The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  Forrest thought about it. “How about the Home Depot parking lot, College Drive? I’ll be in my cruiser. Twenty minutes.”

  “That’s quick, but I can make it. Can’t wait to see it.”

  Forrest heard the floor creak behind him, then a sharp scream. He knew without turning that his wife had made the sound, but it took him a moment to realize why. When he did, he swept the photos on his desk into the top drawer. His wife was accustomed to seeing grisly crime scene photos, but the kiddie porn that Ozan and some of the guys in vice had pulled off a server in the Netherlands was truly sickening.

  “What was that?” his wife gasped.

  “A case,” he said gruffly.

  “I don’t want that in our house.”

  He looked up at the woman who knew his own proclivities about as well as any woman who still walked the earth. But even for someone of her experience and disillusionment, those photos were beyond the pale.

  “I don’t either,” he said.

  “Why do you have them?”

  Forrest decided to test his strategy. “Tech Division pulled these off Colonel Mackiever’s computer. He’s been downloading them at work for months.”

  His wife’s hand flew to her mouth. “I don’t believe it. Griffith Mackiever?”

  He nodded once, watching her closely.

  “Dear Lord.” She shook her head as though she could never accept the idea, but then she said, “I guess you never know anybody, do you?”

  Forrest shook his head, but he was smiling inside.

  KEEP WALKING, WALT TOLD himself, moving steadily up the street with his picklocks nestled in his inside jacket pocket. Straight and steady, like an old man out for a constitutional.

  Knox had left the neighborhood first, his wife about five minutes later. But the most welcome sight had been the silhouette of the pit bull in the backseat of the state police cruiser. Given this gift from the gods, Walt had decided that the best tactic would be to simply walk along the street with a normal gait, then turn up Knox’s driveway as though he were a meter reader or repairman. Mackiever had assured him that no call from Knox’s home security system would alert anyone. It was wired directly to state police headquarters, and Mac had assigned his nephew to disable the connection through the departmental computer system.

  Knox’s driveway was fifteen feet ahead.

  Walt emptied his mind of doubt, then turned and walked up into the carport, through the picket gate in the breezeway, and into the domain of the now-absent pit bull. He was an old hand at B&Es, and French doors were particularly easy. With the alarm system neutralized, the dog was the only thing that could have complicated his entry. Hearing no alarm, he unlocked the door and moved quickly inside.

  Walt’s initial plan had been to search the house itself, then try to break into Knox’s home computer. But as he passed the door of what appeared to be a home office, he saw something he never expected: the computer screen glowing softly, a Microsoft Word document showing.

  Charging across the room, he stabbed the keyboard to keep the screen saver from popping up. If it did, a password would almost certainly be required to re-access the computer. As he stood there panting, he wondered at his good fortune. Surely Knox had not left his computer unprotected?

  The wife, he thought. His wife must have used the computer right after he left. Tensing, Walt minimized Word and checked to make sure he wasn’t logged on to the wife’s account, but no—the account name was NBFKnox.

  “Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Walt said softly. “Who’s your daddy, asshole?”

  He sat down and began working through Knox’s file directory. His folders contained the usual stuff: work letters, tax records, to-do lists. Walt wanted to go through the e-mails, but Knox’s Gmail account required a password. Conscious that the wife might come back at any time, Walt moved on and searched for all images stored on the hard drive. Knox only had a couple of hundred photos on the computer, and Walt didn’t see anything that looked suspicious. There was some pornography, but it was typical heterosexual fare. Moving on, Walt searched for video files.

  This yielded more interesting results. Knox had quite a few videos that appeared to be training films for state troopers, familiar stuff to Walt. Many dealt with shooting techniques, while others depicted SWAT instructors clearing buildings during hostage situations. Walt was nearing the end of the list when a video that looked very different expanded to fill the screen.

  The grainy image showed an open dirt field with a line of trees in the distance. After about five seconds, two horses with men on their backs galloped into the frame. The men carried long spears, and they spurred their horses toward a black blob in the middle of the field. Suddenly the blob disintegrated into several animals racing in different directions.

