The Bone Tree (3 page)

The reason for that was his father.

Tom Cage was almost a relic of a bygone era. A former combat medic in Korea, Cage had gone on to practice medicine for nearly fifty years in Natchez, where he’d worked tirelessly for decades to treat the black community with no thought of recognition or reward. Yet paradoxically, this beloved physician’s irrational actions had directly or indirectly triggered every tragedy that had happened over the past three days.

In the wee hours of Monday morning, Viola Turner, Dr. Cage’s sixty-five-year-old former nurse, had died in her sister’s home in Natchez. After living in Chicago for thirty-seven years, the Natchez native had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and returned home to die in the care of her old employer. Few people had known that Dr. Cage was treating Turner, and even if they had, no one would have expected the explosion that followed her death. That only occurred because Turner’s son, a Chicago lawyer, had shown up at the Natchez DA’s office and demanded that Dr. Cage be charged not with euthanasia, but with murder. And because the black district attorney, Shadrach Johnson, had a long history of antipathy for Penn Cage, he had obliged the angry son.

Things might have progressed with some semblance of order had not Dr. Cage jumped bail after being indicted by a grand jury with lightning speed. From what Kaiser could ascertain, the doctor had been aided in this task by an old war buddy, a former Texas Ranger named Walt Garrity. Worst of all, within hours of making their escape, either Cage or Garrity had killed a Louisiana state trooper who’d cornered them near the Mississippi River. Kaiser strongly suspected that the dead trooper had been working for Forrest Knox, not the State of Louisiana, when he’d caught up with the two fugitives, but sadly Kaiser could not prove that.

“I’m in!” crowed the tech. “I’m looking at the front page of tomorrow’s
Examiner
.”

“Let me see,” Kaiser said, turning from the window.

“Give him your screen, Pete,” ordered the tech.

The second tech got up and went over to the coffeemaker. As Kaiser took the warm seat, the first tech said, “I routed the front page to you. I’ll keep looking for any mention of Henry Sexton’s notebooks.”

With his aging eyes, Kaiser had to tilt his head at exactly the right angle to read what was on the screen, and he could barely make out what the tech was saying on his left. Kaiser had lost nearly all the hearing in that ear two years ago, when a drug dealer holding him hostage on Royal Street in New Orleans had fired off a 9 mm pistol only inches from his ear.

From what Kaiser could see on the screen, Caitlin Masters had led off her story with the true events at the Concordia hospital. Kaiser had hoped to lull the Double Eagles into making a mistake by putting out the story that the Eagles had succeeded in killing Henry Sexton rather than merely wounding him, but the appearance of Captain Ozan at the hospital had seriously lowered the odds of success. He couldn’t blame Masters for printing the truth.

“I’ve got a folder!” cried the tech. “‘Henrys Moleskines’ is the name. Jesus, do you think—?”

“She digitized his notebooks!” Kaiser cried, his pulse racing. “Put the folder on my screen.”

“Doing it now.”

“Can we copy the files?”

“Sure.”

“Will they know we did it?”

“If they hire a forensic firm down the road, yes. But not anytime soon. Do you have it?”

A cluster of typical Windows folders appeared on Kaiser’s screen. “Just click on it?” he asked, his right hand tingling as it hung over the mouse.

“Sure. Just like your computer.”

Kaiser clicked on the folder, but no files opened. “I’ve got nothing. Is the folder password protected or something?”

“Not that I could see.”

Kaiser tried twice more, then clicked on Properties. “The folder appears to be empty on this screen. Are you sure I have access to the file from here?”

“You should have access to everything I do. Hang on.”

Kaiser waited, fingers twitching. If he could get immediate access to every note that Henry Sexton had taken over decades of investigation, there was no telling what deductive leaps he might make. Plus, despite Sexton’s apparent candor in the hospital, the reporter might have held back critical information, hoping to follow it up himself after he recovered. Kaiser suspected, for example, that Sexton might have some notion of the location of the Bone Tree, a long-rumored dump site for Double Eagle corpses and a killing ground that dated to the pre-Columbian years of the Natchez Indians.

