The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  Before I can get out another word, my mother throws her arms around me and hugs me so tightly I can scarcely breathe. “When is Sheriff Dennis carrying out these drug busts?”

  “In about four hours.”

  She draws back, her eyes wide. “We’ve got to get you in the bed. You need to be rested for that.”

  “I am exhausted,” I admit. “But my thoughts are spinning so fast, I’ll probably just lie there until dawn, waiting for the alarm.”

  Without a word Mom goes into the kitchen, fishes loudly through her purse, then returns with a bright yellow pill in the palm of her right hand.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Temazepam. It’s like Valium. I take one every night. Take this now, and I’ll wake you up at five fifteen.”

  “I don’t think I should risk oversleeping.”

  “Take the damn pill, son. Sometimes I take two, if your father has the TV up loud enough, and you outweigh me by nearly a hundred pounds.”

  “You’re not trying to keep me from going with Sheriff Dennis?”

  “No. I think you’re right about knocking the Knox family off balance. That can only help Tom.”

  I take the pill and swallow it with a big gulp of gin.

  My mother pulls me to my feet and ushers me downstairs to one of the guest bedrooms in what I call the basement, though technically it’s the first floor of the chalet. At the threshold, she gives me a hug and says, “I’ll wake you at five fifteen.”

  Then she whisks herself back up the stairs to see to Annie.

  Whether it’s the sleeping pill, the alcohol, or the exhaustion produced by the battle at Brody Royal’s lake house, I can barely stand erect through the ritual of brushing my teeth. By the time I reach the guest room bed, I can’t even pull back the quilt. I simply fall facedown onto it, my mind cycling between total blankness and nightmare images from the smoke-filled hell of Royal’s basement. Behind these pictures drones the voice of John Kaiser, but I can’t make out his words. Through the black boiling smoke I don’t see the burned corpses of Henry and Royal, but rather my father and mother, young and improbably beautiful, sitting in a homey restaurant while a grinning man with stony black eyes hugs them and raves about his red sauce. A fat accordion player steps forward and begins to play, drowning out Kaiser’s voice, and then with a final slap on my father’s back, Carlos Marcello struts back into his kitchen, the big door with the round glass window swinging behind him.

  CHAPTER 17

  BY THE TIME Tom Cage reached Jefferson County, Mississippi, exhaustion, his various illnesses, and his bullet wound had pushed him into a sort of trance. The road in front of the unfamiliar car he was driving wavered in the darkness, his headlight beams an illuminated tube into which startled deer charged with alarming regularity, nearly sending him off the shoulder more than once.

  Tom’s short-term memory had gone haywire; the events of the past hour flickered through his head like a piece of film with random sections spliced out by a drunken editor. After dumping the Knox assassin in a barren field, he’d driven away with his headlights extinguished, making for the home of his wife’s brother. Tom had meant to approach the farmhouse carefully, but in the end he’d just turned into the driveway and honked his horn. He hadn’t the strength for more than that.

  John McCrae had emerged from his farmhouse with a shotgun in his hand. The McCraes were clannish folk, driven out of Scotland during the Clearances, and congenitally mistrustful of authority. But Tom would never forget the look of compassion on McCrae’s face when he realized that the bloodied man sagging against the wheel of the strange pickup was his sister’s husband. McCrae’s wife had been terrified by Tom’s sudden appearance, and what it might mean for her family, but John had only asked Tom what he needed and how he could help. Tom told his brother-in-law that he couldn’t stay; the risk for them was too great. Neither could he seek medical care or turn himself in to the police. What he needed was to get back across the river into Mississippi.

