The Butterfly Forest

EIGHTY-EIGHT

Dave was about to leave my room when there was a cursory knock, and four people entered without invitation. Detective Sandberg nodded when he saw me. He was followed by two men and one woman who walked in with government issued body language to complement their dark suits. Sandberg said, “Glad to see you made it out of those woods alive. Some didn’t.”

I said nothing.

He continued. “These folks are with the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They’ll do the introductions.”

The taller of the two, a man with a cleft chin shaved so close it looked polished, stepped next to my bed. “Mr. O’Brien, I’m Special Agent Dan Keyes, Tampa office, FBI. My colleague is Special Agent Sonja Flores.”

Agent Flores folded her arms over her breasts, dark hair touching her shoulders, deep chestnut brown eyes locked on me like a birddog pointing. She stepped next to my bed, her gun belt making a crackling sound. The Beretta strapped to her curved hip was polished, the smell of gun oil mixed with perfume. I felt my blood rush through my temples and wondered if my IV drip had some morphine in it. She said, “It’s good to see you conscious. How are you feeling, Mr. O’Brien?”

“Better, now, Miss Flores. With these tubes in me, I assume I’m conscious. If not, welcome to my dream.” I smiled.

I saw the pulse in her neck pick up a beat. She gestured to the man at the foot of my bed. “This is Tim Jenkins, senior agent with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE.”

Jenkin’s white hair was neatly parted on the left, eyes unblinking with the blue intensity of a finely adjusted butane torch. The ICE man said, “This is no dream O’Brien. Looks like you left a nightmare in the forest. It’s now an international incident. We have a few questions for you.”

Special Agent Dan Keyes cleared his throat with a grunt. “First, your company needs to exit the premises.”

I said, “My ‘company’ is my long-time friend and personal counsel, Mr. Dave Collins. Anything I say to you can be said in his presence.”

Dave cut his eyes at me, nodded and said, “We’re glad to help you, Agent.”

The man from ICE said to Dave, “Out in the hall, you never told me you were—”

“We were simply trading information, as we are now,” Dave said. “Mr. O’Brien is not charged with any crime, nor is he ancillary to criminal activity. On the contrary, he and Mr. Billie put their lives on the line when they stumbled onto a marijuana operation and were forced into a self-defense situation.”

Agent Keyes almost growled. “We haven’t been able to locate Mr. Billie yet, but we will. And we did find the leftovers in the national forest, it’s a war zone. Some kind of massacre. What happened out there?”

I looked at the two IV’s in my arms. “With all these drugs flowing in me, things are a little hazy. What’d you find?”

“Looks like you found a hell of a lot more than a marijuana operation,” Keyes said. “We’ve talked with Detective Sandberg here. We understand you came up with a composite of someone who resembles Izzy Gonzales, drawn by Luke Palmer after he was arrested for a triple homicide.”

I said, “And now Luke Palmer’s been killed. What does that tell you? Or maybe you didn’t see his body hanging from a tree out there?”

Agent Keyes lips grew tight. “We pulled your background. Went all the way back to when you came out of your mama. O’Brien, I believe you have issues.”

He waited for me to respond. I said nothing. He rocked on the balls of his wingtips for a second. “Thirteen years with Miami-Dade homicide. Internal Affairs ran two separate investigations into your Dirty Harry tactics. A tour of duty in the Middle East. Places we know about include Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. A lot of your file seems to be, shall we say, incomplete.”

I said, “Classified is a better word.”

Agent Tim Jenkins added, “Dan, let’s cut to the chase with Mr. O’Brien.” He touched the tip of his nose. I could see that he’d lost a piece of his small finger, first joint to the nail gone. “O’Brien, I really don’t give a rat’s ass about any issues you may or may not have. I don’t give a shit about fitting you into some neat profile.”

“Profile? You’re trying to color me with your paint-by-numbers illustrations when you have Pablo Gonzales and his minions growing pot on America soil.”

“Was Izzy Gonzales out there?” asked Agent Flores, her eyes absorbing the room.

“If you didn’t find him that means someone took his body.”

“He’s dead?” the ICE man asked.

“Yeah.”

There was a short knock at my door. Agent Keyes instinctively reached under his coat, his hand touching the pistol grip.