“Oh, no,” groaned the tech, his voice taut.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Somebody erased the files in that folder.”

“Just now?”

“Yep. I can see their tracks. Somebody just deleted the file containing what must have been digital scans of Sexton’s notebooks. There was thirty gigabytes of data in that folder. Now it’s empty. And I think they’re still deleting stuff.”

“Who the hell would do that?” Kaiser demanded, a bubble of panic in his chest.

“User 23. That’s all I can tell you.”

“You can’t tell who User 23 is?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Shit!”

“What do you want me to do, boss?”

“Can you copy their whole server drives? Everything they have?”

The tech’s eyes went wide. “That’s a lot of data.”

“That’s not an answer, goddamn it.”

“It would take a long time. And it would definitely increase the odds of their IT people in Charleston noticing something.”

“Do it anyway.”

Kaiser was trying to think outside the box when his cell phone rang. He expected it to be his wife, asking where he’d gone, but it was one of the agents guarding Henry Sexton at the Concordia hospital.

“What is it?” he snapped. “Is Sexton still stable?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sexton’s not in his hospital bed. I just walked in and found his seventy-eight-year-old mother lying in his place. She’s hooked up to the heart monitors and everything.”

“What?”

“She used to be a nurse, apparently. When you gave permission for Henry’s mother to visit him, he got hold of a cell phone and asked her to bring him a few things to help him sneak out. She did, and Henry pulled it off. He walked out of here wearing his mother’s coat and hat. Right past our guards.”

Kaiser slammed his hand on the table. “Damn it! What else does she know?”

“We’re trying to find out. But I’ve already learned one thing that’s not good.”

“What’s that?”

“One of the things Sexton asked for was a shotgun. And she brought him one.”

Kaiser thought fast. “Could Henry even drive? He was heavily sedated when I saw him earlier today.”

“He probably skipped his last doses of meds, except the pain pump.”

“Did Mrs. Sexton know where he was going with the shotgun?”

“She claims she doesn’t.”

“Do you believe her?”

The agent paused. “Yeah.”

“Keep her there! You hear me? I’m coming straight over. And put out an APB on her vehicle. The vehicle and Sexton both. Wait—don’t do that. If the state police hear that, they’ll find Henry and kill him before we get close. He’ll just disappear. Tell our guys to hit the streets. Everybody but you. I’ll wake up the troops here.”

“Got it.”

Kaiser clicked
END
and started to get up, but at that moment his wife touched his shoulder. Jordan Glass was wearing a
LEICA
T-shirt and sweatpants, but her eyes were glued to the screen in front of Kaiser.

“Has Caitlin already posted tomorrow’s edition?” she asked. “I figured she’d be writing right up to the last possible deadline.”

For a moment Kaiser considered lying, but experience had taught him that would come back later and bite him on the ass.

“No,” he said. “We went into their intranet.”

Jordan’s gaze slowly moved to him. “You didn’t.”

“I had to see Henry’s notebooks, if I could. Things are happening too fast to wait.”

“I told you she was going to show them to you tomorrow.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Jordan.”

His wife gave him a look of infinite reproof. “I
was
sure.”

Kaiser endured her gaze as long as he could, out of penance, but then he turned to his techs and said, “Wake everybody up, and I mean everybody. We’ve got to find Henry Sexton ASAP.”

“The Double Eagles murdered the woman he loved earlier this evening,” Jordan said. “They were gunning for him, and she died in his place. Whoever Henry thinks did that, he’s going to kill them.”

Kaiser couldn’t believe this. “Henry is the most mild-mannered guy I’ve met in all this.”

“Everybody has a breaking point, John. You know that.”

As Jordan turned to leave, half a dozen phones began to ring.

TONIGHT DEATH AND
time showed me their true faces.

We spend our lives plodding blindly through the slaughterhouse gate between past and future. Every second is annihilation: the death of this moment, the birth of this moment. There is no “next” moment.

There is only now.

