The Bone Tree (5 page)

The skin on his neck and arms crawled as he waited for the bright red flare of Louisiana police lights. His face was pouring sweat, and angina had locked his back muscles by the time the blinding lights flashed past him, and he saw that they belonged to a Louisiana Power and Light bucket truck.

“Christ,” he gasped, as his stolen truck rolled out of the sucking vacuum between the two vehicles and plowed back into the darkness.

As his heartbeat slowly decelerated, Tom realized that Grimsby had
awakened in the backseat. Some ancient survival instinct had flickered to life and told him that the hit man was now staring at the back of his head, trying to work out a way to kill him. If Tom tried to turn, Grimsby would close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. But Tom knew different. Behind the lids, those eyes would be alive with lethal malice.

What had Walt said?
Mercy is a virtue you can’t afford. . . .

As the truck rolled through the dark fields, Tom reached down and laid his hand on the cold checkered butt of the .357.

THE MOMENT SONNY
Thornfield saw Billy Knox standing beneath the lights on the floating dock outside his fishing camp on the Toledo Bend Reservoir, he knew something had gone wrong. Sonny and Snake had just carried out one of the most nerve-wracking missions he’d taken part in since the war, and he was elated simply to be alive. In the dead of night, Snake had secretly flown them via floatplane to a small lake near Ferriday. After being ferried by car to the lawn outside Mercy Hospital, Snake had assassinated Henry Sexton by shooting him through his hospital window. Then, because Forrest had given the order that everyone with direct knowledge of the Sexton attack had to die, they had drugged two boys in their twenties and drowned them in the Atchafalaya Swamp. No one could have seen that crime. Snake had set the plane down in the middle of a pitch-black pool, miles from human habitation.

That can’t be it,
Sonny told himself, staring at Billy’s grim face as Snake taxied the Beechcraft up to the dock. As carefully as he could, Sonny climbed out onto the starboard pontoon and caught the mooring line that Billy tossed him.

Billy didn’t look much like his father had as a young man. Snake had always been wiry and hatchet-faced. Billy was stockier and blond, with the shoulder-length hair and beard of a 1970s rock singer. Normally his eyes glinted with an amused light, but tonight he looked as grim as Sonny had ever seen him.

“What’s the matter?” Sonny asked. “What’s happened?”

“Wait till Daddy gets out,” Billy said.

When the pontoon bumped the dock, Sonny stepped onto the floating square of wood. “Trouble?”

Billy nodded once. “Big-time.”

A chill raced up Sonny’s back.

Snake climbed down onto the pontoon and stepped lightly onto the dock, his inquisitive eyes on those of his son.

“What’s the matter, boy? You look like you need a dose of Ex-Lax.”

“You won’t be laughing when you hear this. You missed Sexton tonight.”

“Missed . . . ? Bullshit.”

Billy shook his head. “Captain Ozan called. You definitely missed him. You killed his girlfriend, if that makes you feel any better.”

“I saw the round hit him in the head!” Snake barked.

“You only grazed him.”

“No way. That was a .22 Magnum round, and I drilled him.”

Billy shrugged as if tired of arguing the point. “Maybe your eyes aren’t what they used to be. Ozan was there, and he knows what happened. The FBI moved Sexton to an interior room—an office—and tried to pretend he was dead, but Ozan got the truth out of a CPSO deputy. Now we’ve got a world of shit over there.”

“Does Forrest know?” Sonny asked worriedly.

“Haven’t talked to him. But he sure as hell won’t be happy.”

“Where is he?”

“New Orleans. He’s making his move on Colonel Mackiever.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” Sonny couldn’t hide his fear.

“I hit that son of a bitch!” Snake insisted.

“The window glass must have deflected your shot,” Billy said.

“Shut the fuck up!” Snake bellowed. “I know what I saw.”

