[Sean O'Brien 03.0] The Butterfly Forest Read online

  He was tall. Could look me in the eye, which he did. Probably outweighed me by twenty pounds. He had a hawkish face, with dark bushy eyebrows, and eyes to match. His name pin read: Ed Crews. He introduced himself as a district ranger, and said he had worked the Ocala National Forest for seven years.

  “Did you find the body?” I asked.

  “I saw buzzards circling. Wondered what had died, so I stopped my truck on the service road and found her in that hole.” He pointed to an excavated grave under a large live oak. He said, “What a shame. Just a kid. We have coyotes in the national forest. I thought maybe one of them had been digging up the body, but I’m not sure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, about an hour before I saw the vultures, I’d spotted a guy on foot. He was a guy I’d seen in the forest earlier, an ex con. Said he was looking for Civil War “artifacts. A little while ago, he was walking like he was in a hurry. Older guy. White hair. He had a water jug tied to his belt, carried a backpack, and some kind of steel rod. I just mentioned this to Detective Sandberg.”

  “What’d the rod look like?”

  “Like the T rods that septic guys use to probe for concrete tanks in the ground.”

  “Did you stop and question him the second time you saw him?”

  “Started to, we try to keep the squatters out of here, but it’s like trying to patrol the border between Mexico and the U.S., almost impossible. It looked like he was on his way out, and I wanted to see what had died. We have a hell of a problem with poachers killing deer. Sometimes they’ll wound the deer and it’ll take a few hours to die. Then the vultures start circling.”

  “Did you see any animal tracks, you know, coyote imprints at the gravesite?”

  “After I leaned over and stared into that hole, and saw the face of the young girl, I ran back to my truck. Radioed headquarters, and waited in my truck ‘til police got here.” He gestured to his green truck, the side of a door marked U. S. Dept of Forestry. “I’ve been here for almost two hours, and I tell you one thing, I’m ready to get home.”

  I smiled. “Bet you are. Hey, thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “And who the hell are you?” came the question from a voice behind me.

  I turned around and looked into the hard eyes of Detective Ed Sandberg.

  His heavy face was filled with distrust, a sweat ring around the top part of his collar on his button-down shirt. Necktie loose. He was African-American with graying hair, coal-black eyes that drew you into them, like gravity.

  “I’m Sean O’Brien. Detective Lewis in Sanford said I might find you here.”

  “I’m here because it’s my job. Why are you here?”

  I motioned with my hands. “I have information for you.”

  His eyebrows rose. He shook his head and followed me to a cruiser where I turned and stood. “Look, Detective Sandberg, I worked homicide for thirteen years with Miami-Dade. The last place on the planet I want to be right now is here. However, a week ago, a perp tried to kidnap a woman and daughter from a Walmart parking lot. I happened to see it going down and intervened.”

  “I heard about that. So you’re the guy who did the flying body-slam, huh?”

  I nodded.

  He said, “I wish we had video of that. It’s something I’d like to offer to the general public on YouTube to show them how to get killed real quick.”

  “That’s a good idea. By default I fell into this thing. The perp, name’s Frank Soto, he might be the guy that put the girl in the grave.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  I told him about The Art House, Inkman and the fairy tattoo. I added, “So the forest may have been the first place Soto spotted Molly Monroe and her boyfriend.”

  “Maybe he’s a psychopath, a serial killer. Maybe he killed the vic in the hole, and he was gunning for the Monroe woman, but we don’t know that.”

  “I’d like to know if the girl in the back of the ambulance was sexually assaulted.”

  “So would we, Mr. O’Brien. We’ll find out soon. I can tell you her neck was broken. If she was raped, how do you think rape plays into the scenario you’ve painted?”

  “I don’t think Soto was kidnapping Molly Monroe and her mom to rape them. He’s a knee-breaker for bikers and other gangs. I think he was trying to silence them, and, more than likely, he was going to kill her boyfriend the same day, but the boyfriend left for vacation.”

  “What could these college kids have seen that would cause their hit?”

