The Bone Tree (19 page)

As she turned onto Wall Street, Caitlin saw two TV trucks parked in front of City Hall: one from WAPT in Jackson, the other from WLOX on the coast. After passing the trucks, she glanced right and saw two more parked in front of the courthouse: KNOE out of Monroe and WBRZ
from Baton Rouge. There were more to come. When she turned west onto State Street, she saw a big CNN truck parked between the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office, and beyond that was a minivan that read
MPB
—the Jackson PBS station.

Slowing to scan the block for parking spaces, Caitlin saw Shadrach Johnson giving an on-camera interview on the steps of his building. As usual, he was dressed to the nines and standing as straight as a man announcing his candidacy for governor. When she looked left, she saw Sheriff Byrd doing the same on the steps of the ACSO building across the street from Shad. At least five reporters had microphones jammed into Byrd’s face, and he looked as happy as a pig in slop.

Caitlin parked around the corner near Judge Noyes’s chambers, then walked back to the ACSO building. Byrd was winding up the interviews as she approached, and he motioned for her to follow him inside. She soon found herself sitting before his desk like a schoolgirl called to see the principal. Her chair had been chosen to drop male visitors half a head lower than the potbellied sheriff, so she was forced to sit ramrod straight to achieve any sense of being on equal terms.

Squinting down at her like a caricature sheriff from some 1960s western, Byrd announced that he’d brought her there because of complaints filed by the Royal family, who claimed she’d broken into Katy Royal Regan’s house and harassed the woman until she committed suicide. However, it quickly became apparent that the sheriff’s real objective was discovering why Penn had been riding shotgun in Sheriff Dennis’s cruiser during the drug raids. Caitlin only smiled and asked whether Sheriff Byrd planned to make a similar sweep of Adams County. Bristling, Byrd declared that Adams County had no significant meth problem, which was ridiculous, since only the river separated Natchez from Concordia Parish, and traffic flowed over the twin bridges twenty-four hours a day. Caitlin only smiled and kept pressing him.

After Byrd realized she wasn’t going to give him anything on Penn, he began questioning her about the stories in the morning edition of the
Examiner
. Byrd was obviously accustomed to women deferring to him, so Caitlin played the game, hoping to discover how much or how little he knew by way of his inept questioning. The risk was negligible. Fooling Billy Byrd was child’s play compared to dealing with Kaiser.

Ninety seconds of back-and-forth told her that Byrd knew nothing
of the real situation, and she was trying to think of a way to gracefully extricate herself from his office when his cell phone rang. He held the phone away from him and squinted at its LCD, then took the call. After listening for a few seconds, he turned pale and sat up straight.

“How many?” he asked, his face darkening.

Caitlin took the opportunity to check her cell phone, which she’d silenced before entering Byrd’s office. The last text message was from Penn. It read:
Disaster at the warehouse. One deputy dead, others critical. I’m ok, headed to C hospital w Dennis.

Caitlin felt the blood drain from her face.

“Call me as soon as you know more,” Sheriff Byrd said, and slammed the phone down on his desk.

“What happened?” Caitlin asked, fighting the urge to bolt from the office.

Byrd cursed and rubbed his forehead. “Sheriff Dennis just lost a man in an explosion. Looks like a booby-trapped drug warehouse. He’s got three more men in critical condition, some being airlifted out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I know you’ll have a lot to do.” Caitlin got to her feet and headed for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going, missy?”

“Back to work,” she said, wondering how long it had been since she heard that archaic term.

“Hold it right there. You’ve haven’t answered one damn question I asked, and now people are dying across the river. What the hell is your boyfriend up to over there?”

Caitlin turned back to the red-faced sheriff. “Helping Sheriff Dennis do his duty. At least on that side of the river, they have a sheriff who
knows
his duty. Not one who wastes his time playing games with the law.”

“I’m not playing any damn game.”

She walked back to his desk and spoke with cold conviction. “Bullshit. You and Shad Johnson are using the law to settle your personal scores. Penn thrashed Shad in court and an election, and Tom helped your first wife get away from your beatings. You and Shad want to punish them for that.” Caitlin nodded for emphasis. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Byrd blinked like a man confronting some animal he’d never seen
before. Then his expression hardened and he got to his feet. “You have no idea how much trouble you’re biting off.”

