Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  With shaking hands, she took out her phone and speed-dialed John Kaiser. The FBI agent answered after two rings. Caitlin spat out what facts she could. Her words sounded garbled to her own ears, but Kaiser seemed to understand them perfectly. He was parking his car behind the hospital, having returned to question Henry, and said he would be outside Henry’s door in forty seconds. Then he said something that chilled Caitlin to the marrow: “If anyone tries to enter that room before you hear my voice, pull the trigger and keep pulling it until your gun is empty. Door or window, you take them down.”

  The deputy had stopped pounding on the door. Caitlin glanced fearfully at the shattered window, then looked down at Henry, whose eyes still had life in them—or seemed to. She wanted to cradle his head, but she worried she might kill him by doing that. Very lightly, she pressed one fingertip beneath his jaw and felt for a carotid pulse. There! He was alive.

  Caitlin aimed her pistol at the window and tried not to look at Sherry’s body lying motionless on the floor. Even a child could have seen she was beyond help. “Please hurry,” she whispered, picturing John Kaiser’s confident eyes and military bearing. “Please, please, please …”

  At last a Klaxon alarm began to ring.

  CHAPTER 78

  TO SPARE KIRK BOISSEAU conflict with his girlfriend, who had complained bitterly about him diving the Jericho Hole yesterday, I e-mailed him from the Examiner and asked him to meet me at a corner house, two down from his, as soon as he could manage it. Kirk spends most of his off hours on the Web, networking with other kayakers and ex-marines, so I felt sure that he’d see my mail quickly. In the end, I had to sit outside his place for forty-five minutes before he texted me that he’d be out soon. Another ten passed before he actually appeared in my passenger window.

  “Back already?” he asks with a grin, dropping into the seat beside me. “I must have done good yesterday.”

  “You got your name in the paper. Did you mind that?”

  “Not me, man. Nancy wasn’t too happy about it, but hey. My life, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Sorry I took so long. Domestic issues.” He taps my dashboard with irrepressible energy. “So, what’s up now? More bones to salvage?”

  I shake my head and let him see that tonight’s errand is far more serious. “I need to question somebody, Kirk. And he’s not going to like it.”

  He nods slowly. “Like a field interrogation?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Tough guy?”

  “Not exactly. He’s probably over eighty.”

  “What?”

  “But he might have some people with him that I wouldn’t want to have to handle on my own.”

  “I get you. Do I know him?”

  “Brody Royal.”

  Kirk whistles long and low. “Whoa, brah. Hey, we just heard his daughter was in the hospital.”

  “That’s right.”

  The marine’s eyes widen. “Don’t tell me you had something to do with that.”

  “No comment.”

  He makes a sound I cannot decipher. “Well … I’ll help you, but there’s one little problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Royal owns the Royal Cotton Bank, and I’ve got an outstanding note there on my dozer. He sees me working as muscle for you, he’s liable to call my note tomorrow.”

  “How much is left on the note?”

  “About twenty grand.”

  Less than I figured. “Tell you what. If Royal calls the note, I’ll pay the balance, and you can pay me if and when you get the money.”

  The silence lasts a few seconds. “This is some serious shit, huh.”

  “Yep. That’s the second part of this conversation. Brody’s son-in-law is a real bastard. A killer, Kirk. He attacked me in a restaurant at lunch, and Caitlin had to shoot at him earlier tonight to keep him off her.”

  “And you need me to keep him in line?”

  “Discreet backup, let’s say. But things could get violent fast.”

  He shrugs, then rolls his enormous shoulders with fluid grace. “Sounds better than watching Sex and the freakin’ City with Nancy.”

  “This isn’t diving the Jericho Hole. Brody Royal’s tied in with the Double Eagles and some corrupt state cops in Louisiana. There’s drugs involved, and God knows what. They’ve killed a lot of people.”

  “You’re shitting me. I thought Royal was like a model citizen.”

  “As far from that as you can imagine. That guy whose bones you brought up yesterday? Him and his buddy Jimmy Revels were both in the service. One army, the other navy. Before Brody’s thugs killed them, they sliced off their service tattoos and tanned them as trophies.”

