The Bone Tree (15 page)

“Bad bet?”

“Apparently. Ozan’s fed me steady reports ever since, claiming Knox is clean. But about two months ago I started smelling something. I ran a little test, the way the SOE used to do during World War Two, to test the integrity of their people. And I confirmed my worst fear.”

“Why didn’t you bust Ozan?”

“Better the devil you know, right? Since then I’ve been quietly trying to scope out just how big Knox’s operation is.”

“And?”

“He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies around the state. He’s taking cuts from various crooks to leave their operations alone. Coyotes moving illegals through the Port of New Orleans, drugs coming into the country on speedboats down around the barrier islands, prostitution. You name it, Forrest skims it. And after Katrina hit . . . I think he used a team of SWAT guys to selectively take out some of the competition.”

“Man alive. This is the guy the moneymen want to put in your job?”

“Most of Forrest’s supporters don’t know about the criminal stuff. All they know is, Knox did them some favor or other. Got ’em LSU tickets on the fifty-yard line or sprung their drunk kid from some backwoods parish jail. Hell, I still can’t prove anything against him. Nobody will testify against the guy. Everybody either loves Knox or lives in terror of him.”

Walt swirled some scotch around in his mouth, then swallowed. “Some of his thugs threatened my wife earlier today. Out in Navasota.”

Mackiever shook his head. “I’m sorry, Walt. But it doesn’t surprise me. She okay?”

“I’ve got some retired buddies covering her now.”

“Good.” The colonel looked around the room like a man startled from a dream. The daze Walt had seen when he entered the room had never really left his eyes. “Well, I think you see my problem. How exactly can I help you?”

“You know that trooper you lost up in Concordia Parish Tuesday evening?”

“Darrell Deke Dunn.”

Walt nodded. “He wasn’t yours. He was Knox’s.”

The colonel quickly gulped from his glass. “Are you positive?”

“I was there. Your APB’s right about that, but he was about to murder my best friend in cold blood.”

Mackiever looked at the ceiling and cursed.

“I don’t know how much pull you still have in this state,” Walt said, “but I need you to make that APB go away. If you don’t, I can’t help you or myself either.”

The colonel looked as if Walt had asked him for a million dollars cash. “How the hell can I do that? All the evidence points to you and Cage killing Dunn, and I can’t prove Dunn was dirty. I can’t pull the APB on suspected cop killers without good reason.”

“I did kill Dunn,” Walt said bluntly. “So you’ll need to make up a reason.”

Mackiever’s eyes had gone wide. “Christ, Walt. How the hell did you get caught up in this?”

Walt shrugged. “Helping a friend. How else?”

Mackiever leaned back in his chair. “Tell me something. If Dr. Cage
is innocent, why did he skip bail on that first charge? Murdering the nurse.”

Walt kept his face blank. “All I can tell you is this: if the DA and sheriff up in Natchez had gotten Tom into jail, he’d have died there. The Knoxes aren’t the only ones who want him dead. Tom Cage and Sheriff Billy Byrd have bad blood from way back.”

Mackiever looked less than satisfied, but Walt had no intention of elaborating. He drained his glass and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Here’s my proposal. You get rid of that APB, I’ll take down Forrest Knox for you. That’s the only solution that’s gonna work for both of us.”

“You can’t do it, Walt. Short of killing him, there’s nothing you can do.” The LSP chief dropped his gaze and let the pregnant silence drag. Then he looked up with a strange glint in his eyes. “Are you willing to go that far?”

Walt looked at his old friend for a few moments, then walked to the window, parted the curtain, and stared down at the street between the hotel and the casino that sat outside the Mississippi River levee. “No. I can’t do that, Mac. Knox’s men threatened my wife yesterday, and I was about ready to kill him. But I’m not the hothead I once was. I’ve got a lot to lose now. If Knox comes directly at me or mine, I’ll smoke him. But I can’t kill him in cold blood. I can’t risk leaving Carmelita alone while I rot in Angola. She deserves better than that. So do I.”

“Then you might as well go home tonight.”

“Home?” Walt turned angrily from the window. “I’m wanted for killing a cop. Look, anybody as dirty as you say Knox is has got records of what he’s doing. He has to, just to keep up with his money.”

