The Bone Tree

by Greg Iles

  “It is, and I’ll try. I’ve really got to go now.”

  Peggy hung up and rushed into the den, meaning to grab the remote and shut it off. Annie was holding it, of course. The child whipped her head around, then froze as she saw Peggy’s face.

  “What’s the matter, Gram? What happened?”

  Peggy’s throat had sealed shut.

  Annie’s eyes widened. “Gram . . . ?”

  “Your father’s on his way home, sweetie.”

  “Then why don’t you look happy?”

  Peggy glanced at the television. The newscast had cut to a commercial, but it would return any second with the story that John Kaiser had already relayed to her.

  “Annie, let’s turn off the TV.”

  “How come?”

  Peggy stepped forward and held out her hand. “Let me have that, sweetheart.”

  Annie looked down at the remote control. Then she began to cry.

  CHAPTER 75

  AS THE LUSAHATCHA County Sheriff’s Department helicopter storms northwest through gray towers of cloud, I huddle in its belly, my back pressed against the chopper’s metal skin. From across the cabin, Carl Sims stares at me like he’s been assigned to a suicide watch. Carl cares about me, I know, and at some level he loved Caitlin, but right now he might as well be a stranger. The only thing that really joins us is that once he was paid to protect Caitlin and failed in his duty. So Carl knows that pain, at least to some extent. But in the last analysis, Caitlin’s death is a tragic but transient event for him, whereas I have suffered a physical and spiritual amputation. Caitlin is gone forever, and from bitter experience I know I will feel her loss every day (as I did that of my first wife), for at least several years. The effect on Annie I cannot even begin to contemplate; I must spare myself that pain for now.

  Between my legs rests a small cardboard box containing what the duty nurse at Our Lady called Caitlin’s “personal effects.” I only glanced inside the box, half hoping for some clue to what happened to her. But all I saw was her cell phone (which Carl had instinctively saved during our attempted rescue), her engagement ring (the very modest one she’d asked for), one plain gold earring (the other had somehow been lost), a navy blue hair scrunchie, and a scarred Gerber multi-tool with clotted blood still on it. The nurse seemed torn about the multi-tool, wondering aloud whether the police might want it as evidence; but the trauma surgeon believed that Caitlin herself had bloodied the tool in a failed effort to save her life.

  Again and again I hear that surgeon marveling at how Dad had contrived to drain the blood from Caitlin’s pericardium with a ballpoint pen, but even more that Caitlin had carried out the painful procedure herself. Once I left the hospital, I couldn’t shut out the image of Caitlin steeling herself against the fire of that naked blade, then cutting her own flesh in a desperate attempt to save herself. God knows she didn’t lack nerve. Caitlin once put four stitches in my lacerated foot under my father’s watchful eyes, after I’d ripped it open walking through a creek on the Natchez Trace. I did similar things as a boy, when Dad tried to instill in me a love for medicine. But despite his effort, that love never developed, and instead I followed my talents for reading people, for seeing through the fog of lies, and for persuading people of certain realities. How odd that I would ultimately turn to writing fiction: telling lies to persuade people of things that never happened. Of course, the secret that all good novelists know is that the “lies” they tell are truer than any factual history could ever be.

  I wish I had a good lie now. If I did, I would tell it to myself and then, before I saw through it, call Caitlin’s father and tell it to him. Because . . . how do you tell a man that his daughter has been murdered? What do you say when he asks you whether his little girl suffered before she died? And how do you answer when he asks you what you intend to do about what happened to her? In that father’s ideal world, you would say, I promise you this, sir, the son of a bitch who killed her won’t see another sunrise.

  For that is one thing about the South: it’s still a place where, if a man catches someone molesting his child and beats that man to death, he can reasonably expect a jury of his peers to conclude that the pervert fell down twenty-six times on his way to the morgue. Not guilty, Judge, and by the way could we shake the defendant’s hand? The same principle would hold true for a killer of women, at least in some circumstances.