  Hogs, Walt thought.

  Two more horsemen galloped on-screen, with smaller blurs running at their flanks. Dogs. From the motion of the dogs, he guessed they were pit bulls or blackmouth curs. Real hog hunters put vests on their dogs so the boars wouldn’t rip their guts out. One good rip with those tusks could easily eviscerate a dog. Walt had seen it.

  The four horsemen quickly singled out the largest hog and, with the help of the dogs, began trying to hem it in. After several feints and charges that dropped one smaller dog, the big razorback cut between two horses and broke for the tree line. Just as Walt thought the hog might make it, another horseman charged from the trees and with expert skill forced the hog to check its momentum and turn 180 degrees.

  By then the other horses were closing in. When the hog turned and began slashing at the dogs with its tusks, the fifth horseman drove his spear down into its ridged back, between the shoulder blades, like a matador finishing off a bull. The razorback staggered, took a few steps, then collapsed and lay still as a boulder. The dogs went mad, circling the kill, but the men only climbed leisurely off their horses and shook hands with one another.

  Drawing back a couple of inches, Walt squinted at the man who had killed the hog. Despite the graininess of the image, he was pretty sure that man was Forrest Knox.

  Walt nodded slowly, recognizing that they were up against a certain kind of man. There was nothing illegal about hunting hogs with spears. Some crazy sons of bitches hunted them with knives, leaping out of trees to make the kill. From somewhere deep in his memory, the word atlatl rose in Walt’s mind. That was what the old-time hunters called the tool that normally hurled the spear Knox had used during the hunt.

  He clicked on the last video in the folder. Compared to the hunting footage, the final video was about as exciting as a television test pattern. It showed a small house in the dark, and it appeared to have been shot through a telephoto lens. Unlike the hunting film, this video had sound. Walt heard human breathing, as if the man shooting the film was breathing right into the microphone. As Walt stared at the screen, he noticed it was raining. Unlike Hollywood rain, these drops were difficult to see.

  Nothing else happened. The rain continued to fall, and the cameraman kept breathing. Just as Walt was about to switch off the video, he realized that there were numerical markings superimposed over the scene. They were range markings. While he tried to figure this out, the front door of the little house opened and three young black men walked out. Two were carrying a box, while the third carried a semiautomatic rifle, a CAR-15. As the men walked, Walt realized there was water lapping around their feet.

  What the hell . . . ?

  “Target visible,” said a voice with a Cajun accent, and Walt nearly jumped out of his skin. “Two hundred twenty-one meters.”

  “Acquiring,” said a second voice, as cool as a fighter pilot’s. “Target acquired.”

  On-screen, the three black men—oblivious to the camera—moved toward an SUV parked next to the house. The one with the carbine unlocked the rear hatch of the SUV. Walt recognized a high-tech scale sitting on the box in the other men’s hands. The kind of scale used by high-volume drug dealers.

  “Cleared to engage,” said a third
voice. “Engage when ready.”

  The breathing stopped.

  The flat crack of a supersonic bullet told Walt that a rifle had been fired. A silencer had muted the muzzle blast, but the exploding head on-screen relegated that thought to something he would only recall later.

  “Reacquiring,” said the shooter.

  “Fire at will,” said the second voice.

  The two young men carrying the box had whipped their heads around at the sound of the crack, but they had no idea what had happened. By the time they looked down and saw their companion lying facedown in the water, the shooter had fired again. A second man shuddered, then staggered back and fell into the black water.

  The third man dropped his end of the box and ran for the driver’s door of the SUV. Walt expected a flurry of shots, but none came. The SUV backed up with frantic speed. As the driver stopped to shift from Reverse into Drive, a third bullet shattered his window and blasted half his head across the passenger seat.

  “Targets neutralized,” said the emotionless voice.

  “Thirty points,” said the third voice. “Outstanding.”

  The picture froze, and the sound stopped.

