The Bone Tree (7 page)

LIEUTENANT COLONEL FORREST
Knox was seventy miles north of New Orleans and nearing Baton Rouge when he considered switching his cell phone back on. He’d spent the past three hours in New Orleans, but he didn’t want anyone knowing he’d been there. That’s why he was driving an unmarked car, and at the speed limit. Blackmail missions were best carried out under the radar, especially when your target had the kind of connections that Forrest’s boss did. Colonel Griffith Mackiever had headed the Louisiana State Police for seven years, and bringing him down was no small task. Forrest would have preferred a couple of more months to get his ducks in a row, but the moneymen in New Orleans who stood to make millions off the post-Katrina reconstruction wouldn’t wait. They wanted a full-time state police presence in New Orleans to calm jittery investors (by filling the vacuum created by the dysfunctional NOPD). The most ruthless among them wanted certain human obstacles to their plans neutralized by any means necessary. Forrest knew well the impatience that accompanied ambition, but he would not let recklessness destroy him on the verge of success.

At nearly fifty-four, he had never been closer to achieving his goals. Using unerring instincts and iron self-control, he had worked his way up through the ranks of the most powerful law enforcement organization in his home state. Now he stood within a heartbeat of commanding it. Once he cemented his control of the LSP, he would be as bulletproof as a criminal could be in America. Unlike Griffith Mackiever, who had vainly battled the forces of human nature throughout his tenure, Forrest had leveraged his pragmatic worldview into something unique. By combining his cousin Billy’s statewide meth operation with the manpower surviving from his father’s Double Eagle days, and then enlisting an army of avaricious politicians and hungry police officers for protection, Forrest had built a criminal network of unrivaled reach and power in the South.

His philosophy was based on principles understood by every cop in the world: no matter what the law did to discourage them, people were going to use drugs, gamble, and fuck whores (both male and female). Any sane government would have legalized all three practices decades ago and co-opted the criminals. But thankfully, the remnants of America’s religious ethics prevented that from happening, which left the field wide open for a man of vision. Long ago, Forrest had realized that he was that man.

The only problem was that Hurricane Katrina had shown him just how picayune his vision had been. The ravaged city left behind by the receding floodwaters was a vacuum that attracted the true predators of twenty-first-century America—the real estate developers and bankers. Multimillionaires like Brody Royal had been waiting for a catastrophe like Katrina for decades. For the storm and the flood had accomplished what no human activity could: it had flushed the poor blacks out of the city, like a biblical purge. Royal and his friends intended that those blacks should never return. In place of the dilapidated housing projects and single-story rental houses that had blighted the city, they saw upscale housing and corporate offices with mouthwatering proximity to downtown and the French Quarter. The men who planned this remaking of the Crescent City reckoned their profits in tens of millions, not the paltry numbers to which Forrest was accustomed. And thanks to Brody Royal, they had settled on Forrest as one of the lieutenants who could help bring their vision to fruition.

Moving in this world was surreal to him. This morning he’d been at a brunch with politicians, insurance executives, and hedge-fund managers, and he’d known without asking that not one of them had set foot in Vietnam, unless it was as a tourist with a designer backpack and a Black Card. Yet they were predators, just as he was. Instead of crystal methamphetamine and whores, they dealt in political influence, rigged construction contracts, secret real estate deals, and inside stock trades. And right now—thanks to an accident of weather—they needed him. It was these men who had quietly informed the governor that they would like to see a change in leadership at state police HQ. But tacit support from the capitol was not enough. First, Forrest had to move Colonel Mackiever out of the seat at the top of the pyramid.

