The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “I am,” Caitlin said, stepping up to him. “How do you know my name?”

  “Toby sent me.”

  Caitlin cut her eyes at Jordan. “Toby who?”

  “Toby Rambin. Old Toby.”

  “Where’s Toby himself?” Caitlin asked.

  “He had to leave town.” The boy smiled. “In a hurry.”

  Jordan looked at Caitlin as if to say, Didn’t I tell you?

  “What are you doing here, then?” Caitlin asked.

  The boy surveyed her from head to toe without shame. He seemed to like what he saw. “Toby told me I should bring you something.”

  Jordan walked up to the boy. “Hand it over, then.”

  The boy shook his head, his eyes on her pistol. “Hold up, now. Toby said you gotta pay first.”

  “How much?” Caitlin asked.

  “Toby say a thousand.”

  “Shit,” Jordan scoffed. “In your dreams. What are you selling?”

  “Map,” said the boy. “Toby drawed you a map. He say what you lookin’ for be marked with an X. All you need is a boat to find it.”

  Caitlin and Jordan shared a look.

  “I was going to pay him four times that to guide me to the tree,” Caitlin admitted. “But this is way short of that.”

  “A thousand bucks for a hand-drawn map?” Jordan asked.

  The boy shrugged. “That’s what Toby said. He said if you don’t pay, I should ride back to town and forget about all of it.”

  Caitlin took the fat bank envelope from her back pocket and stared at it. Inside were forty hundred-dollar bills. The money meant nothing to her.

  “Wait,” Jordan said. “You have no way of knowing whether the map is real, even if he gives you one.”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “That’s right,” the boy said. “You gots to pay to play, right?”

  “Not always,” said a much deeper voice from somewhere out of sight.

  Jordan brought up her pistol with lightning speed, but neither she nor Caitlin saw a potential target. The boy’s eyes had gone saucer wide, and he started to bolt, but the voice stopped him where he stood.

  “Dontae Edwards, this is Deputy Carl Sims. If you try to run on that bike, I’ll call your mama and have you in jail by noon. Now get off that thing and get the map out of your jacket, if there is one. And you put down that weapon, ma’am.”

  Caitlin nodded with excitement. “Carl’s a friend! A good friend. I called him last night to check out Toby. I forgot to tell you.”

  Jordan reluctantly laid the pistol on the car’s front seat.

  “Get off the bike, Dontae!” shouted the voice.

  The boy shook his head, then got off the motorcycle and set its kickstand.

  Caitlin turned toward the sound of rustling undergrowth and saw a handsome young black man in a brown uniform step from behind the overgrown school bus. He looked about twenty-five, and he grinned and waved at them to reassure them he was no threat.

  “Carl!” she cried, running forward. “What are you doing here?”

  Sims smiled and hugged her. “Did you really think I’d let you meet some damned poacher down here without checking to be sure you were okay?”

  A frightening thought hit Caitlin. “You didn’t call Penn, did you?”

  “No, though I probably should have. I did just like you asked and quietly checked out Toby Rambin. But Toby’s not exactly a sterling character. I figured I’d better make sure this little deal went through as planned. And it obviously didn’t.”

  Jordan offered her hand to Carl, who shook it with a smile.

  “This is Jordan Glass,” Caitlin said. “She’s a big-time photographer.”

  Carl’s smile spread into a grin. “Oh, I know the name. Proud to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand again. “You were in Fallujah for a week when I was there.”

  “Army?” Jordan asked.

  “Marine sniper.”

  Jordan smiled and stood easy. “How about we take a look at this alleged map? I’m starting to feel like I’m stuck in Treasure Island.”

  Carl held out his hand, and Dontae Edwards finally pulled a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. He handed it to Carl, who unfolded it. The map looked as if it had been drawn on a paper towel taken from a dispenser in a public restroom.

  “Looks real to me,” Carl said, studying curving lines that made Caitlin think of a child drawing with a crayon. “This area here looks like the Valhalla hunting camp, and over here is the federal wildlife refuge. Toby’s got one of the game fences marked here, about in the middle. And where this X is, is a deep stand of cypress. It’s one of the thickest parts of the swamp and covered with water most all year round.”

