Natchez Burning (Penn Cage)

by Greg Iles

  “One phone call. I’ll make it now, if you like.”

  “Please.”

  He takes out his cell phone and speed-dials a number. I need to find Randall Regan, fast. As we trudge through the mud beside the disappearing Jericho Hole, Kaiser begins talking, and the rhythmic pounding of the colossal pumps reverberates through the earth like a great beating heart.

  CHAPTER 66

  TWENTY MINUTES AFTER Forrest Knox and Alphonse Ozan left the Yacht Club, a Eurocopter AS350 from the state police Air Support Unit set down at Lakefront Airport and took the CIB chief and his adjutant into its belly. Then the chopper lifted off and stormed up the Mississippi River with Forrest sitting in the left seat and Alphonse Ozan behind him. Knox and Ozan were linked by a special interphone circuit that could exclude the pilot at the touch of a button, and Forrest had made liberal use of this convenience on the way up. Ozan had already learned that a “silver RV-style van” had been seen near Sonny Thornfield’s fishing camp last night, shortly before Trooper Dunn requested a position trace on Sonny’s cell phone.

  The Roadtrek van was almost certainly the 2005 Anniversary Edition registered to one Walter Garrity, a retired Texas Ranger and former combat medic who’d served in the same unit as Tom Cage during the Korean War. According to state police records, two months ago Garrity had assisted Penn Cage in his battle to break up a gambling and dogfighting operation in Adams County and Concordia Parish. Garrity’s name had appeared in several LSP reports at the time, and Forrest figured Colonel Mackiever—himself a former Ranger—probably knew Garrity, even if they weren’t personal friends. While some men in Forrest’s position might consider this possible connection a problem, Forrest was elated. If a friend of his boss had helped someone jump bail and killed a state trooper, that was bound to offer some unique opportunities.

  “Excuse me, Colonel,” said the pilot, breaking into Forrest’s circuit. “I think I see the cruiser.”

  Forrest followed the line of the levee with his eyes until he saw what the pilot did. Two SUVs with light bars were parked fifty yards from the borrow pit, while a white state police car with its trunk open stood much nearer to the water.

  “Who the hell told the locals about this?” Forrest snapped.

  “Some fisherman probably drove up on the scene,” said Ozan. “Hell, it’s their parish.”

  “They’d better keep that crime scene pristine!”

  “Set her down between those sheriff’s cars and our cruiser,” Forrest ordered the pilot.

  “Yes, sir. I think I see the body. Between the cruiser and the water.”

  Sure enough, a man in a blue uniform lay sprawled across some muddy sand near a patch of weeds. From eight hundred feet, he looked like a G.I. Joe doll cast aside by a bored little boy. But he wasn’t. He was Deke Dunn.

  “Take us in, Sergeant. Double quick.”

  “Yes, sir. Hold on.”

  THE FEMALE LOAN OFFICER who escorted Caitlin into the vault of the Royal Cotton Bank was far too curious for her taste. She was only allowing Caitlin access to the boxes because she was a personal friend of Sherry Harden, who was on the access list. The waspish loan officer had treated Caitlin with marked coolness in the lobby, probably because of the generally liberal columns she wrote for the Examiner. Caitlin didn’t care what the nosy bitch thought about her. It had nauseated her even to enter a building owned by Brody Royal, though she appreciated the irony of Henry keeping his backup files in a bank belonging to the man he meant to destroy with them.

  “I hate to be rude,” Caitlin said, after the woman had inserted her keys into the large drawers, “but I need some privacy.”

  The loan officer stepped back as though Caitlin had slapped her. “We have a room for that.”

  “Look, I’m really in a hurry.”

  After giving a prim shake of the head, the loan officer angrily left the vault.

  Caitlin crouched before the two numbered drawers, her heart accelerating. She’d expected regular bank boxes, but both these drawers were triple size. She turned the nearest key, then with some effort dragged open the stainless steel drawer.

  A warm glow spread through her chest. There had to be three or four thousand photocopied pages stuffed into the drawer. As quickly as she could, she unlocked the adjacent drawer and gasped when she saw what was inside: several external hard drives; a Ziploc bag containing thumb drives and SD cards; and perhaps most intriguing, a stack of Moleskine notebooks held together by a thick blue rubber band.

