The Bone Tree (14 page)

WALT GARRITY LAY
half-asleep on a double bed in the Sheraton Casino Hotel in Baton Rouge, just inside the downtown levee. He’d planned to spend no more than an hour in the city; now he’d wasted more than eight, and Tom was out on the night roads, wounded and carrying a hostage, with every cop in Louisiana on his trail.

Walt had come here to meet Colonel Griffith Mackiever of the Louisiana State Police, hoping to get the statewide APB for Tom and himself revoked. He had at least some reason for optimism. Long before Colonel Mackiever joined the LSP, he’d served as a Texas Ranger with Walt, and despite the passing years, they still shared the Ranger bond. When Walt arrived at the hotel, however, he hadn’t found his old comrade-in-arms waiting, but a faxed note telling him Mackiever had been forced to take an unexpected trip to New Orleans to check out their “mutual problem.” Walt assumed this referred to Forrest Knox, and he hoped to God Knox hadn’t suckered his old
compadre
into a trap. There was talk that Forrest might be next in line for superintendent of the state police, and Mackiever’s death would open up that powerful position sooner rather than later. Untimely deaths were far from uncommon in this godforsaken state.

Garrity had never liked Louisiana: shitkickers in the north and Frenchmen in the south—Baptists versus Catholics, praise Jesus. Driving down Highway 61 from Natchez, he’d thought of Angola Farm out in the darkness between the road and the Mississippi River, glowing like some fortified island of lost souls. Most of the prisoners chained inside the Farm belonged there, but the hypocrisy of harsh punishment for men who’d ripped off a few hundred dollars in Louisiana stuck in Walt’s craw. People thought Huey Long had set the high bar for state corruption in the 1930s, but the Kingfish was a latecomer to the public trough. A wise man once said that any territory colonized by the French
eventually settled into a state of lassitude and corruption. As regarded Louisiana, he was right. Like some third-world island appended to America, the state had decayed as steadily as an old whore working the darkest den in Marseilles. During the 1950s and ’60s, Texas Rangers had viewed certain Louisiana parishes as feudal fiefdoms more akin to the realms of warlords than to American counties, and Walt wasn’t sure that the foundations of those fiefdoms had been completely uprooted.

Rolling past the vapor-lit machinery of the refineries and chemical plants along old Highway 61, he’d reflected on what bad odds Mackiever must have faced trying to run the state police in such a place. New Orleans had become so lawless during the 1990s that the Justice Department had considered federalizing the NOPD. The chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hadn’t surprised Walt a bit; the cataclysmic storm had merely laid bare the systemic corruption that had been festering downtown for three centuries, and which had doomed the city itself by allowing a substandard levee system to be built.

With that kind of rot eating away at the state’s largest city, no one should have been surprised to learn that rural parishes had also become dens of vice and violence—a perfect environment for predators like Forrest Knox. Clothed in the uniform of the state police, an ambitious sociopath could pretty much do as he pleased in the boondocks. When the officials above him had so many secrets to hide, which of them would risk confronting a man who had a high-tech intelligence division under his command?

Walt had hoped Mackiever could explain how Forrest Knox had risen so high in his organization, but with every hour that passed, his faith that he would see his old buddy faltered. Tossing and turning on the hotel bed, Walt dreamed of his wife, who had begged him not to leave home to try to help his old friend. The night before Tom called, Carmelita had actually dreamed of Walt’s funeral. But Walt felt he had no choice about helping Tom, and he’d told her as much. As he drove away from their house, Carmelita had watched with her face forlorn and her arms folded, like a woman sending her husband off to war. Walt had felt an ache like an ulcer in his belly, but he hadn’t turned around.

Yesterday, when some Knox-controlled asshole shoved photos of a beheaded family under Carmelita’s door to frighten her, it had taken all of Walt’s self-restraint not to walk up to Forrest on the street in
front of LSP headquarters and blow his brains out. Though Walt now had three old Ranger buddies covering his house in Navasota, every second of fear his wife had suffered stung him like a hornet. Before this mess was through, he would exact retribution for each sting.

Picking up his derringer from the bedside table, Walt rubbed his eyes and headed for the toilet to take a leak. He was zipping up his pants when the landline rang beside the bed. Walt walked out and stared at the phone for three rings, then picked it up and put it to his ear.

