Forests of the Night Read online

  Thirty minutes later the two of them were in jail. Next day Charlotte was assigned a young public defender named Parker Monroe. In the deposition, she gave him her complete hard-luck story back to the beginning of time, went on to describe her total shock that Teddy Miles would commit robbery and murder. She didn’t even know the jerk had a gun. Parker listened, nodding. Then he told her quietly about the get-tough policy of the current DA, a woman running for reelection. Usual sentence for accessory in felony murder was twenty-five to life. The new sentencing guidelines made no distinction between the shooter and his accomplices. Everyone was charged the same. And given the current politics, the DA might press for the death penalty. But he’d give it a shot, see what he could do. Saying it all in his gentle, measured voice. Reassuring, but no guarantees.

  Three days passed before he showed up again. By then Charlotte had cried herself dry. He sat down across from her at the stark metal table and smiled. Parker had done his magic in judge’s chambers. The surveillance tape backed her up. He gave himself no credit, but Charlotte was forever convinced her freedom was due to Parker Monroe’s gift, his utter faith in his client’s innocence, and his plainspoken style. Teddy got thirty to life. Charlotte’s record was expunged. An innocent party to another’s vicious impulse.

  After a year of steady dating she moved in with Parker, and three years after that, when she graduated from the local university, they eloped to Vegas. Giddy in love. This handsome Harvard boy rescued her from prison and an equally tawdry future back in Tennessee. She had to love him. No choice. Two parts gratitude, an equal measure of love and attraction all churning in her gut. Now, almost two decades later, she was still doing penance for her sins, serving and protecting, and still feeling indebted to this man who’d won her freedom. It nagged at her sometimes, Charlotte unsure what portion of her love for Parker was based on thankfulness. And why the hell a man like him had married down, plucking her from the lower classes, anointing her. What had she done to deserve any of it? Most of the time she managed to let it go. Knowing how goddamn lucky she’d been to draw Parker Monroe that day, not one of the harried public defenders she’d met since.

  In a quieter voice, all the macho drained away, Jesus said, “Fact is, I’d get bored with fishing. A week or two, I’d be begging for my shield back.”

  Max walked into the flare of headlights and rubbed his back against the rear tire of the pickup. The red truck had Volusia County plates—Daytona Beach area. None of their friends drove pickups.

  Romero’s radio crackled and they grew quiet and listened. Suspicious character sighted in front of a jewelry store at Merrick Place—the hoity-toity shopping center in the heart of Coral Gables.

  “Suspicious character,” Charlotte said. “At Merrick Place that would be anyone not wearing Manolo Blahniks.”

  “Manolowhat?”

  “Shoes. Expensive shoes.”

  Jesus nodded, tried to smile.

  It was their longest conversation since her rookie days, when Jesus was her mentor. In the years since, Charlotte had passed up promotions, choosing to stay on patrol while Jesus worked his way up to major-crimes detective. Bully for him. He had five kids, needed the extra pay, and had no problem with the dismal crime scenes, investigations going cold, getting filed away. Charlotte preferred the tang of the street. Eight edgy hours, no two days alike. People in need, panicked, confused, jacked up on fury. Drunks, heart attacks, family violence, robberies in progress. Volatile situations, brief windows when it was still possible to make a difference.

  “You hear what your husband did today?”

  She grimaced and nodded. She’d caught a glimpse of Parker on the waiting room TV on her way out. Lead story on the five o’clock news.

  “I don’t get it.” Jesus thumped his knuckles against the steering wheel. “Kid shoots his coach in the face and doesn’t even get thirty days. No probation, nothing. Little turdball struts out of the courthouse smiling.”

  “Parker’s good at what he does.”

  “Too good, you ask me.”

  “There’s always two sides.”

  “You starting to lose your way, Charlotte? I’m talking about a nine-millimeter slug in the face. In through the nose, blows off the back of his head. Kid’s sixteen, he knows from right and wrong. Coach reprimands him for some bullshit thing, kid goes home, gets his Glock. Runs back. Don’t be dissing me, old man. Bang, bang.”

