Natchez Burning (95 page)

“Did you see him?” Henry asked through his teeth.

“Albert?” Caitlin asked hesitantly.

“No … no. The other guy.”

“What other guy?”

“The black guy.”

Caitlin looked around the room as though she might actually find an unexpected visitor. “Who was he?”

“He wouldn’t say.” Henry’s eyes looked dreamy with narcotics. “Just one of Albert’s boys, he said.”

“One of Albert’s boys?” Caitlin had read that phrase in Henry’s journals. “Like Pooky and Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

“How old was he?” she asked, figuring Henry had hallucinated a teenager from his youth in Albert’s store.

“’Bout sixty.”

Caitlin blinked in puzzlement. “Was he here just now?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said groggily. “Maybe it was earlier. Maybe when Sherry stepped out.”

“What did he look like?”

“Just a black guy, you know. Had on a black baseball cap. An old one with a white
D
on it. For Detroit maybe? Yeah. The Detroit Tigers.”

“What did he want here?”

“He thanked me for all the good work I’ve done. That’s all. He said it didn’t matter who he was. It made sense to me.”

I’ll bet, with all the Dilaudid in your system.
Caitlin made a mental note to check the deputy’s book for visitors.

“Hey,” Henry said. “Do you think he could have been the one who went to see Pooky’s mama before she died? ‘Huggy Bear’?”

Caitlin recalled Penn telling her about the anonymous caller who’d contacted Sheriff Dennis about the burning of the
Beacon
building. But the whole idea of that man sneaking in here with a guard outside seemed far-fetched.

“Maybe it was,” she said, deciding not to get Henry too excited with that story. “Henry, do you remember the photograph I showed you before you fell asleep?”

“What?”

“The one of Tom and Brody Royal in the boat. It has writing on the back. It reads ‘BT,’ and then ‘T. Rambin.’ It looks like your writing to me.”

At first Henry said nothing. Then in a reluctant tone, he said, “It is.”

His eyes looked wary, almost hunted. Caitlin said, “I was wondering if ‘BT’ might stand for ‘Bone Tree’?”

The reporter avoided her gaze.

“You see, I read all about the Bone Tree in your journals, and the more I read, the more I started thinking Pooky’s bones might be out there. Maybe Jimmy Revels’s, too. The FBI only brought Luther’s up out of the Jericho Hole.”

“Could be,” Henry said vaguely. “But I looked for that tree … and I never found it. So did the FBI.”

Katy Royal talked about a tree like this, too,
Caitlin wanted to say, but she stifled herself. “Who’s T. Rambin, Henry?”

Still the reporter refused to meet her eye.

Caitlin laid her hand softly against Henry’s hair and stroked it. “I know this is hard, to be trapped in this room while other people go out and try to finish what you started. It’s not fair, and I won’t pretend it is. But whatever I find, Henry, your name will be there with mine. I promise you that. Not for the glory—because I know that’s not what you care about—but for the closure. So the families will know it was you who brought them justice.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And for Swan. She’ll see it, too.”

Henry finally turned to her, his eyes more alert than she’d seen them since the attack. “If you try to find the Bone Tree, you could end up just like me. Or worse.”

“I know that. But it’s worth it to me.”

After some moments, he nodded slowly. He tried to roll to his left, but failed. “My cell phone,” he groaned. “In my pants. In that bag, there. Get it.”

Caitlin quickly found a soiled pair of trousers in a shopping bag beside the chair she’d been sitting in. In their right front pocket was a Nokia cell phone.

“Look in my contacts,” he said. “Toby Rambin.”

Caitlin flicked through the buttons with manic dexterity. “Who is he? I looked for a phone number and couldn’t find one.”

“A poacher. Rambin hunts the swamp down in Lusahatcha County. I only found him a few days ago. Didn’t tell anybody. Not Penn … nobody. All he has is a cell phone. Talked to him Monday night. Rambin says he knows where the Bone Tree is. I was setting up a meeting, but … this happened.”

Caitlin’s heart thumped as her eyes zeroed in on the name in tiny text. “Got it.” Quickly, she memorized Rambin’s name and number, then entered the characters in her Treo. “Do you think this guy is for real?”

“Maybe. He sounded scared enough. He wants money, though.”

