The Butterfly Forest

FORTY-ONE

Elizabeth stood beneath the shade of the pitched canvas awning and watched me approach. Our eyes met less than fifty feet away. The closer I got, the more nervous her expression became, searching my face, honing in for leftovers of hope.

I couldn’t give her any. And I knew she knew.

“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.