The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Mayor. No matter what he said to you. I figured you’d know better.”

  I lower my hands, then shrug. “What does it matter now?”

  The deputy’s sad eyes linger on me with a sort of clinical empathy. “Everything matters in here, Mayor. You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 91

  TWO MONOTONOUS HOURS have passed since I assaulted Shad Johnson. When the big deputy appears before my cell again to announce that I have a visitor waiting, I assume Billy Byrd is about to inform me that new charges have been added to my sheet. I do the convict shuffle as I follow the deputy out of the cellblock, so that my leg manacles don’t abrade my ankles. But when he takes me into the visiting room with the solitary chair and the wire screen, I find not Billy Byrd but Special Agent John Kaiser waiting for me.

  “All those years in the Houston DA’s office,” he says, “and you never learned that punching a district attorney is a bad idea?”

  “I actually wanted to punch the DA about once a month over there.”

  When Kaiser forces a smile, I realize he’s doing it because of Caitlin. He looks as though he hasn’t slept since I last saw him, and his shoulders seem bowed beneath some great weight.

  “Why the long face?” I ask him. “You must have found a treasure trove of evidence at the Bone Tree.”

  “Yes and no. Plenty of bones, but they’ll take a long time to process. All in all, though, this is shaping up to be one of the crappiest weeks of my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For one thing, I was about to nail Forrest Knox’s hide to the barn door when you decided to relieve him of the burden of living.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to apologize.”

  Kaiser sniffs and bites his bottom lip. “That’s not all. Dwight Stone died this morning.”

  This bald statement hits me like a gut punch.

  “His daughter was with him, at least.”

  “Shit. You told him everything Sonny Thornfield told us, right?”

  “Yeah.” Kaiser rubs his right thumb against his fingertips with a dry, urgent rustle. “It meant a lot to him. His daughter told me that.”

  “That’s something, at least. So . . . is that what you came to tell me?”

  “Partly. But I’ve also got some more news for you. Quite a bit, actually.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “I think you’ll like it. Do you know who Griffith Mackiever is?”

  “Sure. Forrest Knox’s boss. The one accused of child pornography.”

  “Right. Well, Colonel Mackiever is going to quite a bit of trouble to get you released from jail.”

  “Released? Why would he do that?”

  “A couple of reasons. First, Walt Garrity has been doing some undercover work for him for at least two days.”

  “While he was being hunted for killing a state cop?”

  Kaiser gives an ironic chuckle. “Yeah. It seems Walt and Mackiever go back to their days as Texas Rangers. Forrest was the one smearing Mackiever, trying to take his job. Mackiever promised Garrity that he’d do all he could for him and your father if Garrity would help him bust Forrest.”

  “Bust him?”

  “I think ‘remove’ might be more accurate. In any case, you ended up performing that function, and you happen to be very dear to Captain Garrity. Also, according to Walt, Mackiever is one of those rare men who understand gratitude. He’s the personification of ‘old school.’”

  “Great. But how the hell can he get me out of killing Forrest?”

  Kaiser leans forward and speaks in a nearly inaudible whisper. “Don’t ever let those words pass your lips again. You drove south on Highway 61 and walked through the Valhalla property, but you never entered that lodge. You were distraught, but you came to your senses and drove back home. You never saw Forrest Knox.”

  “John . . . how the hell can he make that fly?”

  Kaiser speaks a little louder but keeps his voice low. “That’s where I come in. You see, Garrity’s not exactly alone in trying to help you.”

  After Shad’s gloating certainty about my fate, the recognition of compassion in Kaiser moves something within me. “I think you’d better explain.”

  “Do you remember Garrity telling you he’d found something in Knox’s pocket after he died?”

  “Sure. A key. I saw it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Okay . . . “Go on.”