  “It may have been something the girl saw.”

  He nodded. “Lots of weird stuff happens in here. We got reports the other day about some kind of animal sacrifices.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Goats. Two campers reported they’d found goats killed. We sent in a unit. Officers said it looked like the animals had been slaughtered next to a round ring, a ring of rocks formed into a circle. Looks like there’d been a big fire in the circle.”

  “How were the goats killed?”

  “Heads were cut off. You never know what you’ll see in a place this secluded.”

  As the coroner’s van drove slowly by us, I said, “Maybe the dead kid in that van witnessed it, too, and that’s why she was murdered and tossed in the hole.”

  “The ranger mentioned he saw a camper or a homeless guy walking down a dirt service road. We want to find and question him. Unfortunately, the forest is Mecca for crazies, and a lot of people just down and out. They pitch tents way back in here and scratch out a survival somehow. Forestry runs these people out when they can find them. But they drift back in.”

  LUKE PALMER THOUGHT HE WOULD be safer sleeping in a bombing range. It was after 11:00 p.m. He’d never seen or heard the Navy bomb this late. Besides, he was on the outskirts of the range, not in the center where the bunkers and other targets were present.

  He pitched his tent beneath the canopy of tall pines, pulled the lid off a can of beans ‘n franks and ate with a plastic spoon. He thought about the dead girl. She’s somebody’s daughter. He wanted to report it to the forest rangers, but no one would believe he didn’t do it.

  No, he didn’t do it, but Luke Palmer had an idea who did.

  But they wouldn’t believe that either. He watched bats dart under the light of a three-quarter moon. A slight odor of sulfur and burnt gunpowder settled into the earth along with the smell of decaying leaves and oozing pine sap.

  As Palmer lay under the tent, a light rain began to fall on the canvas. He closed his eyes. Pop, pop, pop. The sounds bled into his dreams where he saw a small, two-story white house under the moss-draped live oaks. Inside, Ma Barker and her boy, Fred, huddled down with pistols drawn. Palmer heard the popping noises of guns firing, bullets breaking glass and slamming into the walls with the ferocity of a hundred ax blades chewing wood and spitting splinters. All he could see was plaster, paint chips and dust coating the old woman and her youngest son.

  The FBI was closing in and, soon, those in Ma Barker’s house would be silenced forever.

  The moon was high above Ponce Marina by the time I rolled into the parking lot. Kim was wiping down the empty bar as I approached. She looked up and smiled. Somehow, the last two hours felt better just seeing her smile, her eyes vivid under the glow from the paddle-fan lights. She said, “My favorite gal pal, Max, just strolled through here about a half hour ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep, Dave was taking her to greener pastures before bedtime. He may have held the leash, but it looked like Max was in the lead.”

  “She takes her bathroom breaks seriously.”

  “Hey, how about a beer? You look like you’ve had a rough day.”

  “I can’t keep anything from you, Kimberly.”

  “You’re the one with all that extrasensory stuff, I do believe. And that’s an unfair advantage when it comes to women. We’re supposed to be the ones that are hard for you guys to figure out.” She grinned and tilted her head. “I just know you well enough to
see that it looks like this hasn’t been your best day. Want to talk about it? Split a beer with you?”

  “Okay.” I told her about the tattoos and the discovery of the girl in the grave.

  “Do you think they’ll find this guy, Soto?” she asked.

  “Eventually, yes. But, it might be after he ventures out and kills someone else.”

  “Sean, maybe you ought to let the cops take if from here.”

  “I’ve given them everything I know. They’re doing surveillance at Molly’s apartment and her mother’s place down in Sanford.”

  She reached out and touched my hand, her face filled with compassion. I could feel the pulse in her fingertips. Her heart picked up its pace as she said, “Be careful, please. You have a marina family that really cares about you, okay?”

  “Thanks, Kim. And thanks for the beer.”

  “Anytime.” She leaned in and kissed my cheek, started to say something else and stopped. Her bright eyes were now measured with trouble, and all she said was, “Goodnight, Sean.”

