The Devil's Punchbowl

by Greg Iles

  Two minutes later, I’m climbing the aluminum extension ladder that Bobby DeWitt has leaned against a high oak limb. Ten feet above me is the simple white birdhouse that you see in half the yards in Mississippi. Only this one looks as if it were hand-painted by an Asian artist. The three circular holes in the wall of the house have a tracery of exotic leaves painted around them, and several ladybugs that look almost real have been painted under the eaves of the roof.

  “You okay?” DeWitt calls from below, where he’s holding the ladder steady.

  “Yeah.”

  Suppressing my excitement, I slip two fingers into the first hole and feel in the dark space, hoping I won’t find a brown recluse spider. There’s nothing inside but bare wood. The center hole holds a few small twigs and something that feels like crusted bird crap. But as my fingers probe the leftmost hole, my fingertips touch plastic.

  Moving them back and forth, I know immediately that I’m touching a Ziploc bag. It’s taped to the inside wall of the birdhouse. Tugging gently, I remove the baggie from the hole, taking care not to let DeWitt see it. As I look down, my heart begins to race.

  Inside the sandwich-size Ziploc is a stack of SD memory cards, the kind used in some digital cameras. I count five of them, and the topmost card is labeled 2G HIGH SPEED. Keeping my hand close to my body, I slide the baggie into my front pants pocket. I can barely keep my balance as I descend the ladder, and when I release the aluminum rails, my hands are shaking.

  “Find anything up there?” DeWitt asks.

  “No. I’m not even sure what I was looking for.”

  “Huh, I wondered. You ain’t the only one’s been around here looking. Some guys searched his house a couple nights ago, before the fire. I figured they were cops, but I had a funny feeling about them.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I was standing outside when they come out. And they looked at me like I was just dogshit. On my own property too.”

  “Did they ask you any questions?”

  “Hell, no. I wouldn’t of told them nothing if they had.”

  Intoxicated with hope, I slap DeWitt on the back and say, “Good man, Bobby. I’ll see you around, okay?”

  “Anytime. Hey, you reckon you could get something done about these potholes on our street?”

  I laugh and turn my head as I’m running to my car. “Bobby, by next week, this street will be smooth as a baby’s butt!”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it!”

  “Count on it!”

  CHAPTER

  64

  As I feared, the data on Ben Li’s SD cards were encrypted. Normally, this would have stopped me for at least a couple of days while I located an expert, but Kelly is accustomed to such challenges. Three and a half hours ago, he transmitted the data to a retired buddy from the Army Signal Corps.

  Caitlin has spent that time reading the file Peter Lutjens FedEx’d to my father yesterday. Dad had dressed her hands and feet with bandages after treating the lacerations, but she insisted on keeping her fingers free to turn pages. Apparently the detailed history of Edward Po, his extended family, and his worldwide criminal operations is the only thing capable of taking Caitlin’s mind off the horrors she endured while being held prisoner. She’s still sitting cross-legged on the sofa in the den when Kelly comes running in from my study.

  “Decryption’s coming through. And from the sound of Joey’s e-mail, it’s hot stuff.”

  Caitlin sets the file aside and hobbles toward the study. Soon the three of us are gathered around my computer to review the result of Joey’s efforts.

  Caitlin presses a button on my trackball, and over a hundred tiny thumbnail images appear on my display. Some of them represent data files, but others are clearly JPEG images.

  “Do I see frontal nudity?” asks Kelly, leaning closer and squinting.

  “You do,” says Caitlin, double-clicking on one image. “Oh my God look.”

  On the screen, Linda Church leans over a bathroom counter, bracing herself on her forearms while Jonathan Sands thrusts into her from behind. Sands’s left hand seems to be yanking her head back by the hair, while his right holds a digital camera high to capture the scene. The camera’s flash is a bright star in the mirror of what looks like a hotel bathroom.

  Caitlin turns away. “I’m sorry. It’s not the sex, I just can’t look at her, knowing what I know.”

