The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

“We’d better get some sleep,” she said. “We’re pulling out before dawn.”

  Jordan closed her eyes for a moment, then stood and zipped her jacket. “Maybe I can get to sleep before John gets back to the hotel. I don’t fancy a long night of lying.”

  “But you’ll do it if necessary?”

  Glass gave her a crooked smile. “Same as you, right?”

  CHAPTER 44

  TOM AWAKENED IN a fog of pain and terror. A swarm of black, insectile faces hovered above him, peering down as if they meant to devour him any second. He fought to get off his back, but a flurry of strong hands pressed him back down. When his eyes adjusted to the backlighting, he saw one human face in the alien crowd. A boy, earnest and sweating, leaning over his left shoulder. The boy was working on his gunshot wound.

  A syringe floated into his field of view, then stung his shoulder. Blessed relief washed through him. He hadn’t realized how painful his wound had been until the local anesthetic took effect. With relief from pain, his surroundings took on more detail. An IV line ran fluids into his right wrist. For a few seconds he wondered if he was in some kind of ambulance, but then he remembered that the black masks belonged to a SWAT team—the same killers who had broken into Quentin’s house and shot Melba.

  “Melba,” he croaked.

  “Don’t try to talk,” the boy advised. “You’re severely dehydrated, and your heart’s in bad shape. Let me take care of this wound.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “What’s he saying?” asked one of the masked faces.

  “I think he’s asking about the nurse,” answered another.

  “Don’t worry about her,” said the first man. “She’s fine.”

  They’re lying, Tom thought. Melba’s dead.

  He jerked as the boy medic probed flesh that was not quite numb. Then his stomach rolled as the chopper began to descend rapidly. He wanted to ask the boy a question, but it kept drifting out of his head, like a flashlight fading into darkness. Then all was night once more.

  “IS MELBA ALIVE OR DEAD?”

  “Does it matter what I say? You won’t believe me either way.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “She’s fine, Doc. They just darted her, same as they did you.”

  Hope flamed in Tom’s chest, but he tamped it down, wary of being manipulated.

  VOICES IN THE DARK.

  One more powerful than the others . . . An officer being deferred to by noncoms and enlisted men.

  This time Tom kept his eyes closed.

  “What’s his status?” asked the officer’s voice.

  “He needs to be in a hospital, Colonel. No shit. We’re lucky that dart didn’t stop his heart.”

  “What about his bullet wound?”

  “I pumped him full of antibiotics. If his heart doesn’t give out, he should be okay for a couple of days. But he’s also diabetic. Somebody needs to be checking his sugar regularly.”

  “For the next twelve hours, that’s your job. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Give me a minute with him. Then we’ll move him out of the chopper.”

  There was a shuffle of boots on metal, and then someone squatted on his haunches beside Tom. Tom heard the knees creak.

  “Hey, Doc,” said the officer. “You can quit playing possum. I got your message. If you want to make a deal, open your eyes.”

  Tom did.

  He saw a dark, intense face and a deformed ear that barely qualified as one at all, in the cosmetic sense. Beneath the face he saw a lieutenant colonel’s oak leaves on the epaulettes of a state trooper’s uniform. The uniform threw Tom back to the borrow pits, and Walt killing the trooper beside the van.

  “Do you know who I am?” asked the man.

  “I don’t recognize you. But I’m guessing you’re Frank Knox’s son.”

  The trooper smiled. “That’s right. Forrest Knox.”

  “What happened to the ear? War wound?”

  Knox looked almost pleased by Tom’s frankness. “Lost it in the Vietnamese Highlands.”

  “You didn’t want to fix it?”

  Knox shrugged. “I like keeping the civilians off balance. You know?”

  Tom didn’t answer. He knew the type all too well.

  “So, you want to make a deal,” Forrest said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You offering to guarantee I stay squeaky clean if I can get you out of hot water on this cop killing? Is that about it?”

  “Not just that. I want you to close the Viola Turner murder, too.”

