The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “I know who Kaiser is. I know him from New Orleans.”

  “Well, this time he didn’t turn tail. This time he read me the goddamn Patriot Act, chapter and verse. He was talking about seizing our personal phone and computer records, yours and mine. That son of a bitch is trouble, boss. He threatened to jail me on the spot. Quoted some new Patriot Act rules on meth production, which don’t sound good.”

  “What about Mayor Cage and his girl?”

  “They were there, but the girl headed back across the river to her newspaper. Kaiser’s wife went with her. Cage left with Kaiser. What you want I should do?”

  Forrest looked down at his watch. Whatever Caitlin Masters knew about him and the Double Eagles was almost certain to appear in tomorrow’s Examiner, no matter what he did at this point. Unless . . . “We may need to mobilize the Black Team, Alphonse.”

  The “Black Team” was a handpicked group of SWAT officers who occasionally functioned as Forrest’s private tactical unit. During Hurricane Katrina, the Black Team had done much more than help keep the peace. In the fetid darkness of poststorm New Orleans, they had ruthlessly winnowed the ranks of the Knox organization’s drug-dealing competition, using chaos and lawlessness as their cover.

  “Sounds good to me,” Ozan said. “We can’t just sit and wait for the hammer to fall. You want me to make the call?”

  Forrest weighed the risks of immediate action against those of watchful caution. “Not yet. Just find out where everybody is.”

  “Got it.”

  Forrest thought swiftly. HQ was the wrong place from which to direct tactical action. The best place was Valhalla, the family’s hunting camp halfway between Natchez and Baton Rouge. “Get your ass up to the camp, Alphonse. We don’t need to take this any further on the phone.”

  “I can be there in forty minutes. You?”

  “About the same.”

  “Ten-four, Colonel. Any further orders in the meantime?”

  “Gather all the intel you can, as quietly as you can. Use only contacts you trust. Talk to our man in Dennis’s department. Check Royal’s contact at the girl’s newspaper. Do you know who it was?”

  “Yeah. What about the feds?”

  “We’ll discuss that when I see you.”

  Forrest hung up, then walked to the edge of the building and looked west toward LSU’s Tiger Stadium and the Mississippi River. From long practice, he’d developed the skill of descending into a state of calm in direct proportion to the scale of chaos. Though Ozan’s news had stunned him, his pulse had accelerated only slightly during the call, and it quickly returned to normal. Having honed his instincts in combat, where expediency ruled, Forrest was always first inclined to hit back, hard. In war, if someone attacked you, you counterattacked as quickly and viciously as possible. If someone on your own side screwed up and put your unit at risk, you transferred them out. If you couldn’t do that, you sent them home in a body bag. Forrest had once fragged a Yankee second lieutenant in the A Shau Valley who seemed to think he was on the set of a John Wayne movie. Nobody had missed him, either, not even MACV.

  Such tactics were more complicated back in the world, of course. For one thing, nearly every death in civilian life brought about some sort of investigation, which meant attention. And attention was anathema to the moneymen in New Orleans. They wanted to remain invisible. Even more troubling, Brody Royal had been a member of their insulated elite. His death would profoundly unsettle men accustomed to feeling untouchable. Worst of all, there were probably traceable links between Royal and his New Orleans partners, and those men would be scrambling to eradicate those links wherever possible. Forrest himself was one. He needed to find a way to assure Royal’s partners that he was part of the solution, not the problem.

  With a last look out over the city—his city—he headed for the stairs that would take him down to the elevator. It had been a long time since someone had challenged him in any meaningful way. Rival drug dealers were one thing; they could be killed without fear of recrimination. But a veteran FBI agent was something else. A former prosecutor like Penn Cage couldn’t be ignored either, much less a newspaper publisher like Masters. Those three together made a formidable alliance, one that violence alone could not counter. Violence would play a part, of course, but what Forrest really needed was a narrative that would shape the perception of recent events. Only in this way could he continue to bend the world to his will, which was all he had ever asked of life.

