by Tom Lowe
I worked my way toward a pine thicket interlaced with oaks. Something caught the light. I stepped closer to a large pine tree and spotted a tuff of fur wedged in the bark. It was too high up to have been a rabbit. Maybe a panther or a deer. I scanned the ground. Deer tracks. Set wide apart and deep. I knew that the animal had been running hard. Maybe it crashed into the side of the tree as it ran. What was it running from? There are plenty of bears in the forest. A few panthers and hunters. But this wasn’t hunting season. Poachers? I followed the deer tracks.
Blood. Coagulated—the hue of a ripe plum. There were splatters on leaves. I rubbed a drop between my thumb and finger. Under the shaded canopy from the forest, the blood was still damp. The deer had probably been shot just a few hours earlier.
I continued following the trail. Fifty yards farther and the blood and prints were lost. The underbrush was too thick for visible prints, the leaves and vines no longer spotted with a blood trail. Maybe the deer had died or bolted in another direction and gone deeper into the forest to die. Or its killer could have tracked it, butchered it somewhere in the woods and taken the meat home.
There was movement to my right—something dark moving in the branches. I walked slowly through the sticks and leaves in that direction, careful not to make noise. From out of the foliage, a butterfly rose. It seemed unhurried, almost animated, flying in near slow motion as it searched for flowers. I followed the butterfly as it glided just above my head deeper into the forest.
The butterfly circled near a wild hedge of verdant vines, yellow and white flowers sprouted from the mesh of jade. I recognized the shape and color of the petals. It was a passionflower. The butterfly alighted on one a few feet away from me. I watched it feed. The lower section of its body was a vibrant reddish orange, the ivory black wings trimmed with blue dots at the outer edges. The top center of the wings was splashed with an iridescent sea green. As the butterfly slowly opened and closed its wings, while feeding, the green changed to cobalt blue. It was as if the wings were moving holograms in a cascade of green leaves flowing with yellow and white blossoms.
I knew that I was watching the rare atala butterfly. And it was probably one released by Molly Monroe.
The atala flew to a second passionflower. As it fed, I used my cell phone to take the butterfly’s picture. I called Swanson and told him my location and that I was trying to follow the atala. “If you can walk over here, two sets of eyes will be better than one.”
The butterfly fed for another half minute before taking flight. I emailed the picture to Dave Collins and punched in: PLEASE ID. Swanson caught up with me following the butterfly. It seemed to float with little effort over the ground, never but a few feet above the floor of the forest. I said, “If we can keep an eye on it, maybe we’ll find the coontie plants.”
“We’re tracking a damn butterfly? This is gonna be one for the books. Did you pick up some kind of insect guerilla training somewhere along the line?”
I heard him chuckle, but I wouldn’t take my eyes off the atala while it appeared to hang in the air drifting around trees, passing other flowers and continuing deeper. I hoped a bird wouldn’t dive from the branches and take it out.
We followed the butterfly another fifty or so yards. It appeared to fly in a circle and then settle down on something. As we got closer, I saw it had perched on a coontie plant. There were at least a dozen growing wild in the area. Sunlight came through the canopy in shafts of stippled light. The butterfly crawled on the leaves. “So that’s a coontie, huh?” Swanson raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, that’s a coontie. And it was probably here where Molly and Mark released the box of atala butterflies.”
“What’s the butterfly doing?”
“It’s not feeding on the coontie, only its caterpillars do that. Looks like it’s laying eggs. You’re witnessing one of the rarest butterflies in America reproducing in the wild.”
“That’s what the college kids helped bring about, huh?”
“Yes, and it might have led to their deaths. Let’s leave the butterfly alone and have a closer look around here.”
Swanson nodded and started searching through the undergrowth. I began looking for any broken limbs, material and impressions not found in nature or made by it. I kept in mind the fact this spot may have been hit with the rain that swept through much of the area. Or maybe the tree canopies acted as a shield, deflecting some of the rain. I believed that was why the deer blood was visible. Within a few seconds, I saw blood and could tell it wasn’t from a deer. There were spots that had soaked through grass and into the ground. I picked up single blade of grass and rubbed the blood between by thumb and finger. The coppery smell changes in decay, becomes less metallic, more dirt-like pungency.
