Forests of the Night Read online

  Parker said, “I went to summer camp with Jacob’s uncle. We were cabinmates. Jacob’s passing through town and decided to look me up.”

  “Tsali?” Charlotte was holding the stranger’s solemn stare.

  “Camp Tsali, yeah,” Parker said. “You know.”

  Yes, she did. Knew it damn well.

  “That’s why we’re doing marshmallows,” Gracey called over. “In memory of summer camp. It was my idea.”

  Charlotte broke free of the man’s eyes and smiled at her daughter. Then she turned to Parker. He was gazing off at the swirl of sparks rising into the humid evening, though she could see enough of his face to know he was transporting himself to that mountain retreat his father had run for twenty years. For a man so city-tough, such an uncompromising realist, Parker Monroe could turn into a dreamy doofus in a micromoment.

  Mention summer camp and a blush came to his cheeks, a shy smile surfaced, eyes looking off toward those summery fields where his best self still drew the longbow and planted arrows dead center from fifty yards away. She’d heard it all. Seen the Kodaks. Even gone with him once up to the fog-shrouded Carolina mountains and hiked over cow pastures and streams and a bald precipice to reach the gravel road that led to the padlocked gates of Camp Tsali. The place had closed for good the night Parker’s father died.

  That day Charlotte and Parker had climbed the gates of Camp Tsali, hiked up the steep entrance drive through a green tunnel of pines, then wandered for hours around that ghost town of log cabins and weed-infested playing fields and Indian ceremonial rings. She’d listened to the stories, and was genuinely touched by Parker’s zeal. It would be easy to mock the whole thing as a bunch of spoiled country-club boys dressing up in beaded loincloths and face paint, while in their spare time working on their backhands and chip shots. But Camp Tsali was anything but cushy. It was a hell of a lot more primitive than she could have handled at that age. She would’ve bailed after a single night on those unforgiving cots, and peeing without privacy in open latrines. The Coral Gables holding cells had more creature comforts.

  “Indian lore,” Parker said to Gracey. “That was the big thing. Tribal dances, songs, Cherokee history. Lots of woodcraft. How to survive in the wilderness. Which berries you could eat and which would kill you. Making fires, lean-tos, all that stuff.”

  Gracey rolled her eyes and gave Charlotte a look. Here we go again. Stouthearted man time.

  Charlotte returned the look, then had a sip of her wine and angled to the left of the fire for a better view of Jacob Panther. The name as haunting as the face.

  “Jacob’s a Cherokee Indian,” Gracey said. “Aren’t you, Jacob?”

  He nodded and smiled at the girl and she answered his smile with a gesture so provocative not even Stanwyck would have dared to use it.

  Basking in Panther’s gaze, Gracey stroked a fresh marshmallow against her cheek and in her sauciest voice she said, “Wouldn’t it be nice for your lover to have marshmallow skin? So soft and powdery.”

  Charlotte flinched and spoke her name in warning, but Gracey ignored her.

  “Your skin’s already beautiful,” Panther said. “Better than any marshmallow.”

  With a sly smile, her daughter turned away, giving Panther a full view of her ample profile. She wore a tight gray top that left a five-inch band of flesh exposed at the rim of her black jeans. A dress code ordained by the reigning pop diva. She had Parker’s pale gold hair, which was parted on the side and hung straight to her shoulders. More Veronica Lake than Stanwyck. She’d inherited Charlotte’s nothing-to-brag-about hazel eyes but little else. Lately, Gracey had been making droll remarks about getting lucky in the boob department—taking after her daddy’s side of the family.

  It was true enough. In the past year Gracey had begun to assume the figure of Parker’s mother, Diana, a sinewy, athletic woman with wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and inexplicably heavy bosoms. But the hormonal gush that was reshaping Gracey’s body had yet to touch her face. Her complexion was as flawless as warm crème brûlée. And her childish, pudgy cheeks and trusting eyes seemed absurdly at odds with what was appearing below.