While the pace of life seems stately in the living, we funnel through that gate like driven cattle, fearful, obedient, insensate. Even while we sleep,
now
becomes
then
as relentlessly as a river wearing away a rock. Cells burn oxygen, repair proteins, die, and replace themselves in a seemingly endless train: yet from the womb, those internal clocks are winding down to final disorder.

Only in the shadow of death do we sense the true velocity of time—while adrenaline blasts through our systems, eternity becomes tangible and all else blurs into background. It is then, paradoxically, that seconds seem to stretch, experience becomes hyper-real, and flesh and spirit unite in the battle to remain breathing, conscious, aware—afloat in the rushing stream of time. If we survive the threat, our existential epiphany quickly fades, for we cannot bear it long. Yet somewhere within us, a dividing line remains.

Before and after.

Tonight time slowed down so much I could taste it like copper on my tongue. I felt it against my skin—dense and heavy—resisting every move. Mortality hovered at my shoulder, a watchful beast of prey. Chained to a cinder-block wall, I watched a man older than my father torture the woman I love with fire. I realized then that hell existed; the
terrible irony was that
I had created it
. In arrogance, against the counsel of others, I’d wagered all I had and more—the lives of others—to try to save my father. In desperation, I cast away every principle he ever taught me and reached into the darkness in the hope of a bargain.

What did I get in exchange for my soul?

A pillar of fire roaring in the night. The pyre of three men, probably more, visible for miles across the flat Louisiana Delta. Probably even from Mississippi. Not far to the east, my town sleeps along the high ground above the river, but here all sense, all logic is suspended while the fire devours the dead. Two of those men gave their lives for Caitlin and me.
Henry Sexton, reporter. Sleepy Johnston, musician and prodigal son of Louisiana.
One a white man, one black. Allies by chance, or maybe fate. Either way, they’re gone forever.

Through the slaughterhouse gate.

I’ve never witnessed such brutality as that which preceded their deaths, nor such heroism as was displayed in their sacrifices. Yet all I can taste is ashes. Three months ago I felt a lot like this, as a flood of biblical scale swept over New Orleans, the only real city between the Gulf and Memphis. Three hours south of here, hazmat-suited crews are still dragging bodies from mildewed houses. That disaster, like this one, had human causes. Greed, apathy, hubris—even loyalty—all demand payment in the end. Storms will always come, and men will always do evil in the shadow of some other word.

It’s how we respond that defines us.

A FEW MINUTES AGO
, gripped by a mad delusion of invincibility, I carried Sleepy Johnston out of the basement inferno where this fire was born, and not once while I staggered through the smoke and flames did I doubt I would reach the surface. I hauled a man nearly my own weight as easily as I would have carried my eleven-year-old daughter—but to no avail. Two minutes after I laid him on the ground, Johnston died of his injuries. Now he lies a few yards behind us, staring sightlessly at the smoke-obscured stars.

I did not pray while Caitlin knelt to ease his passing. Anything I said would have been superfluous, for if any God exists, he must surely fold such martyrs into his embrace. I watched in silence while Caitlin
reenacted the oldest ritual in the world, cradling the older man’s head and murmuring maternal reassurance into his ear. Touching my newly scarred face with my right hand, I drove the nails of my left-hand fingers into my palm.
Pain is proof of life.

After Johnston expired, I comforted Caitlin as though I had some purchase on reality. But that was only another delusion, though I didn’t know it then.

Then . . . ?

With alarm I realize that these events happened only a minute ago, if that.
Does a man in shock know he is in shock?

Probably not.

If I rewind history fifteen minutes, this chaotic mass of fire and smoke was a stunning lake house. Now its owner is being cremated in the ruins of his home, and we two survivors stumble about as reality slowly returns with soul-searing clarity. An imaginary newscaster’s voice speaks in my head:
Brody Royal, multimillionaire sociopath, burned to death last night in a fire started by his antique flamethrower. Sadly, Royal was unable to complete the murders he was contemplating prior to his demise, due to a sudden and suicidal intervention by a man he’d ridiculed as harmless for the past twenty years—

Brody’s house shudders like some giant creature, and then, with the sound of cracking bones, one wing implodes. The heat diminishes for a few seconds, then suddenly intensifies, as though feeding on the evil within. Soon it will drive us farther back, away from Johnston’s body.

