Forests of the Night (16 page)

“Two different eyewitnesses, two photo spreads.”

“Weak,” Parker said. “Never met a photo spread I couldn't dismantle.”

Charlotte groaned.

“What's wrong, I'm too sleazy for you?”

And again Charlotte heard it, embedded in the question, the faint reminder of her long-ago deliverance from jail. When she was behind bars, she sure as hell hadn't cared if Parker was sleazy or not. And she hadn't given a good goddamn about the finer points of jurisprudence that secured her release.

“Get serious, Parker. This is no setup. This is about Panther blowing up banks for his own twisted reasons. Real flesh-and-blood men and women dying, like that guy at the airport. I'd like to hear you explain that one away.”

“That one's different,” Parker said. “That one he did.”

“You're kidding? Panther did that, but not the banks?”

“I believe Jacob killed the man as a last resort. This man, Martin Tribue, what if he was working in tandem with whoever killed Mother? Say Jacob knew what was coming down and he intercepted the killer before he could carry out his mission. He got one but not the other. Or maybe he didn't know about the second killer. I don't know.”

“The son of a congressman is an assassin? That's your premise.”

“Gut instinct. Hunch, whatever you call it. It's my operating theory. Jacob intercepted the man at the airport, then came immediately to warn us. He was just getting around to it when Sheffield and the Keystone Kops arrived.”

Charlotte shook her head.

“All that's based on Jacob saying ‘You're next'? Jesus, Parker, for a logical, rational man, you're flying off into the ether.”

“I have Cardoza looking into Martin Tribue. We'll see where that goes. But that's my guess. Jacob's trying to save our lives.”

Miriam Cardoza had been Parker's investigator for more than twenty years. Pre-Charlotte. A police academy washout. Couldn't take the pushups, the running. A large lady, out of shape and getting heavier every year, but as smart and dogged as Parker and with endless aunts and uncles scattered through Little Havana and Hialeah. An indispensable virtue in South Florida.

“There's something we need to discuss, Charlotte.”

He set the book at his feet, and out of his briefcase he pulled out a manila envelope.

“That thing Mother said on the phone.” He cleared his throat, his voice parched. “Her last words.”

“I might've got it wrong,” Charlotte said. “Diana was mumbling.”

“You didn't get it wrong.”

“I said she should lie down. I was trying to keep her calm, and she called me a beloved woman.”

Parker shook his head.

“This wasn't about you. She wasn't giving you her blessing.”

He unlooped the string on the envelope, opened it, and held it out. She looked inside, inserted a finger, and tugged the opening wider, then reached in and drew out a flat, woven disk of beaded embroidery the size and heft of a silver dollar. Solid red on one side, a design on the other in beadwork of black and white and red. A pattern that struck her as vaguely familiar.

Staring at the bulkhead, Parker said, “This was in her safe-deposit box.”

“Something you made at summer camp?” Charlotte said. “A treasure from her little boy that she saved all these years.”

Parker looked at her and smiled, but his eyes were elsewhere, as if he'd sprinted a long way ahead of her on the logic path and was absorbing a different view entirely from what she saw.

Charlotte held the disk at arm's length and squinted.

“What is this? Some kind of Nazi crap?”

“That's a swastika, yeah,” he said. “But they were around forever before Hitler perverted them. Roman, Greek, Chinese. A good-luck image, symbol of power. This particular version is Cherokee.”

Charlotte recalled where she'd seen the design before, and a cold prickle radiated down her shoulders.

“This was on Panther's shirt.”

He nodded.

“All right, Parker, talk to me. What's going on?”

“This isn't a kid's summer camp project. Look at that beadwork—no gaps, perfect lines. You can't see knots or any sign of thread. It's seamless. This is as close to Cherokee high art as you can get.”

Parker bent forward and scooped the book from the floor and flopped it open to the page he'd tagged. A glossy color photograph showed a collection of embroidered disks. He pointed at one identical to the one in her hand.

“What are they?”

“These are facsimiles. Archaeologists have never actually found a real one. Only drawings, oral reports.”

“And this one, it's real?”

“I'm no expert, but my guess is that it is, yes.”

“All right. So what is it?”

Parker closed the book and slipped it back in his briefcase, and groaned as he hauled up a heavier volume. He paged through the book until he came to another section of color plates.

