Текст книги "The Bone Tree"
Автор книги: Greg Iles
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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 58 страниц)
CHAPTER 49
THE TRIP FROM Natchez to the Lusahatcha Swamp took only an hour, yet it had already proved an adventure, not only for Caitlin, but also for Jordan Glass. John Kaiser had insisted on having an FBI agent drive his wife to the New Orleans airport. Jordan had resisted so strongly that they’d fought over it, and ultimately Kaiser had agreed to let her go on her own. But soon after leaving her hotel that morning, Jordan had noticed an FBI tail behind her, with two agents in the car. At that point she’d called Caitlin and asked for an address that had a back driveway out. After a couple of minutes’ thought, Caitlin told her about an antebellum home that butted up against a 1950s-era neighborhood. Armed with this information, Jordan had driven into the place as though for a visit, pulled around the mansion as if to park, then zipped down a narrow lane that cut through to the residential neighborhood. The agents tailing her didn’t figure out her scheme until after Jordan texted her husband that if she was capable of flying to Cuba and meeting the Castro brothers on her own, she could damn well drive herself to the airport. After picking up Caitlin from a street corner two blocks away from the Examiner, Jordan had started south on Highway 61 at the speed limit, confident that her tail was frantically driving south ahead of her, trying to “catch up” to its quarry.
Caitlin spent the first twenty-five miles giving Jordan a detailed history of the Bone Tree, describing the part it had played in the history of the Double Eagle group and recounting Henry’s abortive attempts to find it. Jordan had smiled upon learning that Caitlin had kept the secret of poacher Toby Rambin to herself. When Caitlin paused her narrative, Jordan almost tentatively asked exactly what she hoped to find at the Bone Tree. By this time they were far enough from Natchez that Caitlin decided to trust her new friend with the crown jewels.
“It’s not just the bones anymore,” she said. “Not just the civil rights cold cases. I mean, that’s a huge part of it, absolutely. But after Henry died, his mother brought me some other material she found. And some of that had to do with what John and Dwight are working on.”
“You mean the Kennedy assassination?”
Caitlin nodded.
“Can you tell me about it?”
For the next five miles, they traded the information they’d gleaned from their respective sources, which merged to form a compelling scenario in which Carlos Marcello had hired Frank Knox to serve as a primary or backup shooter in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy died.
“But what does that have to do with the Bone Tree?” Jordan asked.
“Glenn Morehouse told Henry that Frank Knox didn’t trust Marcello. Knox supposedly kept some souvenir from Dallas, a document or trophy of some kind, and that totally fits with the Knoxes’ psychology. This artifact was something Frank must have felt he could use against Marcello if he ever needed to, so it protected him.”
“Do you have any idea what it was?”
“Snake Knox told Morehouse that it was a letter or document of some kind. But the crazy part is . . . it was in Russian.”
Jordan’s eyes went wide. “Russian!”
Caitlin nodded, her pulse picking up. “Last night I read everything I could find about the assassination, and Russia can only come into it two ways. First, if Russia or the KGB played some part in the killing. But I totally discount that as fantasy. The second way is through Oswald.”
Jordan simply waited for her to continue.
“Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Russia for two and a half years after he defected. He’d taught himself the language, and at least some letters that he wrote—like those to his Russian wife—he wrote in Russian. You can see them on the Internet.”
Jordan remained silent, processing what she’d heard. “But how could a letter or document stay hidden in a tree for forty years?”
Caitlin shrugged. “No idea. The best I can come up with is something like a mason jar.”
“No. Water always finds a way in. I once hid some pot in a mason jar and buried it. One month later, the jar was half full of water.”
“Well . . . within a few hours, we may know the answer. I wanted you to know that we’re not just out here looking for Jimmy Revels’s bones, as awesome as it would be to find them. We may actually find the key that Dwight spent half his life searching for. We might even find proof that Frank Knox killed John Kennedy.”
Jordan drove in silence for several seconds. Then she said, “I know that cost you. You don’t really know me well.” Glass looked to her right. “I won’t tell John about it. I promise you that.”
Caitlin felt a rush of gratitude and relief. “Thank you.”