  “I think I just had an orgasm,” she murmured. There was no way she and her team could wade through all this in time to write any sort of comprehensive story by tomorrow. Simply scanning the documents would take days.

  She got to her feet and hurried back to the bank’s lobby. Sighting the loan officer across the room, Caitlin beckoned her over with an urgent wave. The woman took her sweet time about coming, but when she finally arrived, Caitlin said, “I’m going to need some boxes and a cart.”

  “We don’t provide boxes.”

  “How about garbage bags, then? I’ll pay you for them. But I know you’ve got a cart somewhere, and I need it ASAP.”

  She turned on her heel and went back to the vault without waiting for an answer. Then she knelt beside the first drawer and began stacking files beside her on the floor, her nerves singing with anticipation.

  FORREST KNOX TOOK A last look at the bullet holes in Deke Dunn’s face, then got to his feet and addressed Ozan.

  “Small caliber. Didn’t even exit the skull. I’m betting a .22 derringer.”

  The Redbone nodded. “Dunn fired a single round from his weapon. I wonder if he hit either of them.”

  “And who shot first?” Forrest worked his lower lip around a plug of Copenhagen. “Not that it matters. I can’t figure them leaving Deke’s gun here. That’s damned odd.”

  He looked over Ozan’s shoulder, past the chopper with its spinning rotors, at the three Concordia Parish deputies he’d ordered away from the body.

  Ozan said, “The records in that Magnolia Queen case say Penn Cage killed the Irish casino manager with a derringer. The weapon was lost in the river, but it belonged to Garrity. You figure the old man replaced it?”

  “Everybody’s got a favorite gun. Garrity probably likes his ace in the hole. Get somebody to look back through his Ranger reports. I think Garrity must be making the decisions. Dr. Cage wouldn’t know how to blast the hard drive of the cruiser’s video recorder.”

  “True dat, boss. But why didn’t Deke call one of us?”

  “My Al Qaeda order,” Forrest said. “If I’d waited one more hour to issue it, he probably would have called you. But he observed radio silence, like a good soldier. Let’s get photos and casts of the tire tracks by the water. Footprints, too.”

  “Have the locals do it?” Ozan asked. “Or wait on our evidence team?”

  “I don’t want a parish deputy anywhere near this scene.” Forrest spat beside Dunn’s corpse. “I’m going to put out an APB for Cage and Garrity: wanted for killing a state trooper.”

  Ozan whistled. “What evidence you gonna hang it on?”

  “Sonny Thornfield. We’ll keep his name out of the media, just refer to him as a confidential informant. But I’m going to tell Mackiever the truth. Cage and Garrity kidnapped an old Klansman and tried to frame him for Viola Turner’s murder. He can choke on that. We can bolster the APB with the van sighting, and as soon as we confirm the derringer, we’ll update the bulletin. Every cop in Louisiana will be shooting to kill.”

  The Redbone nodded with admiration.

  Forrest stepped away from the body and glared at the deputies staring in their direction. “What we need now is some pressure points, in case something unexpected happens. I already know about Cage’s family. What about Garrity?”

  “He’s got a Mexican wife in Navasota.” Ozan grinned. “Dry as an old boot, probably, but I imagine she bleeds like any other woman.”

  “Make some calls. Before we get back in th
e chopper.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  CHAPTER 67

  I’M SITTING IN my Audi outside the Kuntry Kafé, an old-time diner not far from the music store where Henry and I met Kirk Boisseau after he discovered the bones in the Jericho Hole. Three minutes ago, Randall Regan walked inside alone to eat lunch. As I got up to follow him, I saw through the window that he’d sat down with an attractive woman thirty years his junior, a woman most definitely not his wife. I know from Caitlin’s research that Katy Royal Regan is fifty-nine. The girl laughing with Randall inside is barely thirty. His mistress? A casual conquest? Or an innocent flirtation? The diner is nearly full, yet Regan obviously has no qualms about eating with an attractive young lady, even though he’s married to Brody Royal’s daughter.

