The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller) (5 page)

“I think you like Max.”

“I do.  But that’s not what I’m
thinking
.”  She grinned.  “I think my mom likes you.  Maybe it’s because you’re now our hero.”

Elizabeth cleared her throat, her face flushing and said, “Sean is here to give us some advice on how to handle this situation.”

Molly looked above my shoulders, her face filled with reflection, and then she lowered her eyes to mine.  She said, “That man with the gun… I’m not certain, but I might have seen him before.” 

NINE

There was a knock on the restaurant door.  Elizabeth’s eyes popped wide, her body jumping like a balloon had burst in the room.  “Sorry,” she said.  “A little stressed out, to put it mildly.”  She got up, glanced out the restaurant window and unlocked the door to open it.  “Hi, Harry.  I forgot you were making a delivery today.”

“I’m like the postman, always delivering,” said the man as he stepped inside, pushing a handcart filled with bottled water.  “I’ll put it in the kitchen.” 

He nodded at me as he wheeled the supplies into another room.  Molly scratched Max behind her floppy ears.  Cheese and a head massage, now they were bonded for life.

The deliveryman left, and Elizabeth locked the door.  She sat down and said, “I’ll be so glad when this is over… when they catch him.”

 I asked, “Molly, where do you think you may have seen Frank Soto?”

“I’m trying to remember.  It’s like a dream.  No real reason to hang on to something so fleeting it didn’t make sense when you first experienced it.”

I nodded.  “Where might you have seen someone resembling him?  Maybe a guy at the university… could have been a groundskeeper… maybe someone who works in the rainforest, doing maintenance?”

There was a spark.  A tiny flicker in her memory banks projected onto her eyes.  Something trapped in her pupils, like the afternoon light through the restaurant window, as she tried to remember an image she never knew she would need to know.   

I touched the top of her hand.  “You see something, don’t you?  A man, right?”

She shook her head like awakening for a second.  “I knew you could see stuff.”

I smiled.  “Lots of practice.  What is it?”

“It’s probably nothing.  I do remember one guy, but I didn’t really get a good look at his face.  It was crowded that day.  We were doing a release, some beautiful swallowtails, a few days ago, and lots of school kids were there.  I noticed a man who seemed to be a little off by himself.  The guy wore a baseball cap and large, shiny mirror-like sunglasses.  I could see the yellow swallowtails reflecting from his sunglasses.  But that’s not what made me remember him.  A little while later I was taking a Fed Ex delivery of monarch eggs, and I saw one of the school kids point to the man’s arm.  The kid seemed a little embarrassed because there was a tattoo on one arm that looked like a naked woman or maybe a fairy with butterfly wings.  The guy left right after that.”

I thought of the man in the parking lot, the tattoo on his arm of a nude woman with fairy-like features and butterfly wings.  I felt my stomach tighten, the taste of pie now like cardboard in my mouth.

“Sean,” said Elizabeth.  “What is it?”

“I believe it’s the same guy.”

“What!”  Elizabeth’s voice went up an octave.

“When he was lying cold in the parking lot, the sleeve on his T-shirt had ridden up his arm.  I saw a tattoo.  At first I thought it was a tattoo of an angel.  But I could make out that it was really an image of a nude woman with butterfly wings.”

Molly held her hand to her throat, pushed away the remains of her pie and stood.  “So this creep followed me, right?”

“It appears that way,” I said.

“I’m getting a chill.”  She hugged her upper arms.

“Why?” Elizabeth asked.  “Why would some sick person follow my daughter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please, Sean.” she said.  “You’ve got to help us.”

“The police are better at that than me.”

“But you’re here.  That says something.”

“I’m here because you asked me to come by, and that’s—”

“That’s what?  Please!  What if he comes back?  What do we do?”

“You need to tell the detectives working this case everything we've discussed here today.  You need to call them right now and give them this new information.”

Molly fed Max another little piece of cheese.  “He’s gonna come back.”

I said, “Maybe not.  For some reason, it appears this Frank Soto had followed you from Gainesville to your home here in Sanford.  The question is why?”

Elizabeth said, “Because he’s a pervert, one of those predators who stalk young women like Molly.  He could have seen her come and go from the restaurant.”

“You may be right,” I said.  “But I think it’s something deeper than that.  When do you return to school, Molly?”

“I’m supposed to go back tomorrow.  I’ve got classes and need to be at my lab job, too, on Monday.”

“Maybe you should stay here for a few days.  Give police time to sort this out.” 

Her eyes lifted toward the open window where she focused on the limbs of a mimosa tree blowing in the breeze and the tinkling of wind chimes coming into the room.  Her face filled with thought.  “Have you ever held a live butterfly in the palm of your hand, Sean?  They like the human touch… the warmth that comes from our hands, and maybe our hearts.”

“It’s been a long time since I held a butterfly, not since I was a boy.”         

Molly smiled, her eyes darkening.  “I’m not going to let some jerk cause my brain to freeze with fear.  Mom, remember you kept Dad's .38 pistol after he died?  He taught me how to use it.  I’m gonna take it back to school with me.”

Her mother’s left eyebrow rose.  “Molly, maybe that’s not such a good idea.  And you don’t even have a permit.”

“I don’t care!  He pulled a gun on you and me.  If he comes around again, this time I’ll have a gun, too.”

Elizabeth looked up at me, searching for words.

 I said, “Remember this, Molly: if you have to use it, you won’t have time to think about it.  You’re a young woman with noble ideas and ideals.  People like you are the glue to save the planet.  That quality is what makes you do what you do, and what you do with the butterflies is very special.  Before you put a pistol in your purse, answer this question: if you had to shoot a man in the heart… to shoot to kill… could you do it?”         