  Once Tom had established that objective, John McCrae bent his will toward it, and within one hour he’d made it happen. McCrae was the kind of southerner who had only left the parish of his birth to serve his country in wartime or to carry bulls across the state for mating purposes. Enlisting his son’s help, he’d ditched Tom’s stolen pickup in a ravine already littered with junk cars and trucks. Then he’d concealed Tom himself beneath a carpet of hay in a horse trailer (along with one gentle horse standing over it), spirited him through a state police roadblock, and driven him across the Mississippi River at Vicksburg. McCrae’s son had followed a mile back in a different vehicle—the old Chevy Nova Tom was driving now. Once they were safely across the river, they’d given Tom the Nova and promised to pass a message to Peggy through Tom’s brother in California. Tom remembered his brother-in-law’s face as he shut the Nova’s door and bade him farewell. John McCrae had clearly believed he was looking at a doomed man.

  The trip from Vicksburg to Jefferson County was a blur. A fever had begun rising in Tom, and perhaps that was the culprit where his memory was concerned. All he could focus on was his goal: eighty acres of wooded land in a corner of the county that had elected Charles Evers the first black mayor in Mississippi. As Tom drove, lines from Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man” ran through his overheated brain: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. . . .

  The land and house he made for now were not his home in any legal sense, but he felt sure that the owner would take him in. There were other places he could go: the homes of patients whose lives he had saved, whose babies he’d delivered, whose families he had treated for three generations. But wherever he went, he would carry danger with him, and maybe even death. In his mind’s eye Tom saw helicopters circling suburban houses like birds of prey, shining spotlights into the windows. That was why he’d refused shelter from his brother-in-law. He’d never have been able to forgive himself if he got John McCrae hurt or killed.

  The place he was running to now was different. The man who owned this sanctuary was a soldier of sorts, though he’d never worn a uniform. But during his own years at war, he’d called upon Tom when he needed help, and Tom had answered. Now the tables had turned, and Tom believed that his old friend would return the favor.

  Yanking the steering wheel right to avoid a scuttling armadillo, he centered the Nova as best he could on the narrow road. A fresh sheen of sweat had broken out on his face, and he clumsily wiped his forehead to keep it out of his eyes. His need for sleep was like a dark tide swelling around him. He felt as though he were treading water, barely keeping his eyes above the surface.

  Home, he thought again, trying to remember what the word meant. The house he considered his real home—the one that contained his treasured library—had been destroyed seven years ago, burned to the ground by the man who’d once helped him save the life of Viola Turner. The houses Tom had known before that one flared in his mind like cars on a passing train: the clapboard army box at Fort Leonard Wood, the married officers’ quarters in Germany, the French Quarter apartment he and Peggy had shared while he was in medical school, the dorm of the little college he’d attended in northwestern Louisiana. Somewhere back behind all those lay the tiny house where he’d been raised with his brothers, just up the road from the stinking creosote plant where he’d worked as a boy, sweating alongside the local Negroes until he’d managed to get hired on as an usher at the local movie theater—a job not open to his fellow creosote workers. He’d made good friends among those men, and he credited them with teaching him that human beings were pretty much the same, no matter what color they were.

  The gate Tom was searching for rose out of the darkness like a mirage, then vanished behind him. Braking carefully, he stopped, reversed direction for a few yards, then drove slowly back to the metal obstruction and parked. He didn’t know what he’d do if the gate was locked. He would never be able to walk the half-mile-long driveway that led to the house. And callin
g the owner was not an option, since under the circumstances his phone might well be tapped.

  Climbing carefully out of the Nova, Tom trudged up to the gate and grabbed the upper crossbar to keep himself erect. He nearly cried from joy when he saw a simple chain loop holding the gate to the timber post. After lifting the chain with great difficulty, he pushed open the gate, then returned to the Nova and drove through. He considered simply driving on to the house, but he forced himself to get back out and close the gate, knowing that even the smallest lapse could kill him at this point.

