The Bone Tree (55 page)

“I’m going to take my car,” I call to him. “You’re still a fugitive, and depending on what Kaiser has done about our little hanging party, you may need to rabbit one more time.”

“Okay.”

Adrenaline flushes through me as I sprint for my Audi.

“THIS THING’S GOING OFF
the rails,” Forrest said, pulling his coat around him as the wind over the deck picked up. “I can feel it.”

“What you want to do, boss?” Ozan asked.

Forrest shook his head and wished he had a cigarette. He couldn’t move any faster than he was already. He’d hoped to reassure Snake by phone—and also to ask for a proof of life on Dr. Cage—but when the mole offered Snake a cell phone, Snake’s only answer had been to point at his watch. Forrest understood that message well enough. But now that so much time had passed, he was starting to worry that his worst fear was true.

“I think Dr. Cage is dead, Alphonse. There’s no other reason for Snake to put off talking to me like this. Not that I can see, anyway. And if Dr. Cage is dead . . . there’s no deal to be made with Penn Cage. Not one that’ll hold, anyway.”

Ozan pulled his hands from his pockets and rubbed them together in the wind. “I reckon not.”

“I’ve got to know, one way or the other. But Snake’s the only person who can tell me. Claude’s bugged out, and I’m not bringing in a new lawyer this late in the game. We’re going to have to get Snake out of that jail regardless of the risk.”

“Just Snake?”

“No. All of them. Otherwise, somebody’s going to start thinking about cutting a deal. But getting all of them out is going to take some precision timing combined with reckless daring.” Forrest sucked his teeth, reflecting on his choice of manpower.

“You know that Black Team can handle it,” Ozan said.

“I’m not so sure anymore. They’d
better
handle their end.”

“Who was that you called earlier?”

“Glenn Morehouse’s sister. Wilma Deen. She’s as cold as they come. Not many women would stand by quiet while you killed their brother, much less help you do it.”

“She done that?”

Forrest nodded. “This past Monday. She’s old school, boy. Like that Madame Defarge in
A Tale of Two Cities
.”

Ozan looked blank.

“I also called Billy about a bastard child of Snake’s. Alois Engel’s his name. The kid’s only twenty-five but he’s a mean little fucker. He’s
already affiliated with a couple of white supremacist groups. Cold as ice. Reminds me of a Hitler Youth poster. He’s done work for Billy in the meth trade, too. Anyway, the point in using him and Wilma is that, if anything goes bad with the end of the op—which is the biggest risk—Kaiser will think Snake brought ’em in. Not me.”

Ozan gave a malevolent grin. “Now you’re talkin’, babe.”

“Let’s start assembling the team. We’re going to need the whole goody bag, too.”

“It’s time, boss. Waiting never helped anything.”

AS WALT AND
I race toward Old River, a dead-end channel still connected to the Mississippi River by a narrow chute, the atrocities Kaiser wrote me about spin through my mind like curling strips of black-and-white film. To accept that men capable of such acts have control of my father is tantamount to resigning myself to his death. For while Snake Knox and his crew are behind bars at this moment, they had half the night to work their will on my father, and Forrest—the feared ghost of the Vietnamese Highlands—had him before Snake did.

As I focus on holding the wheel steady on the gravel road, Walt points along the row of bizarre stilt houses that line Old River. This part of the parish always floods when the river rises, hence the tall metal stilts beneath every structure. The little cabins look like ugly cranes on long, thin legs, waiting for an unwary fish to swim down the brown channel behind them. Most of the cabins have a crude elevator system, fashioned from a welded iron cage and an electric truck-winch to lift it.

I’m suspicious of Sonny’s claim that Dad is unguarded, but Walt insists that speed is everything now. As soon as I pull into the driveway he tells me to, Walt leaps out with his pistol and boards the cage that will carry him to Sonny’s raised deck. Walt tests the machine by gripping the rail and heaving himself from right to left, then lays his hand on the lever that will start the winch.

“You take the staircase,” he says. “If somebody comes out, start shooting, because I’m a sitting duck in this thing.”

I look at the four flights of steps that lead the thirty feet up to the cabin. “My fire will be blocked as I near the top.”

“Then get up there before I do, and if they start shooting, kick in the back door and kill them from behind.”

“Okay.”

