The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller) (20 page)

“So is he!  Why can’t you see that?”

“Elizabeth, listen to me, please.  There are few, if any, coincidences in a crime.  You almost were abducted at gunpoint by Frank Soto.  Why?  Why would he risk a daylight kidnapping in a crowded parking lot?  There has to be a very strong reason.  He’s a professional hit man, an enforcer for gangs.  And right now we don’t know where he is.  But before Soto tried to abduct you, he
was
here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Palmer said he saw some kind of Midsummer Eve festival out here in the forest.  He indicated there were lots of hippie types dancing and singing.  That’s where he said he met Nicole Davenport, the girl with the fairy wings that we later found in the grave.”

“He buried my Molly and Mark in another grave!”

“At this festival, Palmer described a man resembling Frank Soto, and Soto was wearing the same T-shirt that he had on the day I jumped him at your car door.  That information wasn’t in any news reports I saw.”

“It doesn’t mean Palmer didn’t do it.”

“No, but it does establish the fact that Soto was here, somewhere in the heart of this forest, and he probably killed Nicole Davenport.  The tattoo on his arm has a likeness to her.  Maybe it’s some kind of weird souvenir.  Who knows?  What we do know is that he was here, and he was at your car in the shopping center.  Molly and Mark were here before the episode at Walmart.  It’s not a coincidence.  There’s a
reason
, and at this point, maybe Palmer is telling the truth.”

“Take me home, Sean.”

We started for my Jeep, and she turned to me.  “I respect your judgment.  If you really believe this man didn’t kill Molly and Mark, will you find out who did?”

The temperature suddenly dropped, and the wind hummed through the tops of the tall pines.  “Will you, Sean?”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Where will you start?”

“Somewhere in this forest.  I need to find out what Molly saw.  And just maybe, she was killed for something she didn’t even know she saw.  The first place I want to search isn’t here?”

“Where?”

“In her camera.” 

I walked Elizabeth to the Jeep, and the wind blew harder.  Pine needles fell from the limbs and shot through the air like darts.  Elizabeth held up her hands to shield her face and eyes.  Black clouds moved over the sun and lowered a curtain that wrapped the woods in darkness.  The temperature dropped and the air was cold across Elizabeth’s skin.  The wind moaned through the pine tops.  I said, “Storm’s almost here.  Let’s go!” 

Two reporters approached us.  One stooped to the ground the second lightning exploded by a treetop less than fifty yards from where we stood.  Thunder crashed with the ricochet of a bomb.  Reporters and camera people ran for the safety of their cars.

I opened the Jeep door for Elizabeth and looked at the trees bending in the wind.  Somewhere in there, somewhere hidden in hundreds of square miles was the reason Molly, Mark and a kid in a fairy costume were killed.  I could smell the approaching rain.  Maybe in its aftermath, I could find fresh tracks in the wet ground and mud. Something would lead me to whatever lies waiting deep within the forest.  But I learned long ago that sometimes very bad men left few tracks.  And just when I thought I was on the right path, I’d discover that evil was following me.

I closed Elizabeth’s door and a cold, silvery rain popped on the Jeep’s canvas top.        

FORTY-EIGHT

After leaving Elizabeth’s house, I picked up Max and we drove over to Ponce Marina.  The closer we got closer to the Tiki Bar, the brighter Max’s eyes would shine. She stood on her hind legs in the Jeep’s front seat, poked her wet nose out the open window and sniffed the salt air.

I thought about leaving Elizabeth’s home earlier.  A dozen people, neighbors and friends, came by her house in the short time I was there.  Most were in tears.  All were at a loss for the right words.  But what are the right words when you learn someone blew a hole through a young woman’s left breast leaving an exit wound out her back the size of your fist?

Elizabeth promised me she’d stay with her sister until Frank Soto was found.  She didn’t think it was necessary since Luke Palmer was in jail, her mind still wrapped around him being the killer.