  But in reality, most times the man in my position does nothing. I saw this soul-deadening dilemma too many times as a prosecutor. The desire for revenge is primal, bred deep in our species. But the fear of losing everything is greater still. Most times, a man who contemplates revenge realizes that he must throw away not only his freedom but his family in order to get it, and in the end, he turns his anger inward. There it mixes with guilt and poisons him until, with luck, the passing years eventually dilute the toxins to a tolerable level. Sometimes, though—particularly with the parents of missing or murdered children—that dilution never happens.

  Sometimes the poison kills them.

  I may not turn to murder for revenge, but neither will I be one of those poisoned men. Whatever responsibility Caitlin bears for her fate, I have failed in my duty to protect her. What can I do now? Killing her killer for revenge would go against everything I’ve stood for all my life. It would go against everything my father taught me. But as this thought flashes through my brain, I realize that in the past week, my father has broken every precept he ever tried to instill in me. So why do I still jump to the false tune of his teaching?

  Danny McDavitt’s voice crackles in my headset: “I just heard on the radio that somebody set that Bone Tree on fire.”

  This brings me out of my fog. “Set it on fire?”

  “That’s what I heard. Trying to destroy evidence, looks like.”

  Snake Knox, says a voice in my head. Or Forrest . . . or that Ozan.

  “Danny?” I say into my headset mike.

  “What is it?” Carl asks, his lips not seeming to move beneath his helmet.

  “Can you fly over Valhalla on your way back to Natchez?”

  “I think the FBI’s pretty active in there right now,” McDavitt says. “And Sheriff Ellis is mad as hell at them for diverting this bird. I’d hate to have to explain what we’re doing in that airspace when we’re supposed to be delivering you elsewhere.”

  I guess I expected this answer, or one like it.

  “We already passed it anyway,” Danny says. “I didn’t know the tree was on fire, but the swamp to the south of Valhalla was lit up like a firebase under attack.”

  “Thanks,” I mutter, visualizing Kaiser and his men standing around the burning Bone Tree like angry Crusaders around a burning altar.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mayor?” Danny asks.

  “No. Just take me home.”

  “I’ll sure do that.”

  After closing my eyes for nearly a minute, I take out my BlackBerry, scroll through my contacts, and find the home number of John Masters. Somewhere in North Carolina, the self-styled southern media baron sits in blissful ignorance of his daughter’s fate. For a few more seconds, he can believe he has been blessed by providence. But after he answers my call, his life will implode as surely as mine has. Where another man might pray, I simply stare across the deck at Carl Sims and give John Masters a little more time to feel alive.

  A little mercy.

  TOM CAGE STOOD SHIVERING on a street corner in the pouring rain, watching a line of vehicles douse him with gutter spray as they passed. Two blocks from the hospital, he’d stopped a man wearing a business suit and told him he’d just been mugged, then asked if he could use the man’s cell phone to call his son. The businessman had hesitated only a moment; the physician’s coat, white hair, and professional manner—along with Tom’s ragged condition—convinced him that Tom must be telling the truth.

  “Punks ought to be hung,” the man said, shaking his head. “This city’s gone to hell since those Katrina refugees flooded in. A
m I right?”

  “When you’re right, you’re right,” Tom replied, turning away and praying Walt would answer.

  To his surprise, Walt had, his normally strict phone discipline overruled by his desperation for news of Tom. More surprising still, Walt had been parked outside state police headquarters only a few miles away, surveilling Forrest Knox and Alphonse Ozan. Thirty seconds after arranging to meet, Tom had tossed the white coat in a Dumpster and set off across Baton Rouge on foot.

  Now he cupped his hands over his eyes and peered into oncoming traffic, searching for Drew Elliott’s old pickup. After two freezing minutes, Walt pulled to the curb in front of him, ignoring the honks and curses of the irate drivers behind him. Seeing Tom’s state, Walt jumped out and helped him through the driver’s door. Tom slid carefully across the bench seat and sagged against the passenger door. He felt Walt fasten the seat belt around his waist, then a lurch as Walt put the truck in gear and rejoined the flow of traffic.