“Why didn’t you kill the Masters girl?” Billy asked, ignoring his father’s anger. “Ozan says she should have been visible through the window. Killing Sexton’s girlfriend didn’t do a damn thing for us. At least wiping Caitlin Masters off the board would have bought us a margin of safety, if Sexton told her anything about us.”

“The other woman was trying to close the blinds. She filled up half the fucking window! Besides, I figured Forrest would have a stroke if I told him I’d killed that newspaper bitch without his okay. If I’d have known he wanted that, I’d have marched right up to the window and blasted them all.”

“Forrest wouldn’t have okayed the Masters girl,” Sonny said. “That’s only hindsight talking.” He rubbed his arms and shivered. “How about we get up to the house?”

“Fuck that,” Snake said. “We need to head back to Ferriday and finish off Henry. We can’t risk him talking.” Sonny looked longingly up the slope at the luxurious condo on the shore of the reservoir, where warm yellow light glowed through the windows.

“Forget Sexton,” Billy said firmly. “He needs to be finished, all right, but you’d never get close to him now. Forrest will make that decision.”

Snake kicked a tackle box that was standing on the dock. “This is bullshit, Billy. What does Brody say? You talked to him?”

“No. We’re not supposed to be using the phones, remember? Ozan broke the rules, but he figured we needed to know. You’re to stay here in Texas until you get further word.”

Sonny waited while Snake cussed and spat.

“Let’s just hope,” Billy said, “that Forrest is the new superintendent of state police by this afternoon. Then we can start some realistic damage control.”

Snake kicked the tackle box into the dark water, then marched up the wooden steps toward the house.

Billy’s cell phone rang, and he answered it immediately. After ten seconds, his face went pale. After ten more, his mouth hung slack. He turned away from Sonny and walked a few steps along the pier. Looking up the slope, Sonny saw that Snake had stopped climbing and was hovering near the top step, watching his son. When Billy hung up, he walked back toward Sonny like a man trying to pass a field sobriety test.

“Who was that?” Snake called, coming back down the steps. “What’s happened?”

“That was Ozan,” Billy said in a dazed voice. “Henry Sexton’s dead.”

Snake laughed and pumped his fist. “I told you I got that son of a bitch!”

Billy shook his head slowly. “No, you didn’t. Brody’s dead, too.”

“What?” Sonny whispered.

“Brody, Sexton, Randall Regan, some old nigger from Detroit, a couple of Brody’s guards, and a Natchez cop to boot. Brody’s house is burning to the ground right now.”

“Bullshit!” said Snake.

“Ozan just heard it on fire department radios in Concordia Parish.”

“What does Forrest say?”

“Ozan can’t get Forrest on the phone. Not since he went into a hotel in New Orleans to meet Colonel Mackiever.”

“Oh, God,” Sonny breathed, looking for a place to sit down.

SHERIFF WALKER DENNIS’S
Tahoe hums swiftly through the Louisiana night, his roof lights dark, his siren silenced. The dry blast of the heater sweeps past my face, the muted crackle of the police radio barely audible beneath it. The heat aggravates the cigarette burn on my left cheek, but after enduring all I have tonight, the pain seems inconsequential.

“I tried to keep a lid on this to delay the state police,” Sheriff Dennis says, “but some firemen mentioned names on the radio. It’s out now. And when a man as rich as Brody Royal dies, people are gonna want to know everything. We’ll be lucky to make the station without state police cruisers flagging us down.”

Twelve miles east of us, this highway crosses the Mississippi River into Natchez, but our destination lies several miles short of that. The Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office is housed in the basement floor of the parish courthouse between Vidalia and Ferriday, Louisiana. The highway between those two towns runs through the worst sort of sprawl: small-engine repair shops, oil field service companies, salvage yards, boat dealerships, and an ever-changing line of marginal enterprises. All have parking lots where state police vehicles could lie in wait for us.

“I’m going to videotape your statements when we get there,” Sheriff Dennis says, “but I’d just as soon know ahead of time what you’re going to say. I don’t want to talk you into a corner you can’t get out of.”