  Tom drove slowly up the gently curving driveway, through the bare woods, toward the winter home of Quentin Avery, his lawyer and, more important, one of his oldest living friends. Though Quentin was an attorney of national reputation, and a hero to many who remembered his role in the civil rights movement, Tom knew him best as a patient. Quentin suffered from severe diabetes, and Tom had shepherded him through progressive peripheral neuropathy, two leg amputations, retinal problems, dangerous hypertension, and a half-dozen other maladies that came along with age and African-American genes. Through most of these battles, Quentin had fought valiantly, maintaining his good humor and acute intellect. But losing his second leg had nearly done him in. The loss of mobility, combined with sexual issues and a much younger wife, had pushed him into clinical depression. There were times Tom had feared the old lion would end his life rather than struggle on with diminished capacity. But so far, Quentin’s survival instinct had prevailed.

  At last Tom’s headlights washed over the front of Avery’s Tudor-style manor. Like so many of the newer homes in Jefferson County, it had been financed by settlement money from the famous fen-phen diet pill lawsuits. Quentin had represented more than a few of the plaintiffs, and he’d profited handsomely from its stunning resolution. After one of his clients squandered every cent of his settlement, the man had been forced to sell this house at a near-panic discount. With the most sympathetic face he could muster, Quentin had consented to take the showpiece off its desperate owner’s hands.

  Tom drove up to the garage and shut off the Nova’s engine, then sat for a couple of minutes, marshaling his strength for the walk to the door. Once he felt capable, he got out, struggled through the chilly wind to the arched timber door at the side of the house, and rang the bell twice.

  Nearly a minute passed before a light came on inside the house. By the time someone peered through the little window set in the door, Tom had sagged against its face. When the curtain rustled, he stood up straight so that he could be seen clearly. Muted voices spoke behind the wood, but then at last the handle turned and someone pulled open the door.

  Quentin’s wife, Doris, stood there in her housecoat, a black pistol in her hand. An attorney herself, Doris Avery was almost thirty years her husband’s junior. Tom figured Doris was about forty, but she had the same coloring as Viola Turner, the darker side of café au lait. In his confused mental state, Tom perceived her as an avatar of Viola, whom he hadn’t seen between the ages of twenty-eight and sixty-five.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Dear God,” Doris Avery whispered. “Quentin, it’s Tom Cage.”

  Tom heard the whir of a motorized wheelchair. Then his old friend appeared behind his wife, smiling up from his chair as though finding Tom on his doorstep was only what he’d expected.

  “Man, you look dead on your feet,” Quentin said. “Get yo’ ass in this house before I freeze to death.”

  Doris didn’t look so sure about this invitation, but after a sharp whisper from Quentin, she helped Tom inside and led him to a sofa in a beautifully appointed den. When Tom collapsed into the padding, he felt something in him give way. He could scarcely follow the words being exchanged only ten feet from him. After a minute or so, the voices began to rise with emotion, and he realized that Quentin and Doris were arguing. He tried to speak, but a moan was all that emerged from his mouth. Then a warm hand touched his face, and he felt glass against his lips. He opened his mouth and swallowed instinctively. Cool water poured down his throat like ambrosia.

  “He’s feverish,” Doris said. “Tom, you’ve got a fever. Do you have any drugs in that truck?”

  Tom nodded. “Bag,” he whispered. “Cipro . . .”

  He sensed Doris moving away from him. Then he felt a cooler hand take hold of his, and Quentin Avery’s warm, rich baritone, which had swayed so many juries in its day, spoke near his ear.

  “I’m here, buddy. You just take it easy. You’re gonna be all right.”

  “I’m sorry for coming here, Quentin.”

  “Hush that nonsense. Is anybody following you?”

  Tom laughed inside his head. “Everybody. But nobody followed me here. I just need sleep, Quentin . . . sleep.”

  “You need a lot more than that. But sleep would be a good start.”

  The next thing Tom remembered was Doris forcing a pill into his mouth and making him drink again.

  “That was Cipro,” she said. “That’s a broad-spectrum antibiotic, isn’t it?”

  Tom nodded and opened his eyes long enough to see Doris’s worried eyes. “Thank you. I’m sorry . . . nowhere else to go.”

  “Lie back, Tom. Just rest there on the sofa. We’ll figure this thing out.”