Maybe she was right.  But until Frank Soto was locked up, I felt Elizabeth was still in danger.  Before I left, she handed Molly’s camera to me and said, “Please call me if you find anything.  I don’t care what time it is, Sean, please call.”

 Max whined once when we stopped in the marina parking lot, her nose now catching the smells of fried shrimp, broiled grouper and beer.  We walked by the bar, and I saw Kim Davis pulling a draught beer for a charter boat captain I recognized.  Kim smiled and said, “Sean O’Brien and Miz Max.”  She petted Max and then looked up at me.  “Sean, your face was on the news, Channel Nine, in the middle of that forest.  Those college kids… what in God’s name is going on?”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“They caught the guy that did it, didn’t they?  Some ex prisoner, a drifter?”

“They caught a man.”

Her eyes searched mine.  “Don’t you think he did it?”

“I don’t know.  I have some work to do that could eliminate him.”

“Leave Max here.  Nicky always does.  I have no problem with her hanging out to catch some pieces of shrimp.  Everyone gets a kick at how fast she catches them.  They never hit the floor.”  She turned to the charter boat captain.  “You have any problem with Max hanging with us?”

He sipped his beer, foam clinging to his moustache, face pinched from sun and salt.  “Hells bells no.  I could use the dog’s company.  We’ll drink to the color of a fine sunset.”

I smiled and said, “I may take you up on that soon, but right now, Max needs her regular dog food, and I have to spend time in front of a computer.”

I OPENED
JUPITER
, Max sniffing all corners, the tide tugging at the lines.  We entered the galley where I popped the top off a cold Corona.  I attached Molly’s camera to my computer and begin looking through the array of images.  Most were of her friends, snapshots around the college campus.  Girls smiling, hugging and holding frozen yogurt drinks up in a toast.  Some images were of a touch football game in a park.  Young men and women in cut-off shorts, jerseys and T-shirts.  Images of vibrant life forever sealed in a dead girl’s camera.  Molly and Mark were in some of the pictures. 

Max cocked her head.  She suppressed a bark while she trotted across the wooden floor in the salon and darted out onto the cockpit.  “Hotdog!  Where you been, girl?”

Nick Cronus, wearing a faded swimsuit, unbuttoned Hawaiian print shirt, tattered flip-flops, and a bottle of beer in hand, eased across the transom and grunted.  He knelt down and scooped up Max in one hand.  She licked his three-day stubble.  “I wish all the ladies miss me like Maxie does.”  Nick walked in the salon and belched.  Max turned her head away, looked toward me with wide, pleading eyes.  “Sean, I was watchin’ the TV in Dave’s boat, and we saw all that shit goin’ down in the forest.  Man, you go lookin’ for a tattoo joint and find a serial killer.”

“Like you said, Nick, sometimes shit happens.”

He flopped on the sofa, set Max beside him, propped his feet up on my shellacked cypress table and shook his head.  He took a long pull from the sweating bottle, his dark face shining with trapped heat and the blush of alcohol.  “Why does it happen to you?”

“It doesn’t.  It happened to three kids.  I was simply in a Walmart lot and noticed something out of the ordinary.  It’s hard to get away from all those years of training.”

He stared at my computer for a moment.  “What’s all those pictures?”

“They came from Molly Monroe’s camera.”

“I saw the picture of the butterfly you sent to Dave.  He called one of his professor pals and learned a lot about it.”  Nick drained the last sip in his beer, rubbed Max’s head with a callused hand and headed toward the galley.  “Got any beer in there?”

“Help yourself.”  I scrolled through the images on Molly’s camera.  I stopped.  Here was the first picture, an image I knew came from the Ocala National Forest.  Well composed.  Good light.  In the frame were the same plants, the coonties, which I had spotted in the forest.  But these looked like they were in a different location.  It was a wide shot with enormous oaks in the backdrop.  The plants I’d found were near some tall pines.  I looked at the next three photos.  More images of coonties, and a picture of Mark kneeling beside the plants.  There was another wide shot, more dense oaks.  Something was behind the oaks.  I enlarged the photo.

Bingo!

