Today he’d head a little farther northwest, stay close to the approximate area and see if he could hit pay dirt. Place must have changed a hell of a lot since Ma Barker and her son hid the loot. It had to be here. Somewhere.
Maybe today would be the day. Find it, get outta here, and help get a kidney transplant for Caroline. If anything’s left, drink margaritas and enjoy life.
Somebody was coming. He poured water on the small fire, kicked out the embers and stood behind foliage as he watched the car in the distance. Same car. Same dark windows. But this time he could see the front window, the morning sun in the faces of three men. Looked like a roughneck driving. A younger, darker skinned man sat on the passenger side. And someone, a man, was in the backseat. As the car passed, the man in the backset lowered the window and tossed out the remains of a cigar. He looked Hispanic, sideburns, black hair, a gold pinkie ring.
Palmer packed his gear and walked toward the dirt road. There was a ghostlike swirl of something white to his left. Almost didn’t see it. Smoke. Near the road. He approached it and saw the cigar smoldering, a yellow flame curling through dry weeds. Palmer stomped out the fire. He looked down at the cigar — one end still wet from saliva and flattened with teeth marks. He used his shovel to throw dirt on the stogie. He shook his head and thought the most dangerous fuckin’ animal in the forest walks on two legs.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I’d been working on Jupiter for five days, sanding, painting, and replacing zincs on the props when my phone rang for the first time. I couldn’t remember where I’d last seen my cell. I set a can of marine varnish down and picked up the cell from a dock chair. Elizabeth Monroe said, “I just wanted to thank you for all of your help. Molly and I are most appreciative to you, Sean. Anyway, I’m glad they found Soto.”
“Maybe they’ll find the reason he attacked you two.”
“I’m praying. I feel so much better knowing he’s behind bars with bond denied.”
“He’ll stay there for a very long time if they can build a case against him with forensics in connection to the death of that girl.”
“I read her name in the papers, Nicole Davenport. She was only seventeen. Poor girl ran away from home. The news said she lived in Connecticut with her parents until one day she left home with her boyfriend. He returned after two weeks, but she apparently fell in with some cult and kept going.”
“Please give Molly my best.”
“I will. She’s so excited. The butterfly rainforest is doing a few new releases of some very rare butterflies. She’s been so involved in all of them. She came back yesterday from a release at the Myakka State Park somewhere south of Sarasota. She’s doing one more tomorrow somewhere.”
“I’m glad to hear that. We need a few more Molly Monroe’s in this world.”
She was silent for a few seconds. “And we need a few more Sean O’Brien’s, too. Look, please don’t think I’m being presumptive or somehow forward… but I thought maybe we could have dinner sometime.”
“What time did you have in mind?”
“Well, it’s not like my calendar’s full. Whenever you have some free time. No pressure just when you have a window—”
“How about Saturday night?”
“This Saturday night?”
“Happens in three days.”
“Yes it does… umm. Sure, that will be fine.”
“I know where we can get some of the freshest red snapper you’ve ever tasted.”
“Where?”
“Two boats down from mine. Nick will be back in by then. I’m betting he’ll have some snapper. I’ll select two prime pieces, make it an old Greek way, toss a salad, and serve it with some chilled chardonnay. How’s that sound?”
“I’m almost a loss for words. Do I come to your boat for dinner?”
“That would work fine, but I’ll be packing Max up Saturday morning and heading back to my shack on the river. I’ll give you the address. Be there at six, and I’ll show you a sunset that will put you at an even greater loss for words.”
“Just having a man cook for me leaves me speechless.”
TWENTY-NINE
He thought of Jurassic Park. It was the first movie Luke Palmer had seen in prison. And now he was walking through ferns that grew up to his shoulders. Bromeliads hung from live oak branches by the dozens. And then he saw something that took his breath away. An oval-shaped spring, at least a hundred feet in width, bubbled up from the earth. The water was a blue diamond shimmering beneath the cloudless indigo sky. Wild red roses grew along the opposite side of the spring.
Palmer simply stood there for a minute absorbing the beauty. Never had he seen anything like this. So untouched. God’s garden. Maybe the last piece of pie left from the Garden of Eden. Some of the things ripped away from a man in prison could be restored here. This was a waterhole for the soul. He stepped to the edge of the spring and filled his jug.
Then he heard voices.
Palmer capped the jug, stood and slipped back into the foliage, his ears tracking the talking. Sounded like a man and a woman. Palmer picked up his gear and followed. He walked next to the spring as it flowed from its azure bowl into a creek bed that snaked its way through the forest. It seemed as if the people talking and laughing were following the stream, too. Another hundred feet and Palmer spotted them. He recognized the girl and the man. Both young. Maybe out of college, maybe not. They carried a cardboard box with dime-sized holes poked into the sides. What was in the box? Could be an animal. Might be something that was injured and these young people were returning it to the woods. Squirrel? Rabbit?
The woman seemed to lead. She pointed toward some plants that looked a little like the ferns he’d walked through earlier. The girl set the box down next to the plants. Her friend took pictures with a small camera as she smiled and opened the box.
Palmer had to grin. Butterflies seemed to float out of the box. A dozen or so. Dark color. They flew around the couple then darted off into the woods.
Butterflies.
Why the hell not? The girl reached one hand into the box. She slowly lifted her hand with a butterfly riding on the tip of an extended finger. The girl raised her arm to the sky, the butterfly opening and closing its wings, testing the air. Palmer watched as the girl smiled and said something to the butterfly. Maybe she was coaxing it to fly. And then it seemed to jump from her finger, flew around the couple and ascended high into the blue sky. The man laughed and tried to snap pictures. The butterfly flew about fifty feet away and alighted on one of the fern plants. The woman hugged the man, said something to him, and pointed inside the box. Maybe there was one more.
Palmer smiled again. He could walk up and introduce himself. See if he might buy some food from them, if they’d brought some. As he started to step out from the undergrowth, he saw three men approach the couple. The men had their backs to him. Although he couldn’t see their faces, he could read their body language. He’d seen it a hundred times in the prison yard. Gangs approaching prey with one man picked as the killer, the rest acting detached as they closed the human noose, each man’s eyes tracking the victim.