“I know you’re a big man in this county. You’ve got an army of deputies, your own private crime lab, your jail. And I’m just a newspaper publisher. Nothing to be afraid of, right? But you forgot one thing. Yours is an elected position. The voters put you behind that desk, and they can snatch you right back out of here. My father owns twenty-seven newspapers across the southeast. And I—”

Caitlin jerked back as Byrd came around the desk, his bloodshot eyes blazing. “You sassy bitch. I don’t care how much money your old man’s got. I run this county, and you’re about to find that out.”

“You’re right about one thing,” she said evenly. “I
can
be a bitch. And up till now, I haven’t taken much interest in you. But that’s about to change. There’s a reporter who works for one of our papers in Alabama—a twenty-five-year-old black girl named Keisha Harvin. Last night, Keisha told her boss she was taking her vacation, then drove all night to get here so that she could work on the Double Eagle case. I trained that girl, Sheriff, and she is
hungry
.”

Byrd snorted in apparent derision, so Caitlin gave him the rest of it. “I’m going to feed you to Keisha Harvin, Sheriff. She’s going to crawl so far up your butt you’ll feel like you had a weeklong colonoscopy. Then I’m going to post the results of her investigation for everyone to see. The next time you go to a meeting of the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association, your oldest buddy won’t walk within twenty feet of you. Any plans you have for reelection will be as dead as that deputy across the river. Am I making myself clear? Or do you want to harass me some more?”

Sheriff Byrd aimed his finger at her like a pistol and spoke softly, but with implacable malice. “Listen to me, hon. Sometime in the next few hours, I’m going to hear one of two things: either Tom Cage was shot, or he’s on his way to my jail. You’d better hope it’s the first one. Because if he winds up in my jail, you’re going to come back here and
beg
me to go easy on him. Then you’ll find out how things really work in this county.”

Byrd’s mention of Tom’s plight had shaken her, but Caitlin pressed down her fears. “Oh, I think everybody knows that already. And they’re sick of it.”

Byrd’s face went purple, but he made no move to arrest her when she turned and reached for the doorknob.

“You’ll be back,” he said with certainty. “And you’ll be begging.”

Caitlin opened the door and went out, her heart in her throat.

TOM AWAKENED WITH A
desperate need to urinate, but when he opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was, or how to find a bathroom. Only when he saw a large framed portrait of Doris Avery did he remember that he was inside Quentin’s house, sleeping on the sofa. The heavy curtains had been drawn, but daylight leaked through at the edges. Tom tried to raise his arm to look at his watch, but pain knifed from his shoulder to his fingertips. He groaned and dropped his arm. He didn’t think he could get to his feet, much less make it to the bathroom.

After the pain receded, he looked toward his legs. Someone had laid a quilt over him during the night—Doris, he was sure—and a glass of water stood on the coffee table within reach of his right hand. Three pill bottles stood beside the water glass. As carefully as he could, Tom extended his right hand and pulled the water glass across the open space and leaned it against his hip. Then he pulled the pill bottles near. One held Cipro, and he swallowed one of the big white pills. Another held Vicodin, which he’d prescribed for Quentin one month earlier, according to the label. The third bottle held nitro tablets, but only three, which would not last him long under his present stress load. Tom chewed up a Vicodin despite the bitter taste, then swallowed the fragments. Then he picked up the water glass and drank steadily until it was empty.

Looking once around the large living room, he slid the glass under the quilt and unzipped his fly. After several surgeries, Tom was an old hand at using a urinal, and a tall glass was close enough. After he’d finished, he set the glass on the floor and fell back on the sofa, his back and shoulder seething with pain.

As he stared at the vaulted ceiling, he remembered he was supposed to text Walt a message that he’d reached safety, and also pass on his location. A coded message, he recalled. The problem was, he was supposed to get a new burn phone before he sent it. Given the two alternatives—taking a chance that someone had discovered the numbers of their burn
phones, or Walt wondering if the hit man in Tom’s backseat had killed him—Tom decided to split the difference.

Without pencil or paper ready to hand, he closed his eyes and thought of the simplest message he could send that would allay Walt’s fears. He finally settled on “
Safe. Loc to follow aft new fon
.” Once he had that, he popped the flimsy back off his cell phone and removed the SIM card, then switched on the phone. While it tried in vain to make contact with a nearby tower, he began to key in the message. One letter at a time, he converted each to its alphabetical number, then, as Walt had instructed, multiplied those numbers by the number of soldiers who had died in the ambulance outside Chosin, which was seven. Shutting his mind against the memories of that night, Tom did the math in his head, then entered the digits on the tiny keypad, putting a hyphen between each one. After the message was entered, he reinserted the SIM card and waited for the phone to acquire a tower. As soon as it did, he pressed
SEND
. When the LCD read “Message Sent,” he killed the phone again, then removed the battery and dropped the pieces on the floor beside the couch.