“Thanks, Walker.”

“Are you and your fiancée straight on your stories?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Because whatever you say is gonna get picked apart by a lot of agencies.”

I nod but add nothing.

“I got the basic gist of what went down, but why don’t you tell me who killed who, and in what order.”

I take a breath and organize my thoughts before speaking. “Two of Royal’s men knocked out the Natchez cop who was guarding the parking lot at the
Examiner
before they snatched us. I think they probably killed him, because I felt no pulse in the van. Once we reached Royal’s, those two guys hauled his body away.”

“Can you give me a good description?”

“Decent. I’d like to kill the sons of bitches.”

“If they killed a cop, you’ll have to get in line. Who died next?”

For a moment I can’t speak. Walker considers it a given that cop killers will die violently, and he’s so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t realize he just condemned my father by extension.

“Royal and Regan were torturing Caitlin and me in the basement,” I tell him, “in Royal’s gun range.”

“Jesus, Penn. I’m sorry. I always heard Brody had some kind of million-dollar collection down there. Never saw the place, though.”

For an instant the two putative assassination rifles flash behind my eyes. “A million might be low,” I murmur. “Royal was trying to find out who had visited Pooky Wilson’s mother before she died. He knew there was a witness who could place him at the scene of Albert Norris’s death.”

“How did he know that?”

“Between you and me . . . I told him, earlier tonight.”

Walker gives me an angry glare. “Damn it, Penn.”

“I know. I’ll pay for that the rest of my life. But it’s done now. During the torture, Henry Sexton and Sleepy Johnston busted in to try to save us. We heard gunshots upstairs. They pretended to be SWAT, but Royal didn’t fall for it. When Sleepy Johnston came through the door, Brody got the drop on him. After Brody figured out who he was—by calling his lawyer, Claude Devereux—he shot Johnston in cold blood.”

“So this Sleepy Johnston was the guy who went to see Pooky Wilson’s mother before she died?”

“Right.”

“And he was the one who called in tips to me as ‘Gates Brown’?”

“That’s right. And visited Henry at the hospital.”

“How the hell did Johnston know that Royal had kidnapped you?”

“He was watching Brody’s house when we were brought there. He’d been following Royal ever since he got down here from Detroit.
That’s why he was in a position to see Royal and Regan burn the
Beacon
building. He just didn’t get up the nerve to call your office until today. Or yesterday, I guess. Technically. Even after living in the North for forty years, Sleepy was still scared shitless of Royal and the Knoxes. He didn’t think Brody would ever pay for what he’d done.”

“Why did he use a baseball player’s name as an alias?”

“After Sleepy moved to Detroit, he was lonely. Gates Brown was a black star of the Tigers, and he’d had some trouble in his youth, just like Sleepy. But he helped the Tigers win the Series in ’68, and Sleepy saw him as a role model. But his luck ran out tonight.”

Sheriff Dennis, an old baseball player himself, nods with understanding. “Pretty damn sad when you think about it.”

“Worse than sad.”

“So who died next? Henry?”

“Henry was already wounded from the earlier attacks, but I think he’d got hit again in the gunfight upstairs at Royal’s. He could barely hold himself upright. Brody knocked him down and taunted him, then basically forgot him. But when Brody was about to fry Caitlin with that flamethrower—and I was chained to the wall—Henry crawled over there, got to his feet somehow, and protected her with his body.”

“Henry did that?”

“You haven’t heard the half of it. He went after Brody then. Brody was trying to fire that flamethrower, but once Henry lunged at him, he couldn’t fire without risking the flame blowing back on him. Then Henry closed with Brody, and after a brief struggle, Henry pulled the trigger and immolated them both.” I pause to get my voice back under control. “It was the most terrible and heroic thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

“God almighty. And Randall Regan?”

After a few seconds of silence, I say, “I killed Regan.”

Sheriff Dennis grunts. “Well . . . I guess you can give me the details at the station.”