“Cap’n McDonald?” said a familiar voice.

Walt said nothing, but his rapid pulse began to subside. “Bill McDonald” was the alias that Colonel Mackiever had instructed him to use when he registered at the hotel. McDonald had been one of the toughest and wisest Texas Rangers ever to wear the star, but he’d died in 1918. It was unlikely anyone else would think to use such a code. Nevertheless, Walt said, “Name a president that Bill McDonald guarded.”

“Teddy Roosevelt.”

Walt sighed with relief. “Where are you, Mac?”

“Coming up the hall. Sorry to make you wait.”

“I’m opening the door.”

Walt took his derringer to the door, opened it, then extended the bolt and backed away so that his visitor would have to push open the heavy door to gain entry. Then he stood just inside the open bathroom door and aimed the derringer at head level.

Someone knocked three times, then slowly pushed open the door while a voice behind it said, “At ease, Cap’n. I know you’ve got a gun back there.”

Walt kept his derringer cocked and ready until Mackiever came in and locked the door behind him. One of the colonel’s hands was empty; the other carried a bottle of Macallan Fine Oak, which gladdened Walt’s heart. Mackiever’s hair had gone nearly white since Walt had last seen him, though his trimmed mustache still had a little pepper in it. His old eyes looked dazed, and he shook Walt’s hand like a man grasping at a life preserver.

“Damn, I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I was up to my ass in alligators before you ever called. But this time I think they’ve got me. Can I pour you a scotch? I need one bad.”

“I won’t turn it down.”

Mackiever went to the bathroom sink and unwrapped two water glasses. Walt watched him pour—both hands shaking—then took the proffered glass and drank the whisky neat. He savored the burn as it sank toward his stomach, then took a seat on the end of the bed while the colonel poured himself another.

“Dark days,” Mackiever said hoarsely.

Walt grimaced. “Let’s hear it, Mac.”

The colonel sat heavily in a chair by the table before the curtained window. As Walt raised his glass in a silent toast to his old friend, he realized he was looking at a man close to breaking.

“Forrest Knox just issued me an ultimatum,” Mackiever informed him. “Step down for health reasons, or he’ll ruin me. I’ve got forty-eight hours.”

“Ruin you? How?”

“The son of a bitch has had one of our tech experts—one of my own officers—planting kiddie porn in my computers, both at work and at home. If I don’t resign, he’ll go public with child pornography charges and drag me through the mud until I choke. You know how it goes with accusations like that. It’s almost impossible to prove a negative. You never shake ’em.”

“That’s bullshit, Mac. A man with your record? He’d never make that stick. You can prove that stuff was planted.”

“Not this time. Knox has been setting this up for months. Day by day, in real time. There’s an extensive search history, thousands of photographs of young kids, even online conversations. They’ve already printed out reams of computer logs and placed them secretly into evidence.”

“Jesus. I still think—”

Mackiever stopped him with a raised hand. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. Forrest’s got two underage prostitutes from New Orleans who’ll swear under oath that I paid them for sex.
Male
prostitutes.”

“What?”

The colonel nodded, his haunted eyes glancing at the floor. “He just paraded one of them in front of me in a New Orleans hotel room. The boy was no more than fifteen, if that. I’m screwed, partner. I’ve got no play.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Mackiever took another sip of scotch and closed his eyes. “There isn’t anything.”

“Help me understand this. How the hell did a man like Knox climb so high in your outfit?”

The colonel shook a cigarette from a pack of Salems and lit it. “Forrest joined the force long before I came over from Texas. He worked his way up, making strong connections all along the way. Everybody knew he was Frank Knox’s son, but nobody in power gave a damn about that, not back then. Hell, most don’t care now. But I wasn’t any better. I initially sized Forrest up as a straight shooter. A hardass, sure, but fair—or so it seemed. And he appeared to have no relationship at all with his extended family.”

“What changed your mind about him?”

“That’s hard to say. After a while, the little man inside just started telling me something was wrong with him. For one thing, he used to keep a samurai sword hanging behind his desk. Like we used to see in Texas sheriffs’ offices, remember? Forrest claimed his daddy had taken it off a Japanese officer during World War Two. One day I asked him to tell me the story, and he did. But first he took a couple of photos out of his desk. They were in a frame he kept in his bottom drawer.”