Caitlin stares at the burning wreckage as though she can’t quite grasp what’s happening. Five minutes ago we both believed we were dead, yet here we stand. Covered with ash and streaked with sweat, her face has a burn scar to match my own. I want to speak to her, but I don’t quite trust myself.

Beyond her, the lake’s mirrored surface reflects back an image of the tower of flame, and with a rush of fear I see our future in it. Like the pillar of fire the Israelites followed across the desert, this beacon too will lead men to us.

“Is that a siren?” Caitlin asks, looking away from the raging flames, and toward the narrow lane at the edge of the light.

“I think so.” My older ears belatedly pick up the distant whine.

“That way,” she says, pointing westward, away from the lake.

I peer through the darkness, but I can’t make out any police lights through the orange glare and waves of superheated air.

“What about Henry’s files?” Caitlin asks. “I should hide them.”

The charred box that Caitlin salvaged from the burning basement stands a few feet from Sleepy Johnston’s body. From the looks of the ashes inside, little of Henry Sexton’s journals remains.

“There’s nowhere to hide them,” I tell her.

“What about the boathouse?” she asks, a note of hysteria in her voice.

“They’ll search that. It’s too late anyway. A neighbor’s coming. Look.”

The nearest house is seventy-five yards away, but a pair of headlights has separated from the garage and begun nosing down toward the lane that runs along the lake here. Perhaps emboldened by the siren, the car’s driver has finally decided to investigate the fire.
Must have heard the gunshots earlier,
I think,
or they’d have been here long before now.

The siren is growing louder and rising in pitch. “That’s probably the Ferriday fire department,” I think aloud. “But the law won’t be far behind. I hope it’s Sheriff Dennis, but it could be the FBI or the state police. They may question us separately. We need to get our stories straight.”

Bewilderment clouds Caitlin’s eyes. “We both lived through the same thing, didn’t we?”

I take her hand, and the coldness of it startles me. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple.”

“Everything you did in Brody Royal’s basement was self-defense. They were torturing us, for God’s sake!”

“That’s not what I mean. The tough questions won’t be about what happened in the basement. They’ll be about
why
it happened. Why did Royal kidnap us? Why did he want to kill us? We’ve held back a lot over the past couple of days.”
And not just from the police,
I add silently.

“What if we just say we don’t know?”

“That’s fine with me, so long as you don’t plan to publish any stories about it in the
Examiner
.”

At last, realization dawns in her eyes. “Oh.”

A half mile from the lake, the whirling red lights of a fire engine break out from behind the trees that line the levee, then veer onto the narrow lane that runs along the shore of Lake Concordia. A half mile behind it, three vehicles traveling in train quickly follow. The flashing red arcs are much closer to the road on those vehicles, which means
they’re police cruisers. Our window of opportunity to shape history is closing fast.

“I found Brody Royal’s name in Henry Sexton’s journals,” Caitlin says, spinning her story on the fly. “That led me to interview his daughter. Out of fear of her father, Katy panicked and took an overdose of pills before I arrived to question her, but she still implicated Brody in multiple murders. Katy’s husband walked in on us after she passed out—that would have been documented by paramedics, if not police. Up to that point, everything’s more or less true. Royal learned from Randall Regan that I’d questioned Katy, and they retaliated to keep me from publishing what I’d learned from her.”

This fairy tale might convince the Concordia Parish sheriff, but probably not the FBI. “Too many people saw me go into St. Catherine’s Hospital,” I say. “They know I spent twenty minutes alone with Brody. Now that he’s dead, his family’s liable to make all kinds of accusations about me going after him. Kaiser will find out sooner or later.”

“Surely you can explain that conversation somehow?”

