The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “Dear God.” Tom cradled his head in his arthritic hands. “I guess nothing we do ever stays buried, does it?” After half a minute, he looked up, his face heavy with what seemed to be grief—or perhaps guilt. “Caitlin . . . if I go further now, what I say is off-limits. You don’t print it. You don’t speak to Penn about it . . . nothing. Ever.”

  She wanted to say, I don’t care about that, but she knew she would be lying. Tom would know it, too. “Never?”

  “Not until Peggy and I are dead, anyway.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Give me your word. On the child you’re carrying.”

  His demand sent a chill through her. “I won’t say that. It scares me.” She held up her the little finger on her right hand. “Pinkie swear?”

  To her surprise, Tom looked as though he might break down. “My daughter used to say that, when she was little.”

  “Come on, Tom. I’m the most sympathetic audience you’ll ever have, other than your wife.”

  He stared at her for several seconds longer, like a man pondering jumping from a bridge. Then he said, “Viola killed Frank Knox. And I helped her.”

  Caitlin felt as though she’d levitated off the chair. “You . . . what?”

  “Viola murdered Frank Knox. Out of revenge. And I helped her. I covered it up for thirty-seven years. Henry never figured that out?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He spoke about Frank’s death last night, just before he died. Maybe the possibility had crossed his mind. But I don’t think he really got that far. We were talking about Viola’s rumored gang rape by the Double Eagles, and whether or not it had really happened.”

  Tom’s reply was hoarse with emotion. “It happened. They raped her two different times, gang rapes both times. Frank Knox ordered it the first time, and Snake the second. The second time was beyond any horror you and I can imagine.”

  Caitlin drew in a sharp rush of air.

  Tom rubbed his white beard, his eyes brighter than they’d been all night. “But Frank paid in full,” he said. “On the floor of my office. Yes, sir . . . he paid. But so did we all, I suppose.”

  “Tell me.”

  Tom did.

  CHAPTER 36

  DWIGHT STONE AND John Kaiser have spent ten minutes trying to persuade me to tell Walker Dennis to call off tomorrow’s questioning of the Double Eagles, but so far I’ve refused. Truth be told, I can’t get my mind off the Triton Battery medical absence form signed by my father. When set alongside the photos I’ve been shown in the past few days, my mother’s admission that Dad knew Carlos Marcello in 1959, and the fact that Dad probably remained silent about the Double Eagle murders of Albert Norris and Dr. Robb for forty years—it surely suggests something unsavory. Of course, the medical excuse could be only what it appears to be, and the only meaningful part of Dad’s contact with Marcello might be whatever deal he made to save Viola Turner. At the moment I’m only thankful that Kaiser and Stone know nothing about my father’s early contact with Marcello in New Orleans.

  My dilemma is what to do next. Part of me wants to simply walk out and leave all this behind. But Kaiser and Stone clearly know more about Dad than they’ve revealed so far. How can I leave without knowing just how dark the picture gets? And if I’m going to confront Snake Knox in an interrogation room twelve hours from now, I need to know everything that might help me manipulate him. Otherwise, he’ll be manipulating me.

  “I know this looks bad,” I say to Stone. “But there’s nothing I’ve seen in the past three days that can’t be explained by scenarios well short of Dad being involved with the Knoxes or Marcello in any criminal way.”

  Stone gives me an understanding smile, but Kaiser looks far from convinced.

  “He was a goddamned war hero!” I practically shout.

  “Frank Knox was a war hero,” Kaiser says relentlessly. “Snake, too.”

  “Dwight,” I press, searching for sympathy from my old friend, “Dad is the least racist white man in this town. He voted for Kennedy in 1960! All this stuff you’ve been telling me is pure supposition. You said yourself, you can’t even prove Frank Knox was in Dallas. For all you know, he really was home with hepatitis.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” says Kaiser. “I spent part of this afternoon tracking down Knox’s old neighbors from that era. Most are dead or long gone from here, but I found two women still living in this area. One has Alzheimer’s. But the other I found in the Twin Oaks nursing home. Mrs. Johnzell Williams.”

