The Butterfly Forest

SIXTY-NINE

As the sheriff did a one-on-one interview with CNN, Detective Sandberg took me aside and whispered, “If Clayton doesn’t have you arrested for impersonating an officer and a slew of other improprieties, I’ll be surprised. What the fuck was that all about, O’Brien. What grandstanding! You running for the sheriff’s job?”

I could smell mint and stale coffee on Sandberg’s breath. I smiled. “Me? Oh, no. Looks like he’s getting plenty of exposure. I’m betting his job’s safe.”

“But you aren’t making my job any safer.”

“Look, Detective, I think you’re probably a damn good investigator. You figure out who’s really responsible for the triple killing in the forest and you’ll be talked about at FBI profiling classes for years to come. And now your job just might be a little easier. Somebody out there knows whose face that is on the composite. He or she’s going to call. I hope you’re in the office to take the call. Your legacy will be around Ocala long after you’ve retired to a farm in Texas.”

“How’d you know I wanted to retire in Texas?”

I started to walk away and said, “The calendar behind your desk. Lots of pictures of Texas hill country. You wear an Aggie ring. The phones might be buzzing now.”

I drove a half hour into a time warp to the Highland Park Fish Camp on the St. Johns River north of DeLand. Some of its residents are seasonal. Some year-round. All seem to want to be left alone. It was the perfect place for a Seminole Indian to live. Joe Billie lived there part-time. Where he resided the rest of the time, nobody really knew. What I did know is that he saved my life two years ago when I was shot in the gut and left to die in my own waste.

I pulled onto the long shell driveway, past clapboard cabins with small screened-in porches, and past aged Airstream trailers until I came to the one closest to the river. It was bordering the river, but farther away from the rest of the residents. I got out of the Jeep and smacked a deerfly that immediately attacked my arm. There was no car in front of the old trailer, its aluminum exterior tarnished after decades of sitting in the same spot. I didn’t know if Billie drove a car. I’d only seen him walking and paddling a canoe.

I stepped to the door and knocked.

“It’s been a while.”

I turned to my right as Joe Billie stepped around a clump of cabbage palms. He was my height, six-two. Coffee colored skin. He wore his salt and pepper hair in a ponytail. I said, “Good to see you, Joe. I didn’t hear you approach.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he smiled. “What brings you back to our little fish camp?”

“I need to find a couple of things. And I thought I could search for them by myself, or I could see if you’d come along and cut a few weeks off my search time.”

“What are you looking for?”

“It’s worse than a needle in a haystack. It’s a cigar in a forest, the Ocala National Forest. We’d be looking for a particular saliva-soaked stogie that’s somewhere in those 700 square miles.”

“Guess that narrows it down some.” He grinned. “You said a couple of things. What’s the other?”

“Marijuana. Lots of it. Three people were killed in the forest, and I believe it’s because some primetime marijuana growers have a big operation somewhere back in there. But nobody seems to be able to find it. I suppose the FBI could find it by flying one of their satellites over and taking pictures, but by the time the red tape is cut, this year’s crop of pot would have been harvested, sold, shipped and smoked.”

“Did you know the people killed?”

“One of them. She was a college student, a young woman who was very close to nature. She was in the forest to release rare butterflies back into the wild.”

“I like that idea. Did she release them?”

“I think so. A butterfly box was found, empty. Blood on it.”

“Okay, Sean, when do you want to start this search?”

“Soon as possible?”

“Today’s Monday. I can help you all day on Wednesday.”

“I’ll come pick you up. Seven a.m. Thank you, Joe.”

He smiled and nodded. “Bring the coffee.”

On the drive back to Ponce Marina, I called Detective Lewis in Seminole County. “Did you get any results from the arsenic test on the pills?”

“Matter of fact, we did. Four of the twenty-five pills were refitted with arsenic. If Elizabeth Monroe had taken two of them, she wouldn’t be here.”

“Any indication it was Soto?”

“No prints outside of yours and Elizabeth Monroe’s. We’re searching for Soto.”

“Now you can search for the face in the composite, too. Sheriff Clayton finally provided copies to the media.”

“Why’d he change his mind?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

“I need to take this call, O’Brien.”

I drove for another mile through the back roads leading from DeLand toward Ponce Marina. I wanted to call Elizabeth, but I thought she might be resting, sleeping off the effects of the poisoning.

My phone vibrated. It was Detective Sandberg. His voice was flat. “We did get that call, O’Brien.”

“I’m listening.”

The anonymous caller said the composite is the face of Izel Gonzales. His nickname is Izzy.”

“So, who is Izzy?”

“Let me put it this way, he’s a punk, but his uncle, Pablo Gonzales, is a real badass. O’Brien, when you did your impromptu news conference with the sheriff and told the world Luke Palmer told you everything he saw, then you hung Izel Gonzales’ picture out there, you may have hung yourself out to dry, too. You need to be real careful.”