The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “Technically,” I say, “I guess this message is from Deputy Hunt. But in a larger sense, you could say it’s a message from God. He’s telling you to cut your losses while you can.”

  Forrest looks like he’s thinking about snatching the phone from me.

  I nearly wag my finger at him, but then I remember that would trigger a shot from Sheriff Dennis. “Six o’clock,” I repeat. “After that, I’m giving Deputy Hunt to the FBI, turning Caitlin and her father loose on you, and going to work myself. If that happens, you can forget taking over the state police. They’ll be processing you into Angola within six months, I guarantee it. And I can’t imagine a much worse hell for a dirty cop who uses snipers to take out his black competition. That would be a fitting end, but it’s one you have the power to avoid.”

  Forrest hasn’t blinked for maybe a minute. He probably looked like this when he staked out trails at night in Vietnam. After a few more silent seconds, a tight smile broadens his mouth, and he reaches out as though to shake my hand in acceptance of my terms.

  Don’t do it, says a voice in my head. He’s playing you. Raise your finger and have Dennis blow his brains out. Any other choice is giving this man a chance to tear your life apart. If Walt weren’t already wanted for killing a state trooper, I might raise my finger and take my chances in court. But that’s not really an option now.

  Suppressing my revulsion, I take Forrest’s hand and shake it. “We’re going to leave now,” I say evenly. “If either of you touch your weapons, Walker will fire. He won’t hesitate, trust me. He lost a cousin to one of your men, and he’d love some payback.”

  Again Knox’s dark eyes glint with interest. “This has been an enlightening visit, Mayor. I look forward to our next meeting.”

  “One more thing, Forrest. I’m not your problem. The federal government is. Special Agent Kaiser is running Sheriff Dennis’s department now, and he wants your ass bad. I think he’s wanted you for a long time. You need to get my father back, so you can focus on staying out of federal prison.”

  I walk away from Knox without waiting for a response, nor do I speak when I pass Walt. All that matters now is Walker Dennis and his rifle. Without them, Walt and I would already be dead.

  WALT GARRITY WATCHED FORREST Knox follow Penn with his eyes, then turn and walk back toward the lake house. Walt was about to follow Penn to the truck when the Redbone reached out and grasped his arm.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Granddad? You sure as hell can’t be no bodyguard.”

  Walt pulled his arm free and started to leave, but Ozan said, “So you shot Deke Dunn, huh? I find that pretty hard to believe.”

  After watching Forrest walk back into the lake house, a cell phone pressed to his ear, Walt finally gave his full attention to the combative trooper.

  “That’s because your head’s full of stump water. Why don’t you crawl back to whatever slough you crawled up out of?”

  The Redbone’s eyes blazed. He balled his right fist and stepped toward Walt, but Walt didn’t move.

  “You must be crazy,” Ozan said. “Is that it? Alzheimer’s got you?”

  Walt spoke in a voice so low that the trooper had to lean forward to hear him. “I’ve known many a Redbone in my day, you know? Especially down around Galveston in the fifties. Some were hardworking boys you could trust to tote the key to the smokehouse. Others could wear a top hat and walk under a snake’s belly. But I sized you up the second I saw you. There ain’t much worse than a dirty cop. I don’t mean a patrolman who takes his share of the pad to pay for his kid’s braces. I’m talking about pricks who use their badge to extort and kill people. Pricks like you and your boss. I wouldn’t be surprised if I bent my Colt over your daddy’s head back in the day. And you could ask him about it, if you knew who he was. But I’m bettin’ you don’t.”

  As Ozan’s cheek twitched, Walt said, “Tom Cage is worth two of me and ten of you. And if he don’t come out of this thing alive and in one piece, I’m gonna cut the blood out of you. And I’ll do the same to your boss.”

  “You mouthy fuck,” Ozan said, reaching back and drawing a switchblade from his back pocket. The blade sprang out with a chilling snick.

  Walt looked at the knife with disdain. “Crab apple switch? I figured you for an Arkansas toothpick.”