Mackiever waved his hand as if too exhausted to explore this. “Have you searched his home?” Walt pressed.

“Hell, no. The only guys I’d trust to do that and keep quiet about it are my nephew and my son-in-law—both troopers—and I don’t want to put either of them that far into harm’s way.”

“Well, then. I’m your man. And what about that hunting camp you mentioned? If it’s way out in the woods, and the Knox family owns it, it sounds like a damned likely place to cache incriminating records.”

“You’d need an army to get in and out of there alive.”

“Or a warrant.”

Mackiever shook his head. “It’d have to be federal. Any local judge
is liable to pick up the phone and tip one of Forrest’s people. He’s that connected.”

“There’s other ways, then.”

The colonel took a deep drag on his cigarette, then held the smoke in his lungs for so long that by the time he started talking again, there was hardly any left. “In theory, I’ve got five hundred and eleven troopers serving under me. But in practice? Tonight? I trust you and maybe a half-dozen others. And as for going after Forrest, you’re an army of one.” Mackiever gave Walt an ironic smile. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Not long ago, Tom Cage had quoted to Walt the unofficial Ranger motto:
One riot, one Ranger
. “There’s some truth in that saying,” Walt said. “Sometimes one man can accomplish what a whole platoon can’t.”

Mackiever looked doubtful. “Times have changed, Cap’n.”

Walt thought about the situation for half a minute. “You know, two can play the game Knox is running on you. You need to throw away the Marquess of Queensberry rules and look at this thing like our lives depend on it—which they do.”

“I’m listening.”

“If I’m willing to go into the jackal’s den, what about planting some evidence on
him
?”

Mackiever’s mouth worked around as though he had something struck in his teeth. “What are you thinking?”

“Come on, Mac. Are you that squeaky clean? Drugs, dirty money, other contraband—I ain’t particular.”

“Getting hold of something like that would take some time.”

“Time’s what we don’t have. If you can’t get something damning in my hands in an hour, it’s no use to me.”

The colonel thought about it, then shook his head. “If I or any of my loyalists go into the evidence room at this hour, Knox is going to hear about it.”

Walt wondered if this was true, or if Mackiever had simply lost the stomach for conflict. “Well, then. The best thing I can do is search Knox’s house, then get up to that hunting camp and go through it with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll lay odds I find something you can hang him with.”

“You’re a lot more likely to end up digging a shallow grave at gunpoint. These are some bad boys, Walt.”

“Bad boys are my business. Yours, too. Or have you forgotten? You’re still a Ranger down deep, aren’t you?”

Mackiever sucked long and hard on his cigarette, then looked away. After he exhaled, his eyes found Walt’s again. They looked like cloudy marbles lost in dark bags of wrinkled skin.

“If that male prostitute goes on TV and says I paid him for sex, my children and grandchildren will never look at me the same again. I don’t want to risk that, Walt. It’s not worth it. Not this close to retirement.”

“You’re not risking anything! Knox gave you forty-eight hours, you said. That’s plenty of time for me to get in and out of those places. I just need to know where Forrest is while I’m doing it. Can you help me do that, at least?”

Mackiever nodded. “That I could do. I’ve got a state-of-the-art GPS tracker on his cruiser. My nephew installed it four days ago. Now and then Knox takes an unmarked car, like this morning, going to New Orleans. But usually he’s in his cruiser.”

“Okay then. You get me the tracking scope, and I’ll know when the coast is clear for me to move on his places.”

“You’ve got a lot more to worry about than Forrest. He’s got a wife and a goddamn pit bull at his home. Then there’s Ozan, the dirty cops they’ve got on call, plus God only knows who else up at that hunting camp.”

Walt shrugged as if this were of no consequence. “That’s my problem, not yours. You just get me that GPS tracker.”

“I can have it delivered here in ten minutes.”

“That’s more like it. Do you know where Knox is now?”

“The hunting camp. He told me he was going to spend the day catching up on work while he waited for my answer, but he’s up at Valhalla. He fully expects to be appointed acting head of the state police by five
P.M.
I think even the governor expects it, though she doesn’t know the details.”