  CHAPTER 10

  TOM CAGE PULLED the stolen pickup off the dirt road into an empty cotton field and switched off the engine. He hadn’t seen a light for miles. The hit man in the backseat was still playing possum, and Tom decided to play along for another thirty seconds. Barren fields and scrub woods stretched into endless darkness and when Tom opened his door, he smelled the rot of a swamp on the air.

  As best he could figure, they were five miles from a telephone, unless there was a farm around here he didn’t know about. Even if the hit man reached a phone within an hour, Tom figured he could be across the Mississippi River in less than that—if his brother-in-law was home. And being a farmer, John McCrae was never anywhere else. There was a chance that the state police might have staked out Peggy’s Louisiana relatives, but if they had, he’d figured a way around that.

  “I know you’re awake,” Tom said, closing his hand around the butt of his .357 and sliding carefully out of the truck.

  Grimsby held to his ruse and said nothing.

  Tom felt unsteady on his feet, but after a few seconds, he regained his equilibrium. The pain in his shoulder had not relented, however.

  “Get out,” he said through the open door. “I’m not going to kill you. I was advised to, and I can’t say you don’t deserve it, but I’ve got a better use for you.”

  At first there was only silence. Then Tom heard a stirring, and the hit man said, “What use is that?”

  “Errand boy. You’re going to carry a message for me, Mr. Grimsby.”

  “To who?”

  “Your boss. Forrest Knox.”

  More silence.

  “But first you’re gonna get that goddamned corpse out of the truck. Move it, son. Double-quick. I don’t have all night.”

  “I’m tied to the goddamn gun rack!”

  Tom reached into his pocket and dug out a steak knife he’d taken from the kitchen of Drew Elliott’s lake house. He leaned into the truck and tossed it onto the backseat.

  “Make it quick. And if you come at me with that knife, I’ll put a bullet in your gut, the same as I did your partner.”

  After half a minute of grunts and struggle, he heard a mechanical thunk. Then the rear door on the driver’s side swung open. “I gotta tell you, Doc,” said the voice behind the door, “you’re a walking dead man. You know that, right?”

  “Bold words for an unarmed man on the wrong end of a pistol.”

  The hit man’s feet touched the ground, and then he stepped out from behind the door—a tall, thin man with his hands now free, and a knife in one of them.

  “You’re not gonna kill me?” Grimsby said, obviously trying to decide whether to risk a charge.

  “I will if you don’t drop that knife.”

  Grimsby’s twitchy eyes moved up and down Tom’s frame, assessing his condition. Sensing the man was going to rush him, Tom fired a round at his feet.

  “Goddamn it!” yelled the hit man as the deep echo rolled over the fields like a thunderclap.

  “Drop the knife,” Tom repeated.

  The blade hit the pavement.

  “Now, get your partner out of that backseat.”

  “Get him yourself.”

  Tom waved the gun.

  “You won’t shoot me.”

  “I killed your partner.”

  “That was different. That was self-defense.”

  Tom laughed. “Remember that, if you’re ever asked to testify against me.”

  “You’ll never see a courtroom, Doc. Nobody who crosses Colonel Knox eve
r does.”

  Tom figured this was true. “Maybe I’m the exception. I’ve beat the odds so far.” He aimed his pistol at the hit man’s shoes. “I can’t leave here with that corpse in the backseat. Get him out, or I’ll put a bullet in your foot. You probably won’t die from it, but this is a Magnum. You might go into shock, and they’ll definitely have to amputate.”

  Grimsby worked his mouth around anxiously, trying to gauge Tom’s ruthlessness. After a face-saving moment, he walked back behind the door and bent to his work, which was dragging a dead body off a truck’s floor and onto the shoulder of a dirt road. While he worked, Tom stood twenty feet away and gave him his brief, beginning with a lie.

  “You’re ten miles from the closest human habitation. Even if you run all the way, I’ll be long gone by the time you can get to a phone and call Knox. But when you do get him, I have a message for him.”

  A strained grunt was the only response.

  “Did you hear me, shitbird?”

  “I heard you, goddamn it. He’s heavy.”