Soon after this, they left Highway 61. Following a map Caitlin had printed from Google Earth, they turned west toward the Mississippi River on MS 24, a narrow asphalt lane barely wide enough for two cars. Then they turned south on something called Lusawatta Road, which turned out to be a neglected gravel lane worn down to red clay. After leaving that, they found themselves on a dirt track hemmed in by trees and undergrowth. They still had not seen water, but Caitlin sensed the swamp was near. Ever since leaving Highway 61, they’d been going downhill, and the oak, elm, and pecan trees had gradually given way to cottonwood and cypress. Caitlin had rarely experienced a more startling transformation of landscape than she had during the last few miles.
Despite the winter month, many of the trees in this area were still choked with kudzu and other undergrowth, and now and then a rusted truck or tractor would peek out of the foliage like some sentient observer. The most surreal moment of their journey had come when ten– or eleven-foot wire fences had risen out of the grass on both sides of the road, giving them the feeling they were traveling through a prison compound. Soon after, they’d begun to spy strange animals through the wire. Caitlin had seen moose, antelope, buffalo, and other creatures that looked only vaguely familiar. With her African work experience, Jordan had recognized several as oryx, springbok, gemsbok, and impala, but other species left even her stumped. Caitlin was reminded of a story she’d read as a child—Jules Verne, perhaps—in which the farther the heroes traveled upstream on a certain river, the deeper back in time they progressed. This trip felt exactly like that.
At least it had until Walt called her. When Caitlin heard that Tom had probably been kidnapped, a black dread had begun to ooze from someplace within her. What she felt was guilt—guilt that she’d known where Tom was but had kept it to herself, and away from Penn. Last night, after they’d made love at Edelweiss, Penn had sensed that she was holding something back, and she’d denied it. If Tom died now, and Penn discovered that she might have prevented it . . . he would never forgive her.
She might never forgive herself.
“Look!” Jordan cried, pointing out the windshield. She hit the brakes and moved slowly into a dirt turnaround. Forty feet from the car, greenish-black water lay across the ground, and farther on, it led back into a forest of cypress knees and overhanging branches.
They had found the swamp.
Caitlin had Jordan drive almost to the water’s edge and park. This was the place Toby Rambin had described to her. A rusted old school bus that had once been yellow protruded from the trees to her right. Dying kudzu vines lay across the bus like strangling ropes. Caitlin reached into her bag and pulled out the red bandanna that Rambin had requested she wear.
“Where’s our poacher?” Jordan asked, climbing out of the car.
Caitlin shrugged and tied the bandanna around her neck. Then she got out, her mind still on Walt’s terrible revelation. The sulfurous stink of the swamp struck her with surprising force, filling her nose and lungs. She hadn’t expected that noxious fume in the chilly weather, but then, she had no experience of swamps. Jordan, on the other hand, was scanning the clearing like a professional surveyor.
“He was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago,” Caitlin said.
“I’ve been in this situation a hundred times,” Jordan said. “I set up a guide to take me into a war zone, and he shows up four hours late, if at all.”
“Let’s hope this isn’t a war zone,” Caitlin said, half under her breath.
Jordan peered into the shadows under the distant trees. “After all you told me about the Bone Tree, this feels like some kind of elephant graveyard thing.”
“After what we saw on the way in, an elephant wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Wait.” Jordan cocked her head and held up her hand. “Do you hear that?”
Caitlin listened hard, but she heard only birds and frogs. “What is it?”
“Motorcycle. Was Rambin coming on a motorcycle?”
“I don’t see how. He’s supposed to bring a boat.”
Jordan reached into the car and brought out a 9 mm pistol.
Caitlin could hear the motorcycle now. It was definitely coming toward them, probably on the same road they’d traveled. The whining engine rose and fell like a chain saw cutting up a fallen tree, but soon the whine became constant and steadily ascended the scale. Then suddenly the cycle flashed out of the trees and skidded to a stop beside their vehicle.
The rider wore a silver helmet, but he took it off immediately, revealing the face of a black boy who looked no older than fifteen. He jumped when he saw Jordan’s pistol, but then he settled down, as though accustomed to being around handguns.
“Which one of you’s Masters?” he asked, his eyes curious.
“I am,” Caitlin said, stepping up to him. “How do you know my name?”
“Toby sent me.”
Caitlin cut her eyes at Jordan. “Toby who?”
“Toby Rambin. Old Toby.”
“Where’s Toby himself?” Caitlin asked.