These actions had utterly expended his energy. He felt light-headed enough that he worried about his blood sugar, but he hadn’t the equipment to check it. He thought about calling out for Quentin, who was diabetic, but Quentin and Doris were probably still asleep. For a few seconds Tom saw an image of the would-be killer he’d abandoned in the dark cotton field last night: the anger in the man’s features, the childlike desolation in his eyes. Had that man reached Forrest Knox yet? Had he even tried? Or had he feared the punishment for failure so much that he’d simply run for his life?

“Time will tell,” Tom muttered. Then he slid back on the couch and slipped into unconsciousness.

THE CONCORDIA HOSPITAL
emergency room is a Babel of frightened wives, wailing children, and deputies so furious they’re ready to kill someone—anyone who might have played a part in the warehouse explosion. In the wake of that lethal blast, the most the hospital staff could do was try to stabilize the injured deputies and evacuate them to the nearest urban hospitals via helicopter. Walker Dennis has been circulating among the families of his men, doing what he can to instill calm, but it’s a tough job with one deputy dead and at least one other barely clinging to life. I can’t help but think of last night, when an unknown sniper killed Henry Sexton’s girlfriend just down the hall from this ER and came close to killing Henry himself. Walker is standing in the door of one of the treatment rooms, comforting the sons of one of his less seriously injured men. I’m trying to decide how long I should hang around when Special Agent John Kaiser marches through the main ER doors, scans the area, then homes in on me.

“What in God’s name possessed you to do something this stupid?” he asks, taking little care to keep his voice low.

“We obviously didn’t believe it was stupid,” I counter, motioning for him to quiet down.

“I told you last night how risky this kind of attack would be. And pointless.”

“We didn’t attack anybody. Sheriff Dennis simply enforced the law, which has been a neglected practice in this parish of late.”

Kaiser glances at Dennis, whose back is to him, then looks back at me. “Oh, bullshit. You hit the Knoxes, and they hit you back. Nothing surprising about that.”

“I’d bet money Forrest Knox was surprised this morning.”

Kaiser shakes his head in exasperation. “Do you realize I had the director sold on a massive search of the Lusahatcha Swamp? He was
talking to the Mississippi National Guard commander and the sheriff of Lusahatcha County. He’d even contacted Dwight Stone to consult about the 1964 search. If you hadn’t started this fiasco, we might have found the Bone Tree by sundown today. We might have had Jimmy Revels’s and Pooky Wilson’s remains. But now? There’s no way I can leave to run that effort. I’m stuck doing damage control. Only this time the damage is so great, I don’t know if it’s fixable.”

“We’re not your problem, John. You’re working a massive case that could take months or years. We’re going after some drug dealers and crooked cops. It’s that simple.”

“More bullshit. You’re going after the same targets I am, only you’re doing it in the stupidest possible way.”

My temper is starting to rise, which tells me Kaiser might be taking his life into his hands if any of the nearby deputies are listening. “We’re taking the shortest distance between two points, which in my experience is a good strategy. Besides, after last night’s conversation, I thought you were after Carlos Marcello, not the Knoxes.”

At last Kaiser lowers his voice to an angry whisper. “I told you I was after Forrest Knox. It’s all the same case anyway.” Before the FBI agent can vent more fury, Sheriff Dennis walks over from the treatment room. “Can I help you, Agent Kaiser?”

Kaiser manages to rein in his anger slightly. “I’m sorry for what happened to your men, Sheriff. But I have to ask: what did you really hope to accomplish with these raids?”

Dennis squares his shoulders like a man preparing for a fight. “Aside from upholding the law and protecting the people of this parish?”

“You’ve confiscated some precursor chemicals, and you’ve got a truckload of low-level perps locked up. Do you really think they’re going to give up the Double Eagles? Do you think they even know anything
worth
giving up?”

Walker gives a surprisingly calm shrug. “Since they’re facing mandatory minimums, I’d say there’s a good chance that one or more will talk.”

Kaiser shakes his head. “You have no idea what you’re up against, Sheriff. The punks you arrested this morning don’t know enough to jail one Double Eagle, and they don’t know jack shit about Forrest Knox.”

“I reckon we’ll see,” Dennis drawls. “But I’m betting at least one of them knows more than you think.”

“Bad bet, Sheriff.”

“John,” I cut in, hoping to prevent further escalation, “I don’t think we’re going to find much common ground this morning. You ought to think about vacating the premises. Some of these deputies are . . . in a highly irritable state of mind.”

