He reached in his backpack and pulled out a large hunting knife. It looked like a Bowie knife, wide blade, serrated teeth at the top. He used the blade to scrape away loose soil. There, in the center, was a four-inch stogie, bite marks still present on the end.
“Impressive,” I said. “You tracked something under the earth.” I snapped a picture of the cigar, close-up and then with Billie kneeling next to the hole.
Billie stood. “I just looked for the signs in nature. You’re pretty good at that, Sean, especially for a paleface.” Billie chuckled. “The signs are all around. You can see it with your eyes, hear it with your ears, and sometimes you can feel it inside you.”
I opened a Ziploc and used my pen to lift and drop the half-smoked cigar into the plastic bag. “I’ll get this to Detective Sandberg.”
Billie said nothing as he slowly stood erect and looked down the empty dirt road.
“Do you hear something?” I asked.
“Yes, I hear the silence. The birdsong is quiet. Something’s coming.”
SEVENTY-SIX
I heard the approaching vehicle before I saw it. The SUV was a Ford Explorer owned by the park service, two people in the front seat. The driver slowed and pulled off the side of the road, stopping next to Billie and me. I recognized the driver. He was the same ranger I’d seen at Nicole Davenport’s gravesite, the same man who assisted the sheriff in the hunt for Luke Palmer. Ed Crews took off his dark glasses and asked, “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” I said.
“This is ranger Nancy Thornton,” he said.
“I’m Sean O’Brien. This is Joe Billie.”
Thornton nodded. She was at least a decade younger than Crews. Her narrow face had no make-up, and I could see tiny potholes from teenage acne across her cheeks. She had an open and natural smile. “Pleased to meet you both,” she said.
Crews glanced at the cigar in the Ziploc. “Looks like you’ve found something I’d like to see banned from all our national forests, damn cigars. It’s not the cigars that are so bad, it’s the idiots who come out here with their buddies to drink, shoot and smoke cigars. They, too often, toss ‘em without making sure there’s no hot ash. It’s enough to give Smokey the Bear a coronary.” He grinned. “You hoping that will match the one the deputies pulled out of the grave?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping.”
“Good luck. Let us know if we can help you.” He started to put the truck in gear.
I said, “Maybe you can help us.”
“How’s that?”
“Were you two with the search parties when they were here a few days ago hunting for the marijuana field?”
“I was on vacation,” said Nancy.
Crews nodded. “We had two members of our staff helping the teams the sheriff had out here. I was on one, and our botanist, Paul Ferguson, was on the other.”
“I’ve got a satellite map in my Jeep. Maybe you could show me the areas where the two teams searched.”
“Sure,” Crews said. “You two going to give it a go, too?”
“Maybe you could point out the search areas.” I stepped to my Jeep, waited a beat for him to come out of the truck, and walked over to them. I spread the map on their hood. “Okay, show us where we are now and the distance the teams covered.”
“Happy to,” he said, stepping into the dappled morning sunlight, a light that made the dye in his hair look like black shoe polish. “Okay, the search team Paul was with worked this area from Juniper Springs to Alexander Springs. The team I was with worked the opposite direction, from near the Yearling Trail across to Farles Lake. They used aerial surveillance over the rest of the forest.”
“Did you see any coontie?”
“Coontie?” He grinned. “You know, come to think about it, I don’t recall seeing any. But we were looking for a different plant. Coontie aren’t too easy to spot.”
“Apparently, neither is a marijuana operation.”
“This is a hellava big forest. Lots of places for crooks to hide stuff.”
“Yeah, I keep hearing that.”
“One time we found a car thief ring. They brought the stolen cars into the forest, stripped them and used a U-haul to truck the parts out to sell. We busted them in two-thousand-eight.” He lifted his foot to the running board and tied his shoe. Pine straw was stuck to the sole.
I said, “I remember seeing coontie in the vicinity of the marijuana plants in a photo from Molly’s camera. Didn’t you originally help Molly and Mark locate coontie so they could release the atala butterflies?”
“Absolutely, I gave them some suggestions as to where they might find the plants. They had a four-wheel-drive and could go just about anywhere in here. They were resourceful kids. Said they’d found some and would be coming back.” He paused, lowered his boot back to the ground, and walked around the truck, pine straw stuck to a small piece of duct tape on his heel. “It’s horrible what happened to them. I heard the guy they arrested out here, Luke Palmer, made bond.”
“That’s what I hear.”
He grinned, got back in the Explorer and started the engine. Ranger Nancy Thornton smiled as they pulled onto the dirt road and drove slowly away.
I turned to Joe Billie and pointed to the map. “Do you know this area?”
“Sure. I’ve been there as a young fella.”
“Let’s look in there. It’s a little north of the two huge areas the teams searched. Maybe we’ll find something.”
Billie studied the topography on the map. He pointed toward Alexander Springs and the St. Johns River. “This place, from river to springs, and up to west of Lake George is wet in summer rains. I know what the coontie looks like. It’s similar to a fern. My mother used parts of it to make bread. You won’t find coontie growin’ in the wet places.” He pointed a finger in the vicinity between Juniper and Salt Springs. “C’mon, Sean. Let’s head for the high country. When we find drier ground, there’s a good chance we’ll spot some coontie.”
SEVENTY-SEVEN
There were no more roads. No more trails. Billie and I’d come to the last bit of what would have passed as any kind of manmade path or clearing in the forest. We got out of the Jeep, the heat and humidity wrapped around us like a steam bath. I swatted a deerfly the second it landed on the back of my neck. I tucked my Glock under my belt in the small of my back and lifted the .12 gauge shotgun from the backseat. Sweat dripped down my sides, soaking into my shirt at the belt.
Billie carried his backpack, his knife now in a sheath attached to his belt. “You want to carry a gun?” I asked.
“No.”
“I don’t know if we’ll find anything. These guys could be long gone. But if they’re still here, it’s going to be very dangerous.”
Billie said nothing. He inhaled deeply, more like he tasted the air rather than just taking a deep breath. I opened the map. “Even from a satellite, with its high-powered camera, you wouldn’t be able to see anything below this massive canopy of trees. Probably the only way Molly and Mark found this area, if this is where they came, was by getting lost.”
“I love these woods. It’s not so daunting. This is the Florida of my ancestors. Even before the time of the Seminole Wars, hundreds of years before. Many tribes lived off the St. Johns River and the land it touches on its journey to the sea. I’d rather be here than Miami. You can survive in here. This place was home-sweet-home two-hundred years ago.” Billie began walking. I locked the Jeep and followed him.