Tilting the book in her direction, he pointed to the same design of thick interlocking lines she'd seen on Jacob's shirt. The swastika shape was elegantly made, with rounded edges like the overlapping blades of two scythes.

In the color plate the design decorated an Indian's shield. The man wore a headdress of red and black feathers, and from the bottom of the shield dangled several more feathers. His loincloth was red, a scarlet cape hung across his shoulder, and in his right hand he gripped a bow and quiver of arrows. His chest was wide and rippled with heavy muscles, and around his neck hung some sort of amulet.

“A warrior,” she said.

“Not just any warrior. That's the Great War Chief in full regalia. For the Cherokees he was nearly a deity. President, general, pope, all in one.”

Parker's voice had grown raspy. She'd heard that happen during interrogations just before a hard-ass suspect broke down and confessed, as if so unaccustomed to admitting the truth, the words burned his throat with their own fierce bile.

“What's it doing in Diana's lockbox?”

Parker took extra care drawing a breath, as if priming himself for a tricky admission.

“Okay,” he said. “The phrase she used on the phone, Beloved Woman, that's an honorary title. It's pronounced ‘Ghi-ga-u' in Cherokee. A Beloved Woman was equal in status to this guy.” Parker tapped a finger against the Great War Chief. “Over thousands of years of Cherokee history, only a handful of women ever earned that title. Like a goddess, a kind of sainthood.”

Saint Diana, the Haughty
, was on her tongue, but she restrained herself.

“A Beloved Woman might come along once every other century. She had to be extraordinary in some way. Distinguish herself, make some enormous sacrifice, take a heroic risk. She became the subject of legend, stories that were passed on for generations.
Ghi-ga-u
. The Beloved Woman.”

Charlotte mumbled the phrase under her breath.

“Your mother's dying words were about Cherokee folklore?”

“It's not folklore. The Beloved Woman was real, she had true power. She sat in the Council of Chiefs. Had an equal say in all matters about the future of the nation. And she was the ultimate judge of all captured enemies. She decided their fate. Life-and-death authority. She was a central part of their culture for thousands of years, long before our benighted civilization built its first cathedral. The Beloved Woman was deciding who lived and who died.”

“Thumbs up, thumbs down.”

“Exactly.”

Parker closed his eyes, and his head dropped back against the seat. His expression was such a complex mixture of sadness, frustration, and fear, she was certain even Fedderman couldn't parse it.

“The tradition died out centuries ago,” Parker said. “The last Beloved Woman was Nanye-hi of the Wolf Clan. You want me to read her story? How she achieved her status?”

“Paraphrase is fine.”

He laid his head back against the seat and stared straight ahead.

“In a battle with the Creeks, when her husband was struck down, she ran onto the battlefield and took up his weapon and waded into the enemy, against overwhelming odds. Inspiring the other Cherokees, she single-handedly turned the tide and saved her people. For that, she was elevated to Beloved Woman.”

“So she becomes an honorary man.”

He gave her a swift, slicing look.

“This isn't about gender politics.”

“So what is it about? Say it. Speak the words.”

Parker shifted in his seat so he was facing her.

“I think it's pretty obvious, the common denominator here.”

“Not to me it isn't.”

“Red war club,” he said. “Great War Chief. Beloved Woman. I don't know who the combatants are or what it's about, Charlotte, but it looks to me like we're in the middle of some kind of war.”

Charlotte was silent, staring at Parker, waiting for him to smile, give her the punchline.

“That's what Jacob's trying to tell us. We're at war.”

“You're serious.”

“Very serious.”

“That's nuts, Parker. Totally and completely wacko.”

“I don't think so. I think Diana was a casualty. And I think we're out on the battlefield, too, in the line of fire.”

“And what's that make Gracey, a goddamn POW?”

“I think Jacob's trying to protect her. Get her out of harm's way.”

“By enticing her to run off to his cave in the forest?”

“He's on our side. I can't prove it, but that's what my gut says.”

“Your gut
always
says that.”

“This is different. We can trust Jacob.”

He brushed invisible crumbs off the lap of his khakis. He turned to her,
but his eyes dodged away. Not the gesture of a man about to tell a lie, but a man about to tell a truth that was more than he could bear.

“There's something I never told you about Mother.”

“Oh, God, here we go.”