  “Twin Oaks? Dad used to be the doctor for that facility.”

  “Mrs. Williams remembers Dr. Cage well. She thinks he walks on water, just like everybody else around here.”

  “That’s nothing to scoff at,” Stone says. “Many a man could wish for the same.”

  “What the hell could she remember from forty years ago?” I ask.

  “Forty-two,” Kaiser corrects me. “We’re talking about the day Kennedy was assassinated, Penn. Everybody remembers where they were on that day. Right?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Mrs. Williams had another reason to remember that weekend,” Kaiser goes on. “She told me that Frank’s oldest son, Frank Junior, was interested in their daughter, Nancy. He was seventeen, but she was only fourteen. On the night of the day the president was shot, Nancy Williams didn’t come home until three A.M. Mr. Williams was ready to kill Frank Junior, but his wife persuaded him to talk to the father. Well . . .” Kaiser gives me a cagey look. “It seems Frank Knox, Senior, couldn’t be found. Nor could his father, Elam. Mrs. Williams didn’t think too highly of Elam, by the way. But what matters to us is that Frank Senior didn’t appear until late Saturday afternoon. And no one had seen him for days.”

  Kaiser takes a small digital recorder from his pocket and starts fiddling with its tiny buttons. “I taped our conversation. Thought you might like to hear this part about Frank Junior. I’ve got it cued up . . . right here.”

  The scratchy voice of an octogenarian white female comes from the tiny speaker. “That boy wasn’t right. He was all the time goin’ to the church house, but he didn’t have the Lord nowhere in him. There was something bad in that house. The Knox house, I mean. I was glad when that boy joined the army. I hated he got killed over there, but . . . well, it was a good thing for my Nancy that he never come back. She married a welder from Jonesville, a good Christian man.”

  Kaiser’s deeper voice floats from the recorder: “What do you think the bad thing was in the Knox house?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t care to know. We minded our own business on Green Street. Folks ought to do more of that nowadays.”

  “Was it the boy only, or his parents?”

  “It’s always the parents,” croaks the old woman. “The Good Book says, ‘Train up a child in the way that he should go, and he will not depart from it.’ Well, I reckon the opposite is just as true. Always seemed so to me, anyway. But what do I know? I’m old.”

  “Not a day over seventy, I’d swear. But as for Mr. Frank Knox? You’re positive that he wasn’t at home on the weekend the president was killed? Maybe sick in his bed?”

  “Didn’t I say that? Why, my husband raised such a fuss on their porch that Frank would’ve come a runnin’ if he was within half a mile. But nobody had set eyes on him in nearly a week. Some people thought he’d run out on his family. But he was prob’ly just off cattin’ around.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Williams.”

  Kaiser clicks off the recorder. “I found that woman in one day. In a week, I’ll have Frank Knox pinned to Dallas like a butterfly to a display board.”

  Stone seems embarrassed by Kaiser’s pushiness. “Penn, forget what we don’t know. Let’s look at what we do. On the day Frank Knox founded the Double Eagles, he wrote RFK, MLK, and JFK in the sand. Then he crossed out JFK’s name and said, ‘One down, two to go.’ We know Brody Royal financially backed the Double Eagles. We also know that Royal—who employed Frank Knox to commit other murders during the 1960s
—had two rifles in his house that were possibly related to the JFK assassination. We also know Brody Royal was a longtime associate of Carlos Marcello. Granted?”

  I nod but say nothing.

  “We know the Kennedys meant to destroy Marcello. We know Frank Knox worked as a military instructor at a Cuban exile training camp funded by Marcello. We know your father knew Frank Knox from his work for Triton Battery, and that he kept quiet about at least one Knox family murder for forty years. We also know that Tom personally visited Marcello in 1968, and that he treated some Marcello soldiers in Natchez. Finally, we know he signed the medical excuse form that got Frank Knox out of work for the week prior to the assassination in Dallas.”

