The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  After searching every room, I went out to the closed garage. Drew had told me I might find his old pickup truck there, but it was gone. Instead, I found Walt Garrity’s Roadtrek van. The sight of it stirred something in me. It was so easy to imagine Dad and Walt rolling down the highway, laughing and smiling. But necessity had separated them, and since the police had a description of the unique vehicle, they’d been forced to leave the Roadtrek behind.

  Since I had no key to the big van, I picked up a brick in the corner of the garage and smashed the passenger window. My throat locked up when I opened the door, so afraid was I that I’d find my father’s body inside. But I found only clothes, a couple of cash cell phones, and quite a bit of high-tech gear that Walt must have brought from Texas. Nothing that would tell me where my father had gone.

  I was walking down to Drew’s boathouse when I noticed some dark smudges on the dead grass to my left. Kneeling, I found that they were bloodstains, and the realization nauseated me. Did my father die here? I wondered. As best I could determine from the depressions in the soft ground, at least three men had faced one another at the edge of the lake. But exactly what had happened I had no way to tell.

  Unable to find any other clues, I screwed up my courage and opened Drew’s boathouse, again expecting to find Dad inside. But again I found no sign of him. No less afraid, I walked the forty yards out to the end of Drew’s pier and gazed desolately over the lake.

  Here I have stood for twenty minutes, watching the wind ruffle the black water and trying to get my mind around all that has happened since Shad Johnson called me Monday morning. One of the hardest things to accept is that a friend as close as Drew Elliott would lie to me in such a situation. Could he not see that Dad stopped making sound decisions long ago? The most bizarre development, though, is John Kaiser’s sudden obsession with the JFK assassination, and his belief that Dad might somehow be involved. I can accept that my father probably knew Carlos Marcello, as Kaiser claimed the surveillance photo he showed me proves. After all, my mother verified it last night, or at least that Dad had treated Marcello in the Orleans Parish Prison and Marcello was grateful for whatever Dad had done for him. But that’s a long way from my father knowing anything about a presidential assassination. Still, Kaiser’s stubborn persistence tells me he’s not going to let the subject drop. And if Dwight Stone is really flying in from Colorado to talk to me about it, then they must know a lot that I don’t. That, or else both men have crossed the line into conspiracy psychosis.

  I remember the day John Kennedy died. It’s one of my earliest memories. I was sitting on a white vinyl sofa beside my mother, watching our black-and-white TV. My sister was at school, but because I was only three and a half, I still spent my days with Mom while Dad worked at his new job in Natchez. I didn’t really understand that, of course. In my mind, we were still living on the Missouri army base where he’d been stationed after returning from Germany. I don’t remember the assassination announcement on TV, but I do remember my mother suddenly getting more upset than I’d ever seen her, hugging me and sobbing, then frantically trying to reach my father by telephone. We’d recently returned from West Germany, and my parents were acutely aware of the dangers of the Cold War. My sister was crying when she got home, and that evening she and I sat on the floor while Mom and Dad watched the news and spoke in hushed tones. It was only much later that I truly understood what had happened in Dallas, but the emotional crux of it sank into me right then. From that day forward I knew the taste of loss, and I’ll carry the memory with me—in the somber black-and-white of our old television, not the saturated, horrifying color of the Zapruder film—until the day I die.

  Three days after the assassination, I watched John Kennedy Jr. salute his father’s coffin. “John-John” was seven months younger than I, but he knew enough to salute when the horse-drawn caisson passed by and his mother prompted him. I didn’t understand much more about the world than he did, but I did realize one very frightening thing: if a boy as special as he was could lose his father, then I could lose mine, too. His dad might have been president, but mine (in my mind, at least) was in the army. I couldn’t know then that my father had already survived the greatest dangers he was ever likely to face, in Korea. But time and fate change all things. Now, forty-two years after JFK died, Dad is running for his life. And in a twist almost beyond understanding, a senior agent of the FBI believes that he may know the truth behind John Kennedy’s death.

  Is it possible? I wonder. Could the brutal, unsolved murders that Henry Sexton was working in this quiet corner of the South for decades actually conceal a deeper secret? The truth behind the biggest cold case murder in American history?

