The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Well, what’s your plan?” Caitlin asked, glancing at her watch again and thinking of Melba and Tom.

  “I haven’t got one. I spent way too long today photographing geriatrics at Glenn Morehouse’s funeral. No Double Eagles showed up, by the way. Not known ones, at least. Now I’m pretty much at loose ends. Tomorrow evening I fly to Havana to shoot Fidel Castro and his brother, but till then . . . nothing.”

  Glass obviously wanted to be asked along on Caitlin’s trip, but Caitlin wasn’t ready to trust her completely. “Listen,” she said awkwardly, “what I’m about to do, I have to do on my own. But if you can get away later tonight . . . come back and see me. I do have a plan for tomorrow, and you might be able to help.”

  The smile that lit Jordan’s face warmed Caitlin inside. Yesterday the photographer had talked like a burnout case, but there was no denying the excitement in her eyes.

  “I’ll be here,” Jordan said, turning off the tap. “You make sure you get back safe. These are serious people you’re trying to dismember in your newspaper. Have you still got your gun?”

  Caitlin nodded. “And I won’t hesitate to use it.”

  “Good girl. And good luck.”

  Caitlin hugged her old idol, then left the restroom and ran for the back door.

  CHAPTER 32

  ANNIE DUTIFULLY AWAKENS me at six o’clock, and Mom sends me on my way with a mug of coffee made in the Abramses’ 1970s-vintage percolator. Annie begs me to take her along, but I explain that I’ll be working in a place that, while not physically dangerous, is no place for an eleven-year-old girl. She isn’t happy about this, but she doesn’t try to guilt-trip me over leaving.

  Night has fallen as I approach the Mississippi River. An hour ago, the sun’s last rays bled red and orange into the clouds over the westward-flowing bend south of town. It’s too late now to show Caitlin Edelweiss at sunset, as I’d planned, but before I feel too guilty, she sends me a text saying she’s tied up and won’t be able to meet me for several hours.

  Dwight Stone has checked into one of the new hotels situated in the flood zone between the levee and the river on the Vidalia side. I park near the front entrance, my mind filling with memories of the two weeks in 1998 that Dwight Stone and I teamed up to break the most important case of my career. Without his selfless help, I not only wouldn’t have solved the case—I wouldn’t have lived to hear the verdict. As I walk to the door, I notice two black SUVs with FBI stenciled on the doors. One has two high-tech satellite dishes deployed on its roof. One points skyward, but the smaller one is pointed at the hotel. This reminds me of the microcassette recorder in my coat pocket. Since I have no idea how long our conversation will last, I decide to switch it on just before entering Stone’s room.

  Kaiser gave me the floor and room number, so I’m surprised to find him in the lobby. He’s talking on his cell phone, but he waves and motions me over to him. “Thanks for coming,” he says, slipping his phone into the inside pocket of his sport coat. “I know you didn’t want to, but it means a lot to Dwight.”

  “I owe it to him.”

  “That was an assistant director of the FBI on the phone. I want you to know that I’m pushing hard to get a protective custody deal for your father. That’s what that call was about.”

  “And?”

  Kaiser winces. “It’s a tough sell, Penn. You know that. But the director hasn’t ruled it out. Stone is pushing as well.”

  “Does the director know about Stone’s Working Group?”

  “He does now. After the discovery of those rifles in Royal’s basement, I decided to pull the trigger and bring him into the circle. But last night’s deaths created a lot of anxiety in Washington. The director’s pretty pissed off, but he’s not going to ignore what we’ve found. I think he’ll get there on your father as well.”

  “It’s not like Dad’s got a lot of time, John.”

  “I know.” He pats my arm. “Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  We move toward the elevators. “Any idea how long this will take?”

  “If you let Dwight speak his piece without interruption, an hour ought to do it.”

  “He’s going to tell me about Carlos Marcello and the Kennedy assassination?”

  “And your father.”

  “What about my father? What haven’t you told me already?”

  Kaiser looks uncomfortable as we step into the elevator. “Look,” he says, pushing 4, “when it comes to the Kennedy case, it’s Stone’s show. Let him tell you his way.”