“He had to leave town.” The boy smiled. “In a hurry.”
Jordan looked at Caitlin as if to say, Didn’t I tell you?
“What are you doing here, then?” Caitlin asked.
The boy surveyed her from head to toe without shame. He seemed to like what he saw. “Toby told me I should bring you something.”
Jordan walked up to the boy. “Hand it over, then.”
The boy shook his head, his eyes on her pistol. “Hold up, now. Toby said you gotta pay first.”
“How much?” Caitlin asked.
“Toby say a thousand.”
“Shit,” Jordan scoffed. “In your dreams. What are you selling?”
“Map,” said the boy. “Toby drawed you a map. He say what you lookin’ for be marked with an X. All you need is a boat to find it.”
Caitlin and Jordan shared a look.
“I was going to pay him four times that to guide me to the tree,” Caitlin admitted. “But this is way short of that.”
“A thousand bucks for a hand-drawn map?” Jordan asked.
The boy shrugged. “That’s what Toby said. He said if you don’t pay, I should ride back to town and forget about all of it.”
Caitlin took the fat bank envelope from her back pocket and stared at it. Inside were forty hundred-dollar bills. The money meant nothing to her.
“Wait,” Jordan said. “You have no way of knowing whether the map is real, even if he gives you one.”
“What choice do I have?”
“That’s right,” the boy said. “You gots to pay to play, right?”
“Not always,” said a much deeper voice from somewhere out of sight.
Jordan brought up her pistol with lightning speed, but neither she nor Caitlin saw a potential target. The boy’s eyes had gone saucer wide, and he started to bolt, but the voice stopped him where he stood.
“Dontae Edwards, this is Deputy Carl Sims. If you try to run on that bike, I’ll call your mama and have you in jail by noon. Now get off that thing and get the map out of your jacket, if there is one. And you put down that weapon, ma’am.”
Caitlin nodded with excitement. “Carl’s a friend! A good friend. I called him last night to check out Toby. I forgot to tell you.”
Jordan reluctantly laid the pistol on the car’s front seat.
“Get off the bike, Dontae!” shouted the voice.
The boy shook his head, then got off the motorcycle and set its kickstand.
Caitlin turned toward the sound of rustling undergrowth and saw a handsome young black man in a brown uniform step from behind the overgrown school bus. He looked about twenty-five, and he grinned and waved at them to reassure them he was no threat.
“Carl!” she cried, running forward. “What are you doing here?”
Sims smiled and hugged her. “Did you really think I’d let you meet some damned poacher down here without checking to be sure you were okay?”
A frightening thought hit Caitlin. “You didn’t call Penn, did you?”
“No, though I probably should have. I did just like you asked and quietly checked out Toby Rambin. But Toby’s not exactly a sterling character. I figured I’d better make sure this little deal went through as planned. And it obviously didn’t.”
Jordan offered her hand to Carl, who shook it with a smile.
“This is Jordan Glass,” Caitlin said. “She’s a big-time photographer.”
Carl’s smile spread into a grin. “Oh, I know the name. Proud to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand again. “You were in Fallujah for a week when I was there.”
“Army?” Jordan asked.
“Marine sniper.”
Jordan smiled and stood easy. “How about we take a look at this alleged map? I’m starting to feel like I’m stuck in Treasure Island.”
Carl held out his hand, and Dontae Edwards finally pulled a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. He handed it to Carl, who unfolded it. The map looked as if it had been drawn on a paper towel taken from a dispenser in a public restroom.
“Looks real to me,” Carl said, studying curving lines that made Caitlin think of a child drawing with a crayon. “This area here looks like the Valhalla hunting camp, and over here is the federal wildlife refuge. Toby’s got one of the game fences marked here, about in the middle. And where this X is, is a deep stand of cypress. It’s one of the thickest parts of the swamp and covered with water most all year round.”
Caitlin nodded excitedly. “That sounds like what we’re looking for.”
Carl gave her a penetrating look. “I did what we talked about last night, but I didn’t learn much. Nothing that would confirm a location.”
On the phone last night, Carl had offered to have his father, a local pastor, discreetly question some members of his Athens Point congregation about the Bone Tree. Since the church was 100 percent African-American, Caitlin had felt it was worth the risk to gain good information. But apparently Reverend Sims had learned little.