Walt flips the start lever on the winch, and with a grinding hum he
begins rising toward the tree house–like structure. I sprint for the base of the staircase, then start pumping my legs as I did running the bleachers as a high school football player. In seconds my chest is pounding and my throat burning, but the door isn’t far away. I’ll beat Walt to the cabin by ten seconds.

Once I reach the deck behind the cabin, I tiptoe to the back door, my ears tuned to the slightest sound. I hear nothing. A clang from the winch around front tells me Walt has reached the front platform. The fact that no one has opened up on him must be a sign that Sonny was telling the truth about no guards.

The back door is locked. As I raise my foot to kick it in, Walt yells, “Front door’s open!”

Worried that someone might be lying in ambush for him, I kick open the flimsy back door and burst into the den of the little structure. The cabin stinks of mildew and looks to have been furnished with cast-off pieces or actual junk. A plywood square has fallen from a footlocker that served as the base of a makeshift coffee table, and the Naugahyde sofa against the wall has been patched all over with silver duct tape.

“I’ll check the back,” Walt says, gesturing at a narrow doorway with his pistol.

I nod, but my belief that Dad might still be here is evaporating fast. Two medicine bottles lie on a square of shag carpet that looks like its purpose is to serve as a toilet for an incontinent dog. Picking one of them up, I read the label:
PATIENT: Thomas Cage. PHYSICIAN: Drew Elliott, M.D. Nitroglycerine, 0.4 mg.

“He’s not back there,” Walt says, emerging from the doorway. “Maybe he got away?”

I shake my head. “He’d never have left his drugs. There’s nitro and pain pills on the floor. He couldn’t do without either. Not for long, anyway.”

Walt kicks the plywood sheet against the wall, plops down on the patched sofa, and kicks his feet up on the footlocker. “You think they knew we were coming?”

“How? Sonny couldn’t have told them. More likely, Forrest figured out where they were and took them back.”

“Damn it. What about Sheriff Dennis? Could he have warned them by phone?”

“No fucking way. Dennis hates the Knoxes.”

“Yeah. I was reaching.”

“It had to be Forrest, Walt. Unless . . .”

“What?”

“Unless Snake came back here and moved him somewhere else. I think Sonny was telling the truth. He believed Dad was here. But you heard him. He said Snake was worried about a setup. He wanted insurance. Maybe Snake worried that Sonny was too weak to stand much interrogation, so he made sure that nobody but him knew where Dad really was.”

“Well, we can’t question Snake. Kaiser won’t let us near him.”

I think back to Snake’s smug countenance. “Nope. And questioning Forrest is pointless, unless we’re willing to do what we just did to Sonny. And even if we were, that’s easier said than done with him.”

Walt nods thoughtfully. “I know where Forrest is. The Bouchard lake house, Lake Concordia. Forrest and Ozan were on the outside deck, and I searched the whole place.”

“Could you have missed Dad?”

“No. Tom could’ve been in the boathouse, I suppose, but I just don’t think Forrest would keep a hostage that close to him. Much more likely Tom would be out at Valhalla.”

“But you were there, too.”

Walt shrugs. “They could have moved him back to either place since I left. If we can’t talk to Snake, then Forrest is our best chance. But we’ll have to fight our way in there, unless either Sheriff Dennis can get us a warrant—”

“That won’t happen.”

“—or you set up some kind of negotiation with Forrest.”

“The way I did with Brody Royal? That didn’t end too well.”

“I didn’t say it was a good plan. But it might be the only one.”

“No matter what happens, Forrest could order Dad killed, then say he died while resisting arrest. Not only that, he could arrest you as a fugitive, and me for interfering on your behalf.”

“Can you get a warrant for Valhalla?” Walt asks.

“Lusahatcha County is in our court district, and I know the circuit judge in Natchez. I can probably get a warrant, but I don’t know that Sheriff Ellis would serve it. From what I’ve heard, he’s pretty cozy with
the local hunting camp owners, including the Knoxes. Plus, Valhalla is known to be connected with the Knoxes. I don’t think they’d stash him in a place we could find using common knowledge, paperwork, or computers.”

“Shit,” says Walt, spitting on the floor.

“You just left your DNA here,” I observe.

“Fuck some DNA. We’re way past that now.”

We sit in silence for several seconds, and in the strange vacuum, a profound fear begins to flow through me. “Walt,” I say in a flat voice. “What does your gut tell you? Do you think they’ve killed him?”

