The Bone Tree (71 page)

His words are registering about the same emotional response as if he’d told me a dump truck ran over an armadillo on the highway.

“I’m still trying to ascertain what happened out in the swamp,” Mackiever goes on, “and I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes before the media descends on this hospital. If you’re up to it, that is. Now, obviously Ms. Masters is going to have to remain here for the time being. There’ll have to be a postmortem, as you know.”

“She died in Mississippi,” I say flatly. “They can do the autopsy there.”

Mackiever gives Carl a worried look, as though he’s uncertain of my sanity. “She was declared dead in Louisiana, Mr. Cage. That puts the autopsy here.”

I say nothing.

“I think you can let the mayor go, Officer,” Mackiever tells Carl.

“You okay?” Carl murmurs in my ear.

“Yeah.”

Carl lets me go, and my hands tingle and ache as the blood flows back into them.

“The FBI is about to pour massive resources into Lusahatcha County,” Mackiever informs us. “Agent Kaiser has already dispatched Bureau choppers from New Orleans to secure that Bone Tree and whatever was inside it. Apparently your fiancée uncovered a trove of bones and other evidence that could solve up to a dozen murders.”

“Then you don’t need me.”

“Mayor Cage—”

“Please don’t call me that.” With careful movements, I pick the sheet up off the floor and lay it over Caitlin’s body, leaving only her face exposed.

“Mr. Cage, I think you’d better come with me,” Mackiever says gently. “Pay your last respects, and then meet me outside in the hall.”

The colonel nods once, then leaves the way he came.

“I know it doesn’t make you feel any better,” Carl says, “but Caitlin did find what she was looking for, and I know she’d be proud she did.”

“Proud?” I echo. “Yes, she would have been proud. And for what?”

“For the families, man. All those boys that got killed, and the families that suffered. They can finally have some peace.”

I look back and find his earnest eyes. “Is that why she did it, Carl?”

The young ex-marine shrugs awkwardly. “I think so, yeah. She wanted to do good.”

A strange laugh comes from my throat. If only Carl had known her as I did.

“Well,” he says. “You knew her a lot better than me. All I know is, she was the prettiest woman I’ve seen in a long time. She still is, even now. Ain’t she? Even lying there now.”

I turn back to the table. “Yes. She is that.”

Taking two short steps forward, I lean over and kiss her forehead. She’s not as cold as stone, not yet, but the skin beneath my lips sends a shudder of revulsion down my back. The woman I loved is no longer present. Death has taken her, and it mocks me now from within her. The tears I leave upon her face might as well have fallen on the floor. When at last I turn and walk from the room, part of me is as dead as she is.

TOM HAD BEEN
awake for less than five minutes when he saw the first cop walk past his door. It looked like a city uniform, not the brown of the state police. A nurse had asked him his name, and he’d acted as though he was unable to hear her, but he knew the troopers wouldn’t be long in arriving. A man with a gunshot wound would always trigger a message to the police. At least he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed yet.

From staff chatter he’d gleaned that he’d suffered diabetic shock and gone into a coma. It couldn’t have lasted long, he figured, because he felt reasonably alert, and his wounds looked just as they had when he last checked them, albeit cleaner. His memory was sketchy, but he clearly remembered trying to save Caitlin beside the huge cypress tree in the swamp. He had no idea how she’d gotten there, nor had he even thought to ask her. He had no idea whether she’d survived her wound or not. The only thing he was sure of was that if Caitlin had not appeared at the Bone Tree, he would be dead by now.

The next time a nurse came through, he asked how Caitlin Masters was doing. The woman told him she’d been taken into the OR and a trauma surgeon was working on her. Tom would have given all the money in his name to rest on that bed and wait to hear the outcome of Caitlin’s surgery, but if he did, he would almost certainly be arrested by cops who reported to Forrest Knox.

He rolled onto his side, then slowly sat up on the treatment table and waited to regain his equilibrium. Once he had, he pulled the IV out of his wrist, held his thumb against the hole, and walked over to a chair, where a white coat had been left by the ER physician. After struggling into the dirty clothes they’d removed from his body, he slipped on the lab coat, then opened drawers until he found a surgical mask, which he placed over his nose and mouth.

