The Devils Punchbowl pc-3

by Greg Iles

  She knew she couldn'’t walk on the levee, as bad as she wanted to. There’d be trucks coming down it before dawn, and if Quinn sent even one man along the road to look for her body on the bank, he’d pin her in his headlights like a doomed deer. She couldn'’t move well enough to be sure of getting away in time. So she’d slid down the far side of the levee, down to the scrub trees by the borrow pits, from which they’d taken the dirt to build the levees. She limped along the pits until the sun came up, her eyes always on the ground, looking for snakes. She remembered a teenage boyfriend walking along a borrow pit, breaking the backs of moccasins with a heavy branch. Despite this frantic killing, the snakes swirled slowly through the shallows but did not flee to the middle of the pit. This puzzled Linda. Were they lethargic from the suffocating heat? Or was it the poisonous fertilizer chemicals that drained off the fields whenever it rained? Her brother shot snakes with a .22 rifle, but this was different. With their backs broken, the serpents writhed and curled back upon themselves in endless figure eights until they drowned and became meat for the nutrias. Later, when that boy was inside her,

  she’d remembered how the snakes had twisted and cracked like whips, and she wondered if they’d been screaming. Could snakes scream? Could they hear each other screaming?

  Linda walked until the skin on the back of her neck felt like it would split from sunburn, dragging her throbbing leg behind her, but by then she’d climbed the levee again and figured out where she was—and where she was going. She was on Deer Park Road, and while there were only a couple of farmhouses for many miles, she knew about a church that stood alone at the edge of the cotton fields, and this confirmed God’s participation in her survival. She got so thirsty she licked the sweat from her arms, and this made her smile. Yankees whined about the heat and the humidity, but it was the humidity that made the heat bearable. Louisiana wasn'’t like the barren hills outside Las Vegas, a place so dry you hardly saw the sweat leave your skin. Here there was almost as much water in the air as in your body, and the sweat beaded on your skin like water on a car that had just been waxed.

  The last time she’d climbed the levee, she’d seen the church. In her mind it was white and clean and straight, rising from a green ocean of soybeans, but in truth it lay beside an empty cotton field like an oversize box thrown carelessly from a truck. The bright tin roof she remembered was a mosaic of rust and primer, and the steeple looked like a doghouse someone had squashed onto the apex of a roof. But even so, even with the crucifix atop it looking like a broken TV antenna, she’d seen deliverance. Pastor Simpson was alone behind the building, walking from the back shed to the main building with two boxes under his arms.

  Linda had wept with joy.

  She’d never been to services at that church, but she’d gone to Pastor Simpson’s old church for years. Linda’s father had been strict Assembly of God, but Linda had discovered Pastor Simpson when a friend had taken her to the Oneness Branch of the church. The Oneness people believed God couldn'’t be split into three, but the main thing was, they hated the hypocrisy of the mainliners. Pastors preaching against television while buying big sets for their lake houses, where they thought nobody would see them. But while Linda was in Las Vegas, Pastor Simpson had splintered off from the

  Oneness people too and had formed something called the Wholeness Church. It wasn'’t official, but he had a small congregation of forty or fifty hard-core believers, and they’d gotten together to renovate the old church by the river. She’d heard about it when she got back to town and went to work on the boat.

  When Linda limped down off the levee, she hadn'’t known what Pastor Simpson’s argument with the Oneness people was, nor had she cared. All she knew was that for years Simpson had been a good pastor and tried to help people, especially the poor. There’d been some talk about him and a couple of the young girls in the congregation, but she’d never had any trouble with him.