  “Well, Garrity figured he ought to do what he could with that key before events took on their own momentum. All he knew was that it went to a Chateau brand lock, which is a very common disk-type padlock. That wouldn’t have meant a damned thing to most people, even most cops. But being the old bloodhound he is, Garrity did something pretty remarkable. He drove to Baton Rouge and looked up rental storage units in the Yellow Pages, and he found two that were within a mile of Forrest Knox’s residence. They contained hundreds of individual units, of course, but that didn’t stop Garrity. He drove to both places, and saw that one had security cameras, while the other didn’t.”

  “Forrest used the one without cameras,” I think aloud. “In case whatever he kept there was ever discovered.”

  “Exactly. And did Garrity stop there? No. That wounded SOB walked up and down the lines of units, checking every Chateau lock he could find, until he found the one that Knox’s key fit.”

  “That sounds just like him, actually. What did he find inside?”

  “The jackpot, Penn. I shit you not.”

  “Not a body.”

  “Better than a body.”

  “Goddamn it, John, tell me.”

  “Most of the stuff was locked in metal containers, and some were even booby-trapped. Walt figured he’d better leave that intact for a later search—an official search. But just inside the storage unit’s door—like it had just been dropped there—he found two boxes of crap that probably came from the floor safes at Valhalla.”

  “What was in them?”

  “Not much. But two items were of particular interest to me. One was a U.S. Navy tattoo on a swatch of human skin.”

  A chill races up my back. “Jimmy Revels’s tattoo!”

  Kaiser nods, his eyes shining. “The one stolen from Sheriff Dennis’s evidence locker yesterday, and now back in our hands. The other item”—he digs into his back pocket—“was this.”

  The FBI agent brings up some folded sheets of paper and holds them in the air, just out of my reach.

  “What’s that?”

  “A letter.”

  “From who? To whom?”

  Kaiser looks like he can’t decide whether to tell me or not. Then he says, “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  “What?”

  The FBI agent nods. “It’s a letter from Oswald to his wife, Marina, and it’s dated November twenty-first, 1963.”

  “John . . . that’s impossible.”

  “Not if Frank Knox killed John Kennedy. The letter was still in its envelope, by the way.”

  Yesterday I wouldn’t have cared one whit about more assassination information, but for some reason, Kaiser’s revelation has stirred something within me. I try to imagine a sequence of events that could have produced the scenario he’s describing, but my mind is too detached to do it. “That can’t be right. No letter like that was ever found. Marina Oswald sure never mentioned it.”

  “I don’t think she ever got it. The envelope was addressed and had a stamp on it—five cents—but it wasn’t postmarked.”

  “So . . . what are you thinking happened?”

  Kaiser lays the letter on the table and folds his arms in front of him. “I think Frank Knox was following Oswald the day before the assassination. As Sonny told us, he wanted to get some idea of who the primary shooter was. He was supposed to kill him the next day, remember? I think that sometime late that day or night, Frank saw Lee drop this letter in a public mailbox. At that point he had to decide whether to keep following Oswald or try to get hold of the letter, and I th
ink Frank chose the second option. He had to, didn’t he? In one day, he and Oswald were going to be part of a team that was going to kill the president. Oswald didn’t know about him, of course, but that was the reality. Frank was only the backup shooter, so his actions depended on Oswald’s. He had to know whether Lee had any other plans or surprises in store.”

  The idea that Frank Knox somehow obtained an artifact no one ever knew about has triggered a strange apprehension in me. “What does the letter say?”

  Kaiser looks as though he’d like to tease me, to pay me back for my skepticism in the hotel, but in the end—probably because of Caitlin—he lays it flat where I can see it. The moment I do, my hand and face go cold. The paper is covered with Cyrillic letters.

  “Is that Russian?” I ask.

  Kaiser’s grin is filled with triumph. “Yes, it is. And it’s a known fact that whenever Lee wrote his wife, he wrote in Russian. Marina was a native Russian, after all.”

  All I can think of is Caitlin’s final message. “What the hell would Frank Knox have made of that?” I ask, my mind still on Caitlin’s unfulfilled quest.

