The Devils Punchbowl pc-3

by Greg Iles

  “What are you

  doing

  ?”

  “Rabies,” he grunts without looking up. The spinal column slows him down for a few seconds, but Kelly’s obviously field-dressed a lot of game in his time. “I don'’t know if this fucker’s had his shots or not. You gotta get the brainstem and everything for that test.” When the head tears free, Kelly lifts it by its wrinkled face and stuffs it into his gear bag. Then he straps on his pack, heaves the dog’s carcass over his right shoulder, and stands with a groan. “What are you waiting for? Pick up the other one.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To throw them in the river.”

  With a strange buzzing in my head, I kneel beside the black dog, lever my right arm under it, then wrestle it over my shoulder in an awkward fireman’s carry. The damn thing must weigh a hundred pounds, and it stinks. I'm winded before I cover twenty yards, but Kelly’s already far ahead.

  This is one time I should have let him do the job alone.

  When I reach the river’s edge, the white carcass is already spinning slowly downstream under the stars, and Kelly is stuffing the dog’s head into the rear cargo hold of his kayak. With the last of my strength, I stagger downstream from the boats and heave my burden into the current. The Bully Kutta disappears with a splash, then bobs to the surface.

  “They actually went after my sister,” I say with breathless disbelief. “I haven'’t heard my dad sound that upset since Ruby died.”

  Kelly squats and rinses his wounded forearm with river water. “I'’ll tell you what I think,” he says softly, scrubbing the half-clotted blood from his skin.

  “What?”

  He looks up, his mild blue eyes like those of a choirboy. “I think Jonathan Sands has become a one-bullet problem.”

  CHAPTER

  34

  “A one-bullet problem?” Caitlin asks, echoing Kelly’s repeated phrase. “You mean you want to kill Sands? In cold blood?”

  Kelly looks around the circle of faces in the room. Along with Kelly and Caitlin, Carl Sims, my father, and I are seated in chairs in the den of a lake house owned by Chris Shepard, my father’s youngest partner. Because it’s after Labor Day, most of the houses used as second homes by Natchezians are empty now. As I drew the curtains over the broad glass doors on the far wall, I saw the narrow black line of Lake Concordia, the oxbow lake that carries the name of the parish, behind the house. I also saw James Ervin, who’s guarding us from the lake side, while his brother Elvin guards the road entrance. Danny McDavitt is sitting in the chopper across the lake road, in the cotton field where we landed.

  “Actually,” says Kelly, “my blood is still pretty hot at this point.”

  “Mine too,” says my father. “Gutless bastards.”

  While my father dressed Kelly’s wounded arm, we listened to his account of Jenny being attacked on the highway (not even the British police believe it was an accident), then brought Dad up to speed on the events on the river. While we talked, Carl tied the Bully Kutta’s severed head in a trash bag, then stored it in the refrigerator, so that its brain can be examined by the path lab in the morning. Coming after the events beside the river tonight, this scene was so surreal that

  I could scarcely separate thought from emotion. Kelly’s assertion that the time has come to kill Jonathan Sands seems perfectly natural to me, given the situation. I can tell by Caitlin’s hard-set face that she doesn’'t agree. She doesn’'t want to antagonize my father, but she’s not going to be silent when the matter at hand is assassination.

  “Look, I want the guy to go down,” she says. “He’s scum, okay? No question. But you can’t just kill him. I mean, if it’s all right for you to decide who lives and dies, the same goes for everyone else. Who empowered you? If you’re free to do that, where does it end? Back in the cave, that’s where.”

  Kelly listens patiently until she stops. “Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We’re still in the cave. It’s just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes. We make alliances and try to be civil, we save the weak instead of leaving them out in the cold to die. But guys like Sands, Quinn, Po they play by the ancient rules. To them, life is a zero-sum game. You win or lose, live or die. And the most important rule of all is, you take everything you can, when you can, until somebody draws a line and says, ‘No more.’”