  Walt sat staring at the screen, his heart pumping like a fist squeezing his trachea. What had he just seen? His gut told him military or police snipers operating during Hurricane Katrina, but he had no way to be sure. As his mind whirled in confusion, he heard a noise from the interior of the house.

  Reaching down through the neck of his shirt, he pulled out the leather thong that held his derringer around his neck. Then he moved quickly into the hall. He heard the noise again, a loud clunk that he now recognized as the sound of an icemaker.

  “Fuck,” he breathed, going back into Knox’s office.

  Taking his seat again, he rifled through Knox’s drawers in search of a flash drive. In the third drawer, he hit pay dirt. A half-dozen thumb drives lay in a pile of old pens, yellow highlighters, and other office junk. Walt suppressed the urge to pocket them all, and instead inserted an orange one into the USB slot on the Dell. A minute later, he had a copy of the sniping video. He copied the hog-hunting video for good measure, then pocketed the flash drive and carefully replaced everything on the desk as he’d found it.

  He was walking to the hall door when he heard a car engine on the street outside. The car seemed to slow near the Knox driveway, leaving Walt frozen like a statue in a cemetery, not daring to breathe. I’m too old for this shit, he thought. By the time the car drove on, Walt had abandoned his plan to search the house. He needed to get that video to a safe place before fate intervened and made it something the police found in a pocket on his corpse.

  As he made his way back to the French doors that led to the patio, his derringer in his hand, a breathtaking inspiration struck him. A smile stretched his mouth. I’m holding the gun I used to kill Trooper Darrell Dunn. The murder weapon. Ballistics can prove it. How perfect would it be for that weapon to be found hidden in the home of Lieutenant Colonel Forrest Knox?

  Walt stopped walking and looked around for a place to hide the gun.

  CHAPTER 22

  CAITLIN HAD HOPED to find Kaiser gone when she returned from Sheriff Byrd’s office, but as she pulled into the employees’ lot, she saw his black Crown Victoria parked against the wall. Pulling around the building, she parked in the visitors’ lot and headed for the front door.

  As she passed through it, she came upon some sort of altercation between a haggard-looking woman of about seventy-five and Jackie Cullen, the paper’s receptionist. Jackie gave Caitlin a quick shake of her head, as though she should hurry past, but before Caitlin could manage it, she heard the overwrought woman say that no one but Caitlin Masters could possibly help her, and she wasn’t leaving what she’d brought with anyone else.

  Something plaintive in the woman’s tone made Caitlin pause. Without taking time to think, she said, “Maybe I can help you, ma’am. What is it you need to see Ms. Masters about?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the old woman said, whirling on her.

  As soon as the frustrated eyes lit on Caitlin’s face, they changed. “You’re her,” she said, her face softening. “Aren’t you?”

  The old woman hadn’t a dab of makeup on her wrinkled face, and she was clutching a manila envelope to her chest like it held the deed to her ancestral home. She looked like nothing so much as a woman from one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs from the 1930s. A Dust Bowl wife. Caitlin forced a smile and said, “I am. And you are . . . ?”

  The woman closed her eyes and wavered on her feet as though about to collapse. Then Caitlin saw tears trickle from the corners of her eyes.

  “Virginia Sexton,” said the woman. “I’m Henry’s mother.”

  Caitlin froze for a second, then rushed forward and put her arms around Mrs. Sexton to support her. The receptionist’s mouth dropped open, but Caitlin didn’t bother to explain. She was scanning the newsroom behind Jackie, searching for FBI agents. Seeing none, she took Mrs. Sexton by the wrist and led her into the nearby advertising office, which was about the only room John Kaiser was unlikely to enter.

  “I need the room,” Caitlin said to the two salespeople sitting in the office. “Don’t tell anybody I’m in the building, and tell Jackie to say she hasn’t seen me. Got it?”

  The younger of the two women nodded as she left the office.

  “I’m so sorry you had to wait,” Caitlin apologized, leading Mrs. Sexton to a rather uncomfortable chair. “We get a lot of cranks demanding to see me or the editor, so the receptionist is overly cautious.”

