The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “Get your ass out of here, Penn!” Kaiser explodes, his face bright red. “Now!”

  “Not until I find out whether my father’s dead or alive.”

  WHEN MOSE FINALLY BROUGHT his boat within reach of the corpse, Caitlin felt no relief. She had hoped for some distinguishing mark that would tell her the dead man wasn’t Tom, but she saw nothing like that. The skin of the back was pale, as Tom’s was, and since most of the corpse was jammed under some limbs, she couldn’t turn it over. She looked for the red marks of psoriasis she had sometimes seen on Tom’s back, but the water had probably soaked the skin to the point that they wouldn’t show, especially under the surface.

  Mose cut the motor.

  “Do you have a pole or something?” Caitlin asked.

  “Pole no good for that. You need a hook. Grappling hook.”

  “I think we’re going to have to wait for Carl,” Jordan said. “Maybe even for divers. Or at least waders.”

  The longer Caitlin stared at the submerged corpse, the more terrified she became. She had to know whether that was Tom or not. Carl was probably going to call Penn on the way over here, and the first question he would ask would be who the dead man was.

  “We have to identify him,” Caitlin said.

  “How?” Jordan asked. “He doesn’t have a head.”

  “I have to know whether or not it’s Tom.”

  “Dat body missin’ a leg, too,” Mose said, craning his neck. “Look. A gator took it off.”

  Caitlin squinted into the muddy water, but she couldn’t tell.

  “How did the body get caught up in the branches like that?” Jordan asked.

  “Gators do that,” Mose said. “They stuff their kill up under a bank or in some tree roots underwater, just like us puttin’ meat in the Frigidaire.”

  A shiver ran the length of Caitlin’s body. She had been close to a feeding alligator before, and she wanted no part of it again.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Mose said. “Dis business for the high sheriff.”

  “How deep is the water here?” Caitlin asked, slowly untying the bandanna from her neck.

  “Can’t be sure,” the fisherman replied. “Could be four feet, could be ten.”

  “Guess.”

  The old man surveyed the trees that bordered the patch of clear water, then studied the fallen tree that held the corpse in its branches. “Probably six, eight feet deep here.”

  A sun-faded life jacket lay in the bottom of the boat near Jordan’s feet. Caitlin picked it up, slipped it on, and tightened the straps as best she could.

  “What the hell you doin’?” Mose asked, starting to stand. “This boat ain’t gonna turn over.”

  Before he could reach her, Caitlin bent her knees, then let herself fall backward over the gunwale, the way she’d been taught to enter the water when scuba diving in the Caribbean. She prayed that the splash would scare away any scavengers.

  The black water enveloped her like an icy blanket. She’d expected it to be cold, but not this cold. After a stunned second or two, she bobbed to the surface, the life jacket bringing her upright. Jordan and Mose were screaming from the boat, telling her to get back in, but having gone this far, she wasn’t about to stop now. She didn’t think she could climb back into the boat without tipping it over anyway.

  She couldn’t feel bottom beneath her, so she kicked toward the corpse. The reek worsened as she got closer, and her shoes grew heavy in the twenty seconds it took her to come within reach of the body. Catching hold of a waterlogged branch, Caitlin catalogued the physical traits that might identify Tom. The cold made it hard to concentrate, and the stink worsened the problem, but her fear was stronger than her revulsion.

  Deformed fingers, she thought. Spooned fingernails. Coronary bypass scar . . . Tom had his chest cracked in 1987. Would the scar still be visible after all these years? Gray chest hair . . .

  The way the corpse was situated, Caitlin realized that the quickest way to see anything was to simply swim under it rather than try to shift it. As she struggled to shed the life jacket, Jordan began shouting at her again, but Caitlin ignored her. She simply had to know.

  The buckles of the life jacket were stuck. Caitlin pressed and jerked as hard as she could, but none of the damned clasps would come undone. Some part of her knew she must be doing something wrong, yet she couldn’t solve this simple problem. The life jacket was strangling her! At last Jordan’s shouts broke through her wild frustration.

  “Catch this!” Jordan yelled. “There’s a knife in it!”

