The Butterfly Forest

SIXTY-ONE

Five minutes later, Elizabeth returned. She sat back in her chair across the table from me. “Are you okay?”

She nodded.

“Where did you see him?”

“At the restaurant.”

“When?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Think, Elizabeth.”

“I’m trying. My daughter just died!”

“Did you see him at some point after Frank Soto was taken into custody?”

“Yes! It was a day or two after Soto was arrested. I remember now. He sat alone at a corner table. From where he sat, he could see the front door, people coming and going. I remember he seemed to linger over his breakfast, and I asked him if everything was all right.”

“How did he respond?”

“He said the food was good, and it reminded him of the food his mother made when his family went camping. Then he asked me if I ever went camping. I told him not in many years, it was more my daughter’s thing. She’s the outdoors gal in the family. He smiled and asked where her favorite camping places were. I told him she used to love going to Gamble Rogers State Park because of the beach.”

“Did he ask you anything else?”

“No.”

“He was trying to see what you knew.”

“What do you mean?”

“Camping. A natural segue would be camping in a forest, maybe it was something that you did with your daughter. He was looking for information, anything that might have indicated you were afraid to enter a forest because, maybe, you could run into a pot farm.”

She touched her throat with her fingers, looked beyond me to a framed photograph of her and Molly on the wall. In the picture, they were at the beach, tossing bread to seagulls flocking all around them. Their smiles were wide, and behind them the sky was drenched in sapphire blue.

“Elizabeth, try to remember everything you saw or even felt in the presence of this man. Anything, okay?”

She nodded. “What does all this mean?”

“It means that whoever this guy is, he thought Soto was going to be out of commission for a while. So your customer, the guy in that sketch, and the same guy that Luke Palmer says shot and killed Molly and Mark, paid you a visit. He’s got balls.”

“Dear God.”

“He must have wanted to get any indication that you might have been apprehensive to have your daughter go back into the national forest because of something she’d seen or heard. He ordered a breakfast, made small talk, played his cards close, and then directed the conversation to see if Molly might have told you something about what she saw or might have seen in the forest. Is there anything else you can remember about this guy?”

“He’s probably in his late twenties. He has large, dark eyes. His hair is black and he combs it straight back. He uses gel, too. He looked like one of those muscular guys you see at swanky resort hotels setting up cabanas and fetching beach towels for wealthy guests. He wore a gold cross on a chain around his neck. I remember watching him hold a fork and knife. His hands seemed delicate. Long fingers and nails that could have used a clipping. He had very white teeth and a big smile. There is no reason why I would have suspected he was capable of cold-blooded killings.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“No, he paid his bill and left a ten dollar tip.”

“Dumb on his part. Leaving a tip that large for a seven dollar meal sticks out.” I picked up my cell phone and started dialing.

“What can we do?” Elizabeth put the sketch back in the folder and closed it.

“I’m calling Detective Sandberg.” He answered on two rings. “Detective, the man in the composite is not some figment of Luke Palmer’s imagination.”

“What are you talking about, O’Brien.”

“I showed the sketch to Elizabeth Monroe. She recognized the man. Said he came into her restaurant right after Frank Soto was picked up. Ordered breakfast, made casual conversation with her, and then prodded around, trying in a covert way to see if Molly enjoyed camping, alluding to state parks and places like the national forests. Elizabeth told him nothing. He finished his breakfast and left.” I heard Sandberg make a long sigh.

“O’Brien, Miss Monroe may recognize the man in the composite, but it doesn’t mean he killed her daughter. He’s probably complicit with whoever is running the pot farm, and Luke Palmer is most likely the trigger man.”

“You could find out if that’s true when you release the image to the media. Maybe somebody out there will recognize this guy. You’ll get a name and more leads, and some of them might incriminate Palmer. Maybe they won’t. Now you have another witness, someone who recognizes the man in the picture. And that someone is the mother of a young woman who was murdered.”

“I’ll run it by Sheriff Clayton. I see your point, O’Brien. But until things play out, the sheriff might not release the composite.”

“Detective.”

“Yeah?”

“If the sheriff doesn’t… you can tell him that I will.”

“Don’t go there, O’Brien. You’d be stepping in more shit than you realize.”