  I don’t even try to hide my exasperation.

  “By the way,” says Kaiser, as the car starts to rise, “Stone got the skinny on Eladio Cruz, the Cuban student who ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano Royal ended up with, and then disappeared in New Orleans. Somebody in the Working Group knew an old FBI informant who worked undercover against Castro in Havana. He said Eladio Cruz was a DRE agent for Castro. Cruz’s job was recruiting high school and college-age kids who’d come to America with their parents. He disappeared on November nineteenth, 1963, but he wasn’t reported missing until the twenty-first. At the time, his friends assumed that either exiles had killed him or he’d gone back to Cuba. But Cruz never returned to Cuba, not in 1963 or later. So he didn’t just disappear from New Orleans. He disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  The elevator stops, and the doors open to the fourth floor.

  “Where do you think he went?” I ask, motioning for John to walk ahead of me into the orange-carpeted corridor.

  “Into the sixty-four hundred acres of swamps behind Marcello’s Churchill Farms,” he says, “just like a lot of other guys did.”

  As Kaiser takes the lead, I slip my hand into my inside pocket and hit the RECORD button on my Sony. That’s one advantage of the old analog units; the buttons are big enough to operate by touch. “Did his disappearance have to do with the Carcano?”

  Kaiser points to his right. “Room 406.”

  “Come on, John,” I say, following him.

  “Are you serious? A known pro-Castro agent buying a rifle exactly like the one that would be used to kill John Kennedy, then disappearing only days before the assassination?” Kaiser holds up his hand and stops me a few paces from Stone’s door. “Listen, you may not realize how bad Dwight—”

  My TracFone is ringing. Kaiser pauses, waiting for me to answer.

  “Go on in,” I tell him. “I’ll be right there.”

  He sighs with frustration.

  Retreating down the hall toward the elevators, I click SEND. “This is Penn.”

  “It’s Walker Dennis. I’m headed out to another warehouse fire on Frogmore Road. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  My gut hitches in dread. “What’s happened?”

  “I just got a call from Claude Devereux.”

  “Brody Royal’s attorney? What did he want?”

  “You won’t believe it. That old Cajun bastard told me that Snake Knox, Sonny Thornfield, and the other Double Eagles on my list will be at my office at seven A.M. tomorrow to surrender themselves for questioning.”

  For several seconds I’m speechless. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Well, they’re coming. Devereux didn’t call them Double Eagles, of course. He claims they have nothing to hide, and that they want to clear their names as soon as possible.”

  “Did he say Billy Knox would be with them?”

  “Billy wasn’t on my list. We don’t have anything on him yet.”

  “What do you have on the others?”

  “Not much, to be honest. Leo Spivey’s home computer has turned up some suspicious accounting—coded stuff—and we’ve found a few suspect connections to the old guys. We still have a lot of evidence to go through, and I’m pressuring the hell out of the cookers and dealers we rounded up this morning.”

  “Walker . . . those punks know that ratting out the Knoxes means a bullet in the head—if they’re lucky. Stay with the computers.”

  “We
will. I just wanted to make sure you’re gonna be at my office in the morning. If those fuckers have their high-dollar lawyer present, I want to make sure I’ve got mine.”

  A rush of conflicting emotions floods through me. I still believe in my strategy of pressuring Forrest Knox so that he’ll have to turn his attention away from the hunt for my father. But something tells me Dwight Stone wouldn’t have traveled all the way here without having something important to say. And now Kaiser has hinted that it may be about my father. Until I hear Stone out, I’m reluctant to commit to what he may think is a serious mistake. In the silence of my thoughts, I hear Walker breathing impatiently.

  “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” he asks.

  “No, no. I’m just thinking this may be more complicated than I first thought.”

  “Tough shit. You’re the one who got me started on this drug war, and now I’ve got two dead deputies and the state police crawling up my ass. We’re fully committed. So make sure you’re standing outside my interrogation room at seven A.M. Otherwise, you get no more information or assistance from me henceforth.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

  He clicks off.

