Forests of the Night

by James W. Hall

  Okay, okay.

  So while Lucy and Nancy Feather said their good-byes, Gracey picked up her cell and dialed.

  Twenty-Eight

  Their barbecue sandwiches arrived a couple of minutes after they ordered them, accompanied by dishes of coleslaw and heaps of French fries. The food grew cold on their plates while they stared out at the parking lot.

  After twenty minutes the waitress came back and asked if anything was wrong with their food.

  “Food’s fine,” Charlotte said. “Just having a serious conversation.”

  “Well, I’ll scoot, then. You shout out, you need anything.” The waitress gave Charlotte a sympathetic smile. Damn these men.

  It was almost five when Parker got up. He needed to stretch, he said, his feet were going to sleep. He wandered the deserted restaurant, reading the headlines inside the newspaper vending machine, glancing at the mass-produced Indian artwork, then studying the bulletin board by the front door.

  Charlotte watched him for a while, then stirred the cold French fries with her fingertip and turned her eyes back to the parking lot. Slow afternoon at the barbecue joint. A young couple with three noisy kids sat outside along the creek. Otherwise, the place was empty.

  She forced herself to draw a complete breath. Let it out slowly and did that again. She roamed her memory for a prayer, some incantation that might attract God’s mercy. But nothing came. As a teenager she’d been a Baptist for a month, a Presbyterian for two. Trying it out at fourteen to see if religion might be an escape from the hellhole of her mother’s double-wide trailer and the whiskey-driven men endlessly coming and going. Neither religion had taken root. What she had instead was fifteen years of police procedure and her philosophy lifted from the forest floor. Helpful enough for day-to-day functioning, but not much use as solace.

  “You sure you heard her right?” Parker said. “Five P.M. today?”

  “I got it right,” Charlotte said. “Apparently her plans changed.”

  It was almost six when the waitress came over and took their plates and asked if they’d like some pecan pie or ice cream.

  Parker shook his head and the waitress gave Charlotte another commiserating glance. The crap we women had to endure.

  When the waitress was gone, Charlotte said, “She’s not coming.”

  The words ached in her throat. But they needed saying.

  “Yeah,” Parker said. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  Charlotte told him she had to use the John and scooted from the booth and located the restrooms down a long shadowy hallway.

  She locked the door and in the bathroom mirror gave herself a thorough look. It’d been forever since she’d turned her critical eye to her own expression. The face she saw in the mirror was a train wreck of emotions. The heavy eyes and sagging cheeks of despair, a repressed fury pinching her brow, twitches at the corner of her mouth signaling her helpless dread.

  She ran the tap and cupped a handful of water and splashed her face. Far colder than Miami water ever was. She rubbed away the last traces of her makeup, then scooped another handful and dropped her face into her hands and kept it there, let the frigid water numb her flesh.

  With her head bowed, she felt a tremor in her gut working upward.

  She shook the water away and pressed her palms flat to the wall on either side of the mirror, and brought up the hot bulge that had been growing in her bowels for days. It rose into her chest and filled her throat, then broke from her mouth in rumbling sobs. Her eyes burned, and she was suddenly lost in the weeping, hands against the wall, feet back, hips pressing the sink like a suspect being frisked.

  She let it come. Her only child lost. Her own abilities in doubt. Her faltering love for Parker. The daily agony she’d witnessed on the city streets for years. All the losses, the regrets whirled together. But it was Gracey’s face she saw inside the storm of weeping. Gracey’s face at ten, before the diagnosis and the drugs and the voices in her head. A birthday party at the beach at Key Biscayne. Balloons and kids and a magician. Gracey smiling. Gracey innocent and smart and full of fun. And the magic white doves that appeared from the top hat and exploded into flight, lofting into a perfect ocean sky.

  Gracey’s scream of delight.

  Charlotte let it have its way. Purging everything she’d so faithfully stored up, years of fitting edge against edge, the neat parcels of grief. Always room for one more. And one more on top of that. They broke from her throat like that flock of white doves, sob after sob.

