Forests of the Night (20 page)

“She have anything?”

“Your old friend Lucy graduated from Appalachian State University with a teaching degree. Next twenty years she taught fifth-grade English at the tribal school. Tutored kids in the summer. Her credit history is spotty. Lot of late payments on her car. Never married. No police record.”

He considered that a moment, then said, “Anything relevant?”

“As for relevant,” she said, “a year ago, when her son started blowing up banks, she walked away from her job. Feds think she's aiding and abetting Jacob's bombing campaign. Every month or so they get a warrant, track her down, and toss the place where she's living. But they haven't turned up anything.”

He was silent for a while, concentrating on the steep rise, the sharp turns. Tailgated by an SUV that finally barreled by in a short passing lane. She kept working over the rearview mirror, and thought once she saw a white pickup a long way back, but with all the twists in the road she wasn't sure.

“This Echota, what is it?”

“Nothing special. A single-room log cabin on a little knoll my dad named Inspiration Point.”

“Well, great, I've been needing some inspiration.”

She looked out her window at a stream rushing alongside the road. A man fly-fishing around some smooth, gray boulders. So calm.

“Every summer a man we called Uncle Mike stayed in that cabin. Piled with books, snakeskins, arrowheads, all kinds of stuff. He and my father were
very close. Uncle Mike handled all the folklore stuff. Taught us the tribal dances, Cherokee history. I revered that man. Next to Dad, he was my role model. Echota was off by itself. It'd be a good place for Jacob to hole up.”

They were quiet while Parker navigated the steep, narrow road. Then Charlotte remembered something from the night before.

“I had a dream,” she said. “In the ten minutes I was asleep last night.”

“Yeah?”

“I was supposed to read these faces, you know, like the Fedderman thing. Only these weren't whole people, they were just a bunch of heads sitting on a shelf. Like severed heads, you know, disembodied but still alive, looking at me. And it's my job to see what's going on in their minds. And it's important. Like life or death. You know how dreams get. You're not sure why it's life and death, but it is. Ten faces, eight or nine. I don't remember.”

“Gothic,” he said.

“Yeah, it gets better. Because I couldn't do it. I studied their faces and I wasn't sure. All these weird pumpkin heads on a shelf, and I couldn't tell a damn thing about who was thinking what. So all of a sudden I've got an ax in my hand. The ax from the other night, at Diana's. It just materialized, and I'm going down the row and splitting open all the heads. Melons, pumpkins, whatever. Splitting them open to see what's inside.”

“And?”

“Just seeds. Seeds and pulp. Nothing. Empty like half a dozen scooped out jack-o'-lanterns.”

Parker was quiet.

“So what's it mean—you got any idea?”

“I'm a lawyer, not a shrink.”

“Take a stab, go on. I won't sue for malpractice.”

“You're angry, frustrated, under stress. You doubt yourself. Losing faith in your abilities. Like you thought you had Frank Sheffield figured out, and it turns out you were dead wrong. Now you're not sure of yourself.”

She looked at her watch. Three hours left.

“That's good, Parker. I wouldn't give up the day job just yet, but that's good.”

The sky was a deeper tone of blue than Miami could manage. An icy cobalt that seemed to soar at a greater distance from the earth than any sky Charlotte remembered. More ancient, more vast, as if this was the same sky that had witnessed the first dawn.

The breeze was cool and scented with pine and last year's decomposing leaves, with a faint undertone of wood smoke and old leather. Like the smell of a horse barn long abandoned.

As they crossed the Tsali campground, Parker and Charlotte took a quick look around before hiking the rest of the way up to Echota. The abandoned cabins appeared remarkably intact after decades of neglect. Some decay here and there, lots of head-high patches of jewelweed, and clumps of pines growing from the pitcher's mound and more in center field. Only a few of the larger buildings were beginning to sag on their foundations.

The remains of Parker's family home had been bulldozed to level ground. Over the years the charcoal from the fire had leached into the dirt and clay, and the grass grew patchy there. Jutting from the earth, a few large foundation stones formed the outlines of the old dwelling.

Parker's pace slowed and his gaze swiveled from side to side.

“Lot of ghosts?” she said.

“Like you can't imagine.”

The trail to Inspiration Point was only about a mile long, but far steeper and more rugged than the climb they'd tackled the night before. Her haunches were throbbing already and going to be worse tomorrow. Despite a temperature in the low fifties, she'd soaked through her green top. Parker wore a blue denim shirt, a different pair of khakis, same boots. Preppy woodsman.

When they mounted the final hump in the trail, the land leveled and spread into a grassy meadow with a tiny cabin perched near the edge of a drop-off.

Inspiration Point had a 180-degree panorama of mountain ranges, miles of jagged ridges stacked back to back, blurring away into the smoky distance. Charlotte started to count them, just to keep her mind busy, anything to distract herself from her wristwatch. She gave up at six ranges. There were more behind those, but her eyes were burning from the effort.

