “A few rotted away, but it looks a lot like it did. The fire tower you guys built. Tetherball stands. The dam's still holding, but it doesn't look real solid. Dining hall's there, infirmary. Not in great shape, but standing.”

Parker watched him hold out his palm and stare down at it as if he were trying to read his own fortune in the frail moonlight.

“You remember the Sequoyah Caverns? Up on Bald Knob?”

Parker said yes, he remembered them.

“Thomas said you two used to sneak up there and smoke dope.”

“Dope?” Gracey said. “You smoked dope?”

“I was young. It was a long time ago.”

“Caverns are all grown over. Kudzu, laurel bushes.” Jacob fanned a night bug from his face. “Walk right past them, never know they were there. Good place to hide.”

In a huff, Gracey pulled away from Parker, pitched her marshmallow stick into the moonlit water, and stalked toward the house.

Parker raised his hand to call her back, try to explain the dope thing if that's what was upsetting her, but she'd already disappeared into the shadows.

“Okay,” Parker said. “Now talk to me, Jacob.”

“I'd say you've got a few things to figure out.”

“What things?”

“About your family. Where you've been, where you're headed.”

“Come on, cut the double-talk.”

“You know who I am? That'd be a good place to start.”

Parker looked into the young man's eyes. His mind blank.

“I can't help you if you won't tell me what's going on, Jacob.”

“Looks to me like you might've gone a little soft, living like this. Citified. Fighting with words instead of muscle and flesh.”

He looked from left to right, searching the darkness.

“I've done what I can,” Jacob said. “Slowed them down. But there's no stopping it. They'll show up eventually. They will.”

“Who?”

“You say you're good at getting people out of trouble, and I can see you make a damn fine living at it. Now you better see how good you are at getting your own self out of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble am I in?”

“Worst kind there is. You've probably got a few days. Two, three maybe.”

“Are you saying my family is in some kind of imminent danger? How would you know such a thing? Talk to me, Jacob.”

Panther opened and closed his right fist several times as though pumping a tennis ball.

“Look,” he said. “You got a john around here? I need to get rid of this beer.”

Parker motioned vaguely toward the French doors.

“Through the kitchen, down the hall, first door on your left.”

For a long moment in the half-light, Jacob studied Parker's face. Cocked forward, tense, he seemed to be debating some long-standing argument, his eyes making difficult calculations as they roamed Parker's features. Finally he reached out and put a warm hand on Parker's bare arm. Flesh to flesh.

At that moment Parker thought it was only the snap of static electricity passing between them, but afterward, for as long as he would live, the nerves on that patch of skin prickled as though he had been forever branded by Jacob Panther's handprint.

Jacob took his hand away and lowered his eyes to the flagstones, cleared his throat gruffly like a man trying to choke back an unwelcome emotion, and glided away toward the house.

Charlotte called Lieutenant Rodriguez at home but got his answering machine. Then she dialed the Gables special weapons and tactics number, and a rookie answered. He was manning the phones while the rest of the SWAT guys were out assisting a Metro hostage situation that was turning into an all-nighter.

So she broke with chain of command and called Frank Sheffield.

A couple of sentences into her explanation, Frank put her on hold and kept her there two minutes, three, while she stared at the thumbnail photo of Jacob Panther.

When Sheffield clicked back on, first thing he asked was if she had her handgun nearby.

“In the next room.”

“It's to be used for self-protection only. Okay? No heroes.”

“You're sending your people?”

“That's right. SWAT.”

“Shit, Frank. By the time they get in gear, I could have a dozen Gables cops here. This part of town we've got less than a two-minute response time.”

“Forget it, Monroe. This is ours. It's already in motion.”

“I'm going to catch shit from Rodriguez.”

“Rodriguez will be fine. You called him first, did it by the book.”

“How soon?”

“Choppers on the pad, firing up. Perimeter's going up right now. I'm already in my car—five, ten minutes tops.”

For the last year Sheffield had been special agent in charge of the Miami field office. Ten years back she'd met him for the first time at a Miracle Mile bank robbery when the feds took over. Nice guy, not the usual stiff-backed hotshot. In fact, he was the only slacker she'd ever met in the FBI. Notorious for his maverick approach, his laid-back style. Everybody she knew in local law enforcement was amazed the guy hadn't been canned long ago, and doubly amazed he'd been promoted to the top slot of one of the largest regional offices in the country.

