The Bone Tree (41 page)

ME:
And the second record?

STONE:
During Jim Garrison’s investigation of Clay Shaw in 1965, an FBI agent based in Dallas saw a close-up picture of David Ferrie. At that time he told his SAC that he believed he’d seen Ferrie in Dallas on the weekend prior to the assassination—at a diner, alone. With Ferrie’s fake eyebrows and hairpiece, it’s hard to believe that agent could have been mistaken.

ME:
What happened to that report?

KAISER:
Hoover ordered it buried.

ME:
But why would Oswald have agreed to kill Kennedy for Ferrie? It may seem an obvious question, but I’m not sure I understand his motive.

STONE:
This is where the psychologists are right. Lee strongly prefigured the later killers such as John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, and the school shooters. His life had been one long string of failures. Emigrating to Cuba was his final fantasy. The Russians didn’t want him, employers didn’t want him, his wife had left him. When the Cubans said no to his defection, he basically had nothing left. Three weeks before the black hole weekend, Lee actually attended a rally where General Walker spoke, almost as if he was planning to try once more to assassinate him. Lee was truly ready for anything at that point, so long as it was sensational.

KAISER:
In behavioral science parlance, Oswald was decompensating. He’d endured stressor after stressor. Killing Kennedy—who had been actively trying to overthrow and even kill Castro—would have made Lee a hero to Castro and the Cuban people. I’m sure Oswald could see himself driving along the Malecón with Fidel in a big convertible, waving to the adoring crowds.

ME:
What about the Cuban student, Cruz? The one who bought the Carcano that was in Brody’s house?

STONE:
I think Ferrie came up with that angle the night he thought of the Oswald plan. If the goal was to sell the world on a Cuban plot—and Marcello on his plan—then they needed a Cuban conspiracy. The way to create that was to pin a rifle like Oswald’s to another loyal Communist—ideally, a native Cuban.

KAISER:
One with a criminal record, so his prints would be on file.

ME:
You make Ferrie sound like a criminal genius.

KAISER:
Some Cuban exiles actually called him “the master of intrigue.” His brilliance is exaggerated, but he was a devious guy. In any case, all Ferrie had to do to get that second Carcano was walk into a Texas gun shop and buy one.

STONE:
And two boxes of ammunition. Western Cartridge Company 6.58-millimeter, manufactured in the U.S. for Italy during the war.

KAISER:
Right. The ammunition’s key.

ME:
So how did they frame Eladio Cruz? They killed him and put his prints on the rifle?

KAISER:
And dumped him in the swamp. You nailed it. Probably on the night of Tuesday, November nineteenth.

STONE:
But first Ferrie had to carry the revised mission order to Frank Knox. He probably flew out of Dallas on the Sunday after seeing Oswald. We’re trying to check his movements during that period, but access to a Marcello plane means he could have traveled as his schedule allowed, with no one the wiser.

ME:
You think Frank Knox just went along with the Oswald scheme?

STONE:
Frank was a soldier. He would have seen the advantages. He simply went from being the primary shooter to the backup.

ME:
But that second Carcano was never found. It was never associated with the assassination in any way. What was the point in getting it? Was Knox supposed to use it against Kennedy?

STONE:
I think he was. But Frank would have known better than to trust a critical shot to a junk rifle. My guess is that he told Ferrie he’d leave the Carcano at the scene, but he wasn’t going to shoot with it. Otherwise, Marcello might have gotten angry when things didn’t go the way he expected.

ME:
Then why wasn’t the rifle found?

KAISER:
Maybe Frank didn’t want to risk carrying two rifles into the Dal-Tex Building. That’s a serious tactical challenge.

STONE:
Or maybe he worried that the FBI or CIA had forensic abilities he knew nothing about. Frank would have known that a presidential assassin’s rifle would be subjected to more scrutiny than any weapon in history.

KAISER:
Or he might have kept it as insurance. Frank knew he was dealing with the mob, and he knew how those guys handled loose ends. Maybe he figured he could use the Carcano as leverage later.

