The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “Right now Jamie has me working background on Sheriff Billy Byrd, and that’s cool. I get it.”

  Caitlin almost blushed with guilt. She’d texted Jamie to assign Keisha that job on her way back from Byrd’s office. “But you really want to work on something else.”

  Keisha inclined her head.

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “I’ve reviewed everything that’s been reported so far, and I’ve talked to the staff about the angles they’re working. And given that . . . it’s become clear to me that one part of the story is being completely ignored.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The crime that started it all. The murder of Viola Turner.”

  Caitlin felt her cheeks heat up. She felt shock, anger, embarrassment . . . and each emotion had hit her on at least two levels. Various replies to Harvin’s request rose in her throat, but Caitlin clamped her mouth shut before any could escape. Because Keisha was right: Viola’s story was being ignored. And there could only be one reason for that. Caitlin’s staff had sensed that she’d marked it off-limits. Silently perhaps, but absolutely. Otherwise people would have been all over that story. The chief murder suspect in the Viola Turner case was the mayor’s father, for God’s sake. The problem for her staff was, because Caitlin and Penn were engaged, the mayor was the boss’s future husband.

  It struck Caitlin then that Jamie had known what Keisha was going to say before she walked through the door. He might even have advised her to do it, thinking Caitlin would be reluctant to blast a young black reporter for raising the sensitive subject. Not that it mattered, of course. Now that they’d brought the unpleasant reality to her attention, she could not ignore it.

  “Okay,” she said to Keisha. “How do you want to handle it?”

  “I’d like to interview Dr. Cage. Obviously that’s not possible at this time, so my first fallback would be to interview Mayor Cage.”

  Caitlin took a deep breath and kept her voice under control. “I honestly don’t know if Penn will talk to you. Even though you work for me, he’ll probably take the same position he would with any reporter. While his father’s life is on the line, he won’t discuss it.”

  “Will you at least ask him?” Keisha pressed.

  God, this girl has balls, Caitlin thought. She wondered if she’d had that kind of courage at twenty-five. Yes, she decided, I did.

  “I’ll ask him,” she said. “But I’d get busy finding a second fallback, because I don’t think Penn will talk to you.”

  “I’m trying to reach Viola Turner’s family right now.”

  “Who? The sister?”

  “And the son. Lincoln Turner.”

  Caitlin’s stomach fluttered. She forced a smile, then tapped her hands on the desktop. “That sounds like a plan. Anything else, guys?”

  Keisha gave her an emotionless smile. “Nope. Thanks.”

  After the reporter went out, Caitlin tried to pretend like nothing unusual had happened, but after a few seconds, she gave up. She stood and looked Jamie in the eyes. “You set that up, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  Caitlin held the eye contact for a few uncomfortable seconds, then went to her refrigerator for a Mountain Dew. After taking a long drink, she said, “She’s right, of course. We have been ignoring the story, and it’s no accident. I don’t like being a pawn in the political games of Shad Johnson and Billy Byrd. But . . . we have to cover it.”

  “I agree. If we don’t, we look biased.”

  She gave a reluctant nod. After another sip of Mountain Dew, she said, “Tom didn’t murder Viola, you know.”

  “Of course not,” Jamie said, much too quickly.

  “You’ll see. It may take some time, but you’ll see.”

  Jamie sighed as if letting out a long-held breath. “I hope you’re right, boss.”

  CHAPTER 23

  AFTER LEAVING THE Concordia hospital, I checked in at City Hall and took stock of the work I’d ignored for the past three days. In the face of that, I decided to go over to the district attorney’s office and see how the events of the past twenty-four hours had affected our DA’s view of the pending murder prosecution against my father. The TV trucks parked outside the courthouse and DA’s office should have told me what to expect. After I brusquely marched through the knot of journalists, Shadrach Johnson made me wait half an hour to see him, and now I wish I hadn’t wasted my time. According to Shad, Dad has the same chance of reaching his custody alive as any other cop killer—about one in a hundred—but if he somehow survives, Shad intends to try him for Viola’s murder as though the events of the past three days have no bearing on that case. The man knows how to hold a grudge, I’ll give him that.

  As I leave the DA’s office building, the cold wind brings me wide awake. I trot down the steps through the shouting reporters without a word, turning left toward City Hall, which abuts the southeast face of the courthouse. Just as I think I’ve cleared the feeding frenzy, someone catches hold of my arm. I whirl in anger, then find myself facing an elderly black woman huddling in a jacket.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I say. “How can I help you?”

  “Isobel Handley,” she says with a smile. “I want to know when you’re going to do something about the schools, Mayor. You got elected saying you were gonna fix ’em, but right now it’s a crying shame how few children who go into the first grade make it through the twelfth for graduation. And you’ve been in office two whole years!”

  The reasons for this state of affairs are both simple and unimaginably complex, and I certainly don’t have the resources to go through them on a cold sidewalk. Not today, anyway. But conversations like this one are the daily fare of a mayor.

