The Bone Tree (52 page)

WALKER DENNIS HAS
reclaimed his desk, and now Kaiser sits before the furious sheriff like a supplicant, just as Henry Sexton and I did three days ago. Walker has deigned to give the FBI agent ten minutes to make his case, unless the Double Eagles can be processed and booked in less time than that. Kaiser’s face was taut with anger when he first came back into this office, but he’s managed to calm down and present his objections without quite accusing Sheriff Dennis of planting evidence on the Double Eagles. Walker has listened with surprising patience, though he’s checked and sent several text messages during the monologue.

“Agent Kaiser,” Walker says during the first sufficient pause, “I realize you’ve questioned a lot of serial killers and such, and that’s real important work. But what we’ve got here is a drug trafficking case. Open and shut. And I’ve got some personal experience in handling that kind of case.”

Dennis points at me. “Mayor Cage here also has considerable experience handling felony cases. In the big city, too. From drug cases right up to capital murder. And he’s been duly deputized by me as a special deputy of Concordia Parish, so there won’t be any bullshit about jurisdiction from the ACLU.”

“Sheriff, let me stop you there,” Kaiser interjects. “Penn has not come here to solve civil rights cases, or even drug trafficking cases. He’s here to save his father.”

I feel my face reddening.

“And while I can empathize with that goal, I can’t allow it to torpedo criminal cases of historic significance.”

Dennis starts to reply, but Kaiser beats him to the punch. “Sheriff, I know you lost a relative a couple of years back—a deputy you believe Forrest Knox had a hand in killing. You also lost two deputies to that booby trap at the warehouse. I’ve lost agents, myself. I lost fellow soldiers in Vietnam. A lot of them. But you can’t give in to the hunger for
quick payback. It never works out like you think it will.” Kaiser glances at me, then back at Dennis. “What I want from these sons of bitches is the truth, no matter who gets jailed or exonerated. The
truth,
men. That’s why if anybody goes in to question them today, it should be me.”

“But you’re not even convinced they
should
be questioned,” I point out.

Kaiser shrugs. “Obviously, we can’t unbreak that egg. They’re in custody now.”

“Damn straight,” Sheriff Dennis says.

“But I need you to understand something, Sheriff. I’ve been working to nail these bastards longer than you think. I know things about them that even Henry Sexton didn’t know. With all due respect, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“I know the Knox family, all right.”

“Do you?” Kaiser reaches into a thick leather bag beside his chair and drops a stack of worn files on the sheriff’s desk. “Why don’t we see how well you know them?”

Dennis sighs heavily, glances at his watch, then motions for Kaiser to get on with it.

As I pray I won’t have to listen to a rehash of the file I read last night, Kaiser pats the top file with the flat of his right hand, then launches into a more concise version of exactly that. Sheriff Dennis appears surprisingly interested in this information, particularly the tales of mutilation carried out by Knoxes serving in the armed forces.

“There were official records of this?” he asks, taking a pinch of Skoal and tucking it into the right side of his lower lip.

“Absolutely,” Kaiser says. “And they weren’t unique to the Knoxes. The practices were so widespread that the brass couldn’t stop them. In 1944, one ‘picture of the week’ in
Life
magazine showed a U.S. sailor’s girlfriend writing him a thank-you note for a Japanese skull he’d sent her from the Pacific. Vietnam vets took a lot of heat over severed-ear stories, but that kind of savagery has always been a part of war—especially in societies that value hunting as proof of masculinity.”

“Like the Deep South?” I ask.

“The South has no monopoly on brutality,” Kaiser says without missing a beat. “A Pennsylvania senator gave President Roosevelt a letter opener made from the arm bone and tanned skin of a Japanese soldier. Roosevelt only returned the gift after a scandal broke about it.
Hundreds of gold teeth and ears were taken by American soldiers on Guadalcanal, sometimes from living owners.”

“So you’re saying that normal men committed these kinds of acts?”

“Yes—if the word ‘normal’ means anything when it comes to war. But the Knoxes don’t belong in the middle of the curve.” Kaiser lets me see the passion behind his eyes. “I believe the Knoxes are sociopaths—all of them, to one degree or another. And I believe that America’s wars—and later the civil rights struggle—offered them an arena in which to exercise their particular appetites.”

“Henry Sexton had a similar theory,” I tell him.