Walt stroked his mustache, thinking. “And where’s his house?”

“Less than five miles from here, near the LSU campus.”

“I’ll hit his house first, then swing up to the camp after he leaves. Where’s Captain Ozan?”

“Probably Concordia Parish. Last night Forrest sent him up there to
investigate Trooper Dunn’s death, but now he’s got that Redbone son of a bitch leading the Henry Sexton investigation.”

“Inmates running the asylum,” Walt muttered. “What about bugging Knox’s cruiser and his phones? Have you tried that?”

“I don’t trust my tech division. They work too closely with the CIB. I’m sure Forrest has them checking his phones and sweeping his cruiser regularly. If he found a bug today, he’d release that porn stuff five minutes later. I’d be done, Walt.”

“Won’t a sweep find the GPS transmitter on his car?”

“They tell me it won’t. I borrowed this unit from a federal intel guy I know in Texas. It only transmits coordinates in bursts, at predetermined intervals. Otherwise, it’s electronically transparent.”

“All right, then. Get the tracker here. I’m ready to move.”

Mackiever held the tiny screen of his phone at arm’s length so that he could make out the keypad, then punched in a text message. “I wish I could do more to help you.”

“You can,” Walt said bluntly. “Find a way to kill that goddamn APB. You’re still the head of the LSP. I’ve got false identification, but it’s damned hard to move around this state with my face on every TV screen and dashboard computer for three hundred miles.”

Mackiever put down his cell phone and nodded. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Do it fast. Tom and I are lucky to have lived this long.”

Mackiever leaned forward and looked at Walt as though trying to penetrate a shell of bravado. “Are you
sure
you want to do all this? Why don’t you just go back to Navasota, lock the door, and take care of Carmelita? Let Dr. Cage sort out his own mess?”

The tone of surrender in his old comrade’s voice made Walt’s throat constrict. “Tom and I served in Korea together, Mac. He saved my life over there. And if I have to die for him over here, well . . .”

Mackiever picked up his glass and raised it in salute, but Walt saw only an empty gesture. He closed his eyes to spare himself seeing how far his old friend had fallen.

“Walt,” said the colonel, sensing his friend’s disgust, “if you’d seen that pathetic kid in that motel, his face painted up, his eyes dead, you might understand. After a lifetime of good work, I can’t stand to see it all tainted by something like that.”

Walt gripped Mackiever’s shoulders and squeezed to the point of pain, his eyes burning. “You
can’t
resign. You hear me? If you cave in to Knox’s threat, Tom and I are dead men. But there’s more to it than that. You took an oath. The Ranger oath, if the LSP oath don’t mean enough. You owe it to every man who ever wore the star to stand tall, no matter what. Don’t kid yourself that you have a choice. You don’t. You break that oath, you won’t be no damn good to anybody. Not your wife, not your grandkids, not even to yourself.”

Through the fear in Mackiever’s eyes, Walt saw a faint flicker of the old esprit de corps. “I hear you,” the colonel said. “I’ll do what I can. You just be careful, take care of yourself.”

Walt waved off the warning. “Don’t waste time worrying about me. I’m taking Knox down, and God help any man who gets in my way.”

FORREST KNOX SAT
behind the desk in the study at Valhalla, peering into the terrified face of the cop who had lost his partner to Dr. Tom Cage. Floyd Grimsby looked like every other North Louisiana cop who ended up on the take, a bullying Baptist deacon who liked screwing the church secretary on the side. He’d relayed Dr. Cage’s message in a voice quavering with equal parts of fear and anger, watching Forrest’s face as attentively as a dog waiting for a beating from its master. Forrest was surprised the man hadn’t fled the state after a fuckup of that magnitude. He’d probably figured that Forrest would find him eventually, and it was better to face the music and try to make up for his mistake.