  “No,” I say to the wind. “Oswald killed Kennedy, and he acted alone. That’s the sad truth.”

  As I walk back up the pier toward the shore, I reflect that Hannah Arendt had it right: evil is incomprehensibly banal. The existentialists went her one better: it’s also absurd, and terrifyingly so.

  Before I reach the bank, the sound of voices pulls me from my reverie. Looking up, I see two men walking down the hill toward the pier. Both are tall and appear to be about forty. One is wearing orange-tinted Oakley sunglasses, and they give him the look of a bird of prey. Both walk with a surly self-assurance that makes me think of cops, though if they are, they’re wearing plainclothes.

  My heart has kicked into overdrive, and only the reassuring hardness of the .357 jammed into the small of my back keeps me from jumping into the water to try to escape. Our paths intersect where the wooden walkway meets the grass, near the blood on the ground.

  “Who are you?” asks the man in the Oakleys, who’s standing on my left.

  “Penn Cage. I’m the mayor of Natchez. Who are you?”

  “Police.”

  “Not Ferriday police.”

  “That’s not your concern,” says the man on my right, who looks like he hasn’t slept for days.

  “It certainly is my concern,” I counter, trying to get a read on their intentions. “I used to be an assistant DA in Houston, and I know my rights. I also believe a crime was committed here last night.”

  “What crime is that?” asks Oakley.

  I point to my right, at the blood on the ground. “Murder, it looks like.”

  The other man laughs. “You’re right about that.”

  The certainty in his voice chills me. “Was somebody killed here? Where are you guys from?”

  Oakley smiles and shakes his head, then takes a .38 from a holster beneath his coat. “Now, just what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for my father. Dr. Tom Cage.”

  The two men look at each other. Then Oakley says, “He ain’t here, Mayor. But he’s wanted for killing a cop. So you’d best get the hell out of here, before you get hurt.”

  I respond in a steady voice that I hope hides my fear. “Look, I just want to find my father. I want him to turn himself in. Is there anything you know that would help me?”

  “Slow, ain’t he?” says the man on my right. “You sure you were a lawyer? ’Cause you don’t seem to understand the situation.”

  Oakley doesn’t bother playing this game. He jerks his .38 at me and says, “You’re going to have to come with us.”

  I hold up my hands, wishing I’d drawn my gun before I reached the head of the pier. Before I can say anything, the man on my right says, “I think he’s carrying.”

  Oakley points his gun at my face. “Are you?”

  “No.” I’m hoping to lull their vigilance for a couple of seconds, but it doesn’t work. Oakley waves his gun, indicating that I should turn around. If I do that, one of them will lift my jacket and see the butt of my .357 sticking out of my pants. But I have no choice. I’m about to turn when the rumble of a heavy engine rolls down the hill from the house. When I look up, I see a white pickup driving about thirty miles per hour down the slope toward the pier.

  Clearly confused, Oakley’s first instinct is to conceal his weapon,
which tells me he’s probably not a cop. The two men back onto the pier as the truck barrels toward us, and while they do I draw my pistol and hold it along my leg.

  “Who the fuck is that?” yells Oakley.

  Before his partner can answer, the brakes screech, the truck slides to a stop, and Lincoln Turner leaps out of the driver’s seat, a sawed-off shotgun in his big hands. He loses no time pointing the gaping barrel at the man nearest him, which is Oakley.

  “Throw down your guns, motherfuckers!”

  The two men look at each other, then one pistol hits the boards of the pier.

  “Kick it in the water,” Lincoln tells me.

  I do.

  “Yours too, shithead!” Lincoln barks, jabbing his shotgun at Oakley.

  Oakley’s pistol hits the pier, and I kick it into the water as well.

  “Check their ankles.”

  Oakley is wearing an ankle holster with a .25 automatic in it. I draw that and pocket it, then take out the men’s wallets. In short order I learn that they are police officers, both from Monroe, Louisiana. Oakley’s last name is Kennard, and his buddy’s is Grimsby.

