Louis had found one other interesting fact in a magazine article — the panther was considered sacred to the Seminoles.
Louis had read all this with a deepening sense of depression. But it also created in him a more urgent resolve. He was damned if he was going to let Mobley sideline this case.
“Kincaid!” one of the techs called. “Come here.”
Louis started over toward Mickey, the older of the two techs. Katy hurried to catch up. They paused in a small clearing where the brush was tamped down into the muck.
“I have tire tracks,” Mickey said.
Louis bent over but could see no definable impressions in the mess of leaves and mud. Mickey motioned for Louis to step back and pulled a clunky-looking light from his bag. He told his partner to hold a small tarp over the ground to block the sunlight and knelt down. When he directed the ultra-violet beam at the ground the rugged outlines of the tire tracks seemed to rise up from the mud. They were too narrow to have come from one of Fish and Game’s giant swamp buggies.
“I’ll know for sure later,” Mickey said, “but I think we’re looking at Super Swamper radials.”
“Are they standard on a specific four wheel drive?”
Mickey shut the light off and stood up. “No,” he said. “People buy them for their mud buggies to be able to get around out here and any place else they want to go four-wheeling.”
“But if we find a suspect we can compare his vehicle tires to these tracks?” Katy asked.
“That’s the idea,” Mickey said. “These treads look to be pretty worn with some specific nicks. If we find a suspect tire the match will be as strong as fingerprints, ma’am.”
“How far do the tire tracks go?” Louis asked.
“Well, they look visible quite a ways out heading toward the southeast.”
Louis turned in the direction Mickey was pointing. He took off his sunglasses and peered between the cypress trees to the prairie beyond. He was disoriented by the primitive landscape, not able to tell where the hell they were.
“What towns are we near?” he asked.
“Immokalee’s the only one out here,” Mickey said.
Louis nodded. At least he knew where that was. Once again, he had met up with Katy there, leaving his Mustang in Juan’s parking lot. But Immokalee was to the northwest, in the opposite direction of these tire tracks.
The sun slipped behind some clouds and there was a low rumble of thunder.
“What else is out here?” Louis asked.
“There’s some cattle ranches but they’re pretty far east, closer to Lake Okeechobee, down around Devil’s Garden,” Mickey said.
Louis had been to Devil’s Garden for the Palm Beach case. There was nothing there but a rusty sign marking an intersection, an old cinderblock store called Mary Lou’s and an abandoned cattle pen where they had found a decapitated body. Devil’s Garden and the cattle ranches were too far away for the panthers to be any threat to livestock.
“Actually, the closest thing to civilization way out here is the rez.”
Louis looked back at the tech. “The Seminole reservation?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s called the Big Cypress Reservation.”
“How far?”
“Oh, maybe twenty miles or so.”
Louis glanced at Katy. She was slowly moving away, eyes still trained on the ground. There had been no accusing tone in Mickey’s voice but Louis sensed Katy had heard something that had compelled her to step away from them and maybe away from the idea that an Indian might be involved. Louis decided to let the possibility go for now and hoped they would find something that led away from the reservation.
“Let’s follow the tracks some,” Mickey said.
He led Louis and Katy across the clearing, stabbing the ground with the small orange flags as he walked. Suddenly, Mickey stopped walking and knelt down. Drawing a small ruler from his shirt pocket, he measured the depth of the track in three places before looking up at Louis.
“The tracks deepen here by a quarter inch and look to continue that way,” Mickey said, pointing south. “I’m guessing he stopped here and added weight to his load.”
“Weight? How much weight?” Louis asked.
“Hard to say. Maybe a hundred pounds.”
“He put Grace in his truck,” Katy said.
“Grace?” the tech said.
“That’s the missing panther’s name,” Louis said.
“I thought they just had numbers.”
Katy turned to stare hard at the tech. “They do have numbers. She was FP105,” she said dryly. “She weighed ninety-two pounds last time we were able to dart her and check.”
Louis looked down. “If he loaded her up here, aren’t we walking all over his footprints?”
“Already checked,” Mickey said. “Foot prints would’ve been shallower, easily washed away by last night’s rain.”
“It didn’t rain last night,” Louis said.
“It did out here,” Mickey said. “I checked before I left the station this morning. We’re lucky he has Super Swampers on his vehicle or we might’ve lost these tracks, too.”
“Hey Mick.”
The other tech, a pudgy guy named Buck, appeared suddenly out of the brush. He wore a white paper jumpsuit, purple latex gloves and a pair of glasses with a magnifying lens inset on the right side. He looked a little like a Haz-mat responder.
“Look what I got,” he said.
He held up a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside was a slightly crumbled box of cigarettes.
“It was back there, under a tree,” Buck said. “I might be able to get some prints off it. Cellophane looks clean.”
“Butts?” Louis asked.
“Nope,” Buck said. “Haven’t seen one butt of any brand.”
“Can I see that?” Katy asked.
Buck handed the bag to her. She took a long look then handed the evidence bag back to Louis. She turned and walked away.
Louis stared at her back for a moment then brought the evidence bag up to peer closely at the pack inside. He could easily make out the brand — Viceroy — but it took him a couple more seconds to see what Katy had noticed. Cigarettes packs in Florida, as in all states, bore a state tax stamp on the bottom of the cellophane. This pack had no stamp and that meant one thing. It had come from the only place in the state where cigarettes weren’t taxed — the reservation.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to Buck, handing him the bag.
He walked to where Katy stood. She had taken off her hat and wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving a dirty smear of sweat across her forehead.
“He’s not Indian,” she said.
“You don’t know that,” Louis said.
“I know,” she said. “I feel it in here.” She put her fist to her chest.
Louis took a slow breath. “Katy, I have to consider all possibilities or I’m not doing my job,” he said.
“It is not your job anymore,” she said. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you here anymore.”
He stared at her in disbelief. He knew the Seminoles, much like the illegal Hispanics in Immokalee, resented outsiders even when they wanted to help. And he respected that. But she had invited him in her world, her uncivilized world of poisonous snakes, rare orchids and panthers that perched in trees. She had introduced him to the cats and somehow, just by the way she spoke of them, she had made them almost human.
He didn’t want to walk away from this. He wanted to find Grace and he wanted to find her alive. Not just for Katy, but for himself. It was going to be his only way back in.
“Take your techs and leave,” Katy said. “I will find another investigator.”
She turned and walked away from him, her step quickening as she neared her swamp buggy.
“Katy. Stop.”
Without a look back, she climbed into the high seat of the buggy and started it up. The roar split the silence and the tech guys looked up in surprise. Then the big buggy rumbled away into the brush, leaving only the retreating growl of its engine in the sticky air.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Louis picked up the laundry basket, used a foot to slam the dryer door shut and headed back to his cottage.