The Butterfly Forest

TWO

If the marine supply store had been open on Sunday, I wouldn’t have made an unscheduled stop at Walmart where I bought varnish and spotted a predator following the women. They were leaving the register closest to the door where a senior Walmart greeter, wearing a yellow smiley face button, welcomed shoppers.

The women didn’t appear to detect the man tracking them. They were in no hurry. The resemblance between the two women was striking, a college-aged daughter and her mother. They walked across the wide parking lot, laughing, carrying shopping bags and taking their time. They were in no rush.

He was.

He tried to fake his direction — a lone wolf moving around the parked cars in the sea of automobiles. He looked to his right and left. Looked for security cameras. Walked quickly. Tried not to be noticeable. To most people, he wouldn’t be anything more than a stressed shopper hunting for his car in the maze of models and metal that winked under the hot Florida sun.

To me, he was hunting for something else, and he had the subtle moves of a killer — a hyena-like cadence. Head down, baseball cap low — just above the hooded eyes trained on the women’s every move. I had about fifteen seconds to decide whether to run to my Jeep, parked one hundred feet away, grab my.9 mm under the seat and try to draw down on the perp. Maybe I could sneak up and take him out with a well-placed strike.

Ten seconds.

The girl got in the passenger side and closed the door. As the mother opened her car door, he was there. His back turned to the only security camera I saw. His body language restrained, yet I knew he’d pulled something from his belt — a knife or a pistol. And even from the distance, I saw the women were terrified. The mother’s mouth formed an O, her eyes darting from his hand to his face. The girl’s face filled with terror.

Five seconds. Decision time. I punched my cell.

“Emergency Services, may I help you?”

“I’d like to report a crime in progress.” I kicked off my boat shoes.

“In progress? Where, sir?”

“Walmart parking lot. On Summerlin Drive. White male, late twenties, dirty blonde hair, well-built, earring left ear, red T-shirt and blue jeans. Man’s about to kidnap or rob two white females. They’re in a blue Ford Escape.”

“About to? Is anyone injured?”

“They’re going to be.” I set my shopping bag down next to my shoes.

“Sir, can you—”

I ran in my bare feet. Ran hard. Kept low. I used the cars as a shield to block his vision as I approached. There was the flash of silver, the chrome barrel on his.22 catching the sunlight, an unintentional distress signal. The real signal was on the woman’s face when the man pushed her from the driver’s seat across to the passenger side next to her daughter. As he started to enter the car, I dove. Sailed headfirst over the hood of a Toyota. Right fist cocked. More than 190 pounds flying through the air. I drove my knuckles into the back of his neck. His face slammed into the doorframe. The sound was like an ax splintering hard wood. His legs buckled. As he collapsed, the pistol scattered across the hot pavement.

The mother screamed — her voice a frightened wail. Then she hyperventilated, her breathing coming in deep gasps. Her daughter trembled. She blurted, “He said if we screamed, he’d kill us!”

“Do you have a cell?” I asked.

The mother nodded, words catching in her throat, tears streaming, a vein in her neck pulsating. “Call the police. Tell them to roll an ambulance, too,” I said. “My call was cut short.” She found her purse on the floorboard and tried to punch the digits with her shaking fingers.

“Is… is he dead?” she managed to utter, her body trembling, holding the phone to her ear and one hand to her throat.

“He’ll feel like it when he wakes up.” I stood over the unconscious man who laid face down, blood and drool seeping from his open mouth onto the asphalt. A fly alighted on a bloodied ear. On his upper arm, there was a tattoo of a nude woman adorned with black butterfly wings trimmed in an aqua-blue.

As the mother managed to tell the dispatcher what happened, dozens of shoppers formed a safe half circle around us, fingers working cell phones. I could smell the beer, sweat and stale odor of cigarettes from the man’s clothes. A baby cried. A yellow dog stood in the bed of a faded pickup truck and barked. A low-rider drove across the parking lot, the booming base from the speakers like war drums in the distance.

I walked to the right rear tire where the pistol lay gleaming in the sun.

“Look out!” the warning came from one of the women in the car.

I saw the shadow in front of me. As I turned, the man charged, kicking me in the rib cage. I felt the air in my lungs exit like a popped balloon. “You’re a fuckin’ dead man!” he screamed as he ran by me, ran between moving cars across the lot.

I stood, holding my side, the air coming in one big heave as my lungs refilled. I heard the roar of a motorcycle, and then I saw chrome and leather move between the long rows of parked cars. The man was doing more than sixty miles an hour in a parking lot as he wove around shoppers, pulled out into traffic on the busy road, and was gone.

At that moment, I thought of Max. Thought of her little bladder and how long I might be away.