  From far away, inside her weeping, she heard the trill of a phone.

  She blinked the tears away and listened. For a moment she was lost. Like waking to a strange room, having to track back through the hours, reconstruct the route she’d taken to this moment.

  She blew her nose in the towels, wadded them, dropped them in the hamper, and plucked the cell phone from her backpack and flicked it open.

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, God. Where are you, sweetie?”

  “I’m ready to go back to Miami,” she said. “Steven thinks it’s best. This Indian stuff is so hokey. The mountains, the slow pace. It’s not filmic. It just won’t work.”

  “Oh, Gracey,” Charlotte said. “Are you okay?”

  The connection felt so fragile, her daughter’s throaty voice was solid in her ear, but she didn’t trust the filmy web of electrons bouncing around the unstable atmosphere, those erratic peaks and valleys.

  “Jacob didn’t want me anyway,” Gracey said. “He wanted Dad.”

  “Just tell me where you are, honey, and we’ll come get you right now. Just give me a landmark, anything.”

  “There’s guns lying around. Right out in the open. Like any minute there could be a shoot-out or something. Which bothers me, you know, makes me nervous, then Joan, she’s been after me to check in and tell you I’m okay, but it wasn’t till Steven went off about Miami and how much better it would be for the film if we were back there, you know, that’s why I called. So you can come get me now. Or I’ll call Earl. He’ll do it. Earl was nice. You remember Earl, right? No, you don’t know Earl, do you? That was just me alone in his truck. Right? Just me and Earl.”

  It was the scattered, hyper way she got when she’d been off her meds and was beginning to stagger toward chaos.

  “Gracey, okay, now listen. Just give me some idea where you are, and Dad and I’ll be there as quick as we can.”

  On Gracey’s end there was noise in the background, a door slamming, then an adult’s angry voice.

  The phone rattled, and Gracey squealed as if she’d been struck. Charlotte called out her daughter’s name, but all she could hear was a muffled voice behind the covered mouthpiece.

  Then a woman’s voice spoke in her ear, “Who the hell is this?”

  “This is Gracey’s mother. What’re you doing with my daughter?”

  The silence lasted for several heartbeats, then as Charlotte was summoning her hard-ass cop voice, the woman spoke.

  “Where are you and Parker staying?”

  Charlotte hesitated a second too long, and the woman said, “You want your goddamn daughter back or not?”

  “The Holiday Inn on Route Nineteen.”

  “Tomorrow sometime,” the woman said. “And if there’s any sign of cops around, or FBI, or anything that looks a bit strange, forget it. That clear?”

  “I want her now, goddamn it.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Jesus Christ, what’re you doing with her?”

  “She showed up at my door, and I took her in, okay? Just be there tomorrow.”

  “Is this Lucy Panther?”

  For almost half a minute Charlotte listened to the woman breathing. Then the connection broke.

  Twenty-Nine

  It was dark now, and from his vantage point across the parking he had a perfect sight line on Room 118. He was in a dead zone behind a defunct motel next to the Holiday Inn.

  To his immediate right was a Dumpster and a yard away to his left was a white
church van that appeared to be abandoned. Two of its tires were flat, and the front windshield was broken out.

  In front of him, the security lights of the Holiday Inn illuminated the parking lot, but the yellow halo faded to shadows by the time it reached his position. He was standing in almost total darkness, and would fire into a brightly lit arena.

  His rifle was a variant of the MSG90 outfitted with several custom features, including a threaded muzzle that wore a screw-on silencer and a low-signature flash hider. Although in the past he had never fired the weapon in such close quarters, the sound suppressor functioned admirably, so once he had made his shots, all he had to do was walk briskly for twenty paces until he was beyond the corner of the building where he’d parked the stolen car.