  Caitlin nodded excitedly. “That sounds like what we’re looking for.”

  Carl gave her a penetrating look. “I did what we talked about last night, but I didn’t learn much. Nothing that would confirm a location.”

  On the phone last night, Carl had offered to have his father, a local pastor, discreetly question some members of his Athens Point congregation about the Bone Tree. Since the church was 100 percent African-American, Caitlin had felt it was worth the risk to gain good information. But apparently Reverend Sims had learned little.

  Jordan poked her thumb at Dontae Edwards, who was paying close attention to their conversation.

  “Scoot!” Carl ordered. “And forget you ever saw this map, or you’ll be hauling ass out of town like Toby did. Only you haven’t got the money to do it.”

  The boy jumped back on the motorcycle and kick-started it, but Caitlin yelled “Wait!” before he pulled on his helmet. As he watched impatiently, she took five one-hundred-dollar bills from the envelope and handed them over. A grin spread across the boy’s face. He waited a half second, then snatched the bills, stuffed them into his jacket, and tore out of the clearing with a scream of his engine.

  “So what now?” Jordan asked. “We don’t have a boat.”

  Carl smiled, his white teeth gleaming in his coffee-colored face. “I think I can probably do something about that.”

  “Such as?”

  “My man Danny McDavitt is doing a check-ride in the LCSO chopper this morning. He could pick us up and have a look for Toby’s X for you.”

  Caitlin blinked in disbelief. Danny McDavitt was a retired air force pilot who flew the helicopter for the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department. She’d met him two months ago, when the pilot had assisted Penn in fighting against the criminals operating the Magnolia Queen casino. McDavitt had gone far beyond the call of duty to try to locate Caitlin after she’d been kidnapped by those men. “Carl, are you serious?” she asked. “Would he help us today?”

  “Sure. Just let me call him.”

  “You wouldn’t have to tell Major McDavitt anything about what we’re looking for, would you? I trust him, but this is a special case of secrecy. Not even Penn knows I’m here.”

  Carl nodded thoughtfully. “I can play it off like I don’t know myself.”

  “Can you trust the major to keep quiet about the search? At least for a few hours?”

  The deputy smiled. “Danny’s good people. You know that. He can keep a secret.”

  Caitlin was sorely tempted, but the prospect of complications worried her. “But what if we find the Bone Tree?”

  “Well . . . at that point it’s going to become a law enforcement matter one way or another, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But I’d like at least an hour there before we call anyone else in. And we’ll have to call the FBI, even if we call your sheriff as well. Would that put your job at risk?”

  “That I don’t know. For now, we’ll chalk this flight up to hunting for marijuana fields. If we find that tree . . . maybe Danny and I will scoot and leave you two to report it.”

  Caitlin’s pulse raced in anticipation of the hunt, but she also felt conflicted. If Tom’s life was at risk, what was the point of searching the swamp for a tree? On the other hand . . . what could
she really do to help find Tom? Walt had already told her she could do nothing. While Carl spoke to Danny, Caitlin tried to call Walt back, but her phone wouldn’t work. When she checked the screen, it said NO SERVICE.

  “Danny’s coming,” Carl said, drawing Caitlin’s attention away from her Treo.

  “I can’t get a tower,” Caitlin said. “Do you have AT&T or Cellular South?”

  Carl grinned and tapped the radio on his collar. “Neither. I’ve got the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department radio net. I used a channel nobody monitors.”

  Caitlin’s face fell.

  “Sorry,” Carl said. “Reception in this swamp is practically nonexistent. You need to make a call?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t feel good about taking off on this little jaunt if I can’t monitor the situation back home. Penn’s father . . .”

  The deputy’s smile vanished. “I know. When we get to altitude, your phone will find a tower. Danny can make sure of it.”

  Jordan walked over and took Caitlin’s hand. “It’s your call. We can keep going, or you can head back to town and I’ll go on to New Orleans.”