Jordan poked her thumb at Dontae Edwards, who was paying close attention to their conversation.
“Scoot!” Carl ordered. “And forget you ever saw this map, or you’ll be hauling ass out of town like Toby did. Only you haven’t got the money to do it.”
The boy jumped back on the motorcycle and kick-started it, but Caitlin yelled “Wait!” before he pulled on his helmet. As he watched impatiently, she took five one-hundred-dollar bills from the envelope and handed them over. A grin spread across the boy’s face. He waited a half second, then snatched the bills, stuffed them into his jacket, and tore out of the clearing with a scream of his engine.
“So what now?” Jordan asked. “We don’t have a boat.”
Carl smiled, his white teeth gleaming in his coffee-colored face. “I think I can probably do something about that.”
“Such as?”
“My man Danny McDavitt is doing a check-ride in the LCSO chopper this morning. He could pick us up and have a look for Toby’s X for you.”
Caitlin blinked in disbelief. Danny McDavitt was a retired air force pilot who flew the helicopter for the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department. She’d met him two months ago, when the pilot had assisted Penn in fighting against the criminals operating the Magnolia Queen casino. McDavitt had gone far beyond the call of duty to try to locate Caitlin after she’d been kidnapped by those men. “Carl, are you serious?” she asked. “Would he help us today?”
“Sure. Just let me call him.”
“You wouldn’t have to tell Major McDavitt anything about what we’re looking for, would you? I trust him, but this is a special case of secrecy. Not even Penn knows I’m here.”
Carl nodded thoughtfully. “I can play it off like I don’t know myself.”
“Can you trust the major to keep quiet about the search? At least for a few hours?”
The deputy smiled. “Danny’s good people. You know that. He can keep a secret.”
Caitlin was sorely tempted, but the prospect of complications worried her. “But what if we find the Bone Tree?”
“Well . . . at that point it’s going to become a law enforcement matter one way or another, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But I’d like at least an hour there before we call anyone else in. And we’ll have to call the FBI, even if we call your sheriff as well. Would that put your job at risk?”
“That I don’t know. For now, we’ll chalk this flight up to hunting for marijuana fields. If we find that tree . . . maybe Danny and I will scoot and leave you two to report it.”
Caitlin’s pulse raced in anticipation of the hunt, but she also felt conflicted. If Tom’s life was at risk, what was the point of searching the swamp for a tree? On the other hand . . . what could she really do to help find Tom? Walt had already told her she could do nothing. While Carl spoke to Danny, Caitlin tried to call Walt back, but her phone wouldn’t work. When she checked the screen, it said NO SERVICE.
“Danny’s coming,” Carl said, drawing Caitlin’s attention away from her Treo.
“I can’t get a tower,” Caitlin said. “Do you have AT&T or Cellular South?”
Carl grinned and tapped the radio on his collar. “Neither. I’ve got the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department radio net. I used a channel nobody monitors.”
Caitlin’s face fell.
“Sorry,” Carl said. “Reception in this swamp is practically nonexistent. You need to make a call?”
She shrugged. “I don’t feel good about taking off on this little jaunt if I can’t monitor the situation back home. Penn’s father . . .”
The deputy’s smile vanished. “I know. When we get to altitude, your phone will find a tower. Danny can make sure of it.”
Jordan walked over and took Caitlin’s hand. “It’s your call. We can keep going, or you can head back to town and I’ll go on to New Orleans.”
Caitlin looked into the cypress trees and pressed down all guilt and doubt. “Screw it,” she said. “Let’s go.”
FORREST KNOX SAT ON the elevated deck of a five-thousand-square-foot lake house overlooking Lake Concordia, a steaming cup of chicory coffee and a cordless phone on the table before him. Five miles away lay the Concordia Parish courthouse complex, which held the sheriff’s office and the jail, where Penn Cage and Sheriff Walker Dennis planned to interrogate Snake, Sonny, and four other Double Eagles. As soon as the Eagles left Valhalla this morning, Billy had gratefully abandoned his babysitting job and flown himself back to his retreat at Toledo Bend, Texas. Forrest didn’t want to take any chances on someone arresting his cousin. Only after Sheriff Walker Dennis had been removed from his position and the state police had taken over his duties would Forrest tell Billy to return to Mississippi.