  Charlotte thought of her as treacherously beautiful, but still thankfully lacking in the vanity of most teenage girls who were so endowed. The boys at her school had gotten the message and were calling nightly. Polite enough when Charlotte answered, but in a hushed fever to get past the gatekeeper and whisper their secret charms in her daughter’s ear.

  “I noticed the plates on your truck,” Charlotte said to their guest. “I take it you’re from Daytona Beach?”

  He looked at her, but the question tripped nothing in his eyes.

  “You’ll have to excuse Charlotte,” said Parker. “She’s a cop. Spends her days interrogating people, she comes home, can’t turn it off.”

  “It’s all right,” Jacob said. “No, I’m not from Daytona. I move around. I’m a traveling man.”

  Gracey drew another marshmallow from the fire. She plucked at the shriveled black mess and pinched a bit into her mouth. Charlotte caught her eye and waved her back over to join in, but Gracey shook her head and resumed her scrutiny of the blackened goo in her hand.

  Pressing his beer bottle to his sweaty cheek, Panther smiled at Charlotte. Though there was nothing overtly wolfish in the grin, his eyes lingered too long, becoming familiar, challenging.

  “You have anything in mind for dinner?” Parker asked her.

  “If you mean am I cooking, the answer’s no. I’m done in.”

  “I was thinking of Norman’s. A little celebration. Wouldn’t need a reservation on a Thursday this early.”

  Jacob Panther turned from them and gazed out at the swath of moonlight on the polished water of the wide canal. The embroidery on the back of his shirt was red and black, a series of concentric circles, some interlocked, some broken, like a maze seen from high above.

  Charlotte stared at his broad shoulders, urging the recollection up through the murky depths.

  Nudging her arm, Parker gave her a quick “What’s wrong?” wave of his hand. But Charlotte just smiled and looked away.

  “When we go to Norman’s I get the yellowtail snapper with garlic mashed potatoes,” Gracey said to Panther. “It’s the best. Norman always comes over to our table. He’s cute. I’d so marry him. He could cook for me every night.”

  The big man nodded, still wearing the bold smile he’d given Charlotte.

  As she studied the man’s profile, his identity finally began to clarify, a shape congealing from the fog. Of course, of course. Jacob Panther. Sweet Jesus Mother of God.

  “You know you look like somebody,” Gracey said. “Doesn’t he, Dad? Doesn’t he look like somebody we know? I can’t think who.”

  Panther turned slowly from the darkness.

  “I get that a lot. I must have a common face.”

  “Anything but,” Charlotte said quietly. Parker heard and turned in her direction. She set her wineglass down on the arm of a lawn chair, saying, “Norman’s sounds fine. I just need to freshen up. Back in a sec.”

  Parker shot her a puzzled look, but she didn’t field it, didn’t even hold his eyes for an extra tick, not wanting anything to trigger Jacob Panther’s sensors.

  Charlotte ambled to the kitchen, then, when she was certain she was out of sight, she jogged down the hallway past the master suite to the back guest room where she stored her work files and her laptop.

  She sat down at her desk, switched on the IBM, opened the DSL connection, and a second later she typed in the Web address for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With two clicks she was looking at a thumbnail photo of the man on their patio. He hadn’t even bothered with an alias.

  Though the FBI didn’t number them anymore, counting down from the top of the page their blond guest held the eighth position on the Most Wanted list.

  Five

  “So I hear you’re one tough son of a bitch,” Jacob said.

  “What?” Parker stiffened.

&nb
sp; “You’re a rough-and-tumble guy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s what Uncle Thomas said. Lots of fistfights, hell-bent to prove yourself. Chip on your shoulder.”

  Parker poured the dregs of his beer onto the dying embers.

  “That’s what he said. Don’t turn your back on Parker Monroe. Only makes sense a guy like you would turn out to be a lawyer.”

  Parker was floored.