  Caitlin’s head cleared as though she’d been slapped. Looking up, she saw a dull flash of metal and somehow snatched it out of the air. Jordan’s multi-tool. Flicking open the largest blade, Caitlin sawed through the three straps. Then she looked up and threw the knife back at Jordan. By the time the tool clanged against the bottom of the boat, she had kicked free of the life jacket. With that freedom came the memory that Tom had been shot in the shoulder on Tuesday night.

  Which shoulder was the bandage on? The left.

  Caitlin screeched in terror as something bumped against her leg, then scooted away. It hadn’t felt like a fish, unless it was a damned big one. A gar, maybe. Or a catfish.

  “Caitlin!” Jordan shouted. “Get back in this boat and wait for the chopper!”

  Caitlin shoved all her fear down into a deep hole, took a huge breath, then dived deep under the tree and kicked hard. When she felt mud, she rolled over and opened her eyes.

  She could see amazingly well, but what she saw almost made her vomit. The corpse had no left shoulder. It had been eaten away. Likewise both hands. Fighting panic that scrambled in her chest like a crazed animal, she grabbed a limb that was jammed into the mud and tried desperately to remember her thoughts only moments ago.

  Gray chest hair . . .

  She couldn’t see any hair on the chest. As she stared, something long and dark passed between her and the body, then disappeared. Primal terror surged through every fiber of her being. She let go of the branch and drove her feet against the bottom, desperate to reach the surface. As she broke through to air and sunlight, the last thing she had seen finally registered in her cerebral cortex.

  Black pubic hair.

  At the crotch of what remained of the dead man’s legs, a thick thatch of black hair had been plainly visible. Caitlin had never seen Tom naked, but Penn’s father was seventy-three years old, and he had silver-white hair and a beard of the same color. No way was his pubic hair black.

  Jordan had braced one hand against the gunwale of the johnboat and was holding out a small boat paddle.

  “Grab it!” she cried. “Grab it, goddamn it!”

  “It’s not Tom!” Caitlin shouted. “It’s not Tom!”

  “Thank God. Now get your crazy ass back in here.”

  She grabbed the paddle but found herself too weak to pull. Mose Tyler took the paddle from Jordan and hauled Caitlin to the edge of the boat with surprising strength. Then an eerie hissing sent adrenaline surging through her again. She jerked her head in every direction, looking for snakes or any other threat, but it was only the sound of fresh rain on the water. As her heartbeat steadied, Mose and Jordan reached down and dragged her up into the listing boat. When Caitlin came over the gunwale and collapsed onto the green metal bottom, she heard the heavy beat of approaching rotor blades.

  “It’s not Tom,” she said again, relief flooding through her like a drug.

  Jordan knelt above her and looked into her eyes like a doctor examining a patient. Apparently satisfied that she was not seriously hurt, Jordan said, “Not bad, little sister. Not bad at all.”

  “Crazy is what dat was,” Mose said. “Craziest damn thing I ever saw.”

  Caitlin felt a sudden panic, as in a nightmare when she’d lost something but didn’t know what it was. Then she knew.

  The map.

  She dug into her pocket and pulled out what remained: a soggy mess like wet toilet paper, faintly stained with blue ink.
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  “I lost the map,” she said. “Toby’s map.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jordan said, squeezing her hand. “It’s nothing.”

  TEN SECONDS AGO, KAISER took out his phone and summoned two agents to drag me out of the interrogation room. As pounding feet sound in the hall, I see Sonny Thornfield pick up the pen I used to create the puzzle pieces and begin writing on the large page.

  “Look!” I cry. “John, look!”

  The door crashes open, and two agents rush into the room. Kaiser holds up his hand long enough to look where I’m pointing, then walks to the metal table. After looking down at the page, he motions me forward.

  With his trembling hand, Sonny Thornfield has written seven uppercase letters in the blank square next to Viola Turner’s name. My breath goes shallow as I read the childishly written letters:

  TOM CAGE

  Sonny lays down the pen and then looks up at me, his eyes filled not with triumph or revenge, but with some unreadable emotion.

  “You happy now?” he asks hoarsely. “Is that what you wanted?”