  “They’re city cops from Monroe,” I say, walking over to Lincoln’s side and facing the men. “Who sent you here?”

  Neither answers.

  “Forrest Knox. Right?”

  The flicker of surprise in Kennard’s eyes tells me I’m right. Turning to his partner, I say, “You know what happened last night. You were here, weren’t you?”

  Grimsby’s eyes keep flicking to Lincoln’s shotgun. “Who the fuck is this?” he asks.

  “No friend of yours,” Lincoln bellows. “Although you probably figured that when you saw my color.”

  “Dad was here last night,” I tell Lincoln. “I think this asshole was, too. We need to know what he knows.”

  Lincoln steps forward and cracks Grimsby across the jaw with the barrel of his shotgun.

  The man staggers but manages to hold his feet, blood dribbling from his mouth. Rage brews in his eyes, but Lincoln just laughs and says, “You cops ain’t used to that kind of treatment, are you? That’s how the other half lives.”

  “You’re a dead man,” says the cop in the sunglasses.

  Lincoln’s half smile vanishes, and he steps up to Kennard. The man flinches when Lincoln raises his hand, but instead of hitting him, Lincoln yanks off the Oakley sunglasses and crushes them in his hand. “I’ll tell you boys right now, there ain’t no percentage in staying quiet. Next man who refuses to answer a question get his jaw broke.”

  Kennard shakes his head, but I can tell Grimsby is afraid.

  “What happened here last night?” I repeat.

  “Your old man shot my partner,” Grimsby says. “Late last night. Right there.” He points at the bloodstains on the grass.

  Lincoln and I share a glance, but I can’t read his eyes. I know this, though: if Dad really killed another cop, he’s thrown away whatever chance he had of survival.

  “How did that happen?” I ask. “How did he get the drop on two cops?”

  “He had a pistol in his pants pocket,” Grimsby says. “We didn’t know it was there.”

  “Why did he shoot?”

  The cop’s eyes go wide. “I don’t know!”

  “He wouldn’t have shot except to save his own life. You were about to kill him, weren’t you?”

  “No!”

  “Bullshit,” says Lincoln, stepping closer to Grimsby. “Who told you to kill him?”

  “Nobody, I swear!”

  “I’ll fuck you up,” Lincoln says, raising the shotgun over Grimsby.

  “Go ahead,” says Kennard. “Kill him. You’ll be doing him a favor, compared to what would happen if he tells you what you want to know.”

  Lincoln gives me a questioning look.

  Taking out my cell phone, I start looking for John Kaiser’s number.

  “Who you calling?” Lincoln asks.

  “FBI.”

  “No,” says Kennard. “Don’t do that.”

  “Tell us who sent you here.”

  Neither answers.

  “You work for Forrest Knox. Nobody else would scare the piss out of cops, except maybe Brody Royal, and he’s dead. And you two are way too young to be Double Eagles.”

  Kennard is looking hard at his wallet in my hand. Is he stupid enough or desperate enough to try to escape? I point my .357 at his belly. “Where were ya’ll when I pulled up?”

  “Neighbor’s house,” says Grimsby. “Nobody home over there. Our car’s on the far side of that house.”

  “What you want to do with them?” Lincoln asks. “Give them to the FBI?”

  Grimsby shakes his head and says, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you’ll let us go.”

  “Tell me what happened last night. Everything.”

  The man takes a deep breath, then looks over at the blood on the grass. “My partner was going to shoot your old man. We had orders, that’s all I’ll say about that. But at the last second, the doc shot my partner in the stomach using a pistol in his pants. Then he put the gun on me. He made me carry my partner up the hill, then drugged me with something. Later on he dumped me out in the middle of nowhere, and the body with me.”

  “If you guys had been working as legitimate cops at the time, that would have been all over the news. In fact, I still don’t know why Forrest wouldn’t put out a release saying Dad killed another cop. What kind of game is Forrest playing?”

  Grimsby shrugs, and Kennard doesn’t look like he knows the answer either.

  “Why the hell would you come back here?” Lincoln asks.

  “Forrest ordered him to,” I guess. “Right?”

