A tall, lean man in a black robe climbed on a wooden box and began speaking, the chants ended and the drumbeats slowed to a steady pulse.
“Brothers and sisters,” said the man, eyes scanning the crowd. Even from the distance of at least one hundred feet, Palmer could see the firelight reflecting in the man’s wide eyes. “My angels of Eden,” began the man again, pointing to a half dozen women who moved to the beat of the drum. “From ancient Nordic times, this night is sacred. It’s the zenith in the crossroads of time and space… a night special beyond all the rest. Why? Because this is the night of the mystic movement of the heavens — the trek of planet earth on a southern journey. It’s the long day when we earthly creatures must move in sync with the pendulum that swings to its fullest arc this night.”
Someone standing to the far right of the crowd caught Palmer’s eye. A man, someone who seemed to be older than the majority of these kids, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans. He stood alone. Watching. Palmer had seen the stance, the look of the assassin many times in the prison yard. This man moved no different. He seemed to survey the crowd, and then work his way toward a table where food and drink was laid out. Palmer watched the man approach one of the girls dressed like an angel.
Palmer wanted to walk up to them and ask where a fella could get a thick steak on a night like tonight. We’re all fuckin’ carnivores, some have sharper and more deadly teeth, he thought. And Luke Palmer knew that the man talking with the girls was a lone wolf among sheep.
He watched the celebrations for another minute, said to hell with it. He could tell everyone was smokin’ and tokin,’ some drinking something from the bowl in the center of the table. God knows what’s mixed in that shit. People chanting. Dancing. Crying.
He turned and walked back toward his camp, walked through the clearing near the cars when a woman came out from behind a tree. “I saw you go in there,” she said, her voice soft as the moonlight falling around her shoulders.
Palmer looked at her, more curious than anything. She wore the angel wings, too. Her blond hair braided and up, her long dress was the color of vanilla, and she had a yellow wildflower behind one ear.
“Well, now you see me leaving,” Palmer said.
“You think we’re odd. Maybe some kind of freaks.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just didn’t speak it.” She smiled, dimples showing. “It’s okay. This is the celebration of St. Johns. A midsummer’s night dance with the little people.”
Palmer said nothing. He hadn’t had a lot of practice talking with women in the last forty years, and tonight he was totally speechless.
“I’m calling you Night Raven,” the girl smiled. “Because I think you have the wisdom of the raven. You feel comfortable at night. You’re free to live your dreams here, away from a spirit that’s been cooped up with things that you didn’t ask for.”
“I’ve had more than my spirit cooped up. What’s your name?”
“Evening Star, can’t you tell?” The smile was brighter than the moon over her right shoulder.
“Yeah, I guess I can, now that you mentioned it.”
She licked her thumb, knelt down, and placed her thumb in the dirt. Then she stood and reached up to Palmer’s forehead. He didn’t resist as she pressed her thumb on the center of his forehead. “There, Night Raven, you are of this earth… forever.”
Palmer shook his head. “Look, you’re a sweet kid. I’ve kinda missed a few generations in my life. Or maybe nothing’s changed since I was locked up way before you were born. A thing that hasn’t changed is bad in some people. Be careful out here.”
“That can’t touch us on this night.” She smiled and looked at the moon.
“That can always touch you, even when you don’t know it. Just be aware.”
“When was the last time you were hugged?”
“Huh?”
“Hugged.”
“Hugged?”
“That’s what I thought.” She leaned in and put her arms around him. “You can hug me, too.”
Palmer slowly placed his arms on her back, finding a spot between the wings.
“There,” she said, ending the embrace. “You are loved, Night Raven.” She turned to leave, walking toward the crowd in the meadow, the singing, the drums, the glow of the bonfire, almost floating like a winged moth to a flame where evil circled just outside the firelight.
ELEVEN
I awoke before sunrise, slipped on shorts, T-shirt and running shoes. Max kept under the blanket on her side of the bed. She’d stayed up too late last night pacing the screened-in porch while gators rumbled and roared mating calls on the riverbank. Fog stood motionless above the water as if layered clouds had descended from the heavens overnight. The rising sun was a burnt orange planet trying to penetrate the mist. The sunlight was a shattered radiance bent through steam and moving water, creating color wheels of dappled rainbows. The river itself was drenched in morning light.
My three-mile jog took me north, most of the running on a path near the river. As the sun eased over the tree line, I thought about Elizabeth and Molly Monroe. I’d left my card with them and instructions to call if they needed me. I remembered my cell phone sitting back on the porch next to a framed picture of my wife, Sherri. And I remembered the promise I’d made to Sherri to do something else with my life. “I’m trying,” I said, the sound of my own voice out of character in the surrounding primal land of birdsong, water and light, a place where Florida existed like it had before the Spanish arrived 450 years ago.
I pictured Frank Soto and the hate on his face as he kicked me. What had Molly done or seen…or what had he thought she’d done or seen? Maybe Elizabeth was right. Maybe Soto was your basic serial rapist who got his erections by stalking women, using hate and violence as self-satisfying, sadistic foreplay. Then why did he try to take them both, mother and daughter? Could it have been because he assumed the daughter had told the mother something, and both needed to be silenced?
I climbed the steps to my back porch, and there was Max waiting. She was pacing to a different stimulus, this one bladder-induced. I let her out, and she scampered to her favorite spot in the wide yard. She watched a small Johnboat motor down the center of the river, a fisherman sipping coffee from a thermos, a V rippling the still water.
My cell phone didn’t indicate any missed calls or text messages. I glanced down at Sherri’s beautiful eyes and said, “I’m trying. No calls. That’s a good thing.”
Max looked up at me. “Yep, I know, most of the time I talk to you. I was just…” Her head cocked, eyes curious. “Oh, never mind, Max. Let’s head to the marina.” I had checked on the web and knew we had a few days of hot sun. Now was the time to begin repairs to my boat. It, like my home, creaked with old age.
I locked the river house, put Max in the front seat of the Jeep, headed for the grocery store and then went to Ponce Marina. What I needed was a few days of sanding, painting, lots of sweating, saltwater, and some fresh seafood to keep my head in the direction I told myself it needed to be. Then I thought about the heart-felt embrace Elizabeth Monroe had given me in the parking lot, the scent of her perfume, the slight trembling in her body, the way she held me. But it was at the restaurant when I felt something unfasten inside me. It was when we were saying goodbye. She had faked a boldness that I knew was thin, a shield she held to protect her daughter, like she’d probably done so many times before. And now a psycho had pointed a gun in her face, left her with emotional scars and the threat of his return.
I found the card Detective John Lewis had given me. I called his number, reintroduced myself and asked, “Did you come up with anything more on Soto?”