“And?”

“The first one showed this Jap officer brandishing a samurai sword. The guy had two human heads tied to his belt. Caucasian heads. I kid you not, Walter.” Mackiever gulped some more scotch. “Why don’t you look surprised?”

“I was in Korea, remember? I know about shit like that.”

“That’s right. Well . . . according to Forrest, these two heads on the Jap’s belt belonged to American marines. But the second picture showed a U.S. Marine sergeant holding the same sword with a headless body at his feet. The dead man was the Jap officer from the first picture. The marine was a tough-looking bastard, a real leatherneck. He looked like Forrest, only twice as mean.”

“Was it Forrest’s old man?”

Mackiever nodded. “Frank Knox. In that photo, he’s holding the Jap officer’s head up for the camera. By the
hair
. Forrest said when his daddy found the first photo on that Jap officer after an island battle, he cut the guy’s head off with his own sword. Forrest kept the photo in his desk.
He’d take it out and show it to people when they asked about the sword. And they
loved
the guy for it.”

“I’ve known guys like that,” Walt said, thinking of the photos of the beheaded family that had been shown to Carmelita to frighten her.

“Don’t be so sure. It’s easy to underestimate Forrest Knox. God knows I did. He’s a smooth character. I hear he’s done some sick stuff to hookers he’s arrested—blacks and Asians, mostly—and I’ve heard talk of even crazier things going on at a hunting camp his cousin Billy runs just over the Mississippi line. The official name is the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, but they call it ‘Fort Knox’ amongst themselves. But hell . . . that’s not what you’re here for.”

“I’m here to help you, buddy,” Walt said, “and to get your help in return. Tell me what you need, and I’ll do the same. My request might overstep the bounds of friendship, but we is where we is.”

Mackiever sucked at his cigarette as though it were a narcotic. “Walter, by the end of the day, I’m going to be a private citizen. I won’t be able to help you. And there’s nothing you can do to help me.”

“You’re wrong on both counts. When you’re in the kind of fix we’re in, you do what you’ve gotta do to get the ox out of the ditch. Tell me more about Forrest. A guy that dirty has to have a weak spot. All of God’s creatures have an underbelly.”

“If Knox has one, he’s wearing armor over it.”

“Why’s he got such a hard-on to move you out?”

Mackiever lit a second cigarette off the first one and poured himself another scotch. “Walt, you may not believe this, but there are people in this state who saw Hurricane Katrina as a blessing. Divine intervention, even.”

“I’ve heard the talk.”

“But do you know what’s beneath it? For the past twenty years, New Orleans has been shrinking. Major companies have been pulling out, and white workers have been fleeing across Lake Pontchartrain. The trend seemed unstoppable—until Katrina. The storm destroyed the homes of huge numbers of blacks, and they were bused out of the city in the so-called evacuation. About four days too late, by my count, but that’s not my point. That ‘evacuation’ looked more like the relocation of the Indian tribes in the 1800s to me. That’s how it’s worked out, too. And the money boys don’t mean to let ’em back into the city. They
want to raze the Lower Ninth Ward and demolish the housing projects elsewhere, then put up new developments for their kind of people.”

“White people?” Walt grunted.

“Or rich colored. They aren’t that particular, so long as you’ve got the green. Point is, the state’s elite doesn’t see me fitting into this new utopia. They want an enforcer with their own ideology heading up the state police.”

“What’s the LSP got to do with the city of New Orleans?”

“More than you think. The fat cats have got puppet politicians standing for all the municipal offices, but political authority is still subject to the whim of the voters. The man with my job isn’t subject to election. We have a lot of power and discretion, and with the right superintendent—or the wrong one—the state police can function like a paramilitary force. The governor can use us as an intimidation tool, sort of how Nixon used the FBI and the IRS against his enemies.”

“I see.”

“I first started to suspect what Forrest was up to about two years ago. I suspected he had my Internal Affairs division compromised, so I handpicked a mean son of a bitch named Alphonse Ozan to infiltrate the Criminal Investigations Bureau. Ozan’s a big Redbone, so I figured he’d be immune to Knox’s influence, Knox being such a racist, and half Cajun to boot. There’s no love lost between those two groups.”