The Bone Tree (24 page)

That Drew and Melba would keep Dad’s whereabouts from me when his life was at stake is almost incomprehensible. And yet . . . why would I expect anything else? Their willing deception tells me just how many options my father must have when it comes to finding aid and comfort in his home territory.

“Why don’t you think he’s still there now?” I ask.

“I’ve been calling the house phone all morning,” Drew explains. “No answer. Tom could be there, of course, but my gut tells me no.”

“Mine, too,” Melba agrees.

“Maybe Walt got back and they moved on?”

Melba slowly shakes her head. “I think Dr. Cage believed Captain Garrity was already caught. Maybe even dead.”

“Jesus. I need to get over there.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Drew asks. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a key. “I brought this.”

“No.” I pluck the key from his hand. “You’ve done enough already.”

“Penn—”

“At least you told me now. Christ, you guys. Swear to me that you’ll call me if he contacts you again.”

They both nod with the sincerity of the guilty.

With a heavy sigh, I hurry to my office for the keys to the city car.

WHEN WALT SAW
Griffith Mackiever sit down opposite him in the Waffle House on Lee Drive, he knew he was looking at a broken man. The restaurant was nearly empty, and Walt had taken a corner booth, but Mackiever spoke in a cracked whisper so soft that Walt could hardly make out his words.

The gist was that Forrest Knox had leaked the story about Mackiever downloading child pornography, and he’d supplied images to the press. Reporters started calling the colonel’s house immediately, and within half an hour TV trucks had laid siege to his front yard. Mac had only reached this rendezvous by sneaking through his neighbor’s backyard and having his nephew pick him up, and he was anxious to get home to his wife as quickly as he could. He’d only come because he’d put Walt in harm’s way and felt he owed it to him to personally release him from any obligation.

“What do you mean?” Walt asked, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You sound like you’re giving up. You’re not going to resign, are you?”

“What else can I do?”

“Fight, goddamn it.”

“How do you fight a fire hose of filth? Knox has been laying this computer trail for months, using my actual computers. How can I prove I didn’t do those searches?”

“Did you do them?”

“Of course not!”

“Then you can prove it. You’ve just got to calm down enough to approach it systematically.”

“Walt, I don’t have that kind of time. If I don’t resign, Knox will have those male prostitutes talk to the press. They’ll swear I hired them. I’m sure Forrest has access to all my movements for the past year, and all the dates will jibe.”

“Fuck him. You need to stab that prick in the gizzard.”

Mackiever cradled his face in his hands. “With what?”

Walt took the flash drive out of his pocket and laid it on the Formica between Mac’s elbows.

“What’s that?”

“A video of snipers murdering three black teenagers during Hurricane Katrina.”

The colonel dropped his hands and blinked in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

“No. They’re trained snipers, either military or police. I’m betting state police. The shooter used a silencer.”

A light came into Mackiever’s eyes. “Can you see their faces?”

“No. The footage was shot through a scope. Probably a spotting scope. But you can hear voices on the tape.”

“Clearly enough to recognize them?”

Walt thought about it. “I think so. With all the high-tech tools available now. If you’re lucky, one of the voices on the tape is Knox’s.”

Mackiever was clearly tempted. “If that’s true, it would not only destroy Knox, but the reputation of the state police.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Mac.”

Mackiever looked miserable.

“Don’t give Forrest any clue that you have this, or he’ll have time to make up some bullshit story to explain it.”

The colonel looked at Walt a couple of more seconds, then hung his head.

“What the hell did you expect when you brought me into this?” Walt demanded, looking around the restaurant. The fry cook behind the counter was staring at them.

“I thought I had forty-eight hours,” Mackiever said. “That’s what Knox told me in New Orleans. But he didn’t even give me twelve.”

“He’s being squeezed. His drug operations got hit in Concordia Parish this morning.”

“Really?”

Walt nodded. “I’m betting Penn Cage is behind it. Knox isn’t invincible, Mac. But you can’t fight a guy like that halfway. It’s kill or be killed, just like the old days.”

“I just wish we had something lethal, something that would damn Forrest alone.”

Walt thought about the derringer he’d planted in Knox’s house. Then he thought about the man he saw before him. Looking at the bloodshot eyes and resigned face, he saw nothing of the stalwart Ranger he’d once known.

Walt patted his own chest. “You remember what I always keep around my neck here, don’t you?”

Mackiever nodded dully. “A five-shot derringer.”

“That’s right. Let me run something by you. I was thinking . . . if you were to order a search of Knox’s home, and the search team found the gun that killed Trooper Dunn hidden there . . . that would change the game quite a bit. Wouldn’t it?”