  This ruthless recitation leaves me speechless, but Kaiser piles on with more facts. “Henry Sexton had a photo of your father with Frank Knox and Ray Presley at a Natchez KKK rally in 1965. There’s the fishing boat photo of your father with Royal, Ray Presley, and Claude Devereux from 1966. Penn, if that many pictures survived to support these relationships, then what are the odds that those were the only times Tom ever saw those men?”

  “I don’t care,” I insist, my voice filled with irrational defensiveness. “You’ll never convince me that my dad was part of any plot to kill Kennedy. Would he screw his black nurse, or even fall in love with her? Sure. But knowingly participate in an assassination? Hell no.”

  “As I said before,” Stone says quietly, “Tom might have done something without understanding what the consequences would be—until it was too late. You know how the Mafia works. They do you a small favor, and the next thing you know, you’re in up to your neck. They lend you money, but when you go to pay them back, you find out they don’t want money in return. They want a name, or a key to a building—”

  “Or a medical excuse,” says Kaiser.

  “Fuck you, John.” I keep my gaze on Stone. “I thought you said you believed it would turn out that Dad hadn’t done anything.”

  “I said his decisions would turn out to be justified.” An embarrassed sadness seeps from the old agent’s eyes. “Penn, I’m as human as the next man. You know my record. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of, and often for no good reason other than whiskey. But if I feared for my family’s safety, I doubt there’s much I wouldn’t do to protect them.”

  The universal motivation gives me pause. It might even be the reason Dad is still doing crazy things today.

  “Brody Royal told you that Tom saved Viola Turner in 1968,” Stone says. “The only person with the power to save that woman from the Double Eagles was Carlos Marcello. Nobody else could have muzzled Snake Knox.”

  I can’t argue this point.

  “That simple truth,” says Stone, “begs one question.”

  I know what he’s suggesting. “What did Dad do in exchange for Marcello saving Viola?”

  “No,” says Stone, surprising me. Then he speaks like an oncologist delivering a devastating diagnosis. “The question is, why did Tom think Marcello would help him in the first place?”

  With these words, a black abyss yawns open at my feet.

  “I know all this has been a blow,” Stone goes on softly. “I wish I could have padded it, but I don’t have the time.”

  Without realizing it, I’ve begun pacing out a path of futility in the little room. Part of me wants to bust out of this hotel and run for miles along the river. But where would I go?

  “What do you want from me, Dwight? I know something’s coming.”

  Kaiser nods at the older man.

  “You’re right,” says Stone. “Penn, I don’t mean any offense, but . . . I can’t accept that Tom is completely out in the cold. He wouldn’t leave your mother without some kind of reassurance. If you don’t know where your father is, then your mother does.”

  For the first time in a long while, laughter bubbles up my throat. “Man, you do not know my parents. Mom’s faith in my dad is unshakable, almost absurdly so. As for Dad, he thinks Mom is safer not knowing where he is, and he knows she’s tough enough to stand the waiting.”

  Stone ponders this for a bit. “And you?”

  I shrug. “I don’t think he’s thinking about me at all. He’s got other things on his mind.”

  “You’re wrong about that. And I think you’re wrong about your mother. Ask her, Penn. Push her. You might be surprised.”

  I step closer to the bed, my sympathy for Stone’s plight forgotten. “You’ve got some nerve, man. You accuse me of lying, then ask me to push my mother into telling you where my father is . . . but you can’t even protect him if he did decide to come forward. I’ve been searching for him from morning till night, even though I’d like to kill him myself. But here’s the bottom line: if you can’t guarantee to keep him alive while we try to get to the truth, then I won’t do a damned thing to help you. Not either of you.”

  “You’re upset,” Stone says.

  “You’re goddamn right I am.” I look from Stone to Kaiser, then back at my old friend. There’s something I’m missing, still. “You guys are still holding back on me, aren’t you? That medical excuse doesn’t prove any kind of complicity, or even guilty knowledge. But last night John told me that Dad knows who killed Kennedy.”