  “There’s one question answered,” I say. “Sands shot the nude pictures of Linda that were planted in Tim’s house.”

  “Can I change the picture?” Caitlin asks in a distressed voice.

  “Sorry, yeah, go.”

  She clicks the trackball again, and a photo of Sands having sex with a different woman fills the screen.

  “Ben Li couldn’t have taken these, could he?” asks Kelly.

  “No. He must have hacked into Sands’s private computer and copied whatever he found. Keep going. Skip down a ways.”

  “There’s a lot more folders,” Caitlin says, scrolling through the contents of the disc. “They’re mostly pictures too.”

  I’m beginning to understand. “Ben Li shot the cell phone pictures that Tim showed me in the cemetery that first night. I’ll bet those pictures are in here too. Stuff from the dogfights. I think Ben Li liked pictures.”

  “I don’t get this,” Caitlin says in a puzzled voice.

  “What?”

  “If Ben Li had all these pictures of Sands, why didn’t he use them to save his life? Why sit there and be tortured and yell elliptical clues? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Think about it,” I tell her, having solved this riddle during my drive back from Li’s burned house. “He has these pictures stashed. When he wakes up and figures out Tim has been using him, he calls Sands or Quinn and reports what happened, probably thinking he has no choice. Next thing he knows, they’ve got him strapped in a chair with an electrode up his behind. Aside from the obvious stupidity of calling Quinn, this kid was a genius. Simply telling Sands and Quinn that he had these pictures—or anything else that might be on these discs—wasn’t going to save him. They’d just retrieve the discs from the birdhouse and kill him anyway. He needed to figure out a way to barter the discs for his life. He probably passed out while he was trying to do that. And he was high as a kite, remember, from whatever Tim had given him. He probably didn’t wake up until he was in Quinn’s boat.”

  Caitlin is nodding slowly. “And when he tried to stop Quinn from getting Linda, Quinn shot him.”

  “Right. So the discs stayed hidden.”

  Caitlin lowers her head for a few moments, then raises it and clicks on another thumbnail image. Now we’re looking at a well-known local attorney—a very married attorney—having sex with a Chinese girl who looks barely sixteen.

  “Is that who I think it is?” asks Caitlin.

  “It is.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Keep going. This is important, but it’s not what we need.”

  She clicks through several more images of people having sex, mostly Sands with a variety of women. But several familiar local faces pop up, as well, most of them of people with political or financial influence.

  “What are we looking for here?” Kelly asks.

  “How about this?” asks Caitlin, pulling up an image of a group of men gathered around two bloody dogs savaging each other in a pit.

  She clicks through this sequence, which depicts what appears to be three or four different dogfights. The dogs and the people change in the pictures, but here too I recognize quite a few locals. When one image pops up, I seize Caitlin’s shoulder. It’s the photo I saw on Shad Johnson’s wall yesterday: Shad and Darius Jones standing beside a dead boar hog hanging from a hoist.

  “I see him,” Caitlin says. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Keep going,” I tell her, my hand flexing with hopeful tension.

  Three more shots of Shad and the wide receiver follow. Two show the hog, while in the third the two men stand arm in arm with drunk grins on their faces. But Caitlin gasps when the next photo fills the screen. In it, a blood-soaked pit bull hangs from its neck from a tree
branch while three men look on. The dog’s spine is bowed from the animal jerking its hindquarters away from something in one of the men’s hands. A cattle prod. The man holding it is Darius Jones. But to Jones’s right, staring with what appears to be primal fascination, is District Attorney Shadrach Johnson.

  “Holy God,” Caitlin breathes.

  I squeeze her shoulder again. “That’s it. That’s what we needed.”

  “Do you know what that is?” she says in a stunned voice.

  “What?” asks Kelly.

  “That’s two black men at a lynching. Only they’re not the ones being lynched.”

  I’m shaking my head in disbelief, but after so many days of feeling helpless, a bracing surge of power is rising in me.