Charlotte stuffed the pages of Panther's file back in the folder. She looked across the aisle at the drunk. He was smiling at her. Not only flexing his zygomatic major, but also tightening his orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis, the muscle encircling the eye. A genuine smile, impossible to fake. A 100 percent, no-bullshit, big, sloppy, alcoholic grin.

Charlotte raised her hand and caught the flight attendant's attention, and pointed to the man's Bloody Mary, then pointed at herself. The attendant nodded and set to work making her drink.

“Okay,” Charlotte said, turning back to Parker. “Hit me.”

“Diana's father was Giovanni Parisi.”

“Yeah, and her mother was Millie Walker.”

“Walkingstick,” he said. “Millie Walkingstick. A full-blooded Cherokee.”

The flight attendant came around the edge of the galley and handed her the drink. Charlotte thanked her and took a healthy taste, then another.

“You sure you should be drinking?”

“Damn sure,” she said.

He sighed and brushed more crumbs from his lap.

“Both my grandparents were dead by the time I was five. I may have met Millie Walkingstick once or twice, but I have no clear memories.”

“I don't get it. Your dad revered Cherokees. Why would he go along?”

“Maybe Mother was ashamed of her heritage. I don't know why, exactly. But Dad honored her wishes. That's how he was.”

“How long have you known this?”

“A few years. She wanted me to know my roots. I got the feeling there was something more she wanted to say, but she lost her nerve.”

“Your roots. So she was half Cherokee, which makes you, what, a quarter? And Gracey an eighth? That how it works?”

“I suppose it does.”

“And this Beloved Woman thing, let me get this straight. Because this badge is in Diana's lockbox, you're suggesting she's one of those? A female war chief?”

“What I think is…” He reached out and took the drink from her hand and swallowed what was left and set it down between them. “I think Mother did something heroic, something extraordinary for her people. I don't know what, I don't know when, but it's part of this thing.”

“Part of this war, you mean.”

He nodded and his eyes drifted shut. His lips flattened as if he were straining to hold back a howl.

For the last hundred miles Steven Spielberg had been whispering inside Gracey's head, challenging her to quit whining about the smell that rose from her unwashed body, the lanky mess that her hair had become, the broken nail, a small ragged tear that continually snagged on the bus seat beneath her. He wanted her to embrace her discomfort, learn from it. She mumbled back that she was trying. Try harder, he said. You want to open up the depths of your inner life, you need to be on a first-name basis with pain.

Okay, okay, she was working on it. She was. Steven went on talking, same theme, same words, over and over.

Gracey felt herself drifting away.

She had no idea buses were so slow, that they stopped so often, let people off, took more on. She could have walked the same route almost as fast. After ditching the car, she'd gone to the Jacksonville bus station, sleeping on a bench for a while, then leaving at eleven, and now it was late afternoon, the bus stopping at one little nowhere town after another. Ever since the stop in Hardeeville, South Carolina, she'd been wedged in beside a young black man in overalls and a white dress shirt buttoned to his throat. He was muscular and kept his hands cupped in his lap, and he smelled like
a smokehouse where hams were cured or perhaps the insides of a barn where tobacco dried. He smelled like the Deep South, like red clay baking in the endless sun.

Gracey'd been smelling the man and listening to Steven's plans for her, his urgings, his wild flipping of the channels in her mind. She adored Steven and respected his artistic work but was beginning to have faint doubts about things working out between them. Their partnership.

He was so different from her. So much older, so much more accomplished. She could hear Mr. Underwood talking, too, like a voice on a phone line bleeding in from the background.

The bus stopped in downtown Columbia, but Gracey stayed in her seat, didn't even get off to pee, stretch her legs, buy crackers, or anything, because Jacob Panther had begun speaking to her.

His words were shaped with perfect edges, like photographs in super-sharp focus. Every word he'd spoken to her still hovered like a tangy flavor that wouldn't die.

She sat on the bus and finally it pulled away and chugged back onto the highway and she sat back and watched the miles.

Gracey was tired and her back ached and she smelled the black man next to her. His honest scent. She listened to the voices flipping the channels in her head. Listening to them all, but she kept returning to Jacob's words, which burned deeper, brighter, and seemed louder somehow than even Steven's voice. Though she knew Jacob had made no movies, probably had not even seen a movie. Still, it was Jacob's voice she heard above all else.

He repeated everything he'd said in their one meeting. The exact words in the exact order, like a memory, only newer and more real than it had been the first time. He repeated it all—where she could find him, the names and numbers she should look for, the towns along the way, the mountain ranges, telling her all of it again in his fast, efficient, effortless voice. Jacob Panther. Her half brother.