“Did you find something?” Swanson asked.
“Yeah.” I slowly stood and looked at the foliage, searching for dried blood spray. The person shot most likely fell right where the blood had pooled. Maybe the bullet had not gone through the body.
The atala rose from the coontie and flew between Swanson and me. It passed a large pine tree before vanishing into the forest. Something on the tree, a mark, a flicker in the shadows and speckled light, caught my eye. There was a thin line reflecting from the bark. It looked like a dry slime trail left by a tree snail. And right in the center of the long path was a hole. I stepped closer. The hole was about five feet from the ground on the side of the tree directly facing the pooled blood. Swanson joined me. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
“It’s a bullet hole. This dried slime came from a snail. It probably would have crawled around the hole. So I’d guess the bullet was fired after the snail had come through this spot on the bark. See that resin oozing out of the hole?”
“Yes.”
“That means it’s very fresh, like the tree has a new wound.” I scanned the bark, following the snail’s track farther up the tree. About twenty feet above the hole was the snail on the opposite side of the tree. Its shell was a little larger that a walnut, tinted in white, brown and red stripes. “And there’s the little guy who left his mark. If he’s doing a foot an hour, for example, the bullet may have been fired fifteen hours ago. The bullet could have passed through Molly or her boyfriend, Mark, and lodged in the heart of the pine. Your team might have to use a chainsaw to get it.”
Swanson shook his head. “First we track a butterfly, now a snail. What’s next?”
“A deer. I found a blood trail heading south, but I lost the trail.” I looked at the GPS map on my phone. “Could be a stream in that area. I found a water bottle about one hundred yards to the east. It needs to be examined for prints and DNA.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Mark this as a crime scene and call in the dogs.”
The man handling the dogs introduced himself as Bo Watson. He wore a faded brown Stetson, brim tainted the shade of weak coffee. A handlebar moustache draped beneath his nose, wiry sun-dried body. He had tucked his jeans inside his ostrich skin cowboy boots. Within minutes, a dozen deputies and two forensics investigators joined us along with Detective Sandberg and Sheriff Clayton. “What do we have?” the sheriff asked.
The team listened to what Swanson and I had found. The sheriff turned to Watson and said, “We got blood. Two types. One might be a deer, the other’s most likely human. Can you keep your dogs focused on the human stuff first?”
Watson nodded and moved a toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth. “Big Jim and Shiloh don’t have to be told which is which. They know we’re looking for Miss Monroe and Mr. Stewart. I don’t have to put ‘em on the right trail.” He held the dogs by their leashes, each dog whining, anxious to continue the hunt.
The sheriff turned to his deputies and Ranger Ed Crews. “Ya’ll search in areas where Deputy Swanson and Mr. O’Brien haven’t gone. Let’s keep three men behind Bo and the dogs. If these college kids are out here…we’ll find ‘em.”
The teams followed as the dogs picked up the trail with Bo Watso
n close behind them. Detective Sandberg turned to me. “O’Brien, we’ll lift the bullet out of the tree. Maybe there’s some DNA embedded in there.” He shook his head, eyes on the tree and slowly settling back to me. “We’re pretty versed in forensics, normal investigative techniques, but all this stuff you did with snails and butterflies, we’ll that’s a little off the page for me.”
I smiled. “Nature is an open book, and out here it’s about all we have to read.”
He scratched one of his calves. “And we have chiggers. They’re eating me up.”
The sheriff’s voice came through the radio hooked to Sandberg’s belt. “Need some folks over here. Dogs are excited.”
We headed in that direction. The dogs found something less than fifty yards from the tree with the bullet hole. They whined and circled an area covered in limbs and leaves. Deputies pulled the debris away. One of the dogs, Big Jim, sniffed and began digging in the center of what looked like fresh earth.