Forrest had sent no attorney to the CPSO. He wanted it to look as though the former Double Eagles meant to cooperate fully, right up until the moment Sheriff Dennis was arrested by one of his own deputies. As soon as that was accomplished, Forrest would make contact with Penn Cage and find out whether or not there was a deal to be made. Now that he had the ultimate bargaining tool in his back pocket—in the form of Tom Cage—the son would have no option but to negotiate. Whether such negotiating would result in a deal remained an open question, since Forrest’s real worry wasn’t the mayor, but Cage’s goddamned fiancée.
He owed his knowledge of Mayor Cage’s whereabouts to Sheriff Billy Byrd, who had assigned one of his deputies to follow Kirk Boisseau, the former marine who’d accompanied Penn when he confronted Brody Royal at the hospital on Wednesday night. At 6 A.M. that deputy had followed Boisseau to a house that turned out to be owned by the parents of an old schoolmate of Cage’s. Boisseau and Cage had walked one circuit of the house, then had gone inside for five minutes, after which Boisseau returned home. A half hour later, binocular surveillance had revealed the mayor’s mother as she’d briefly parted the curtains to look outside. Thankfully, rather than storming the house in search of Tom Cage, who he believed was hiding there, Sheriff Byrd had called Forrest about his discovery. He claimed to have done this out of a sense of obligation to a fellow officer who’d had one of his men murdered in the line of duty by Dr. Cage. Nevertheless, it had taken some creative manipulation for Forrest to persuade Byrd that no immediate action should be taken against that house. Forrest, of course, knew that Tom was currently on ice at the Royal Oil field near Monterey, Louisiana. But he couldn’t tell Billy Byrd that. Instead, he’d told the hyped-up sheriff that two plainclothes police officers had checked the Abrams house with infrared technology and determined that it contained only an adult woman and a juvenile female. This, and a promise to keep Byrd updated hourly, had proved sufficient to forestall a SWAT assault.
Forrest looked down at the wrought-iron patio table, where a copy of the Natchez Examiner lay open. While yesterday’s sensational stories had made no mention of him, today’s main article had reported that Colonel Griffith Mackiever was under fire for child pornography allegations and quoted an unnamed “FBI source” who claimed that Mackiever’s second-in-command might be behind those charges. A side article by Caitlin Masters suggested that dirty politics lay at the root of this scandal, and Masters had taken great pains to point out the connections between Forrest and his extended family, nearly all of whom had been members of the Ku Klux Klan, and some even suspected Double Eagles. Forrest had a feeling that Masters’s FBI source was John Kaiser, the same agent who had drained the Jericho Hole. He was starting to think he’d been behind the curve where that particular FBI agent was concerned. He needed a line into Kaiser’s plans, and he had a good idea how to get one.
As his coffee went cold, Forrest began to feel a little anxious. He’d expected the call informing him of Sheriff Dennis’s arrest by seven A.M., and it was ten past now. The deputy in charge of the bust hadn’t checked in since before six. Forrest took out his cell phone and speed-dialed the moron.
“Hunt here,” said a country-ass voice.
“You know who this is?”
“Yes, sir!”
“What’s the holdup?”
“The sheriff’s still in his house, Colonel. He’s usually in his office by now, and already drunk his morning coffee. I don’t know what the holdup is. You want me to just knock on his door with the K-9?” Deputy Hunt asked. “I could tell him we got an anonymous tip?”
Forrest looked at his watch. “No, hell no. Maybe his wife decided to give it up this morning. Give him ten more minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are you parked? Can he see you?”
“I’m down the street in a friend’s SUV. No markings. Sheriff won’t recognize it.”
“And you have backup?”
“Yes, sir. Parker and McGown. They’re out of sight, too.”
“Okay. The questioning’s going to start pretty soon over at the department, so ten minutes is the limit. If he’s not outside by then, bust him right in front of his family.”
Hunt made a noise that sounded like a gulp.
“Are you up for this job, Deputy?”
“Yes, sir. No problem.”
“All right, then. If you see anything suspicious, call me. Otherwise, follow orders. Out.”
Forrest hung up and looked out over the narrow lake. A glittering gold bass boat arrowed along the opposite shore, trailing a silver wake that rolled gently into the cypresses. He sipped his coffee, then held his hand high in greeting.
Across the lake, the fisherman waved back.
