The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

“What’s up?” I ask him. “Did Sonny get Snake to tell him about Dad?”

  “No. Where are you, Penn?”

  “Getting food.”

  “Okay, stay calm. Your mother and daughter are fine, but there was some kind of attack on the house where you have them staying. A Molotov cocktail, it sounds like.”

  “What?” A blast of adrenaline brings me straight up in my seat. “How the hell did they find it?”

  “I don’t know that yet. Your mother called the sheriff’s office looking for you. Whatever number she has for you didn’t get answered, so she got me instead.”

  I take out my burn phone, which I set on silent before meeting Forrest and neglected to switch back on after hearing Sonny’s JFK story.

  “They just hit our satellite dish, too,” Kaiser says, “at the hotel. This was a coordinated attack, Penn. Nobody was hurt at the hotel, but our secure communications with Washington have been knocked out. The Natchez PD and fire department are over at Duncan Avenue now, and they’re covering your mother and daughter. I’m going to head over myself, because my guys can handle the hotel scene.”

  “I’m on my way, John. I’ll talk to you there.”

  I honk my horn, but the cars in front of me don’t move. Rather than wait for a response, I wrench the wheel right and drive over the concrete curb, then squeal out of the parking lot.

  Once I’m on Highway 84, I speed-dial Walt’s burn phone.

  “Talk to me,” he says.

  “The Knoxes just hit the house where I was hiding Mom and Annie. They’re okay, but the war has definitely started. Where’s Forrest?”

  “I’m following him south on Highway 61. He could be headed back to Baton Rouge, or he could turn east for Athens Point and head back to Valhalla. I’m hoping that’s his plan.”

  “Is Ozan still with him?”

  “Yep. They could easily have ordered the attack over the phone, though.”

  “Don’t lose them, Walt. We can’t afford to now.”

  “I won’t. You take care of Peggy and your baby. I got these bastards covered.”

  “Thanks.” As my front wheels hit the eastbound Mississippi bridge, I push the gas pedal close to the floor.

  SPANKY FORD WAS SITTING at his desk when the dispatcher informed him that the courthouse had received a bomb threat. Even though he’d known it was coming, his stomach flipped and his mind went blank for a few seconds. What’s the protocol? Sheriff Dennis wasn’t in the building (and hadn’t been since he’d stormed out and Agent Kaiser had announced that the FBI was taking over the department). Since the sheriff’s department occupied much of the western end of the courthouse building, a bomb threat meant a twofold crisis, and Spanky set down the phone in a kind of daze.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the FBI agent sitting at the desk with him, a man named Wilson.

  “We just got a bomb threat. Apparently it has something to do with JoJo Menteur.”

  “Who the hell’s that?” Wilson asked.

  “One of the meth prisoners. He’s downstairs in the holding pen.”

  “He’s not one of the specials, is he?”

  “No. He’s nobody. A Cajun who moved up here about five years ago.”

  “What’s the protocol? Do you guys have an EOD squad?”

  “Not really,” said Spanky. “We’re supposed to evacuate, both the department and the courthouse.”

  “For every phoner? Or only credible threats?”

  “How the hell do you know what’s credible? JoJo’s got some crazy-ass cousins. We’ve got to evacuate!”

  Wilson thought for a moment. “Well, we can’t move the special prisoners out of the cellblock.”

  “Why not? Sheriff Dennis left me in charge, and I’m not going to have deputies or prisoners blown to pieces on my watch. We already lost two men raiding these meth dealers.”

  Wilson’s face had colored. “Agent Kaiser will shit a brick if we let those prisoners out of there. Did the threat come with a time frame?”

  “Right now! How’s that?” Spanky showed some temper. “What do you think your boss’ll do if those assholes get blown up or die of smoke inhalation?”

  “Good point. I’d better call him.”

  “You do that. I’m calling an evac.”

  Spanky hit the panic button at the front desk, and a loud alarm began blaring through the building. As deputies scattered to perform pre-assigned tasks, Agent Wilson stood and peered at the exterior windows as though some answer lay outside the building. “Who the hell would bomb a courthouse over some low-level Cajun meth dealer?” he asked. “A meth charge might get you a stretch in the pen, but bombing a courthouse is a ticket to death row.”

