The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  Walt wondered if this was true, or if Mackiever had simply lost the stomach for conflict. “Well, then. The best thing I can do is search Knox’s house, then get up to that hunting camp and go through it with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll lay odds I find something you can hang him with.”

  “You’re a lot more likely to end up digging a shallow grave at gunpoint. These are some bad boys, Walt.”

  “Bad boys are my business. Yours, too. Or have you forgotten? You’re still a Ranger down deep, aren’t you?”

  Mackiever sucked long and hard on his cigarette, then looked away. After he exhaled, his eyes found Walt’s again. They looked like cloudy marbles lost in dark bags of wrinkled skin.

  “If that male prostitute goes on TV and says I paid him for sex, my children and grandchildren will never look at me the same again. I don’t want to risk that, Walt. It’s not worth it. Not this close to retirement.”

  “You’re not risking anything! Knox gave you forty-eight hours, you said. That’s plenty of time for me to get in and out of those places. I just need to know where Forrest is while I’m doing it. Can you help me do that, at least?”

  Mackiever nodded. “That I could do. I’ve got a state-of-the-art GPS tracker on his cruiser. My nephew installed it four days ago. Now and then Knox takes an unmarked car, like this morning, going to New Orleans. But usually he’s in his cruiser.”

  “Okay then. You get me the tracking scope, and I’ll know when the coast is clear for me to move on his places.”

  “You’ve got a lot more to worry about than Forrest. He’s got a wife and a goddamn pit bull at his home. Then there’s Ozan, the dirty cops they’ve got on call, plus God only knows who else up at that hunting camp.”

  Walt shrugged as if this were of no consequence. “That’s my problem, not yours. You just get me that GPS tracker.”

  “I can have it delivered here in ten minutes.”

  “That’s more like it. Do you know where Knox is now?”

  “The hunting camp. He told me he was going to spend the day catching up on work while he waited for my answer, but he’s up at Valhalla. He fully expects to be appointed acting head of the state police by five P.M. I think even the governor expects it, though she doesn’t know the details.”

  Walt stroked his mustache, thinking. “And where’s his house?”

  “Less than five miles from here, near the LSU campus.”

  “I’ll hit his house first, then swing up to the camp after he leaves. Where’s Captain Ozan?”

  “Probably Concordia Parish. Last night Forrest sent him up there to investigate Trooper Dunn’s death, but now he’s got that Redbone son of a bitch leading the Henry Sexton investigation.”

  “Inmates running the asylum,” Walt muttered. “What about bugging Knox’s cruiser and his phones? Have you tried that?”

  “I don’t trust my tech division. They work too closely with the CIB. I’m sure Forrest has them checking his phones and sweeping his cruiser regularly. If he found a bug today, he’d release that porn stuff five minutes later. I’d be done, Walt.”

  “Won’t a sweep find the GPS transmitter on his car?”

  “They tell me it won’t. I borrowed this unit from a federal intel guy I know in Texas. It only transmits coordinates in bursts, at predetermined intervals. Otherwise, it’s electronically transparent.”

  “All right, then. Get the tracker here. I’m ready to move.”

  Mackiever held the tiny screen of his phone at arm’s length so that he could make out the keypad, then punched in a text message. “I wish I could do more to help you.”

  “You can,” Walt said bluntly. “Find a way to kill that goddamn APB. You’re still the head of the LSP. I’ve got false identification, but it’s damned hard to move around this state with my face on every TV screen and dashboard computer for three hundred miles.”

  Mackiever put down his cell phone and nodded. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Do it fast. Tom and I are lucky to have lived this long.”

  Mackiever leaned forward and looked at Walt as though trying to penetrate a shell of bravado. “Are you sure you want to do all this? Why don’t you just go back to Navasota, lock the door, and take care of Carmelita? Let Dr. Cage sort out his own mess?”

  The tone of surrender in his old comrade’s voice made Walt’s throat constrict. “Tom and I served in Korea together, Mac. He saved my life over there. And if I have to die for him over here, well . . .”

  Mackiever picked up his glass and raised it in salute, but Walt saw only an empty gesture. He closed his eyes to spare himself seeing how far his old friend had fallen.

  “Walt,” said the colonel, sensing his friend’s disgust, “if you’d seen that pathetic kid in that motel, his face painted up, his eyes dead, you might understand. After a lifetime of good work, I can’t stand to see it all tainted by something like that.”