  Looking back toward Stone’s room, I see Kaiser still standing in the hall, watching me. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have heard anything I said.

  “Everything okay?” he asks as I approach.

  If I related Walker’s news about the Double Eagles to Kaiser, he would blow his top, and probably upset Stone in the process. “Yeah, no problems.”

  “About Dwight,” Kaiser says, blocking the door with his hand. “He looks pretty rough. He’s on the transplant list, but they haven’t found him a liver yet. His tumors are growing, and this operation tomorrow is sort of a last-ditch holding action. I gather his odds are about fifty-fifty going in. It was crazy for him to come here, but nothing was going to stop him. I lobbied the director to give him this last gift.”

  I hadn’t realized things were quite that bad. “How’s his mental state?”

  “Oh, he’s still sharp as a razor. That’s the tragedy of it. He may run on a little about the JFK stuff, but be patient with him. You’ll know a lot more about your father when you walk out of here than you did when you came in.”

  With that cryptic comment, Kaiser drops his arm and ushers me into room 406.

  After moving through the short passage between the closet and the bathroom, I see a man who bears little resemblance to the one who saved my life in 1998. Back then Stone was a tough, tanned, wiry old bird who looked like he could whip men twenty years his junior. Now he’s so jaundiced that his face and hands look as though someone swabbed them with Betadine. He’s propped against the headboard with the covers pulled up to his waist. His eyes have sunk deep into his skull, and his silver hair looks thin and wispy. I haven’t seen many men who look this far gone emerge from a hospital again.

  “Hello, Penn,” he says in a reedy voice that’s but an echo of his once powerful baritone. “Come over here and shake my hand.”

  I walk around the bed and carefully take his right hand in both of mine. Gently squeezing the papery skin, I notice bruises at both inner elbows, probably from multiple needle sticks. His face, too, is bruised in places, but his hollow eyes still burn with the light of a gas flame. In my peripheral vision I note a plastic urinal behind the lamp on the bedside table and a folded wheelchair leaning against the wall. It’s hard to believe this is the man who took a bullet while trying to save my life in the icy river that ran beside his Colorado cabin.

  “I appreciate you coming,” he says, obviously meaning it.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it, buddy.”

  Kaiser sits on a small sofa beneath the picture window on the wall to my left. Behind him the lights of Natchez glow high on the bluff across the dark river.

  Stone gives me a weak smile. “I’d ask about your father, but John has brought me up to speed. You know, back in 1998, after your trial was over, Tom and I had lunch together. We found we had a lot in common. We’re exactly the same age, and we both spent 1950 freezing our asses off in Korea.”

  “I’d forgotten that.”

  “I know you’re probably baffled by his recent actions. I hope I can give you some insight into why he’s behaved as he has.”

  “I sure need it. Is the answer good or bad?”

  Stone drops his hand and takes a measured breath. “Once we get to the final truth, I believe that whatever Tom did will ultimately prove justified.”

  “Are you referring to the Viola Turner case? Or the Kennedy stuff?”

  “Both, I hope. Why don’t you sit down, Penn? I don’t have the wind I used to, so we’d better get to it.”

  “Do you want me to sit on the bed? Or can you talk loud enough for me to use the chair by that desk?”

  “The chair’s fine.”

  As I move back to the desk chair, it strikes me that I’m sitting with the veterans of two wars: Korea and Vietnam. By being born roughly a decade after Kaiser, I won the lottery that spared my generation combat. Neither man comments when I take my .357 Magnum from the small of my back and lay it on the veneer desk.

  As I settle back in the chair, Stone folds his hands in his lap, looks down at them, and begins to speak in the voice of a man who has paid a great price for his wisdom. “This meeting may be the last significant thing I do in my life outside a hospital. If it is, I’ll have no complaints. I’ve been certain who gave the order to kill John Kennedy for nearly two years. But I couldn’t prove it, because I didn’t know how he arranged it or who fired the kill shot.”

  I glance at the sofa, where Kaiser is silently pleading with me to be patient. “Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, Dwight. From the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Anything else is fantasy.”