  “What the hell you talkin’ about, old-timer?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Walt pointed at the lake house. “Run home to Papa, son. We’ll have our day, you and me.”

  Ozan waved the knife under Walt’s chin. “Laugh it up now, Texas, but get ready. I’m gonna gag you and gut you and sit you in front of a mirror while I do it.”

  Walt spat within an inch of the trooper’s boot. “I’ll look forward to that party.”

  I STAND BY THE Tahoe with Walker Dennis, who is still sighting down his AR-15 at Ozan as Walt makes his way to Drew’s pickup truck.

  “I’d like you to cover us until we’re clear here,” I tell him. “Then escort me back to Vidalia.”

  “What about Garrity?”

  “He needs to stay on these guys. As soon as I’m back in Vidalia, I want you to go to wherever you have Deputy Hunt and move him again. Find out everything he knows about the Knoxes, but don’t kill him. Right now he’s the only leverage we have against Forrest.”

  “Understood.”

  Drew Elliott’s truck starts up and begins rolling toward us. “And Walker? Switch vehicles before you do it. We’re not the only ones who know about GPS trackers.”

  Walker nods, his rifle still trained on the lake house.

  When the truck reaches me, I pat Walker on the shoulder, then climb into the passenger seat beside Walt.

  “Does Knox even know where Tom is?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so. I think Snake has stashed Dad somewhere.”

  “Oh, man. Lord, just give me ten minutes in a cell with Snake Knox and no cameras.”

  “You’re not going to get it. That’s why we’re splitting up.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going back to the sheriff’s office. I can use Sonny’s tattoo to buy my way back into the interrogations. You find a good spot to lie up and monitor Forrest by GPS. If he and Ozan make a move, stay with them. If they go to where Dad is, and you feel you have a chance, kill them and get him out of there. Or call Dennis and me, and we’ll help you hit them.”

  Walt thought this through. “And if that call Knox just made was to order Tom killed?”

  “There’s only so much we can control, Walt. Let’s get to it. Take me back to my Audi.”

  He shifts into Drive and pulls onto the narrow lake road.

  “What was that between you and Ozan there at the end?” I ask.

  “Just a little flirting. Nothing to worry about.”

  CHAPTER 60

  THE VIEW FROM Danny McDavitt’s helicopter had been overwhelming in its way, but the view from Mose Tyler’s johnboat was oppressive. Traveling through the cypress swamp at water level felt like trying to navigate the delta of a great jungle river. Part of the time the boat was driven by a small, outboard Evinrude, but at other times the old man had to switch to an electric trolling motor. Tyler appeared to be over eighty, and he moved with an arthritic slowness that Caitlin recognized from her father-in-law’s careful motions.

  Their guide said little, even in response to questions, and Caitlin soon began to doubt that he could even see well enough to read the map they had shown him. But he’d been happy to take two hundred dollars from her, and right now she had little choice but to trust the old man.

  Just as she began to wonder whether they should head back to their car, a stand of massive cypress trees came into view. They dwarfed the ones she had seen up until now. Their trunks were as thick as economy cars, and the great knees that jutted out of the water around them looked like boulders made of wood. Several trees had wide cracks in them, as the story in Henry’s files claimed the Bone Tree did. But Mose Tyler seemed disinclined to stop and investig
ate these gigantic specimens. When Caitlin turned to Jordan for support, the photographer merely shrugged and went on shooting pictures with her plastic-wrapped Nikon.

  Amazingly, the trees grew even larger as they sailed deeper into the swamp. Many stood on grassy tussocks that rose like hobbit hills out of the water, and these trees seemed somehow more alive than the oaks and pines Caitlin was accustomed to seeing. The wildlife became more abundant, too. Caitlin saw a water moccasin swimming like a slowly curling whip, its wedge-shaped head lifted above the water. A young alligator rested on a log in a single shaft of sunlight. And farther on, a pair of deer swam with surprising speed between two grassy hummocks.

  “I didn’t know deer could swim,” she said with awe.