“I’ll go you one better,” Dennis says aggressively. “I’m gonna call in the Double Eagles for questioning today.”

The FBI agent clearly can’t believe his ears. “You mean get warrants for their arrest?”

“No, no,” Walker says. “Just ask ’em nicely to come in for a chat.”

Kaiser actually laughs. “How are you going to contact them?”

Dennis shrugs again. “It’s a small parish. I’ll figure a way. If they’ve got nothing to hide, they shouldn’t mind coming in.”

“I’ll save you the trouble, Sheriff. Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield are in Texas, at Billy Knox’s fishing camp. It’s on the Toledo Bend Reservoir. And they won’t come back here to talk to you, no matter how nicely you ask them. Especially after this morning. Because they
do
have plenty to hide.”

Sheriff Dennis works his lower lip around his dip of snuff. “Well . . . I reckon I’ll ask anyway. Can’t hurt none.”

“You’re wrong,” Kaiser says in a grave voice. “If all you guys were doing was jumping the gun on a drug case, I’d shut up and go back to New Orleans. But you’re throwing a wrench into one of the biggest conspiracy cases the Bureau’s ever been involved with, and I can’t stand by while you do it.”

Dennis cuts his eyes at me, but I offer nothing. “You wanna explain that statement?”

When Kaiser doesn’t answer, I say, “Our junior G-man thinks he’s working the JFK assassination.”

Dennis’s eyes narrow. After squinting at Kaiser for fifteen seconds, he says, “Why not the Lindbergh baby?”

Kaiser angrily shakes his head. “What you guys don’t know . . . Jesus.”

“Do you
see
what’s going on in this parish?” Walker asks, waving his hand to take in his casualties and their families. “I’ve got good men down, and one dead. Bastards who murdered people forty years ago still killing people today. And they’ve got their kids helping them. When I saw you draining the Jericho Hole yesterday, I figured we were on the
same side. But it’s starting to look to me like you’re just in the way.”

“That’s because you’ve got blinders on,” Kaiser says, not the slightest bit intimidated. “Penn, could I speak to you alone?”

“I don’t think so. We’re in Sheriff Dennis’s jurisdiction. I’m just the mayor of Natchez, as you reminded me last night. And I’m not really interested in the Kennedy assassination right now.”

“No?” Kaiser lowers his voice again. “What if I told you that one of the rifles we took out of the ruins of Brody Royal’s house was a 6.58-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano, just like the rifle Oswald fired from the Texas Book Depository? It’s the exact variant, 40.5 inches long.”

I think about this for a few seconds. “I’d say you found yourself a replica that Brody bought to add to his little collection. Like a model of the starship
Enterprise
.”

“That Carcano’s no replica. It’s a genuine Italian surplus war rifle that was probably made within a few months of the one Oswald bought through the mail in 1962.”

“Does it have a serial number?”

“It does. It also has fingerprints on it.”

“How is that possible? The fire would have—”

“This rifle wasn’t in Royal’s basement.” Kaiser’s eyes shine with triumph. “We found it in a gun safe in the old man’s study, on the main floor of the house. Everything in that safe was in pristine condition. Agents from our Legat in Rome have contacted the Italian government to trace the records. The odds are that Royal’s rifle was shipped to the U.S. for retail sale, like most of the other Carcano surplus in the fifties.”

“Great. But I’m not interested.”

“Penn, how sure are you about the type of rifles you saw in that special display case?”

To my surprise, Sheriff Dennis seems to be listening closely.

“I know neither was a Mannlicher-Carcano,” I tell Kaiser. “Any Texas prosecutor has talked to enough JFK conspiracy nuts to know what Oswald’s rifle looked like. The Carcano has an extended trigger housing and a forestock that nearly reaches the end of the barrel. It’s basically a crappy weapon. The rifles I saw in that display case were expensive hunting rifles with quality scopes. Surely you’ve identified them by now?”

“We think so. But let’s double-check.” Kaiser pulls a folded piece of
paper from his back pocket and shoves it at me. “Have a look and see if you can ID the two rifles you saw in that case.”

While Dennis stares with knitted brows, I take the inkjet-printed sheet. It shows a column of eight rifles in full color and good resolution. At first they look very similar, but the closer I study them, the more differences I see.

“I’m pretty sure this is the one that had the MLK date under it,” I say, pointing to a lever-action hunting rifle. “What is it?”