He knew he should check his appearance in a mirror, but he didn’t
have time. A nurse or tech could come in at any moment. He walked to the door and paused long enough to steel himself against the pain signals pouring into his brain from every extremity. Then he marched through the ER as he had ten thousand times in Natchez, walking with the purposeful tread that nurses would instantly read as the gait of a physician in a hurry to get somewhere he was needed.

Though Tom had never been in this emergency department, he’d worked in enough of them to sense the flow of people, and within seconds he was in the ambulance bay and walking through the parking lot. A spray of rain hit him as he moved out under the gray clouds, but he didn’t break stride. The lone security guard was staring at what appeared to be an illegally parked car as Tom approached. When the guard looked up, Tom gave him a quick salute and kept walking.

“Yo, doc,” said the guard, “have a good one.”

PEGGY CAGE STOOD AT
the kitchen stove of Penn’s Washington Street town house, watching Annie and waiting for the six o’clock TV news. Kirk Boisseau had finally agreed to go to the hospital for treatment, and after that she and Annie had been moved here, where they would be surrounded at all times by at least a dozen cops and FBI agents. The Natchez police chief had told Peggy that a prisoner had either died or been murdered in the Concordia Parish jail, but he knew few details. As for Penn, Peggy knew only that he had raced out of town to try to find Caitlin in the swamp near Athens Point.

Peggy had tried to persuade Annie to rest, but all her efforts were in vain. Annie meant to sit up until her father returned. Peggy had thought she knew Annie pretty well, but right now she couldn’t tell whether the eleven-year-old was on the edge of cracking, or whether she was stronger than her own grandmother. Peggy was feeling pretty fragile after the events of the afternoon. Had Kirk Boisseau not reacted as quickly and selflessly as he had, she might have been badly burned. And there had been no word, neither open nor via a secret channel, about Tom or Walt.

When Peggy was stressed, she cooked, even if there was no real need. She’d decided to prepare chicken jambalaya for Annie, even though the child had claimed all she needed was a peanut butter sandwich. The policemen outside would certainly appreciate it. As Peggy
stirred the chicken and rice mixture, she wondered whether the time had come to trust her son above her husband. During their life together, Tom had rarely made a bad decision about the big things. But this time, Peggy had come to believe, he was wrong. Even if he was right, he was wrong, in the sense that his choices might cost him and Walt their lives—not to mention what might happen to the rest of the family.

“Come sit down, Gram,” Annie said, beckoning her to the kitchen table.

“I’m cooking, sweetie.”

“What will Mr. Abrams think about his house? It smelled pretty terrible when we left, and some of the windows got knocked out by the fire.”

“Mr. Abrams’s son and your father are good friends. Your father will pay to fix it like it was before.”

“The news is on!” Annie cried, pointing at living room. “I hear it. Come on! Should we watch Baton Rouge or Alexandria?”

“I’m not sure we should watch either. You can’t be sure they have accurate information.”

As the announcer gave a précis of the night’s report—which included a possible murder in the Concordia Parish jail—the house phone began ringing, triggering a rush of fear in Peggy. She forced herself to calm down, then picked up the kitchen extension.

“Penn Cage’s residence.”

“Mrs. Cage?”

The voice sounded familiar, but Peggy wasn’t sure she recognized it. “Yes. Who is this?”

“Special Agent John Kaiser. I met you this afternoon, with Penn.”

“Yes, I remember.” Peggy’s throat tightened in dread. “Do you have any news?”

“I do. And I’m afraid it’s not good.”

Peggy stopped breathing, and her gaze flew to the kitchen door, to be sure Annie wasn’t eavesdropping from the den.

“Is my husband all right?” she whispered. “And my son?”

“Yes, ma’am, Penn’s alive and well. Dr. Cage, too, as far as I know. But . . . I’m afraid that Caitlin Masters has been killed.”