  Caitlin looked into the cypress trees and pressed down all guilt and doubt. “Screw it,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  FORREST KNOX SAT ON the elevated deck of a five-thousand-square-foot lake house overlooking Lake Concordia, a steaming cup of chicory coffee and a cordless phone on the table before him. Five miles away lay the Concordia Parish courthouse complex, which held the sheriff’s office and the jail, where Penn Cage and Sheriff Walker Dennis planned to interrogate Snake, Sonny, and four other Double Eagles. As soon as the Eagles left Valhalla this morning, Billy had gratefully abandoned his babysitting job and flown himself back to his retreat at Toledo Bend, Texas. Forrest didn’t want to take any chances on someone arresting his cousin. Only after Sheriff Walker Dennis had been removed from his position and the state police had taken over his duties would Forrest tell Billy to return to Mississippi.

  Forrest had sent no attorney to the CPSO. He wanted it to look as though the former Double Eagles meant to cooperate fully, right up until the moment Sheriff Dennis was arrested by one of his own deputies. As soon as that was accomplished, Forrest would make contact with Penn Cage and find out whether or not there was a deal to be made. Now that he had the ultimate bargaining tool in his back pocket—in the form of Tom Cage—the son would have no option but to negotiate. Whether such negotiating would result in a deal remained an open question, since Forrest’s real worry wasn’t the mayor, but Cage’s goddamned fiancée.

  He owed his knowledge of Mayor Cage’s whereabouts to Sheriff Billy Byrd, who had assigned one of his deputies to follow Kirk Boisseau, the former marine who’d accompanied Penn when he confronted Brody Royal at the hospital on Wednesday night. At 6 A.M. that deputy had followed Boisseau to a house that turned out to be owned by the parents of an old schoolmate of Cage’s. Boisseau and Cage had walked one circuit of the house, then had gone inside for five minutes, after which Boisseau returned home. A half hour later, binocular surveillance had revealed the mayor’s mother as she’d briefly parted the curtains to look outside. Thankfully, rather than storming the house in search of Tom Cage, who he believed was hiding there, Sheriff Byrd had called Forrest about his discovery. He claimed to have done this out of a sense of obligation to a fellow officer who’d had one of his men murdered in the line of duty by Dr. Cage. Nevertheless, it had taken some creative manipulation for Forrest to persuade Byrd that no immediate action should be taken against that house. Forrest, of course, knew that Tom was currently on ice at the Royal Oil field near Monterey, Louisiana. But he couldn’t tell Billy Byrd that. Instead, he’d told the hyped-up sheriff that two plainclothes police officers had checked the Abrams house with infrared technology and determined that it contained only an adult woman and a juvenile female. This, and a promise to keep Byrd updated hourly, had proved sufficient to forestall a SWAT assault.

  Forrest looked down at the wrought-iron patio table, where a copy of the Natchez Examiner lay open. While yesterday’s sensational stories had made no mention of him, today’s main article had reported that Colonel Griffith Mackiever was under fire for child pornography allegations and quoted an unnamed “FBI source” who claimed that Mackiever’s second-in-command might be behind those charges. A side article by Caitlin Masters suggested that dirty politics lay at the root of this scandal, and Masters had taken great pains to point out the connections between Forrest and his extended family, nearly all of whom had been members of the Ku Klux Klan, and some even suspected Double Eagles. Forrest had a feeling that Masters’s FBI source was John Kaiser, the same agent who had drained the Jericho Hole. He was starting to think he’d been behind the curve where that particular FBI agent was concerned. He needed a line into Kaiser’s plans, and he had a good idea how to get one.

  As his coffee went cold, Forrest began to feel a little anxious. He’d expected the call informing him of Sheriff Dennis’s arrest by seven A.M., and it was ten past now. The deputy in charge of the bust hadn’t checked in since before six. Forrest took out his cell phone and speed-dialed the moron.

  “Hunt here,” said a country-ass voice.

  “You know who this is?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “What’s the holdup?”

  “The sheriff’s still in his house, Colonel. He’s usually in his office by now, and already drunk his morning coffee. I don’t know what the holdup is. You want me to just knock on his door with the K-9?” Deputy Hunt asked. “I could tell him we got an anonymous tip?”