“Thanks.”

“But tell me this: if Sleepy Johnston was shot down in the basement, how’d he wind up outside on the ground?”

“I carried him out.”

The sheriff looks back at me, his eyes skeptical. “Dead?”

“No. He was hit in the spine. I knew moving him might paralyze
him, or even kill him, but he’d have burned alive otherwise.” I force back the images of Sleepy Johnston’s face as he resigned himself to death in those flames. “I didn’t even feel the weight, Walker. It was like lifting a little kid.”

Dennis nods slowly. “That’s how it is when shit like that goes down.”

“All I know is, two good men are dead. Three, if that Natchez cop guarding the
Examiner
was killed.”

“I don’t envy you the call to Chief Logan. Unless you want me to make it.”

I shake my head. “No, I owe Logan that.”

“Well, at least Royal and Regan are dead. I won’t say I’m sorry to hear that news.”

But at what cost?
“Caitlin blames me for what happened tonight,” I say dully, voicing my deepest conviction. “She’ll never say it, but she does. She blames my father, too, of course.”

“What about you? Do you blame your old man?”

After a long silence, I hear myself say, “I guess I do. If he’d done anything but what he did, you know? If he’d opened up to me from the beginning, about Viola’s death? If he hadn’t jumped bail? How many people would still be alive?”

“I don’t know, Penn. But wait till you can talk to him before you judge. Your daddy’s a good man. I feel sure there are things you don’t know. Things that will make all this make sense.”

“I tried to write him off tonight, Walker. After Henry died. And Sleepy Johnston. But I can’t.”

Sheriff Dennis turns and gives me a look of pure empathy. “He’s your father, man. He’s blood.”

There it is. Blood. The empirical, evolutionary imperative. What more can be said?
“Walker . . . tonight I asked Brody if he killed Viola Turner, or ordered her killed.”

“What did he say?”

“He said no. He admitted that he’d raped Viola, along with some other Double Eagles. Snake Knox and the others. But he said he didn’t kill her. He
said
. . .”

“What?”

“I’ll deny I ever said this, Walker. But Royal said my father killed Viola.”

Sheriff Dennis seems to freeze behind the wheel. Then he bites his lip for a few seconds. “Did he give you any details?”

“He said Dad saved Viola’s life forty years ago, but he killed her two days ago. He laughed at the irony of it.”

“Do you really believe that sick son of a bitch?”

“He had no reason to lie, Walker. He thought Caitlin and I were about to die, and he’d already admitted ordering the murder of Pooky Wilson.”

Dennis watches Highway 84 and takes his time before speaking. “But do
you
believe it? In your gut?”

“I don’t know. Could Dad have killed Viola to ease her suffering? Yes. But murder her . . . Not one person I’ve talked to this week believed that’s possible. And in the end, I guess I don’t either.”

“What did Henry think?”

“Henry believed the Double Eagles killed her. They’d threatened to do it if she ever came back to Natchez, and she did. Henry didn’t have any doubt that they fulfilled their threat.”

“That’s good enough for me, bub.”

“I wish it were for me. I’ve come up with at least three different theories over the past three days. There are so many possibilities. It might even be that Lincoln Turner killed Viola, Dad knows that, and he’s covering up for him.”

“Lincoln Turner, who accused your old man of murder in the first place? You’re saying he killed his own mother?”

“Maybe. Possibly by accident, either in a botched mercy killing, or a layman’s effort to revive her with adrenaline.”

“But . . . if that’s the case, why the hell would your father cover for that asshole?”

“Because Dad thinks Lincoln is his son.”

This silences Dennis for half a minute.

“Jesus,” he says finally. “This is Tennessee Williams shit, here.”