ME:
So why didn’t Marcello blow up when Frank didn’t leave the rifle at Dealey Plaza?

STONE:
[chuckles] When we think about mobsters like Carlos Marcello, we inflate their powers in our minds. We see them as fearless. But Carlos had watched Frank Knox train Cuban exiles at his camp. He’d heard the stories of what Frank had done in the Pacific. The medal-winning assaults, the mutilation of prisoners, the black market skulls. Compared to Frank Knox, a Mafia hit man with a snubnose .38 was a clown.

KAISER:
There are some guys it doesn’t pay to go to war with. Especially when they only live three hours away from you.

ME:
But the ballistics . . . How could the bullet fired from Frank’s Remington match the bullets fired from Oswald’s Carcano?

STONE:
Ferrie would have provided ammunition to both Oswald and Knox. That would further tie the two shooters in an apparent conspiracy. Lee was poor as dirt, so he wouldn’t have bought new ammo if he didn’t have to.

ME:
You’re missing my point. If Frank didn’t use that second Carcano, then he couldn’t have used the bullets that matched Oswald’s lot. You said he needed a rifle that fired a super-fast round, didn’t you? How did the metallurgy of Frank’s bullets—fired from a Remington 700—match the bullets Oswald fired from his 6.58 Mannlicher-Carcano?

STONE:
That’s where Frank Knox proved his genius. Frank’s bullet was designed to explode on impact with Kennedy’s skull, remember? It left very little trace. But the metallurgy of the fragments
did
match Oswald’s bullet. New tests were done only a few months ago. There are a couple of ways that this match could have been accomplished. You get into complex gunsmithing work and reloading issues, but Frank was an old hand at all that stuff. All the Knoxes were. The only requirement would have been that Frank had a sample of the ammo Oswald used, and he did. With that, he could have used any rifle he wanted. Trust me, Penn—it can be done.

ME:
I’d rather hear the explanation.

Leaning forward, I fast-forward past the complex ballistics and stop on the revelation that floored me. I dread hearing it again, but I want to evaluate it once more before Caitlin arrives and distracts me.

STONE:
Tell him, John. He’s gone beyond the call for us.

KAISER:
I told you I sent two agents up to the Mississippi field office today. That’s how I found the Triton medical excuse. But once the director was on board, I also put out a Bureau-wide request for any and all files of any type on all the principals in this case. Late this afternoon, a clerk at the Jackson field office sent me a digitized copy of one more file.

ME:
Which was?

KAISER:
In 1993, a file clerk at the Triton Battery Corporation requested the return of Frank Knox’s personnel record.

ME:
So?

KAISER:
They didn’t do that out of the blue. They’d been contacted by a former company physician who wanted to see the record. You know who that was.

ME:
Bullshit.

STONE:
It was your father, Penn. About a month after Carlos Marcello died in New Orleans, Tom requested Frank Knox’s Triton personnel record from the company. You see, he had no idea that the Bureau would have the file.

ME:
And what do you conclude from that?

STONE:
Well. Either Tom had just figured out what he’d been a part of, and wanted to check it, or . . .

KAISER:
That’s not it, guys. I know you don’t want to hear it, but he wouldn’t risk asking for that file out of simple curiosity. Dr. Cage knew what he’d done back in ’63. And once Marcello was dead, he did what he could to wipe out the traces. He just didn’t count on the Bureau having that record.

STONE:
John—

KAISER:
He nearly got away with it, too. Because nobody at the Bureau could find the file when Triton Battery made their request. They simply reported back to Triton that the file couldn’t be found. If a conscientious Bureau clerk hadn’t decided to open a file to note the unfulfilled request, the whole event would have been lost in the sands of time.

As I listen to Stone try to ameliorate the effects of Kaiser’s accusation, my cell phone vibrates on Caitlin’s desk. The incoming text reads:
I just pulled into the lot. I see your car. Be inside in a sec. Love you!