It wasn’t like the old man hadn’t asked for it. Mackiever had been
trying to nail Forrest for months now, and if the superintendent made common cause with the FBI, they just might be able to find enough evidence to tie Forrest to the Double Eagles’ meth operation and bring him down. Everything that had happened in Concordia Parish over the past three days would make that job a hell of a lot easier. Agent John Kaiser had already used extraordinary measures to bring up 1960s-vintage bones from a sinkhole beside the Mississippi River, and he’d used the Patriot Act to take possession of the corpse of Glenn Morehouse, the Double Eagle whom Sonny and Snake had killed to keep quiet (one day too late, apparently). To effectively fight these tactics, Forrest needed full control of the state police. Only then could he take over the investigation into the sniper attack on Henry Sexton—which he himself had ordered—and sandbag the FBI’s efforts to solve the old Double Eagle murders.

Since Griffith Mackiever was virtually incorruptible, Forrest had chosen a tactic calculated to hit the man in the only place he was vulnerable. It was a dirty business, and Forrest would never forget the old man’s face after he’d seen the strangling net of false evidence Forrest had meticulously woven together while Mackiever had been working so ineptly to nail him. Only a supreme effort had allowed the old man to choke back tears. An ex–Texas Ranger, Mackiever had worked in law enforcement long enough to know that there were certain kinds of accusations from which no man ever recovered, regardless of what facts emerged in the wake of the initial smear. Forrest had given him forty-eight hours to resign, and he felt sure the old man would cave by midday tomorrow. If he didn’t, Forrest had no problem pulling the trigger and destroying the man’s career—and his personal life along with it.

Now that he’d moved against Mackiever, Forrest’s immediate concern was finishing off Henry Sexton. Forrest could never have imagined that Snake Knox—a trained combat sniper in his youth—would miss Sexton and kill his girlfriend by mistake. The simple truth was, Snake and the other Eagles were getting too old for the work they were doing. That was why Morehouse had cracked: he was dying of cancer and scared shitless. He’d wanted to clean his conscience before he faced his maker. After Snake missed his shot at Mercy Hospital in Ferriday, the FBI had moved Sexton to a windowless hospital room under Bureau guard. Getting to him there would not be easy. But it had to be done.
Sexton had spent at least an hour speaking to Glenn Morehouse in person, and then again later on the telephone, and Morehouse had known more than enough to send not only his fellow Double Eagles, but also Forrest himself, to Angola Prison for the rest of their lives, and possibly even to death row.

Forrest also needed to know how much information Sexton had confided to Caitlin Masters, the publisher of the
Natchez Examiner
. The two were competitors and normally would not cooperate on a story. But Forrest worried that with Henry wounded and out of commission, he might have passed what he knew to the girl in order to hit the Eagles as hard and as fast as possible. And no mole, no matter how well placed, could tell Forrest what was inside the girl’s head.

WHEN THE POINTED TOWER
of the state capitol appeared in the distance, Forrest switched on the encrypted cell phone he’d been using to communicate with Alphonse Ozan. Yesterday he’d ordered Billy’s drug organization to begin using “Al Qaeda rules,” which meant no electronic contact, only face-to-face meetings. But that wasn’t practical for the man sitting at the top of the pyramid. Forrest felt reasonably confident that the FBI didn’t know about his satellite phone, but he had occasional nightmares about the NSA and their automated intelligence-collection algorithms. He decided to wait until he reached headquarters to talk to Ozan.

The instant his phone found a satellite, it began to ring. As the LED read out Alphonse Ozan’s number, the hair on Forrest’s arms stood erect. Ozan should not be calling him. He had no idea what the trouble might be, but the odds were, it involved Concordia Parish. Instinct told Forrest he was behind the curve of events, and that was never a good place to be.

“What’s happened?” he asked, holding the phone to his head.

“Colonel, I’ve been trying to reach you,” said Ozan, sounding rattled. “Are you okay?”

“Of course. I’ve been following the goddamned rules. You ought to try it.”

“I couldn’t wait. We’ve got trouble.”

“Something to do with Dr. Cage?”

“No. Brody’s dead.”

Forrest gripped the phone harder. “Brody Royal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dead how? Natural causes?”