“I sure can’t admit that I tried to cut a deal with him.” Under the pressure of the approaching authorities, my mind ratchets down to the task at hand. “What if I pick up where your story leaves off? I went to St. Catherine’s Hospital to make sure Royal wasn’t going to take some kind of revenge against you for his daughter’s suicide attempt. I suspected that he’d ordered several murders during the 1960s, and Katy had verified that to you. I also believed Royal had ordered the hit attempts on Henry at the newspaper and the hospital, and I was worried he’d do the same to you. That makes sense, right?”

Caitlin nods quickly, her eyes on the whirling lights.

I step closer to her. “Are you going to tell the cops about your recording of what Katy said?”

“I might as well, since Brody burned both copies. They’re going to read about it in tomorrow’s paper anyway.”

Closing my eyes, I see Caitlin’s Treo smartphone and my borrowed tape recorder being consumed by the fearsome blast of a flamethrower. “You really don’t have another copy at the newspaper?”

Her look of desolation is my only answer.

The fire engine has reached the head of Royal’s driveway. We only have seconds now.

“What about Brody’s confessions?” Caitlin asks. “That he was behind Pooky Wilson’s death? That Frank and Snake Knox killed Pooky at the Bone Tree?”

“We tell the cops all of that. Every bit of it helps justify what we did tonight.”

Caitlin looks strangely hesitant, which I don’t understand. Even if we tell the police about those confessions, she can still publish the story before any other media outlet gets the information.

“For God’s sake,” I say, “until tonight, no one was even sure the Bone Tree was real. And Royal admitted taking part in the gang rape of Viola Turner. We’ve
got
to tell them that.”

Caitlin gives me a pointed look. “Brody also told us your father killed Viola. Do you want to tell the police that?”

“Of course not.”

“All right, then. That’s why I’m asking what we hold back. Is there anything else?”

I can’t read her eyes. We’ve kept so much from each other over the past few days that it’s hard to know where our stories might diverge if compared to one another.

“The rifles,” I say softly. “Those two rifles in the cabinet that he showed us just before you held the razor to his throat. Did you see them?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was waiting for my chance to attack him.”

“There were identifying plaques beneath every other rifle in the gun collection. But on those two plaques there were only dates. Dates, and a small American flag emblem.”

Caitlin shrugs. “So?”

“The dates were November twenty-second, 1963, and April fourth, 1968.”

She blinks in confusion for a couple of seconds, but then her eyes go wide. “No way. I mean . . . do you really—”

“I don’t think so. But if we don’t tell Kaiser about them, whatever’s left of those guns might disappear tonight. And we’ll never know.”

Caitlin gingerly touches the burn on her cheek. “Let’s hope Sheriff Dennis is in one of those cars, and not the goddamn state police. Not that Captain Ozan.”

I reach out and squeeze her shoulder. “Whoever it is, act more disoriented than you are. You really are in shock, but play it up more. When they question you, try to stick to the past hour, nothing more. Act exhausted, and play up your injuries.”

Caitlin doesn’t appear to like this plan. “I don’t want to spend the night in a damned hospital. This is the biggest story I’ve ever been involved in. I’ve got zero time to waste.”

“I know.” Moving forward, I pull her tight against me. An hour ago I made the worst mistake of my life by begging her to suppress part of a story in order to try to bargain with a killer for my father’s life. I’ve got no right to try to control anything she does now. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. You tried to tell me something like this would happen. My worry over Dad blinded me.”

She shakes her head against my chest. “It wasn’t just you. Once I made that recording of Katy, Brody was going to come after us, no matter what.”

“But he wouldn’t have known about the recording if I hadn’t told him.”

This is debatable, but Caitlin only draws back and looks hard into my eyes. “Whatever happens now, I need to get back to the newspaper.
Please
do whatever you can to make that happen.”

The fire engine screeches to a stop thirty feet from us, and uniformed men leap off and out of it. The hoses come out faster than I would have believed possible, but these guys don’t have a prayer of putting out this inferno. One fireman hurries toward the body on the ground and drops to his knees, but I call out to him that the man is dead.