With Jacob Panther's voice speaking to her, Gracey rode through the late afternoon with hunger crawling cold and irritable in her belly, smelling herself, the scent of Gracey Monroe, her true nature seeping past the layer of deodorant, the dab of cologne, the fabric softener in her blue cotton top, the stink of her own humanity rising into the air all about her.

She rode into the heavy gray dusk, the bus leaving the straight four-lane interstate and going into the mountains, where the road began to snake upward and on every other turn she was rocked against the black man, her shoulder bumping his and every time he said “Excuse me” and again on the next bump “Excuse me” until his voice became music in her head, a bass accompaniment to Steven's and Mr. Underwood's and Jacob Panther's and her own mother's voice, too, chiming in, begging her get off the bus and call her and tell her she was all right, which Gracey knew was the right thing to do, but she wasn't about to do it, she was so mad at her mother, at all the rules, at the way she'd tried to capture Jacob, send him to prison without even knowing who he was, Gracey thinking about her mother, all the time with the music going in the background, the black man like a deep bass, excuse me, excuse me.

Excuse me, as the highway twisted back on itself and the bus seemed way too big for the narrow, snaking road and the night darkened and then she was dozing, still swimming in voices when the bus stopped again, and Gracey opened her eyes and looked at a small outpost in the cool, damp mountains, a lit store with bugs swirling at the lamps and men standing around doing nothing, a general store with a sign out front that was the sign Jacob Panther had mentioned, the name of the little town, and the black man said “Excuse me” as she climbed across his legs and dragged her knapsack and she said “Excuse me” back to him and walked down the aisle with the others, mostly gamblers going to the casino, for she'd heard them talking about slots and blackjack for the last hour, and she followed them down the steps, the bus driver saying “Good luck” to each of them as they stepped down, but Gracey didn't reply because she was listening to Jacob Panther's voice, what he'd said in the hallway in her house in Coral Gables, about a specific location where he could be found, a place that she had to keep very very very secret, could tell no one about except her dad, only her dad, because if anybody else found out about it, the men with guns would come for him and handcuff him and send him away to the gas chamber.

She wanted to see him again. She wanted to hear his voice in the flesh. “Excuse me,” she said to one of the men standing doing nothing, “excuse me, could you give me directions?”

“I can give you more than directions,” the man said.

The other men chuckled. Gracey looked at the man carefully. He didn't seem dangerous. He was short and dumpy and had sideburns down to his chin. He chewed on something in his cheek.

“More than directions?” she said.

It was dark and cold. Nippy, her father would say, sweater weather. Up in the mountains in June with bugs swirling at the lights, battling to be warm, to burn themselves up in the electric glow. She looked around at the men doing nothing. Men in overalls and baseball hats and sweatshirts that didn't cover their big bellies, a couple of them holding small paper sacks, some sitting on benches outside the general store. No women she could see. But no one looked dangerous. Not really. Not like dangerous men looked in Miami. These men looked lazy and slow and slightly comical.

“You need a lift?” the man said.

“She ain't even told you where she's aheaded.”

“Don't matter,” the man said. “I'm going that way.”

The men chuckled.

“I'd sure as shit head that away if I had me a fucking car,” a younger man said. “I'd head that way in a red-hot minute.”

“Don't be talking like that, Seth. Don't be spoiling his fun.”

“You can just point the way,” Gracey said. “I don't mind walking.”

“Suit yourself,” the man said. “But if it's around here, I'll be knowing where to find it. Don't listen to these nitwits. Trying to put worrisome ideas in your head.”

Gracey decided the man was okay and followed him to his truck and climbed inside. A green Chevy that smelled like mud and wet dogs and stale cigarettes with trash on the floor at her feet.

She told him where she was going, the place Jacob had told her, and he thought about it a second and said, sure, he knew where it was. Kind of out of the way spot, but it wasn't more than ten, fifteen minutes.

He drove her up a dark, winding road, his headlights were dim like they were filmed with crud, and he drove slow, looking over at her as they went, Gracey keeping her eyes forward, the man whistling to himself, the man driving slower and slower, peering into the dark at each of the narrow lanes that disappeared into the trees like he was choosing the place to take her and do what he wanted, with Gracey hearing silence in her head, no one
talking to her, no one advising or warning or anything, like they'd all gone off together, Steven and Jacob and Mr. Underwood, Joan and Barbara, to gossip among themselves and left her alone with this man who hadn't told her his name, and kept glancing over at her.