“Nobody’s exactly sure what happened, but his lake house burned up. It may have
blown
up. He’s not the only one dead, either. It’s a mess out there. Son-in-law’s dead, too.”

Randall Regan? Dead?
Forrest felt himself brace for further shocks. “Who else?”

“Three of Royal’s security people, plus Henry Sexton and an old black guy named Johnston.”

And the hits just keep on coming.
Forrest tried to picture what sequence of events could have led to such a nightmare. “This doesn’t make any sense, Alphonse. What the hell happened?”

“You ain’t heard the worst of it. Somehow, Mayor Penn Cage and his fiancée, the Masters girl, wound up in Brody’s basement, and—”

“Don’t tell me they’re dead.”

“No, no,” Ozan said quickly. “But they were in there. Looks like Royal may have kidnapped them, or ordered it done.”

“Goddamn it!” Forrest gritted his teeth.

“I know. I think maybe Henry Sexton and the old nigger went in there to try to get Cage and the girl out. What happened after that, I don’t know. Only Cage and the girl came out alive, and only they know what happened.”

“Who was the nigger?”

“His name was Marshall Johnston, Junior, but I don’t know what the hell he was doing there. Fire department says there was some kind of explosion, and everything smells like tar.”

Forrest instantly thought of Brody Royal’s flamethrower, the weapon Forrest’s father had used on Albert Norris and his store in 1964. The deadly antique fired a mixture of gasoline and tar, propelled by inert nitrogen gas.
I should have taken care of Brody last night,
he thought.
Or even before that.

“Where are Cage and the girl now?” he asked.

“Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office.”

Forrest was tired of dealing with old men. They were as reckless and sensitive as teenagers. Because of the bruised ego and paranoia of
Brody Royal, he now had to contend with a seismic shift in battlefield conditions.

“Alphonse?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Get your ass over to the sheriff’s department and take over the investigation.”

“Which one? Brody’s house blowing up?”

“No. Everything going back three days. We can’t afford to have Walker Dennis poking around in our business any longer.”

“You think Dennis will stand for that?”

“You’re not going to give him any choice.”

“Okay. And the FBI?”

“If Kaiser backs off like he did at the hospital, then we’ll know we’ve got it made.”

“And if not?”

“We’ll sandbag that blue-flame son of a bitch before he knows what hit him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me again.”

“I won’t.”

Forrest switched off the phone and dropped it on the seat beside him. Despite his best efforts to control the situation, the bodies were piling up fast. With Henry Sexton dead and the Masters girl involved, one thing was sure: a media storm was coming. Any hope of solving his problems quietly would vanish with the publication of tomorrow’s
Natchez Examiner
. Forrest pulled the red bubble light from his glove box and set it on the dash, then switched it on and floored the gas pedal. He needed to get to headquarters. Speed was everything now.

I’M SITTING ON
a bench outside an interrogation room in the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office, with Special Agent John Kaiser staring down at me with a mixture of fury and disappointment. The trim and usually well-dressed agent looks like someone shook him awake from a nap in his car: hair sticking up, clothes askew, eyes bloodshot and heavy-bagged. Sleep deprivation is finally taking its toll on him.

There’s nothing in the corridor but a battered vinyl couch, a metal chair, and a card table with a plastic Christmas tree and a dying Mr. Coffee standing on it. The coffee in the carafe looks like river mud mixed with tar, but that didn’t stop Caitlin from pouring herself a full cup before going into the interrogation room. She’s obviously prepping for a marathon of work once she gets out of this place.