I’m surprised Walker Dennis knows enough about Tennessee Williams even to make that remark. “More like Faulkner, I’d say.
Absalom, Absalom!
”

“Same difference. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“All this crap with Royal and Regan and the Double Eagles is a good
thing. For your father, I mean. It’s obvious that there’s a whole lot more going on than the murder of one old nurse. And Viola was related to that civil rights kid, Revels. If you can just get your dad safely into custody—in Mississippi, not Louisiana—he’ll go to trial for killing Viola. Right?”

“Aren’t you forgetting the dead Louisiana state trooper?”

Dennis waves his hand dismissively. “Just forget that for a minute. I’m no lawyer, but I’ve watched my share of murder trials. If your father goes to trial for killing Nurse Viola, all you need is one thing—
reasonable doubt
. Am I right?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Are you going to defend him yourself?”

“Hell, no. Quentin Avery’s his lawyer.”

“Even better. Avery could talk twelve dogs off a meat truck.”

“We’re light-years from a courtroom, Walker.”

“Maybe we are, and maybe we ain’t.” The sheriff looks back at me, his eyes glinting beneath his Stetson. “All this trouble goes back to the Knox family: Frank and the Double Eagles in the old days, and Forrest and his drug operation now. I say we go back to our first plan. Hit the Knoxes as hard as we can. Bust every meth cooker and mule in this parish. Turn up the heat on the Knox organization, big-time. Before you know it, we’ll have a couple of Double Eagles in the frying pan. And once they start singing, I’ll have Forrest by the balls. And Quentin Avery will have all he needs to stuff your dad’s jury full of reasonable doubt. When Quentin’s done preachin’, those jurors won’t be sure whether they’re right-handed or left.”

“None of that matters,” I say in a flat voice, “if the state police kill Dad as a fugitive.”

Dennis shrugs. “They haven’t got him yet, have they?”

“We don’t know that.”

“Sure we do. If they’d caught him and Garrity, my radio would be chattering like my wife’s church group. No, my money says that old Texas Ranger has the trail smarts to keep your daddy loose for a while yet.”

I don’t hold out much hope that any Double Eagles would give up enough information to save my father from police execution. But as the security lights of various businesses flash past in the darkness, a new strategy begins to take shape in my mind.

“How soon could you organize a parishwide sweep of the meth dealers?” I ask.

Dennis looks at his watch. “I can have my people ready to go six hours from now. Just before dawn.”

“Are you serious?”

“I did ninety percent of the groundwork today. I told you that yesterday, and now we’re here.”

The prospect of hitting the Knoxes hard in such a short time frame is tempting. “What about Agent Kaiser? Would you tell him about it?”

The sheriff rolls his shoulders, then sets them as though to take a blow—or deliver one. “After I saw Kaiser tuck his tail between his legs when Captain Ozan showed up at Mercy Hospital? No way in hell. This is you and me, Penn. I’m tired of standing by while the Knoxes shit all over my parish. My cousin’s two years gone, and I know in my bones it was Forrest Knox’s outfit that killed him. I’m through sitting on my hands.”

“Henry didn’t believe any Double Eagle would break his oath of silence under police pressure. Kaiser, either.”

Walker snorts with contempt. “Forgive me speaking ill of the dead, but Henry Sexton didn’t know shit about law enforcement. And Kaiser’s a big-picture guy. It’s time to keep it simple. I’m a cop, you’re a prosecutor. Meth trafficking carries a mandatory fifteen- to thirty-year sentence in this state. Somebody on the Knox payroll will give us a Double Eagle or two to keep their asses out of Angola. And once we have an Eagle in my jail, it’s Katy-bar-the-door. Those old bastards are in their seventies now. You think they want to die on Angola Farm with a bunch of black lifers?
Hell,
no. Think about Glenn Morehouse facing cancer. He cracked, didn’t he?”

“That’s different.”

“You think so?” A bitter laugh escapes the sheriff’s lips. “Given a choice between dying of cancer in a nice hospital and rotting in Angola with a bunch of pissed-off soul brothers who know I used to be in the Ku Klux Klan? I’ll take the cancer every time, bubba. At least you get morphine to cope.”