“The damned thing of it is,” says Sheriff Dennis, “it sounds like Forrest Knox was a hell of a soldier. Killing all those VC out on his own like that, and leaving half-dollars in their mouths . . . he scared the hell out of the Cong.”

Kaiser smiles strangely. “Sociopaths often make effective soldiers, at least in small-unit actions. Killing is the objective, after all. But over time, their various paraphilias have a corrosive effect on morale.”

Dennis gives a somber nod. “I swear to God, when I read Caitlin’s article this morning, about the Double Eagles slicing off those black boys’ service tattoos, I damn near puked. Anybody who did that to a vet ought to be hung.”

“I’m working on it,” Kaiser promises. “Just like Henry was.”

“I thought the Double Eagle gold piece was the Eagles’ sign,” Dennis says, glancing at his watch. “Why did Forrest use half-dollars on the VC?”

Kaiser smiles like a patient college professor. “Only the older guys had gold pieces. The mints stopped pressing the Double Eagle in 1933. All the younger members carried ’64 JFK half-dollars. Confidentially, that may have had to do with the Kennedy assassination.”

“You said something about that in the hospital yesterday morning,” Dennis recalls. “What’s the deal on that?”

I sigh wearily, dreading a Kaiser soliloquy on his pet conspiracy theory, but he says, “We don’t have time to go into the details, Sheriff. And I don’t have the authority to give them to you. Let me just say that one or more of the men in your jail at this moment may know who killed John F. Kennedy. They may even be related to the assassin. Most important, they may possess evidence that could prove his guilt.”

Dennis can see that Kaiser is serious, and he’s appropriately
impressed. “Well, since they’re facing mandatory thirty-year sentences, why don’t you take this opportunity to squeeze the truth out of them?”

Kaiser takes his time with this question. The idea must surely be tempting to him. But his response is exactly what I expect.

“Because,” he says, “anything I get them to say based on a threat that might later be proved, ah . . . less than genuine, shall we say, would be inadmissible in court. I can’t risk a case that big under those circumstances.”

Dennis has the grace not to take this as a personal insult. “Those charges are going to stick, Mr. Kaiser. And they should stick. Because those bastards have been selling that poison in this parish for years. And people have died from it.”

“I know they have, Sheriff.” Kaiser fans through a file without looking at it. “But the men you’re trying to nail aren’t simply meth dealers. Nor are they merely violent racists. They’re serial rapists and murderers related by blood and tribal ties. I don’t think there’s any comparable case in the literature, at least not on this scale. The linking crime signature is the trophy taking. It crosses all the generations. Two separate sources have mentioned that Elam Knox had a Bible bound in human skin, possibly given to him by his youngest legitimate son, Snake.”

“Holy Christ,” Dennis says, as if finally appreciating the scope of the battle he has taken on. “I should have gone ahead and crushed that asshole’s windpipe back there.”

“Then we’d be booking you for murder,” Kaiser observes. “Sheriff, I’m begging you to look at this thing objectively. If you won’t postpone these interrogations, at least let me handle them. I’m an expert on the Knox family, and I have far more experience than either of you at questioning sociopaths.”

“On that point,” Dennis says, “unless I’m mistaken, you also nearly killed a convict you were interrogating as part of an FBI research project. A handcuffed convict.”

Kaiser’s face colors. “That’s true. He was trying to get under my skin, and he did. He described a little boy he’d violated and killed eight years earlier with a power drill. I snapped and went for him, just like you did earlier with Snake. It was a mistake, and I’m lucky he didn’t die. You should—”

Someone has knocked at the office door.

“
What is it?
” bellows the sheriff.

A tall deputy pokes his head in. “Everybody’s printed and processed and locked up tight.”

“I’ll be there in a second, Silas.”

“Who you want first, Sheriff?”

“Snake fucking Knox.”

Kaiser clears his throat. “Sheriff, could I have another sixty seconds before you make that decision?”

Dennis tells the deputy to wait for confirmation on who to bring to the interrogation room.

After the door closes, Kaiser looks back and forth between us. “You two probably figure that Snake Knox is the leader of the Eagles that we have here and therefore possesses the most information. You’re right on both counts. But Snake is also the toughest of all six suspects. You just threatened to kill him, and he spit your threat right back in your face. He’s not worried about that crystal meth, Sheriff. You can’t break a guy like that. Not legally, anyway. And maybe not even with torture.”