  “There’s a reason they call it dead weight, son. Now, listen up. About the stupidest thing Forrest could do at this point is kill me. If he does, my son and Caitlin Masters won’t rest until Forrest is rotting in jail or dead himself. That might not scare you, but it will him. Because he’s got a brain, like his father. I knew Frank Knox, you see. And Frank was no fool. Now, Forrest has probably already considered trying to silence my boy and his girl. But I’ve got a better solution for him. Far better. You see, if he’ll help me with my problem . . . I’ll help him with his.”

  The dead man’s head and shoulders dropped beneath the bottom of the door, hanging in the air like a deer carcass.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Grimsby, leaning out of the truck. “How can you help the colonel?”

  “I can call off my daughter-in-law and her newspaper. She’ll have to cover the deaths that have happened already, and might touch the Double Eagles, but I can keep Forrest’s name out of the papers. I can guarantee my son won’t pursue him either, and Forrest will know the value of that. It was my son who nailed those bastards running the dogfighting ring out of the Magnolia Queen. You remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “I can’t do anything about the FBI chasing Forrest, but that’s his lookout. There are also certain things I know that could hurt Forrest, as well as Snake and the others. The old guys will know what I’m talking about. I’ll keep those buried, as well.”

  With a long heave and a steady driving of his feet, Grimsby finally dragged the corpse clear of the truck. The dead man’s shoes hit the cold earth with dull thuds.

  The hit man straightened up and rubbed his hands together, his breath steaming in the chilled air. “What do you want in exchange for all that?”

  “I need Forrest to call off the hunt for me and Garrity. That trooper tried to kill me, and he got what he deserved. Forrest can also clear me of the Viola Turner murder charge.”

  “How the hell can he do that?”

  “By blaming the murder on somebody else.”

  “Such as?”

  “Yesterday I was thinking Glenn Morehouse, but that might be a little close for comfort, considering he was a Double Eagle. Now Brody Royal and his son-in-law look like perfect candidates. Forrest can hang everything on them.”

  “You don’t mind asking for the moon, do you?”

  Tom shrugged. “I don’t care if he blames the dead trooper on you, so long as he calls the dogs off me. Have you got all that?”

  Grimsby snorted in derision.

  “Tell Forrest I’ll be waiting for his signal that he accepts my terms.”

  “What signal?”

  “An announcement on statewide radio and TV. When I hear that the APB has been called off, I’ll know he’s serious about making a deal. The statement should say that the state police have a new theory and are now pursuing other persons of interest. After I hear that, I’ll contact Knox’s office at state police headquarters.” Tom gestured with the Magnum. “That’s it. Back away from the truck.”

  The hit man folded his arms and shivered in his windbreaker. “Are you really gonna leave me out here? It’s fucking cold, man! I could freeze.”

  Tom thought about the mountains around the Chosin Reservoir. “You think this is cold?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Your friend’s a lot colder.”

  Grimsby looked down at the corpse. “Seriously, Doc. You gonna leave me without a heavy coat?”

  “Take your friend’s and put it over yours. He doesn’t need it anymore.”

  The hit man looked up in disbelief.

  Tom raised his Magnum, and his shoulder screamed with pain.

  “You won’t make it twenty miles without hitting a roadblock,” Grimsby said. “Like I said before, you’re a walking dead man.”

  Tom grinned. “Lab tests have been telling me that for a long time, but I’m still vertical.”

  Without turning his back on the killer, Tom put one foot on the running board and raised himself slowly into the driver’s seat. Grimsby was still staring down at his dead comrade when Tom put the truck into gear, made a painful three-point turn, and drove back the way he had come. The hit man might be right about the roadblock, but Tom didn’t have twenty miles to go. John McCrae’s farmhouse was less than half that distance away.

  With a sudden inspiration, Tom switched off his headlights and slowed down until his eyes adjusted to the moonlight. At this point he’d be a fool to let himself be caught because of being sighted by a chopper or high-flying prop plane. He’d switch the lights back on when he reached the narrow strip of pavement they called the main road around here. The thought made him smile, despite his pain. Whenever anyone asked his wife where she was from, Peggy always said “a little farm in the middle of nowhere.” People always assumed she was exaggerating, but she wasn’t.