  Forrest looked at his watch. “No, hell no. Maybe his wife decided to give it up this morning. Give him ten more minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are you parked? Can he see you?”

  “I’m down the street in a friend’s SUV. No markings. Sheriff won’t recognize it.”

  “And you have backup?”

  “Yes, sir. Parker and McGown. They’re out of sight, too.”

  “Okay. The questioning’s going to start pretty soon over at the department, so ten minutes is the limit. If he’s not outside by then, bust him right in front of his family.”

  Hunt made a noise that sounded like a gulp.

  “Are you up for this job, Deputy?”

  “Yes, sir. No problem.”

  “All right, then. If you see anything suspicious, call me. Otherwise, follow orders. Out.”

  Forrest hung up and looked out over the narrow lake. A glittering gold bass boat arrowed along the opposite shore, trailing a silver wake that rolled gently into the cypresses. He sipped his coffee, then held his hand high in greeting.

  Across the lake, the fisherman waved back.

  CHAPTER 50

  “PENN? PENN, WAKE UP.”

  My mother’s face materializes above mine, only inches away. It takes a few moments for reality to assert itself, and longer for my sense of time to reengage. Then I glance at my watch, and a rush of adrenaline blasts through me.

  “It’s nearly seven! Did you oversleep?” I sit up in the bed, unintentionally giving my mother an accusatory look.

  “No,” she says purposefully.

  Of course she didn’t. She’s fully dressed, and I can smell coffee and bacon all the way from the first-floor kitchen. Undoubtedly Annie is down there eating breakfast. “Then why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

  Mom sits beside me on the bed, her brow knit with worry. “Are you sure you need to go question the Knoxes? You said there would be other law enforcement people there. The FBI even. Do they really need you?”

  “Sheriff Dennis wants me there. I told you last night I needed to do this.”

  “I know you did. But I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t usually pay attention to that kind of thing—women’s intuition and all that. But today is different. That Knox family is bad news. We lived fifty miles away from Ferriday and never left the farm, but our men knew about Elam Knox. They kept their daughters home when he came around w
ith his ratty old revival tent. And the apples apparently didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  While she was speaking, my mind slipped back to the hotel room with Dwight Stone and Kaiser, and their surreal narrative played behind my eyes like a black-and-white sequel to JFK. At this point, there’s nothing Mom could say that would stop me from keeping my appointment at the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

  “Mom, I have to go. It’s that simple, and it’s my best shot at helping Dad. Now, what do you think about sending Annie back to school?”

  “It’s a terrible idea. We’re fine right here.”

  “Are you sure it’s not too much? I can have patrol cars watch the school. Chief Logan will do that for me.”

  Mom actually snorts at this idea. “She’s not half the trouble you were. She’s staying right here.”

  “All right. But I’m going to have Kirk Boisseau come over and sit with you.”

  “Kirk Boisseau? Why not one of those policemen your father treated?”

  “We need a different skill set than that. Kirk was a recon marine. He can handle real trouble.”

  Mom sighs as though this is unnecessary, but she doesn’t argue further.

  As I power up my burn phone, a text pings through. It’s from Sheriff Dennis, and it reads: I left a present at your house. OOOO. I dropped the keys through the mail slot. See you at seven.

  “The keys?” I murmur. Then it hits me: the four O’s in his text are meant to be the Audi rings. “Walker found my S4!”

  “What?” asks Mom, looking worried. “Who found what?”

  “I think Sheriff Dennis found my car.”

  “Oh. I thought that was something about your father.”

  I shake my head. “Wherever Dad’s hiding, he’s doing a good job.”

  Her eyes betray both anxiety and satisfaction.

  “Tell Annie I’ll be down in one minute.”

  Whipping the sheet off the bed, I wrap it around me and hurry into the bathroom. There’s no time for a shower. Unless Walker Dennis ran into a problem I don’t know about, sometime during the last hour he busted the senior surviving members of the Double Eagle group on meth trafficking charges. And if he did, then everybody who thought the shit hit the fan yesterday is going to have their mind blown today.