“Hold him back,” the sheriff said. He turned to a deputy. “You got a shovel in the truck.”
“Yes sir.”
“Get it.”
Within a minute, the team was there, each man looking at the likely grave, wearing faces etched in lines of anxiety, sketched by a collective familiarity with crime scenes.
The sheriff gave the order to dig. A muscular deputy began shoveling away dark soil. Sweat dripped from his face into the hole. The dogs sat on their haunches, uttered whines and watched. A mockingbird called out as it flew from one pine tree to the next. Police radios crackled, the noise sounded strange in the forest.
“We have something!” said the deputy digging the hole. One of the forensics investigators, glasses perched near the tip of his nose, stepped above the hole. He said, “That’s not a body.” He knelt closer, used a small brush to remove more dirt. “That’s fur. Dig around the carcass. Looks like a deer.” He stood as the deputy shoveled more sand from the opening.
The putrid odor of death seemed to catch the deputy in the throat. He winced, blew from his nose and continued digging.
Detective Sandberg shook his head. “Damn, that buck got sour quick. It’s been shot out of season. Probably killed by a poacher who didn’t want to be found with the deer and get hit with a big fine.”
“No doubt,” Ranger Ed Crews said.
“Cover that thing back up, boys,” said the sheriff, hitching his pants and turning to Bo Watson. “Dogs found a body. It just wasn’t a human body.”
Watson shook his head. “Sheriff, Big Jim doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to human scent, especially cadavers.”
“Maybe he was gettin’ a scent from the poacher who butchered the deer.”
“No, the dogs won’t be fooled like that.”
I said, “Maybe something’s buried under the deer.”
The sheriff pursed his dry lips. He grunted and looked up at me through squinting eyes. “All right, somebody get down in the hole with Johnny and lift the buck out.”
“I’ll do it,” said a younger deputy, putting on plastic gloves. He tossed a pair to the deputy who’d been digging. They scraped away the remaining dirt. One man held the deer’s hind legs, the other man held its head. “On three,” said the young deputy. “One, two three…”
They lifted the carcass from the hole and laid it to one side. Blowflies with green bodies buzzed in the humid air. The sheriff and Detective Sandberg stepped to the edge. “Sweet Jesus…” mumbled the sheriff, touching his forehead.
Detective Sandberg held his hand to his nose. “Whoever buried those bodies thought the scent of the deer would throw us off.”
Bo Watson nodded and said, “You cain’t fool these dogs. They followed the scents of both these kids. What happened here is the devil’s doing.”
I looked in the grave and saw the bodies of Molly Monroe and Mark Stewart, lying side-by-side, a stub of a cigar next to Molly’s face. I fought back bile and rage as it boiled in my gut. The noise of the police radios, murmur of the deputies, whine of the dogs, it all faded. I could only hear Molly’s voice that day in the restaurant when she looked across the table to me and said, “Have you ever held a live butterfly in the palm of your hand? I believe they like the human touch…the warmth that comes from our hands, and maybe our hearts.”
Elizabeth stood beneath the shade of the pitched canvas awning and watched me approach. Our eyes met less than fifty feet away. The closer I got, the more nervous her expression became, searching my face, honing in for leftovers of hope.
I couldn’t give her any. And I knew she knew.
“Sean…dear God…please…tell me no…”
“I’m so sorry. I wish I had good news.”
She folded. Her body wilted, and she dropped to her knees. She buried her hands in her palms and sobbed with deep, painful moans. Officers, volunteers and gathering media kept their distance. Elizabeth vomited in the leaves and pine needles. I felt helpless.
After her cries distilled into soft sobs, I reached for her, holding her trembling body. She buried her head in my chest and quietly wept. I held her close for more than a minute. There was nothing I could say—nothing I should say. I simply wanted to be there, be in the moment for whatever she needed. Finally, she looked up at me, tears streaking down her face. “How did it happen? How did he kill my baby?”
“Used a gun. Mark was killed, too.”