  “We should never have split up,” Tom said, his feverish face pressed against the cold glass.

  “You got that right,” Walt said. “Whose idea was that anyway?”

  Tom couldn’t raise a laugh. “Should we turn on the radio? Find out how hard they’re still looking for us?”

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  Tom looked up then, and he saw pain in Walt’s face. The kind of pain that often filled his own when he passed on terrible news. “What is it? Has something happened to Penn?”

  Walt shook his head. “No.”

  “Who?” Tom felt a shiver of dread. “Not Peggy or Annie?”

  “No, no. It’s the girl. Caitlin.”

  Tom’s heart turned to lead. “Tell me.”

  “She died on the table. Mackiever just called me.”

  Tom stared at Walt, slowly shaking his head, refusing to believe it. Then he put his face in his hands and began to shudder. He had failed at so many things over the past few days—over his lifetime, really—but failing to save Caitlin was beyond bearing. For Tom knew in that moment that he had lost not only Caitlin and the child she was carrying, but also Penn. He had crossed into a country beyond forgiveness.

  He had lost his son forever.

  CHAPTER 76

  PEGGY CAGE HAD watched her son endure tragedies before, but she had never seen him come unhinged. During the past few minutes, Penn had started to do just that. She already regretted not calling Drew Elliott so that he could sedate Penn; but in truth, Drew would have refused to do such a thing unless Penn requested it, and Penn would never request it. Yet sedation was exactly what he needed.

  If watching Caitlin die in his arms had not driven Penn beyond the point of endurance, having to tell his daughter about it had. Peggy had done all she could to help, and more than half the battle had been fought before Penn ever arrived. Peggy had never suffered as she had while watching Annie’s face as she absorbed the news that the woman she’d viewed as a second mother would never walk into this house again. Peggy had worried that Annie might not believe the news, but she had—instantly. She had, in fact, been waiting for it. Apparently, Annie’s fears for Penn, for Peggy, and for Caitlin had been so great that she had scarcely slept the past few nights. She had covered it well, but once Peggy confirmed one of her worst fears, Annie had begun a sort of high-speed infantile regression.

  Peggy had never forgotten the effects of Annie’s mother’s death. The then three-year-old had developed severe separation anxiety, which was the main reason Penn had moved her to Natchez. Prior to that move, Annie had refused to leave her father’s side, and even insisted on sleeping in his bed, one little hand always in contact with his wrist or arm, an early-warning system of impending loss. After that move, Peggy had taken Penn’s place to some extent—as had Tom—until over time the child had grown secure enough in their love and constant attention that she learned to be independent again.

  But Caitlin had played an important role as well. She had entered their lives as soon as Penn and Annie arrived in Natchez, and despite being only twenty-eight and career-oriented, Caitlin had proved amazingly intuitive at earning Annie’s trust. The depth of their bond had been displayed tonight, when Annie shattered before Peggy’s eyes.

  After the first tears of shock, Annie had voiced an almost obsessive concern with Caitlin’s body. Where was she now? Was she alone? Why wasn’t Daddy bringing her home with him? The rational answers did nothing to allay her concerns, and once Annie realized that Caitlin’s body was almost sure to be autopsied, she had grown even more distraught. After a very difficult hour, Peggy had given her a couple of teaspoons of Benadryl, with the excuse that it would make her burning eyes feel better. The adrenaline-depleted child had almost instantly collapsed in her lap and gone to sleep.

  Annie still lay there now, while Penn steadily vented the emotions boiling in his mind and heart. At first he had spoken softly, but as he revealed more of his feelings, he got louder, and Peggy grew worried that he would awaken Annie. On the advice of their FBI guards, they had moved down to Penn’s basement office. Thankfully, that isolation also prevented the guards from hearing what Penn was saying now, which was a blessing. Peggy didn’t want anyone to know how angry he was at his father, or how irrational he sounded when he spoke about the Knox gang—particularly Forrest Knox. She worried that Penn actually might take it on himself to go after the state police officer with a gun. Part of her was glad to see Penn’s anger diverted from Tom, but she knew his focus on others was probably some sort of transference. His deepest anger was reserved for Tom, and there Peggy was at a loss. She didn’t know how to argue without appearing to be giving her husband the blind support of an ignorant or deluded wife. She was looking down at Annie when the best solution came to her.