Alphonse Ozan stood against the wall beside the door to the great room, maintaining radio contact with the scouts he’d placed at the perimeter of the camp. There was still a chance that the Bureau had sent Grimsby as a stalking horse, so they had to be ready to run for the river on a moment’s notice. If the feds brought a helicopter, Ozan had a man outside with a BAR that could take it down. Of course that would mean leaving the country, but Forrest and Billy had always been prepared for that. They had paid-up property in Andorra, in the Pyrenees on the French border, waiting for the day when fate finally caught up with them. But as Forrest had often told his cousin, many times success came from holding your nerve when other men would bail. In this time of maximum danger, Forrest stood to gain more money and power than he could have imagined only a year earlier.

“So Dr. Cage took a phone call while he thought you were unconscious,” Forrest said. “How much did you hear?”

“Not enough to know where he was going. I think it was that Texas Ranger though. Garrity. Later, Dr. Cage told me his friend had told him to kill me.”

Forrest smiled. “A wise man. Did anything you heard give you any idea where he might be running?”

“He said something about Mobile. Like Garrity was already there.”

“Alabama?” Forrest thought about this. “That doesn’t make any sense. Garrity would run to Texas if he was running at all. Do you know where you were when he dumped you off?”

Ozan said, “I’ve got it pinpointed about as close as we can get it. Catahoula Parish. But given the elapsed time, and the fact that Cage has a vehicle, he could be a hundred miles from that point by now.”

“What about our roadblocks?”

Ozan shrugged. “It’s the boonies, boss. If Cage knows those roads, he could get a long way without hitting a roadblock.”

“And he was born in Louisiana.”

“His wife, too,” Ozan said. “She grew up right around there. I’ve sent some guys to check, on the off chance he’s hiding with relatives.”

Forrest tapped on the desk. “Where the hell
is
Garrity? Why did they split up at all?”

Grimsby shrugged.

“Garrity was a Texas Ranger,” Forrest said thoughtfully. “Mackiever was too, back in the day. He only came to Louisiana to take the superintendent’s job. I wonder if he and Garrity knew each other? Or even served together?”

Ozan was nodding. “Good thinking. I’ll check it out.”

“You do that. We’ve got Mackiever by the balls right now. The last thing we need is a hardass like Garrity giving him hope that he can save himself.”

Forrest gave the Monroe cop a last measuring glance. “You let an arthritic old man kill your partner. How does that feel?”

The cop’s eyes smoldered with hatred and embarrassment. “Not good.”

“You want to kill Dr. Cage?”

“Just give me one shot at him, Colonel.”

“You already had your shot. And you didn’t take it.” Forrest leaned back in his chair. “Go out to the bunkhouse and get a few hours’ rest. You’ll have new orders when you wake up.”

The cop didn’t move.

“Go, goddamn it,” Forrest said mildly. “Before I have Captain Ozan here give you the punishment you deserve.”

The cop stood, and with an awkward salute he left the room.

After the sound of his boot heels faded, Forrest sighed and shook his head. “That’s some piss-poor manpower right there, Alphonse. A sad state of affairs.”

Ozan let some time pass before he spoke. “What you think about Dr. Cage’s message? If he can do what he said, it kind of throws a new light on things, don’t it?”

Forrest smiled. “It offers the possibility of a low-body-count solution, which we could sorely use right now. If we start killing public officials, even if we blame it on Snake, we’re asking for trouble we may not be able to handle.
But
—Dr. Cage’s solution requires trusting not only him, but also his son and the Masters girl to go along with his promise to protect us. And that would take a lot of convincing for me to buy.”

Ozan didn’t reply to this.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the good doctor,” Forrest mused. “And what I’ve decided is, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Dr. Cage was never really any threat to me. He might be to Snake and Sonny and the other old men, but he can’t hurt me at all.”

Ozan looked intrigued by this idea.

“And if he really killed his old nurse, he probably did us all a favor.”

“What do you mean
if
?” Ozan asked.

“I’m not so sure he did it. Hell, all we have to go on is Snake’s word.”

“And Sonny’s.”

“Sonny Thornfield wouldn’t cross Snake—not if Snake told him to lie. And neither of them would want to tell me they’d disobeyed my orders.”

“But if Dr. Cage didn’t kill the old woman, why did he jump bail?”