  “God only knows. He probably worried that Oswald was telling Marina to tell the Soviets what he was about to do, or maybe even Castro. Who knows? But Frank didn’t waste time in getting it translated.”

  Kaiser lays the second sheet of paper over the first. This one is covered with blocks of Courier text, which were obviously hand-typed on an old machine.

  “Walt found this translation in the same Ziploc bag that held the original. These are both photocopies, of course. Would you like to read it?”

  In my present state, I don’t think I could even reach out for the paper. “How about you read it to me?”

  Kaiser nods and begins reading in a low voice.

  Marina, I am writing because I cannot tell you what I am about to do. I wanted to tell you earlier tonight, because I thought it might convince you to give me one more chance. But for once I can afford to be patient. If all goes as planned, by the time you read these words, I will be on my way to Havana. I can’t write how I have arranged this, finally, but by the time you read this, you will know. Tomorrow, everyone who doubted my commitment will finally see how wrong they were. I mean to bring you and the girls to Cuba as soon as this can be arranged, so prepare yourself. No snow this time! Only sand and sun.

  I have only one reservation. I don’t completely trust the man who is making this possible for us. I knew him long ago, when I was a boy. I never told you about him. He and I no longer share the same politics or motivations, but we do want the same end, at least in this matter. But in spite of my reservations, this opportunity is so historic that I could not in good conscience refuse it. Fate has chosen me to alter the history of the world. Tomorrow you will see how I was placed in a position to change the future, and no man of conscience could refuse such a call.

  After you finish this letter, burn it and flush the ashes down the toilet, so that Hosty and the other agents will have no evidence against you to prevent you from leaving the country. (I’m mailing this because I did not want you to find it too soon, and we can’t be sure that the FBI doesn’t enter the house at times, even with the cleaning woman there.) If anything bad should happen, know that I gave my life to change things for the better, for us and for the world. When the girls are old enough, tell them what I did.

  Lee

  By the time Kaiser falls silent and looks up from the page, the table before us is wet with my tears.

  “My God, man,” he says. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s not the letter. It’s Caitlin. She found out about the letter on her own, through something of Henry’s, I guess. She actually knew it was in Russian. That’s really what she went back to the Bone Tree for. She left a final message on her phone, and one thing she said was to pass that on to you. I’m sorry I forgot. But . . . you found it anyway, so . . .”

  Kaiser is blinking in disbelief. “Henry knew about this?”

  “Christ, man . . . She died for something that wasn’t even out there. Do you think it was ever out there?”

  Kaiser shrugs and says, “Who knows, with those old guys? It might have been, and for a long time. We’ll probably never know, until a Double Eagle tells us about it. I’m sorry, Penn. But at least we’ve got it now.”

  “Do you believe that letter is real?” I ask.

  “I already checked the Russian handwriting against known samples of Oswald’s other letters. It’s real, Penn. No doubt.”

  I sit in silence, trying to process the implications. “The way that’s written certainly implies a conspiracy.”

  Kaiser nods. “He’s talking about Ferrie, Penn.”

  “He doesn’t mention a name.”

  “No. But I got independent confirmation of a tie between Ferrie and Oswald late last night.”

  “From who?”

  “Fidel Castro.”

  “What?”

  Kaiser’s eyes light up again. “Jordan asked him about it. And that wasn’t all. Castro told her about a French Corsican who made an attempt on his life. I think it was the man in the fishing boat with your father and Brody Royal. Under torture, he told Castro that an American instructor at one of the Cuban training camps killed JFK for Marcello. He said the man was a former Klansman.”

  Even in my numbed state, this revelation sends shock through me. “Did Castro mention Frank’s name?”

  “No. But goddamn it . . . what more could we ask for?”

  I shrug. “Frank’s name, obviously. Not to mention Dwight and Caitlin living to learn about this.”

  “Dwight did find out. I told him late last night.”

  My face probably doesn’t express it to Kaiser, but this does bring me at least some comfort. “Well . . . I’m glad of that. But all this is kind of off-track for me, actually. My problem is a murder charge.”