  “Penn, would you take Annie from me? My legs have gone to sleep. She’s way too big for my lap now.”

  He stopped pacing and glared at her, but then his face softened, and they made the transfer with the smoothness imparted by long practice.

  “I’m going to make you a drink,” she said.

  “I don’t need a drink.”

  “Yes, you do. If you don’t slow that brain down, you’re going to talk yourself into something crazy. You have to calm down, son.”

  He sighed heavily and looked over at his desk. “All right, one drink.”

  “Gin and tonic?”

  He nodded.

  Peggy swished up the stairs before he could think twice, then went to the kitchen cabinet where Penn kept the liquor. A young FBI agent sat at the kitchen table, but he merely nodded to her and smiled encouragingly.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you.” Peggy quickly poured a triple serving of gin.

  “Don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “I won’t,” Peggy said, covertly reaching into her purse for the bottle of the temazepam she took to help her sleep. She swallowed one of the yellow capsules, then quickly pulled apart three others and stirred the white powder into Penn’s drink with her forefinger. It didn’t dissolve very well, but she thought the bitter gin would cover the taste.

  “I wish my husband would call,” she said, just to keep the agent focused on what she was saying rather than what she was doing.

  “I think Agent Kaiser wishes the same thing.”

  “Oh,” Peggy said brightly, “I’m sorry, I forgot to offer you a drink.”

  The agent smiled. “I’m on duty, Mrs. Cage.”

  “Peggy, I told you. Please.”

  “I’m fine, ma’am.”

  She smiled, then picked up the glass and carried it back to the basement, the ice tinkling as she negotiated the stairs. She thought she might have to press Penn to drink, but when she got to his office, she found Annie asleep on the couch and Penn standing by his desk with his hand out. He took a big gulp from the glass, then gave her a hug so tight she could feel him shuddering against her. As she hugged him back, she spied a suede zip bag lying on his desktop. It hadn�
��t been there when she left to get the drinks. Tom owned several bags like that one. Every one contained a pistol.

  “Mom . . . last night Dad was hiding at Quentin’s house in Jefferson County. I didn’t know that, but Caitlin did. She found him somehow. She went to see him, she talked to him, but she never told me about it. I think Walt knew, but he held it back to protect her. I only found out because I called Melba to check on her. She let it slip by mistake. If Caitlin had told me last night where Dad was . . . none of this would have happened. Don’t you see? It’s like she killed herself. Because she wanted an exclusive story. Can you believe that?”

  Peggy was stunned, but she didn’t want to play into Penn’s anger. “I imagine Tom made her promise not to tell us about it.”

  “Of course he did, but still. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere with loyalty. That’s what I was telling you yesterday.”

  Peggy just hugged her son and willed the drug to take effect.

  “Can you believe Dad just walked out of that hospital? Caitlin was dead upstairs, and he just . . . walked out. Like he didn’t even care.”

  “He couldn’t have known she’d died, honey.” Peggy prayed this was true.

  Penn drew back, his bloodshot eyes like those of an angry and disillusioned teenager. “If he didn’t, then it’s worse. He knew she was barely holding on.”

  “Don’t talk that way!” Peggy snapped.

  “Why not? I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to say it: how many chances has Dad had to do the right thing?”

  Peggy went and sat beside Annie, stroked her silken hair. All she’d withheld from Penn roiled in her stomach like something she needed to vomit up, yet still she did not speak.

  “I wonder if he’ll even come to Caitlin’s funeral?” Penn asked bitterly.

  A wrenching abdominal ache nearly doubled Peggy over. She almost couldn’t bear to hear these words come from her son’s mouth. When would those three pills take effect? Penn’s face had grown steadily redder, but he showed no sign of collapsing. As she stroked Annie’s hair, Penn spoke with almost fearful softness.