The Butterfly Forest

SIXTY-TWO

After Detective Sandberg disconnected, I set the phone down on top of the file folder with the composite sketches. Elizabeth sat slowly at the table. “What did he say?”

“Even though you corroborated Palmer’s ID of this guy by recognizing him in the sketch, Sandberg said there’s no guarantee the sheriff will release it to the media.”

“I heard you say that the detective can tell the sheriff if he doesn’t then you will. Be careful, Sean. If you make enemies of the police, we’ll never bring Molly and Mark’s killer to justice.”

“If they arraign and try an innocent man, if he’s found guilty, but he really isn’t, what then? What if Palmer’s sent back to prison on not much more then circumstantial evidence while Molly and Mark’s killer or killers walk free?”

“The deer blood on his clothes. It matches the animal taken out of that hole where they buried my daughter.”

“That doesn’t mean he shot them.”

“But he’s an ex prisoner. A man just out of jail. How can we really believe him, Sean? Why do you believe him? He could be conning you as easily as anyone else.”

“He could be, but he’s not. He—”

“No! You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re not some damn psychic! The dogs tracked him to the river. He was running because he was running from something, the murder of my daughter. You don’t have a child. You could never understand. Maybe the sheriff’s right not to release it.”

“I may not feel what you’re feeling, but I understand this: no one shoots a deer, cuts the bullet out of its muscle, drops the carcass into a hole, and then keeps the bullet on him. If he did it, he’d have tossed it. I believe Palmer found the deer critically injured, like he said, thought about field-dressing it, but became spooked when he heard them trying to find him, and he ran.”

“You could be wrong.” She stood and stepped to the kitchen wall and turned on the floodlights. She looked back to me, her eyes welling with tears. “I need to be alone tonight.”

“I thought you wanted me to stay. It might be dangerous if you—”

“I’ll be fine. What are they going to take from me now? They’ve already taken my daughter. I didn’t know about the marijuana operation until you told me, so what value am I to these creeps. Palmer’s in jail, and maybe the guy that came to the restaurant worked for Palmer. I’m not going to let fear control how I live my life.”

I said nothing.

She swallowed hard, eyes blinking back tears and said, “I just need some rest. I haven’t had eight hours of sleep since that day Frank Soto pulled the gun on Molly and me. Maybe tonight I will.”

On the way to Ponce Marina, I played back conversations in my mind. Much of it from the things Luke Palmer had told me. He tossed a cigar out the window and almost started a forest fire. I put it out and buried the damn thing under dirt. If I could find that cigar, and if the DNA was still intact… just maybe… but if two teams of deputies couldn’t find evidence, and couldn’t find pot plants tall as stalks of corn growing deep in the forest, how could I find a half smoked cigar under some dirt?

I probably couldn’t.

But I knew one man who could.