  “I believe it was his uncle’s Glock. Left unlocked in a dresser drawer.”

  “Oh, come on. Right and wrong, Charlotte. Justice, injustice.”

  “Can’t blame Parker. It was a bad Miranda. Some Metro rookie, stopped halfway through his rights, answers a personal call on his cell, never finished reading the card. His partner testified. Talking to some girl he’d just met instead of doing his business.”

  “Technicality.”

  “Chain of evidence was spotty, conflicting eyewitnesses. Other kids in the locker room were all over the goddamn place. Shooter was just trying to scare the coach, never meant to fire the pistol. Coach went for the gun, there was a struggle, gun fired accidentally. Guys who were there, watching the whole thing, even they couldn’t agree what happened.”

  “Some of them were lying. Protecting their buddy.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it blows the case.”

  “Your old man’s got you brainwashed. He’s whispering to you in your sleep, converting you to his brand of Satan worship. Goddamn trial lawyers.”

  “We do our jobs right, Parker’s got nothing to work with. We screw up like the yahoo stopping halfway through the Miranda, the bad guys walk.”

  “Did the kid shoot the coach?”

  “You know there’s more to it than that.”

  “Not for me there isn’t.”

  She huffed and shook her head. Acting more put out than she was. But this is how she managed it. Took Parker’s side. Repeated his set phrases. Tried damned hard to see it his way. And usually nobody called her on it, or got in her face like Jesus was doing.

  She’d been doing it for years, whenever one of his cases made news. Another bad guy let loose. She trotted out the speeches. Parker’s arguments were valid, of course, and she believed them to a point. Even scum were entitled to counsel. Crafty lawyering made for smarter police work. Yeah, yeah. Still it wore on her to mouth the words. Frayed the strands of her self-respect. Marriage vows in direct conflict with her other sacred vow—to serve and protect. Ride the bad guys to their bloody knees and haul their asses in.

  “There he was on TV while I was eating my black beans and rice, standing out on the courthouse steps, taking questions from that blond babe on Channel Six. All humble, no smiling, no high fives or any of that garbage. Came off pretty well, considering he’d just given the justice system a good reaming.”

  “Look, he’s a decent guy. More than half his cases are pro bono.”

  “Like this guilty fuck today.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it.”

  “Half are pro bono, the other half are rich-ass swindlers and drug lords. Nothing personal, but your husband’s playing on the wrong team.”

  “Goofy as it sounds, Parker believes everybody who walks through his door is innocent.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Every single one of them.”

  “I knew he was some kind of bleeding-heart lunatic, but man. Everybody’s innocent? What kind of outer-space bullshit is that?”

  “One night soon, come over to dinner, bring Maria. I’ll make that lasagna you like so much. You can talk to Parker, hear his side, call his bluff. Then afterward feel free to badmouth him all you want.”

  “Christ, I have dreams about your damn lasagna. Been years since I had it last, but some nights I wake up, I’m salivating.”

  “So we’ll do it then. Get together.”

  “Hell, if I got in the same room with that guy, he’d work his voodoo on me, next thing you know I’d be down at the jail throwing open the c
ells.”

  Charlotte smiled and looked over at the house. She could see shadows through the gold curtains. Two tall men walking through the dining room, heading for the patio. A shorter shadow tagging along. Gracey.

  Jesus tapped out a café cubano rhythm on the steering wheel.

  “I heard Gracey was having trouble. How’s she doing?”

  “Depends on the meds. She skips a few, it can get rowdy.”

  “She still into oil painting?”

  “It’s acting now. She goes to the fine-arts magnet downtown. Got a teacher who thinks she’s a genius, Mr. Underwood.”

  “So what’s wrong with that?”

  “You ever seen Double Indemnity? Fred MacMurray and a beautiful blonde murder the blonde’s husband?”

  “Sure, Barbara Stanwyck. Tight sweaters and an ankle bracelet. I’ve seen it maybe twenty times.”

  “Well, Gracey’s been consulting with Barbara on acting matters.”

  “What? She watches her movies, studies technique?”