  “You own Shad Johnson,” Caitlin says. “The question is what are you going to buy with that picture?”

  “Anybody want to guess?”

  “Thumb drive,” says Kelly.

  I smile and nod with satisfaction. “For a start.”

  CHAPTER

  65

  I’m staring at Shad Johnson across the compulsively neat surface of his antique desk. The district attorney looks as though he hasn’t slept since our meeting yesterday, and having seen the contents of Ben Li’s secret files, I’m not surprised.

  “You look a little green around the gills, Shad.”

  “Skip the bullshit, okay?”

  I glance to my right, to his Wall of Respect. The picture of Shad and Darius Jones with the dead hog is conspicuously absent. In its place hangs a framed photo of Shad sitting beside a state senator at a political banquet.

  “Looks like you’re missing a photograph.”

  “I said cut the bullshit,” snaps Johnson. “Why are you here?”

  I give him my most cordial smile. “You know what they say about a career in Mississippi politics, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The same thing they say about Louisiana politics. The only way to truly end your career is to get caught with a dead woman or a live boy.”

  Shad licks his lips as his gaze flicks to the window. His political instincts are well-honed; he knows something’s coming, only he doesn’t know what. Taking a manila envelope from inside my wind breaker, I remove an eight-by-ten printout of the dog-lynching photo and slide it faceup across his desk.

  “I think that picture is the exception to the rule.”

  Shad hesitates before looking down, knowing that after he does, his life will never be the same. At last his chair creaks and he leans forward, lowering his eyes to the image on the paper. Shad is a light-skinned black man, but he perceptibly lightens another shade.

  “Looks a little bit like you and Darius with the hog, doesn’t it? Only it’s a little different. Especially when considered from a legal perspective.”

  Shad seems to have lost his voice altogether.

  “You’re a smart man, Shad. So I know there’s no misunderstanding about where we stand now.”

  “What do you want?” he asks hoarsely.

  “You already know. The USB drive. I know you’ve got it, and I know how you got it. But if you hand it over now and come up with a plausible story, I’m willing to run with that. You’re not who I’m after.”

  The district attorney clears his throat, then speaks in his professional voice. “I was about to call you about that drive, Mr. Mayor. As a matter of fact, someone slid a sealed envelope underneath my door last night.”

  “Is that so?” I smile to let him see that I’m willing to play along.

  “Sure did. Even in this day and age, you’ll find a Good Samaritan doing whatever he can to help the cause of law and order.”

  “I’d like to see that envelope.”

  Shad reaches into his pocket, takes out a key, then unlocks his bottom desk drawer. He looks down into it for a long time, and for a couple of seconds I have a crazy feeling that he’s about to pull a pistol. I’m sure he’d like nothing better, if he could get away with it, but when he straightens up, he’s holding a sealed, bone-white envelope. He tosses it across the desk.

  Ripping the envelope open, I tilt the torn side to my palm. A small, gray Sony thumb drive falls into it, no heavier than a child’s LEGO block.

  “Do you know what’s on it?” I ask.

  “How could I? I never even opened the envelope.”

  I give him a hard look. “What’s on it, Shad?”

  He shrugs, then sighs. “No idea. It’s encrypted. I couldn’t get into it.”

  I slip the thumb drive into my pants pocket and stand.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Shad asks.

  “I’m going to run those Irish bastards out of town. Do you know why you’re still sitting here, and not in a jail cell?”

  He swallows audibly. “Why?”

  “Because you could have turned that drive over to them, and you didn’t. I know you didn’t do that from a noble motive—probably just self-preservation. But whatever the reason, you didn’t do the worst thing you could have done.”

  “So, what now? Is this the end of it?”

  “Oh, no. Today’s a big day, my friend. A red-letter day. I’ll be in touch about what I need from you.”

  Shad rises behind his desk as I move toward the door.

  “Whatever you want, Penn. You can count on me one hundred percent.”

  “Oh, I know that.”

