The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

“He looks pretty tough to me. I think I’ve seen him doing dirt work across the river.”

  “Fuck him. We just need a diversion to make sure we can get the bombs to the door.”

  “We don’t have a go order yet, do we?”

  “We will. I heard it in the colonel’s voice.”

  Alois jerked a dirty towel off the box sitting beside him on the backseat. In the box were three sealed wine bottles filled to the neck with a mixture of gasoline, kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate. Taped to the side of each bottle were two windproof matches.

  “Who did you say designed these things?” Wilma asked. “The Russians?”

  “The Finns,” Alois said irritably. The kid fancied himself a connoisseur of World War II weaponology. “They used them in the Winter War.”

  “Against the Russians?”

  “Against the Germans.”

  “Okay, okay, BF deal. Somehow they don’t look like real Molotov cocktails without the rag hanging out.”

  Alois grunted. “Do you want to look cool while you set yourself on fire, or really hurt the people who wasted your brother?”

  Wilma said nothing. This kid had no idea what was really going on. To him Glenn Morehouse had been just a fat old guy who’d lived in her house, not an unstoppable force that could be pointed at a target like a tank.

  “How well do you know Forrest?” Wilma asked.

  “Well enough to know that when he asks you to do him a favor, you do it. He’s about the baddest son of a bitch I ever met, and I’ve met some.”

  Wilma laughed. “I just bet you have, blondie.”

  The truck jounced over a speed bump, and the bottles clanked ominously in the box.

  “Stuff that fucking towel in there!” Wilma snapped. “Wedge it between the bottles. I don’t plan on burning up in this truck.”

  Alois obeyed with surprising delicacy. Then he reached down to the floor and brought up a heavy Sig Sauer pistol.

  “You know, if that guy doesn’t go in for a break pretty soon, I’m just going to walk up and blow his shit away.”

  “Forrest didn’t say anything about shooting guards,” Wilma said.

  “Well, he doesn’t want us waiting on the street all day.”

  “Just hold your water. He’ll have to take a leak soon. You got the masks?”

  Alois lifted a Walmart bag from the floor. “You get the Harry Potter. I’m taking Spider-Man.”

  She shook her head in derision. Kids.

  ONLY ONCE IN HER life had Peggy Cage had her faith in her husband tested as it was being tested now, and she wasn’t sure she was up to the challenge. Still, she put the best possible face on things, as she’d been taught to do from birth. Despite her protestations to Penn, having Kirk Boisseau close by had improved her sense of security. Like a lot of Natchez men of his generation, Kirk had been taught English by Peggy at St. Stephen’s Prep back in the early 1970s. He’d grown up to be quite an imposing adult, and today she was glad of it. Tom’s elderly patient James Ervin was guarding the back of the house—unless it was his brother Elvin; Peggy could scarcely tell the difference between the retired cops. With both James and Kirk on guard, it seemed that physical security was not a problem, and yet Peggy felt deeply unsettled.

  One reason was Annie. As the mayor’s daughter, Annie Cage had become even more adept than her grandmother at putting on a public face, but the girl couldn’t fool Peggy. Though she’d managed an animated discussion with Kirk, Annie was clearly worried about her father and Caitlin—and terrified for her grandfather. Annie had also suggested to Peggy that Penn and Caitlin were having “relationship trouble.” Though she had only her intuition and Caitlin’s continued absence to support this assertion, Peggy suspected she was right.

  Early that morning, Annie had sat down in the den and made a great show of reading Caitlin’s most recent articles aloud from the newspaper Kirk had brought with him. Peggy tried to look interested, but the only stories that held her interest anymore were those dealing with the murder for which Tom had been indicted, and there had been precious little information printed on that case after the initial story.

  “Gram!” Annie cried, getting to her feet with her cell phone held aloft. “Caitlin just texted me!”

  Peggy clenched her abdomen in preparation for whatever might follow. “What does she say, honey?”

  Annie read from the screen: “Hey punk, sorry I haven’t been around much. You can see from the paper I’m working around the clock. Today I’m doing Lara Croft meets Nancy Drew. I may be on CNN tonight, so watch the news. With any luck, I’ll be there to watch it with you. Love, Cait.”