  “I’m talking about the public schools,” the woman goes on. “Not the private white schools where the only black kids are football players.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say hopelessly. “I’m working as hard as I can on the issue, I promise you.”

  “If your little girl wasn’t in a private school, you’d work harder.”

  “Mrs. Handley, I—”

  “You don’t have to explain, baby, I understand. But you take a stick to them selectmen and supervisors, if you have to. That’s what they need. Sometimes I think the schools were better before integration. At least we learned the fundamentals, and we graduated knowing how to read.”

  There’s no point trying to explain that I have no authority over the county supervisors or the state board of education. “Sometimes I wish I could do exactly what you suggested, Mrs. Handley. Now, you’d better get out of this cold. And Merry Christmas to you.”

  At last she smiles. “You too, Mayor. God bless. And don’t pay these reporters no mind.”

  I look toward the door of City Hall as I move on, hoping to avoid more conversations, but that’s too much to ask. This time it’s not a journalist or member of my constituency who buttonholes me, but John Kaiser. The FBI agent is sitting on the steps beneath the lamppost, obviously waiting for me.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I ask. “A meeting with Oliver Stone, maybe?”

  He makes a sour face. “I’ve got some news for you.”

  My blood quickens, more out of dread than hope. “My father?”

  “No, the Double Eagles. Leo Spivey is dead.”

  “Who the hell is Leo Spivey?”

  “The Eagle who owned that booby-trapped warehouse. A hotel maid found his body in a room across the river. He appeared to have put a bullet through his own head. The hits just keep on coming.”

  “Was it really suicide?”

  “Fuck, no. Knox’s goons got him. Sheriff Dennis’s men are over there now, working the scene as a homicide. To the best of their abilities, anyway.”

  “Maybe Spivey killed himself rather than be punished by Knox or his buddies.”

  Kaiser shrugs. “Either way, the cause is the same. You and Dennis hit the Knoxes’ drug operations. Soon we’ll have bodies piling up everywhere.”

  “I know y
ou wanted everything to keep running nice and smooth while you worked on recruiting a star witness against Forrest, but my dad doesn’t have six months to wait on you.”

  I start to move past him, but Kaiser stands and blocks my way.

  “One more bit of news. Our Legat agents in Rome tracked down the serial number of the Mannlicher-Carcano from Royal’s house.”

  “And?”

  “It was shipped into the Port of Los Angeles in 1962, one shipment after the lot that contained Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle. Our next stop will be finding the U.S. retailer. That might take a little time, but the director’s with us now, and we’re pushing hard.”

  “The director doesn’t think you’re nuts?”

  “It’s pretty hard to deny physical evidence.”

  “I told you earlier . . . I’m not interested.”

  “And if we track that rifle to Louisiana?”

  I turn up my hands in exasperation. “What do you want me to say? My only concern right now is my family. If you want to spend your time trying to crack the Kennedy case, have at it.”

  “Do you feel the same way about the murders of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, and the others?”

  “We know who killed those guys now, or who ordered the hits, anyway. Brody Royal, and he’s dead. If you want to nail Snake Knox and the other Eagles, you need to get on our side. Because Walker and I are going to be squeezing those guys’ balls before you even get your plan into first gear.”

  Again I try to move past him, but Kaiser raises the flat of his right hand to my chest. “I know you don’t want to listen to me. But will you listen to Dwight Stone?”

  God, is this guy pulling out the stops. “You think a phone call from Stone is going to make me reverse course on busting the Double Eagles?”

  “Not a phone call. Stone’s flying in today on a Bureau jet.”

  This actually stuns me. “In? Here? For what?”

  “To talk to you. He’s been trying to find a way down here since Tuesday night, when I told him about the bones coming out of the Jericho Hole. He was looking into chartering a plane. But you seeing those rifles in Royal’s basement and hearing Royal say the Knoxes killed Pooky Wilson at the Bone Tree convinced the director to authorize a Bureau flight to bring Dwight down here to consult. He’s only going to be here for a few hours.”

  “Why such a short stay?”

  Kaiser takes a long breath. “Because he’s dying, Penn.”

  A sick feeling hits me high in the stomach. “What?”

  “Liver cancer.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You know Dwight. Old school. A lot like your father, I imagine. He’s scheduled for an operation tomorrow. This visit is the Bureau’s way of giving back a little of the respect Hoover took when he fired Stone in ’72. Before Dwight goes under the knife.”

  “Goddamn it, John. When’s he coming in?”

  “He ought to be here by six P.M. Can you spare him an hour of your time?”

  Kaiser’s revelations are almost too much to process quickly.

  “The way I heard it,” he says, “it was Stone who made it possible for you to solve the Delano Payton case seven years ago.”

  I nod. “He did more than that. Stone saved my life up in Colorado.”

  “So will you come by?”

  I have no choice, and Kaiser knows it. “Yeah. But only because it’s him. I think you guys are crazy to believe those rifles are real.”

  “The evidence will tell, one way or the other.”