Above her head, in a maple tree, a mockingbird ran through its playlist. The first wispy leaves of the new season jittered in an accompanying breeze.

Parker was silent, absorbing the view, or perhaps traveling back to the thousand other moments he'd gazed out at those same timeless hills.

“Looks deserted.”

A small stone chimney ran up one side of the cabin, and a single window faced their direction. Its greasy panes were opaque, faintly reflecting the dull shine of the sun like a mirror that had lost its silver backing.

The cabin was two hundred yards off, no way to approach it except across that open field.

“Hear anyone in the woods on the way up?”

Parker shook his head, taking the question seriously.

“You knew those SWAT guys were out there last night, didn't you? You heard them, but you kept on going.”

“I heard them,” Parker said.

“I never thought of you as having acutely sensitive hearing.”

“Apparently I'm more gifted than you know.”

“I'm finding that out.”

The rough edge between them was still there, but smoothing. His worry
lines had loosened, his eyes letting go of the strain, the knot in his brow coming undone. She assumed it was because of their imminent reunion with Gracey, or maybe his crying jag in the hotel.

As they crossed the meadow, Parker continued to gaze out at the peaks, a solid span of green broken only here and there with giant boulders or cliff faces. A hawk circled the valley between their position and the closest hills.

“The name doesn't do the place justice,” she said.

“I made a bunch of promises up here. Right in this field. Things I vowed to accomplish.”

“That's the kind of place it is.”

“I haven't done half of them yet,” he said.

“Those are hard promises to keep. Ones we made so young. When we didn't know if the earth was flat or round.”

He looked at her, mouth drawn into a reluctant smile.

He looked at his watch, and damn it, she gave in and looked at hers. Another fifteen minutes burned. Still a long way to five o'clock.

She marched ahead, the final twenty yards to the cabin, Parker following. If there was anybody in there, they'd had plenty of time to get ready.

At the steps, she drew the Beretta from her backpack, set the bag in the grass, lifted the metal latch, and with a foot against the base of the door, she toed it inward. Creaking hinges and a rush of stale air.

She jammed her pistol into the opening, ducking in behind it, looked around, and drew back.

“Nobody's home,” she said. “But somebody definitely lives here.”

She held the door open, then followed Parker inside, standing behind him while he surveyed the room.

Two stuffed owls sat high on a shelf. A kerosene lantern hung from a center beam, and books and magazines and newspapers littered the floor. In one corner a cot had been wedged flush against the log walls, the sheets rumpled and thrown open. In the center of the plank floor there was a red and green serape stretched out as a rug. Leather sandals and rumpled clothes were scattered here and there. The windows at the front were missing.

Charlotte drew open the door to a wardrobe and found a half-dozen pinstriped suits hanging neatly and a full shelf of shoes, black and cordovan
polished to a high military gloss. On the back of the door were several clipon bow ties in floral prints and paisleys.

Parker looked at the clothes and shrugged.

She shut the door and turned back to the room.

Beneath the largest window was a solid oak table that had been converted to a desk. It was cluttered with papers and narrow green books that had the look of ledgers.

In the midst of the mess sat a laptop computer with a wire running from its modem to a bright blue cell phone, its aerial extended. On the computer screen was an elaborate spreadsheet, columns of numbers.

She said, “Those sure as hell aren't Jacob Panther's clothes.”

“Whoever it is, he has no right to be here. Property's been closed for thirty years. It's private land, no trespassing.”

“So arrest me,” a man said from the doorway.

Charlotte swung her aim to the man, but he held out his empty hands and she lowered it.

He was short and stooped, and his wispy white hair draped forward over his bent shoulders and brushed the middle of his chest. His clothes appeared to be stitched from animal skins, shapeless and loose. Simple moccasins, no jewelry or adornment. He had a hawkish nose and his face was a moonscape of crags and wrinkles. A desiccated Merlin in his mountain lair, his flesh as pale and filmy as an apparition's.

He smiled at Charlotte and held out her backpack.

“This would be yours?”

She took it and slipped her pistol back into place as Parker was saying, “Uncle Mike? Is that you?”

“Thought I'd died?”

“My god.”

“A lot of people make that mistake. See me one day, can't believe I'm around the next.”

Parker came forward and opened his arms and the man stepped into the embrace and returned it, both of them clapping the other on the back.

When they broke apart, Parker introduced the old man to Charlotte. No last name, just Uncle Mike. And he took her hand and held it in his dry grasp and looked into her eyes with such penetrating frankness that for a
moment she thought she felt him roaming through her thoughts.

“I have so many questions.” Parker had begun to pace the tiny room, from desk to cot and back again.

Charlotte glanced at her watch. Three hours left.

“After the fire, and the camp closed, you stayed behind?”

He nodded. In a fey gesture, his left hand swayed through the air at waist level as if his palm was riding bumpy currents of wind.

“Nowhere else I wanted to be. Now I look after things around the old place. Chase off the occasional real-estate developer.”