The world seemed to distort around Peggy, and a claustrophobic silence blanked out the sound of the television from the den. “Are you certain?” she whispered.

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Cage. She was airlifted to a hospital in Baton Rouge, but she expired before she arrived. Penn was in the helicopter with her.”

Peggy shut her eyes against tears.
Dear God, could things get any worse?
But she had lived long enough to know the answer to that question: things could always get worse. Much worse.

“Where’s Penn now?” she whispered.

“He’ll be headed home soon. But, Mrs. Cage, there’s more.”

Peggy’s hand went to her mouth, and she felt her heart pounding. She knew before the FBI agent said anything that it had to do with Tom.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Dr. Cage was apparently with Ms. Masters either when or after she was shot. He tried to save her, but he wasn’t able to. He went into diabetic shock.”

“Oh, God.” Peggy closed her eyes. “You said he was all right!”

“Yes, ma’am. He was on the chopper when they flew into Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. They stabilized him, but after he regained consciousness, he walked out of the ER. Nobody knows where he is now.”

“Oh, no. Are you sure? How do you know he wasn’t kidnapped?”

“Security camera footage shows him walking out under his own power. I believe he knew he was going to be arrested by the Louisiana State Police, so he fled the scene.”

Peggy didn’t know what to say.

“Mrs. Cage, I called you for two reasons. First, I’m concerned about Penn’s state of mind. According to two officers who were on the scene, he was extremely upset. I was thinking you might even want to call one of Dr. Cage’s partners to check him out. I know that may sound extreme, but Penn’s going to be feeling a lot of anger—at your husband, unless I miss my guess—and grieving men in shock can be pretty unpredictable.”

“I understand,” Peggy said, thinking of all the widows and widowers Tom had been forced to sedate over the years in the first hours after a death.

“Obviously the question of telling Penn’s daughter the news is going to come up. I don’t know how you feel about that. But given what I’ve heard tonight, you might want to handle that job yourself. Penn may not be in a condition to do it.”

“Of course,” Peggy said automatically, though dread had begun to
fill her heart. Annie had lost her biological mother at the age of four, and she hadn’t handled it well. Now—on the verge of gaining a new one—she too had been snatched away?

“I didn’t want Penn driving a car,” Kaiser was saying. “That’s why he’s returning by helicopter. He left his Audi on a highway in Wilkinson County, so I sent agents to retrieve it and bring it back to the house. Don’t be alarmed if you see his car pull up outside. I’ve alerted my men there.”

“Thank you, Agent Kaiser,” she mumbled, even as her ears picked up the news announcer in the next room saying: “
We’re getting news of a breaking story in Lusahatcha County, Mississippi, one that involves yet another death and possibly a break in the unsolved civil rights murders being investigated in the Natchez–Concordia Parish area
. . . .”

“Oh, I’ve got to go,” she said.

“Wait, please,” said Kaiser. “There’s a good chance your husband will try to contact you. It’s time to bring this circus to an end, Mrs. Cage. I’m doing everything I can to arrange protective custody for Dr. Cage. If he should contact you, please try to persuade him to call me. Any FBI office can patch him through to me. Tell him to identify himself as Dr. McCrae. Which I believe is your maiden name.”

“It is, and I’ll try. I’ve really got to go now.”

Peggy hung up and rushed into the den, meaning to grab the remote and shut it off. Annie was holding it, of course. The child whipped her head around, then froze as she saw Peggy’s face.

“What’s the matter, Gram? What happened?”

Peggy’s throat had sealed shut.

Annie’s eyes widened. “Gram . . . ?”

“Your father’s on his way home, sweetie.”

“Then why don’t you look happy?”

Peggy glanced at the television. The newscast had cut to a commercial, but it would return any second with the story that John Kaiser had already relayed to her.

“Annie, let’s turn off the TV.”

“How come?”

Peggy stepped forward and held out her hand. “Let me have that, sweetheart.”

Annie looked down at the remote control. Then she began to cry.