  Walt gripped Mackiever’s shoulders and squeezed to the point of pain, his eyes burning. “You can’t resign. You hear me? If you cave in to Knox’s threat, Tom and I are dead men. But there’s more to it than that. You took an oath. The Ranger oath, if the LSP oath don’t mean enough. You owe it to every man who ever wore the star to stand tall, no matter what. Don’t kid yourself that you have a choice. You don’t. You break that oath, you won’t be no damn good to anybody. Not your wife, not your grandkids, not even to yourself.”

  Through the fear in Mackiever’s eyes, Walt saw a faint flicker of the old esprit de corps. “I hear you,” the colonel said. “I’ll do what I can. You just be careful, take care of yourself.”

  Walt waved off the warning. “Don’t waste time worrying about me. I’m taking Knox down, and God help any man who gets in my way.”

  CHAPTER 15

  FORREST KNOX SAT behind the desk in the study at Valhalla, peering into the terrified face of the cop who had lost his partner to Dr. Tom Cage. Floyd Grimsby looked like every other North Louisiana cop who ended up on the take, a bullying Baptist deacon who liked screwing the church secretary on the side. He’d relayed Dr. Cage’s message in a voice quavering with equal parts of fear and anger, watching Forrest’s face as attentively as a dog waiting for a beating from its master. Forrest was surprised the man hadn’t fled the state after a fuckup of that magnitude. He’d probably figured that Forrest would find him eventually, and it was better to face the music and try to make up for his mistake.

  Alphonse Ozan stood against the wall beside the door to the great room, maintaining radio contact with the scouts he’d placed at the perimeter of the camp. There was still a chance that the Bureau had sent Grimsby as a stalking horse, so they had to be ready to run for the river on a moment’s notice. If the feds brought a helicopter, Ozan had a man outside with a BAR that could take it down. Of course that would mean leaving the country, but Forrest and Billy had always been prepared for that. They had paid-up property in Andorra, in the Pyrenees on the French border, waiting for the day when fate finally caught up with them. But as Forrest had often told his cousin, many times success came from holding your nerve when other men would bail. In this time of maximum danger, Forrest stood to gain more money and power than he could have imagined only a year earlier.

  “So Dr. Cage took a phone call while he thought you were unconscious,” Forrest said. “How much did you hear?”

  “Not enough to know where he was going. I think it was that Texas Ranger though. Garrity. Later, Dr. Cage told me his friend had told him to kill me.”

  Forrest smiled. “A wise man. Did anything you heard give you any idea where he might be running?”

  “He said something about Mobile. Like Garrity was already there.”

  “Alabama?” Forrest thought about this. “That doesn’t make any sense. Garrity would run to Texas if he was running at all. Do you know where you were when he dumped you off?”

  Ozan said, “I’ve got it pinpointed about as close as we can get it. Catahoula Parish. But given the elapsed time, and the
fact that Cage has a vehicle, he could be a hundred miles from that point by now.”

  “What about our roadblocks?”

  Ozan shrugged. “It’s the boonies, boss. If Cage knows those roads, he could get a long way without hitting a roadblock.”

  “And he was born in Louisiana.”

  “His wife, too,” Ozan said. “She grew up right around there. I’ve sent some guys to check, on the off chance he’s hiding with relatives.”

  Forrest tapped on the desk. “Where the hell is Garrity? Why did they split up at all?”

  Grimsby shrugged.

  “Garrity was a Texas Ranger,” Forrest said thoughtfully. “Mackiever was too, back in the day. He only came to Louisiana to take the superintendent’s job. I wonder if he and Garrity knew each other? Or even served together?”

  Ozan was nodding. “Good thinking. I’ll check it out.”

  “You do that. We’ve got Mackiever by the balls right now. The last thing we need is a hardass like Garrity giving him hope that he can save himself.”

  Forrest gave the Monroe cop a last measuring glance. “You let an arthritic old man kill your partner. How does that feel?”

  The cop’s eyes smoldered with hatred and embarrassment. “Not good.”

  “You want to kill Dr. Cage?”

  “Just give me one shot at him, Colonel.”

  “You already had your shot. And you didn’t take it.” Forrest leaned back in his chair. “Go out to the bunkhouse and get a few hours’ rest. You’ll have new orders when you wake up.”