“You in some kind of trouble with the law?”

Gracey said no, not that she knew of. “Why do you ask?”

“ 'Cause I think that's Johnny Law on our tail right now. It's one of them cars they drive.”

Gracey looked back and could see only a single set of headlights.

“You want me to stop, see what they want?”

“No,” she said. “I want to go where I said.”

“All right, then. I'd best lose these peckerwoods.”

As the road swung hard to the right, the man shut off his headlights and swerved his wheel the other way and bumped onto a gravel road. Gracey hadn't seen it coming. She saw no sign out on the road, listening hard now to her own head, to catch any shred of voice that might be counseling her what to do. Jump out of the door, run? What?

Behind them out on the highway, the headlights went flying past.

The man continued to drive down the gravel lane. Then another one that was even narrower. He made two more turns and then stopped in the middle of the muddy road and looked all around.

“Are we lost?” She heard her voice, how shrill it was and that frightened her more.

“No, ma'am. I don't get lost. These are my woods back here.”

He drove on for a while, making more turns down bumpy roads, deep potholes sending paper cups and crushed beer cans tumbling off his dashboard onto her lap.

“Where we going?”

“I reckon this is where you said.”

He turned down an even narrower lane, branches clawing at the truck's sides, rocks kicking up against the bottom of the truck.

Then she saw the sign, hand-painted and nailed crooked to a tree, the name of the campground Jacob had told her.

And the dumpy man, her driver, helped Gracey find the exact camping spot, shining a flashlight out his window at the silver numbers nailed to
wooden posts. It took him ten minutes more, and Gracey knew she couldn't have done it without him. She would've gotten lost, been attacked by bears, she would have died of cold and fright and loneliness, withered up in a pile of leaves and blown away in the first winter gale. The man in the truck wasn't dangerous. She'd been right, her instincts about him. He was a good man. She'd trusted him and he was good.

“I expect that's it, yonder. Right there in the headlights.”

It was a camper, like a Winnebago only half the size. There was a stone pit next to it with the last of a smoldering fire. Dim lights shone inside the camper, and someone moved behind the curtains. It had started to sprinkle, smearing the dirty windshield.

“You going to be all right out here in the dark, little girl?” the man asked.

“I'll be fine,” Gracey said. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Name's Earl. You need any help while you're in these parts, ask anybody. Ain't but one Earl for miles around. You hear me now?”

“I hear you.” And she shook his offered hand. He held on a little too long, then let go and smiled at her with something sad in his eyes. Like he'd been scared, too, but couldn't admit it. Scared of himself, what he wanted to do.

Gracey walked to the camper and stepped up to the door.

Earl waited till her knock was answered and the door opened a crack.

It was a woman. Dark hair cut short, pretty face with dark, glossy eyes. Her slender hand holding the door.

“I'm looking for Jacob Panther.”

“Are you now? Then that makes you one of many.”

“My name's Gracey Monroe,” she said.

The woman frowned and look past her into the night.

“Where's your dad?”

“It's just me. I'm alone.”

Earl tapped his horn and called out to see if she was in the right place.

“Am I in the right place?” Gracey asked the woman.

The woman waved at Earl and he backed his truck into the night.

“You were supposed to tell your dad to come, not come yourself.”

“What?”

“Did you tell your father where to find this place?”

“I didn't know I was supposed to.”

“Goddamn it,” the woman said. “I told Jacob it wouldn't work.”

“You wanted my dad? I thought Jacob asked me to come.”

“Hell, no,” the woman said. “You're just a girl. What good are you?”

Tears burned Gracey's eyes. She took a backward glance at Earl's taillights disappearing through the trees.

“Aw, hell. It's all right, don't sweat it,” the woman said. “We'll work something out.”

The woman opened the door a few inches and Gracey could see she wore blue jeans and a black tank top. She was beautiful in a dark-eyed, foreign way like Cuban women sometimes were, but this woman wasn't Cuban. A Cherokee maybe. A little too old to be Jacob's girlfriend, but pretty enough for the job.

“I'm Lucy,” the woman said, putting out her hand out for a shake. “Lucy Panther. Come on in out of the damp.”