The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  Not to anybody.

  CHAPTER 13

  FORREST KNOX TOOK a remote control unit from his pocket and opened the gate of the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve. Driving north from Baton Rouge always invigorated him, leaving behind the gas flares of the petrochemical plants of Cancer Alley and the haunted fields of the Angola Prison Farm, and climbing into the green hills and hollows of southwest Mississippi, the hunter’s paradise. The great river itself lay scarcely a mile away now, beyond a few wooded ridges and the swamp where the river flowed eons ago.

  The serpentine access road to the hunting camp wound through acres of second-growth hardwood forest filled with wildlife surveillance cameras and food plots for the game animals. After a descent through broken terrain, the road flattened out on a plateau overlooking the rich bottomland between the westernmost ridge and the Mississippi River. At the edge of this plateau stood the main lodge. Ozan’s state police cruiser was already parked in the oyster shell turnaround on its back side. Forrest parked beside him, then hurried up the steps and into the lodge.

  He found Ozan in the great room, a vast space lined with the heads of exotic game taken from around the world, though several species had been transplanted here and bred behind the camp’s eleven-foot fences. The Redbone sat in a leather club chair, a shot glass of bourbon beside him. Forrest couldn’t remember seeing the man so anxious in all the time he’d known him.

  “You want a drink?” Ozan asked, moving to get up.

  “Later.” Forrest sat on the sofa opposite Ozan and put his boots up on an ottoman. “We need to make some fast decisions.”

  “I’ve got the Black Team online. Everybody but Pichot. He’s in Florida, but he’s heading back as soon as he can get a flight.”

  “Good. Because Brody put us in a real corner tonight. It’s a relief that Henry Sexton’s dead, but we have to assume he passed on what he knew to the Masters girl. And we have to assume Morehouse told Henry everything he knew.”

  “Shit.”

  “And Brody’s death is going to rattle the hell out of the money boys in New Orleans.”

  Ozan’s lips parted in silence: this consequence had not yet occurred to him.

  “If I’d known all this would happen,” Forrest thought aloud, “I might have waited to move on Mackiever, but the iron’s in the fire now.”

  The Redbone took a sip of whiskey, then wiped his mouth. “If that girl is the problem, I can take care of that. I can be in Natchez in forty minutes. By noon tomorrow, she’ll have disappeared off the planet. Nobody’ll ever find her. It’ll be like she never existed.”

  Forrest admired Ozan’s initiative, but the man was no strategist. “No, it won’t.”

  “Sure it will. How many drug dealers have I fed to the alligators? I can do the same to Mayor Cage, and even the FBI man if it comes to that.”

  “This is different. If high-profile people like that disappear, the story will just get bigger and bigger until it swallows us. If we killed the Natchez mayor, its newspaper publisher, or an FBI agent, we’d have a dozen new FBI agents in here the next day. Kill all three, and we’d have fifty. And they’d never stop hunting until they nailed us. No . . . the only people we can kill with impunity at this point are Dr. Cage and Ranger Garrity. The others are practically untouchable.”

  The Redbone shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “What’s the alternative? Sit tight and hope for the best?”

  “That’s one option, as much as I hate to contemplate it. The other, obviously, is to hit hard and fast, damn the consequences. Scorched earth.”

  “But you just said they were untouchable.”

  “I said ‘practically.’ There’s one way you can pull off a hit like that. You need a fall guy. The crime has to be unambiguous, the corpses there for everyone to see, and the killer so obvious that all the carnage looks inevitable in retrospect. Then people move on without ever looking past the surface of things. You understand?”

  “Sure. Like Kennedy, right?”

  Forrest smiled and nodded, pleased at the irony of Ozan making this leap. The Redbone had learned a lot about Forrest’s business in the relatively short time he’d been involved, but he knew nothing about the innermost secrets of the Double Eagles.

  “Who the hell could our fall guy be?” Ozan asked. “Brody and Regan would have made good patsies, but they’re dead.”