  Spanky was about to reply when the floor rocked beneath his feet, a vibration that went into his bones. The sound only arrived afterward, a muted blast that triggered a combination of awe and fear in him.

  “That was the near the courtrooms!” Spanky cried.

  Two more explosions sounded from outside the building, reminding Spanky of transformers exploding during a thunderstorm. Then the sprinkler system unleashed a torrent of water upon them. The lights went dim, wavered, blacked out. Seven seconds later, they switched back on as the emergency generator came online. Spanky saw Special Agent Wilson standing with surprising coolness, holding his phone to his ear.

  “Nobody would do this for some meth cooker,” he said, wiping water from his eyes. “They’re trying to get us to evacuate the cellblock. They want to break the old guys out.”

  As the two men stared at each other, a second detonation rattled the building. This time the room went dark and silent, as all the computer drives and fans spun to a stop.

  “They took out the backup generator,” said Spanky. “What do you think now?”

  At that moment an FBI agent raced into the office from the hall that led to the courthouse. “Dan!” he cried, waving at Wilson. “Somebody just blew up two of our cars!”

  “Son of a bitch,” Wilson said, raising his hand to point at Spanky. “This may be an escape attempt. Don’t let a soul in or out of the cellblock until I get back.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Spanky, stunned by how perfectly Forrest’s predictions were being borne out. “You guys be careful out there.”

  WHEN THE FIRST SHUDDER rolled through the cellblock floor, all six Double Eagles came up off their cots. As the lights dimmed and came back on, a babble of questions bounced off the cinder-block walls. The fear in the voices was plain. After seven or eight seconds, Snake shouted everyone down, and the block fell silent.

  “What the fuck, Snake?” whispered Gene Christian from his cell.

  “That was a bomb,” said Skillet McCune.

  “C4, sounded like,” said Snake. “Did you think Forrest was gonna leave us in here to rot?”

  “Hot damn!” cried Skillet.

  “Keep your yap shut. I want to listen.”

  Sonny Thornfield had known it was a bomb within two seconds of the blast. During the war he’d been inside buildings that had taken direct hits from mortar rounds. That bone-rattling shudder of masonry and earth was unique to blast waves, at least in this part of the country.

  Sonny sat frozen on his cot, wondering what Snake might know that Sonny didn’t. Would Forrest really try to stage a mass escape with FBI agents crawling all over the courthouse?

  A second detonation rocked the building, and this time the lights went out. Now the only illumination reaching the cells came from gray light spilling through the high slit windows.

  “Jesus,” someone breathed. “Were you expecting that one, Snake?”

  “Right on time, boys. This is it. Okay?”

  As Sonny wondered what Snake meant, all eight cell doors slid open simultaneously.

  “Holy shit,” Skillet marveled.

  “Go time,” said Snake.

  In the darkness Sonny heard the hiss of sock feet sliding across the floor. The sound seemed to come from all directions at once.

  He was no longer a
lone in his cell.

  The fear hit Sonny’s chest like the boot of that Texas Ranger who’d kicked him in the sternum three days ago. He prayed that the pain was only angina and not another heart attack.

  “Stand him up,” ordered Snake. “Quick, now.”

  Powerful hands seized Sonny’s arms below the shoulders, then hoisted him to his feet. In the dim haze he saw Snake’s slit-eyed face inches from his own, and then a pair of hands looped something thick and dark around his neck. A towel, maybe? He tried to pry his arms loose, but the hands that held them were far too strong, and the towel quickly choked off his air. He thought briefly of Glenn Morehouse’s giant hands twisting Jimmy Revels’s coffee-colored arm down to the workbench . . . but Glenn was dead now. Sonny blinked in confusion. Everything he saw and felt was distorted by the prism of agony in his chest.

  “Traitor,” spat a venomous voice near his head.