Ten minutes ago, I finished my statement to Sheriff Dennis and his video camera, while the sheriff’s brother-in-law stood guard over Caitlin in a nearby office. As agreed with Caitlin, I mostly told the truth, while omitting a few dangerous facts, among them Brody Royal’s assertion that my father murdered Viola Turner three days ago. By the time Sheriff Dennis called Caitlin into his office, she was nearly crazy to get back across the river to the
Examiner
. She’d been talking to her editor on a departmental landline, and she’d managed to assemble her full staff, which now awaits her arrival. Sheriff Dennis promised to finish with her as soon as possible, but his intentions meant nothing unless we could get clear of this building before the state police or FBI arrived to detain us further. And that was exactly what happened. Five minutes after Caitlin disappeared into Walker’s office, Agent Kaiser walked up the hall from the front entrance and called out my name.

In response to the FBI agent’s questions, I’ve given a reasonably detailed summary of the night’s events. About seventy percent of what
I told Kaiser is true. Twenty percent was lies, and another ten percent I omitted altogether. In the silences between my words and his, I fought to drown out internal echoes of gunfire, Caitlin’s screams, and the bone-chilling hiss and roar of Brody Royal’s flamethrower.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Kaiser tells me, obviously working hard to keep his anger under control. “But we both know that if Henry Sexton and Sleepy Johnston hadn’t broken into Royal’s house and sacrificed their lives, you and Caitlin would be dead now.”

I don’t look up from the floor tiles. “That’s all I’ve been thinking about since it happened.”

“I warned you to stay out of this, Penn. But you went ahead, and now six people are dead—maybe more.”

The guilt I’ve felt since the fire is so lacerating that Kaiser’s words add nothing to the pain. I look up at him without a hint of apology. “As long as we’re telling the truth, John, I’d say you’ve given me mixed messages from the start. This morning at the Jericho Hole I told you I was going to poke a stick in a rattlesnake hole, the same as you. Did you tell me not to? No. You also knew I’d tangled with Regan in the restroom of that café. You warned me to be careful, but that’s it. I think you were hoping I’d stir things up
just enough
to get Royal and Regan to incriminate themselves, but not enough to cause a disaster—which, admittedly, is what we have now.”

Kaiser returns my gaze with a stony stare. “Okay, I bear some blame for this. But in any case, you’re done now. You’re the mayor of Natchez, not the district attorney of Adams County. You have no jurisdiction whatever.”

“Obviously. If I was the DA of Adams County, the Double Eagles would already be in a cell in Natchez, begging for a plea bargain.”

“Then thank God you’re not. Because that would be exactly the wrong thing to do.”

“How do you figure that?”

Kaiser walks to a folding metal chair opposite me, then sits beside the card table and hangs his hands over his knees. “Penn, we’ve held a lot back from each other over the past two days, but I’m going to be straight with you now. I knew more about Brody Royal than I let on to you. About Forrest Knox, too. Some I knew before I got here, and the rest I got from Henry Sexton.”

“I can’t believe Henry told you much.”

“Henry had a certain amount of bitterness toward the Bureau, granted. For our civil-rights-era failures, and for the way a lot of agents treated him over the years. But after Glenn Morehouse was murdered, Henry decided that safety demanded he pass me a certain amount of information. It was Henry who told me about the link between Royal and the Double Eagles going back to 1964. He also told me his suspicions about Forrest Knox protecting the Eagles’ drug business, and possibly even being a partner. I’d heard a few rumors prior to that, but Henry had more facts than the Bureau did.”

I say nothing, still trying to process the fact that Henry confided so much in Kaiser.

“He
didn’t
tell me about his backup files,” says the FBI agent. “His change of heart didn’t extend to that. I think he worried that if he gave his journals to the Bureau, they might disappear forever. He wanted a journalist to have them, so Caitlin got it all. A bad decision, considering what’s happened to them.”

Earlier tonight Caitlin told me she intended to let Kaiser view Henry’s files tomorrow, but given what happened at Brody’s house, I don’t want to speak for her.

“I visited Henry one last time this afternoon,” Kaiser says, “only a few hours before the sniper tried to finish him off. He was pretty depressed, but he told me what Glenn Morehouse said about Jimmy Revels’s murder.”

I give Kaiser a puzzled look, but he’s having none of it.