  “No, it’s not. Don’t you get it? This letter is your ticket out of here.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Kaiser gives me a sympathetic smile. “When Garrity found this stuff, he knew how big it was. He called Mackiever right away, and by then, Mackiever and I were working together. He told us what he found, and he made some very clear demands. He wanted Forrest blamed for the murder of Trooper Deke Dunn, which would clear him and Tom of that killing. By some method I won’t let myself think about, the derringer that killed Dunn turned out to be hidden in Forrest Knox’s Baton Rouge home.”

  I nod slowly.

  “I see that doesn’t surprise you. Well, maybe this will. Garrity also wanted you cleared of any possible charges that might come from the death of Forrest Knox or Alphonse Ozan. At first it seemed that I couldn’t use this letter—or even the evidence from Forrest’s storage room—without revealing that you and Garrity had been at Valhalla and done what you did there, which allowed Garrity to find the storage locker.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “After some discussion, we decided that Colonel Mackiever would say he’d discovered the key at Forrest Knox’s house during a legitimate search. He was actually searching Knox’s house while you were driving to Valhalla. He found the derringer, but there’s quite a bit of other evidence against Forrest, too. We have a video of Knox’s SWAT guys carrying out a multiple murder during Hurricane Katrina. Using that, I forced one of the snipers in the video to turn state’s evidence. And last night, when I was questioning Double Eagles about Sonny’s death, I actually turned one of them.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Kaiser nods. “Will Devine. The guy was scared to death, especially after what happened with Sonny. Devine’s the oldest Eagle left alive. He’s haunted by things he did. A bit like Glenn Morehouse, I imagine. That’s why I let those guys out this morning, to protect him. He couldn’t have kept up a front while I worked out his plea deal. That’s what I was hinting about at the funeral. Anyway, taken in toto, all that gave us quite a bit of power to shape the narrative that would emerge in the wake of Forrest’s an
d Ozan’s deaths.”

  “Your code of ethics seems to have relaxed a bit since yesterday.”

  The FBI agent sighs deeply. “I’d rather not discuss that just now. What matters for you is the new narrative. The official story. Now it’s Mackiever—not Walt—who discovered the key, hunted down Forrest’s storage unit, found the evidence, and contacted me about the Oswald letter.”

  “Okay. But I still don’t see how that gets me out of here. Sheriff Ellis from Athens Point has game camera photos of me at Valhalla right around the time of death.”

  Kaiser gives me a strange smile. “Does he? Well . . . the significance of those photos is all in the interpretation, isn’t it?”

  “Come on, man. Out with it.”

  “This is where another friend of yours proved to be a great help. Carl Sims? The former marine sniper?”

  “How did Carl help?”

  “Once Sheriff Ellis issued the APB on you for killing Knox, Carl decided he had information I might need to know. And he was right. Carl told me that if I poked my hand into certain holes, I’d find evidence tying Sheriff Ellis and his department to the Knox family and Valhalla. Turns out Ellis went on all-expenses-paid hunts in Alaska and Canada every year, on the Knoxes’ dime. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. A lot of drugs move through that county, and a lot of murders have gone unsolved. Turns out, I didn’t have to work very hard to convince Sheriff Ellis that a double murder in his county involving endemic police corruption wasn’t something he wanted me looking into too closely. He was perfectly willing to take my word that your presence at Valhalla was wholly unrelated to the crime.”

  This statement leaves me almost breathless. “How the hell is that possible? Who killed Forrest, then?”

  A self-satisfied grin animates Kaiser’s face. “As a novelist, you’ll appreciate this. Captain Alphonse Ozan is now the hero of this revised opera. Ozan was the brave internal affairs officer assigned by Colonel Mackiever to infiltrate Forrest Knox’s cabal of corrupt cops. Earlier today, Forrest discovered that Ozan had been working against him for months, and the two men killed each other in a vicious hand-to-hand struggle.”