Dennis’s face darkens. “Well, who would you question first, hotshot?”

“Sonny Thornfield. He’s got a daughter and two grandkids that I know about, and maybe more. One grandson is in the army. Sonny was probably present at most of the Eagles’ worst crimes, but nothing in his background indicates the kind of sociopathic behavior that the Knoxes and some others have displayed. Sonny’s also got severe heart disease, and he knows he’d never survive prison. Hell, he nearly died three days ago after Dr. Cage and Garrity questioned him in that van. If any Eagle ever had incentive to cut a deal, it’s Sonny Thornfield. I think that’s why Dr. Cage picked him.”

Sheriff Dennis turns up his palms as if it makes no difference to him. “So I’ll start with Sonny. Thanks for the tip.”

Kaiser shakes his head wearily. “No . . . if you do that, you’ll tip Snake that we know Sonny is the most vulnerable. The thing to do is start with Snake, but don’t truly go after him. I’ll show him the gun we pulled out of Luther’s Pontiac, maybe a bone or two. I’ll keep hammering at him with that, and he’ll keep stonewalling. Then we swap him for Sonny. But once Sonny’s in there, we show him what we
really
have. Not the meth, but everything I know about the Double Eagles and the Knoxes.”

“Compared to the meth, that’s nothing,” Dennis says. “If you had enough to nail him, you’d have arrested him already.”

“Sonny won’t forget about the meth,” I think aloud, as I realize what Kaiser is doing. He’s not going to make himself party to using planted evidence, but he doesn’t mind exploiting the fear that evidence has produced.

“Trust me, Sheriff,” Kaiser says. “If I make it plain that Sonny’s going to spend the last years of his life in Angola if he doesn’t turn state’s evidence—and at the same time offer him and his family federal witness protection—Thornfield will crack.”

Kaiser is right. In terms of planning his interrogation, Walker Dennis probably never got much past walking in, slamming the meth down on a table, and giving Snake an ultimatum. And that would be effective enough to accomplish my initial goal—distracting Forrest from hunting my father. But if Kaiser is willing to use the fear created by the planted meth, and pile what he knows on top of that, then Sonny might actually agree to flip on his comrades. If he does that, we might learn not only where Dad is, but also who killed Viola—not to mention getting enough testimony to send Forrest and Snake to prison. Closing deals like that often takes days, of course, not hours; but if I don’t at least admit the logic of Kaiser’s argument, he’ll suspect I was part of the planted meth gambit from the start.

“He’s making sense, Walker,” I say, still wondering if Sheriff Dennis condemned himself to prison by planting meth at Billy Knox’s residence.

Perceiving my wavering support as a betrayal, Walker launches into an impassioned defense of his jurisdiction and his need to prove to the people of his parish that the era of police corruption has come to an end. While Kaiser suffers patiently through this, my cell phone vibrates. Slipping it partway out of my pocket, I see a text message from a number I don’t recognize. I almost ignore it, but then a little voice tells me I can’t afford to ignore anything today. Sliding the phone farther out of my pocket, I see this message:

This is Walt. Ur father’s been taken. I’m on my way to Natchez. ETA 8 mins. If we don’t find Tom quick, he’s dead. He could be already. (Yeah, it’s me, boy. We first met on the Alvarez case.)

The final parenthetical sends a chill across my neck and scalp. Someone trying to lure me outside might claim to be “Walt” or “Walt
Garrity,” but no one involved with this case could possibly know that Walt and I first met during a murder case in Houston, when he worked as an investigator for DA Joe Cantor.

If we don’t find Tom quick, he’s dead. He could be already
. . . .

Walker is still pontificating to Kaiser, who quietly responds in logical counterpoint that has no effect whatever on the sheriff. While this clumsy dance continues, my mind slips quietly but inexorably free from its moorings. Too much has happened too quickly over the past few days, and I’ve had too little rest to process this new information with anything like objectivity.

“Penn?” says Sheriff Dennis. “Did you hear me?”

“I’m sorry. What?”

Kaiser is watching me with an inquisitive gaze, and I can’t summon a mask to put him off. All I can think about is marching back to the cellblock and sticking a gun in Sonny Thornfield’s mouth and forcing him to tell me where my father is. Given the circumstances and the time frame, it seems the only logical thing to do.