  “Goodnight.” I walked down L doc to the sounds of breakers rolling in the distance and ropes stiffening and moaning in a tug-of-war with a rising tide. I could see light spilling through portholes on some of the cruisers, the glow dancing off the moving dark water in the bay.

  St. Michael was far from being battened down and tucked in for the night. Inside the salon, I saw Nick laughing and talking with a blond in cut-off shorts. As I walked by the boat, I could hear his storytelling over the sound of Greek music, the smell of broiled fish and garlic and lemon coming from the small grill anchored on his cockpit.

  I walked ahead toward Gibraltar. Dave’s lights were on, and I could see the bluish glow from the television screen flickering from his salon. The sliding glass doors were wide open, Max sleeping on one of Dave’s overstuffed leather chairs. He nursed a vodka and tonic and watched CNN.

  “Anybody home?” I asked, stepping aboard. Max flew off the chair and circled me. Tail moving like a maestro’s baton. She stood on her hind legs as I bent down to pick her up before walking in the salon.

  Dave grinned. “There’s no denying that Max believes you’re related to her. I’m only Uncle Dave. You’re definitely her papa, as Nick calls it.”

  I smiled. “Looks like Nick’s got company tonight.”

  Dave nodded. “Don’t know where he gets the energy. I was about to freshen my drink. How about a nightcap?”

  “I had half a beer with Kim—“

  “Then finish the second half with me. After you called me when you left the crime scene, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you saw and where you saw it.”

  When Dave said that, I knew he’d been doing some research while I drove back from the girl’s gravesite. I said, “Rather than a beer, a shot of Jameson over ice might get me to sleep tonight before Max starts her snoring.”

  Dave grinned, got up from his chair, fixed himself a fresh vodka and tonic and poured a shot of Irish whiskey over ice for me. “To getting a grasp on this runaway train,” he said, lifting his glass to mine in a midnight toast. He returned to his chair, and I sat on the couch, Max in my lap as Dave began. “We both know that the Ocala National Forest is an extremely interesting environment, a place that possesses a rather dark history.” He sipped his drink, his thoughts entering places where I knew Dave kept deep repositories of experience. He said, “It just might be the nation’s bloodiest ground and its most vast cemetery.”

  “The body of a teenager has been found in the Ocala National Forest,” came the newsbreak on Dave’s television. He reached for his remote and turned up the sound. The reporter, standing in a wooded area, said, “And police aren’t releasing the identity until the victim’s next of kin can be notified. An autopsy to determine the exact cause of death is set for tomorrow…we’ll have a complete update on Eyewitness News Sunrise.”

  Dave hit the mute button and sipped his vodka. He stared at the silent screen for a few seconds, his mind working, probably dissecting scenarios as to why the girl was killed. He grunted. “Since a lot of our nation’s history began in and around what is now the Ocala National Forest, it has a history as dark as some of those merciless events.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s go back, say 450 odd years or so. A quarter-million Timucuan Indians died in and around the forest.”

  “A quarter-million?”

  “Maybe more. They died from diseases imported by the Europeans, in particular, the Spanish Conquistadors. Advance three hundred years and we have some of the bloodiest battles in the history of America fought in there, the Seminole wars.”

  I sipped my whiskey, Max’s eyes closing. I said, “It’s a big forest. A lot of American history began there. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. It’s actually quite peaceful and beautiful in there.”

  He swirled the ice in his drink and said, “The locals call it ‘the forest,’ because some don’t want to call it America’s largest cemetery.” Dave lifted a sheet of paper off the table next to his chair. “I printed this out about an hour ago. Campers or hunters usually are the ones to discover these corpses, and most remain unidentified. Serial killer Aileen Wuornos left one of her victims in the forest. Amber Peck and John Parker, both were camping in the forest when a man, Leo Boatman, snuck up and slaughtered them. He hitched a ride across the state, and went into the forest looking to murder.”

  “So you think he was drawn there, drawn there to commit murder?”