  “I understand,” said Mrs. Sexton, breathing too fast. “You can imagine what kind of nuts showed up at the Beacon to give Henry an earful.”

  Caitlin smiled and nodded, but she felt tears on her own cheeks. For the thousandth time she saw Henry disappear into a roaring fireball, giving his life to save hers. “I can,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Mrs. Sexton, I have more respect for your son than any reporter I ever met.”

  As the aged eyes took her measure, Caitlin felt the ruthless appraisal of someone who has nothing to gain or lose. Virginia Sexton had already lost everything, and nothing could compensate her for it.

  “I’m sure you do,” said Mrs. Sexton. “I tried to warn him, you know. Two, three times a week I’d try to talk him into letting go of all that history and just getting on with life. But he couldn’t turn it loose. He was like a loggerhead snapping turtle. Stubborn, like me. I wouldn’t admit it while he was alive, but it’s true.”

  Caitlin didn’t know what to say, so she simply vocalized what was in her heart. “Mrs. Sexton, Henry gave his life to save mine last night. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. Literally. I feel so guilty about that.”

  The old woman nodded, obviously bereft. “You feel guilty? I took him my car and that shotgun last night. I went to his room and helped him out of that hospital bed . . . helped him fool the monitors.” She dabbed at her eyes, looking away from Caitlin. “I used to be a nurse, you see. So don’t blame yourself. If I hadn’t done those things, my boy would still be alive.”

  As Caitlin reassured Henry’s mother, her eyes settled on the manila envelope still clutched in the wrinkled hands.

  “What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  Mrs. Sexton slowly took the manila envelope away from her chest and set it on her lap. “I haven’t been able to sleep since last night. I’ve been going from room to room, cleaning up. I’ve always kept Henry’s old room pretty much like it was when he was a boy, even though he’s a grown man. After his father passed, I never really needed the space, so . . . well, I don’t know. I have some happy memories of the things in that room.”

  “Is that where you found the envelope?”

  The woman looked down as if she’d already forgotten what she held. “No. Henry had this in his weekend bag at the hospital. It was stuffed under the plastic bottom. I found it when I was unpacking the bag, and . . . I made the mistake of looking inside. It’s a
letter to you. My first instinct was to go out back and burn it in the trash can.”

  Inwardly, Caitlin shuddered.

  “But Henry wouldn’t have wanted that. I know he chose you to carry on his work after they beat him up, so I decided to bring it to you. There’s pure evil in this envelope, and no mistake. I don’t think you should fool with it. But I imagine you’re like my Henry was. You’ve got to get at the truth of things, even if it kills you.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  Caitlin stepped forward and gently lifted the envelope from Mrs. Sexton’s hands. The old woman seemed to shrink within her skin when she let go of the paper. However much she hated Henry’s work, she understood that giving it up meant giving up the surviving essence of her son.

  “I’m so sorry for what happened,” Caitlin said uselessly. “And I’ll never let the world forget what Henry did.”

  Mrs. Sexton shook her head. “Henry didn’t care about that. My boy didn’t do what he did to see his name in the paper, like some.”

  Caitlin’s cheeks burned, though she didn’t get the feeling the comment had been directed at her.

  “He just believed everybody deserves the same break. I don’t know where he got that idea. Not from his daddy, that’s for sure. And I learned a long time ago, if you’re going to wait for this world to be fair, you’re going to be waiting in the grave.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The old woman started to leave, but Caitlin touched her arm and checked the foyer first, to make sure no FBI agents were close. Before she let Mrs. Sexton go, she said, “Did Henry’s, ah, partner know about this envelope?”

  “You mean that Sherry Harden?”

  Caitlin nodded.

  “I don’t know. She might have brought some of those papers up there to him. I don’t know how else he would have got them. But she couldn’t have seen the letter. He wrote it after Sherry was shot, and he woke up in the special hospital room. It doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s beyond doing anything about it.”