  Forrest nodded as though intrigued. “I suppose you didn’t kill her?”

  “That no longer matters. The only question now is who gets blamed for it.”

  Forrest smiled. “You have a suggestion?”

  “I say blame the dead. Easiest for everybody.”

  Now Knox grinned. “A man after my own heart. I like that plan, Doc.”

  “So what do you think?”

  Knox shifted his weight onto his haunches. “I think I need to get in touch with your son. The problem is, I can’t find him.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Tom said. “And vice versa. Safer that way.”

  “Maybe up till now. But the thing is, Doc, while I trust your motives—and your follow-through, up to a point—your word doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can’t call off your son and his fiancée at the newspaper. Right?”

  “I can do that. I talked to Caitlin tonight.”

  “And she said she’ll drop the story?”

  Tom tried to hold his facial expression neutral. “She’s open to it. I think Penn and I together can persuade her.”

  “I hope so, Doc. For your sake.” Forrest leaned down over him, his gaze disturbingly intimate. “My daddy always liked you, Doc. He respected what you did in Korea. Do you remember him?”

  Tom let himself think back to the early sixties. “I remember Frank, all right.”

  “Nothing good to say, though? Even now?”

  “We were more different than alike.”

  Forrest grinned again. “No doubt about that.” He raised his hand and tapped his forefinger hard on Tom’s forehead. “I’d hate to have to hurt you, Doc. I really would. I remember you giving me my football physicals back in the day. But if you and your boy can’t straighten out that Masters cunt before she goes too far . . . she’s gonna pull the same train Viola Turner did back in ’68. Only she won’t come out of it alive.”

  While Tom tried to suppress his memory of Viola’s wrecked state after those events, Knox signaled through the chopper’s wide hatch. “Let’s get him out!”

  Three masked SWAT team members clambered through the hatch. Forrest moved aside so they could slide Tom onto a stretcher. They lifted him easily, then manhandled him through the door and out under the starry sky.

  Tom smelled the stink of old crude oil and the sticky mud some men called gumbo. Turning his head to the right, he saw the long black arm of a pumping unit rising and falling like a black bird drinking from a puddle, the cyclic hum of its engine strangely comforting in the dark.

  “Oil field,” he murmured, as the men carried him through the night.

  “Yep,” Forrest said from above him. “Brody Royal owned this land, but he won’t have much use for it now. There’s an old well-checker’s shack through the trees. I was going to leave you there, but considering your present condition, I think we’ll give you the better alternative.”

  Tom followed Knox’s pointing hand.

  Parked in the dark about forty yards from the well was Walt Garrity’s silver Roadtrek van. They must have sent someone to collect it from Drew’s lake house garage.

  “Where’s Walt?” Tom asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

  Tom shook his head. “I lost touch with him a long time ago.”

  “Come on, Doc. You’re going to make me doubt you’ll stand by any deal.”

  Tom felt angina tighten the muscles of his
back as they neared the big van. Forrest opened the Roadtrek’s rear doors. The sound made Tom think of Walt threatening Sonny Thornfield in this van only two nights ago. How swiftly the tables had turned. The stretcher banged against the van, and he tensed against the pain.

  “Hold it,” Forrest said, and then he leaned over Tom once more. “You were with my daddy when he died, right?”

  Tom nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “Did he say anything at the end? I was only sixteen, and nobody ever mentioned any last words. But Snake said Daddy was in and out of consciousness when they took him to your office, and I’ve always wondered.”

  Tom shut his eyes and saw Frank Knox gasping on the floor of the little surgery room as his blood poured onto the tile and the air embolism hit his heart like a sledgehammer. For the first time in his life, Tom took pleasure in the memory.

  “No,” Tom said, opening his eyes. “He passed out when I started working on him, and never regained consciousness. Frank was tough, but his injuries were catastrophic.”

  Forrest stared into Tom’s eyes for a few seconds, then nodded slowly. “That’s what I figured.”

  Tom heard the men holding the stretcher breathing harder.

