These men in the forest didn’t encircle the couple. Didn’t have to. They didn’t think anyone was watching. No guard towers. No rival gangs. No one. Palmer wanted to do something. Say something. If only he had a gun. The man in the middle carried a lever-action rifle. The girl held her hands up, like her palms could deflect death. The young man started to say something when a bullet hit him between the eyes. The girl screamed. It was the most horrific scream Palmer had ever heard. The man in the middle shot her in the chest. She fell to her knees, one hand clutching her wound.
As the man stepped closer, the girl reached for the box next to her, a trembling bloody hand on one of the cardboard flaps. Then the man stood over her and fired a shot into the back of her head the moment a lone butterfly flew from the box.
Palmer felt bile erupt in the back of his throat. He coughed.
One man looked his way. Palmer ducked farther back, dropping his water jug and running. Had he been seen? Heard? Or was it a coincidence that the man looked his way. Regardless, Palmer wouldn’t forget the man’s face. He’d seen it earlier. He ran as fast as he could. Ran toward the spring. He’d hide deep in the jungles. He tripped, falling on his outstretched palms. Was it a root that tripped him? He sat up and looked at the dark hose. It was partially buried beneath leaves as it made its way toward the spring.
Run! He could hear the men in the distance. A second shot rang out.
Run! The echo from the shot reverberated through Palmer’s soul as he ran deeper into the forest. He ran through growth so dense he couldn’t see the sun. Sweat rained from his face. Plants ripped and bloodied his arms and chest. He’d gone at least a mile when his lungs felt like acid was bubbling up, legs rubbery. Too weak to go. Run! He stumbled and fell. He lay there. Breathing. Listening. Palmer watched a tick crawl onto his arm. He didn’t have the strength to knock it off his skin. For a full two minutes, he lay on his stomach as the tick began to feed.
Sunlight warmed the back of his neck when he looked up at the largest oak tree he’d seen. Some twenty feet away, he could barely make out on old carving etched into the tree.
He managed to get to his knees as he pulled the tick from his skin and studied the carving in the tree. Through the years, the two hearts had changed as the tree grew, the trunk expanding, the carving changing.
The two hearts looked like a pair of butterfly wings.
For the first time in forty years, Luke Palmer allowed himself to cry.
THIRTY
When Sherri was alive she loved my “gourmet cooking,” hated my cleaning. She called the cooking real but the cleaning superficial. She treasured my attention to detail with food and with her but didn’t like the way I introduced dishes to soap and water. Since it’s been Max and me, I’ve made an effort to keep the dishes, and the house, cleaner than my genetic handicap would permit.
I thought about that as I was dusting the old house before Elizabeth Monroe’s arrival later this afternoon. Would her female radar pick up on unidentified dirt? Times like this I wished Max could mimic a bird dog. She could scout behind the furniture, stop, freeze and point to a hiding dust bunny poised to leap when a breeze came across the screened porch and blew through the house.
Maybe we’d eat on the dock.
I was listening to a bluesy tune by Kelly Joe Phelps as I made the salad and marinated the two pieces of red snapper. I stored them in the refrigerator and waited for Elizabeth to arrive. I hadn’t met many women since Sherri’s death. Dating seemed odd. For that matter, life seemed abnormal after I released her ashes at sea. But, for sanity, you move on best you can or calcify. Some of the women I’d met had their lives somehow knocked out of trajectory, which was too much for me to handle after losing the woman I had adored. Nick told stories of birds, even sparrows, caught in air currents and blown out to sea. They’d land on his boat, feathers frayed, wet with perspiration, tattered from exhaustion. He’d nurse them back to health. He said one sparrow liked to sit on his head, resting at times in his hair like it was a nest. After icing down the day’s catch, Nick would drink ouzo, play his guitar and sing in Greek to the bird. He swore one night the little sparrow started singing to him, long chirping calls.
When Nick’s boat got within sight of land, his company would take flight, the bird’s world brought back into perspective with a new horizon. That had been my story with some of the women I’d met in the last couple of years. Leslie Moore had not been one of them. She was a gifted detective who was murdered by her boss, a former police lieutenant on the take. Now he’s doing a life stretch in Raiford.
Max barked. She jumped off her chair and trotted to the front door. “That’s Elizabeth. Greet her warmly, okay?” Max looked at me over her shoulder as she approached the door. For a moment I thought she nodded.
When I opened the door, I wish I’d spent more time cleaning. Elizabeth was beyond stunning. “Come in,” I said. She brought a physical presence into the room so total I felt the old house itself took notice. She wore her hair back, face radiant, small pearl earrings with a matching necklace. Her white blouse was feminine without frills. The curvature of her legs and hips made her black pants come alive.
“Well, hello Max,” she said entering and holding a pie. “Since you seemed to like the pie at my restaurant, I baked a whole one. Sean, where can I put this?”
“Thank you. Kitchen’s right past the living room.”
“I love the feel of your home, the fireplace, the wood. This place has character.”
“It’s got a wow factor for me, but there's still a lot of work left to be done to bring the character back of yesterday while adding the conveniences of today. The plumbing works. That was my first job.”
She smiled and followed me to the kitchen. I set her pie down and said, “Make yourself at home. What would you like to drink?”
“You mentioned chardonnay when you were going over the menu on the phone.”
“Chardonnay it is.” I got a chilled bottle out of the refrigerator, popped the cork and filled two glasses. “I also promised you a sunset. Let’s walk down to the dock.”
“Oh, what a wonderful porch. And the view of the river… this is breathtaking. How’d you find this old house?”
“I grew up in DeLand. I remembered the place all these years. As a kid, I fished and played on this river. Its waters are a kind of catharsis for me. When I decided to come back, I wanted to see if the old Parker place was for sale. It was in foreclosure.”
“Well, it’s a great place. To the dock and a sunset? I’ll follow your lead.”
I smiled. “We’ll both follow Max’s lead.”
My cell phone rang. It sat on the table next to the picture of Sherri. “She’s beautiful,” Elizabeth said, picking up the framed photo.
“That was my wife, Sherri. She died from ovarian cancer.”
“I’m so sorry. How long has it been?”
“Two years.”
“They say time heals most things. Sometimes.”
“The cut still bleeds.”
“I understand.”
Elizabeth set the picture down, and I glanced at my cell. The caller ID wasn’t a call I anticipated or wanted.
I wondered if Detective Lewis had left a message.
THIRTY-ONE
An amber sunset filtered through the tall trees in the forest as Luke Palmer looked for a place to stretch his plastic tarp between two trees. He’d hunker down in the thicket away from the killers. Were they still tracking him? Didn’t think so, but they might be back in the morning. He’d find the big ol’ oak again, dig for the dough and get out of the woods. This world, a world with no bars, was too fuckin’ crazy.