I switch off the recorder, glad to be spared the last two minutes of conversation. My argument with Kaiser was as intense as it was pointless. I won’t know what prompted Dad to request that medical record until I can question him directly, and until he’ll tell me the truth. But what lingers in my mind is the lump in my throat as I took leave of Stone. Though the old agent put on a brave face, and I tried to match it, I couldn’t suppress the conviction that I would never see him again. And though he’d brought me unwelcome news, I knew that Stone’s heart had always been in the right place. The tragedy was that his news had made me confront even more starkly the question of whether the same was true of my father.

I’ve barely gotten my recorder back into my pocket when Caitlin’s office door flies open and she steps inside, obviously looking for me.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. Where have you been? I’ve been worried.”

It’s instantly obvious my tone has angered her. “I went to see a couple of my contacts in the black community,” she says, setting her purse down on the desk.

I try to make eye contact, but she turns away and begins heating water for tea. She speaks with her back to me.

“The Jackson radio station has been running that Lincoln Turner interview all day, and I heard he’s been swaying some people—persuading them I’ve been protecting Tom in the
Examiner.
As I told you this afternoon, some of my own reporters seem to believe the same thing.”

“And what did you find out?”

“Reverend Ransom says most of his flock still love your father, but
that doesn’t mean they don’t think he’s human. What they call ‘outside children’ are a fact of life, especially from white fathers, so they have no problem buying that Lincoln could be Tom’s son. That obviously might have led to some real problems between Tom and Viola.”

“Great.”

Caitlin finally turns back to me, her arms folded across her chest almost defensively. “How’s Dwight Stone doing?”

“Worse than I expected. I don’t think he has long. Days, at the most.”

“God. I should go see him.”

Not wanting to encourage this, I say nothing.

“If he’s that sick, what’s he doing here?” she asks, fixing me with her gaze.

And here we come to it: do I lie or tell the truth?
After all I heard in room 406, I’ve got no desire to tease through every new fact with Caitlin, especially those dealing with Dad’s possible complicity in crimes. Nor do I want her hounding a dying man for a scoop on the JFK assassination. “After Henry’s death and all John’s discovered, he couldn’t stay away. I think this trip was Dwight’s last hurrah on the unsolved cases from his past. That’s probably all that’s keeping him going now.”

“The JFK thing? Or the civil rights cases?”

“The Double Eagle stuff, mostly.”

Caitlin looks almost disappointed by my answer. She turns and drops a tea bag into her mug, then looks over her shoulder and says, “So . . . what’s this big surprise you wanted to show me?”

“You’ll see, sooner or later. It’s really too dark now.”

She shrugs. “Your car has headlights, doesn’t it? What is it we’re trying to see?”

Since Edelweiss stands atop the bluff facing the Mississippi, the combination of streetlamps, the house lights, my headlights, and the moon might be enough to create quite a dramatic reveal. And since the last thing I want to do is sit in this office while she probes me about my meeting with Kaiser and Stone . . .

“Come on!” I say, bouncing up from the chair and taking her hand. “Let’s get our minds off all this bullshit for half an hour.”

The sound of her sudden laugher is almost a shock after the last couple of days. “
Where are we going?
” she screeches as I try to drag her into the hall. “Wait!”

She darts back into the office long enough to turn off her teapot, then follows me down the hall. Hand in hand, we run through newsroom together, laughing with near hysterical relief, not knowing why, only sensing that the terrible weight of the past few days has been lifted for a few precious moments. Caitlin’s reporters and staff people look up openmouthed, but a few of them smile. For them, the Double Eagle murders are just a story—a big one, to be sure, but only a way station on the long careers they see ahead. Whereas for Caitlin and me . . .

The stakes are life and death.

SHADRACH JOHNSON AND
Sheriff Billy Byrd had been talking in the DA’s office since Byrd walked over at 5:45
P.M.
Neither man could quite believe the turns that the Tom Cage matter had taken, or the casualties that had swiftly mounted in and near their jurisdictions. Together, they had worried every thread of the Viola Turner case until Sheriff Byrd pulled a flask of bourbon from his pocket and started drinking.