  The cop didn’t move.

  “Go, goddamn it,” Forrest said mildly. “Before I have Captain Ozan here give you the punishment you deserve.”

  The cop stood, and with an awkward salute he left the room.

  After the sound of his boot heels faded, Forrest sighed and shook his head. “That’s some piss-poor manpower right there, Alphonse. A sad state of affairs.”

  Ozan let some time pass before he spoke. “What you think about Dr. Cage’s message? If he can do what he said, it kind of throws a new light on things, don’t it?”

  Forrest smiled. “It offers the possibility of a low-body-count solution, which we could sorely use right now. If we start killing public officials, even if we blame it on Snake, we’re asking for trouble we may not be able to handle. But—Dr. Cage’s solution requires trusting not only him, but also his son and the Masters girl to go along with his promise to protect us. And that would take a lot of convincing for me to buy.”

  Ozan didn’t reply to this.

  “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the good doctor,” Forrest mused. “And what I’ve decided is, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Dr. Cage was never really any threat to me. He might be to Snake and Sonny and the other old men, but he can’t hurt me at all.”

  Ozan looked intrigued by this idea.

  “And if he really killed his old nurse, he probably did us all a favor.”

  “What do you mean if?” Ozan asked.

  “I’m not so sure he did it. Hell, all we have to go on is Snake’s word.”

  “And Sonny’s.”

  “Sonny Thornfield wouldn’t cross Snake—not if Snake told him to lie. And neither of them would want to tell me they’d disobeyed my orders.”

  “But if Dr. Cage didn’t kill the old woman, why did he jump bail?”

  Forrest shrugged. “We’ll ask him that when we find him. We’re talking about a man and a woman, Alphonse. Ain’t no telling what might have gone on between them over the years, or in that house that night. But I know Snake wanted her dead. He always did. The Eagles had a death warrant on her if she ever came back to Mississippi. I don’t know what she knew, but cancer wasn’t quick enough for Snake. He nearly busted a gut when I told him he couldn’t waste her. Anyway, my point is, the Double Eagles themselves are more of a threat to me than Tom Cage ever was. The Eagles truly know shit about me.”

  “I think you’re forgetting something,” Ozan said in a cautious voice. “Dr. Cage and Garrity had Sonny Thornfield in the back of that van before Deke Dunn pulled up and got hisself killed. So Cage and Garrity might know whatever Sonny knows about you.”

  Forrest couldn’t believe he’d forgotten something so obvious. “You’re right. So we either have to cut a deal with Cage or kill him, tout suite.”

  “Then we’re basically back to our original dilemma,” Ozan said. “Sit tight, kill ’em all, or try the doc’s approach?”

  As Forrest nodded, he realized he’d already decided to hold off on the scorched earth strategy. “I’m going to take a chance on Tom Cage. But step one is to find him. I’m not about to cancel that APB until he looks me in the eye and swears he can do what he claims he can.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we need to verify that his son and the Masters girl will follow suit. God only knows what Brody might’ve said to them before he died. I guess we might read it in this morning’s paper, no matter how fast we move.”

  “That’s one uppity bitch,” Ozan said. “At the hospital, she got right up in my face even after Kaiser had backed down. I wanted to pistol-whip her so bad I could taste it.”

  Forrest shook his head. “That’s one pleasure you’re unlikely to get. If anybody kills her at this point, it’ll be Snake.” Forrest got up from behind the desk and stuck the dead cigar in his mouth. “Change the orders to our people. Find Dr. Cage, but don’t kill him. Not unless he forces the issue.”

  “Got it. What about Garrity?”

  The specter of Walt Garrity allied with Griffith Mackiever rose to the forefront of Forrest’s mind. “If they find Garrity alone, they should waste him. We’ll pin Deke Dunn’s death on him, and that’ll clear the books, freeing us to cut a deal with Dr. Cage. The doc will just have to live with Garrity’s death as the price of his freedom.”

  Ozan seemed to like this solution. “And Snake? When he finally reads what’s in the Examiner in the morning—and he will, the online version—he’ll be ready to kill that Masters bitch, just like you said.”

  “Leave Snake to me. I’ll tell him we’re going to take everybody out, but he needs to stay in Texas while we do it. Then if I change my mind, I’ll tell him we couldn’t bring it off, and we need him to do the wet work.”