  “What does he want to ask me, John? He’s not going to change my mind about anything.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt any man alive knows more about the JFK case than Dwight and his colleagues. He was posted in Mississippi and Louisiana multiple times during the sixties, so there’s no telling what he might know about the Double Eagles, Carlos Marcello, or even your father. I suspect Dwight wants to give you the Working Group’s theory of how what happened in Dealey Plaza grew out of Louisiana. Once you hear that, you might be as reluctant as we are to jeopardize any chance of achieving justice in that case.”

  “Does Dwight understand the jeopardy my father’s in now?”

  “Of course. And he’s trying to convince the director that Dr. Cage should be brought under Bureau protection as a witness in the Kennedy investigation.”

  I should have known Dwight would be doing what he could for me. “What are the chances of that happening?”

  “Better with Dwight involved. But I won’t lie to you. No sane FBI director wants a public battle with a state police agency over a reputed cop killer, especially with the legal grounds for protective custody being the JFK assassination. That’s a publicity nightmare. The point is, Stone’s doing all he can to help your father. So am I.”

  I restrain my temper with some difficulty. “If you really were, you wouldn’t ask me to waste an hour humoring an old man with an obsession.”

  Kaiser gives me a sad look. “You’re not seeing this thing straight, Penn. Your fear about your father has distorted your perception. You’re like a guy looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Seventy percent of all Americans believe John Kennedy died as the result of a conspiracy. Justified or not, people believe this country swerved into darkness on that day, and we’ve never recovered from it.”

  “Sixty percent of Americans believe in UFOs. Fifty percent believe AIDS was invented by the government.”

  The FBI man grabs my left arm. “You’re pretty glib, aren’t you? After Dallas . . . almost anything became possible. I lived through one of the results in Vietnam. So did Forrest Knox. So before you discount this as a waste of time, consider what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  In the face of his burning intensity, I raise my hands in symbolic surrender, but Kaiser’s having none of it.

  “Over the past forty years, the JFK assassination has become the vessel of America’s darkest anxieties. If we can cut through all that crap and give the people the truth—in all its banality, once and for all—then we’ll have done a lot more than atone for the sins of the FBI. We’ll have cut a tumor from the soul of this nation.”

  Kaiser obviously feels great passion about his subject, but passion means nothing on the topic he’s discussing. “You’re wrong about the unknown, John. People need a mystery on which to project all their free-floating paranoia. If you pull back the curtain on the Kennedy assassination, people will just project all their angst onto something else.”

  “Maybe I’ve got more faith in people than you do.”

  “Maybe so. Politics has changed me, I’ll admit that.”

  I pull my coat tighter and scan the streets and windows surrounding the courthouse and City Hall. Not much Christmas cheer in the air today. “JFK’s been pretty battered as a symbol, John. He’s no longer King Arthur cut down in his prime. He’s more like a spoiled prince we never really knew. I feel like people are almost angry at him now, for not living up to their dream of him.”

  Kaiser shakes his head. “They still want the truth.”

  “Heady conversation for the steps of City Hall, huh?” I say, trying to lighten the tension. “I need to get upstairs to work.”

  “But you’ll come see Dwight?”

  “I will. I owe him that. I’ll call you about five thirty?”

  “Thanks. And please give me a heads-up if you and Sheriff Dennis decide to make any more arrests today.”

  I nod acknowledgment but make no promises.

  As the FBI agent walks back to his car, I walk up the six steps to the door of City Hall, then pass through the lobby and jog up the staircase to my office on the second floor.

  “You alone?” asks Rose, my secretary, peering around me at the hallway door.

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “That FBI agent is gone?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You’ve got visitors,” Rose says in a cryptic tone.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Go back to the lounge. I didn’t want to p
ut them in your office, in case Agent Kaiser came back.”

  Irritated by her caginess, I walk back to the little kitchen we call our lounge. There, I find Dr. Drew Elliott and Nurse Melba Price waiting for me. Drew looks very uncomfortable, but Melba appears relieved to see me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Have you heard from Dad or something?”

  They look at each other. Then Drew says, “We’ve got something to tell you, Penn. Your father spent yesterday at my house on Lake St. John.”

  At first I think he’s telling me he’s just discovered this, but almost immediately I realize that this is a confession. “When did you find this out?”

  “We knew Tuesday night.” Drew’s guilty countenance does nothing to ease my anger or sense of betrayal. “I’m sorry, man,” he goes on. “Tom asked me for help, and he was wounded. I didn’t feel I had a choice.”

  My face is hot, and my heart has begun pounding. “Wounded how?”

  “Through-and-through gunshot. Left shoulder. I treated him, and Melba nursed him until last night.”

  My eyes switch to Melba Price. “And you couldn’t call me?”

  Melba closes her eyes in what appears to be shame.

  “Tom specifically asked me not to,” says Drew.

  “So? You think he’s in his right mind right now?”

  “He appeared to be.”

  “Jesus . . . we’ve been friends since we were kids.”

  Drew turns up his palms. “Tom’s my partner, Penn. I’m sorry. I see now that it was probably a mistake. Especially since . . .”