Parker drew the beaded disk from his shirt pocket and extended it to Uncle Mike. The man held his ground but drew his head back an inch or two.

“You know what this is?”

“I do.”

“It belonged to Mother.”

“Apparently she was a Beloved Woman.”

“Why? What did she do to deserve this?”

“I suppose she did what all of them did. She was valiant and took grave personal risks that changed the course of Cherokee history.”

“You're kidding,” Charlotte said. “Diana?”

“I don't do much of that,” said Uncle Mike. “Kid.”

“Specifically,” Parker said. “What did she do specifically?”

“I'm not privileged to the inner workings of the tribe. A select group of elders make these decisions. Their identities are secret. But from what I gather, Diana showed great courage on the night your father died. And this honor was bestowed on her as a result.”

“You don't know any more than that?”

“My guess would be no better than your own.”

But his eyes dipped as he spoke the words. A slippery man.

“You know something,” Charlotte said. “Go on, say it.”

Uncle Mike brought his gaze to hers and waved away the thought like a housefly.

“So tell me, Parker. Where did you and Diana go after you left Camp Tsali? Where in the world did you vanish to?”

“Florida,” he said. “Miami. But why do you say ‘vanish'?”

“Because Diana cut off all contact with her old friends. The two of you left and that's the last anyone around these parts heard from her.”

“Maybe she couldn't face the reminders of Dad's death, even old friends.”

“Perhaps,” said Mike, looking away. “I'm sure she had her reasons.”

“What're you driving at? You got something to say, stop being cute and say it.” Charlotte watched the stippled shadows move across Uncle Mike's face from a cloud's quick passage. He caught her scrutiny and dropped his eyes, ducking his chin, and Charlotte saw something flicker across his face in the half-second before his look was transformed by a smile.

It was a flash of some feverish emotion. A fleeting squeeze of brow, the fierce, unmistakable glitter in the eyes and the tightening around them, as though a wince of memory had knifed through him but he had shunted it aside.

And there was something else, a simpler observation based only on quantity of eye contact. He was favoring Charlotte two to one over Parker, as if he had sized her up as the greater threat or else the harder sell.

“Please, Uncle Mike. Mother was murdered and my daughter's run away. She's up here somewhere, and we believe she's in danger.”

“Diana murdered? When did this happen?”

“Tuesday night,” Charlotte said. “What do you know about it?”

He looked at her and shook his head slowly and the inner corner of his eyebrows rose and his lower lip pouted out. The physiology of generic sadness. Honest enough, but the look passed too quickly to be deeply felt, the way one registered the death of someone who'd been gravely ill for years. A death already processed—meaning either he had known about her murder, or else suspected such a thing was imminent.

“Look, Uncle Mike.” Parker reached out and took hold of the old man's sleeve. “Anything you might've heard about this Beloved Woman thing could be helpful. We're running low on time.”

“And patience,” Charlotte said.

Uncle Mike's expression relaxed to its neutral state. The half-smile of someone adroit at staying out of range of the difficulties of others.

Gently, he tugged his sleeve from Parker's grasp and pulled out his chair and took a sideways perch, looking at Parker for one tick, Charlotte for
two. His free hand continued to smooth the air like a conductor keeping the woodwinds on tempo.

“May I suggest that if you find yourself with some free time on your hands and a hankering for some enlightening entertainment, you purchase tickets to the pageant?”

“Pageant?” Charlotte looked at Parker.

“You mean
Unto These Hills
,” Parker said.

Uncle Mike nodded.

That particular drama was, as Charlotte knew, the reenactment of Cherokee history, with special emphasis on the life of the namesake of the summer camp where they stood. And it was also, of course, the site of Parker's first encounter with Lucy Panther.

“I've seen it a dozen times, Uncle Mike. What am I going to learn I don't already know?”

“A man sees different things at different stages of life. You're familiar with the story they were telling, but I suspect you missed the hidden one.”

“What's your game?” she said. “Why won't you talk straight?”

Uncle Mike held Charlotte's gaze.

“Did you happen to notice the view off Inspiration Point, young lady?”

She said yes, of course she'd noticed it.

“You hiked all the way up here, just over five thousand feet. Florida people like you, flatlanders, your legs must be sore.”

“We're surviving,” she said.

“Think that view would look the same if you'd driven your car?”

As Uncle Mike's hand undulated through the air, she heard a cardinal on a limb just outside and realized the old man's hand moved in time with its song as though one of them, bird or man, was in service to the other.

“If you had used your car,” Mike said, “you wouldn't appreciate the view half as much. It was a core belief of Parker's father, as it is of mine. Unless you earn it, it's not truly yours. Simple as that. The rest is spiritual burglary.”

“Come on, Parker,” she said. “This is a waste.”

“If I simply blurted out to you everything I know,” said the old man, “you would find it unfathomable. It would be like describing that view to a man blind from birth. A challenge that neither of us could meet.”

“Try us.”