  “No,” he says. “Oswald was in Dealey Plaza that day, and he did shoot President Kennedy. But he didn’t kill Kennedy.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Before I tell you that, let me tell you how I know Oswald didn’t. I’m not here because some old FBI gomers got together in the rest home and came up with a conspiracy theory.” He gives me a small smile. “Although I suppose you could make that argument. We’re old enough to have read most of the five million pages of public records pertaining to the assassination. But my group has also gained at least limited access to most of the ten thousand records that will remain sealed until 2017.”

  This is the first thing I’ve heard that’s surprised me. “Is that where you got your new assassination theory? From the sealed records?”

  Stone snorts with disdain. “God, no. Most of those records remain sequestered for one of two reasons. They deal with CIA and FBI operations that either were illegal or showed gross incompetence by still-living officers. Some of it makes waterboarding and drone strikes look like a tea party, but it’s ass-covering, Penn. Nothing more. Every conspiracy nut waiting to find the Dealey Grail in those sealed records is due for some serious disappointment.”

  “Then why are we here? How do you know Oswald didn’t fire the kill shot?”

  “I’m here because of one forensic fact. It’s been right in front of us—in front of the whole world—ever since we saw the Zapruder film.”

  “It’s simple ballistics,” Kaiser interjects. “And undeniable proof of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.”

  “Well?” I prompt.

  “Oswald fired three shots in Dealey Plaza,” Kaiser says. “He only hit President Kennedy with one of them—in the back. That was the so-called magic bullet that produced seven wounds between Kennedy and Governor Connally, and remained ‘fairly pristine.’ You remember that?”

  “I saw the movie. How could I forget?”

  “Exactly. Oliver Stone’s film did an even greater disservice to the head shot—the kill shot. District Attorney Jim Garrison created the theory of the improbable ‘magic bullet,’ then tried to prove that the shot to Kennedy’s head was fired from the grassy knoll. You remembe
r?”

  “Back, and to the left,” I say, quoting Kevin Costner from the movie. “Seinfeld even had an episode mocking that.”

  Dwight nods in the bed. “Oliver Stone almost single-handedly elevated two glaring forensic errors into myth, which always trumps truth in the public mind.”

  “What were his errors?”

  “First, the magic bullet wasn’t magic at all. Oswald was firing fully jacketed rounds designed for winter war in the Alps, meant for penetrating multiple layers of heavy clothing. His bullets were slow—eighteen hundred feet per second—but very powerful. In Dallas, they performed exactly as they were designed to.”

  “The real magic bullet,” Kaiser says, “was the head shot. It blasted open Kennedy’s skull, blew out a third of his brain, and left only tiny fragments in the skull case.”

  “And practically vaporized in the process,” Stone finishes. “Which no Mannlicher-Carcano 6.58 round ever did after hitting a human skull at eighteen hundred feet per second. We’ve verified that under the most rigorous field conditions, and also through exhaustive research.”

  “There had to be another shooter there,” Kaiser asserts. “One firing a rifle with a muzzle velocity greater than three thousand, two hundred feet per second, the speed required for a bullet to reliably and effectively explode. A rifle like the Remington 700 you identified from Brody Royal’s basement. A hot load for that rifle can reach four thousand feet per second.”

  “Why didn’t ballistics experts see this long ago?” I ask.

  Stone smiles sadly. “The forest and the trees, Penn.”

  “Contrary to popular belief,” Kaiser says, “Oswald had the skill to make that shot. What he didn’t have on that day was the rifle or the bullet.”

  “But Dwight said Oswald hit Kennedy in the back,” I point out.

  “Even a blind pig finds a truffle now and again,” says Stone.

  “That was luck,” says Kaiser. “The scope on Oswald’s Carcano was a cheap Japanese add-on, and it wasn’t even zeroed. In fact, it couldn’t be zeroed. It only had two screws holding it on. But even if it could have been, that Carcano couldn’t fire a bullet fast enough to explode, and Oswald wasn’t using frangible rounds.”