With a twinge of guilt, she edited Henry’s “Toby Rambin” contact so that the surname “Rambin” became “Smith.” Then she altered the area code of Rambin’s phone number to that of South Carolina. Unwilling to go so far as to delete the information altogether, she saved the changes, then slipped the phone back into Henry’s pants.

When she looked up, Henry was holding out his bandaged hand. Caitlin hurried to his bedside and took it in hers. “You be careful,” he said. “They play rough down in Lusahatcha County. The Knoxes own land down there.”

“I will. Let me ask you one more thing. I found a telephoto shot of you with a rifle scope over your face. What’s the story on that?”

Henry took a couple of shallow breaths, and his eyes clouded with anxiety. “I was … checking into Brody Royal’s land deals … with Carlos Marcello. Got that picture in the mail. Showed the FBI … They never traced it. I backed off. Too chicken, I guess. That time, anyway.”

Caitlin leaned over and kissed the reporter’s forehead. “Screw that. You’re a hero, Henry. I mean it. This is Captain America stuff you’ve been doing.”

Henry’s skin reddened between his bruises. He was blushing.

“We’re going to get them all in the end,” she promised. “Royal, his son-in-law, the Knoxes … every last one. And when we do, it’ll be because of you.”

Henry began coughing, hard. “Hope so,” he finally croaked. “Won’t bring Albert back, though. Or Jimmy … or Pooky.”

Caitlin glanced back at the door, toward the little hall that led to the door. She felt as though Sherry were standing just out of sight, listening intently.

“Can you tell me anything else about Brody?” she whispered. “Is there anything else you didn’t put in your notebooks?”

Henry’s breaths were coming shallow. He flinched suddenly, then raised his hand. “
Ohhh
. Belly hurts again … bad.”

Caitlin picked up the pain med controller and started pumping. “I’d better let you rest some more.”

“Pump it,” he said, his face sweating. “Pump …”

She pressed the button four times.

“Muhhfckrs,” Henry mumbled.

Caitlin looked up. “Did you say ‘motherfuckers’?”

“Yeah. Listen … if you go see Toby Rambin … don’t go alone.”

“I won’t.”

Henry’s eyes widened.
“Promise me.”

“I promise!”

“Talk to Dr. Cage, too. He knows more than anybody.”

“I will, as soon as I find him.”

“Oh, Jesus … pump some more.”

Caitlin pressed the button four more times. “It’s coming, Henry. I’m pressing. I think you’re at the limit, though.”

Henry lay silent but for his stertorous breathing. Then his eyes popped open and flickered like lantern flames. “I’ve tried to forgive them,” he said. “But I can’t. Jimmy talked to me about forgiveness once. He wasn’t but twenty-five … but he was
wise
. He said forgiving somebody doesn’t mean … they shouldn’t … pay a price for what they’d done. But that’s God’s business, he said. Hating somebody just poisons you … not them.”

Caitlin felt a sudden urge to unburden herself, a desire to know what Henry would do in her predicament. “Penn wants me to hold back the recording of Katy,” she said. “He wants to use it against Brody, to try to save his father.”

The reporter blinked several times, his head moving side to side on the pillow. Then he looked at her as though trying to make her out from a great distance. “Dr. Cage is a good man. But … can’t let Brody go free. Not even for …”

The reporter’s eyelids fell and did not rise again.

Hearing the door creak, Caitlin stepped back from the bed, afraid it would be Sherry rather than another nurse. Henry’s girlfriend wouldn’t like seeing her leaning so close over him.

The first thing Caitlin saw was a huge, flower-print weekend tote. Then came a grease-stained McDonald’s bag, followed by Sherry herself, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans.

“
Look what Sherry’s got,
” Caitlin sang, hoping to break the spell of intimacy in the room.

“Is he awake?” Sherry asked, looking for floor space to set down her bag.

Henry’s lips moved, but as Sherry dropped her tote against the exterior wall, his head jerked to the right and his eyelids fluttered, then froze in the open position.

“Did you say something, hon?” Sherry asked, straightening up with a weary sigh.

In the silence that followed this question, a shard of glass fell out of the window. It tinkled against the air-conditioning unit, then shattered on the floor with a flat crack like a broken Christmas ornament. Caitlin stared at the shard in confusion, then looked up at Henry.

