The Bone Tree (20 page)

Dennis clucks his tongue twice. “Murder’s never ancient history, Penn. You know that. And that one caused more harm than most. A lot more. If there’s a chance of finding out who really killed the president that day in Dallas—or why—I’m all for it. I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“I hear you, Walker.”

The sheriff lowers his big head another inch. “Don’t keep anything else from me. Okay?”

“I won’t.”

After a long moment, he nods, then walks back to his injured deputy’s cubicle.

Small-town sheriffs,
I say silently.
Jesus.

WALT GARRITY HAD
been staking out Forrest Knox’s house since before dawn, and he was tired of waiting. Knox’s wife was asleep inside, which prevented an immediate search, and there was also a large pit bull penned in the backyard. Forrest himself had driven from Valhalla to Baton Rouge at about 5
A.M.
, and Walt had followed the whole journey on the GPS tracking scope Mackiever had given him. The new toy was nice, but Walt was worried that his target intended to sleep the morning away. That might seem improbable to some people, given the present situation, but in Walt’s experience career criminals often possessed the ability to sleep through anything.

As Walt cruised past Knox’s well-tended ranch house, his burn phone pinged. Picking up the TracFone, he saw a text message from Tom. The message contained only a sequence of numbers, as Walt had instructed him to use, but the mere sight of those numbers relieved some of the strain Walt been suffering since he’d heard Tom had a hit man tied up in his backseat.

Pulling out of the affluent neighborhood, which stood less than a mile from the university, Walt turned into a service station and parked near the car wash. He felt reasonably secure in the truck, since he’d stolen a new plate from a similar model in a Lowe’s parking lot. Satisfied that no one was watching, he took a notepad from his bag and began decoding Tom’s message. A minute later, he read the words:
Safe. Loc to follow aft new fon
. He wished Tom had gone ahead and given him his location, but his old friend was wisely waiting until he had a 100 percent secure telephone. Taking one of Tom’s cigars from his shirt pocket, Walt lit the expensive beast, then settled back in his seat and watched the entrance to the quaint little haven that sheltered the most dangerous cop in the state.

FORREST KNOX SAT AT
the Dell computer in his home office, working on notes for the press conference he would call at noon. Inkjet printouts of child pornography pulled from Colonel Mackiever’s work computer lay spread on the right side of his desk. Forrest should have been at headquarters by now, but something was nagging at him down deep. The obvious problems were bad enough. Henry Sexton’s death had triggered a media storm, and Caitlin Masters’s newspaper coverage had only magnified it. (Today’s online edition of the
Examiner
hovered just behind the Word document containing Forrest’s notes for the press conference.) Thankfully, Masters had focused primarily on Royal and the Double Eagles, and stopped short of accusing Forrest of anything. But that wouldn’t last.

What had kept him at home were the two phones calls he’d received a half hour earlier. The first was from a contact he had in the New Orleans federal court. The woman hadn’t identified herself, but she hadn’t needed to. She simply told Forrest that the FBI had filed National Security Letters requesting the phone and e-mail records on Forrest Knox, Alphonse Ozan, and two other officers in the Criminal Investigations Bureau. Forrest had hung up without a word, but he couldn’t pretend the call hadn’t rattled him. Had he not had that contact, he would never even have known the Bureau was digging into his past. Before he could fully process this news, the second call had come, this one from one of the wealthiest developers planning the post-Katrina transformation of New Orleans. Brody Royal’s death—and the scandal brewing in its wake—had hit those multimillionaires where they lived, and their answering message to Forrest was clear: get Mackiever out of his job ASAP and tamp down the trouble in Concordia Parish by any means necessary. If he couldn’t, their support for him would evaporate like smoke.

A loud barking from behind the house startled Forrest. Traveller, his pit bull, was letting him know he was running late. Forrest forced himself to ignore the dog and focus on the Word document. He was glad when his encrypted phone distracted him from the computer screen.

“What is it?” he said, reading a sentence that needed to be a lot better than it was.

“Mackiever’s back home,” Ozan informed him. “About ten minutes now.”

“Any idea where he’s been?”

“Nope.”

“I should have had him followed from New Orleans.”

“Spilled milk, boss. You think he’ll go in to HQ today?”

“I wouldn’t.” Forrest glanced down at the naked little boy on his desk.