  “Who’s Lara Croft?” Peggy asked, relieved and thankful that Caitlin had thought to reassure Annie.

  “Just a character from a video game,” Annie said, her face glowing. “I wish Dad and Papa would text us like Caitlin does.”

  “Me, too. I’ll be right back, sweetie,” Peggy said, getting to her feet. “I’m going to check on Mr. Kirk.”

  “He’s just plain Kirk,” Annie corrected her. “He told me not to call him mister. He was four years ahead of Dad in school, but they played football together.”

  Peggy smiled and went into the den, where Kirk Boisseau was leaning against the wall and watching an old western in black and white.

  “Are you all right, Kirk? Can I fix you a sandwich or something?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “I’m good.”

  Unable to think of any small talk—which was rare for her—Peggy looked at the television. On-screen she saw a black-clad cowboy brandishing a bullwhip, and the sight cut her to the quick. The actor was Lash LaRue, a Saturday matinee cowboy from the 1940s and ’50s. Peggy recognized him because she and Tom had once seen an impromptu performance by LaRue at New Orleans’ Dew Drop Inn, a Negro nightclub that Tom sometimes visited to hear certain black musicians. Tom and Peggy were allowed admittance because Tom had treated several employees while working as an extern. As a boy, Tom had worked as a theater usher during the 1940s, and he’d been ecstatic to find a star from his childhood onstage. He watched spellbound as the black-suited LaRue played his guitar with the Negro musicians, then cut paper from the mouth of a waitress with a bullwhip someone had produced from the back of the bar.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Cage?” Kirk asked.

  “What?” Peggy asked, wiping a tear from her eyes. “Oh, yes. This has just been hard. I’m not used to doing without Tom.”

  Boisseau smiled. “I’m sure it’s all going to work out.”

  “Are you?” she said quietly. “Because I’m not.”

  “Penn will get it worked out.”

  Peggy somehow summoned a smile. “Do you feel like we’re pretty safe here?”

  Kirk smiled back, and Peggy thought his eyes looked too gentle to belong to a real soldier. But when he spoke, his voice held the hard edge of steel.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you or that girl. You can count on that. I gave Penn my word. You just try to relax.”

  “Thank you. We’ll try.”

  “I saw that pistol in your purse,” Kirk said. “You know how to use it?”

  Peggy nodded. “Tom taught me. A long time ago. But I hope it won’t come to that.”

  “What are you guys doing?” Annie asked from the door. “What won’t come to what?”

  “Me eating healthy food!” Kirk said easily. “Your grandmother was trying to sell me on a salad. I want a big old skillet-fried grilled cheese sandwich.”

  Annie looked suspicious for a second, but then she started laughing.

  “I’m going to make another pass around the house,” said Kirk.

  “And I’m going to make you that sandwich,” Peggy said. “Come help me, Annie.”

  Annie looked longingly after Kirk as he went out the front door.

  ALOIS ENGEL BRAKED AT the stop sign at the corner of Auburn and Duncan Avenues and depressed the electric cigarette lighter. The hippie who’d been guarding the front of the house was s
till nowhere to be seen. There were no cars behind Alois, and none on the intersecting streets. Duncan Avenue felt like it had been transplanted from the Garden District in New Orleans. Facing a golf course dotted with black and white men in their seventies, this sleepy lane was due for some excitement.

  The cigarette light popped out, ready to go.

  Alois removed the little metal plunger with its red-hot eye, then picked up the Molotov cocktail and carefully ignited the windproof match taped to the bottle’s side. Then he wedged the bottle between the passenger seat and the console of his pickup. The match burned with a snakelike hiss.

  Alois scanned 360 degrees around the intersection. Still no traffic. Picking up his cell phone, he texted a question mark to Wilma Deen, whom he’d dropped off on Ratcliff Place, near a home whose yard abutted the yard of the mayor’s safe house. Ten seconds later, his phone pinged.

  Wilma’s text read: Still in position. Ready 2 rock.

  Alois picked up the Spider-Man mask from the passenger seat and pulled it over his head. Then he let his foot off the brake and rolled forward.

  The mayor’s house was fifty yards away.

  Alois had rolled only ten yards when the blond hippie walked out the front door and surveyed the street.