  Forrest’s smile broadened. “They can still be blamed for everything that happened up till tonight. After all, Brody did order that first attack on Henry, at the Beacon office. And Brody and Regan burned the Beacon. The FBI’s bound to prove Brody was behind the kidnapping of Cage and Masters, and also that his guys killed that Natchez cop. How big a leap is it from there to assume Brody sent the sniper to finish off Sexton at the hospital but killed his girlfriend by mistake?”

  Ozan grinned. “A damned short one. I like it. But that won’t help us with the other targets.”

  “No. But this is the beautiful part. For those hits, we’ve got two patsies so perfect they could have been sent over by Central Casting.”

  Ozan was clearly behind the curve. “Who you talking about, boss?”

  “Snake and Sonny. The original Double Eagles. Last of the crazy racist crackers.”

  The blood drained from the Redbone’s face. “Are you shitting me?”

  “If we want to go scorched earth, it’s the only way. We have to give the FBI somebody they can close the cases on, fast. With no doubters at the table.”

  Frightened wonder still shone from Ozan’s face. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “You bet your ass I do. Listen to me. Katrina has given us a chance to get our snouts up to the big trough. One or two deals with the guys I’m rubbing shoulders with now is worth more than everything I ever made out of Snake and Billy’s operation.”

  Ozan still looked unconvinced. “But . . . how can you take those guys down? The second Snake and Sonny figure what you’re up to, they can cop a plea and send you to death row. And me along with you.”

  Forrest shook his head. “Give me some credit, Alphonse. By the time Snake knows what I’m really doing, it’ll be too late.”

  “You’d better lay this out for me, boss. ’Cause I can’t see it working.”

  “You know Snake. A more hotheaded son of a bitch never drew breath. And once he hears what happened tonight, and how much danger we’re all in, he’ll be screaming for blood. The fact that he fucked up the hit on Henry will make him that much more ready to do it. You agree?”

  “That’s Snake, all right.”

  “Okay. Now, he’ll be expecting me to hold him back, like I usually do. Only this time I won’t, see? I’ll tell him the stakes are so high that killing those three is our only hope. And he’s the only man to do it.”

  A tight smile had appeared on Ozan’s face. “Snake’ll eat that up, all right.”

  “Here’s the twist, though. As soon as Snake has made the hits, we’ll leak something that puts the FBI on his trail—but not too close. Naturally, we’ll know where Snake’s hiding. Sonny’s fishing camp would be perfect. It’ll be Snake and Sonny, maybe one more Eagle. I’ll make a public appeal as Snake’s nephew, to get him to turn himself in. I’ll have told him to expect that, that I’m just playing the game. But then the FBI will corner them.”

  Ozan was nodding.

  “I’ll volunteer to go into the house and talk Snake out. Once inside, I’ll stall a little, tell him I’m figuring a way to break him from jail once he goes in. Then, when he’s distracted, I’ll take him out. Sonny, too.”

  The Redbone blinked; the rest of him remained as motionless as a cigar store Indian. “You mean kill him?”

  “Snake and Sonny both. And whoever else is with them.”

  The Redbone swallowed hard. “Your own uncle?”

  “It’s the only way, Alphonse. If I’m willing to kill my own uncle because he committed murder, I’ll be permanently safe. Washed in the blood, son. Better yet, that’s political gold in this state. You can’
t buy that kind of press.”

  “Ain’t you forgetting something?” Ozan asked, still looking wary. “What about Billy? You think he’s gonna stand by and keep his mouth shut after you kill his daddy?”

  Forrest had thought a lot about his cousin during the past hour. “I can’t say for sure. But I do know this: Billy knows his father is a hothead. And the last thing he wants on this earth is to go back to prison. Billy did a jolt in Raiford in the eighties, and that was all the hell he could stand. He just might sit still for this, if I put it to him the right way. After all, Snake’s had a good run. It’s time for our generation to take the helm.”

  Ozan swallowed the last of his bourbon, then leaned back in his chair. “It’s a ballsy plan, I’ll say that.”

  “Can you see any other way to take those people out and stay out of prison?”