  Kirk’s left fist flexes and unflexes on the console of my Audi. “Brody Royal was behind that?”

  “Yep. I’ll tell you something else. Most of the Double Eagles were bastards, but at least they served their country. Brody Royal had mob connections who fixed it so he could stay home during the war and rake in black market money while everybody else risked their ass overseas.”

  “I’m starting to look forward to this.” Boisseau sniffs and gives me a nonchalant look. “Where’s this friendly conversation likely to take place?”

  “Probably St. Catherine’s Hospital. But if not, then some other semi-public place. I don’t think we should go to Royal’s place on Lake Concordia.”

  “Does it have to be tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  Kirk rubs his chin. “Does this have to do with your dad’s trouble?”

  “Yes. These guys want Dad shot as a fugitive. I’ve got to convince them to cancel an APB.”

  “I got you. Only one question, Bwana. Will they be armed or not?”

  “Probably so.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want you with me as a stabilizing presence. Ideally, nobody will lose his cool. But like I said, Randall Regan could get crazy and go for us.”

  Kirk shrugs. “I got no problem with self-defense. If fact, I’m kind of—”

  The ring of my cell phone stops him in midsentence. I start to ignore it, but then I check the LCD and see it’s Caitlin. I hit the button to answer.

  “Hey. Can I call you back?”

  “Penn, Henry’s been shot.”

  The blood drains from my head so fast that I feel dizzy, even though I’m sitting. “Shot dead?”

  Kirk tenses beside me.

  “No. The bullet grazed his head, and then I yanked his bed clear.”

  “You were there? I thought you were at the paper!”

  “I needed to check something with Henry. Penn, Sherry Harden’s dead.” Caitlin sounds near to hyperventilating. “They shot her through the window. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Are you safe now?”

  “Yeah. Kaiser has FBI agents here, and Sheriff Dennis is on the way. Penn … what about the recording? Katy must have known her father was going to try to kill Henry. Do I tell Kaiser about it?”

  My stomach knots. “Ahhh … not yet. Stay close to Sheriff Dennis and away from the windows. I’m on my way.”

  “What happened?” Kirk asks as I hit END.

  “A sniper just shot Henry Sexton through his hospital window. They only grazed him, but they killed his girlfriend.”

  Kirk holds up his hands like weapons at the ready. “This is wild, man. Tell me what to do. Is our thing still on?”

  “Yes. I want you to track down Royal for me. As soon as I can get loose from this murder scene, I’ll come to you.”

  Kirk grips my hand with startling strength, then springs out of the Audi, closes the door, and leans back through the window. “Do what you gotta do, man. I’ll stay on these guys till you’re ready to brace them. And if it turns out they shot Henry Sexton … I might just take it out of their asses myself.”

  CHAPTER 79

  SONNY THORNFIELD THOUGHT he’d been afraid during the afternoon, but that had been nothing compared to now. This was like the war a
ll over again. The plan that put a bullet into Henry Sexton’s brain had been pure genius; nobody would argue that. It was the aftermath that had Sonny worried. He and Snake were flying five thousand feet over the Atchafalaya Swamp in a darkened Cessna Caravan with two half-drunk boys in the backseats: Jake Whitten and Charley Wise, the two surviving punks who’d bungled Brody Royal’s first hit on Sexton. Sonny had been told that his job was to help Snake kill the boys and dump them in the swamp, but he feared that the real purpose of this mission was to leave him in the same dark hole.

  Until he’d heard about this flight, Sonny had felt pretty sure that Forrest still trusted him, despite his being kidnapped by Tom Cage and that Ranger bastard. But then—on Forrest’s orders—Snake had carried him to Claude Devereux’s office to videotape a statement about what happened, which was then notarized and duplicated on the spot. With that video statement in Devereux’s safe, Forrest could still order Sonny’s death whenever he liked. Sonny looked out at the stars and thought about the successful hit on Sexton. Surely Forrest would give him partial credit for that?

