The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,186

floor rack between us. His police radio chatters on low volume, and a dashboard computer glows softly with a screen saver that reads: GO TIGERS!

Dennis appears barely in control of his emotions, so I speak in the calmest voice I can muster.

“Hey, bud. Looks like you’re sweating bullets. Why don’t you turn the heater down?”

Dennis wipes his face like a man waking from a trance. “You’re right. Shit, I didn’t realize.”

After he turns the heater to low, I turn and brace my back against the passenger door. “What did you find, and where did you find it?”

The sheriff shakes his head in disbelief. “A shitload of crystal meth, cooked and bagged and ready for sale. Right under my goddamn house!”

“How much is a shitload?”

“Three-quarters of a pound. Enough to put me in Angola for thirty years, not counting corruption charges.”

A strange serenity flows over me at this news.

“You were right,” he says, an edge of hysteria in his voice. “Those goddamn Knoxes.”

“Well, at least we have our answer. This is why the Double Eagles agreed to come back for questioning. They think you’ll be busted by your own men before you ask them your first question.”

Sheriff Dennis goes pale. “My own men?”

“Unless Forrest brings in the DEA—which I doubt—I’d bet on it. I imagine one of your deputies will receive an ‘anonymous’ tip sometime prior to tomorrow’s interrogations. A team will drive over to your house to search it, with the expectation of ‘discovering’ the hoard you found tonight. And if the dope was there, you’d have helped teach your colleagues a valuable lesson: crossing the Knoxes is career suicide for a cop.”

“And you figured this out from a story your kid told you?”

“That triggered it, yeah. Kaiser’s certainty about the Eagles not coming had been bothering me all evening. To submit to questioning, they had to have some kind of insurance. Subconsciously, I must have been wondering what the easiest way to move you off the board would be. I saw drugs planted on cops in Houston before. With this parish’s history of corruption, that would have been a slam dunk.”

Sheriff Dennis wipes the sheen of sweat from his forehead with his uniform sleeve. “So what now?”

I don’t answer for a while. Then, after some thought, I say, “Are you asking me as the mayor of Natchez? As a former prosecutor? Or as a friend?”

“A friend, goddamn it.”

“These are the same guys who killed your cousin, right?”

“Yep.”

“They booby-trapped the warehouse that killed two of your deputies.”

Dennis nods soberly.

I turn and look over at the harsh light spilling out of the Walmart doors. “An elegant solution came to me while I was driving over the bridge.”

“What’s that?”

“Send that meth right back where it came from.”

Walker’s voice goes quiet, as though someone might hear us. “Plant it back on the Knoxes?”

Turning back to him, I answer with words I can’t quite believe are my own. “Put on a pair of latex gloves, then divide the meth into separate packages. You know how to make it look authentic. Stash those packets in or around the homes of the Double Eagles we’re going to question tomorrow. At least Snake and Sonny, anyway. Make sure the amount meets the standard for trafficking charges.”

“That wouldn’t be any problem with this load. What about Billy Knox?”

“Something tells me Billy’s likely to have serious security around his place. I’d leave him out of it. But Snake and Sonny won’t, and I doubt they’re back from Toledo Bend yet.”

Walker looks away from me, his jaw muscles working hard as he grinds his teeth. Then he nods suddenly. “Fuck ’em. I’m gonna do it.”

“Good.”

Now his eyes seek me out. “Have you ever done anything like this?”

“No. In all my years as an assistant DA, I never broke the rules. I never looked the other way when a cop did, either. Not on a single case. I was a goddamn choirboy. And I don’t know why I’m advising you to do this now, except . . .” I trail off, unsure whether even I know the answer. “Tonight Billy Byrd tried to search my house, and I almost pushed him into a gunfight. It was stupid, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire,” Dennis says softly. “If the bad guys are wearing white hats while they break the rules . . . you throw the rules out the window.”

“I guess that’s it.”

“Part of it. The truth is, you’re worried about your father. If