AS THE LUSAHATCHA
County Sheriff’s Department helicopter storms northwest through gray towers of cloud, I huddle in its belly, my back pressed against the chopper’s metal skin. From across the cabin, Carl Sims stares at me like he’s been assigned to a suicide watch. Carl cares about me, I know, and at some level he loved Caitlin, but right now he might as well be a stranger. The only thing that really joins us is that once he was paid to protect Caitlin and failed in his duty. So Carl knows that pain, at least to some extent. But in the last analysis, Caitlin’s death is a tragic but transient event for him, whereas I have suffered a physical and spiritual amputation. Caitlin is gone forever, and from bitter experience I know I will feel her loss every day (as I did that of my first wife), for at least several years. The effect on Annie I cannot even begin to contemplate; I must spare myself that pain for now.

Between my legs rests a small cardboard box containing what the duty nurse at Our Lady called Caitlin’s “personal effects.” I only glanced inside the box, half hoping for some clue to what happened to her. But all I saw was her cell phone (which Carl had instinctively saved during our attempted rescue), her engagement ring (the very modest one she’d asked for), one plain gold earring (the other had somehow been lost), a navy blue hair scrunchie, and a scarred Gerber multi-tool with clotted blood still on it. The nurse seemed torn about the multi-tool, wondering aloud whether the police might want it as evidence; but the trauma surgeon believed that Caitlin herself had bloodied the tool in a failed effort to save her life.

Again and again I hear that surgeon marveling at how Dad had contrived to drain the blood from Caitlin’s pericardium with a ballpoint pen, but even more that Caitlin had carried out the painful procedure herself. Once I left the hospital, I couldn’t shut out the image of Caitlin
steeling herself against the fire of that naked blade, then cutting her own flesh in a desperate attempt to save herself. God knows she didn’t lack nerve. Caitlin once put four stitches in my lacerated foot under my father’s watchful eyes, after I’d ripped it open walking through a creek on the Natchez Trace. I did similar things as a boy, when Dad tried to instill in me a love for medicine. But despite his effort, that love never developed, and instead I followed my talents for reading people, for seeing through the fog of lies, and for persuading people of certain realities. How odd that I would ultimately turn to writing fiction: telling lies to persuade people of things that never happened. Of course, the secret that all good novelists know is that the “lies” they tell are truer than any factual history could ever be.

I wish I had a good lie now. If I did, I would tell it to myself and then, before I saw through it, call Caitlin’s father and tell it to him. Because . . . how do you tell a man that his daughter has been murdered? What do you say when he asks you whether his little girl suffered before she died? And how do you answer when he asks you what you intend to do about what happened to her? In that father’s ideal world, you would say,
I promise you this, sir, the son of a bitch who killed her won’t see another sunrise.

For that is one thing about the South: it’s still a place where, if a man catches someone molesting his child and beats that man to death, he can reasonably expect a jury of his peers to conclude that the pervert fell down twenty-six times on his way to the morgue.
Not guilty, Judge, and by the way could we shake the defendant’s hand?
The same principle would hold true for a killer of women, at least in some circumstances.

But in reality, most times the man in my position does nothing. I saw this soul-deadening dilemma too many times as a prosecutor. The desire for revenge is primal, bred deep in our species. But the fear of losing everything is greater still. Most times, a man who contemplates revenge realizes that he must throw away not only his freedom but his family in order to get it, and in the end, he turns his anger inward. There it mixes with guilt and poisons him until, with luck, the passing years eventually dilute the toxins to a tolerable level. Sometimes, though—particularly with the parents of missing or murdered children—that dilution never happens.

Sometimes the poison kills them.

I may not turn to murder for revenge, but neither will I be one of those poisoned men. Whatever responsibility Caitlin bears for her fate, I have failed in my duty to protect her. What can I do now? Killing her killer for revenge would go against everything I’ve stood for all my life. It would go against everything my father taught me. But as this thought flashes through my brain, I realize that in the past week, my father has broken every precept he ever tried to instill in me. So why do I still jump to the false tune of his teaching?

Danny McDavitt’s voice crackles in my headset: “I just heard on the radio that somebody set that Bone Tree on fire.”