  “I’ve gone out on a limb for you, Doc. The easiest thing would have been to take you down and hang Viola around your neck. I hope your son wants you back as bad as I’d like to see my daddy. If he doesn’t, this RV’s gonna wind up at the bottom of the river. And you’re gonna be in it.”

  Forrest gave the stretcher-bearers a hand signal, then walked away. Tom felt a hitch as the SWAT troopers lifted the stretcher high, then slid him into the tomblike darkness of the van.

  CHAPTER 45

  IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Sheriff Dennis called me back and told me to meet him in the parking lot of the Ferriday Walmart Supercenter. He didn’t tell me the reason, but the near-panicked urgency in his voice told me I’d been right about the planted drugs. It took all my strength to haul myself out of bed and walk down to my car, and it took most of the drive over to Louisiana to bring myself fully awake.

  Driving west on the dark, flat artery of Highway 84, I suddenly spy the Walmart glowing like a fluorescent island in the vast black fields between Vidalia and Ferriday. Fewer than twenty vehicles dot the parking lot when I pull alongside Sheriff Dennis’s cruiser. As I get out and cross between our two cars, I see a black cat with three kittens crouching in the shadow of a parked tractor-trailer, eating from a wet McDonald’s bag.

  A hot wind escapes from Walker’s cruiser when I open his passenger door, and when I close myself inside, I see that the sheriff has mounted a sawed-off shotgun in the floor rack between us. His police radio chatters on low volume, and a dashboard computer glows softly with a screen saver that reads: GO TIGERS!

  Dennis appears barely in control of his emotions, so I speak in the calmest voice I can muster.

  “Hey, bud. Looks like you’re sweating bullets. Why don’t you turn the heater down?”

  Dennis wipes his face like a man waking from a trance. “You’re right. Shit, I didn’t realize.”

  After he turns the heater to low, I turn and brace my back against the passenger door. “What did you find, and where did you find it?”

  The sheriff shakes his head in disbelief. “A shitload of crystal meth, cooked and bagged and ready for sale. Right under my goddamn house!”

  “How much is a shitload?”

  “Three-quarters of a pound. Enough to put me in Angola for thirty years, not counting corruption charges.”

  A strange serenity flows over me at this news.

  “You were right,” he says, an edge of hysteria in his voice. “Those goddamn Knoxes.”

  “Well, at least we have our answer. This is why the Double Eagles agreed to come back for questioning. They think you’ll be busted by your own men before you ask them your first question.”

  Sheriff Dennis goes pale. “My own men?”

  “Unless Forrest brings in the DEA—which I doubt—I’d bet on it. I imagine one of your deputies will receive an ‘anonymous’ tip sometime prior to tomorrow’s interrogations. A team will drive over to your house to search it, with the expectation of ‘discovering’ the hoard you found tonight. And if the dope was there, you’d have helped teach your colleagues a valuable lesson: crossing the Knoxes is career suicide for a cop.”

  “And you figured this out from a story your kid told you?”

  “That triggered it, yeah. Kaiser’s certainty about the Eagles not coming had been bothering me all evening. To submit to questioning, they had to have some kind of insurance. Subconsciously, I must have been wondering what the easiest way to move you off the board would be. I saw drugs planted on cops in Houston before. With this parish’s history of corruption, that would have been a slam dunk.”

  Sheriff Dennis wipes the sheen of sweat from his forehead with his uniform sleeve. “So what now?”

  I don’t answer for a while. Then, after some thought, I say, “Are you asking me as the mayor of Natchez? As a former prosecutor? Or as a friend?”

  “A friend, goddamn it.”

  “These are the same guys who killed your cousin, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “They booby-trapped the warehouse that killed two of your deputies.”

  Dennis nods soberly.

  I turn and look over at the harsh light spilling out of the Walmart doors. “An elegant solution came to me while I was driving over the bridge.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Send that meth right back where it came from.”