  He’d recognized Linda almost immediately, and he’d taken her into the church and washed her wounds with water from the sink in the one bathroom they had. She hadn'’t told him the truth of course—not because she didn't trust him, but because she was afraid she might bring terrible harm down onto him or his followers. He’d sat there for half an hour with his silver hair and red skin and sympathetic eyes while she told him a lie about getting involved with a man she’d met on the gambling boat, a man who’d been in prison, who had almost killed her with a beating, and who would kill her if he found her. No, she couldn'’t go to the police, she said, because the man had friends in the police, on both sides of the river. Pastor Simpson had shaken his head and promised to do all he could to help, including getting her out of town. And he’d stood by his word, so far. When she’d written out the long note for Mayor Cage, Simpson had called one of the girls in his church to come out from town and pick it up, a girl named Darla, and Darla had promised to deliver it, and to make sure the mayor had no idea where any of them were, or even who she was.

  Linda wished time would speed up. She’s going to have to move soon because there’s an evening service coming, and the pastor told her to be hiding in the shed well before the first car pulled up. She dreads that fifty-foot walk like nothing in a long time, but she’ll do it somehow. Because after the service, the pastor’s nephew is going to drive her to Shreveport, to stay with another group of Wholeness worshippers. There she will be safe from the “convict” who is hunting her. Linda lifts her shirt and wipes the sweat from her

  brow, which is burning like the skin around her torn leg. She needs a doctor, but she can hold out another few hours. They might even have a doctor in the church in Shreveport, she thinks. No matter how bad things look, God has taken her into his blessed hands. To know that’s true, all Linda has to do is think about Ben Li.

  CHAPTER

  30

  “You can talk in here,” Kelly says, gunning the 4Runner and heading out of the parking lot. “No bugs, guaranteed.”

  “We’re going to the cemetery.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “The disc is there. Not only that—Linda Church is alive.”

  Kelly looks at me. “How do you know that?”

  I quickly relate what happened at the Ramada and describe the contents of the tape and the note. Caitlin supplements my account from the backseat.

  “Wait a minute,” says Kelly, turning onto Homochitto Street. “Two different people approached you at this one event?”

  “Yeah, I figured you saw them.”

  “I saw a girl watching you early on, but I was looking for males. I'm thinking of the coincidence.”

  “I know, but remember what you asked me early this morning? Everyone in town knew I would be at that event. It was published in the newspaper. Both Jewel and that girl knew they could talk to me without seeming to try to. It could look accidental. But what about you? You said we have a problem.”

  “One thing at a time. Do you know where Linda is?”

  “No, but she’s safely hidden, and her note says she’s leaving town.”

  “You didn't recognize the girl who gave you the note?”

  “You said she looked familiar,” Caitlin reminds me.

  “I could say that about almost everyone in this town. Do you know how many people I’'ve spoken to since becoming mayor? And during the campaign? I think the part of my brain that connects names and faces has been short-circuited.”

  “I wouldn'’t mind having Linda Church in our back pocket,” Kelly says. “I think you’re going to need her as a witness before this mess is through.”

  “What the hell’s going on? What’s the problem you talked about?”

  “Blackhawk got a bounceback on Jonathan Sands.”

  “A bounceback?”

  “A return query. Rebound request. Someone in Washington wants to know who’s asking about Sands.”

  Caitlin’s eyes meet mine. “Washington?” she says. “

  Who

  in Washington?”

  “They wouldn'’t tell me, and that’s not a good sign. The company says they'’re covering for me, but I’'ve got
to be straight with you. Seventy-five percent of Blackhawk’s revenues come from the Defense Department, and that number goes up every month. If Washington demands something, sooner or later the company’s going to cave. They value my services, but in the end I'm just a grunt.”

  A wave of fear rolls through me. “Are you saying Blackhawk might give up Annie’s location if the government pushed hard enough?”

  “No, no. But they might give up my name, and maybe yours. Sands could find out I'm involved and figure you’re trying to bust him, not help him.”

  “I see.”

  Kelly gives me a sidelong glance. “What

  are

  you going to do with that disc, if you find it?”

  The truth is, I'm not sure, but I keep that to myself. “I hope you’re about to find out.”

  “So how did you figure out the clues?” Kelly asks.

  “He hasn’'t even told me that,” Caitlin says with pique.