A single runnel of bright red blood trailed from his temple down to the white pillow. His head jerked again, but his eyes remained open. Caitlin’s gaze went to the window again and finally took in the state of the mini-blinds.

When were those opened?
she wondered.
They were supposed to be closed at all times—

“Henry?” Sherry said, puzzled but still not worried.

“Shut the blinds!” Caitlin screamed.
“Sherry, shut the blinds
!
”

Flooded with adrenaline, she grabbed the foot of the hospital bed and pulled it away from the wall. Various cords and tubes resisted her, but she yanked hard and the bed came away on its wheels.

Sherry stared at Caitlin as if she were about to start pulling the bed back toward the wall.

“
Shut the fucking blinds!
” Caitlin yelled again.
“Someone’s shooting!”

Another piece of glass popped out of the window, and Caitlin sensed more than felt something ricochet through the room. At last Sherry grasped what was happening. Without any thought for herself, she lunged for the plastic rod that controlled the blinds.

Caitlin manhandled the head of Henry’s bed past the bathroom door and slammed it against the main door of the hospital room. Then she kick-locked the bed’s wheels to stop anyone getting in from the hall.

Someone was pounding on the door—the deputy, probably—but Caitlin wasn’t about to let anybody inside. She shouted that he should call the FBI and lock down the hospital, but he just kept yelling for her to open the door. Scanning the room for her purse (meaning to get her pistol), she saw Sherry spin away from the window, both hands clutching her throat. The woman hung in the air for a surreal second, blood pouring from her left eye socket, then fell so heavily that Caitlin knew she was dead before she hit the floor.

Terrified that the gunman outside would rush the shattered window, Caitlin snatched up her pistol from her purse, then backed into the narrow crack between Henry’s bed and the wall. The deputy was still shouting, but he didn’t have the weight to overcome the resistance of both Caitlin and the locked wheels under the bed.

“Lock down the hospital!” she shouted. “There’s been a murder!”

With shaking hands, she took out her phone and speed-dialed John Kaiser. The FBI agent answered after two rings. Caitlin spat out what facts she could. Her words sounded garbled to her own ears, but Kaiser seemed to understand them perfectly. He was parking his car behind the hospital, having returned to question Henry, and said he would be outside Henry’s door in forty seconds. Then he said something that chilled Caitlin to the marrow: “
If anyone tries to enter that room before you hear my voice, pull the trigger and keep pulling it until your gun is empty. Door or window, you take them down.
”

The deputy had stopped pounding on the door. Caitlin glanced fearfully at the shattered window, then looked down at Henry, whose eyes still had life in them—or seemed to. She wanted to cradle his head, but she worried she might kill him by doing that. Very lightly, she pressed one fingertip beneath his jaw and felt for a carotid pulse.
There!
He was alive.

Caitlin aimed her pistol at the window and tried not to look at Sherry’s body lying motionless on the floor. Even a child could have seen she was beyond help. “
Please hurry,
” she whispered, picturing John Kaiser’s confident eyes and military bearing.
“Please, please, please …”

At last a Klaxon alarm began to ring.

TO SPARE KIRK BOISSEAU
conflict with his girlfriend, who had complained bitterly about him diving the Jericho Hole yesterday, I e-mailed him from the
Examiner
and asked him to meet me at a corner house, two down from his, as soon as he could manage it. Kirk spends most of his off hours on the Web, networking with other kayakers and ex-marines, so I felt sure that he’d see my mail quickly. In the end, I had to sit outside his place for forty-five minutes before he texted me that he’d be out soon. Another ten passed before he actually appeared in my passenger window.

“Back already?” he asks with a grin, dropping into the seat beside me. “I must have done good yesterday.”

“You got your name in the paper. Did you mind that?”

“Not me, man. Nancy wasn’t too happy about it, but hey. My life, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Sorry I took so long. Domestic issues.” He taps my dashboard with irrepressible energy. “So, what’s up now? More bones to salvage?”

I shake my head and let him see that tonight’s errand is far more serious. “I need to question somebody, Kirk. And he’s not going to like it.”

He nods slowly. “Like a field interrogation?”

“You could call it that.”

“Tough guy?”

“Not exactly. He’s probably over eighty.”

“What?”

“But he might have some people with him that I wouldn’t want to have to handle on my own.”

“I get you. Do I know him?”