The Butterfly Forest

THIRTY-EIGHT

The sheriff’s helicopter flew low near the river. Swanson reached for the button on his radio. I said, “Maybe we should scout the area first. No need to send people, especially volunteers tromping all over here, looking for a plant that might be hard to spot.”

“So what are we looking for?” His brow wrinkled.

“We’re trying to find a plant that looks like a cross between a fern and a sago palm.” I reached for my cell phone, punched up the picture and handed the phone to Swanson. “That’s a photo of a coontie. And right now, far as we’re concerned, it’s an image of America’s most wanted plant.”

“Detective Sandberg said you worked homicide for Miami-Dade PD.”

“A lifetime ago.”

“I can see how it can get to you. Body count in Florida gets higher every year.”

“Yeah. I’ll search the area to the left. Maybe you can look around to the north.”

“Hunting for a plant?”

“Yep.”

We separated. I watched him for a few seconds, walking slowly, pulling back scrub brush, probing the shadows. I heard the sheriff’s chopper in the distance. Searching the vicinity, I thought of Elizabeth. When I left her, she stood under the shade of a canvas tarp that the sheriff’s deputies had erected. She held a water bottle in one hand and clutched a silver cross that hung from her necklace with the other hand. As the search party was leaving, the look on her face was one of silent desperation.

I saw something. It wasn’t the color of a coontie plant, and it wasn’t the color of nature, either. Plastic. An opaque image near the base of a pine tree. I knelt down and studied the bottle. A half-gallon container, a former milk bottle, with about two inches of water in the base. A strap, from a piece of an old leather belt, was lopped through the plastic handle. I used my cell phone to take a picture before I would ask Swanson to call forensics. Maybe there were trace cells of DNA around the mouth of the bottle or prints on the side.

I worked my way toward a pine thicket interlaced with oaks. Something caught the light. I stepped closer to a large pine tree and spotted a tuff of fur wedged in the bark. It was too high up to have been a rabbit. Maybe a panther or a deer. I scanned the ground. Deer tracks. Set wide apart and deep. I knew that the animal had been running hard. Maybe it crashed into the side of the tree as it ran. What was it running from? There are plenty of bears in the forest. A few panthers and hunters. But this wasn’t hunting season. Poachers? I followed the deer tracks.

Blood. Coagulated — the hue of a ripe plum. There were splatters on leaves. I rubbed a drop between my thumb and finger. Under the shaded canopy from the forest, the blood was still damp. The deer had probably been shot just a few hours earlier.

I continued following the trail. Fifty yards farther and the blood and prints were lost. The underbrush was too thick for visible prints, the leaves and vines no longer spotted with a blood trail. Maybe the deer had died or bolted in another direction and gone deeper into the forest to die. Or its killer could have tracked it, butchered it somewhere in the woods and taken the meat home.

There was movement to my right — something dark moving in the branches. I walked slowly through the sticks and leaves in that direction, careful not to make noise. From out of the foliage, a butterfly rose. It seemed unhurried, almost animated, flying in near slow motion as it searched for flowers. I followed the butterfly as it glided just above my head deeper into the forest.

The butterfly circled near a wild hedge of verdant vines, yellow and white flowers sprouted from the mesh of jade. I recognized the shape and color of the pedals. It was a passionflower. The butterfly alighted on one a few feet away from me. I watched it feed. The lower section of its body was a vibrant reddish orange, the ivory black wings trimmed with blue dots at the outer edges. The top center of the wings was splashed with an iridescent sea green. As the butterfly slowly opened and closed its wings, while feeding, the green changed to cobalt blue. It was as if the wings were moving holograms in a cascade of green leaves flowing with yellow and white blossoms.

I knew that I was watching the rare atala butterfly. And it was probably one released by Molly Monroe.