  “When I searched the cemetery yesterday, I searched the graves of everyone Tim and I both knew. Classmates we’ve lost, people from

  St. Stephen’s who died young. I even searched all the famous graves I knew. But I left out one grave. It never even

  occurred

  to me that Tim would use it.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “A high school senior who was killed by a drunk driver in 1979.”

  Caitlin leans up between the seats. “Why didn't you think of him the other day?”

  “Because Tim Jessup was the driver who killed him.”

  “My God. But how did the clue make you think of him?”

  “The boy’s name was Patrick McQueen.”

  Kelly smiles after a moment, but Caitlin shrugs. Sometimes a ten-year age gap causes issues.

  “The Great Escape?”

  I prompt. “Steve McQueen ? He ran from the Nazis on a motorcycle? Crashed into barbed wire at the end?”

  “Oh okay, I get it.”

  “I never considered Patrick’s grave because I couldn'’t imagine Tim thinking about him in a desperate moment like that. Tim spent a year in jail because of that accident, and it ruined most of his life. I figured he’d done everything he could to get Patrick out of his mind. But I should have known better. He’s probably thought about Patrick every day of his life since that night. Especially lately. I think he’d been trying to make up for what he did by living a good life.”

  Caitlin shakes her head sadly.

  “But what does ‘dog pack’ mean?” Kelly asks. “What’s that part of it?’

  “Tim and I used to ride our bikes in the cemetery when we were kids. Once a pack of wild dogs chased us there. I'm not positive about the connection, but I think I know. We’ll be sure in two minutes. When you get up to the flat part of this road, you’ll see the river on your left. Turn at the main gate.”

  As Kelly does so, Caitlin touches my shoulder. “Are you sure you can’t remember anything else about the girl who gave you the note? Something must have triggered that feeling of familiarity. What was it?”

  I try to recall the girl’s face, but the harder I concentrate on it, the less distinct it becomes. “I really can’t place her. I have this vague

  feeling she reminded me of a girl who used to wait on me across the river somewhere. A store or a restaurant in Vidalia, maybe. But the girl I'm thinking of was really heavy, and a lot plainer. I'm probably way off.”

  “Don’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it will come to you later.”

  “I do better with remembering when I'm not trying to.”

  Despite this assertion, I plumb my memory for some connection to the girl’s face, but as we climb Maple Street toward the hill from which the Charity Hospital used to look down upon the cemetery, a very different memory rises. In the summer after sixth grade, a bunch of us were staying overnight with a friend who lived downtown. Most of us lived in subdivisions, but a few schoolmates still lived in ramshackle Victorians fronted with wrought-iron fences and backed by narrow alleys and deep gullies. We’d ride our jerry-built banana bikes downtown, pretending to be Evel Knievel, then spend the night tearing around the city streets, trying to do enough yelling to get the police to chase us.

  We were just old enough that when Davy Cass suggested we should invade the cemetery, no one dared to say he was afraid to do it. I certainly didn't. Partly it was the idea of a deserted graveyard that scared me, but another part knew that the cemetery lay on the north side of town, uncomfortably close to the Negro sections of the city. During that era, no black male with his wits about him would have dared say a cross word to a white child, but we didn't know that. There was old Jim Clay, who lived in a shack on the Fenton property and who would fire rock salt from a shotgun if we got too near his place. Nook Wilson at the gas station had killed his wife with a butcher knife and sometimes looked at you like he’d just as soon kill you too. That was who I thought about when our bike routes took us close to the north side after dark, and not Ruby Flowers, our maid, who lived out that way and would have coldcocked anyone who tried to hurt me. But mostly—and wisely—we feared the unknown.

  Our first thirty minutes in the cemetery were euphoric. We flashed down the narrow lanes between the mausoleums like the superheroes we worshipped, riding no-hands and seeing who could shut his eyes the longest without crashing. I rode from the main gate to Catholic Hill without once touching the handlebars, holding my

  arms out like wings (and only peeking a couple of times). But this hyperexcited state ended with the sound of a single growl. Barks wouldn'’t have frightened us, since most of us owned dogs. But when Davy suddenly skidded to a stop, the rest of us slammed into him from behind, and then we saw what had stopped him.

