The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller) (23 page)

Palmer studied the image for a few seconds.  “Yeah, that’s the guy I saw that night when the hippies were at the bonfire.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.  I remember faces.  I mess around with charcoal, pencil and some pen ‘n ink.  I had an old con teach me how to draw people.  I always drew as a kid.  I sorta got a way of seeing a face and spitting it out on paper.  And I can do it pretty fast.”

“You’re an artist?”

“I’m not a con artist.  Seen plenty of them in prison.  I guess I’m just a guy who’s always liked to draw.”  Palmer smiled.  “One time I drew the faces of almost all the men in the cellblock.  Did it for practice.”

“You said you saw the face of the man who shot Molly and Mark?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you draw that face?”

“Suppose I could, if I had a pencil and some paper.”

“How long would it take you?”

“About ten minutes.”

I looked at the clock on the wall.  I had twenty minutes left with Palmer.  “Wait there a second.”  I dropped the phone and stepped to a guard.  “I need a piece of paper and a pencil.”

“What for?”

I told him and he said, “Pencil could be considered a weapon.”

“Palmer is going to sketch a quick picture for us.  He’ll hand the pencil back to you when he’s done.  You can watch him the entire time.”

“I don’t know—”

“The drawing he does could help us find a guy who killed three people and probably will kill at least one more.”

“I’m going to watch him like a hawk.”

“I think he’s used to that.”

The guard went into another room, came back with a pencil and a piece of 8 1/2 by 11-inch white paper.  He placed the material in front of Palmer.

“Were you in a position to have seen any identifying features?” I asked Palmer.

“Close enough.  One thing you learn in a prison yard is how to look for identifying features, like the way a man carries himself.  What he’s hiding.”

Palmer closed his eyes for a moment, his face reflective.  Then he looked down at the paper and began drawing.  He was fast.  Sketching the general outline of the face, working in the hair, and then beginning with the details of eyes, nose and mouth.  I said, “You could have easily been a police sketch artist.”

“Or a tattoo artist.”

I thought about the tattoo on Soto’s arm.  “Tell me about everything you’ve seen in the forest since you’ve been out there.”

He grinned.  “I just came from a place full of mean sons-a-bitches.  You expect to find badness in prison.  You don’t expect to find it in a forest, at least I didn’t.  And, boy, was I was wrong.”

FIFTY-SIX

Palmer sketched for a moment in silence.  He worked in detail on the angular face, and then he raised his eyes to me.  “All right, I’ll go over most everything I can remember.  I’ve already told the detectives this.  They listen but hear what they want to hear.  Look man, I know evil.  I’ve lived with it in cellblocks most of my life.  But in those woods, in that forest, there’s more weird shit that you can ever imagine.  I’ve seen everything from hard asses running meth labs, to fuckin’ devil worshipers sacrificing goats and acting like they wanted to cut a girl’s throat.  You taking notes?  Want me to go slow, or just let it out?”

“I’m taking notes in my head.  Just let it all out, tell me everything.”

He nodded and, for the next fifteen minutes, I listened to Palmer as he began his observations the first day he entered the Ocala National Forest.  He spoke, stopped, sketched, and began speaking again.  I didn’t interrupt.  He concluded by saying, “And this dude I’m drawing, when he shot those kids, that wasn’t the first time I saw him.”

“When was the first time?”

He looked up from the sketch.  “It was when he lowered the back window of a car he was in.  He was a passenger.  There were two other men.  This guy lowered the window and tossed a half smoked cigar out.  It caught the dry brush and almost started a forest fire.  I put out the fire, and I buried the damn cigar.”

“You told me what you’ve seen in there.  But you haven’t said why you were there.”

“I told the others, the detectives.”

“Now, why don’t you tell me the truth?”

“What do you mean?”

 “I don’t believe you were hunting for Civil War relics.”

“What do you believe?”

“You’re on some kind of mission.  Someone either sent you into that forest, or there is a compelling reason you’d go there on your own.  I think you are on your own.   It’s all about you.”  

He looked down at his drawing, and then glanced away.  His eyes distance, face filled with concern.  “That’s impressive, Mr. O’Brien.  But it’s not all about me.  Okay, here’s the story.  What the hell.  A few years back, I ran across a guy in prison, and old dude, who said he was a gang member back in the thirties, the Barker Gang.  You know, the one where the FBI finally shot the old woman and one of her boys, Fred.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, I saved Al Karpis’ life once.  He told me he’d been there, in the Ocala National Forest when Fred Barker buried money they’d taken in bank robberies, a half-mil.  The banks they stole it from don’t exist anymore.  Karpis said he was gonna die of cancer before he walked.  He gave me a map and said it was mine if I could find it.”

“Did you find it?”

He was silent a few seconds.  “I did, but I put it back in the hole when I heard all the shooting.  O’Brien, I’m not some greedy guy who wants the dough just for me.  I haven’t had money in forty years.  But I do have a chance to help my sick niece, Caroline.  She has kidney disease.  She’s in Houston, Texas.  The money would get her treatment… might save her life.”    

As he worked on the sketch, he told me about his niece.  He told me about the first time he saw Mark and Molly in the forest.  “They just looked to me like two kids, kinda scared.  It was getting darker, and I think they were in a hurry to get outta there.  I saw them lookin’ over their shoulder like they thought they were being followed.  I didn’t see anybody comin’ after them, I did see rangers stop and give them a ride.”

“What did the rangers look like?”

“Only one got out of the car, medium height bushy eyebrows, dark hair.  I’d seen the guy around the forest.  I think I’ve met most of them that work there.  All of them pretty much left me alone.  This guy was a little different.”

