The Butterfly Forest (Mystery/Thriller) by Tom Lowe Read Free Book Online

had given me in the parking lot, the scent of her perfume, the slight trembling in her body, the way she held me.  But it was at the restaurant when I felt something unfasten inside me.  It was when we were saying goodbye.  She had faked a boldness that I knew was thin, a shield she held to protect her daughter, like she’d probably done so many times before.  And now a psycho had pointed a gun in her face, left her with emotional scars and the threat of his return.
    I found the card Detective John Lewis had given me.  I called his number, reintroduced myself and asked, “Did you come up with anything more on Soto?” 
    He cleared his throat.  “Right now, Mr. O’Brien, the suspect is still on the run.”
    “Where’s his family?”
    “We don’t have a last known address.  The DL lists an address of a PO Box in Miami.  Soto’s done a good job of not leaving a plastic trail.  Must use cash for everything.  I heard you worked homicide in Miami, is that so?”
    “It’s been a while.  You think Soto will return?”
    “Hard to say what a criminal mind will or will not do.  We have a visible presence at the restaurant, officers stopping in for coffee.  We’re not so visible to the untrained eye at Miss Monroe’s home, but we’re there.”
    “How about when Molly Monroe returns to her apartment in Gainesville?”
    “Florida Department of Law Enforcement is working with Gainesville PD.”
    “So you believe it wasn’t a random attack, right?”
    He didn’t answer immediately.  I could hear a croaky sound deep within his lungs.  He said, “Correct.  We have reason to believe Soto knew or knew of Molly Monroe.”
    “Is that because of the tat she saw at the butterfly research center in Gainesville?”
    “Yes.”
    “She tell you it looked like a woman wearing butterfly wings?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Detective, it was a hybrid tat.”
    “Hybrid?  What the hell does that mean?’
    “The face was like a young fairy with the body of a grown woman superimposed with the wings and lower extremities of a butterfly.”
    He snorted when he laughed.  “A damn fairy, like a cartoon, on the body of a nude woman.  Now, what does that tell you about the mind of Frank Soto?”    
    A handful of thoughts raced through my head—not one of them good.  I knew the place and direction I needed to be—at the marina, chartering the boat, making a life.  I pointed my Jeep that way.  But inside, deep inside, my internal compass was beginning to spin toward Elizabeth and Molly Monroe. 

 
     
    TWELVE
     
    We rolled into the dusty parking lot and Max stood on her hind legs, popped her head out the open window, and filled her nose to sensory capacity.  A half-dozen sunburned tourists, back from a morning of charter boat fishing, loaded their iced-down catch of red snappers into the trunk of a rental car.  Two bearded bikers cut their Harley engines, parked under a live oak and strode into the Tiki Bar Restaurant adjacent to the main pier.   
    Getting out of the Jeep, I was greeted with the scent of blackened grouper and garlic drifting across the oyster shell lot.  A flock of brown pelicans sailed effortlessly above us, banking over the long line of boats moored to L dock, and then vanishing into the mangroves and estuaries of the Halifax River.  In the distance, I could see the top of the Ponce Lighthouse poking its glass eye above the tree line. 
    I liked this place.  Liked the people, the smells, even liked the “dock cat,” Ol Joe, a calico knock-off who outweighed Max by ten pounds.  Joe had no fear of Max, and had, on one occasion, raked his claws across Max’s nose. 
    “Hey, Sean, ‘bout time you showed up here again.  One day your bilge pump is gonna go kaput, and your boat will be on the bottom of the bay.”  The greeting came from Nick Cronus, a commercial fisherman with an ancient Greek sailor’s heritage in his blood and a wide smile on his tan face.  In his mid-forties, he had