The Bone Tree (61 page)

I’M ABOUT TO
observe the most surreal interrogation of my legal career, and I’m not even sure it’s legal. John Kaiser hasn’t set up this session to gather evidence for a court case. He wants to uncover a long-buried truth, one he believes to be bigger than any single case, and more important than the fate of my father. For this reason, Kaiser has allowed things I’ve only rarely seen in a sheriff’s office, and never during an FBI interrogation.

First, the video camcorder is unplugged. This occasionally happens, and for a variety of reasons (but not usually to help the suspect). Second, the bedsheet is still hanging over the observation window (a sensible precaution). But strangest of all, Kaiser has submitted to a physical search by his prisoner, so the Double Eagle can be sure the FBI agent isn’t wearing any recording device. I had to endure the same treatment in order to be present, and since I hold out some hope that Sonny might recant what he wrote about my father on the puzzle I created, I consented.

Sonny Thornfield has relaxed considerably since I was last in this room. The reason is simple. Kaiser’s agents have already tracked down his grandson, the one preparing to depart for his second tour in Iraq. Kaiser actually brought in an encrypted FBI phone and allowed Sonny to speak to the kid on it. By then I knew the backstory: the boy saw his best friend maimed during his first tour, and he has no interest in sharing the same fate. Kaiser promised Sonny that if his grandson agreed to go into federal witness protection, he would not have to return to Iraq. I have no idea whether this is true, but Kaiser’s confidently delivered answer—combined with the fact that he’s already arranged to fly three of Sonny’s family members here on FBI aircraft—told me that the FBI agent is pulling out all the stops for this case.

So . . . here we sit, watching a former Ku Klux Klansman and Double Eagle prepare to reveal a secret he’s carried for forty years, on pain
of death, in order to save himself and his family. Among my regrets—and they are many—is that Henry Sexton did not live to sit beside me in this moment. Whatever Sonny Thornfield knows, it might mean more to Henry than even to Dwight Stone.

“I want to make one thing clear,” Sonny begins, licking his lips and glancing over at the bedsheet to make sure it’s still taped over the one-way mirror. “I’m not going to talk about any other case but the big one. Dallas. And when I say the name Frank, I’m referring to Frank Sinatra. Nobody else, got it? Frank Sinatra.”

“Got it,” says Kaiser. “Let’s hear what Old Blue Eyes did in Dallas in 1963. I always heard that he and JFK were friends.”

Sonny shrugs and turns up his palms. “What do you want to know? I can’t just start talking. Ask me something.”

“All right. To your knowledge, who was behind the assassination? I mean the man at the very top.”

Thornfield rubs his stubbled chin as though pondering what answering that question would have cost him forty years ago.

“Come on,” Kaiser urges. “Nobody can hear you.”

“It was Carlos Marcello’s show,” Sonny says finally. “All the way.”

When Kaiser turns to me, I see something like rapture in his eyes.

“Who fired the kill shot? The one that blew Kennedy’s brains out?”

“You already know. Frank Sinatra.”

Kaiser doesn’t react at first. But I can see from his frozen stillness how badly he wishes this were a legitimate interrogation. “How do you know that?” he asks.

“He told me.”

“Who did?”

“Frank.”

“When?”

Sonny shakes his head.

“What year, then?”

“Nineteen sixty-seven, I believe. About a year after he . . . had a family tragedy.”

Kaiser looks back at me. We’re both thinking the same thing.
A year after Frank Knox lost his son in Vietnam.

“Was he sober when he told you this?” Kaiser asks.

“I don’t think Frank was ever sober after 1966.”

“Fair enough. How did Marcello approach Frank about that job? Or did someone else do that?”

“I think Marcello did it. We’d done a few jobs for him over the years, mostly in Florida. But Carlos knew Frank from the anti-Castro training camp in Morgan City. That’s how Frank knew, ah . . . the other guy, too.”

“What other guy?”

“The other guy who was in on it.”

“Oswald?” Kaiser asks, but I know this is a feint to test Thornfield.

“No. Frank didn’t know that nut job.”

“Who, then?”

Sonny practically whispers the name. “David Ferrie.”

Kaiser closes his eyes and exhales slowly. I have to admit, I feel a profound sense of satisfaction at hearing Dwight Stone’s theory confirmed, and since Stone can’t be here himself, I let myself enjoy it.

“What was Ferrie’s part in the operation?” Kaiser asks.