  “Deer be good swimmers,” Mose mumbled. “Better get your raincoat on, if you got one.”

  As though summoned by the old man’s words, Caitlin heard a high-pitched hiss over the water. A silver gray curtain was rolling toward them through the trees. The mirrored surface of the swamp suddenly erupted into chaos, and the hiss grew into the crazed snapping of water thrown on a hot griddle. The cold rain quickly worked its way under the collar of her jacket, soaking her bandanna and running down her back. Caitlin made sure that Carl’s walkie-talkie was staying dry in her zippered bag.

  Mose tolerated the downpour with the equanimity of a cow, and Jordan reacted much the same. Caitlin shrugged away the rain and focused on the forest around them. The massive trees with their great gnarled knees reminded her of the Tree of Life in the Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida. They weren’t that big, of course. That tree was fourteen stories tall, and riddled with hidden passageways. But the giant cypresses here looked fifty feet around, and their fibrous trunks seemed like natural models of the great columns at Karnak.

  “I read that some of these trees could be seven hundred years old,” she told Mose and Jordan.

  “These trees ain’t nothing,” said the fisherman. “When I was a boy, you couldn’t hardly come through here. Then a rich man sent saw-gangs in here one summer. They cut all the oldest trees. They’d cut them down, then wait for the winter rains, chain them together, and float ’em out to be sawed up for lumber. All them trees gone now. Nothing left but these littl’uns.”

  Caitlin could scarcely imagine trees that dwarfed the ones before her. “Are we anywhere near that X on the map?”

  The old man killed the Evinrude, then leaned to his left and pointed past Jordan in the bow of the boat.

  Caitlin followed the line of his weathered hand. An eight-foot-tall fence like the ones they had seen on the way in blocked their path.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Hunting club fence,” Mose said.

  “Is the X on the other side of that fence?”

  “Best I can tell, it is.”

  “Have you ever been on the other side?”

  “No, ma’am. Dat private property.”

  Caitlin didn’t believe him. She looked hard into the old man’s bloodshot eyes. “I don’t care if you run illegal trotlines, Mr. Tyler, or hunt game out of season. I just want to know what’s on the other side of that fence.”

  Tyler’s eyes narrowed and he looked away from Caitlin.

  “I didn’t mean to suggest you were doing anything wrong,” she said.

  “We despise the people who put up these fences,” Jordan said. “We’d tear every one of them down if we could.”

  “You can’t,” Mose said solemnly. “You tear down them fences, you’ll find yourself sunk in a hole out here. Food for the panthers.”

  “There aren’t any panthers out here,” Jordan said. “Panthers are extinct in the United States.”

  Mose laughed for the first time, an eerie cackle that set Caitlin’s nerves on edge.

  “Will you take us to the other side of that fence?” Caitlin asked. “Please?”

  “Not for no two hundred dollars, I won’t. And not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lots of reasons. But I’ll earn my money. I’ll tell you something most people don’t know. That fence ain’t on the rightful boundary.”

  “What?”

  Mose nodded with conviction. “Just ’cause you puts a fence in a certain place don’t make the land yours.”

  “How do you know that’s not the boundary?” Jordan asked.

  “ ’Cause I was here before that fence was. Lots of times, with my daddy. And that fence be in the wrong place.”

  Caitlin felt a chill go through her that had nothing to do with the rain. If Mose Tyler was correct—as Danny McDavitt had suggested—then the Bone Tree might stand on federal land. And committing murder on federal land—even dumping a body on it—meant that the killers could be tried in federal court, even if they had been tried and set free decades ago in a state court. It was one of the very few ways around the double-jeopardy statute.

  “Nobody checks this fence?” Jordan asked.

  “Guv’mint ain’t got the men to do it,” Mose said.

  Caitlin was about to ask him another question when the old trapper raised his hand. She had no trouble interpreting that gesture as a call for silence. Caitlin listened, but all she heard was the steady hissing of the rain. A slight wind was blowing, enough to have made the boat drift farther away from the fence, but she saw nothing threatening in that.