“Can you tell if he's armed?”

“You already asked that, Frank, and I said no, not that I can see.”

“Whatever you do, don't let Parker in on it. No offense, but your husband's liable to have Panther bailed out of jail before we can arrest the son of a bitch.”

“This isn't funny, Frank. My family's at risk. My daughter.”

At the groan of a floorboard in the hallway, she shot a look over her shoulder and in the same moment clicked her mouse to kill the FBI page. Nobody there. In that old house the oak planks were always creaking from the muggy air swelling the wood, the constant breezes stressing the rafters.

“This is a bad dude, Monroe. Eight homicides.”

“I've read the stuff on the site. I've got the picture.”

“Blown five banks so far, every other month for the last year. We got half a dozen agents with the Southeast Bomb Task Force out of Atlanta working full-time on the guy. Those boys are going to be pissed we made the takedown.”

“Got to wonder,” she said, “why the hell someone blows up banks.”

“We'll ask him in a few minutes.”

Charlotte's breath burned her throat. Chitchatting while FBI's Number Eight was on her patio.

“I got to go, Frank.”

“Keep him distracted. Give him some wine, truffles. Whatever you people eat in the Gables.”

“Not funny.”

“Well, I guess this explains the airport thing.”

“What airport thing?”

“What, your power go off over there? A guy got assassinated at MIA this afternoon. Blowgun, poison dart. Eyewitness got a look at the boy who did it. Tall, heavyset, long hair. She thought maybe a Miccosukee or Seminole from the design on the shirt he was wearing.”

“Why do you say ‘assassinated'?”

“Dead guy was the son of some congressman, in town for some fund-raising thing. Gets whacked going down the escalator to baggage claim. Media's playing up the political angle.”

“A blowgun? You can't be serious.”

“Dart lodged in the neck. Unless the perp walked up and smacked him with a dart, which doesn't seem likely, it was some kind of air-pressure weapon. Tribue went down—five, six seconds later, he's cold.”

“And that fits Panther's MO, a blowgun?”

“Not really. But he's one of the names that popped when we ran the eyewitness stuff. Now here he is, standing in your living room eating liver pâté. So hey, two plus two.”

“Bye, Frank. I'll leave the front door open. No need for the battering ram. Parker's touchy about that front door. You damage it, he'll sue.”

She slapped the phone down and turned to see Gracey in the doorway.

“So who was that, your boyfriend again?”

Gracey was holding a sheet of paper. The serene look had dissolved. Now her lower lip jutted, eyes frosted over as if the dizzy white noise was filling her head. In only a few moments her daughter had been swept up by the storm of molecules and mitochondria and assorted unruly chemicals. A cheerful, imaginative teenage girl body-snatched and replaced by a warped, fun-house-mirror version.

“I was discussing work,” said Charlotte.

“Yeah, right, Mom, whatever you say. But I don't care if you have a boyfriend. Be kind of nice, really. Make you less boring. Give my life a little texture and dimension.”

“There's no boyfriend, Gracey. Now stop that.”

She held out the paper and rattled it.

“Dad said I should get you to sign this.”

“It'll have to wait.”

“It's so I can do a ride-along with a Metro cop. An eight-hour shift with a real police officer. Go into the ghetto, the down and dirty world.”

Charlotte stood up, came over to Gracey, took her by the upper arm, and tugged her into the room. She leaned out, peered down the empty hallway, then shut the door.

“Steven thinks I need more life experience. Breathe some exhaust fumes. Experience some hard knocks.”

“Listen, sweetie, something's come up. We can talk about this later.”

“I'm your daughter,” Gracey said. “Don't my needs count?”

“Of course they do, you're the most important thing there is, but…”

“Yeah, right. You spend all day pulling winos out of Dumpsters, you don't have a lot left for your family when you get home.”

“Don't say that, Gracey, you know it isn't true.”

“Steven had a shitty childhood. Mega personal pain. He thinks I'm too sheltered to be a real artist. I'll never get the depth into my work without more heartache, struggle.”

“Steven thinks this. Some friend from school?”

“Spielberg, stupid.”

“Oh, Gracey. Come on.”

“
Jaws
, you know, Mom.
E. T., Jurassic Park
. Just the biggest movies of all time. That Steven.”

“I know who he is.”

“Steven's made me his protégée. He sees what I'm capable of. He's chosen me.”