“I’ve worried from the start they meant to kill him so he’d go down as Viola’s killer, and that investigation would stop. And with the trooper hanging around our necks . . . we just made it too easy for them.”

Walt’s tone of despair leaves me feeling hollowed out. Short of getting Snake Knox in that CPSO broom closet with Walt and a wet towel, I don’t see that we have an option.

“Hey,” Walt says, shoving the old footlocker with his foot.

“What?”

“You see this? This is a marine footlocker, World War Two vintage. It’s made of wood. I saw a few of ’em in Korea.”

“So?”

“So it’s got a brand-new padlock on it. A Chubb. Take a look.”

Looking down, I see a pitted, flimsy-looking latch with a heavy, shining padlock on it. Above the circular latch is a metal nameplate with the letters
CPL. SONNY THORNFIELD
stamped on it. The same letters are stenciled on top of the oblong box, but they’ve faded to near invisibility.

Walt taps his thighs, his eyes on the padlock. “Why does an old gomer like Sonny lock up his piece-of-shit footlocker like it’s holding the crown jewels?”

“Maybe it’s all he’s got in the world.”

Walt slides up to the edge of the sofa and leans forward. “Let’s find out.”

Reversing his pistol in his hand, he hammers at the latch and lock, but they refuse to yield.

I get up and go through the drawers beside the plastic sink against the wall, hunting for a screwdriver. I don’t find one, but in the back of
the drawer I find an old rat-tail file, as rusty as some tool left behind by the slaves who built the pyramids. Taking it in my hand, I go to the footlocker, wedge it into the latch, and with one savage twist snap the latch free from the lid of the case.

“Good man,” says Walt. “Let’s see what that old fool thinks is worth protecting. Probably ten years’ worth of
Hustler
.”

My stomach feels strangely hollow as I lift the lid, just the way it did when as a boy I secretly unpacked my Christmas presents after finding them hidden in a closet. In the dim light of the cabin, I see mementos of Sonny Thornfield’s younger life stacked carefully in layers. A woman must have packed this locker. Digging patiently through it, I find war ribbons and medals; a pistol and bayonet; an ancient tube of Barbasol shaving lotion; a marine forage cap; a Ku Klux Klan hood and several Klan pins—one a fiery cross wrought in gold—lying on what appears to be a folded white robe; a stack of baseball cards from the early 1940s, bound by a dry-rotted rubber band; a cup of multicolored marbles; a
Playboy
magazine from 1953; a snapshot of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Natchez, probably the big one held in the summer of 1965; two hand grenades that have been emptied of explosive; Thornfield’s birth certificate, along with several other yellowed legal papers, including his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps. But at the bottom of the footlocker, pressed between two ancient hymnals, lies a memento of a different sort—the sort that Kaiser dealt with in his previous life.

What I first think is just a chamois cloth is actually a soft swatch of leather with the letters
USN
needled into it with dark blue ink. Above these letters are an anchor and a rope. About five inches long, and brown as stained walnut, the skin has rolled a little at the edges. Fighting the urge to gag, I lift the thing from the bottom of the footlocker. The obscene trophy is soft and buttery, like the finest grain leather. It
is
leather, I remind myself. Tanned to perfection by someone with a deep knowledge of such things.

“Son of a
bitch,
” Walt intones.

I try to speak, but my throat has sealed shut. The ragged edges of the thing in my hand make it plain that it was cut from Jimmy Revels’s arm. I only hope he was dead when it happened.

“This is my ticket back into the sheriff’s office,” I finally whisper. “To talk to Snake Knox.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

After hastily repacking the footlocker, I fasten it shut, then look up at the old Ranger. “No. Not yet. Kaiser won’t let us do what we’d need to do to Snake.”

Walt nods gravely. “Where then?”

“It’s time to talk to Forrest Knox.”

His eyes narrow. “You gonna call him on that cell phone Dennis gave you? Try to cut a deal with him?”

“There’s no deal to be had. We’re going to find out where Dad is, no matter what that takes.”

An unspoken question rises in Walt’s eyes. I lay the tattoo in his callused hand, then get to my feet and check my pistol. The old Ranger looks down at the tanned skin for several seconds without speaking, feeling it between his fingers. Then he brings it closer to his face so that his aging eyes can focus on the inked letters.

“Jesus wept,” he says finally. “I had a brother who served in the navy. No matter what happens at Knox’s place, I’m gonna kill the motherfucker who done this.”