  Crouching in the middle of the path was a black cur that had to weigh sixty pounds. Behind him a dozen more dogs stood alert, awaiting an attack signal. The cur had his teeth bared and his ears back, and when I saw his feverish eyes glint in the moonlight, I cringed with prehistoric fear. The lane cut between walls of earth twelve feet high, so our only escape route lay behind us. I felt my bladder turn to stone, then communal panic flashed through our little tribe. By the time we got our bikes turned, fifteen or twenty dogs were in pursuit. We’d had trouble with wild packs before, usually in the woods, and every summer our mothers reminded us that Billy Jenkins had been forced to take twenty-three rabies shots in his stomach because of a dog bite. This knowledge made us pedal like madmen for the gates, praying for deliverance as the frenzied animals snapped at our legs.

  We didn't have a chance. Only the savant-level survival instincts of Trey Stacy saved us. When he jumped from his bike and dashed for the low-hanging branch of an oak tree, the herd instinct kicked in. Soon seven boys were treed like coons in the great gnarled branches of the oak. The furious dogs leaped and gnashed their teeth, barking and howling like demons among the gravestones, but that was their undoing. Their baying eventually drew the attention of a passing motorist, who called the police. The first cop shot one dog with his pistol, but the pack didn't retreat until his red-haired partner killed the alpha male with a shotgun. Several boys were crying as the police hauled us back to our sleepover, not for fear of their parents, but from the shock of seeing the dogs killed. I was shivering myself and glad when my father arrived to take me home rather than let me stay the night.

  Caitlin touches my shoulder again and says, “Penn? We just went through the main gate. Where are we going?”

  I point along a rank of oaks that line the nearby lane. When we reach the oak of my memory, I tell Kelly to stop. Its trunk is massive now, and its great branches hang so low that weather-treated four-

  by-fours have been propped beneath to keep them from sagging to the ground. Across the lane from the tree, beneath a twisted limb, lies the grave of Patrick McQueen.

  With Caitlin trailing, I walk to his gravestone, a tall slab of granite with the text of Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” engraved on its face. One quick scan tells me that no disc is hidden beside the stone, but I'm certain now that Tim told me what I need to know. Lea
ving the stone, I walk out to where the crooked limb almost touches the grass. Then I set my foot in its crook, grip the rising branch with both hands, and begin climbing toward the trunk of the tree.

  I don'’t have to go far. Fifteen feet from where I mounted the limb, wedged into a forked branch, is a hardcover copy of my third novel,

  Nothing but the Truth.

  The sight of its jacket moves me strangely, but the feeling passes as I look down and see Patrick McQueen’s grave almost directly beneath me. For an infinite second, I feel as though I

  am

  Tim Jessup, clinging here in the dark, desperate to preserve the evidence I’'ve stolen from the men I hate so deeply. Closing my eyes for a moment, I let this déjŕ vu bleed out of me. Then I fan the pages of my own book.

  A flash of silver makes my heart thump. Lying between pages 342 and 343 is a DVD in a transparent plastic sleeve. There’s no mark or label on the disc, and from the purplish color and look of the data side, it appears to be homemade.

  “What did you find?” Caitlin calls from below. “It looks like a book.”

  “The disc is in it. We need a computer with a DVD drive.”

  “I can grab a notebook computer from the office.”

  Kelly steps up beside her, his blond hair bright beside her black mane. “I’d feel better with four walls around us. And we need to make some copies.”

  “We’re two minutes from the office,” Caitlin says. “We can lock the building. If Sands tried to storm the

  Examiner,

  that would make national headlines.”

  “That doesn’'t mean he won'’t,” says Kelly. “We don'’t know what’s on that disc. I'’ll cover the building while you two check it out. If there’s anything you think I should see, call me on the Star Trek.”