“Winchester Model 70,” says Kaiser. “Classic sniper rifle. What about the one dated November twenty-second?”

After narrowing the remaining weapons down to two, I point at the one that looks most like the image from my memory. “This one.”

Kaiser gives a half smile. “Right both times. That’s a Remington Model 700. A hot load in that rifle drives a bullet close to four thousand feet per second, depending on the caliber. Perfect for the Kennedy head shot. And that’s one of the rifles we found. Minus the incinerated wooden parts, of course.”

“Then why the hell are you making such a fuss about the Mannlicher-Carcano from Royal’s study?”

“Because it raises so many questions. And if I’m right, it’s going to connect the Royal-Knox-Marcello group directly to Oswald and Dallas. I’ll bet you any amount of money that the final shipping destination of that rifle was Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas.”

“I told you, John. Not interested.”

“Hold up a second,” says Sheriff Dennis, his eyes on Kaiser. “Are you saying Brody Royal had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy?”

“I am. But that’s confidential case information, Sheriff. And not just Brody Royal.”

“Who else? The Knoxes?”

Kaiser shakes his head. “I shouldn’t say more at this time.”

“He thinks the Knoxes and Carlos Marcello had a hand in it,” I say. “Crime of the century.”

Kaiser glares at me, but Sheriff Dennis is studying the FBI agent intently. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Do I look like a joker to you, Sheriff?”

“No, sir, you don’t. And I know a little bit about the Marcello clan.
If you really believe you can solve the Kennedy case, I can respect that. But you’ve got to grant me the same courtesy. You probably don’t know it, but I lost a cousin to these bastards in a drug buy gone bad a couple of years back. A dirty cop killed him. And Forrest Knox covered for that bastard. I mean to make those Knoxes pay, you hear? We’ve put up with their crap for too long in this parish. I drew the line this morning, and there’s no going back. So, I wish you well with your work. If there’s any way I can help you with your case, I will. But I won’t stop my own work on the Double Eagles. And you’d do well not to try to interfere. Okay?”

Sheriff Dennis doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns and walks back through the door to the treatment room, where one of the deputy’s sons is crying.

“Small-town sheriffs,” Kaiser mutters.

“Didn’t I hear you started out as one?”

He gives another exasperated sigh.

“We’re moving forward, John. You can either get in the game with us or sit on the sidelines and watch. Either way, Forrest Knox is going to feel the heat.”

Kaiser steps close to me. “If you keep pushing Forrest—and Snake and the others—this morning’s casualties won’t be anything but a warm-up for the main event. Take a word of advice, Penn. Hide your family in a deep hole. Because there’s nothing Forrest won’t do to stop you.”

In my mind I see Annie and my mother looking worriedly after me as I left Edelweiss and headed out to my car. “I’ll do that.”

Kaiser turns without another word and walks toward the exit. Before he passes through, he turns back and says, “Let me know if Dennis gets an answer from the Double Eagles on that voluntary questioning.”

“I thought you said there was no chance.”

“Yeah, well . . . this is Louisiana. Crazier things have happened.” He shakes his head miserably, then walks out.

I follow Walker into the treatment room and find him sitting with the two young boys. Their wounded father is wearing an oxygen mask over his mouth. Walker is holding the hand of one of the boys. His face is wet, and his big neck is bright red. With embarrassment I realize that the wife is saying a prayer beside the bed. I bow my head.

After she finishes, Walker rises and leads me back to the main ER area.

“How
are
you going to contact the Eagles?” I ask him.

“I’m gonna call Claude Devereux, their lawyer. That Cajun bastard has always been too slick for his own good. If he doesn’t cooperate, I’m gonna find a way to lock him in the trap with the rest of them.”

This is actually a good idea. “Kaiser’s probably right about Snake and Sonny being in Texas. Surely Devereux will tell them to stay put?”

“If they stay in Texas, that tells us something, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, I’ll be grinding away at the punks we brought in this morning. Sooner or later, one of them’s gonna want to trade something.”

“Do you want me to help you with the questioning?”

“Not after what happened at the warehouse. Too many people will be watching me. You steer clear for today. If somebody decides to flip on a Double Eagle, I’ll call you. Fair enough?”

“Yeah. I need to tighten up my family’s security anyway, and I’ve got a huge backlog of work at City Hall. I’m sorry again about your men.”

I start to leave, but Walker takes hold of my arm, then steps even closer, his eyes hard on mine. “How come you didn’t tell me about that JFK angle?”

“Because it’s just a pig trail. Even if Kaiser is onto something with that rifle, it’s ancient history.”