  I cannot voice the thought that has arced through my mind like a rocket against a black sky: Two nights ago, Brody Royal told me my father killed Viola. Now Sonny Thornfield has told me the same thing.

  “Let’s go, Penn,” Kaiser says, signaling the two agents to help me out of the room.

  “He’s lying, John,” I insist, as much to myself as to Kaiser. “How could he possibly know that?” I lunge at Sonny, but strong hands yank me back, and a thick forearm locks around my neck. “How could you know that unless you were there?” I shout.

  Kaiser lays the flat of his hand on my chest. “Penn, I’m on your side, but you need to step out of this room.”

  I start to protest when my cell phone rings. “Let me answer, John!”

  Kaiser nods, and after a moment the agents release me. I pull my phone from my pocket and answer it. “Caitlin?” I ask, my arm and voice shaking.

  “Penn! Can you hear me? Stay on . . . we’re airborne and climbing!”

  My heart leaps at the sound of her voice. “I hear you!” I yell into the static. “Whose body was it? Was it Dad? Tell me now!”

  “No! It wasn’t Tom! Repeat, not your father. It was a much younger man. The sheriff’s office down here thinks it’s one of those missing boys from Vidalia, Casey Whelan.”

  “It wasn’t him,” I echo, though my brain has spun into some zone where it feels disconnected from my voice. “It was one of those missing kids . . . Whelan.”

  Thornfield’s head whips up at the mention of the name.

  “Thank God,” says Kaiser, squeezing my shoulder. “What about Jordan? Is she okay?”

  Dizzy with relief, I half fall toward the metal table. Kaiser steadies me by taking hold of my shoulders, and I rest one hand against the table’s edge to regain my balance.

  “Tell John Jordan’s fine,” Caitlin says, the connection much clearer now. “We’ll probably be stuck down here talking to Sheriff Ellis for a while, but we’re both good. There’s no other word on Tom?”

  “No.”

  “Please call me the moment you hear anything.”

  Already the euphoria of relief has begun to evaporate. “All right.”

  “I love you!” Caitlin shouts.

  “Okay . . . okay. I love you, too.”

  And then she’s gone.

  I look down at my hand, and a shock of revulsion goes through me. I’d thought Kaiser was squeezing my wrist, but the hand wrapped around my arm belongs to Sonny Thornfield.

  “I’m glad for you,” the old man says.

  Yanking my arm free, I shake my head and speak with open disgust. “You knew who was in that swamp. You killed Whelan, didn’t you? Or you saw it done. I saw it in your face just now.”

  Thornfield’s watery eyes go wide. Then he shuts them tight and covers his face with his hands. Kaiser jerks me away from the old man and shoves me toward the door.

  “Get out, Penn. You’ve had some luck just now, but don’t push it.”

  I plant my feet at the door and stop us. “Luck is for fools, John. Are you going to give Thornfield his deal?”

  He looks anxiously back at the old man.

  “You’ve got to get him back to the cellblock soon. You already kept him longer than you did Snake.”

  “Hold Penn here,” Kaiser say to his agents. Then he walks back and squats beside Thornfield, just as I did earlier. “Why didn’t you put your name by those victims, Sonny? The only way you could know who killed them was to be there yourself. Come on, man. Take the final step.”

  The old man’s body is trembling like a scarecrow in a rainstorm.

  “Give me something I can believe,” Kaiser pleads. “Then your family can have a new lease on life. New names, a new town, far out of Forrest’s reach.”

  Thornfield’s bloodshot eyes slowly focus on Kaiser. “Something you can believe? How about Jimmy Revels’s last words?”

  Kaiser glances back at me. “How do you know them?”

  Thornfield shakes his head like a sinner facing his maker. “They’ve haunted me for the last forty years . . . that’s how. That boy whispers in my ears when I sleep.”

  Kaiser swallows in anticipation. True detectives live for these moments. “What were they, Sonny?”

  “‘I forgive you,’” Thornfield says with utter desolation. “Can you believe that?”

  When Kaiser bows his head, I know Sonny’s confession has rung the bell of truth within him.