  As if against his will, Ozan shook his head. “You know I’m up for damn near anything, boss. But when you start killing family . . . I don’t know. It’s like asking for trouble from the gods.”

  Forrest barked a laugh. “The gods? Alphonse, the only god you need to be worrying about at this point is the god of war. And you know what he says.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”

  Ozan gave him a smile, but it looked forced. The Redbone’s hesitancy shocked Forrest. He’d watched Ozan commit acts as brutal as anything he’d seen in Vietnam, even among the tribes up in the Highlands. To see him sobered by such a logical proposal gave Forrest pause.

  “When will you decide?” Ozan asked quietly.

  “I think I already did. The only question is when. It’s too late to stop the girl from getting tomorrow’s newspaper out. Whatever she knows at this point is going to hit the street. I just have to hope my name is nowhere in it. And that Snake’s is.”

  “It will be,” Ozan said with certainty. “I checked with Brody’s mole at the paper, like you said. They know Snake killed one of those women in the insurance fraud case. The whistleblowers. Morehouse told Henry the story. They’re going with that tomorrow.”

  A rush of excitement went through Forrest. “Goddamn, that’s perfect.”

  “As long as the cops don’t arrest Snake before he can take out our targets.”

  “They won’t. What evidence do they have besides a story told by a dead man? No, there’s a mile of wiggle room between a newspaper story and an arrest warrant.”

  Ozan jerked in his chair at the muted ring of a cell phone. He dug into his uniform pants and brought out a black TracFone.

  “Who the hell is calling you?” Forrest asked. “Didn’t everybody get my order?”

  “We got two guys missing, remember?” Ozan said. “The ones we sent to get Dr. Cage at his partner’s lake house. I hope to God it’s them.”

  “Is that a burn phone?”

  “Yeah.” Ozan answered with a press of his thumb. “What’s the word?” he asked, then waited for a coded reply. “Okay. What happened?” As Ozan listened, his face darkened. “Where are you now?” he asked after nearly a minute. “Then get here as fast as you can. . . . What? . . . I’ll tell him. Out.”

  The Redbone clicked off and looked at Forrest with something close to fear in his eyes. “This ain’t our night.”

  “What happened?”

  “That was Floyd Grimsby, one of the two guys I sent after Dr. Cage. The other was named Deakins. They’re off-duty cops from Monroe. They were the closest to where we traced Dr. Cage’s nurse’s cell phone to.”

  “And?”

  Ozan shook head. “They found the doc there, down by the water. Deakins was about to shoot him when Dr. Cage gut-shot him with a pistol from his pocket. He fired right through the pocket. Floyd went for his piece, but Cage had the drop on him. Then Cage drugged him and dumped him out in a cotton field somewhere.”

  Forrest felt as though a cold wind had blown through the room. His blood pressure was dropping. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Old Dr. Cage?”

  Ozan shrugged. “You told me he served in Korea, didn’t you? And him and that Garrity did kill Deke Dunn.”

  “Was Garrity at the lake house?”

  “No sign of him, Grimsby said.”

  “Jesus Christ. We can’t catch a break.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Ozan said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Dr. Cage gave Floyd a message for you.”

  “Me? What message?”

  “Floyd said it had to be face-to-face. He’ll be here in less than an hour.”

  “My face’ll be the last thing that fuckup ever sees.”

  Ozan got up and started pacing. “What kind of message would Dr. Cage send you?”

  “You don’t think the FBI has Grimsby, do you? That this is a setup?”

  “I don’t think he would have given me the right code if it was like that.”

  Forrest snorted. “A dirty cop from Monroe? Can you put a man down by the gate before he gets here?”

  “Sure. I’ve got four in the bunkhouse.”

  “Do it. Meanwhile, I’ll have a think about Tom Cage, M.D.”

  “How much do you know about him?”

  “A bit. Daddy always liked him. And I know he did some favors for Carlos Marcello back in the day.”

  “Dr. Cage?”

  Forrest shrugged. “It was the sixties, man. Strange times down here. Get that man on the gate, Alphonse. We’ll wait down by the river with a radio. If it’s the FBI, we’ll take the boat.”