“He’s a proud old bastard,” Ozan said. “He’s liable to go over to the governor’s office to personally hand in his resignation.”

“She’s ready to accept it.”

“What about your press conference?”

Forrest suddenly knew what he was going to do. “I’ve changed my mind about that.”

“What do you mean? You gonna wait? Give him the full forty-eight hours?”

“No. I’m going to leak the full story.”

“Who you gonna give it to?”

“Don’t worry about that. Just call me when you hear it’s circulating.”

“Got it.”

“No word on Dr. Cage?”

“Negative. Bermuda fucking Triangle.”

Forrest grunted. “Keep looking. Out.”

He pressed
END
, then deleted the document he’d been writing. Taking his regular cell phone from his pocket, he called a former vice detective he’d partnered with long ago. The man answered after three rings.

“Yo, Colonel. You the boss yet?”

“Not quite. Are you still tight with that woman at the
Advocate
?”

“Sure.”

“And the TV station? WAFB?”

“You know me. Finger on the pulse.”

“I know the pulse that finger likes to take.”

The detective barked a laugh. “I ain’t changed, partner. Who does? You want me to pass something on?”

“Yeah. But not on the phone. I’ll give you an envelope.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“You won’t believe it when you see it.”

“Who’s the target?”

“The cowboy colonel.”

The detective was silent for a moment. “Sounds like I’m doing you a real service.”

“You know I’m big on gratitude.”

“That I do, old buddy. How about one of those weekend hunting trips with
diablitos
and whores included?”

“Do this and you’re comped.”

“Oh, hell yeah. Where’s the handoff?”

Forrest thought about it. “How about the Home Depot parking lot, College Drive? I’ll be in my cruiser. Twenty minutes.”

“That’s quick, but I can make it. Can’t wait to see it.”

Forrest heard the floor creak behind him, then a sharp scream. He knew without turning that his wife had made the sound, but it took him a moment to realize why. When he did, he swept the photos on his desk into the top drawer. His wife was accustomed to seeing grisly crime scene photos, but the kiddie porn that Ozan and some of the guys in vice had pulled off a server in the Netherlands was truly sickening.

“What
was
that?” his wife gasped.

“A case,” he said gruffly.

“I don’t want that in our house.”

He looked up at the woman who knew his own proclivities about as well as any woman who still walked the earth. But even for someone of her experience and disillusionment, those photos were beyond the pale.

“I don’t either,” he said.

“Why do you have them?”

Forrest decided to test his strategy. “Tech Division pulled these off Colonel Mackiever’s computer. He’s been downloading them at work for months.”

His wife’s hand flew to her mouth. “I don’t believe it. Griffith Mackiever?”

He nodded once, watching her closely.

“Dear Lord.” She shook her head as though she could never accept the idea, but then she said, “I guess you never know anybody, do you?”

Forrest shook his head, but he was smiling inside.

KEEP WALKING,
WALT TOLD
himself, moving steadily up the street with his picklocks nestled in his inside jacket pocket.
Straight and steady, like an old man out for a constitutional.

Knox had left the neighborhood first, his wife about five minutes
later. But the most welcome sight had been the silhouette of the pit bull in the backseat of the state police cruiser. Given this gift from the gods, Walt had decided that the best tactic would be to simply walk along the street with a normal gait, then turn up Knox’s driveway as though he were a meter reader or repairman. Mackiever had assured him that no call from Knox’s home security system would alert anyone. It was wired directly to state police headquarters, and Mac had assigned his nephew to disable the connection through the departmental computer system.

Knox’s driveway was fifteen feet ahead.

Walt emptied his mind of doubt, then turned and walked up into the carport, through the picket gate in the breezeway, and into the domain of the now-absent pit bull. He was an old hand at B&Es, and French doors were particularly easy. With the alarm system neutralized, the dog was the only thing that could have complicated his entry. Hearing no alarm, he unlocked the door and moved quickly inside.

Walt’s initial plan had been to search the house itself, then try to break into Knox’s home computer. But as he passed the door of what appeared to be a home office, he saw something he never expected: the computer screen glowing softly, a Microsoft Word document showing.