  “Jimmy tried to forgive me with them words,” Sonny says, weeping openly now. “But he damned me forever.”

  TWO MINUTES AFTER THORNFIELD’S confession, Kaiser and I stand alone in the observation room while two agents flank him at the interrogation table.

  “You’ve broken him,” I say. “But you’ve spent too long with him. If you’re going to fly his family in, you’ll have to send him back to the cellblock in the meantime. Send him in with one mission, John. Find out where my father is.”

  Kaiser shakes his head. “Not yet, Penn.”

  “You’re going to blow it, man. Don’t get greedy. I know what you want, but you can’t spend another hour in there with Sonny asking about the Kennedy assassination. Snake will realize that he’s flipping. You’ve got to question the other Eagles to keep Sonny safe.”

  Kaiser shakes his head, his expression adamant. “I can have other agents question the other Eagles. I’ve already separated them from one another. None of them knows what’s going on in here. Snake sure as hell doesn’t know. I’ve got one of my agents questioning him right now to throw him off.”

  “But Snake will know. You know he will.”

  It seems incomprehensible, but Kaiser is deaf to my appeals.

  “You’ll get the Kennedy stuff with all the rest of it. There’s no deadline on that stuff. Why is it more important than half a dozen civil rights murders? Why is it more important than my father?”

  Kaiser clenches his jaw, and for a moment I believe I’ve shamed him back to sanity. But then he grabs my shoulders, his eyes blazing with passion.

  “Why do you think, Penn? Dwight Stone is going under the knife in ninety minutes. Once they put him under, he may never wake up again. If I can give him the peace of the answer he’s sought for twenty years, I’m going to give it to him.”

  “At the cost of all the other cases? Of Sonny’s life?”

  “Sonny’s not going to die.”

  “My father might. He’s stuck somewhere without his medicine, if he’s alive at all. He doesn’t have nitro or insulin . . .”

  “Fifteen minutes, Penn. That’s all I need. In fifteen minutes Sonny can confirm or deny every critical detail of the assassination. I just want to know whether Marcello was behind it, and whether Frank Knox fired the kill shot.”

  “That’s a sixty-second conversation.”

  “Christ, can’t you see? After this session, the director will authorize total protection for Sonny’s family, and I’ll bet a
ny amount of money he’ll do the same for your father.”

  “Like that matters now?”

  Kaiser clutches my arm. “Don’t you want to know whether your father was complicit or not in writing that medical excuse for Frank Knox? Sonny might know that.”

  I pull my arm free. “I already know. Whatever’s at the root of my dad’s behavior, it isn’t evil. I know that, even if you don’t.”

  “Then at least let’s do this for Dwight. After that, we’ll see if Sonny can wheedle your dad’s location out of Snake.”

  At this point, I surrender. Nothing is going to stop him anyway.

  CHAPTER 62

  WILMA DEEN TURNED the stolen pickup right on Auburn Avenue, cruised for a quarter mile, then turned left on Duncan Avenue. This took her once more past the house that Penn Cage had pulled out of this morning, and where Forrest Knox had told her Tom Cage might be hiding. For the second time she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in blue jeans walking in the front yard of the two-story house. Wilma was sure he was a guard, and she’d wanted to know if there was another in back. After she crossed over a rise in the street, she pulled over to a tall stand of hedges and stopped.

  A blond, wiry twenty-five-year-old roustabout named Alois Engel stepped out of the hedge and climbed into the backseat of the truck. All Wilma knew about Alois was that Snake Knox had fathered him by some honky-tonk slut, and he worked for the Double Eagles in some capacity. She thought she remembered Sonny Thornfield once telling her the kid was into white supremacy, but he didn’t look like much to her. The most distinctive thing about Engel was the anger that bled steadily from his eyes. He looked hungry for retribution, but Wilma had no idea for what. Nor did she care. She was here for one reason: to make sure her brother had not died for nothing.

  “Any guards in back?” Wilma asked, accelerating down State Street, which was lined with expensive cars.

  “One,” said Alois. “An old nigger. I think he’s a city cop, or used to be. The guy out front looks like an old hippie or something, doesn’t he?”