  They share another glance.

  “Come on, damn it! Out with it. What have you got to lose at this point?”

  “We do know one more thing about your father,” Stone says quietly. “It’s not damning, but it does prove guilty knowledge.”

  “For God’s sake, Dwight. Tell me.”

  The old man finally gives me an unguarded look, and in his eyes I see a fear that’s almost pathetic. “I’m afraid that if I do, you’ll walk out that door and never come back.”

  “So what? Do you expect me to stay here all night?”

  “No. I only want you to listen to John for ten more minutes.”

  I turn to Kaiser. “What for?”

  This time Kaiser doesn’t speak. He’s waiting for guidance from Stone. The old agent looks like he’s come to the end of his rope. I feel strangely guilty for fighting him, but he’s left me no real choice.

  “Penn,” he says finally, “you and I are both standing at the doors of mysteries. You want to know why everyone wants your father dead, and why he won’t come in from the cold. I want to know what happened in Dallas and why. But I believe that once we get those doors completely open, we’re going to find that our mysteries are the same. All my instinct tells me that.”

  “I don’t see how,” I say wearily.

  “Stay for ten more minutes and find out. I’m asking you as a friend.”

  “You’re holding me hostage to information about my father. Is that what a friend does?”

  A flash of guilt crosses his face, but then his gaze hardens. “This is bigger than we are, son. Bigger than your family, even. Help me put this case to rest.”

  I’m about to tell them I’m leaving when Kaiser stands and walks up to me.

  “I know you don’t want to listen to me anymore,” he says. “But I want you to know that I’m not against your father. In fact, I think he’s innocent of killing Viola Turner.”

  My mouth falls open. This is the first time Kaiser has even hinted at this possibility. “Why are you only telling me this now?”

  “Because I knew it would drive you crazy that I couldn’t do anything about it. Once your father and Garrity killed that trooper, my hands were tied.”

  “You’re just trying to manipulate me. You want me to talk Walker into backing off from the Double Eagles tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I do. But that’s got nothing to do with my opinion about your father.”

  “Who do you think killed Viola?”

  “I think Forrest Knox gave the order.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  Kaiser turns up his hands. “If I could, I’d have done it already. But Forrest was sixteen when Viola was raped, when her brother and Luther Davis were killed. I think he took part in those crimes. And if he did, then he had every
reason to want Viola dead.”

  I don’t know how to respond to this new tack.

  “Whatever deal your father made with Carlos Marcello kept Viola safe until Marcello died,” Kaiser says. “After that, force of habit was probably enough. Viola was way up in Chicago, and she hadn’t said anything about the Knoxes in twenty-five years. But once she moved back to Natchez, and Henry Sexton started visiting her . . . that was too much. The Knoxes had to kill her, exactly as they’d threatened to do.”

  “John . . . goddamn it. If you really believe that, surely you can do something to protect Dad?”

  The FBI agent shrugs helplessly. “My faith buys him nothing with the director. Your only currency is information we can use.”

  “Information about the assassination?”

  “That’s the gold standard today.”

  As I look from him to Stone, I realize the time has come to gamble on the integrity of these two men. I don’t like risking my mother’s privacy or feelings, and I don’t want to implicate my father any further, but his survival is more important than his guilt or innocence.

  Taking a seat on the edge of Stone’s bed, I say, “In 1959, my dad worked as a medical extern in the Orleans Parish Prison. At one point Carlos Marcello was a prisoner there, and my dad treated him. Later that year, in some Italian restaurant, Carlos came over to their table to make sure they were happy. He seemed to know Dad. I only just learned about this. My mother told me last night, when I asked her about Marcello. She thought it was funny, just a colorful story. The point is, Dad knew Carlos at least four years before the assassination. So he may very well know things you want to know.”

  “Christ,” Kaiser exclaims. “I knew it. I mean, I believed there’d be something like this. I’ll bet the restaurant was Mosca’s.”