Charlotte measured a breath. Stay logical, the shrink said. Don't buy in to her fantasy. Keep showing her the real world, its shape, its hard contours.

“You've spoken with him on the phone?”

“We talk all the time. He's considering me for a project.”

Charlotte stopped, listened. She thought she heard the heavy thud of a helicopter but then wasn't sure.

“I have to go, sweetie. If you want to do a ride-along, I'm not ruling it out. But we need to discuss it.”

“Rules,” Gracey said. “Everything's against the rules. Rules, rules, rules. You know all the rules, don't you, Mom? You got them all memorized.”

“I know some of them.”

“Well, Steven didn't get where he is by following rules. No real artist does. They make their own. That's what creativity is, Mom, in case you haven't heard, breaking the rules. What you're trying to do is suffocate me. Push all the air out of my lungs, sit on my chest, and turn me into some kind of mushroom fungus. A goddamn toadstool, that's what you want me to be.”

“Okay, I've listened to you, now you listen to me. Go to your room right now, Gracey. I'm not mad at you, I'm not punishing you, and I won't try to keep you from doing what you want with your life, but right now, this second, you have to go to your room, lock the door, and stay there till I come for you. Okay? There's something going on. It's a volatile situation, sweetie, and I want you to be safe. In your room. Now.”

Gracey bent her arm backward and dug her thumb at her bra strap, tugging it back into place. The artless gesture of a child wrestling with a twenty-year-old's body.

When the strap was fixed, Gracey swung toward the built-in bookshelves in the corner of the room.

“I told you what the bitch would say. Didn't I tell you?”

“Gracey, stop that.”

Staring at the bookshelf, she lowered her voice to a whisper, only a few words audible. “My life. Bruises. Haven't forgotten.”

Charlotte reached out for Gracey, then let her hand fall. Fighting the instinct to wrench her daughter's arm, shake her hard, do whatever it took to drag her back from that dark oblivion.

Gracey stared at the spines of the books and listened to the phantom voice, and nodded and mumbled some reply, then by slow degrees her eyes resurfaced and her gaze drifted from the shelves and settled on Charlotte. A grim mask tightening into place on her child's face. Stanwyck, Bogart, the lifeless look.

“This is about him, isn't it? That phone call, how you're acting. It's about Jacob.”

Charlotte glanced up at the ceiling, hearing it, the thrash of blades somewhere within a few blocks.

“I know who he is, Mom. I've got eyes. I'm not a kid you have to hide things from. You should've come out and told me. But no, you think I'm this little girl in gingham frocks, some goody-goody you have to protect. Well, it's too late for that. I can see who he is. I'm not stupid.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Gracey.”

“You're such a liar. I just talked to him in the hall and asked him straight out, and he said yes. He admitted it.”

“In the hallway? Just now?”

“Goddamn it,” Gracey said. “Why doesn't anyone listen to me? You think if you ignore me, I'll just go away. That's what you really want, isn't it? Well, okay, maybe I will. Maybe I'll just leave. I'm wasting my time here anyway. The way you've tried to turn me into a privileged little brat. Always so goddamned worried about protecting me. Well, it won't work, Mom. Know why? Because I don't need any of this shit, and you know what else? I don't want to be protected. Not by you. Not by anyone.”

Gracey gestured at the room and the house beyond it, then her head rocked back, shoulders trembled, eyes blinking rapidly. A full-scale meltdown. The tears welling, quickly brimming over, her nose running. Gracey fragmenting.

Charlotte put an arm around her shoulder, pulled her into a hug, spoke into her hair, into the smell of clover and rain. The girl shivered and twisted against Charlotte's embrace, a token resistance, then she grew still.

“Look, sweetie, I want you to stay right here in my office till I come back for you. Don't go anywhere. Don't move. You've got to promise me.”

Gracey spoke through her tears.

“I need to e-mail Mr. Underwood, tell him I'm going to do ride-alongs. He agrees with Steven. I need more seasoning, more bumps and bruises.”

“Nobody needs more bruises, honey.”

Gracey tore away from the hug, her eyes wild and scarlet.

“What do you know? Driving around in your bulletproof vest all day, reading the rule book. What do you know about anything?”

“Okay, fine, e-mail your teacher. Use my laptop. Just stay here till I come back. Promise me.”

“Sure, Mom. Whatever.”