  It was a quarter to eight, and the lamps were on in the Monroes’ room. He saw figures moving behind the curtains. For a while he tracked their shadows through his light-gathering sight, moving the barrel smoothly inches to the left, then inches to the right. His hands so steady, the crosshairs showed only the slightest quiver.

  From such close range, making the shots would be a near certainty. The Heckler & Koch MSG90 had a five-round magazine and was outfitted with a Hensoldt telescopic sight. Equipment that was far more sophisticated than his current needs required.

  He lay his backup magazine on a ledge of the Dumpster. Ten shots to achieve his purpose. This time nothing would interfere.

  “We’re going to be late,” Parker said. “If you miss the first ten minutes of this play, you miss Hernando de Soto and some great plumed helmets and blunderbusses.”

  “You seem pretty blasé.”

  “I’m just repressing, Charlotte. Putting one foot in front of the other, just like you. I don’t see we have a lot of choice in the matter.”

  Charlotte made one last uninterested pass with her lip liner, gave her hair a final scrunch, then stepped into the bedroom.

  As Parker reached for the doorknob, the motel phone rang.

  He sighed, marched over and snapped it up, listened for a moment, said, “Okay,” then set the receiver back.

  “Front desk,” he said. “An envelope addressed to you. They’re sending somebody around. It’ll just be a minute.”

  Charlotte perched on the edge of the bed and stared at the blank TV. The jangle in her veins was so loud she could barely form a coherent thought.

  She realized now that she should’ve handled the phone call with Gracey differently. Not attacked Lucy Panther. If she’d used her negotiating skills, played it calm, Gracey might be with them now.

  Her goddamn instincts were failing her. Or maybe she’d just been kidding herself all along about her abilities. She’d totally misread Frank Sheffield, not seen the con job he was pulling with his tracking device. Her first impression of Uncle Mike had been grossly distorted by her impatience and escalating irritation. And then she’d blown it with Lucy Panther—letting her emotions override years of training.

  The discipline and control she prided herself on were unraveling. Her so-called gift for reading faces struck her now as a fraud. Some statistical accident that Fedderman had misinterpreted as genius. She was an imposter. Put her under stress and her skills vanished.

  When the knock on the door came, Charlotte pushed herself to her feet and joined Parker. The ground seemed to be buckling beneath her, the first seismic tremors as the plates shifted far below the earth. A forewarning that the ground was about to split apart and swallow her and all those she loved. But Charlotte’s faith in her own intuition was so badly shaken, she ignored that needle jiggling against the graph paper, that shiver in the concrete beneath her feet. She followed Parker out the door.

  At first his mind would not accept the reality of what he was witnessing. He watched with growing alarm through his telescopic sight as the day manager of the Holiday Inn, Myra Rockhill, rounded the far corner of the building and came striding down the sidewalk, then stopped outside Room 118 and knocked.

  Myra was six feet tall and nine months pregnant. Word around town was that she was having triplets. With her massive body obscuring the doorway, he lowered his rifle for a moment to make certain his eyesight was working properly.

  The door immediately opened, and Charlotte and Parker Monroe stepped into view.

  He caught the rest of the action through his sight, but managed only fleeting glimpses of his targets as the pregnant colossus handed Charlotte Monroe a white envelope, then spoke briefly to her.

  Despite the startling event, he managed to hold his emotions in check, for he was certain a clear shot was approaching.

  But instead of walking back down the sidewalk in the direction she’d come, Myra, the gargantuan, must have just gone off duty, for she took a path that headed directly toward his own position, crossing the parking lot with long strides, and effectively blocking his view of the Monroes as they entered their car.

  Flattening his back against the Dumpster, he hid his rifle behind his leg and watched the woman proceed in his direction. As she came closer, he inched backward, deeper into the shadows, but still visible from the parking lot, where the woman reached into her purse and drew out her car keys and chirped the alarm on her pickup. Its headlights flared and trapped him in their beams.

  He staggered back behind the Dumpster, dragging the Heckler & Koch, and only at the last second did he remember the additional magazine clip he’d left behind.