Mackiever’s eyes had gone wide. “That derringer was the gun you used on Dunn?”

“You’re asking the wrong question, buddy.”

“You’d go back in and plant it?”

The fucking thing is already planted, you amateur,
Walt thought dejectedly. “I told you, this is kill or be killed. Survival.”

“How could I explain telling the team what to search for? How would I know or even suspect the gun was there?”

“Get the judge to write the warrant as generally as you can. You know how to play that game.”

Mackiever’s face told Walt that his old friend was simply overwhelmed. “Walt . . . I appreciate all you’ve done. And I’m going to take the video, get it analyzed. But trying to pin Trooper Dunn on Forrest would be just about impossible. He was nowhere near that crime. And why in God’s name would he keep the gun if it was a murder weapon?”

“Possession’s nine-tenths of being screwed,” Walt said bluntly. “You’re overthinking this.”

“You’re oversimplifying. Knox has been planning his play for months. We’re not going to beat him by improvising at the last second. For one thing, you could get caught going back in there to plant the gun.”

Walt considered telling Mackiever that the derringer was already planted, but he decided against it. “Knox is at headquarters right now. I checked the GPS before I came in.”

“His wife could walk in on you.”

“A meteor could hit the Waffle House. What’s happened to you, Mac?”

The colonel gripped his coffee mug and swirled it on the table. “The world isn’t what I thought it was. I knew things were bad, but . . . shit, forget it. What about your derringer? Is there any way they could trace it back to you?”

“No. I got it from a friend in Texas who used it as a throwdown gun for years. It’s as cold as they come.”

Mackiever considered this for close to a minute. Then he shook his head and said, “I’m not going that way. I’ve still got a couple of allies in my corner, if this porn thing doesn’t drive them away. A senator and I teach Sunday school together.”

Walt reached across the table and squeezed his old friend’s wrist. “You’re hoping for a miracle, Mac. In my experience, those are damned far between in this life.”

Mackiever stared at him in silence for a while. Then he threw a ten on the table, pocketed the flash drive, patted Walt on the shoulder, and walked out of the diner.

THE SECOND TIME TOM
awakened, he saw Doris Avery’s lovely face hovering just above his own. She might be an attorney, but he saw the compassionate concern of a natural nurse in her brown eyes.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

Tom tried to say, “All right,” but his throat was parched, and all that came out was a croak.

“I brought you more water.” Doris held a straw to his lips. “How’s that shoulder?”

Tom drank several sips from the straw. After he’d finished, he said, “Not too bad, actually. I woke up earlier and took a pain pill.”

“I saw you did,” said Quentin Avery with a laugh.

Tom turned his head to the right and saw his old friend sitting in his motorized wheelchair on the other side of the coffee table.

“Couldn’t make it to the bathroom, huh?” Quentin asked, pointing at the glass on the floor.

“Sorry about that.”

The lawyer grinned. “Oh, I can relate, baby.”

“Is anything wrong?” Tom asked. “Has anything happened?”

“No. Everything’s quiet.”

Tom breathed a little easier.

“You don’t feel like you have a fever anymore,” Doris said. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat. But I don’t want to be any trouble.”

Quentin laughed heartily. “We’re way past that, old friend.”

Doris said, “How about a grilled cheese sandwich?”

Tom’s stomach growled.

“I’ll fix one,” she said, giving Quentin a meaningful look. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

“Fix two,” Quentin said.

After she left, the wheelchair hummed, and Quentin piloted it around the table until he sat near Tom’s feet. Now Tom could talk to him without having to crane his neck.

“How are you, really?” Quentin asked. “Medically speaking.”

Very carefully, Tom tried to move each of his limbs. The pain was bad, but if he didn’t have a fever, he was a lot better off than he could have been.

“My heart’s still beating. That’s about the best I could hope for.”

“And the shoulder?”

“Better than I have any right to expect.”

Quentin’s eyes filled with concern. “No shit, man. How bad is it?”

Tom forced himself to smile. “I’ll be all right. After the army, gunshots are something I know a lot about.”

“You’re not a twenty-year-old GI anymore.”

“A lot of grizzled old vets got hit in Korea. They made it.”

“Grizzled old vets of thirty-five.”

This time Tom’s smile was natural. “I treated indigenous Koreans, too. Plenty of old men survived having their legs blown off by land mines.”

“I’d still feel a lot better with you in a hospital.”

