“Sean… dear God… please… tell me no…”
“I’m so sorry. I wish I had good news.”
She folded. Her body wilted, and she dropped to her knees. She buried her hands in her palms and sobbed with deep, painful moans. Officers, volunteers and gathering media kept their distance. Elizabeth vomited in the leaves and pine needles. I felt helpless.
After her cries distilled into soft sobs, I reached for her, holding her trembling body. She buried her head in my chest and quietly wept. I held her close for more than a minute. There was nothing I could say — nothing I should say. I simply wanted to be there, be in the moment for whatever she needed. Finally, she looked up at me, tears streaking down her face. “How did it happen? How did he kill my baby?”
“Used a gun. Mark was killed, too.”
Elizabeth touched her stomach as if the breath was knocked from her lungs, her features crippled. I held her forearms as she tried hard to steady her feet and legs. I walked her to an empty canvas chair, pulled a bottle of water from a cooler and unscrewed the cap. She shook so much that she could not hold the water bottle.
I said, “They’re searching the area for a suspect, and it’s not Frank Soto.”
She looked at me, unsure of what she heard. “One of the forest rangers said he saw a homeless guy in here. He spotted him on one of the back roads not too far from the grave of the girl they found with the fairy wings, Nicole Davenport. The ranger said he didn’t stop the guy because he didn’t know of the grave until he found it later. But he’d spoken with him a few days earlier. Says he found out this man was just released from San Quentin. The man told the ranger he was camping and looking for Civil War relics. Also, we found a cigar stogie tossed in the grave with Molly and Mark; it could tell us some things.”
Elizabeth simply looked at me, her lower body slack in the chair, eyes swollen. “What does Molly’s camera look like?” I asked.
She struggled to think. “It’s small, silver color… a Sony. I remember because I gave it to Molly on her last birthday.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Molly mentioned that she’d snapped a few pictures the last time she was in the forest. Do you know where her camera is now?”
“Sean, please… I can’t think, okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
After a minute, she whispered, “Camera could be in her room.”
“Maybe you can check later.”
She nodded, used her fingers to wipe beneath her lower eyelids. My cell rang. It was Detective Sandberg. “O’Brien, are you with Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes.”
“I can only imagine how she took the news. Look, if she’s in any condition to hear it, tell her we may have something. That water bottle you found, we’ll take it back to the lab. Bo Watson let his dogs sniff the jug. They’re on the trail of whoever was carrying the bottle. If we’re lucky, he’s the perp that killed these kids.”
Through the phone, I heard the whine of dogs, a primal call of the wild. The sounds of the hunt stirred a latent echo in my soul. It was a silence I knew would resurrect into dark noise and resonate into the blackest reaches of the forest before me.
The sound startled Luke Palmer. Dogs and men in the distance. Shouting. Helicopters. Coming in his direction. He put the money in the steel box, closed the lid and lowered it back into the hole.
The dogs were getting closer, and with them Palmer knew men with badges would be following. He covered the hole with dirt, lifted a dead branch from the ground and shook dry leaves from it over the freshly turned earth.
RUN! Lose the scent in the creek and run until it was safe to come back.
The dogs and men were coming faster. RUN. He clutched the steel prod and ran through vines and undergrowth that slapped his face. He thought of the time a prison screw hit him. No reason other than meanness. He saw the face of the girl he’d met at the bon fire. Felt her hug. “Night Raven…” His hands uncovered the dirt on her grave.
“When was the last time you were hugged?”
Her pasty face locked forever into the cloudless sky.
Buried money. Buried kids. Jungle everywhere. This was a land the devil blessed. A man can’t run outta hell if he can’t see the horizon.
FORTY-TWO
Sheriff Roger Clayton was in his element, firing orders as his deputies readied to track down a killer. “Let’s move!” he yelled, jumping in a pickup truck and leading his growing posse back into the forest. They fanned out, moving east, radios popping with quick directives. A police helicopter hovered in the distance.
A few minutes later, a third television news satellite truck came down the dirt road into the forest, the branches screeching, like nails on a chalkboard, against the sides of the truck. I watched from the shade of the canvas as volunteers and a few curiosity seekers stood by, waiting for word from the search party. Three officers manned the makeshift headquarters. One, a tall man, had just arrived. They called him in from vacation. I heard an officer say that the man was the best sharpshooter on the sheriff’s SWAT team.
The media set up tripods and cameras, and began stringing wire to trucks rumbling with generators, the pungent odor of burning diesel fuel drifting across the clearing.
Elizabeth rose from the chair, her eyes vacant. A warm breeze teased her hair as she looked at the media, saw volunteers and officers averting their eyes when she turned her head in their direction. News of the double murders had a visible affect on everyone out here. The sheriff had contacted Seminole County S.O. and asked that they deliver the news to Mark Stewart’s family.
“Take me home, Sean,” Elizabeth said. “When can I bring Molly home? I want to lay her to rest.” She squeezed her upper arms, tips of her fingers like cotton, her eyes scanning the trees beyond the clearing. “She needs to be removed from this place.”
“We’ll get her back soon. In a homicide, they have to do autopsies.”
She stared at me, her mouth slightly open. I said, “It’ll help us know exactly how Molly and Mark died, and it will strengthen the case against whoever is arrested.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She used her left hand to hold on to one of the aluminum poles that supported the canvas. We could hear a sheriff’s helicopter flying low over trees to the northeast, the area where I knew the dogs and deputies were heading.
A television reporter, blond, slender frame, the runway stride of a former beauty queen, approached us. She held a wireless microphone in one hand by her side as she walked, her cameraman staying a few feet behind her. “Excuse me… Miss Monroe… my name is Jayne Fox from News Center Seven. I’m so sorry to learn of your loss. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”
Elizabeth’s hand slid down the pole, her head turning toward the reporter, her mind struggling with the request for an interview. “There is nothing I can say right now.”
The reporter smiled. “I understand… maybe I can ask you about a past incident when a man tried to abduct you and your daughter in a parking lot. Police say it was Frank Soto. As you know, he’s been on the loose since killing a guard… do you think he did this horrible thing to Molly and her boyfriend?”
“Please, I have nothing to say.”
I watched the other reporters start toward us. Soon, I knew, it would be a feeding frenzy as they battled to get crumbs before their news deadlines. I said, “Miss Monroe will give you a statement when it’s appropriate. So, please, give her some time and space until we know more.” Other reporters formed a semi-circle around us, cameras rolling.
A tall man, unshaven, sunken dark eyes, camera hanging from his neck, pen and notepad in a hand with long fingernails, pursed his lips and said, “Understood, maybe we can get some details of the last few days to help us piece the story together. Had either you or your daughter been followed, maybe stalked is a better word.”