For Shad, meeting with Billy Byrd was always a little uncomfortable. For while they shared common cause against the Cage family, Billy was no good old boy with his heart in the right place. He was an unreconstructed redneck who—if it were thirty years earlier—would have liked nothing better than to horsewhip Shad for daring to walk on the same sidewalk with him. Beyond that, Byrd wouldn’t have been able to get hired as a janitor at Harvard Law, while Shad had the school’s diploma hanging on his wall. Yet in the present circumstances, Shad was forced to treat the corpulent, Skoal-dipping sheriff like an equal.

Shad was about to suggest that Byrd continue his drinking elsewhere when he heard pounding feet on his staircase. Five seconds later, someone threw open the door with such force that Billy Byrd grabbed for his gun.

“Goddamn it, don’t do that!” the sheriff cried, pointing his flask at Lincoln Turner, who stood in the door like an angry juke-joint bouncer.

Lincoln ignored Byrd and looked straight at Shad. “I think I’ve found Tom Cage.”

“Where?”

“That big green house at the top of Silver Street, looking over the river? Looks like a Swiss chalet or something.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Shad said. “Nobody lives there.”

“Maybe not. But I just followed Penn Cage and that Masters girl to it, and they walked right up on the porch like they were playing a scene in a movie.”

Shad couldn’t believe the speed with which Sheriff Byrd heaved his bulk from the chair and bolted through the door.

“Wait!” Shad cried, yanking open his top drawer in search of his car keys. “Wait for me, damn it! A lot of people go up there to look at the river!
Don’t do anything crazy, Billy!
”

CAITLIN FELT AS THOUGH
she were trapped in a surreal romantic comedy, or even a farcical one. Penn had driven her down Canal Street, then turned onto Broadway and parked just past the head of Silver Street, where tourists often stopped to gaze over the Mississippi River before driving down to the Natchez Under-the-Hill district. Penn’s city car smelled stale, and it nauseated her. She looked to her left, at Edelweiss, which had been her favorite house since she’d first visited Natchez seven years earlier. In a city filled with Greek Revival mansions, the three-story chalet with its wraparound gallery on the second floor seemed to float above the bluff like a clean-lined ship. The mere sight of it usually lifted her mood, and tonight was no exception. Owned by an elderly woman in a nursing home, the 1883 gem had been falling into disrepair for years. Only recently had some mystery buyer begun restoring it to its former splendor.

“What are we doing here?” Caitlin asked, perplexed to be parked in the dark.

“I want to show you something down on the river,” Penn said.

“At night? That’s my surprise?”

“Mm-hm.”

She could tell he was suppressing a smile. “Well, why don’t you drive down Silver Street?”

“You have to be up here to see it. Let’s get out.”

He opened the driver’s door of the smelly car. With a tired groan, Caitlin got out and started toward the fence at the edge of the bluff.

“No, over here,” Penn said, walking halfway across the street and beckoning to her. “Let’s go up on the porch of Edelweiss. It’s a lot higher up.”

“Are you sure the house is empty? Somebody bought it, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think the restoration’s finished. Come on.”

She crossed the street and followed him up one of the twin
staircases to the broad gallery of the chalet. The cold wind racing up the face of the bluff cut mercilessly through her clothes. Penn went to the rail and looked westward, toward Louisiana. She stood shivering beside him, gazing out over the distant lights, trying to guess where in that dark landscape Brody Royal’s house had stood. From here you could see more than ten miles of the Mississippi River during the day, but all she could think about now was the Jericho Hole, the burned-out ruins of the
Concordia Beacon,
and the hospital where Henry had died.

“Some view, isn’t it?” Penn said. “Even at night.”

She lowered her gaze a little. Two strings of barges were making their way along the river in a delicate ballet of drifts and pauses. The twin bridges blazed with light, and Highway 84 twinkled like a line of Christmas lights fading into the distance.

“Yes, but it’s the one I’m used to. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

Penn shrugged. “What
are
you looking for?”