  Before Grimsby can answer or evade the question, Kennard breaks to his right and sprints past me, running in a zigzag pattern. Lincoln fires his shotgun, but only into the air. Seeing this, Grimsby bolts as well.

  Lincoln aims after his retreating figure. “Want me to shoot him?”

  “No. I’ve got their IDs.”

  “I can hit him in the legs.”

  “We don’t need the hassle.” I shove the cops’ wallets into my pocket.

  As the men disappear around the neighbor’s house, Lincoln lowers the shotgun. “Whose house is this?”

  “Drew Elliott’s. One of Dad’s medical partners.”

  “Have you searched it?”

  “I didn’t find anything that would tell me where he’s gone. And it looks like he was taken against his will. He left medicine behind. But if that guy was telling the truth, maybe he was just under stress.”

  Lincoln peers deeply into my eyes.

  “That’s all I know, seriously. I’d rather him be on trial for killing Viola than running from a thousand cops. Besides, you probably just saved my life.”

  The silence that follows this statement is strangely awkward. While Lincoln stares at the blood on the grass, I search his face for similarities to my father’s, or even my own. I remember our conversation in CC’s Rhythm Club, the juke joint by Anna’s Bottom, and his promise to take a DNA test. If I had a Q-tip or a plastic bottle to store a twig in, I’d ask him to scratch a sample from his inner cheek right now.

  “You followed me here, didn’t you?” I say at last. “You were hoping I’d lead you to Dad.”

  Lincoln looks up the slope, toward the lake road, as though he’s considering leaving. “Yeah. But you don’t know shit, do you?”

  I remind myself to be more careful the next time I visit Annie and my mother.

  Lincoln cradles the shotgun and looks back at me. “All anybody’s talking about now is that dead reporter, Sexton. And Brody Royal. A couple of white men die, and my mother’s forgotten. No surprise, I guess. This is still Mississippi.”

  “Do you really still believe my father killed your mother?”

  “Nothing’s happened that would change my mind.”

  “What about all the killings in the last three days?”

  “What about them? I read the paper this mor
ning. Don’t mean shit.”

  “Did you read about Glenn Morehouse?”

  “That old Klansman who talked to Henry Sexton?”

  “He wasn’t a Klansman. He was a Double Eagle.”

  “Same difference to a black man.”

  “I think your mother was killed for the same reason Henry was. She knew too much about the Double Eagles, and they were afraid she was going to act on what she knew.”

  Lincoln looks past me, back over the lake.

  “Unless you killed her yourself, that is,” I add.

  His face whips back to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know my father a lot better than you. It was totally out of character for him to run rather than face the charges against him. He’d never do that to protect himself, only someone else.”

  “He’s ashamed,” Lincoln says, “and his shame’s made him cowardly.”

  “No. He has his faults, but cowardice isn’t one of them. He’s protecting someone. And maybe that someone is you.”

  Lincoln looks as though I slapped him. “Why would he protect me?”

  “He believes you’re his son.”

  The black man’s eyes narrow, and for the first time he looks at me with serious interest. “You’ve finally accepted it, haven’t you?”

  “No. But Dad has. I think your mother told him he was your father, and that was enough to make him believe it. I think she was trying to help provide for you after she was gone. I don’t blame her. And I don’t blame you if you tried to ease her passing with morphine.”

  Lincoln’s dark cheek twitches.

  “But if you made some kind of mistake and gave her that painful death by adrenaline—and then tried to blame Dad for it—then for that I blame you. Is that what you did? Did you have second thoughts and try to revive her?”

  Immeasurable contempt radiates from Lincoln’s eyes. “If I’d done that, and Dr. Cage meant to protect me, why would he run? Why wouldn’t he just plead guilty and take his sentence?”

  “I’m not sure. He probably figured her death would be recorded as natural, and there’d be no autopsy. He certainly didn’t expect any videotape. And he probably expected you to show some gratitude and keep your mouth shut. But instead you pushed for a murder charge. And Dad knows that both the Double Eagles and the Adams County sheriff would like to see him dead. I don’t think he was ready to die in a jail cell.”