  Peeking around the edge of the Dumpster, he watched Myra Rockhill struggle into her truck and start the engine, then sit for a moment with a cell phone at her ear. Clamping the phone in place with her shoulder, the woman lit a cigarette, then put the vehicle in reverse and backed out of the space. When she was safely out of sight, he reached back and snatched the extra clip.

  The entire affair unfolded in less than half a minute, yet he was badly shaken. His hands rattled and his throat burned with each breath. His plan had been foiled by a sequence of the sheerest coincidences. As he stood in the darkness, composing himself, the only consolation he could muster was that the Monroes had not been carrying suitcases, so in all likelihood they would be returning sometime later that evening.

  All was not lost. His quarry had merely gone out for dinner or a movie or some other form of rustic entertainment. They would return.

  Parker handed Charlotte the envelope and she ripped it open and glanced at the business card. Then she switched on the map light and read the scribbled note on the back.

  “What?” Parker said.

  “Sheffield. He wants me to call him.”

  “What is it?”

  “Doesn’t say.”

  “So go ahead, use the cell.”

  “The jerk can wait.”

  They parked outside the amphitheater, bought their tickets, and prowled the theater gift shop for a few minutes, then bought programs and made their way down the aisle to seats near the front.

  A group of spirited college kids in Western costumes warmed up the crowd with American show tunes and gospel.

  By the time the drama began, the outdoor theater was only a quarter filled. Maybe five hundred people. A decent crowd in most auditoriums, but that cavernous arena felt empty. A natural valley surrounded by woods, with the spring night damp. Some faint stars showing in a chilly sky.

  The nightly performances of Unto These Hills had once been the largest tourist draw in that part of the state. Fifty years earlier, in a simpler, more moralistic age, the play’s sappy treatment of the Cherokee’s history would have been solid dramatic fare, and it still seemed to please the crowd around her, though to Charlotte the play’s tragic mood and overblown message had little bite in the current age of greater horrors and catastrophes.

  The story was simple and familiar. The white man barged into paradise, and almost overnight the innocence of the Cherokee was destroyed. Their nation was portrayed as more advanced and civilized than those of their Native American neighbors, and their people far more enlightened than their conquerors. Cherokee leaders were temper
ate and blessed with unfailing wisdom.

  And finally, an hour into the play, there was Tsali’s story.

  Isolated on his farm in a remote valley, Tsali and his family of five lived a simple, idyllic life, until that day when the soldiers rode in and took them prisoners, marched them off toward a stockade where the others of their tribe were being assembled for their long trek west to Oklahoma. But when one of the soldiers used his bayonet to hurry up Tsali’s wife, wounding her, it set off a fierce struggle that resulted in two dead soldiers. The other two escaped.

  Fleeing into the mountains, Tsali and his family hid in a tiny cave. For weeks dozens of soldiers combed the dense forests without finding a trace.

  But Tsali’s mutinous behavior could not be tolerated. The army was determined to take whatever measures were necessary to capture the Cherokee and make an example of him. An entire regiment was sent into the mountains to seek the fugitives.

  Weeks passed, but every effort failed. As winter approached, the U.S. Army circulated an offer among the remaining Cherokees. If Tsali could be convinced to emerge from hiding and give himself up to execution, the few hundred Cherokees still living in the western Carolina mountains would be free to remain in their homeland.

  Learning of the proposal, Tsali spent days in deliberation. At last he and his family came down from their hiding place and turned themselves over to the military. Tsali and all but his youngest son and wife were placed before a firing squad and shot dead.

  Despite all its sentimental excess, Charlotte was caught off guard by the story. Maybe she was a sucker for altruism, or maybe it was just the strain from Gracey’s absence, but as Tsali gave up his life, Charlotte found she had to rub a finger hard across the bridge of her nose to keep the tears from flowing.

  “So?” Parker said, on their way up the aisle. “You see anything?”

  “I need to take a look at that gift shop again,” she said.