Charging across the room, he stabbed the keyboard to keep the screen saver from popping up. If it did, a password would almost certainly be required to re-access the computer. As he stood there panting, he wondered at his good fortune. Surely Knox had not left his computer unprotected?

The wife,
he thought.
His wife must have used the computer right after he left.
Tensing, Walt minimized Word and checked to make sure he wasn’t logged on to the wife’s account, but no—the account name was
NBFKnox
.

“Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Walt said softly. “Who’s your daddy, asshole?”

He sat down and began working through Knox’s file directory. His folders contained the usual stuff: work letters, tax records, to-do lists. Walt wanted to go through the e-mails, but Knox’s Gmail account required a password. Conscious that the wife might come back at any time, Walt moved on and searched for all images stored on the hard drive. Knox only had a couple of hundred photos on the computer, and Walt didn’t see anything that looked suspicious. There was some
pornography, but it was typical heterosexual fare. Moving on, Walt searched for video files.

This yielded more interesting results. Knox had quite a few videos that appeared to be training films for state troopers, familiar stuff to Walt. Many dealt with shooting techniques, while others depicted SWAT instructors clearing buildings during hostage situations. Walt was nearing the end of the list when a video that looked very different expanded to fill the screen.

The grainy image showed an open dirt field with a line of trees in the distance. After about five seconds, two horses with men on their backs galloped into the frame. The men carried long spears, and they spurred their horses toward a black blob in the middle of the field. Suddenly the blob disintegrated into several animals racing in different directions.

Hogs,
Walt thought.

Two more horsemen galloped on-screen, with smaller blurs running at their flanks.
Dogs
. From the motion of the dogs, he guessed they were pit bulls or blackmouth curs. Real hog hunters put vests on their dogs so the boars wouldn’t rip their guts out. One good rip with those tusks could easily eviscerate a dog. Walt had seen it.

The four horsemen quickly singled out the largest hog and, with the help of the dogs, began trying to hem it in. After several feints and charges that dropped one smaller dog, the big razorback cut between two horses and broke for the tree line. Just as Walt thought the hog might make it, another horseman charged from the trees and with expert skill forced the hog to check its momentum and turn 180 degrees.

By then the other horses were closing in. When the hog turned and began slashing at the dogs with its tusks, the fifth horseman drove his spear down into its ridged back, between the shoulder blades, like a matador finishing off a bull. The razorback staggered, took a few steps, then collapsed and lay still as a boulder. The dogs went mad, circling the kill, but the men only climbed leisurely off their horses and shook hands with one another.

Drawing back a couple of inches, Walt squinted at the man who had killed the hog. Despite the graininess of the image, he was pretty sure that man was Forrest Knox.

Walt nodded slowly, recognizing that they were up against a certain
kind of man. There was nothing illegal about hunting hogs with spears. Some crazy sons of bitches hunted them with
knives,
leaping out of trees to make the kill. From somewhere deep in his memory, the word
atlatl
rose in Walt’s mind. That was what the old-time hunters called the tool that normally hurled the spear Knox had used during the hunt.

He clicked on the last video in the folder. Compared to the hunting footage, the final video was about as exciting as a television test pattern. It showed a small house in the dark, and it appeared to have been shot through a telephoto lens. Unlike the hunting film, this video had sound. Walt heard human breathing, as if the man shooting the film was breathing right into the microphone. As Walt stared at the screen, he noticed it was raining. Unlike Hollywood rain, these drops were difficult to see.

Nothing else happened. The rain continued to fall, and the cameraman kept breathing. Just as Walt was about to switch off the video, he realized that there were numerical markings superimposed over the scene. They were
range markings
. While he tried to figure this out, the front door of the little house opened and three young black men walked out. Two were carrying a box, while the third carried a semiautomatic rifle, a CAR-15. As the men walked, Walt realized there was water lapping around their feet.

What the hell . . . ?

“Target visible,” said a voice with a Cajun accent, and Walt nearly jumped out of his skin. “Two hundred twenty-one meters.”

“Acquiring,” said a second voice, as cool as a fighter pilot’s. “Target acquired.”

On-screen, the three black men—oblivious to the camera—moved toward an SUV parked next to the house. The one with the carbine unlocked the rear hatch of the SUV. Walt recognized a high-tech scale sitting on the box in the other men’s hands. The kind of scale used by high-volume drug dealers.