  “Who knows? This murder list here goes on, suffice to say, the forest has a certain aura about it. The forest does attract known pagan groups for various festivals and ceremonies that coincide with changes in seasons.”

  “I’m betting the summer solstice was one of them.”

  Dave nodded and crushed a piece of ice with his back teeth. “The Midsummer’s Eve event is a remarkable annual occurrence that has deep, sometimes sinister roots, you know. But there’s also a certain enchantment to it, captured before Shakespeare and carried into modern times. The fantasy of slipping into a forest under a full moon at just before midnight to witness fairies and gnomes dancing around a fire has fascinated people for many millennia.”

  “I believe the girl found dead today was traveling, like a gypsy, with the group of so-called Rainbow people. One of them could have killed her, or it could have been Soto if he was on the prowl. Inkman told me Soto spent time with these people. But if it was Soto, why get a tattoo of your victim? Even if it doesn’t resemble the face of the girl found today, the fairy wings connect dots and can build his profile in FBI databases.”

  Dave set the paper down and placed his glass on it. “You told me Inkman said Soto wanted a fairy, like medieval times, so he took one. Took as in a sexual conquest, rape perhaps…or as in taking her life?”

  “Maybe neither. If he was on some kind of drug, a hallucinogen, he could have imagined the whole thing.”

  “The girl’s body is no figment of a psychopath’s warped imagination.”

  “No, but she could have been killed by someone else. Or, if Soto did do it, how could it be connected to Molly and Elizabeth?”

  “Blame it on the Grey Goose, I don’t follow you, Sean.”

  “What if the girl found today saw something that Soto also thought Molly and her boyfriend saw? Then, there would be the common thread in this—something much deeper. Whoever the kid in the grave was, with her broken wings and broken neck, she also could have stumbled upon whatever it was that Soto doesn’t want anyone to know about.”

  “And, it simply may have been the girl’s body itself. Soto might believe that Molly and her boyfriend saw the killing or saw him digging a grave. They got in their car and left before he could silence them. Maybe something delayed Soto from getting them before they left the forest. So now he’s stalking to silence the only living witnesses to avoid a life behind bars.”

  I said nothing. Max closed her eyes, her chin resting on my thigh.

  Dave said, “Let the constables who
patrol the forest track this guy down.”

  “Have you and Kim been comparing notes?”

  He half smiled, his eyes weighted with fatigue and vodka. “Our little marina community looks out for its own. Although you’re a part-time resident, you’re full time in our hearts, especially Kim’s. Maybe you’ve noticed. And Nick would lay down his life to save yours. As for the two women in the Walmart parking lot, you were in the right place at the right, or wrong, moment. You most likely saved their lives…but you aren’t on duty for life, Sean. Another drink?”

  “No thanks, I’m taking Max to bed. Maybe I’ll sleep topside with her. Watch the stars and the light from the lighthouse before the sandman comes.”

  “Unfortunately, our safe harbor here isn’t as immune from demons as we’d like, especially the kind you’ve carried since the Gulf War and your wars on the streets of Miami. As you watch that light shining out into the dark sea, it’s worth hearing something that you should or probably already know: Wherever light travels, it’s greeted by darkness, but light always comes again.”

  My body wanted sleep. My mind wanted resolution. I could go down into the master berth, stretch out and try to drift off. But I knew sleep would be illusive, my thoughts returned to the forest and the girl’s gravesite. I sat on the couch in my salon, put my feet up on the old table and read. Max curled into the center of the couch, her breathing slow and steady behind closed eyes. After a half hour, I book-marked the end of a chapter, pulled my last Corona from the cooler and tried to ease out of the salon without waking Max.

  One brown eye popped open. Then the other. Now both little brown eyes confused—maybe looking at me in some kind of doggie disbelief suggesting I was an incurable insomniac. She jumped from the couch, yawned and followed me to the cockpit. We climbed the steps to the fly bridge. She found her bed on the bench seat, and I found my nest in the captain’s chair. I sipped a beer, rested my feet up on the console and felt the cool sea breeze sweep across by face.