  “Goddamn it,” Alois muttered. “I’m gonna blow your shit away.”

  But he didn’t. He snapped off the head of the sizzling match and grabbed for his cell phone.

  CHAPTER 63

  I’M ABOUT TO observe the most surreal interrogation of my legal career, and I’m not even sure it’s legal. John Kaiser hasn’t set up this session to gather evidence for a court case. He wants to uncover a long-buried truth, one he believes to be bigger than any single case, and more important than the fate of my father. For this reason, Kaiser has allowed things I’ve only rarely seen in a sheriff’s office, and never during an FBI interrogation.

  First, the video camcorder is unplugged. This occasionally happens, and for a variety of reasons (but not usually to help the suspect). Second, the bedsheet is still hanging over the observation window (a sensible precaution). But strangest of all, Kaiser has submitted to a physical search by his prisoner, so the Double Eagle can be sure the FBI agent isn’t wearing any recording device. I had to endure the same treatment in order to be present, and since I hold out some hope that Sonny might recant what he wrote about my father on the puzzle I created, I consented.

  Sonny Thornfield has relaxed considerably since I was last in this room. The reason is simple. Kaiser’s agents have already tracked down his grandson, the one preparing to depart for his second tour in Iraq. Kaiser actually brought in an encrypted FBI phone and allowed Sonny to speak to the kid on it. By then I knew the backstory: the boy saw his best friend maimed during his first tour, and he has no interest in sharing the same fate. Kaiser promised Sonny that if his grandson agreed to go into federal witness protection, he would not have to return to Iraq. I have no idea whether this is true, but Kaiser’s confidently delivered answer—combined with the fact that he’s already arranged to fly three of Sonny’s family members here on FBI aircraft—told me that the FBI agent is pulling out all the stops for this case.

  So . . . here we sit, watching a former Ku Klux Klansman and Double Eagle prepare to reveal a secret he’s carried for forty years, on pain of death, in order to save himself and his family. Among my regrets—and they are many—is that Henry Sexton did not live to sit beside me in this moment. Whatever Sonny Thornfield knows, it might mean more to Henry than even to Dwight Stone.

  “I want to make one thing clear,” Sonny begins, licking his lips and glancing over at the bedsheet to make sure it’s still taped over the one-way mirror. “I’m not going to talk about any other case but the big one. Dallas. And when I say the name Frank, I’m referring to Frank Sinatra. Nobody else, got it? Frank Sinatra.”

  “Got it,” says Kaiser. “Let’s hear what Old Blue Eyes did in Dallas in 1963. I always heard that he and JFK were friends.”

  Sonny shrugs and turns up his palms. “What do you want to know? I can’t just start talking. Ask me something.”

  “All right. To your knowledge, who was behind the assassination? I mean the man at the very top.”

  Thornfield rubs his stubbled chin as though pondering what answering that question would have cost him forty years ago.

  “Come on,” Kaiser urges. “Nobody can hear you.”

  “It was Carlos Marcello’s show,” Sonny says finally. “All the way.”

  When Kaiser turns to me, I see something like rapture in his eyes.

  “Who fired the kill shot? The one that blew Kennedy’s brains out?”

  “You already know. Frank Sinatra.”

  Kaiser doesn’t react at first. But I can see from his frozen stillness how badly he wishes this were a legitimate interrogation. “How do you know that?” he asks.

  “He told me.”

  “Who did?”

  “Frank.”

  “When?”

  Sonny shakes his head.

  “What year, then?”

  “Nineteen sixty-seven, I believe. About a year after he . . . had a family tragedy.”

  Kaiser looks back at me. We’re both thinking the same thing. A year after Frank Knox lost his son in Vietnam.

  “Was he sober when he told you this?” Kaiser asks.

  “I don’t think Frank was ever sober after 1966.”

  “Fair enough. How did Marcello approach Frank about that job? Or did someone else do that?”

  “I think Marcello did it. We’d done a few jobs for him over the years, mostly in Florida. But Carlos knew Frank from the anti-Castro training camp in Morgan City. That’s how Frank knew, ah . . . the other guy, too.”

  “What other guy?”

  “The other guy who was in on it.”

  “Oswald?” Kaiser asks, but I know this is a feint to test Thornfield.