She pulled her coat tighter and tried to keep her face calm. Had he brought her up here to interrogate her? Did he have some idea that she’d seen Tom? “What are you asking me?”

“Take it easy. Nothing weird. We’ve just been in full-on panic mode since Monday morning. After the insanity of last night, I felt like we needed to remember what our lives are really about. Because tomorrow the craziness is going to start all over again.”

He took her hand and squeezed, and after a couple of seconds, she squeezed back. But one phrase replayed in her mind:
what our lives are really about
. Though she would never voice the thought, it was during tumultuous times like these that Caitlin felt most alive. What they had endured last night might be terrible from an objective point of view, but she had spent much of her life dreaming about working on stories like the Double Eagle murders, and she wasn’t sure she would undo that suffering even if she could. Penn was different. While trying capital cases in Texas, he’d experienced triumphs and losses she couldn’t begin to match, yet he’d walked away from that life and never looked back, except to analyze some of his experiences in the novels he’d written later.

With a start Caitlin realized Penn was no longer gazing at the river, but at her. She reined in her thoughts and looked back at him.

“Have you ever found out who’s restoring this place?” she asked.

He smiled. “I have.”

“Is it some actor, like the rumors say? I’ve heard everybody from Morgan Freeman to John Grisham.”

Penn laughed. “No. Morgan Freeman’s staying up in the delta, and Grisham’s still in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

“Just so long as it’s not some out-of-towner who’ll stay for a year and then bail. Although, come to think of it, that might not be bad. We could get it for a steal.”

“We’ll never get this place for a steal. But then again, we don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“We already own it.”

A strange numbness came over her as she tried to figure out whether he was joking. “Penn . . . ?”

“I’m serious,” he said, his eyes shining. “This house is your wedding present. I guess now we’ll call it your Christmas present.”

As Caitlin looked back into his face, a hundred little clues and inconsistencies from the past months suddenly fell into place. Disbelief turned to an effervescent bubble of excitement in her chest. She’d thought herself beyond clichéd romantic reactions, but the bubble pressing upward in her chest broke into a thousand tiny ones, and she felt wetness in her eyes.

“You
do
remember we were supposed to be getting married next week, right?” Penn asked.

“Oh, I remember.” She smiled broadly. “You’re a better liar than I thought.”

“Well, give me a damn hug or something!”

She wrapped her arms tight around him, but even as she did, the reality of all that had been lost during the past few days crashed down on her. She’d held back so much from him that she couldn’t even begin to explain her feelings. For one thing, he didn’t even know she was pregnant.
Talk about being a good liar.
Worse, she’d just spent an hour with his father and said nothing about it. The trickle of tears on her face became a stream, and she buried her face in his chest.

“Hey,” he said, squeezing her gently. “Are you okay?”

Caitlin nodded but said nothing. She was standing on the gallery of her dream house, yet she felt miserable.

“Caitlin?” he murmured into her ear. “What’s going on?”

She shook her head against his chest, wondering,
How did I get here?

“Talk to me,” Penn said, separating them enough for him to see her eyes, which had probably become the usual raccoon mask of running mascara.

“Are we really going to live here?” she asked.

“Of course we are.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s just everything that’s happened. That’s why I wanted to show it to you. To show you we’re going to get past all this. That normal life is waiting for us.”

Normal life.
“Does Annie know?”

“Afraid so.” He grinned. “Mom and Dad, too. Everybody knows but you. I actually hid Mom and Annie here until I moved them this afternoon.”

Caitlin thought back to Tom asking her about her pregnancy at Quentin’s house. Even knowing that, he hadn’t breathed a word to her about Edelweiss.

“Don’t you want to see the inside?” Penn asked, obviously itching to show her all he’d done to the place. “It’ll take your breath away.”

“No!” she said quickly.

His smile faded. “Why not?”

“That’s like the groom seeing the bride before the wedding. It’s stupid, I know, but I don’t want to jinx anything.”