  “More than that. The two of them have heart-to-hearts. Sometimes it’s Joan Crawford.”

  “She could’ve picked better actresses.”

  “It’s from the class she’s taking. Film Noir. So my daughter’s learning how to wear a mask. That deadpan, shell-shocked look they all used back then, the Humphrey Bogart thing, hide your feelings, cover it all up.”

  Jesus shifted, looking uncomfortable.

  “So she talks to Barbara Stanwyck? How does that work?”

  “She hears a voice in her head. Barbara Stanwyck’s got a hotline to my daughter, sending her inspiration.”

  “She’s got an artistic temperament. Hell, one of my girls acted pretty weird for a couple of years, making all these creepy-sounding voices. Role-playing or whatever. Just a phase, part of that teenage hormone thing.”

  Charlotte shook her head.

  “Now you sound like Parker.”

  “Well, what is it then? It have a name?”

  Charlotte hated the word. She could count the number of times she’d spoken it aloud.

  “Schizophrenia,” she said. “That’s what I’m told.”

  “Oh, Christ. I didn’t realize.”

  “One percent of the population worldwide.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one percent that keeps us busy.”

  Jesus winced when he realized what he’d said.

  “It’s okay,” Charlotte said. “She’s not that bad yet. It could happen, but there’s drugs, therapy. She may turn out to have the high-functioning variety.”

  Jesus stared at the red truck in his headlights, his voice going quiet.

  “You know that guy Ray Hamersley, the basketball coach the kid shot? Well, about a hundred years ago I played for him at Miami High.”

  She turned to look at Jesus’s profile.

  “Junior year, he caught me smoking a Camel behind the gym, kicked my ass off the team right there. Did I go home and get a fucking gun? Let me think. No, no, I don’t recall that. I think I went home and smoked the rest of the case and puked in the backyard and never smoked again.”

  He looked at her and then turned back to the pickup in his headlights.

  “It’s what he does, Jesus. He’s not a bad man. He does it because he believes in it, same as we do.”

  Jesus turned in his seat, pointed at her face, and wagged his finger like she’d been naughty.

  “Don’t you be going over to the dark side now.”

  She grabbed hold of Romero’s finger and bent it backward, not enough to hurt, but close.

  He groaned and pried loose from her grip.

  “Okay, okay. You women, shit, first time you burned a bra, we should’ve been all over you. What were we thinking?”

  “Too late now, Jesus.”

  “Don’t I know it. Don’t I fucking know it.”

  Charlotte opened the door and got out. Jesus popped a two-finger salute and rolled out the drive. She left the electric gate open, then squatted down to pat Max. The rest of the troop emerged from the shrubs purring and whining like they hadn’t been fed. She gave each of them a stroke, then unlocked the door and the whole gang scampered inside around her ankles.

  Four

  Charlotte threaded through the maze of hallways to the bright kitchen, set her purse on the granite counter, and peered out the French doors. Gracey and Parker were out on the patio tending a small bonfire in the brick barbecue pit. Floodlights off, the fire cast a rippling halo across the flagstones and the wide waterway that ran behind the house.

  Parker and Gracey both held long twigs and seemed to be roasting marshmallows. Beside them stood a burly man with shoulder-length hair. He had on khakis and work boots, and when he turned to the side briefly, she saw on the back of his denim shirt some kind of colorful embroidered insignia. The firelight fluttered on his face, and though he was a hundred feet away in bad light, an old brain cell woke from its timeless nap and fired off a sharp tingle of disquiet.

  Charlotte watched the man sip his beer. She burned the image on her retina, closed her eyes, and tried to summon a name, a situation, any distant echo of this man. Nothing came. Blankness. Then an ugly snippet replayed from one of today’s videos, the trooper lying on his back, one hand rising like a feeble plume of smoke toward the downward slice of the blade.

  She opened her eyes and stared some more. The guy was probably just an electrician or plumber bidding on a job. Their house was eighty years old, ancient by Miami standards, and required constant attention. She was simply oversaturated with violent images, having a flash of paranoia.

