“Saw what? What forest?”
“Ocala National.”
“What’d he see?”
“Some kind of religious ceremony. Said the women were dressed as fairies. Lots of drums beating all night. He said the women were like fireflies around the light of the bonfire. He mentioned he was on his way to meet somebody when he saw all these fuckers, Rainbow people, or whatnot. Anyway, they were pulling their beat-up vans and trucks way the hell down in the forest for a week of fire and drums. Looks like this guy sort of stumbled among them. Said he took some hits. Some kind of sage, sort of like acid, called it a salvia plant. But he said it was like nothin’ he’d ever done before, he thought he’d traveled back in time, you know like some fuckin’ land of druids. Said in that land women are for the taking. So he took one. That’s all he said. He took one. He wanted a tattoo to keep her close. Now what the fuck is that suppose to mean?”
TWENTY
Detective Lewis sounded guarded. Or maybe slightly annoyed when I called to tell him I’d found a tattoo parlor and now had a lead in the case for him.
“What kind of lead?” he asked.
I told him about my conversation with Inkman and said, “The only thing we have that connects Molly Monroe to Frank Soto before the take-down in the Walmart lot is the Ocala National Forest.”
“What do you mean?”
“Molly and her boyfriend, as you know, were there recently scouting for areas to release endangered butterflies. Frank Soto told this tat artist he was in the forest and met up with a group of free spirits, called them Rainbow people. They’d converged in the forest to sit around bonfires, dance and use some kind of peyote or something to take them on a trip without packing.”
“Are they still in there?”
”I don’t know, but it’s worth checking out. The summer solstice, often called Midsummer’s Eve, just occurred. It’s a time of year with a long history of pagan rituals and fairy dances. Maybe there’s a missing girl, someone dressed in a fairy costume, a woman who met up with Soto and never made it back to her tribe.”
“Far as I can tell, there’s no missing persons report coming from the national forest, but it’s not my jurisdiction.”
“These Rainbow people could be too out of it to report the sighting of Haley’s Comet. Or maybe one of them told the ranger at the station something. Unless you tell me you have a whereabouts on Soto, it’s all we have that ties him directly to an area where Molly Monroe was before Soto showed up at the butterfly facility. It’s your case, and I don’t know the locals up here.”
I heard a deep sigh. He said, “All right, O’Brien. I’ll talk with Marion County investigators. I have a friend in the department. I’ll give ‘em the heads up and see if they can find something in that place. What is it, like a half million areas of forest?
“Biggest forest in the state. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Sandberg, Detective Ed Sandberg, but don’t you start calling him. I’ll let you know if we find anything.” He disconnected.
As I pulled out of the Art House parking lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and could make out the silhouette of someone standing in the window looking at my Jeep. Beyond the OPEN sign, flickering neon with a burned out O, beyond the words on the window, I could see the look on Inkman’s face. It was an anxious posture, cell phone pressed to his ear, the red dot of a cigarette bouncing from his lips. Nick’s voice played in my head. “I told you how shit happens, remember?”
At the crossroads, I drove right on Highway 40 and headed west toward Cedar Key. Thought I’d inspect the 41 Beneteau moored there before I took the job of delivering it to the new owner at Ponce Marina. Depending upon the wind, length of marina stops, I figured it would take two weeks to sail the boat to its new home. The money was good. The time at sea would be even better. I missed sailing. I’d take Nick and Max. Maybe Dave would join us. I began to let my mind wander at sea as I headed to Cedar Key, an island moored at a point in time that seemed ageless.
Luke Palmer thought someone was following him. He’d been living in the forest now for almost two weeks, digging for something he wasn’t sure he’d ever find. He had the feeling, occasionally, that someone was watching him from a distance. Almost like an inmate watching him across a prison yard. Shake it off, he told himself.
He sat under a pine tree and sipped water from the half-gallon plastic jug he’d carried for miles. His mind drifted back to his years in prison. Finally gone from forty years in an eight-by-nine pen to a place so big there were more squirrels than people. Prison was constant noise. Here, the silence had a presence. He loved hearing the birds in the morning. Sleeping in the little tent was like the Taj Mahal compared to four decades on a hard cot.
Maybe the hippies had pulled up camp in the forest. Saw enough of ‘em on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in the sixties. Little Charlie Manson wanted to be one of ‘em, but his spirit, like his body, never had been and never would be free.
He thought about Al Karpis. All ten of Al’s fingerprints surgically removed in the thirties. If he were alive, what would ol’ Al do to hide his DNA today? Where the hell did they hide the loot? “Where’s the dough, Al? Huh? Dug more than fifty holes. Nothing. Nothing but blisters and a case of the shits from eating bad bologna.”
He stood up, his back sore from digging, and started walking through the forest. Heading toward another huge tree in a place of ten million trees. His eyes scanned the shadows moving like apparitions over the scrub oak, the buzz of honeybees in the wild purple heather. He could see something a little different under the base of the next oak he was approaching. Fresh earth turned up. His mind raced, his eyes searching the woods. Palmer felt sweat rolling down his back as he walked faster to get to the next tree. He carried his gear, water jug tied to his belt and bouncing off a bad knee.
He stopped. The earth was fresh. Someone had been digging here. Had they found Ma Barker’s money?
SONSABITCHES! Watchin’ from somewhere. Picking a tall oak and digging. Had they found it? Was it gone? Gone for fuckin’ forever!
He dropped to his knees beside the newly turned earth. He used his small shovel to dig. The sound of deerflies buzzed around his head. A fly with a green body landed on his hand. He smacked it and dug deeper.
The smell came up from the hole like the devil threw up in his face.
He could see the tip of some kind of wing. Purple and gold. Protruding right through loose soil, like feathers from a grave. He used his hands. Shaking. The face of a girl appeared under a scoop of dirt. Black soil in her mouth and nose. Lips blue. He almost didn’t recognize her. It was the girl he’d met that first night he heard the drums. “When was the last time you were hugged?”
Palmer felt nausea rising. He stood and vomited the rest of a bologna sandwich from his guts into the weeds. As he used the back of his hand to wipe his lips, a crow flew overhead, its mocking call sounded as if it would echo to the ends of earth.
TWENTY-ONE
Cedar Key may have broken off from Key West about the time Hemingway lived there, floated backwards in the Gulf Steam, and anchored itself away from the tides of change. The whole town feels like it should be on the national register of historic places. It’s an old fishing village that propped itself up recently, tossed out the dusty Sears and Roebuck catalogs, and invited tourists.
After four hours of inspecting Sovereignty, turning over her diesels, I gave the Beneteau keys back to the broker and walked to the Captain’s Table on Dock Street for a late lunch. I ordered Cedar Key steamed clams, which were cooked in white wine, butter and garlic, and took them outside to eat on the dock. I sat at a wooden table, the late afternoon sun spilling from crimson clouds in the west over the Gulf of Mexico. As I ate, five roseate spoonbills glided over the still water as if they’d been plucked from the clouds, their pink feathers shimmering off the flat ocean. A man in a kayak paddled toward the sun.