“The RFK assassination plan?” he says. “Carlos Marcello, all that? Don’t play dumb, for God’s sake. Not after what’s happened tonight.”

Before I can reply, Kaiser says, “We need to talk about what you told me about your father when I first called you from New Orleans.”

He’s referring to me saying that Brody Royal and my father might possess information about the major 1960s assassinations. I only told him that to lure him to Natchez, and now I regret it. I need to sleep and be ready for the drug raid at dawn. But one thing Kaiser does need to know, no matter how crazy it may sound.

“Do you have any agents at the fire scene?” I ask.

“Three. Why?”

“Can they stop the state police from taking evidence away from it?”

“Absolutely. Brody Royal’s lake house and property are now a federal crime scene.”

To my surprise, relief washes through me. “As soon as the ruins cool, your guys need to grid-search the place and sift the ashes.”

“What are we looking for?”

Something makes me put off revealing the most explosive information. To stall him, I lay out some bait that could get him out of my way tomorrow. “Depending on the heat of the fire, you might find the remains of a one-of-a-kind letter opener. Royal told us that Frank Knox carved it from one of Pooky Wilson’s arm bones. The blade was bone, and the handle was covered in the tanned skin of Wilson’s penis. Or so Royal claimed. He admitted that murder to us, John. He gave the order, Snake and Frank Knox carried it out, and all this happened at the Bone Tree.”

“The Bone Tree?” Kaiser says softly. “Most of our agents don’t believe that thing even exists.”

“It does. Royal was there when Wilson was killed. And his bones are bound to still be there.”

Kaiser can’t hide the interest in his eyes. “Did he say anything about Jimmy Revels’s murder?”

“No. But he admitted taking part in the gang rape of Viola Turner.”

“What made Royal so damn talkative?”

“Henry and Sleepy showing up. Brody just had to tell them how pointless their lives had been.”

“What a guy.” Kaiser slowly shakes his head.

“Could you extract DNA from something like that letter opener?”

“Possibly. But you’re deflecting me, Penn. What does a trophy from Pooky Wilson’s murder have to do with the 1960s assassinations?”

“Nothing.” I prop my elbows on my knees and rub my temples. “This is going to sound crazy, but . . . just before everything went to hell in Brody’s basement, he showed us two rifles in one of his gun cabinets. There were brass plaques beneath the guns.”

“And?”

I look up, letting Kaiser see that I’m not personally invested in what I’m about to tell him. “Unlike all the other plaques, which gave the make of the weapon, et cetera, these only had dates on them, plus a small American flag.”

Kaiser shrugs. “So?”

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

I expect the agent’s face to show incredulity, but what I see is a hunter’s excitement glimmering in his eyes. “Did you believe they were real?”

“
Brody
believed they were real. Did I? No. I think Snake Knox sold that old man a pig in a poke. Twice. And I told him so.”

Kaiser mulls this over. “Was that truly your gut reaction?”

Thinking back to a story my father recently told me, I reconsider. “I can’t say that one hundred percent. Not about the JFK rifle.”

“Tell me why.”

The realization that Kaiser is more interested in this than in my father’s plight makes me want to smack him in the face. “While my father’s being hunted down like an animal by corrupt cops?”

The FBI agent studies me for a few seconds, then speaks with maddening calm. “I know how hard you’ve been trying to save your father. I know what you did tonight, too. You got hold of some leverage against Brody and tried to force him to help your father. After you left me, you went to St. Catherine’s Hospital. You offered to bury what you know and keep Brody’s name from the cops, and out of the newspapers. Right?”

Kaiser didn’t get where he is by being slow on the uptake. “I might have tried that, if Henry Sexton would have gone along with—”

“Oh, bullshit. It was Caitlin holding the sword over Brody’s head, not Henry. She made some kind of recording of Katy Royal earlier this evening, didn’t she?”