  “I think it’s time we get out of here,” Mose said. He yanked on the Evinrude’s starting cord, but the motor didn’t catch.

  “Wait,” Jordan said in a commanding voice.

  Mose ignored her, and this time the engine caught. As he started to throttle up the motor, Jordan stood in the bow and held up her hand. The old fisherman had little choice but to kill the motor.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, anxiety in his voice.

  “I smell something,” Jordan said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. Something dead.”

  “They’s always somethin’ dead down in here. Half this swamp be dyin’ and rotting, while the other half growin’ so fast you can almost see it. You ought to come down in here at night sometime. There’s logs glowing, under the water like the bodies of dead men lookin’ up at you.”

  “What I smell is human,” Jordan said without any doubt in her voice.

  “How you know that?”

  “I’ve been in a lot of war zones, that’s how. I know what a dead body smells like.” Jordan turned slowly in the unsteady boat, peering off into the trees as the cold rain fell upon her. “That way,” she said, pointing toward an opening in the trunks, not far from the fence.

  “Oh, hell no,” Mose said.

  “We’ll pay you extra,” Jordan said. “Take us down there.”

  Tyler shook his head like a scared little boy.

  “Five hundred more,” Caitlin said.

  “How much you got?” the old man asked.

  “A thousand. It’s all yours.” Keeping her envelope in her jacket, she dug out ten more bills and handed them over. “There you go. Now, take us.”

  With a resentful look, Mose switched on the electric trolling motor to propel the boat in the direction Jordan was pointing.

  Ten seconds later they saw buzzards circling above the cypress trees in the distance.

  WHEN I LAID JIMMY Revels’s navy tattoo on the desk Kaiser had commandeered from Walker Dennis, the sight stunned him speechless. Before he could question me, I gave him an edited version of how I’d found it and where I’d spent the time since he’d kicked me out of the sheriff’s office. I told him that Forrest Knox had used a SWAT team to kidnap my father last night, and that Snake and the old Eagles had then snatched Dad from Forrest’s men, to keep as insurance in case Forrest was setting them up to be arrested this morning.

  I didn’t tell Kaiser I’d seen Forrest Knox in person, nor did I tell him anything Walt Garrity had told me about his activities relating to Forrest. If Kaiser was unwilling to use planted meth to pressure the Eagles, he wasn’t going to use a pla
nted derringer to go after Forrest. I was tempted to tell Kaiser about the video of the Katrina sniping, but since it didn’t show Forrest himself (and since Walt no longer had possession of the video) I knew Kaiser wouldn’t go for that. After a couple of Kaiser’s men photographed the tattoo, he wrapped it carefully in a dry towel, then asked them to give us some privacy.

  Once they had, he said, “Why did you bring this back here, Penn?”

  “Because Snake Knox is probably the only person alive who knows where my father is, and if he’s alive or not.”

  “This tattoo isn’t going to make Snake talk. You saw him in there. You talked to him. He’s not going to tell us where your father is.”

  “No. But he might tell Sonny Thornfield.”

  Kaiser drew back, his face darkening. “Oh, no. If I sent Sonny into that cellblock to try to trick that information out of Snake, Snake would tip to what’s going on in two seconds flat. I can’t take that risk.”

  “John—”

  “I’m sorry, Penn. This isn’t the way I wanted it, but I now have a chance to turn a Double Eagle. With that tattoo, I can break Sonny Thornfield. And I have to try it. Now. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  “You wouldn’t even have the chance without that tattoo.”

  “Probably not. And I’m grateful for it.”

  “John . . . I could walk out of here and tell the world that Walker Dennis planted that meth on the Eagles. And I could say I never saw that tattoo in my life until you pulled it out of your briefcase.”

  Kaiser looks like he doesn’t believe I’d do it, but then doubt enters his eyes. “You’d blow the chance to turn a Double Eagle and solve a dozen murders on the off chance of saving your father?”

  “If that’s my only option.”

  “Two can play that game. I could jail you for obstruction. Under the Patriot Act.”