Sonny shrugs as though the answer is self-evident. “He’s the one who knew Oswald.”

“How?”

“They were both from New Orleans. Ferrie had known him since Oswald was a kid.”

“Known him how?”

“Frank told me they were queer. I don’t know if that’s true. But that’s what he said.”

Kaiser cuts his eyes at me again. So far, he and Dwight are batting a thousand.

“Did Frank know why Carlos wanted Kennedy dead?”

“He told me JFK and his brother were going to run the Little Man out of the country. Carlos had tried everything he knew to stop it, but nothing worked. This was the last chance.”

“Okay.” Kaiser glances at his watch. “Let’s talk about the actual hit. Dealey Plaza.”

Sonny scratches his nose and looks at the bedsheet once more. “You guys ain’t got some kind of X-ray camera or anything in there, have you?”

“No cameras,” Kaiser says, treating it as a serious question.

“Are you sure Snake don’t know what’s going on in here?”

“Positive. We’re questioning Snake in another interrogation room right now.”

Sonny clearly gets a fair dose of relief from this knowledge. “What else you want to know, then?”

“Tell us about the rifles, Sonny. The ones from Brody’s house. Penn says one was displayed in Brody’s basement as the assassination rifle, but that was a Remington Model 700. So why did we find an exact copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle upstairs in Brody’s study?”

Sonny smiles strangely. “You can thank Frank for that. See, Carlos and Ferrie wanted him to use a rifle like Oswald’s for the hit, and then leave it at the scene. They wanted to sell a big Commie conspiracy and blame Castro.”

“To deflect suspicion from Carlos?”

“Sure, and to get Carlos’s casino action back. They figured if they could get the public mad enough at Castro, LBJ would invade.”

Kaiser happily clucks his tongue. “So, why didn’t Frank use the Carcano to kill Kennedy?”

“Because it was a piece of junk! The aftermarket Jap scope that came on it wasn’t good enough for a BB gun. Frank told ’em he’d use his own rifle for the hit but leave the Italian one at the scene. But Ferrie didn’t like that idea. He’d given Frank bullets from the same box as Oswald’s, and he said Frank had to use those. The bullets had to match, he said.”

I can only see Kaiser in profile, but an anticipatory smile has appeared on his face. “So what did Frank do?”

“He told Ferrie no problem. Frank was a genius with guns, see? Any kind of weapon, really. But guns were his specialty. He told Ferrie he could use his Remington and the bullets would
still
match—if the cops found any fragments at all.”

Kaiser’s face is practically glowing. “How could Frank manage that?”

Sonny chuckles with obvious admiration for his old sergeant. “First, he took those 6.58 Carcano bullets and removed them from the cartridges. Then he scraped the lead out of the copper jackets, so he’d have a lead-antimony mix that would match Oswald’s bullets to a T, or at least as well as could be done.”

“And then?”

“Then he used that lead to cast some .243 bullets to fit the cartridges for his Remington. He drilled out the cores so they’d blow apart on impact, and then he tested them to be sure.”

“How did he do that?”

“On some pigs.”

“Pigs. Did the bullets work as he wanted?”

“Hell, yeah. I told you he was a genius. The damn things exploded when they hit the skulls, and they hardly left a trace.”

Kaiser quietly considers all he has heard. “If Frank went to all that trouble, then why didn’t he leave the Carcano behind him after he made the shot, like he’d promised?”

Sonny settles back in his chair and folds his arms. “A couple of reasons. He said totin’ it around was too risky. He already had to carry the Remington—broke down, of course. Carrying two guns doubled the risk. But that wasn’t all. He was worried there might be forensic tests he didn’t know nothin’ about. Space-age stuff, you know? He’d handled that rifle himself, and he didn’t want it winding up in the Sandia National Lab or someplace like that.”

“Smart thinking.”

“Frank didn’t miss much, boy.” Sonny looks anxiously around the interrogation room. “Is that enough? Can I go back to the brig now?”

Kaiser shakes his head. “Not yet. You haven’t told us where he shot from. Was it the grassy knoll?”

Kaiser is testing Sonny again. There’s no way the kill shot could have been fired from the grassy knoll. In my view, this testing is a waste of time. Thornfield is obviously telling the truth as he knows it. The real question is,
Was Frank Knox telling Sonny the truth when he told him all this?

“Sonny?” Kaiser prompts. “The grassy knoll?”