  After another few seconds, when no recollection hardened into focus, Charlotte turned to the counter, got out the cans of tuna, opened them one by one, and fed the tribe. When they’d taken their positions at their bowls, she poured herself a glass of cabernet and walked outside.

  Parker was in his after-hours uniform. Faded jeans, boat shoes, and a T-shirt from his vast collection. This one, bright yellow with red lettering, was from Duffy’s Tavern over in West Miami, a beer joint they used to frequent when they were first married and burning so many calories in the bedroom they could eat all the fries and greasy burgers they wanted.

  He opened his arms, and Charlotte rocked in and out of his embrace, planting her shoulder briefly against his chest and managing a quick bungled kiss on the edge of his mouth. The prickly conversation she’d had with Jesus was making her feel ungainly and self-conscious. An impostor in her own life.

  “Won the Drury case.” Parker made a self-deprecating smile.

  “I heard.”

  “Botched from start to finish. Metro should reprimand that patrolman, their crime-scene people. But they won’t. A total mess—Miranda, everything.”

  “Which you exploited successfully.”

  Parker leaned away from her and squinted at the hint of disapproval.

  “You okay?”

  Gracey extended a twig capped with a fresh marshmallow and waved it near Charlotte’s face. For the moment the sullen tautness in her cheeks had relaxed and she looked like the sweet, sincere girl she’d been a year earlier. Charlotte couldn’t tell if this mood was genuine or not. Maybe Gracey was making progress, chanting some new mantra she’d learned from her therapist. Or more likely it was simply a short-lived burst of artificial serenity brought on by the miracle of pharmaceuticals. For the last year their lives had been ruled by the endless skirmishes between the drugs and Gracey’s biology. Almost as quickly as they found a new pill that eased her back to normalcy, her condition mutated and the wild eruptions began again.

  When Charlotte opened her arms, Gracey stepped in and embraced her with such simple warmth that, against her better judgment, all her caution and reserve dissolved and Charlotte felt a rush of unadulterated hope. Maybe this was it, the watershed moment when the storm finally passed and the sun broke through and all would be well again. She would have her Gracey back, the demon exorcised, not even a memory of its terrible possession lingering on.


  Gracey drew away and gave Charlotte a cheerful smile.

  “We’re having white-trash hors d’oeuvres,” she announced.

  Charlotte took the twig and had a nibble of the white foam.

  “Oh, Mom, you’re supposed to roast them first. I’ll do one for you. Didn’t you ever go to summer camp?”

  “No, I didn’t. I was deprived.”

  Gracey took the twig back and walked over to the fire and held the white flesh near the heart of the flames.

  The large man shifted in the half-light.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Parker stepped beside her, lay a hand on her arm. “Charlotte, I’d like you to meet Jacob Panther.”

  The big man nodded hello. His sandy hair brushed his shoulders, and his features were strong and distinctly mismatched. While there was a boyish smoothness to his skin, the sum of his features radiated the weariness of someone far older. His quiet blue eyes were heavy-lidded and moved with lazy ease. But the man drank her in with unsettling frankness. She felt the touch of his gaze like an insolent hand trickling across her cheeks.

  His sharp jawline and finely etched nose clashed with the blunt chin, the wide, bullish forehead. Belligerence and gentleness in equal measure. Crude yet refined. A face at war with itself.

  Now that she was only a few feet away from him, the tingle of uneasiness had grown to a bristling apprehension. She knew this guy from somewhere, and the bell it was ringing was sharp and discordant.

  Charlotte managed a guarded hello and shook the man’s thick hand.

  She had a sip of wine and could feel Parker watching her.

  The memory was there, hovering just out of view like one of those silly sayings trapped inside that fortune-telling eight ball from Charlotte’s youth. Ask a question, turn the ball over, and wait for the answer to float up through the thick liquid with the same painful sluggishness as this man’s face and identity were emerging from the sea of memory. Maybe his was a face from the pages of the countless mug shots she’d pored over, or one of the black-and-white printouts handed around at roll call. Or perhaps it came from some other realm entirely.