  Ozan pulled on his duty coat and headed for the nearby building where overflow guests stayed when hunters came in large groups.

  After the door closed, Forrest walked back to the study where the seven-hundred-pound razorback he’d killed with the atlatl spear glared from behind the desk. His cousin Billy used this desk more than anyone else. In the top left drawer was a box of Cuban cigars. As Forrest sat in the padded chair, he opened the drawer and thought back to the days when his father was alive, an afternoon when Dr. Cage had given Forrest his junior high football physical. He remembered the easy manner in which his father and the doctor had dealt with each other—Frank Knox and Tom Cage, two men from opposite ends of the social spectrum. His father always said they didn’t make them like Dr. Cage anymore. If what the cop from Monroe had told Ozan about the gunfight was true, Frank Knox had been posthumously proven right.

  Wouldn’t be the first time, Forrest thought, lighting one of Billy’s cigars and settling in to wait.

  CHAPTER 14

  WALT GARRITY LAY half-asleep on a double bed in the Sheraton Casino Hotel in Baton Rouge, just inside the downtown levee. He’d planned to spend no more than an hour in the city; now he’d wasted more than eight, and Tom was out on the night roads, wounded and carrying a hostage, with every cop in Louisiana on his trail.

  Walt had come here to meet Colonel Griffith Mackiever of the Louisiana State Police, hoping to get the statewide APB for Tom and himself revoked. He had at least some reason for optimism. Long before Colonel Mackiever joined the LSP, he’d served as a Texas Ranger with Walt, and despite the passing years, they still shared the Ranger bond. When Walt arrived at the hotel, however, he hadn’t found his old comrade-in-arms waiting, but a faxed note telling him Mackiever had been forced to take an unexpected trip to New Orleans to check out their “mutual problem.” Walt assumed this referred to Forrest Knox, and he hoped to God Knox hadn’t suckered his old compadre into a trap. There was talk that Forrest might be next in line for superintendent of the state police, and Mackiever’s death would open up that powerful position sooner rather than later. Untimely deaths were far from uncommon in this godforsaken state.

  Garrity had never liked Louisiana: shitkickers in the north and Frenchmen in the south—Baptists versus Catholics, praise Jesus. Driving down Highway 61 from Natchez, he’d thought of Angola Farm out in the darkness between the road and the Mississippi River, glowing like some fortified island of lost souls. Most of the prisoners chained
inside the Farm belonged there, but the hypocrisy of harsh punishment for men who’d ripped off a few hundred dollars in Louisiana stuck in Walt’s craw. People thought Huey Long had set the high bar for state corruption in the 1930s, but the Kingfish was a latecomer to the public trough. A wise man once said that any territory colonized by the French eventually settled into a state of lassitude and corruption. As regarded Louisiana, he was right. Like some third-world island appended to America, the state had decayed as steadily as an old whore working the darkest den in Marseilles. During the 1950s and ’60s, Texas Rangers had viewed certain Louisiana parishes as feudal fiefdoms more akin to the realms of warlords than to American counties, and Walt wasn’t sure that the foundations of those fiefdoms had been completely uprooted.

  Rolling past the vapor-lit machinery of the refineries and chemical plants along old Highway 61, he’d reflected on what bad odds Mackiever must have faced trying to run the state police in such a place. New Orleans had become so lawless during the 1990s that the Justice Department had considered federalizing the NOPD. The chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hadn’t surprised Walt a bit; the cataclysmic storm had merely laid bare the systemic corruption that had been festering downtown for three centuries, and which had doomed the city itself by allowing a substandard levee system to be built.

  With that kind of rot eating away at the state’s largest city, no one should have been surprised to learn that rural parishes had also become dens of vice and violence—a perfect environment for predators like Forrest Knox. Clothed in the uniform of the state police, an ambitious sociopath could pretty much do as he pleased in the boondocks. When the officials above him had so many secrets to hide, which of them would risk confronting a man who had a high-tech intelligence division under his command?