Forrest shrugged. “We’ll ask him that when we find him. We’re talking about a man and a woman, Alphonse. Ain’t no telling what might have gone on between them over the years, or in that house that night. But I
know
Snake wanted her dead. He always did. The Eagles had a death warrant on her if she ever came back to Mississippi. I don’t know what she knew, but cancer wasn’t quick enough for Snake. He nearly busted a gut when I told him he couldn’t waste her. Anyway, my point is, the Double Eagles themselves are more of a threat to me than Tom Cage ever was. The Eagles truly
know
shit about me.”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” Ozan said in a cautious voice. “Dr. Cage and Garrity had Sonny Thornfield in the back of that van
before Deke Dunn pulled up and got hisself killed. So Cage and Garrity might know whatever Sonny knows about you.”

Forrest couldn’t believe he’d forgotten something so obvious. “You’re right. So we either have to cut a deal with Cage or kill him,
tout suite
.”

“Then we’re basically back to our original dilemma,” Ozan said. “Sit tight, kill ’em all, or try the doc’s approach?”

As Forrest nodded, he realized he’d already decided to hold off on the scorched earth strategy. “I’m going to take a chance on Tom Cage. But step one is to find him. I’m not about to cancel that APB until he looks me in the eye and swears he can do what he claims he can.”

“And then?”

“Then we need to verify that his son and the Masters girl will follow suit. God only knows what Brody might’ve said to them before he died. I guess we might read it in this morning’s paper, no matter how fast we move.”

“That’s one uppity bitch,” Ozan said. “At the hospital, she got right up in my face even after Kaiser had backed down. I wanted to pistol-whip her so bad I could taste it.”

Forrest shook his head. “That’s one pleasure you’re unlikely to get. If anybody kills her at this point, it’ll be Snake.” Forrest got up from behind the desk and stuck the dead cigar in his mouth. “Change the orders to our people. Find Dr. Cage, but don’t kill him. Not unless he forces the issue.”

“Got it. What about Garrity?”

The specter of Walt Garrity allied with Griffith Mackiever rose to the forefront of Forrest’s mind. “If they find Garrity alone, they should waste him. We’ll pin Deke Dunn’s death on him, and that’ll clear the books, freeing us to cut a deal with Dr. Cage. The doc will just have to live with Garrity’s death as the price of his freedom.”

Ozan seemed to like this solution. “And Snake? When he finally reads what’s in the
Examiner
in the morning—and he will, the online version—he’ll be ready to kill that Masters bitch, just like you said.”

“Leave Snake to me. I’ll tell him we’re going to take everybody out, but he needs to stay in Texas while we do it. Then if I change my mind, I’ll tell him we couldn’t bring it off, and we need him to do the wet work.”

At last Ozan seemed satisfied.

“Now, find me Tom Cage.”

“It can’t be that goddamn hard,” Ozan declared. “Especially with him and Garrity split up. He’s got to still be in Louisiana, probably within twenty miles of where he dumped Floyd. There’s no way he crossed the Mississippi River. We’ve got roadblocks at every bridge, and even a cruiser at the St. Francisville ferry, in case he thinks it’s still running.”

Forrest wasn’t so sure. “He’s proved to be a resourceful son of a bitch, Alphonse. If we don’t find him in the next two hours, we might need to pull that APB on him and just leave it on Garrity.”

“You think that’ll bring him out of the woods?”

“Who knows? For now, put every man you can into LaSalle, Catahoula, Franklin, and Tensas parishes. Check out the wife’s relatives’ houses. And keep the tech division going back over all electronic communications of Dr. Cage, his family, his partners, everybody. If there’s a deal to be made, we’ve got to do it quick. Otherwise, we turn Snake loose and get ready for the Sam Peckinpah ending.”

“The what?” Ozan asked.

“Nothing. Get to it, Captain.”

As the Redbone left the study, Forrest reflected on the irony that he could probably have a more enjoyable conversation with Tom Cage than with any of the men he worked with every day. That included his cousin Billy, who was a serious reader, at least by Knox family standards. Once more Forrest thought about his father and Dr. Cage joking around while the doc gave him his football physical. Then he banished the thought. For at bottom, he felt strangely sure that before another day had come and gone, he would have to kill Tom Cage, either with his own hands or by sending other men to do his will.