As Tom looked back at his old friend, he realized what was about to happen. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Quentin nodded slowly. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in Jackson, but that’s not the real reason. I read your future daughter-in-law’s stories in the paper when I woke up. A man named Sonny Thornfield has
made a statement that he saw you and Walt Garrity kill that Louisiana state trooper.”

“That’s a lie. He didn’t see anything.”

“That’s good to know. But if the police come here and find you, I’ll lose my law license, even if I don’t go to jail. And Doris could lose hers as well. I can’t do you any good if I can’t represent you in court, Tom. And if guns are what you need to protect you, I’m betting you know men a lot better with them than I am.”

“I understand, Quentin.”

“Let me finish. You’re welcome to use my house as long as you need to. If Doris and I aren’t here, no one can argue that we aided and abetted. My deepest wish is that you’d let me arrange a surrender to a district attorney, or even a U.S. attorney. But you’re not ready to do that, are you?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.”

“All right, then. When you get ready to fight this case, or plead the charges down to something manageable, you call me.”

“I will.”

Doris’s shoes clicked on the floor, and she brought in a plate with a hot cheese sandwich on it. She set the plate on the coffee table, then some iced tea beside it.

“Thank you,” Tom said.

“Where’s mine?” asked Quentin.

“You get a salad.”

Quentin groaned, but then he said, “Doris put your car in our garage, so nobody can see it from the air. And there’s a laptop computer on the floor by your pee glass. We’ve got Wi-Fi in the house. You ought to be safe here for as long as you need to stay. Just promise me you’ll call somebody if that shoulder starts getting bad.”

Tom sat up a little and gave them a brave smile. “I’ve got some people I can call. I’ll have help here soon. You two already went beyond the call of duty. You saved my life.”

Doris laid a warm hand on Tom’s bearded cheek. “You think hard about your options, Tom. Don’t sacrifice yourself for the wrong reason.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

Quentin reached out and squeezed Tom’s foot beneath the quilt. “I’ll be thinking about you. And you think about me. I’ve still got one good murder trial in me. Two, if there’s no other way.”

“I’m counting on that. You two take care.”

With that, Quentin squeezed his foot once more, then whirred out of sight.

Doris sighed, then stood up straight. “Does your wife know where you are?”

“No. But she knows I’m safe.”

“I doubt she’s resting easy.”

“No. But it’s her I’m doing this for, as much as anyone.”

Doris looked at Tom for a long time. Then she said, “I hope I see you again soon, and in far better circumstances.”

Before he could reply, she turned and walked back into the kitchen.

Tom listened until the back door closed. A minute later, the soft sound of an engine reached him. It grew louder for a few seconds, then faded fast.

He was alone.

His first thought was of Walt. His old friend had not acknowledged receiving the “safe” message, nor had he asked for information on Tom’s exact location. That meant one of three things: either he was busy, he did not trust his or Tom’s current mobile phones, or he was dead. Tom prayed it was not the latter. If so, he would carry the burden of Walt’s death for whatever remained of his days.

Tom’s next thought was for himself. If he didn’t get help soon, he would die in Quentin’s house. Above all, he needed a safe telephone, preferably several burn phones, and he had no hope of getting these himself. Second, he needed more nitroglycerine and antibiotics than Quentin had left on the table.

His options were few.

He could call Penn, but Penn would insist that he turn himself in to the authorities, which was out of the question. Tom couldn’t even consider that until he’d learned the result of Walt’s meeting with Colonel Mackiever. Peggy would do anything he asked, of course, but he wasn’t about to put her in further jeopardy. If he died, or was killed while on the run, at least she would remain to represent their generation in the family. A primitive thought, he reflected, but that was what he felt.

Drew Elliott had helped him once, but Tom had a feeling he’d stretched Drew’s loyalty about as far as he dared. No, what he needed was unswerving loyalty. A hundred patients came to mind, but Tom
couldn’t bring himself to put them in lethal danger. Once he faced that reality, only one person remained.

Melba Price.

Melba hadn’t wanted to leave him last night, at the lake. Thankfully, she had finally relented, or the confrontation with Knox’s killers might have gone differently. Tom hated to ask more of her, but the grim truth was, Melba was single, her children were grown, and her loyalty was beyond question. Tom had only to close his eyes to remember what a wreck Melba had become when her husband left her for a younger woman. She’d drunk so steadily and suicidally—with various pills added to the mix—that she put even Tom’s worst excesses to shame. But with Tom’s intervention and help, she had survived. He didn’t think of the present situation in terms of her repaying any debt; he simply knew that if asked, Melba would come.