  Walker’s voice goes quiet, as though someone might hear us. “Plant it back on the Knoxes?”

  Turning back to him, I answer with words I can’t quite believe are my own. “Put on a pair of latex gloves, then divide the meth into separate packages. You know how to make it look authentic. Stash those packets in or around the homes of the Double Eagles we’re going to question tomorrow. At least Snake and Sonny, anyway. Make sure the amount meets the standard for trafficking charges.”

  “That wouldn’t be any problem with this load. What about Billy Knox?”

  “Something tells me Billy’s likely to have serious security around his place. I’d leave him out of it. But Snake and Sonny won’t, and I doubt they’re back from Toledo Bend yet.”

  Walker looks away from me, his jaw muscles working hard as he grinds his teeth. Then he nods suddenly. “Fuck ’em. I’m gonna do it.”

  “Good.”

  Now his eyes seek me out. “Have you ever done anything like this?”

  “No. In all my years as an assistant DA, I never broke the rules. I never looked the other way when a cop did, either. Not on a single case. I was a goddamn choirboy. And I don’t know why I’m advising you to do this now, except . . .” I trail off, unsure whether even I know the answer. “Tonight Billy Byrd tried to search my house, and I almost pushed him into a gunfight. It was stupid, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire,” Dennis says softly. “If the bad guys are wearing white hats while they break the rules . . . you throw the rules out the window.”

  “I guess that’s it.”

  “Part of it. The truth is, you’re worried about your father. If we can keep up the pressure on the Knoxes, it’ll definitely increase his chances of survival.”

  I nod slowly, watching the mother cat and her kittens scamper from the shadow of the parked truck to a deeper shadow beside a Dumpster. “Once this is done, you’ll need somebody to make an anonymous tip call to you about the meth at Snake’s and Sonny’s houses, preferably from a pay phone to your home. In case a defense lawyer checks later. Do you have someone you can trust?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Be sure you trust them, Walker. If you’re caught doing this, you’ll go to the penitentiary, if the Knoxes don’t kill you first. If it’s the only way to be sure, I’ll wake up and make the call myself.”

  “I don
’t want you to take that risk. I can get it handled.”

  “All right. I guess we’re done, then.”

  “What about tomorrow morning? You’re gonna be there for the interrogation, right?”

  “Kaiser says I have no authority to question the Eagles. And technically, he’s correct.”

  “Screw that. I want you in that room. Consider yourself a special deputy of Concordia Parish. I’ll swear you in tomorrow. I’ll even pin a tin star on your chest.”

  A childish thrill of satisfaction runs through me. Walker Dennis is smarter than people give him credit for being. “I didn’t think about that. You know, with trafficking charges against Sonny and Snake, we’ll have some real leverage. Because of the mandatory sentencing minimums, you won’t even need the cooperation of the DA to charge them.”

  “You’re goddamn right. What about Kaiser, though? Do you think he’ll show up and try to stop us?”

  I think back to the discussions in Kaiser’s hotel. “I don’t know. He’s got a lot of other things on his mind. But he’s worried we’ll screw things up for him, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him.”

  Dennis shakes his head, obviously troubled by something. “You know, that Kaiser’s a pretty tough dude. He fought in ’Nam.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He also worked in the Bureau’s profiling unit, but he transferred out after attacking a convict they were interviewing. A child killer. He’s probably got a lot of experience with interrogation.”

  “So do I, Walker. Don’t worry. With trafficking charges against the Eagles, you won’t require much finesse. And Kaiser won’t be able to interfere. Just make sure you don’t screw up while you’re planting the stuff.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Where’s the meth now?”

  “In the trunk.”

  A bolus of pure terror blasts through my veins to my heart. “This trunk?”

  “Shit, where else was I gonna put it?”

  An almost overwhelming urge to leap from the car grips me. “Okay, okay,” I say, closing my hand around the door handle. “Just get the job done as fast as you can. And be careful. This isn’t some prank, man. They’ll kill you if they catch you. They won’t hesitate.”