  The words that followed penetrated no deeper than Sonny’s eardrums. The terror he’d felt when the cell doors opened had yielded to an eerie sense of separateness—as though he were some Gemini spaceman whose tether had been cut, so that he drifted steadily away from his ship with its life-sustaining oxygen. Was this how Jimmy Revels had felt when he spoke the three words that had haunted Sonny every day of his life?

  I forgive you. . . .

  Sonny couldn’t forgive Snake Knox for stealing the last few years of his life—the only ones that might have really mattered. Sonny couldn’t even forgive himself. He’d bitten so hard on the deal Kaiser had offered him, the dream of a life unburdened by association with men who’d goaded him to do things he would never have done on his own. How could he have been such a fool? When you’d gone as far down the road to damnation as he had, there was no getting back.

  Snake’s face loomed before him, the familiar flattened smile of the hooded cobra swaying before its prey. “You know the rules, Sonny,” he hissed, his eyes filled with wounded pride. “Damn, but I never figured it’d be you who turned.”

  Sonny’s eyelids began to close. He wanted to speak, to tell the rest of the boys to get away from Snake as fast and as far as they could, but whatever they’d wrapped around his neck had sealed his throat shut.

  “Next stop, Hell, brother,” Snake whispered. “Say hello to Glenn for me.”

  Sonny thought of his grandson, flying toward Louisiana at five hundred miles per hour, hoping to see his grandfather and to get a reprieve from war. He thought of his daughter, who would see his murder as a fitting end for a selfish old man. Then he thought of the eager-eyed FBI agent back in the interrogation room, who longed to tell the world who’d really killed President Kennedy. What could it matter after all this time? America had swerved so far off course since then that nothing would ever bring the country back to what it had been. As the last light winked out in Sonny’s mind, his final thought was a prayer that God had heard Jimmy Revels forgive him in the shadow of the Bone Tree.

  CHAPTER 66

  CAITLIN HAD INTENDED to approach one of the black patrons of the Crossroads Café without Terry, but in the end, her nerve had failed her. It was the audience of white men that had stopped her. Instead, she’d sat down in the booth farthest from the white men and taken Jordan’s map photo from her pocket. Toby Rambin’s hand-drawn graphic left a lot to be desired, but it was better than anything the FBI had. More even than the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department had—unless they’d known where the Bone Tree was all along.

  A waitress walked up to Caitlin’s booth and asked if she needed help. Caitlin explained that her friend was ordering from the counter, but she asked for a cup of coffee and borrowed a pen from the waitress—a clear hexagonal Bic like the ones she’d used in grade school. Just holding it gave her a surprisingly nostalgic feeling. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser on her table and began drawing a map of where they’d found Casey Whelan’s body.

  While Terry waited for their order at the counter, Caitlin stole glances at the men who were doing the same to her. In between looks, she would go back to her napkin, her mind on whether or not she might be able to lure Carl Sims away from work to help her locate the X on Rambin’s map.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when a boy of about nineteen walked up to her booth and stared down at her. At least six foot two, he wore the traditional uniform of the gangbanger, with a bright designer sweatshirt and oversized shorts that hung so low that his butt crack had to be on constant display.

  “You pretty, baby,” the boy said, shifting his package with his hand. “You got a boyfriend?”

  Caitlin glanced over at the men in the booths, but no one seemed inclined to come to her aid.

  “I’m married, baby,” she said, holding up her engagement ring.

  “ ’Course you is, hot as you are.”

  A table of truckers were now watching the interchange, but no one interrupted.

  “That’s a big rock,” the boy said. “Your husband rich?”

  Caitlin looked up with all the hardness she could muster. “Listen, baby. I work for the DEA, and I’m in town to consult with Sheriff Ellis on the crack trade. Do you really want to sit down and get to know me better?”

  The boy gaped at her for a few seconds, then shuffled back toward the glass-fronted beer cases, his ass crack in plain view. The men in the booths went back to their papers. A couple chuckled softly.