  In a profession so shamelessly belligerent, he’d always prided himself on the opposite virtue, an unassuming manner, a quiet though tenacious passion for fairness. In the courtroom he adopted an old-fashioned pace, dawdling, meandering. Unfailingly serene and polite in cross-examinations. When he had no choice but to object to a prosecutor’s line of questioning, he was courteous to a fault. No irony, no sarcasm, 100 percent sincere. A twenty-first-century Atticus Finch. And that, he believed, was the source of his success. He was a man out of time. His hyped-up adversaries with their eye-gouging tactics didn’t know how to respond. Next to Parker either they came across as grossly aggressive or—by trying to compete with his approach—they assumed a laid-back pose that struck juries as totally bogus.

  “Win at any cost.” Jacob was still smiling. “Hiking, felling trees, rope climbing, starting campfires, whatever it was. Had to do it bigger, better, faster. Super gung ho.”

  “Funny,” Parker said. “I don’t remember it that way.”

  “Like you needed to prove yourself to all those other rich snots, you being the owner’s kid. You had to make up for it some way. That’s what Uncle Thomas said. I’m just repeating.”

  Jacob sipped his beer and stared out at the moonlight glazing the canal.

  “I remember a couple of fights. No more than anyone else.”

  “No need to be defensive. I don’t believe he meant it as a criticism,” Jacob said. “I think he admired you for it, ’cause that’s how he felt himself. Out of place. Not one of those prep-school types with their silverware manners. Then, of course, he was the token redskin, all those boys spying on him day and night, trying to see if he pissed and shit like regular human beings.”

  “I suppose that must’ve been hard.”

  “Being a fighter,” Jacob said, “sometimes it’s the only way to survive.”

  Parker waited for him to continue, to make his point, but Jacob went silent, and his face turned again to the water.

  “What’s all this about, Jacob?”

  The big man glanced his way briefly, then looked back into the glittering darkness.

  “Looks to me like you’re still that way, Parker. Gung ho, competitive.”

  Jacob Panther gazed across the canal at the McCollums’ brightly lit backyard, their Great Dane enlarging the excavation it had been working on all week. When he turned back to Parker he had a quiet smile.

  “You in some kind of trouble, Jacob? Because that’s what I do. I get people out of trouble.”

  “I know what you do.”

  Parker could see that Gracey was transfixed by the conversation. Allowed to stay and witness an unguarded adult encounter. It was one of the areas of disagreement in child rearing between Charlotte and him. Parker argued they should treat Gracey as an equal, include her as much as possible in family decision-making. Charlotte lobbied hard the other way. Wanting to prolong the girl’s childhood as long as possible. Adults ran the show, children followed the rules. Lately it had turned into a good cop, bad cop situation. Parker the permissive one, Charlotte the enforcer. Gracey sensed it, and was exploiting the friction between them to negotiate herself the best possible outcomes. Daddy’s little bargainer.

  “You’re not passing through town, are you? This isn’t a social call.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Well?”

  Jacob glanced at Gracey for a moment and his face relaxed.

  “You got yourself a handsome family. You’re a lucky man.”

  Then he stepped close to Parker and spoke with such grim authority that Parker felt something lurch and stumble in his gut.

  “You’re next.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Parker set his beer bottle on the edge of the barbecue pit and took a moment to gather himself.

  “This have something to do with your uncle Thomas?”

  “Thomas, no.” Jacob’s eyes flashed to Parker’s. “The spider dragged Thomas off to the darkening land.”

  Parker repeated the phrase to himself, fetching through the fog of years.

  “Thomas is dead?”

  “Well, you remember something they taught you at camp.”

  Tilting his head back, Jacob looked up at the first faint stars.

  “Heart attack, six years ago. Too much whiskey.”

  Parker chose that moment to pose the question he’d been wanting to ask since Panther showed up at his door.

  “And your mother, Lucy? How is she?”

  “I’m forbidden to speak of her.”

  “Whoa,” Gracey said, coming closer. “What’s that mean?”

  Without taking his eyes from Jacob, Parker said, “It’s a Cherokee thing.”

  “Forbidden to speak of her. Like what, she’s being shunned or something? Kicked out of the tribe. She did something bad?”

  “Not shunned.” He looked at his daughter, reached out and lay a hand on her shoulder and maneuvered her to his side so the two of them were facing Panther. The man’s face had lost the last wisps of amusement. A defiant stare emerging as though he was daring Parker to explain this to his daughter.