  Forty minutes ago, he and Snake had dropped out of the clouds over an empty Concordia Parish cotton field, then descended toward a line of chemical glow sticks. Snake had set the floatplane down on a narrow stretch of water owned by a friend of Billy Knox, then taxied to a stop near the shore, where a Chevrolet parked at water’s edge switched on its headlights. Charley and Jake had brought this car to meet the plane, with Snake’s raccoon trap in the trunk.

  Snake took the trap out of the trunk, shot the terrified coon, then climbed into the Chevy and headed for Mercy Hospital. Twenty minutes later, he dumped the dead coon beneath Henry’s window, then set up his rifle on a spot he’d marked that morning with a tent stake, just thirty yards from the window. Using a modified photographic tripod as a bench rest (just as he had when practicing the shot through the windows of an abandoned house near Jonesville), he executed Henry Sexton with a perfect head shot, then took out his girlfriend, just in case she’d seen something.

  Sixty seconds after killing the reporter, Snake was back in the Chevy and headed for the Cessna, where Sonny and the boys waited. Slick as snot on a doorknob. No flight plan, no airport, not even a dirt strip. Just an airplane floating on a patch of water in some empty fields. Charley and Jake had no idea they were going to take the return flight to Toledo Bend, but they didn’t argue much, especially after Snake pulled his pistol. They left their keys in the Chevy as instructed, then handed over their cell phones to Snake and climbed into the rear of the plane.

  Sixty seconds after the Cessna lifted off, a four-wheeled ATV carrying two former Double Eagles emerged from the trees. It stopped beside the Chevy long enough for one man to dismount and get behind the wheel. After driving out to the highway, he wouldn’t stop until he reached Memphis, Tennessee, where he’d dump the Chevy in an abandoned salvage yard, then ride the bus back to Natchez. After the four-wheeler disappeared, it was as though none of the vehicles had ever been there.

  But they had, Sonny reflected. And now Henry Sexton is dead.

  Snake had ordered him to keep the boys calm while he flew them toward their deaths. That was easier said than done. You could smell the fear coming through the boys’ skins, a sour sweat that permeated the Caravan’s cabin. But they’d tried to put on brave faces and pretend this was all part of some grand plan to protect them, rather than the opposite. Sonny knew exactly how they felt.

  Twenty minutes into the flight, he’d given each of them a bottle of Budweiser laced with Versed, a short-acting benzodiazepine often given to children to sedate them for medical procedures. Sonny and Snake were drinking Schaefer (supposedly to be sure they got the nondoctored beers, but Sonny kept thinking his tasted funny, and tried to drink as little as possible). Long before the plane reached the black glassy sheet of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the two boys fell unconscious. The longer Sonny remained conscious, the better he began to feel.

  He tensed again when Snake checked his GPS unit, then began descending rapidly toward the swamp. There was a big stretch of open water about twenty-five miles east of Lafayette, Louisiana. A mile north of Des Glaise, it ran north-to-south and was not accessible by road. True Cajun country. Snake had a lot of years under his belt flying as a crop duster, skimming beneath power lines and dodging trees. But it took all the guts and skill he had to set the Caravan down in that swamp without lights.

  When the plane finally settled heavily into the water, Sonny climbed down onto a rocking pontoon and shone a spotlight in front of the plane while Snake taxied toward a wall of cypresses in the distance. It took them four minutes to reach the trees. Once there, Snake steered the plane into a long channel and taxied for another minute. Then he cut the engine.

  Sonny’s heart banged like an antique pump in his chest. There was so much adrenaline flushing through him that he felt like he’d been doing coke for two hours. He quickly realized that he couldn’t manhandle the boys out of the plane on his own. After bitching for most of a minute, Snake got out of his seat and helped Sonny muscle the boys through the door and down into the water. Neither boy stirred when they were dropped in, though the water had to be freezing.

  When Sonny turned to get back into the plane, Snake told him they couldn’t chance either kid waking up in time to swim to shore or climb into a cypress and save himself. He told Sonny to hold each kid’s head under the water for at least three minutes. It wasn’t drowning the boys that freaked Sonny out—though he’d never cared for killing—it was turning his back on Snake to do it. But in the end he didn’t have a choice. Snake had the only gun.