This brings me out of my fog. “Set it on fire?”

“That’s what I heard. Trying to destroy evidence, looks like.”

Snake Knox,
says a voice in my head.
Or Forrest
. . .
or that Ozan
.

“Danny?” I say into my headset mike.

“What is it?” Carl asks, his lips not seeming to move beneath his helmet.

“Can you fly over Valhalla on your way back to Natchez?”

“I think the FBI’s pretty active in there right now,” McDavitt says. “And Sheriff Ellis is mad as hell at them for diverting this bird. I’d hate to have to explain what we’re doing in that airspace when we’re supposed to be delivering you elsewhere.”

I guess I expected this answer, or one like it.

“We already passed it anyway,” Danny says. “I didn’t know the tree was on fire, but the swamp to the south of Valhalla was lit up like a firebase under attack.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, visualizing Kaiser and his men standing around the burning Bone Tree like angry Crusaders around a burning altar.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mayor?” Danny asks.

“No. Just take me home.”

“I’ll sure do that.”

After closing my eyes for nearly a minute, I take out my BlackBerry, scroll through my contacts, and find the home number of John Masters. Somewhere in North Carolina, the self-styled southern media baron sits in blissful ignorance of his daughter’s fate. For a few more seconds, he can believe he has been blessed by providence. But after he answers my call, his life will implode as surely as mine has. Where another man
might pray, I simply stare across the deck at Carl Sims and give John Masters a little more time to feel alive.

A little mercy.

TOM CAGE STOOD SHIVERING
on a street corner in the pouring rain, watching a line of vehicles douse him with gutter spray as they passed. Two blocks from the hospital, he’d stopped a man wearing a business suit and told him he’d just been mugged, then asked if he could use the man’s cell phone to call his son. The businessman had hesitated only a moment; the physician’s coat, white hair, and professional manner—along with Tom’s ragged condition—convinced him that Tom must be telling the truth.

“Punks ought to be hung,” the man said, shaking his head. “This city’s gone to hell since those Katrina refugees flooded in. Am I right?”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Tom replied, turning away and praying Walt would answer.

To his surprise, Walt had, his normally strict phone discipline overruled by his desperation for news of Tom. More surprising still, Walt had been parked outside state police headquarters only a few miles away, surveilling Forrest Knox and Alphonse Ozan. Thirty seconds after arranging to meet, Tom had tossed the white coat in a Dumpster and set off across Baton Rouge on foot.

Now he cupped his hands over his eyes and peered into oncoming traffic, searching for Drew Elliott’s old pickup. After two freezing minutes, Walt pulled to the curb in front of him, ignoring the honks and curses of the irate drivers behind him. Seeing Tom’s state, Walt jumped out and helped him through the driver’s door. Tom slid carefully across the bench seat and sagged against the passenger door. He felt Walt fasten the seat belt around his waist, then a lurch as Walt put the truck in gear and rejoined the flow of traffic.

“We should never have split up,” Tom said, his feverish face pressed against the cold glass.

“You got that right,” Walt said. “Whose idea was that anyway?”

Tom couldn’t raise a laugh. “Should we turn on the radio? Find out how hard they’re still looking for us?”

“You don’t want to do that.”

Tom looked up then, and he saw pain in Walt’s face. The kind of pain that often filled his own when he passed on terrible news. “What is it? Has something happened to Penn?”

Walt shook his head. “No.”

“Who?” Tom felt a shiver of dread. “Not Peggy or Annie?”

“No, no. It’s the girl. Caitlin.”

Tom’s heart turned to lead. “Tell me.”

“She died on the table. Mackiever just called me.”

Tom stared at Walt, slowly shaking his head, refusing to believe it. Then he put his face in his hands and began to shudder. He had failed at so many things over the past few days—over his lifetime, really—but failing to save Caitlin was beyond bearing. For Tom knew in that moment that he had lost not only Caitlin and the child she was carrying, but also Penn. He had crossed into a country beyond forgiveness.

He had lost his son forever.