  At last Ozan seemed satisfied.

  “Now, find me Tom Cage.”

  “It can’t be that goddamn hard,” Ozan declared. “Especially with him and Garrity split up. He’s got to still be in Louisiana, probably within twenty miles of where he dumped Floyd. There’s no way he crossed the Mississippi River. We’ve got roadblocks at every bridge, and even a cruiser at the St. Francisville ferry, in case he thinks it’s still running.”

  Forrest wasn’t so sure. “He’s proved to be a resourceful son of a bitch, Alphonse. If we don’t find him in the next two hours, we might need to pull that APB on him and just leave it on Garrity.”

  “You think that’ll bring him out of the woods?”

  “Who knows? For now, put every man you can into LaSalle, Catahoula, Franklin, and Tensas parishes. Check out the wife’s relatives’ houses. And keep the tech division going back over all electronic communications of Dr. Cage, his family, his partners, everybody. If there’s a deal to be made, we’ve got to do it quick. Otherwise, we turn Snake loose and get ready for the Sam Peckinpah ending.”

  “The what?” Ozan asked.

  “Nothing. Get to it, Captain.”

  As the Redbone left the study, Forrest reflected on the irony that he could probably have a more enjoyable conversation with Tom Cage than with any of the men he worked with every day. That included his cousin Billy, who was a serious reader, at least by Knox family standards. Once more Forrest thought about his father and Dr. Cage joking around while the doc gave him his football physical. Then he banished the thought. For at bottom, he felt strangely sure that before another day had come and gone, he would have to kill Tom Cage, either with his own hands or by sending other men to do his will.

  C
HAPTER 16

  I’M STANDING IN the third-floor bedroom of Edelweiss, the historic house I bought for Caitlin as a wedding present, looking down at my daughter’s sleeping face. There’s just enough light leaking through the cypress shutters to illuminate Annie’s profile against her pillow. I’ve done this hundreds of times in my life. The nights I remember most were those after Annie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer—immediately after getting the news, of course, and then later, after her treatments had failed, and hope failed with them. On those desolate nights, I stared down at my three-year-old daughter and shivered in the strangling grip of mortality, forced to accept that all my hope, faith, strength, intelligence, friends, and money could not even slow the progression of the disease that would take Annie’s mother from her and leave me to do a job for which I felt completely unprepared.

  Now, eight years later, having brought Annie through that most terrible of traumas, I feel almost as helpless as I was then. Only this time it’s not an illness I’m fighting, but my father. The man who guided me through most of my life has vanished, leaving chaos and death in his wake, and I am all but powerless to save him. For now, I must focus on protecting the rest of our family. Thinking back on what Kaiser told me about the lethality of Forrest Knox, I’m thankful for this German chalet perched on the bluff above Silver Street and the Mississippi River. Whenever possible, hide in plain sight, a wise friend once advised me. Since I kept this purchase secret from everyone but my mother, it has proved to be a serviceable safe house. How strange it is to remember that if Viola Turner hadn’t died early Monday morning, I would be giving Caitlin a key to Edelweiss next Friday—probably with a huge ribbon and bow tied around the massive doors. Now I have no idea when we might be married. In the meantime, my mother and daughter hide here like witnesses in a Mafia trial.

  The route I took here from City Hall is testament to the gravity of our situation. First I drove to Walmart and purchased a half-dozen prepaid cell phones. Then I drove through several residential subdivisions, doubling back often to be sure I wasn’t being followed. As I did, I pondered all John Kaiser had told me outside City Hall. The FBI agent’s goal had been to recruit me to the cause of persuading Dad to give himself up to the Bureau, not for my father’s safety, but so that he might reveal to Kaiser whatever he might know about Carlos Marcello. To be fair, he wasn’t the only one with selfish motives. I had hoped to persuade Kaiser to organize a search of the Lusahatcha Swamp, with its object the elusive Bone Tree, and whatever dead bodies lay in its shadow. Such a large-scale effort would have kept him out of my and Sheriff Dennis’s way while we moved against the Knoxes’ meth operations tomorrow. But once I realized that Kaiser’s primary focus had become tying the Double Eagles to the Kennedy assassination, I knew the Bone Tree gambit would have been a waste of breath.