  He clears his throat. “What about the original of that photo? The negative, or the disc or whatever?”

  “Let’s see how things go. I’ll make my decision later.”

  I turn and walk through the doorway, then stop and poke my head back through it. Shad is studying the photograph like a man being forced to peer into the darkest corner of his soul.

  “One more thing,” I say quietly.

  “What?” he says without looking up.

  “Soren Jensen. You just pled him down to probation and a drug treatment program. He doesn’t spend one more day in jail.”

  “He’s out on bail now.”

  “Say it,” I tell him.

  “Done. Probation.”

  “Stay by your phone. I’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER

  66

  Caitlin is sitting at the kitchen table, poring over the Po file like a novel she can’t put down. One hour ago, Kelly sent a copy of the data on the USB thumb drive to his Signal Corps friend, who warned us that it could take longer to crack than the SD cards. In the meantime, Kelly and I have been discussing how best to use the results, should they prove to be as incriminating as we believe they will be.

  “Let’s just assume,” Caitlin says, abruptly dropping the file and joining our conversation, “that the thumb drive is what you think it is. Conclusive proof of systematic money laundering by Golden Parachute Gaming Corporation, and that it incriminates both Sands and Po.”

  “Okay.”

  She smiles like a woman with a secret. “Proof is no longer our problem. Chief Logan could arrest Sands at that moment for money laundering. He could arrest him right now for dogfighting based on Ben Li’s pictures, and the district attorney to boot.”

  “Keep going.”

  “The problem is Edward Po.”

  “How so?”

  “What is your worst fear at this point?”

  I think about this for a few seconds. “Legally, I guess the worst scenario would be for Po to actually show up for the sting, and for Hull to grant Sands immunity in exchange for his testimony. Hull might grab Sands and keep him out of our reach for a long time using national security as a justification.”

  “Hull has made that deal already, right? I mean, would Sands lure Po here without a signed plea agreement? Something Hull can’t renege on?”

  “No. You’re right.”

  “On the other hand, if Po doesn’t show up for this Roman-spectacle freak show they have planned, Hull will likely take down Sands as a consolation prize, right?”

  “If he can. Hull has tolerated enough of Sands’s crimes that Sands may have significant leverage over him.”

  “Can Hull stop the State of Mississippi from pursuing murder charges against Sands?”


  “Hard to imagine,” I say thoughtfully.

  “Not for me,” says Kelly. “Post-9/11? Hull’s task force is part FBI, part Homeland Security, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they designate Sands as some kind of special informant to the task force? Hell, they could put him on the payroll of the CIA. They could say he’s been working for them all along. You’ve got to think about how the world has changed, Penn. I mean, Sands could disappear, and you’d never even know where he was. They could do it.”

  “That’s my worst fear. Sands walks away from both murders and never suffers a day for all the hell he brought down on this town.”

  Caitlin threads her fingers together, then twists her arms inside out to stretch. Through a grimace of pain, I see the gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. “So the person you really need to be able to control is—”

  “William Hull,” I finish. “The real architect of this clusterfuck.”

  “How do you get that?”

  I sigh heavily. “Hull has definitely pushed the envelope, but given the nature of his target, the government may sweep a lot of that under the rug. You have to get guys like Hull to hang themselves.”

  “By?”

  “Wearing a wire. You get them somewhere they feel safe, lead them into saying things, and let them convict themselves. But he won’t do that with me.”

  “So, what’s your plan?”

  “Hull is probably in town already, prepping for tonight’s sting. I’m going to demand a meeting with him and find out the details of his plea agreement with Sands.”

  “Using the thumb drive for leverage?”

  “If it’s what I think it is. I can threaten to arrest Sands based on that evidence and blow Hull’s Po operation, unless he modifies the plea agreement.”

  “But if he calls your bluff, and you blow the operation, Po walks away. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you told me yourself he’s the bigger target. The greater of two evils.”

  “Yes. I just want Sands more.”

  Caitlin’s smile vanishes. “So do I.”