  “Is that your view of life?”

  “If it were, I wouldn'’t be offering to kill a man in front of witnesses. You probably studied existentialism in college, right? Survey of philosophy course? I'm not trying to patronize you, okay? But I

  am

  an existentialist. A soldier. Asleep or awake, in uniform or out. There’s war in Afghanistan, but there’s war here too. When Sands threatened to kill Penn’s child, he opened hostilities and declared the rules of engagement. We know from Linda Church’s note that Sands probably murdered Ben Li, or else ordered it done. It’s a miracle Linda isn’t dead too—

  if

  she’s still alive, which we don'’t know for sure. I'm sure they'’re hunting for her as we speak.”

  Caitlin shivers at this thought.

  Kelly nods with certainty. “Given where things stand now, we have only one practical solution. Remove Sands from the equation.”

  “You’re willing to do that?” Dad asks. “If we say here and now that that’s what we want then Sands will die?”

  Kelly nods soberly. “Quinn too, I think. Unavoidable.”

  Caitlin shakes her head in amazement. “And you’ll go back to Afghanistan and never lose a night’s sleep over it?”

  “I'’ll sleep better.”

  What strikes me most about Kelly’s cool assertion is that a couple of hours ago, he was unwilling to put a dying dog out of its misery. But that mystery will have to wait. I look at my father, who’s rubbing his white beard with arthritically curled hands.

  “It’s tempting,” Dad says. “When I think of Jenny rolling over in that car, I could do it myself.”

  “I'm sorry to be a drag here, guys,” Caitlin says. “But this is

  way

  over the line. What does killing Sands even accomplish? If Edward Po is the problem, who’s to say he won'’t carry on the vendetta and send men here to kill Penn and every member of his family?”

  “She’s got a point,” Carl says. “You’d be crazy not to consider that.”

  “I’'ve considered it,” Kelly says. “Edward Po is a businessman. Whatever he’s up to here, he ultimately views it in terms of profit and loss. You can’t go around murdering government officials in small-town America. It draws the wrong kind of attention. That'’s bad business. Sands is Po’s cat’s-paw, his control mechanism for Golden Parachute. If Sands dies, Po will simply order Craig Weldon to put someone else in that job.”

  “Yet you’re arguing that Sands

  will

  murder government officials,” Caitlin points out. “Or their families.”

  “I think he’s proved that he will. I don'’t think Sands is motivated primarily by money.”

  “You don'’t know that Po is either. You’re ignoring the question of face. If Po is a criminal, can he afford to let other criminals know that his lieutenants can be killed without reprisals?”

  “I considered face,” Kelly says patiently. “Also

  guanxi.

  I think killing Sands is actually the most elegant solution to our problem—and not just for us. If Sands is killed, I suspect Po will claim credit for the murder—unofficially, of course. Competitors will assume that Po had Sands murdered for interfering with his niece, Jiao, whom Po vowed to protect from people like Sands.”

  Everyone is silent, not least because Kelly seems two steps ahead of us all.

  “We either kill him or we back off,” Kelly concludes. “Conventional methods are too slow. They’re just going to get someone we care about killed.”

  “Carl?” Caitlin says pointedly. “Would

  you

  kill Sands?”

  The sniper gives her a “Why me?” look, like a grade-school student being called on by his teacher. “Kelly’s a free agent,” he mumbles. “The man makes h
is own decisions.”

  “I'm asking about

  you.

  ”

  “Depends on the situation. If somebody was going to die because I didn't, I would, yeah.”

  “But would you shoot him sitting at his breakfast table?”

  Carl turns up his palms. “I don'’t think so, but it’s complicated. I

  have

  shot somebody who was eating dinner, because the Marine Corps told me he needed to die. Now, I don'’t know Jonathan Sands from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. But if I knew he was going to kill my sister or my mother then I’d vaporize him.”