  Tom tried to follow the subsequent conversation, but his mind slipped underwater again. Then a sharp cry brought him to the surface. Doris Avery was clearly afraid—as John McCrae’s wife had been—and she was arguing that they could call someone she knew and arrange to surrender Tom to someone trustworthy in Jackson, the state capital. Tom tried to sit up, but he couldn’t manage it. He did, however, bring himself awake enough to hear Quentin’s reply. The old lawyer spoke quietly but with absolute conviction.

  “Doris,” he said, “you’re my wife, and I love you. But you weren’t born until 1965. While you were in your mama’s belly, I was down in Liberty, Mississippi, challenging the county government on voter registration. Lionel Hill was down there with me, working secretly with CORE and the SNCC. Lionel was a wanted man in Mississippi. The Klan had been after him for a year. But at night he’d go into homes and churches and talk to the people, trying to buck up their courage and get them to risk registering to vote.”

  “Q, that’s ancient history,” Doris broke in. “It’s got nothing to do with here and now.”

  “You’re wrong, baby. It means everything. About a week into this work, the local cops heard Lionel was in town, and they started hunting him. The Klan, too. One night they got onto our tails, and we had to run for it in an old, broken-down Rambler. Lionel’s daddy had run whiskey up in South Carolina, and he was a hell of a driver. We got away from those white boys on a dirt road that ran across a flooded creek. But just after we got clear, Lionel skidded off some gravel and hit a tree. Ripped half the scalp off his head, broke some ribs . . . he was out cold for ten full minutes. We carried him to an old logger’s shack and got him awake, but he needed real help. The problem was, where to go? Any hospital in the state would have called the cops the second we walked in. They’d have jailed Lionel without putting a stitch in his head, if the Klan didn’t get there first and take him.”

  “Quentin—”

  “Let me finish. Then make your decision.”

  Doris huffed in exasperation, and Quentin went on: “Lionel wanted to try for New Orleans, but there was no way we were going to make it out of Mississippi that night. Natchez was only twenty-five miles away. That old logger sneaked us out of Amite County on roads hardly wider than a deer track. Then he drove us to the edge of Natchez. I’ll never forget that night. I used a pay phone at the Minute Man just past the Johns Manville plant to call Dr. Tom Cage. And what did Tom do? He got out of bed, met us at his office, and worked on Lionel for two hours straight. That’s right. He risked everything he had to help us out of that jam. He risked his family, Doris. In 1965. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yes, I do. But I also understand the penalties for aiding and abetting a fugitive—especial
ly one wanted for killing a state trooper. You’ll lose your law license, Quentin. So would I. Maybe forever.”

  “Maybe,” Quentin conceded. “So maybe it’s best if you go on and leave this to me.”

  “To you?” Doris snorted at the suggestion. “Between the two of you, you haven’t got the strength to get Tom into a bed, much less do anything substantive to help him.”

  “I just might surprise you,” Quentin growled. “You go if you need to go. Just don’t tell me what I’m risking to help this man. If the police come for him, I’ll sit in our front door with the Constitution in one hand and a rifle in the other. At least until somebody convinces me he’ll make it to a courtroom alive. After that, I won’t need a damned rifle.”

  “You’re a hardheaded old fool,” Doris said, but Tom heard love beneath her frustration. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  “Yes, you do,” Quentin said. “Let’s get him to a bed.”

  “No,” Doris said.

  “What?” Quentin asked, sounding truly worried for the first time.

  “I don’t think he can make it to a bed. I’ll get some quilts and a pillow. He’s going to sleep right here. And if he’s still alive in the morning, we’ll decide what to do then.”

  As the swish of Doris Avery’s slippers receded, Tom felt Quentin’s hand close around his again. “That’s a good woman right there,” Quentin intoned. “Between you and Doris, I’ve been a lucky man. You gonna be all right now, Tom. Just let go. Let go of everything and trust old Q.”

  Tom squeezed his friend’s hand. Then he let go and slipped beneath the surface for the last time.