  “No. Frank didn’t know that nut job.”

  “Who, then?”

  Sonny practically whispers the name. “David Ferrie.”

  Kaiser closes his eyes and exhales slowly. I have to admit, I feel a profound sense of satisfaction at hearing Dwight Stone’s theory confirmed, and since Stone can’t be here himself, I let myself enjoy it.

  “What was Ferrie’s part in the operation?” Kaiser asks.

  Sonny shrugs as though the answer is self-evident. “He’s the one who knew Oswald.”

  “How?”

  “They were both from New Orleans. Ferrie had known him since Oswald was a kid.”

  “Known him how?”

  “Frank told me they were queer. I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what he said.”

  Kaiser cuts his eyes at me again. So far, he and Dwight are batting a thousand.

  “Did Frank know why Carlos wanted Kennedy dead?”

  “He told me JFK and his brother were going to run the Little Man out of the country. Carlos had tried everything he knew to stop it, but nothing worked. This was the last chance.”

  “Okay.” Kaiser glances at his watch. “Let’s talk about the actual hit. Dealey Plaza.”

  Sonny scratches his nose and looks at the bedsheet once more. “You guys ain’t got some kind of X-ray camera or anything in there, have you?”

  “No cameras,” Kaiser says, treating it as a serious question.

  “Are you sure Snake don’t know what’s going on in here?”

  “Positive. We’re questioning Snake in another interrogation room right now.”

  Sonny clearly gets a fair dose of relief from this knowledge. “What else you want to know, then?”

  “Tell us about the rifles, Sonny. The ones from Brody’s house. Penn says one was displayed in Brody’s basement as the assassination rifle, but that was a Remington Model 700. So why did we find an exact copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle upstairs in Brody’s study?”

  Sonny smiles strangely. “You can thank Frank for that. See, Carlos and Ferrie wanted him to use a rifle like Oswald’s for
the hit, and then leave it at the scene. They wanted to sell a big Commie conspiracy and blame Castro.”

  “To deflect suspicion from Carlos?”

  “Sure, and to get Carlos’s casino action back. They figured if they could get the public mad enough at Castro, LBJ would invade.”

  Kaiser happily clucks his tongue. “So, why didn’t Frank use the Carcano to kill Kennedy?”

  “Because it was a piece of junk! The aftermarket Jap scope that came on it wasn’t good enough for a BB gun. Frank told ’em he’d use his own rifle for the hit but leave the Italian one at the scene. But Ferrie didn’t like that idea. He’d given Frank bullets from the same box as Oswald’s, and he said Frank had to use those. The bullets had to match, he said.”

  I can only see Kaiser in profile, but an anticipatory smile has appeared on his face. “So what did Frank do?”

  “He told Ferrie no problem. Frank was a genius with guns, see? Any kind of weapon, really. But guns were his specialty. He told Ferrie he could use his Remington and the bullets would still match—if the cops found any fragments at all.”

  Kaiser’s face is practically glowing. “How could Frank manage that?”

  Sonny chuckles with obvious admiration for his old sergeant. “First, he took those 6.58 Carcano bullets and removed them from the cartridges. Then he scraped the lead out of the copper jackets, so he’d have a lead-antimony mix that would match Oswald’s bullets to a T, or at least as well as could be done.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he used that lead to cast some .243 bullets to fit the cartridges for his Remington. He drilled out the cores so they’d blow apart on impact, and then he tested them to be sure.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “On some pigs.”

  “Pigs. Did the bullets work as he wanted?”

  “Hell, yeah. I told you he was a genius. The damn things exploded when they hit the skulls, and they hardly left a trace.”

  Kaiser quietly considers all he has heard. “If Frank went to all that trouble, then why didn’t he leave the Carcano behind him after he made the shot, like he’d promised?”

  Sonny settles back in his chair and folds his arms. “A couple of reasons. He said totin’ it around was too risky. He already had to carry the Remington—broke down, of course. Carrying two guns doubled the risk. But that wasn’t all. He was worried there might be forensic tests he didn’t know nothin’ about. Space-age stuff, you know? He’d handled that rifle himself, and he didn’t want it winding up in the Sandia National Lab or someplace like that.”