  Caitlin turns to me, as though I'm the court of last resort. “You’re an attorney, sworn to uphold the law. You’ve sent people to death row for doing exactly what Kelly’s offering to do now. Are you really going to send him out of this house to commit murder?”

  The fact that I think Kelly is right surprises even me. I’'ve been in similar situations before, with the power of life and death over someone almost as evil as Sands, and I chose to use the court system, even with the chance that they might escape punishment. But Sands is a special case. I wish Caitlin and I could have this discussion in private, because she tends to get more stirred up when she’s in front of people. But there’s no alternative now.

  “I have sent people to death row,” I concede in a level voice. “But not for doing something like this. This is a unique situation. Tim stumbled into something far bigger and more complicated than he knew. Blackhawk’s position and Peter Lutjens’s warning prove that. We still don'’t really know what we’re dealing with. We only know that the government is involved in some way, and that Sands and Quinn are prepared to kill to prevent anyone from learning what they'’re doing. I also know that wherever they are, my mother and Annie are scared to death. They’re holding their chins up, but they'’re terrified that they’ll get a phone call saying that Dad or me is dead. And I believe that’s a real possibility.”

  “That sounded like a summation, not an answer,” Caitlin says, her tone still challenging.

  “Caitlin this is like a stalking case. When I was a prosecutor, I saw a lot of women die needlessly because the police had no effec

  tive way to intervene until after they were dead. A lot of the men who killed those women went to prison afterward. But the women were still dead.”

  This time I get no ricochet response.

  “In this case, there are four women who could die,” I go on, “all of whom I love. And one of them is you.”

  “Don’t do that,” she says with startling intensity. “Don’t use me to justify killing someone.”

  “Maybe we should take a vote,” Kelly suggests.

  “No!” snaps Caitlin. “We’re not taking any goddamn vote. No one here has the right to vote on murder. If you kill Sands, you'’ve done it on your own.”

  “What would you do if he went through with it?” I ask. “Would you report Kelly to the police?”

  She gets to her feet and turns to my father. “Tom, you’re not seriously condoning this?”

  Dad looks up at her with sad eyes. “I understand your feelings, Kate. I believe in the rule of law. And Sands hasn’'t killed a member of my family—yet. But that’s only thanks to chance. My daughter could easily have died two hours ago.”

  “But she

  didn't,

  Tom. She’s going to be all right. We have time to take another path.”

  “What path would that be?”

  “We could go public. I can have this story on the front page of twenty-three papers tomorrow, and a lot more than that, if I bring my father into this. I’d hate to do that, but if we’re to the point of assassinating someone, then I think it’s time to break the story nationwide.”

  “If we go public,” I point out, “Edward Po won'’t set foot on U.S. soil for ten years, at least. Whatever he’s doing here, he won'’t be nailed for it.”

  Caitlin looks at me like I'm an idiot. “What do you think Po is going to do if you murder Sands? You lose Po that way too.”

  “What exactly would you print?” I ask. “Unsubstantiated allegations?”

  Kelly leans forward and says, “I know going public seems like a magic solution, throwing light onto people who live in the shadows. But men like Po don'’t see the world the way you do. They’re not

  politicians. While you’re stirring up your media storm, they will be

  acting.

  To them, this is war. And if they take you out, or Annie or Peggy or Penn, none of us is going to feel comforted by the fact that you splashed Sands’s and Po’s names in the paper. Because that won'’t bring back the dead.”

  Dad seems to be weighing all the arguments in his mind. “You saw those two old black men outside?” he says to Caitlin. “The ones watching over us?”

  She nods.

  “Before they were cops, before there even

  were

  black cops in Natchez, they were members of something called the Deacons for Defense.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A group of men who got fed up with their friends and neighbors being terrorized, beaten, and killed. They patrolled their neighborhoods with pistols, lay out all night in ditches with shotguns, all to keep their people safe. They did that because they couldn'’t turn to the police. The law had failed to protect them, so they did it themselves.”