  One by one, Sonny held the boys’ heads under the water for the allotted time. Jake Whitten twitched after about a minute under the surface, but then he stopped, and Sonny tried not to think about his freezing hands or Snake’s pistol as he waited for Snake to call time. The colder he got, the easier it was to imagine Snake saying, “Sorry, Sonny boy, Forrest’s orders.”

  But Snake never said that.

  After catching his breath on the pontoon, Sonny climbed back into the Cessna and collapsed into his seat while Snake taxied back to open water. Forty seconds later, they were airborne again, climbing for the clouds. Snake remarked that two missions had just been accomplished with a minimum of conversation, and that mostly curses. That was how vets worked in combat zones, he said with nostalgia, and Sonny grunted in agreement. But inside, Sonny was still a wreck.

  “Forrest may be slow to pull the trigger,” Snake said, “but once he makes up his mind, he don’t take chances or prisoners. Ask them jellylegs we left back there in the swamp.” Snake’s harsh laughter bounced off the windscreen and hurt Sonny’s ears. “Ask Henry Sexton,” he added.

  Shivering in his seat, Sonny gave the obligatory laugh.

  I’ve gotta calm down, he thought. Snake’s gonna see I’ve got the yips. And if he does, he’ll start to worry. And if Snake starts worrying, Forrest will, too. And I won’t live to see my grandson again.

  “A perfect head shot, you said?” Sonny asked with feigned awe.

  “Punched right through his skull. Got his girlfriend in the eye. Wish you coulda seen it, Son. She dropped like a sack of meal.”

  “Damn,” Sonny said, trying to hold down the contents of his stomach. “I wish I could have, boy.”

  CHAPTER 80

  BY THE TIME I penetrated Sheriff Dennis’s outer perimeter and started looking for Caitlin, John Kaiser and a couple of his agents were on the scene and working to restore calm at the hospital. Nevertheless, I found weeping nurses, a panicked administrator, and rattled deputies milling through the halls. Just as I saw Caitlin down a corridor, Walker Dennis appeared beside me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into an empty hospital room.

  “You and I need to talk,” he said in an urgent tone, “before we see anybody else.”

  “What is it, Walker?”

  “A little while ago you asked me to keep that ‘Mr. Brown’ call about Brody Royal to myself. Is that still
how you want to play it? With the FBI, I mean? Because in light of what’s happened, I’m thinking anything could be important, no matter how crazy it might sound.”

  All I can think about is the copied audio recording of Katy Royal in my back pocket—something I don’t want John Kaiser to know about until my father has reached some safe place. “Walker, this may not make much sense to you, but I’d still prefer to keep that call between the two of us.”

  His eyes narrow. “Are you onto something about Brody? Even without the wiretaps?”

  I nod. “Please don’t ask me what it is now. I’ll tell you as soon as I can. I’m trying to save my father’s life, or I wouldn’t ask this of you. Can you live with that?”

  Sheriff Dennis looks into my eyes for several seconds, then sighs. “I guess I can. But if you think Brody ordered Henry shot tonight, I wish you’d tell me now.”

  “I don’t know, Walker. If I had to lay money on it, I’d say the Knoxes are behind this. That’s who Henry was stirring up the most. You don’t happen to know where Brody is now, do you?”

  “I just checked on that, as a matter of fact. He and his family are over at St. Catherine’s Hospital. His daughter’s in a coma in their ICU.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  Walker’s eyes radiate suspicion from beneath his hat brim. “You don’t happen to know how she got that way, do you?”

  “I’ll tell you that story later, too.”

  The sheriff shakes his head like he’s not looking forward to hearing the answer. “All right. We’d better go see if Kaiser’s turned up anything. He used to be a big dog in the Investigative Support Unit, you know. And I’m not going to pretend I don’t need the help.”

  When Sheriff Dennis and I reach the end of the corridor, we find John Kaiser questioning Caitlin and the deputy who was guarding the door during the shooting. Jordan Glass stands a discreet distance away. Caitlin looks like she’s barely holding herself together. Unlike Kaiser’s wife, she hasn’t had much direct exposure to violence. When Kaiser asks the deputy a question, I hug Caitlin tight, then whisper into the shell of her ear: “Don’t say anything about Katy’s tape. Okay?”