I don’t answer, but I can’t for the life of me figure how Kaiser found out about that tape.

“Does it still exist?” he presses. “Or did Brody take it from you tonight?”

My expression tells him all he needs to know.

Kaiser’s face betrays genuine empathy. “Look, speaking as a man, I don’t blame you. Your father’s life was on the line, and you had Royal by the short hairs. But look what’s happened because of what you did.”

I stare at the floor, wishing Caitlin would emerge from the interrogation room.

“If it’s any consolation, I think your old man and Walt Garrity have
gone to ground somewhere. We’ll never find them, and with luck, the Knoxes won’t either. Those old coots are safe as houses. That’s why your next plan is stupid.”

“What plan?” I ask, wondering if he somehow knows that Dennis and I intend to bust the Knoxes’ meth operation.

“The deal with Royal didn’t work, so now you’re thinking about approaching Forrest Knox. Right?”

This assumption actually stuns me. “Hell, no!”

Kaiser rolls his eyes. “Just tell me you haven’t already reached out to him.”

For once the FBI agent is wrong, so I let my anger fill my eyes. “I’m not that stupid, John.”

“Not normally. But you’re not thinking straight now. So let me enlighten you. Brody Royal was like a cranky old dog lying under a porch. Forrest Knox is a purebred wolf that will smell you coming from five miles away. Do
not
fuck with him.”

I get up from the bench and start pacing the hallway. “Why are you so concerned with those old assassinations? I would think you’d be organizing a search of the Lusahatcha Swamp, trying to find the Bone Tree. You’re bound to find the remains of Pooky Wilson, and maybe even Jimmy Revels. That’s the way to nail the Knoxes, if you won’t go after them from the meth angle. You could arrest Snake on Brody’s statement alone.”

Kaiser is already shaking his head. “Brody Royal told you Snake Knox killed Pooky Wilson. But there’s a 302 report in our files from the 1970s in which a Double Eagle named Jason Abbott swears that Forrest Knox killed Pooky. Also at the Bone Tree, by the way.”

“That’s got to be bullshit. Forrest was what, twelve years old the year Pooky died? Royal was telling the truth tonight. He had no reason to lie.”

“You’re probably right. But that doesn’t make that 302 disappear. Do you know how Henry Sexton first discovered that Pooky Wilson had probably been crucified?”

“From that 302, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.”

“That’s right. Jason Abbott was an older cousin of Forrest Knox, and also a Double Eagle. In 1972, he found out that Forrest had been screwing his wife, both before he left for Vietnam and after he got back.
Abbott stood being cuckolded for as long as he could. Then one night he got blind drunk and went to the hotel room of an FBI agent who’d once questioned him. He told that agent that the Double Eagles had intended to skin Pooky alive, but they didn’t have the right kind of knife, so after some effort, they gave up and nailed him to the Bone Tree. He said Forrest hammered in the nails.”

“That’s the way Brody described it, except Frank and Snake were in the lead roles.”

Kaiser intertwines his fingers around one knee and speaks like a thoughtful college professor. “My guess is that Forrest was present but only witnessed Pooky’s death. Abbott wouldn’t admit to being at the Bone Tree himself. He claimed he’d heard the story from another Double Eagle who’d been there. He tried to hang a bunch of other crimes around Forrest’s neck, as well—all unverifiable—but he also revealed a lot of valuable information about the Knox family. The FOIA version Henry got was heavily redacted.”

“Did the Bureau do anything about Abbott’s stories?”

Kaiser suddenly looks uncomfortable. “That was problematic. After he sobered up, Abbott tried to recant. And since Forrest had been screwing his wife, the man had an obvious motive to make false accusations. Even so, two agents set up an interview with Forrest at a military base, to check out the story.”

“And?”

Kaiser leans back against the wall and savors his next words. “While the agents were questioning Forrest, Jason Abbott was run over by a truck two hundred miles away. Hit and run, never solved.”