  “Has the law failed to protect us?” Caitlin asks, looking around our circle. “We haven'’t even

  asked

  for help yet.”

  “Kate,” my father says gently. “Let me tell you a story a patient of mine once told me. Back in the sixties and seventies, they had gambling and prostitution not far from where we are now. A place called Morville Plantation. Very close to where Penn and Kelly got attacked. Some of the girls who worked at Morville were held there against their will. God only knows where they’d been taken from, or what hell they’d been through. But one day, one girl got away from there. Half naked, she walked all the way to the sheriff’s department. She was crying with relief while she told her story. The sheriff listened, then put her in his car and drove her right back to the whorehouse.”

  Caitlin stares at my father in silence.

  “Kate, you’re sitting in a parish that didn't have jury trials for almost ten years—from 1956 to 1966.”

  “We’re not living in that time anymore,” Caitlin says quietly.

  “That'’s true. But how far are we from the story of that poor girl? If we believe Tim Jessup, the same thing is going on today.”

  Dad’s mention of Tim seems to move Caitlin to silence.

  “This is what I know,” I conclude. “Peter Lutjens warned me to stay away from Sands, said he could give me no information whatever. Peter would only do that if Sands was involved with the government in some way. Sands is either a target, an agent, or an informant. I'm almost afraid to find out which. But the fact is, he’s been committing felonies since he arrived here, up to and including murder. Yet he’s still roaming free.”

  “Maybe the government doesn’'t know he’s doing that!” Caitlin argues.

  “The same government you want to pillory for its handling of Katrina and Iraq?” I shake my head. “Either we’ve stumbled into something really rotten, or something so serious that we can’t even grasp its significance. Either way, we have to assume that if Tim’s death didn't matter to whoever’s in charge of this mess, none of ours would either.”

  Caitlin looks as if she’s winding up again, but before she speaks, Dad says, “I think Penn and I have to make this decision alone. Caitlin, you and Carl will have no part in it.”

  “But we

  know

  about it. We

  are

  a part of it, whether we want to be or not.”

  As passionate as she is about this, some part of me wonders about Caitlin’s true motive.

  “If we decide to go ahead,” Dad says, “you do whatever you feel you must.”

  The room is so quiet that my cell phone vibrating in my pocket stops the conversation. It’s late enough that I feel I need to check it. The screen shows one ne
w text message. The area code is 202—Washington, D.C.—but I don'’t recognize the number. The message reads: GO OUTSIDE AND TURN ON YOUR SATELLITE PHONE.

  “What is it?” Kelly asks, seeing the color drain from my face.

  I toss the phone to him. He reads the screen, then jumps to his feet and grabs his gear bag.

  “What is it?” Dad asks worriedly. “Is it Annie or Peggy?”

  “I don'’t know what it is,” Kelly says, “but it ain’t good.” He looks at me. “Who have you given the sat number to?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Shit. Either it’s someone from Blackhawk, or they gave the number to somebody in D.C.”

  “What do I do?” I ask. “How do they know I'm inside?”

  “They tried to call the satphone and you didn't answer. Take it easy. They can’t see us or anything. But you'’ve got to take the call. I'’ll go out with you.”

  We brush aside the curtain and go out the patio doors. Caitlin follows. As soon as Kelly sets up the link to the satellite, the phone starts to buzz.

  “This is Penn Cage.”

  “Hello, Mr. Cage,” says a voice with a vestigial Southern accent. “My name is William Hull. I'm an attorney with the Justice Department.”

  “They’re a pretty big employer. Could you be more specific?”

  “I'm special counsel to the Department of Homeland Security.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Very boring, I assure you. Being an assistant DA in Houston is twice as exciting.”

  “What are you calling about, Mr. Hull? And how did you get this number?”

  “We have some mutual friends. They were kind enough to give me your private number. As for the purpose of my call, it’s about Jonathan Sands.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, this is a delicate matter. We—”

  “Mr. Hull, when you say

  delicate,

  I hear

  dirty.

  ”