Elizabeth touched her stomach as if the breath was knocked from her lungs, her face ashen. I held her forearms as she tried hard to steady her feet and legs. I walked her to an empty canvas chair, pulled a bottle of water from a cooler and unscrewed the cap. She shook so much that she could not hold the water bottle.
I said, “They’re searching the area for a suspect, and it’s not Frank Soto.”
She looked at me, unsure of what she heard. “One of the forest rangers said he saw a homeless guy in here. He spotted him on one of the back roads not too far from the grave of the girl they found with the fairy wings, Nicole Davenport. The ranger said he didn’t stop the guy because he didn’t know of the grave until he found it later. But he’d spoken with him a few days earlier. Says he found out this man was just released from San Quentin. The man told the ranger he was camping and looking for Civil War relics. Also, we found a cigar stogie tossed in the grave with Molly and Mark; it could tell us some things.”
Elizabeth simply looked at me, her lower body slack in the chair, eyes swollen. “What does Molly’s camera look like?” I asked.
She struggled to think. “It’s small, silver color…a Sony. I remember because I gave it to Molly on her last birthday.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Molly mentioned that she’d snapped a few pictures the last time she was in the forest. Do you know where her camera is now?”
“Sean, please…I can’t think, okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
After a minute, she whispered, “Camera could be in her room.”
“Maybe you can check later.”
She nodded, used her fingers to wipe beneath her lower eyelids. My cell rang. It was Detective Sandberg. “O’Brien, are you with Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes.”
“I can only imagine how she took the news. Look, if she’s in any condition to hear it, tell her we may have something. That water bottle you found, we’ll take it back to the lab. Bo Watson let his dogs sniff the jug. They’re on the trail of whoever was carrying the bottle. If we’re lucky, he’s the perp that killed these kids.”
Through the phone, I heard the whine of dogs, a primal call of the wild. The sounds of the hunt stirred a latent echo in my soul. It was a silence I knew would resurrect into dark noise and resonate into the blackest reaches of the forest before me.
THE SOUND STARTLED Luke Palmer. Dogs and men in the distance. Shouting. Helicopters. Coming in his direction. He put the money in the steel box, closed the lid and lowered it back into the hole.
The dogs were getting closer, and with them Palmer knew men with badges would be followi
ng. He covered the hole with dirt, lifted a dead branch from the ground and shook dry leaves from it over the freshly turned earth.
RUN! Lose the scent in the creek and run until it was safe to come back.
The dogs and men were coming faster. RUN. He clutched the steel prod and ran through vines and undergrowth that slapped his face. He thought of the time a prison screw hit him. No reason other than meanness. He saw the face of the girl he’d met at the bon fire. Felt her hug. “Night Raven…” His hands uncovered the dirt on her grave.
“When was the last time you were hugged?”
Her pasty face locked forever into the cloudless sky.
Buried money. Buried kids. Jungle everywhere. This was a land the devil blessed. A man can’t run outta hell if he can’t see the horizon.
Sheriff Roger Clayton was in his element, firing orders as his deputies readied to track down a killer. “Let’s move!” he yelled, jumping in a pickup truck and leading his growing posse back into the forest. They fanned out, moving east, radios popping with quick directives. A police helicopter hovered in the distance.
A few minutes later, a third television news satellite truck came down the dirt road into the forest, the branches screeching, like nails on a chalkboard, against the sides of the truck. I watched from the shade of the canvas as volunteers and a few curiosity seekers stood by, waiting for word from the search party. Three officers manned the makeshift headquarters. One, a tall man, had just arrived. They called him in from vacation. I heard an officer say that the man was the best sharpshooter on the sheriff’s SWAT team.
The media set up tripods and cameras, and began stringing wire to trucks rumbling with generators, the pungent odor of burning diesel fuel drifting across the clearing.
Elizabeth rose from the chair, her eyes vacant. A warm breeze teased her hair as she looked at the media, saw volunteers and officers averting their eyes when she turned her head in their direction. News of the double murders had a visible effect on everyone out here. The sheriff had contacted Seminole County S.O. and asked that they deliver the news to Mark Stewart’s family.