  For a few seconds I consider waiting for a better opportunity to confront him. But the sooner I rattle the son of a bitch, the sooner he and Brody are liable to say something incriminating on the telephone (or via e-mail or text). After a brief argument with myself, I put my .357 in the glove compartment, lock my car, and walk into the Kuntry Kafé, my entry announced by Christmas bells hanging from the door.

  Several people recognize me, and wave, but I walk straight to Regan’s table and sit in one of the two empty chairs. Regan gives me a mildly curious look, but the young woman appears shaken. She looks anxiously at Randall, but he seems content to wait and see what I intend to do.

  “I know you,” she says, peering closer at me. “You’re the . . . the mayor of Natchez.”

  I give her a politician’s smile. “That’s right. And everybody else in here is figuring out the same thing about now. They’re all staring at us, and trying to figure out who you are, and why you’re eating with Randall here.”

  She looks around at the watchful crowd, then back at Regan, who tilts his head toward the door. Blushing red, she grabs her purse and bolts without a word. Randall chuckles, then gives the crowd a hard look, one face at a time, and they go back to their meals.

  Pithy Nolan described him as Black Irish, and as usual, she was right. Regan’s eyes are dark and fey, his nose an off-center testament to the risks of boxing (or street fighting), and his curly black hair lined with silver. Rangy and rawboned, he looks like he’s done enough manual labor to make him harder than most athletes ever get. If a weight lifter challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest, he’d probably snap the man’s wrist just for spite.

  Since Regan shows no inclination to question my sudden appearance, I simply start talking. After all, my purpose is to rattle the man into panicking, not to have a conversation with him. I speak just below conversational volume, softly enough that the people at the nearest tables can’t hear exactly what I’m saying, but not whispering, either. I start out by describing the murder of the two Royal Insurance employees at the hunting camp in South Louisiana, using every vivid detail Glenn Morehouse provided to Henry. Then I give Regan a devastatingly accurate summary of Brody Royal’s involvement in the murders of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, Jimmy Revels, Luther Davis, and Leland Robb. To my surprise, the man doesn’t say a word during my monologue. Nor does he get up and walk away.

  I’ve had conversations like this before, usually during interrogations of hardened criminals. They’d sit and smoke, or pick their noses, or just give me what they thought was a thousand-yard stare. Eventually most of them broke down, once I found the right psychological lever. But Randall Regan is different. He doesn’t try to intimidate me like most hardasses would. He tucks into his country-fried steak as though I’m some traveling salesman who happened to sit down in the last available seat, and he’s content to endure my patter, like a plowing farmer must endure the rain.

  Despite his apparent nonchalance, the one or two times he does meet my gaze, I realize he’s got some of the coldest eyes I’ve ever come across. Recalling Morehouse’s tale of this man who forced one woman to kill her coworker, then raped her and ordered her death, I lose track of my words for a second. Into this gap rushes an image of my father and Walt Garrity running for their lives from men like Randall Regan. Banishing that nightmare, I push on, exercising my practiced prosecutor’s gift for detail. When I finally stop talking, Regan wipes his mouth with his napkin, takes out his wallet, leaves a ten-dollar bill on the table, then tosses his head once and walks out the front door.

  I’ve seen that casual toss of the head countless times in my life, usually under friendly circumstances. It generally means “Be seein’ you.” Today it means the same thing, but the context isn’t friendly at all.

  As Regan’s V-shaped back disappears through the door, the obvious reality finally breaks through the daze that Walker’s news knocked me into: Regan assumed I was wearing a wire. That’s why he didn’t speak to me. If I had been wearing one, anyone listening to the recording would have concluded that I’d sat in the diner and talked to myself for ten minutes. Still, I reflect, that doesn’t mean my plan didn’t work.

  “Randy left already?” asks the waitress, startling me.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, dern. He usually orders dessert. I’ve got it right here.”

  She lowers a saucer with a slice of chocolate pie on it. “You want it instead?”

  “No, thank you.”

  As she walks away, I go to the restroom to get some privacy. I don’t fancy walking out into the parking lot until I know Regan is gone. Once inside, I sit on the edge of the sink and call John Kaiser’s cell phone. He answers immediately.