  Tom had never been more grateful for that than he was tonight.

  CHAPTER 11

  NATCHEZ SLEEPS IN silence as we cross the Mississippi River, as silent as Kaiser and I have remained since we left the sheriff’s office. The town looks as it has since I was a child, a fragile line of lights strung along the rim of the high bluff, with church steeples standing watch over the populace. Given the ruckus at the Concordia hospital early in the evening, a few citizens are probably sitting up, constantly refreshing the Examiner’s Web page, hoping for a Breaking News update that will tell them once and for all whether Henry Sexton was killed by a sniper. How will they react when they learn that Henry survived that attack only to give his life for Caitlin’s hours later? Or that he was only one of several casualties, among them Brody Royal?

  Looking back at the dark lowlands of Louisiana, I scan the sky for the column of flame we left behind, but I don’t see it. The levee near that lake stands thirty-five feet tall, and the flames were probably double that, but now the fire’s burned out of sight.

  Kaiser turns onto Canal Street and heads into downtown proper.

  “Are you going to keep me in suspense all night?” I ask. “I’m not going to sit outside City Hall talking till dawn. I’m wiped out, man.”

  When Kaiser begins speaking at last, his voice carries a passion that it didn’t back in the corridor of Sheriff Dennis’s office. “Penn, the FBI had two great failures in the last century, and they irreparably damaged the Bureau in the public mind. The first was the unsolved murders of the civil rights movement. The second involved the major assassinations, particularly that of JFK. Those weren’t failures of process, but of will. Why did the Bureau fail? Because the director didn’t really want those cases solved.”

  This isn’t news to me, but it’s a pretty remarkable statement to hear from a serving FBI agent. “When Dwight Stone discovered who was behind the murder of Del Payton in 1968—a big Nixon supporter, as it happened—Hoover made Stone suppress it. ”

  “I know all about that. Stone’s generation of agents saw J. Edgar’s sins
firsthand. And as a result, there’s now a group of retired FBI agents—mostly thirty-year men—who’ve never forgotten the sting of those failures. They’ve never let go of the cases they weren’t allowed to work as they should have been. The Double Eagle cases were among those.”

  “And the JFK assassination?”

  Kaiser nods. “That, too. These men work quietly, in the background, but they’ve done significant investigative work over the years. They’ve even got serious funding behind them now—private money, of course. The current director knows nothing about these guys, but some active agents give them help when possible.”

  “Like you?”

  A brief nod. “Like me.”

  “Is Dwight Stone part of this group?”

  “He is. They don’t publicize their activities, so you can’t tell Caitlin about it. If it got out that former FBI agents were actively working the Kennedy assassination . . . that’s like chum in the water to the media. These men are dedicated pros. Engineer types. They keep their heads down, and they don’t get excited. I think of them like retired astronauts. In fact, that’s what I call them, when I refer to them at all. They call themselves the ‘Working Group.’”

  Kaiser turns right on State Street, rolls past Sheriff Billy Byrd’s sheriff’s department and the courthouse, then turns left again and parks in front of the lit oaks before City Hall.

  Dwight Stone’s participation in this group legitimizes it in my eyes, but given tonight’s events, I can’t raise much interest. “Where’s this going, John?”

  “My astronauts have been pretty quiet for a while. The civil rights murder cases have stalled, and the few remaining witnesses are dying like flies. Even the agents themselves are dying, more’s the pity. But when Glenn Morehouse talked to Henry Sexton on Monday, everything changed. Everything, Penn. No Double Eagle had ever cracked before.”

  “Except Jason Abbott.”

  “That was different. Abbott was just trying to screw the guy who was screwing his wife. But Morehouse was trying to clear his conscience, and in the process he opened a door that the Working Group believed was closed forever. By revealing the connection between Carlos Marcello and Frank Knox—through Brody Royal—he cracked the door on the JFK assassination.”