“Okay, okay. I guess I can wait. Annie would want to be here anyway. I just wanted you to know that it’s ours.”

Caitlin shook her head, still unable to believe that he’d done this, or that the family had managed to keep it from her. “I really can’t process it,” she said, still crying.

“But you’re okay with it, right? You’re happy?”

She nodded.

“Well, let’s get out of here before you go into terminal depression.”

He led her to the head of the right-hand staircase, where she paused. Miles of empty space opened to the west of them, seemingly endless darkness broken only by twinkling lights. She looked upriver and thought of Tom, hiding in the deep forests of Jefferson County with Melba Price.

“Are you really all right?” Penn asked. “Is there anything you need to tell me?”

For a few seconds she considered telling him everything. Penn would be furious, of course, but in the end he would be glad she’d told him the truth. Yet something kept her silent. She supposed it was her promise to Tom: the twenty-four hours of peace she’d sworn to give him. But truth be told, she wasn’t sure.

“What are you thinking about?” Penn asked.

The truth pressed against the back of her throat like a lump of food that refused to go down. “I’m just worried about Tom. I’m sorry.”

“I’m worried, too. Let’s just hope Walt is back with him.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed Penn lightly. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“Oh,
God,
” she groaned, as she always did when he showed sentimentality.

He laughed so hard that he didn’t notice the cars racing up Broadway, but Caitlin could see them over his shoulder. Seconds later the sound of roaring engines made Penn whirl.

A sheriff’s cruiser screeched to a stop in front of Edelweiss. The second vehicle, a white pickup that Caitlin felt strangely certain belonged to Lincoln Turner, stopped some fifty yards back, beyond the head of Silver Street.

Sheriff Billy Byrd got out of the cruiser, looked up at the gallery, then crossed the sidewalk and marched up the right-hand staircase. He was red-faced and out of breath by the time he reached the main floor.

“What do you want?” Penn asked him.

“Your father,” Sheriff Byrd said. “Go inside and tell him to come out.”

Penn looked at Byrd like he was crazy. “What are you talking about? Who told you he was here?”

“That makes no difference. Open the door.”

Penn considered the order for a few seconds, then said, “Go back to your office, Sheriff. You’ve got no business here.”

Byrd took a step closer to the big cypress door. “I said open that house.”

Penn moved between the sheriff and the door. “Do you have a search warrant?”

Something in Penn’s posture made Caitlin’s stomach flutter.

“I don’t need a warrant,” Sheriff Byrd said. “I’ve got probable cause.”

“Not from where I’m standing.”

Caitlin’s heart began to pound. If she hadn’t known Tom was hiding in the next county with Melba Price, she would have assumed, like the sheriff, that Penn’s behavior meant Tom was inside the chalet.

“I’m the sheriff of this county, Cage,” Byrd said, hitching up his gun belt. “Being mayor don’t mean shit compared to that. Open the door, or I’ll open it myself.”

Caitlin heard a door slam at street level. Looking down, she saw Lincoln Turner climbing out of his truck, his eyes on the gallery.

She whipped her head to the left. Penn had backed against the door as though he intended to die defending it.
Why is he doing this?
she thought frantically. But almost as quickly, she knew the answer. Penn had felt impotent for so long in this battle over his father that a corrupt sheriff had become the focus of his frustration. He would make a reckless stand over something meaningless in order to gain some control over the situation.

“I’m going around the back!” Lincoln called from the ground. “Dr. Cage might be trying to get out that way.”

“Who’s down there?” Penn asked Caitlin.

She dreaded answering, but she knew she had to. “Lincoln Turner.”

Penn shook his head and glared at Byrd. “Is that who’s calling the shots over at your office now?”

“Get out of my way,” the sheriff said, his right hand settling on his pistol. “I have reason to believe you’re aiding and abetting a fugitive wanted for killing a Louisiana State Police officer. I’m going to search these premises no matter what you say.”

“Let him search, Penn!” Caitlin cried. “Your dad’s not in there. What does it matter?”