  “Get ready,” I tell him. “I think the music’s about to start.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Poked a stick in the rattlesnake’s hole.”

  Kaiser is quiet for too long. “You haven’t heard, have you?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Penn, there’s no good way to tell you this. A few minutes ago the Louisiana State Police sent a flash APB across five states for Thomas Jefferson Cage, M.D., and Walter Roark Garrity, a retired Texas Ranger. They’re wanted in connection with the murder of Trooper Darrell Deke Dunn, who was shot and killed last night near the borrow pits in rural Concordia Parish.”

  As I sit dumbstruck on the sink, my head roars as though I’m standing in the middle of a highway. I feel like someone just told me that a friend of mine ran over a child in the street and fled the scene. Life will never be the same.

  “The bulletin says both fugitives are known to be proficient with firearms and should be considered armed and dangerous. Penn? Are you there?”

  “Yeah,” I manage to grunt. “What else can you tell me?”

  “Forrest Knox visited the crime scene in a helicopter a little while ago. He issued the APB himself, and there’s not a chance in hell of getting it recalled. I’m sorry. I know this is tough, on top of everything else.”

  “John, what the hell is going on? There’s no way my dad killed a cop.”

  “What about Garrity?”

  The time it takes me to ponder this possibility tells Kaiser all he needs to know.

  “John, it doesn’t matter if they did it or not. When an alert goes out for a cop killer, it’s open season. Every cop within five hundred square miles will be looking to shoot them on sight.”

  “I know. The only good news is that your father seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, right along with Captain Garrity. My advice is, put on your thinking cap and try to figure where he’d go to ground with his life on the line. Nobody knows him better than you, right?”

  I shake my head, not sure of this at all.

  “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” Kaiser promises. “And I’ll be monitoring Royal’s and Regan’s communications for you.”

  I almost laugh at this. “Like it matters at this point? After what you told me, who killed Viola Turner rates about a two on a one-to-ten scale. At this point I’d be happy to have Dad on trial for murder. At least he’d stand a decent chance of surviving.”

  “You work on finding him, Penn. I’ll work on a way to take him into federa
l custody.”

  My heart leaps. “Will you really?”

  “I don’t think Dr. Cage will survive an encounter with Forrest Knox’s troops, even if he gives himself up with his hands over his head.”

  “Thank you, John.”

  “Keep your head high, man. I know who the good guys are.”

  As I press END, my eyes well with hot tears, and my throat spasms shut. Never have I felt so angry or impotent or cut off from my family. Two minutes ago, I was trying to save my father by solving a murder mystery. Now I’ll be lucky if I can keep him alive long enough to go to prison.

  My bladder, which felt like stone as I talked to Kaiser, suddenly ambushes me with a desperate need to pee. Stepping up to the urinal on the wall, I see a piece of duct tape stretched across it. A handwritten sign reads: BROKEN! USE THE STALL!

  Pushing open the stall door, I unzip and stand over the commode, but despite my urgency, nothing comes. My heart is pounding, and sweat has broken out on my face and neck. Did the news of the APB cause this? Or did it begin during my confrontation with Royal’s son-in-law? Though Regan didn’t say one word throughout, he made it clear that a state of war now exists between us. Just as my urine starts to flow, the restroom door opens.

  “It’s a one-holer today!” I call. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  “No problem,” says an amicable voice.

  While I strain to empty my bladder, the stall door crashes against my back, knocking me into the wall and spraying piss all over me. An arm like an iron bar locks around my neck and bends my spine back over what must be a knee, pulling me into an agonizing bow. A blast of air bursts from my diaphragm, but the choke hold traps it in my throat. I can neither speak nor breathe. While I try in vain to free myself, a big hand gropes me from armpits to ankles, not missing any place where I could conceal a weapon or a wire.

  My vision’s going black. The hold loosens slightly. When the voice speaks again, it’s a savage rasp in my right ear, the mouth so close I feel its heat and moisture.

  “You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, you’ve got a lot to learn, Mayor. You think you saw some shit over in Houston? Well, you didn’t. That’s bush league over there, and you’re about to find it out.”