“Hell, no. That’s Hollywood bullshit. Frank shot from the building next to the Book Depository. Catty-corner to it. The Dal-Tex Building.”

“How do you remember the name?”

“I’ve seen some TV shows about it. Documentaries. Hell, I watch the History Channel. It’s pretty funny, the stuff they come up with, when you know what really happened. Everybody overthinks it, you know? Frank always took the shortest path between two points. I can’t tell you how many times he said to me, ‘Simplest is best, Son.’ From back when we were kids, all the way to the Pacific . . . he lived by the same rules.”

“How did he get into the Dal-Tex Building?”

Sonny chuckles again. “He went in as an elevator repairman, with a toolbox.”

Kaiser thinks this over. “And how did he get out? The Dal-Tex Building was one of the first to be shut down after the shots were fired.”

“As a
cop,
” Sonny says, amazement in his voice. “Isn’t that great? What could be simpler? He carried a Dallas police uniform in with him in the toolbox, wrapped around his rifle parts. Kept the gun from rattling. He put on the cop’s uniform as soon as he got to the office he shot from. After he fired, he just walked out carrying the rifle. Everybody assumed he was part of the security detail, hunting for the shooter. Even the Secret Service. Always hide in plain sight, right?”

“Did he carry the toolbox out?”

“Nope. He left it in the elevator machine room. Empty.” Sonny looks at me, then back to Kaiser. “Can’t I go? This is taking too long. And the mayor wants to know about his daddy, don’t he?”

“Yes, he does,” I say in a taut voice, my eyes on Kaiser.

“Just a little longer,” says Kaiser, not looking at me. “Tell me about Oswald, Sonny. Was Frank meant to fire the kill shot all along, or was he a backup for Oswald?”

“Backup. See, Ferrie thought Oswald could make the shot. Shows you how much he knew about rifles. Frank said the way that scope was attached, Oswald was lucky he hit anything. With only two mounting screws, you couldn’t even zero the damned thing.”

Yet another perfect correlation with Stone’s theory. “Did they mean for Oswald to be captured?”

“Found dead, more like.” A new light shines from Sonny’s eyes. “That was where the operation went wrong. Frank was supposed to kill the idiot right after the hit. Oswald was told to meet him in that stockyard parking lot behind the Book Depository, but on the day, he didn’t show up.”

“Why not?”

“Frank figured that when Oswald saw the president’s head explode in his scope, he knew he hadn’t made that shot. And that scared the shit out of him. That’s why he panicked and ran home to get the pistol he hadn’t even brought with him to Dealey Plaza. The one he used to shoot that cop later. Tippit.”

“If Oswald didn’t know anything about Frank, who did he think he was going to meet in the stockyard parking lot?”

“Ferrie, of course. That fool thought Ferrie was going to fly him to Havana! What a joke, right? But Frank told me Ferrie had actually run
guns to Cuba, back before Castro allied with the Russians. And Oswald knew that. So maybe he wasn’t so dumb to believe it.”

“All right,” I say in the most conclusive tone I can. “You’ve got what you wanted. Time to get on with the next act of this show.”

Kaiser looks at his watch. “I think we’re okay, Penn.”

I try to mask my growing anger. “Sonny’s not. Wanting doesn’t make it so, John. Time’s passing. Send him back to the cellblock with Snake and give Dwight his victory call. That’s the gift you wanted to give him, and he deserves it. Then start interrogating all the other Eagles. Spend just as much time with each of them as you did with Sonny. And maybe—just maybe—you’ll get away with this.”

At this moment Kaiser regrets bringing me into this room. But at some level, he brought me in here to keep him from losing sight of his priorities.

“Then it’s time for the big question,” Kaiser says. “Sonny, you’ve given me a lot of details today, and I appreciate it. But do you have any way of proving anything you’ve told me? Anything besides what you say Frank told you?”

Sonny looks perplexed. “Like what? Like something physical?”

“Exactly.”

“You know . . . I think there was something he kept. Frank never told me about it, but Snake said something once.”

“What are you talking about? Something besides the rifles?”

“Yeah. A letter, maybe. Some kind of insurance.”

“A letter written by Frank?”

“No, no. Somebody else. Ferrie, maybe. Or even Oswald. It sure wouldn’t be Carlos. Carlos was like Frank. He never wrote nothing down. He was famous for that.”

“How would Frank get a letter from Lee Harvey Oswald?”