The Butterfly Forest

SEVENTY-EIGHT

Joe Billie said nothing for a few seconds. Then he said, “The killers sure wanted to make a statement.” He shook his head and stared at the body, his face unreadable. He cut his eyes up through the boughs of the old tree to see turkey vultures silently riding the air currents in a slow circle.

The rope had twisted Palmer’s neck at an abnormal angle, the skin now swollen and the color of a ripe plum. Two blowflies crawled in blood that had spilled and dried in the corner of his mouth. My heart hammered. I’d worked plenty of crime scenes in my life, but this slaughter hit me in the adrenal glands so hard I felt nauseous. Not from the site of the body, but from the horror and pain the killers had inflicted on Palmer. I looked away, fighting the urge to vomit, trying to find a horizon to focus on, pushing back motion sickness.

I saw movement.

Less than fifty yards from us stood a doe and her fawn. They moved slightly, brown eyes wide and wet even from the distance. I thought about the wounded deer that Luke Palmer had put out of its misery, the bullet he’d removed from the buck’s stomach, animal blood running down his arms and hands. All I had suspected was true. Palmer’s murder, his corpse twisting in the wind, was testament to the fact that he never buried the deer in that grave with Molly and Mark. He never dug the hole nor had he filled it with death.

Billie pointed to something on the side of the tree. We walked around the body and over to the tree. About ten feet from the ground, carved into the trunk was what appeared to be a butterfly. In the center of the left wing were the initials or letters, MA. In the center of the right wing were the letters, ME.

I thought about Molly and her efforts to release endangered butterflies into this forest, this dark place where a man’s stiff and bloated body swung from the end of a rope. What did the butterfly carving mean? Why was Palmer killed here and hung from this tree? I looked closer and saw that the head and body of the carved butterfly, the image between the wings, was more like the “&” symbol. MA & ME carved in two hearts now grown together like butterfly wings.

I remembered the story Palmer had told me about the Barker Gang, the cache of loot hidden in the forest, the FBI shootout with Ma Barker and her son, Fred, in their home near Ocala. I knew what the MA and ME letters meant. Letters carved by Fred Barker into this tree in 1936.

I looked back at Palmer’s body hanging from the old tree in a horrid, swollen silhouette with a blood-red sky painted behind passing storm clouds. I remembered his eyes misty and remote as he spoke of his niece and how he’d hoped to help pay for a kidney transplant. Luke Palmer’s own midsummer’s dream now was a nightmare after spending four decades in a prison to walk as a free man in pursuit of ghosts — two tragic figures in American crime history, Ma and Fred Baker, and their fortune hidden in the forest. But what Palmer uncovered was the grave of a teenage girl, the murders of two college students, and the same evil that could never be contained behind the high walls of prison.

“Do we cut him down?” Billie asked, touching the knife strapped to his thigh.

“No, this is a crime scene. I’m calling Marion County — now maybe Detective Sandberg will get it.”

Billie nodded and stood near the tree as I used the satellite phone to make the call. I was transferred twice and placed on hold for a minute. When Detective Sandberg came on the line, I told him what we found. He said, “Jesus, all right, O’Brien, looks like you’ve substantiated your theory.”

“Never was a theory, Detective. All the evidence pointed away from Palmer. You told me a few hairs discovered on Nicole Davenport's body didn’t have roots for DNA testing.”

“That’s right.”

“And, you said it was dyed dark black.”

“Where you going with this?”

“To U.S. Forestry Ranger Ed Crews.”

“What?”

“I saw him today, in daylight. The roots are growing out in his hair. He’s going to have another dye job soon, no doubt. Check him now, today. If the coloring chemicals in the hair match the ones found on the hair from Nicole’s body, you have him as an accomplice.”

“Accomplice to what?”

“To multiple murders, and to turning his head, aiding and abetting a marijuana operation in a national forest. Gonzales probably paid Crews more than he’d make in a lifetime if he’d help them get in and out of the forest, help them divert the law. Crews was there when we pulled Molly and Mark from the grave. He was present at the first murder. He told me he’d been there for two hours, yet I saw mud on his truck that was glistening wet. It would have dried or almost dried in two hours. The men we were tracking, those who hung Palmer, left shoe imprints with no tread or patterns on the soles of their shoes. I saw a piece of duct tape on Crews’ boot this morning. Duct tape soles wouldn’t leave imprints.”

Sandberg said nothing.

I heard a wasp fly next to me. Sandberg said, “Okay, we’ll question him. I’ll get paperwork for DNA testing.”

“Ultimately, the man who made Palmer’s bond, probably Pablo Gonzales, which I suspect is the king puppeteer, is responsible for Palmer’s murder and the other three.”

“They hung Palmer to send a message, O’Brien. Drug lords invented terrorism. Palmer on ice can’t testify against his nephew Izzy. Neither, obviously, can Molly and Mark. Izzy, assuming we could ever pick him up, walks away.”

“Maybe not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We found Palmer, maybe we can find Izzy Gonzales.”

“You might have to track him to Mexico. And who the hell’s we?”

“A friend of mine. He’s Seminole. He can track almost anything that leaves a trail, even to Mexico.”

“I’ve kept Sheriff Clayton at bay because the media have let up some. But now that there’s another killing in the forest, and this one’s a former suspect in the other three murders, we might have to stretch crime-scene tape around the whole fucking Ocala National Forest. You and your Indian pal need to get your assess outta there now. Where exactly is the body? We need to roll units.”

“It’s the intersection of Highways 40 and 19. Go north on 19 one mile. You’ll come to an unmarked spur road on the left. Take it as far as it goes and then you’re on foot for about a half mile due west heading northwest of Juniper… Sandberg… Sandberg can you hear me?”

Nothing but static. “Did you get the directions, Sandberg?” No response. I looked at the satellite phone. The picture symbol for battery was gone, replaced with a weak pulsating dot. Then the phone lost all power.

“Let’s move on, Joe. We have a few hours until nightfall. I bet this place gets darker than the bottom of a deep cave.”