  The waitress brought Caitlin her coffee. Someone left the café, and two more men walked in. Caitlin sipped the harsh mixture, then jotted some numbers on the napkin, trying to remember exactly how long she’d been off the Pill when she’d conceived. She didn’t care that people were going to realize she’d been pregnant before she was married. She just wanted to know that her body had cleared the artificial hormones before her egg was fertilized.

  About the time she’d figured out the relevant math, another young black man decided to hit on her. This one didn’t merely approach the booth, but slid onto the bench seat opposite her as though he belonged there.

  Caitlin was so shocked that she didn’t protest immediately. This boy was older than the first one, maybe twenty-five. Not a boy, really, but a young man. He was also dressed in work clothes—reasonably clean jeans and a flannel shirt worn over a red long-john top. His hair was cut close to his scalp, he was clean-shaven, and his eyes were large and bright. The only thing that tweaked her radar was the sharp tang of cigarette smoke that wafted off him when he leaned toward her and whispered so that the men in the booths could not hear him.

  “You the lady lookin’ for the Chain Tree?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?” she said, a wave of heat coloring her cheeks. “The what?”

  The young man turned around far enough to check on the men in the booths. “The Chain Tree. Big cypress with old rusty chains on it, where the Klan killed all them boys back in the old days?”

  A couple of the men were watching now, and Terry was staring fearfully from the counter. Caitlin leaned forward and said, “How do you know that?”

  The young man smiled faintly, and his eyes twinkled. “My daddy goes to Reverend Sims’s church. Beulah Baptist. He was asking about the Tree, whether anybody knew where it was. He talked about the Cat Lady a little, the one whose son got beat to death out there, and his wife got raped.”

  The Cat Lady? Caitlin thought, trying to work through the boy’s words. It struck her then that he was the one who had been watching from the gas pumps when she and Terry first arrived. “How did you recognize me?”

  The boy laughed. “You don’t exactly look like you fit in around here, you know? But I’ve seen your picture in the Natchez paper before. I saw you a minute ago, when I was getting gas. I figured you had to be her. Carl Sims said you looked like a movie actress.”

  “Do you know Carl?”

  “I know his cousins, the Greens.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother digging any deeper. “So why did you come over here? Just to chat me up?”

  The boy’s smile broadened. “No, ma’am. I came
to check if you still want to go see where that tree be at.”

  A dozen different thoughts tumbled through Caitlin’s mind. At the counter, Terry looked like she was about to call 911. Caitlin gave her the okay sign, then slid the photo of the map across the table.

  “Do you recognize that?”

  “Who drew this?”

  “A friend.”

  The boy chuckled softly. “I know who drew this map. Ol’ Toby Rambin.”

  The kid was sharper than he looked. “Do you see that X on it?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Is it in the right place?”

  He pursed his dark lips, then laid his long fingers on the edges of the map and regarded it from different angles. After several seconds, he took Caitlin’s pen and drew an X about an inch from the one that Rambin had drawn.

  “Right there looks better to me.”

  “What’s there?”

  The boy looked up at her, his eyes like dark pools. “A place no black man ever went by choice.”

  “Is everything okay?” Terry was standing at Caitlin’s side with a tray in her hand. Her eyes were locked onto Caitlin’s as though she was afraid to make eye contact with the stranger in the booth.

  “Everything’s fine,” Caitlin said. “Sit here by me.”

  After some hesitation, Terry slid into the booth.

  “Terry, this is . . . ?” Caitlin gave the boy an inquisitive look.

  “Harold,” he said. “Harold Wallis.”

  Caitlin looked steadily into his eyes. “Show me your driver’s license.”

  After a couple of seconds, he took out his wallet and opened it for her. The name under his driver’s license photo read Harold Wallis.

  “You don’t have a middle name?”

  “Nope. Mama couldn’t think of one. I got eight brothers, and she said she ran out by the time she got to me.”

  Caitlin pointed at the map and lowered her voice still further. “How do you know where that X goes, when nobody else seems to?”

  “Easy. My granddaddy trapped and fished that swamp all his life, same as old Toby. He used to take me back there to help with the trotlines. I seen that tree a dozen times, even though Daddy cut a wide circle around it.”