“How so?”

“He was nice, but seemed to play the ranger thing strictly by the book.  Like the screws in the joint that are counting their days ‘til they get their pension and spend the remainder of their lives gettin’ fat on Busch beer, fishing on Saturdays and watching stock car races on Sundays.  This guy let me know I wasn’t wanted in the forest.”

I watched him work in the detail around the eyes and cheekbones.  “Why was the deer blood on your clothes?”

“I told the detectives.  I heard the deer thrashing through the woods, bleeding like a stuck pig.  It had fallen to its knees when I walked up on it.  Felt sorry for the poor animal.  I killed the buck to put him out of misery and pain.”

“Were you going to butcher the carcass?”

“I was damn hungry.  Stomach was hollow.  When I was a teenager, I hunted with my old man in the Texas hill country.  Killed my first four-point buck when I was seventeen.  Pops taught me how to field dress right then and there.”

“So why didn’t you dress the deer meat?”

“‘Cause I found a bullet in it.  Looked like it might have been from the same rifle the dude used to kill the college kids.  My stomach turned sour as old milk.”

“What’d you do with the bullet?”

“It’s in the inside lining of my knapsack.”

“Did you tell detectives this?”

“No.  You’re the first to ask me.  Okay, I’m done.”  He held up the sketch.  The detail was sharp.  Amazing.  He’d captured the man’s look.  And even through pencil lead on paper, I could see the image of absolute evil.

FIFTY-SEVEN

After I left the county jail, I stopped at a Kinko’s and made three dozen copies of the image Luke Palmer had drawn.  Driving to the sheriff’s office, I thought about the last thing Palmer had said: “If anything happens to me, would you mind sending my niece a note to let her know Uncle Luke tried his best?”

“How do I reach her?” I’d asked.

As one of the guards came for Palmer, he said, “Give me your address.  I’ll send it to you.”

“No time to write it down.  Can you remember it if I tell you?”

“No problem.”

I gave him my mailing address at the marina.  Palmer nodded as they lifted him from the chair and escorted him beyond a gray steel door. 

I OPENED THE LARGE WOODEN door leading to Sheriff Clayton’s office.  His secretary of eight years said he wasn’t in, and she didn’t know when to expect him.  I smiled and began writing a note:

Sheriff Clayton, here is a sketch of the man Luke Palmer says he saw shoot Molly and Mark.  Palmer drew it from memory.  Maybe someone can identify this guy if you can get it to the media.   Thanks, Sean O’Brien.

I placed the note in an envelope with a copy of the drawing.  I said, “Please make sure Sheriff Clayton gets this when he returns from the D.A.’s office.”

Her eyebrows arched over the rims of her glasses.  “I don’t know if he’s coming straight back.  Might have to wait ‘til the morning.”

“It’s urgent.”

“I understand.”  She dropped the envelope in a wooden in-box and continued working a Sudoku puzzle on her desk.    

“Where’s the detective’s office?”

“Down the hall.  Third door on the right,” she said, not looking up at me.

DETECTIVE SANDBERG SAT IN a cubicle office, phone pressed to his ear, writing notes across a yellow legal pad.  He glanced my way as I approached and motioned for me to sit in one of the two metal chairs in front of his desk.  Other detectives worked phones and leads in cubicles scattered across the cavernous room.  Behind Sandberg, on a white board, were pictures of Molly Monroe, Mark Stewart and Nicole Davenport.  To his right was a calendar of Texas hill country, a barn, blue bonnets and a windmill.

He hung up the phone, looked at me and leaned back in his chair.  “O’Brien, give me some good news.  I have two search teams out there with twelve men each.  Twenty-four of my best combing the Ocala National Forest looking for a pot farm.  So far, we’ve found a couple of former meth labs and a few animal skeletons—looked like goats, and an abandoned Corvette that was stripped to the paint.  Nothing near where we found the bodies.” 

“It’s in there somewhere.  You saw the pictures.  If it’s gone, might be because whoever’s growing the stuff harvested it quickly and left.”

“We only have about another five hundred square miles to search.  That forest is perfect for growing pot because the whole damn forest is green and weedy.  The marijuana would blend in like green paint on green paint.”

I was silent.

“We sent a chopper up.  Burned a thousand dollars in fuel crisscrossing the forest.  Nothing.”

“You’ll find it.”

“Wish I had your optimism.”  

“I have more than that.”  I handed him a copy of the sketch Palmer had drawn.

“Who’s this?”

“I think it’s the man who killed those three people on the board behind you.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Luke Palmer drew it.  He says this is the face of the man he saw pull the trigger.  Palmer said he saw him once before, in the back seat of a car heading into the forest.”

Sandberg said nothing.  He leaned in and studied the image.

“I dropped this off to the sheriff’s secretary and asked her to give it to him.”

“You think Palmer’s telling the truth, or is this some image he concocted in his head to take some of the heat off him?”

“If I hadn’t met Frank Soto in the Walmart parking lot, I’d be skeptical, too.  But I did, and I’m not.  You should release this.  See if someone knows who this guy is.”

“That will be up to Sheriff Clayton.  I don’t know if he’ll feel comfortable releasing an image done by a man who we’re holding on murder charges.”

“An eyewitness to a shooting is an eyewitness.  Where’s your evidence room?”

“Why?”

“Is Luke Palmer’s backpack there?”

“CSI pulled the blood stains from the deer off Palmer’s clothes and anything else they could find.”

“Did they find the bullet?”

“Bullet?”

“It’s in the lining.”

Detective Sandberg glanced at the images on the board behind him.  “Let’s take a look.”

FIFTY-EIGHT