  Even though it had been almost thirty years, the words came easily, those strange, foreign lessons imprinted in his marrow.

  “The Cherokee are one of the few cultures where women have as much power as men. Women were held in such high regard among the Cherokee people that long ago, if a woman’s name was so much as mentioned when warriors went into battle, the fighter’s resolve was thought to be seriously weakened. So the warriors on the edge of the battlefield were forbidden to speak the names of women.”

  “Cool,” Gracey said. “That’s a tribe I’d like to belong to.”

  Jacob looked around at Parker’s home, at the canal, the palm trees rustling. Then his eyes drifted back to Parker.

  “You ever been back to Tsali?”

  “Once.”

  “Log cabins are still standing,” Panther said. “A few rotted away, but it looks a lot like it did. The fire tower you guys built. Tetherball stands. The dam’s still holding, but it doesn’t look real solid. Dining hall’s there, infirmary. Not in great shape, but standing.”

  Parker watched him hold out his palm and stare down at it as if he were trying to read his own fortune in the frail moonlight.

  “You remember the Sequoyah Caverns? Up on Bald Knob?”

  Parker said yes, he remembered them.

  “Thomas said you two used to sneak up there and smoke dope.”

  “Dope?” Gracey said. “You smoked dope?”

  “I was young. It was a long time ago.”

  “Caverns are all grown over. Kudzu, laurel bushes.” Jacob fanned a night bug from his face. “Walk right past them, never know they were there. Good place to hide.”

  In a huff, Gracey pulled away from Parker, pitched her marshmallow stick into the moonlit water, and stalked toward the house.

  Parker raised his hand to call her back, try to explain the dope thing if that’s what was upsetting her, but she’d already disappeared into the shadows.

  “Okay,” Parker said. “Now talk to me, Jacob.”

  “I’d say you’ve got a few things to figure out.”

  “What things?”

  “About your family. Where you’ve been, where you’re headed.”

  “Come on, cut the double-talk.”

  “You know who I am? That’d be a good place to start.”

  Parker looked into the young man’s eyes. His mind blank.

  “I can’t help you if you won
’t tell me what’s going on, Jacob.”

  “Looks to me like you might’ve gone a little soft, living like this. Citified. Fighting with words instead of muscle and flesh.”

  He looked from left to right, searching the darkness.

  “I’ve done what I can,” Jacob said. “Slowed them down. But there’s no stopping it. They’ll show up eventually. They will.”

  “Who?”

  “You say you’re good at getting people out of trouble, and I can see you make a damn fine living at it. Now you better see how good you are at getting your own self out of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble am I in?”

  “Worst kind there is. You’ve probably got a few days. Two, three maybe.”

  “Are you saying my family is in some kind of imminent danger? How would you know such a thing? Talk to me, Jacob.”

  Panther opened and closed his right fist several times as though pumping a tennis ball.

  “Look,” he said. “You got a john around here? I need to get rid of this beer.”

  Parker motioned vaguely toward the French doors.

  “Through the kitchen, down the hall, first door on your left.”

  For a long moment in the half-light, Jacob studied Parker’s face. Cocked forward, tense, he seemed to be debating some long-standing argument, his eyes making difficult calculations as they roamed Parker’s features. Finally he reached out and put a warm hand on Parker’s bare arm. Flesh to flesh.

  At that moment Parker thought it was only the snap of static electricity passing between them, but afterward, for as long as he would live, the nerves on that patch of skin prickled as though he had been forever branded by Jacob Panther’s handprint.

  Jacob took his hand away and lowered his eyes to the flagstones, cleared his throat gruffly like a man trying to choke back an unwelcome emotion, and glided away toward the house.

  Six

  Charlotte called Lieutenant Rodriguez at home but got his answering machine. Then she dialed the Gables special weapons and tactics number, and a rookie answered. He was manning the phones while the rest of the SWAT guys were out assisting a Metro hostage situation that was turning into an all-nighter.