It was unmistakable.  In the background, beyond the oaks, beyond the coonties were plants not native to the forest.

Marijuana. 

FORTY-NINE

Dave Collins pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and studied the pictures on my computer screen.  He grunted and said, “I wonder if Molly and her boyfriend ever even noticed the marijuana growing back in there?”

“If they did, she didn’t mention it to her mother and me when I questioned her about Soto and why he might have been following her.”

“She was a college kid.  Maybe she or her boyfriend did see them growing, and then decided to harvest a few leaves to take back to college.”

I could hear Nick outside on
Jupiter’s
cockpit, stoking heated charcoals in my grill while he cooked snook and snapper.  The aroma of olive oil, fresh fish and lime hung in the air.  Max, the consummate beggar, was at his feet.  “I don’t think Molly would have picked marijuana leaves.”

Dave looked over the frame of his glasses.  “Why?”

“I believe she was blatantly honest, a free spirit with few secrets.  If she’d seen the marijuana, or even taken some, I think she would have mentioned it.”

“I wonder what kind of an operation is in there.  It wouldn’t be difficult to grow and hide marijuana in Florida deep within a remote forest.  If those plants we see in the image are the tip of the iceberg, there might be a hell of a lot more.”

“Enough to get Molly and Mark killed.”

Dave stood when Nick entered and headed to the galley.  He chatted in Greek to Max.  She was a few steps behind him.  

 Dave said, “The picture of the butterfly you sent me… it was indeed the atala.  I spoke with an entomologist friend of mine at the University of Miami.  He said the atala, in the caterpillar stage, is very colorful, too, spending its days gorging on the highly toxic coontie plant.  And, as a butterfly, predators rarely attack it because of its bright red body.  Birds instinctively know the atala was weaned on a plant that’s very poisonous to them.  Toxins from the coontie remain in the butterfly after it emerges from its cocoon.”

“Beautiful, fragile and yet deadly to predators.”

“Yes, and it’s funny how nature does its balancing act.  These particular butterflies can’t escape quickly.  They fly very slowly, almost without effort.  It’s as if they float in flight—a suspended animation, if you will.  That can lead to the illusion that they aren’t afraid of people.”   

“Maybe that’s why I got so close to the one I photographed.”

Dave looked at the image on the screen for a moment, his eyes settling back to mine.  “Somebody’s growing marijuana, probably a lot of it, somewhere in the Ocala National Forest.  Do you think this guy they picked up, Palmer, is our farmer?”

“He could have been hired by someone.  That would explain why he was there.  Palmer told investigators he was searching for Civil War relics.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t think a guy comes out of prison, after serving forty years, and takes up a hobby like hunting for antiquities in the middle of a national forest.”

“Then what do you think he was doing there?”

“He was hunting for something, but I don’t have a clue as to what.”

“Do you think he killed the first girl, the one in the fairy costume?”

“No, but I believe he
knew
her or had met her.”

“Over the phone, you’d mentioned the late-night drum beating ceremony with dozens of people who hadn’t had a shower in a while.  A Midsummer’s Eve with a lot of dirt behind the ears.” 

“Something like that,” I said.  “When Palmer spoke, he seemed like he genuinely cared for the girl’s welfare.”

“It’s a possibility.  But the hard facts are this: He was locked up for forty years.  Murder.  He hadn’t been with a woman in a lifetime.  All of the sudden, deep in a forest, he stumbles into a treasure trove—a group of drugged-out hippies, many of the girls dressed in fantasy clothing.  For a guy like that, it’s a Midsummer Night’s wet dream.  Maybe he tried to take her, she fought back, and he snapped her neck.  He buried her in a hole, and now the causality list is three bodies.  So much for penal rehabilitation.”

“Fish ready in three minutes,” Nick shouted from the cockpit.

Dave pulled a barstool next to my computer screen as I brought up the last picture in Molly’s camera.  It was another angle of the forest, coontie plants in the foreground, marijuana in the background hidden beneath oaks.  “Gotcha,” I said.