TEN

Luke Palmer warmed up a can of beans over an open fire.  It had been more than a week since the drums stopped.  He stared at the yellow flames and thought about the first night he heard the drums.  It was his first night in the forest.  He wondered if the girl and her commune had moved on to some other desolate place.  He thought about her smile, brighter than the moon that dark night.

HE DUCKED UNDER A low-hanging limb, pushed through Spanish moss, and walked toward the drumbeats in the distance.  Mosquitoes followed him, buzzing in his ears, biting at his exposed forearms and neck.

Within fifteen minutes, he’d reach the site.  A few dozen old cars and vans were parked in a small field off one of the dirt roads.  Palmer hid in the shadow of trees under a bold moon and watched as people moved in and around the parked cars.  The scent of burning marijuana caught his nostrils.  He saw the tiny moving orange dots as the pot was passed among two women and one man.

He crept closer to the sounds of the drums and chanting.  Moving behind the underbrush, Palmer pulled back branches and looked out onto a small meadow area.  At least fifty people sat around a bonfire.  Some chanted.  Some danced.  One man in a white robe played a guitar.  They all looked like they needed a good meal, he thought.  Skinny hippie kids out here in no man’s land. 

Palmer was intrigued with the costumes some of them wore.  Girls dressed in wings, like little angels.  The guys wearing masks, black and white, green faces, some wore horns, like the pictures of warlocks he’d seen. 

A tall, lean man in a black robe climbed on a wooden box and began speaking, the chants ended and the drumbeats slowed to a steady pulse.

“Brothers and sisters,” said the man, eyes scanning the crowd.  Even from the distance of at least one hundred feet, Palmer could see the firelight reflecting in the man’s wide eyes.  “My angels of Eden,” began the man again, pointing to a half dozen women who moved to the beat of the drum.  “From ancient Nordic times, this night is sacred.  It’s the zenith in the crossroads of time and space… a night special beyond all the rest.  Why?  Because this is the night of the mystic movement of the heavens—the trek of planet earth on a southern journey.  It’s the long day when we earthly creatures must move in sync with the pendulum that swings to its fullest arc this night.”

Someone standing to the far right of the crowd caught Palmer’s eye.  A man, someone who seemed to be older than the majority of these kids, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans.  He stood alone.  Watching.  Palmer had seen the stance, the look of the assassin many times in the prison yard.  This man moved no different.  He seemed to survey the crowd, and then work his way toward a table where food and drink was laid out.  Palmer watched the man approach one of the girls dressed like an angel.

Palmer wanted to walk up to them and ask where a fella could get a thick steak on a night like tonight. 
We’re all fuckin’ carnivores, some have sharper and more deadly teeth
, he thought.  And Luke Palmer knew that the man talking with the girls was a lone wolf among sheep.

He watched the celebrations for another minute, said to hell with it.  He could tell everyone was smokin’ and tokin,’ some drinking something from the bowl in the center of the table.  God knows what’s mixed in that shit.  People chanting.  Dancing.  Crying.  

 He turned and walked back toward his camp, walked through the clearing near the cars when a woman came out from behind a tree.  “I saw you go in there,” she said, her voice soft as the moonlight falling around her shoulders. 

Palmer looked at her, more curious than anything.  She wore the angel wings, too. Her blond hair braided and up, her long dress was the color of vanilla, and she had a yellow wildflower behind one ear.

“Well, now you see me leaving,” Palmer said.

“You think we’re odd.  Maybe some kind of freaks.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just didn’t speak it.”  She smiled, dimples showing.  “It’s okay.  This is the celebration of St. Johns.  A midsummer’s night dance with the little people.”

Palmer said nothing.  He hadn’t had a lot of practice talking with women in the last forty years, and tonight he was totally speechless.

“I’m calling you Night Raven,” the girl smiled.  “Because I think you have the wisdom of the raven.  You feel comfortable at night.  You’re free to live your dreams here, away from a spirit that’s been cooped up with things that you didn’t ask for.”

“I’ve had more than my spirit cooped up.  What’s your name?”

“Evening Star, can’t you tell?”  The smile was brighter than the moon over her right shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess I can, now that you mentioned it.”

She licked her thumb, knelt down, and placed her thumb in the dirt.  Then she stood and reached up to Palmer’s forehead.  He didn’t resist as she pressed her thumb on the center of his forehead.  “There, Night Raven, you are of this earth… forever.”

Palmer shook his head.  “Look, you’re a sweet kid.  I’ve kinda missed a few generations in my life.  Or maybe nothing’s changed since I was locked up way before you were born.  A thing that hasn’t changed is bad in some people.  Be careful out here.”

“That can’t touch us on this night.”  She smiled and looked at the moon.

“That can always touch you, even when you don’t know it.  Just be aware.”

“When was the last time you were hugged?”

“Huh?”

“Hugged.”

“Hugged?”

“That’s what I thought.”  She leaned in and put her arms around him.  “You can hug me, too.”

Palmer slowly placed his arms on her back, finding a spot between the wings.

“There,” she said, ending the embrace.  “You are loved, Night Raven.”  She turned to leave, walking toward the crowd in the meadow, the singing, the drums, the glow of the bonfire, almost floating like a winged moth to a flame where evil circled just outside the firelight.             

ELEVEN

I awoke before sunrise, slipped on shorts, T-shirt and running shoes.  Max kept under the blanket on her side of the bed.  She’d stayed up too late last night pacing the screened-in porch while gators rumbled and roared mating calls on the riverbank.  Fog stood motionless above the water as if layered clouds had descended from the heavens overnight.  The rising sun was a burnt orange planet trying to penetrate the mist.  The sunlight was a shattered radiance bent through steam and moving water, creating color wheels of dappled rainbows.  The river itself was drenched in morning light.