The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,39

News update that will tell them once and for all whether Henry Sexton was killed by a sniper. How will they react when they learn that Henry survived that attack only to give his life for Caitlin’s hours later? Or that he was only one of several casualties, among them Brody Royal?

Looking back at the dark lowlands of Louisiana, I scan the sky for the column of flame we left behind, but I don’t see it. The levee near that lake stands thirty-five feet tall, and the flames were probably double that, but now the fire’s burned out of sight.

Kaiser turns onto Canal Street and heads into downtown proper.

“Are you going to keep me in suspense all night?” I ask. “I’m not going to sit outside City Hall talking till dawn. I’m wiped out, man.”

When Kaiser begins speaking at last, his voice carries a passion that it didn’t back in the corridor of Sheriff Dennis’s office. “Penn, the FBI had two great failures in the last century, and they irreparably damaged the Bureau in the public mind. The first was the unsolved murders of the civil rights movement. The second involved the major assassinations, particularly that of JFK. Those weren’t failures of process, but of will. Why did the Bureau fail? Because the director didn’t really want those cases solved.”

This isn’t news to me, but it’s a pretty remarkable statement to hear from a serving FBI agent. “When Dwight Stone discovered who was behind the murder of Del Payton in 1968—a big Nixon supporter, as it happened—Hoover made Stone suppress it. ”

“I know all about that. Stone’s generation of agents saw J. Edgar’s sins firsthand. And as a result, there’s now a group of retired FBI agents—mostly thirty-year men—who’ve never forgotten the sting of those failures. They’ve never let go of the cases they weren’t allowed to work as they should have been. The Double Eagle cases were among those.”

“And the JFK assassination?”

Kaiser nods. “That, too. These men work quietly, in the background, but they’ve done significant investigative work over the years. They’ve even got serious funding behind them now—private money, of course. The current director knows nothing about these guys, but some active agents give them help when possible.”

“Like you?”

A brief nod. “Like me.”

“Is Dwight Stone part of this group?”

“He is. They don’t publicize their activities, so you can’t tell Caitlin about it. If it got out that former FBI agents were actively working the Kennedy assassination . . . that’s like chum in the water to the media. These men are dedicated pros. Engineer types. They keep their heads down, and they don’t get excited. I think of them like retired astronauts. In fact, that’s what I call them, when I refer to them at all. They call themselves the ‘Working Group.’”

Kaiser turns right on State Street, rolls past Sheriff Billy Byrd’s sheriff’s department and the courthouse, then turns left again and parks in front of the lit oaks before City Hall.

Dwight Stone’s participation in this group legitimizes it in my eyes, but given tonight’s events, I can’t raise much interest. “Where’s this going, John?”

“My astronauts have been pretty quiet for a while. The civil rights murder cases have stalled, and the few remaining witnesses are dying like flies. Even the agents themselves are dying, more’s the pity. But when Glenn Morehouse talked to Henry Sexton on Monday, everything changed. Everything, Penn. No Double Eagle had ever cracked before.”

“Except Jason Abbott.”

“That was different. Abbott was just trying to screw the guy who was screwing his wife. But Morehouse was trying to clear his conscience, and in the process he opened a door that the Working Group believed was closed forever. By revealing the connection between Carlos Marcello and Frank Knox—through Brody Royal—he cracked the door on the JFK assassination.”

“How? Just what did Henry tell you, exactly?”

“That Jimmy Revels was murdered to lure Robert Kennedy to Mississippi to be assassinated by the Knoxes. Or that was the plan anyway, until Frank Knox was killed in an industrial accident.”

“You don’t doubt that story?”

“Not at all. Carlos Marcello had hated Robert Kennedy since the McClellan hearings in ’59, and he’d wanted him dead since Bobby deported him while attorney general in ’61. If JFK’s death hadn’t neutralized Bobby in ’63, Marcello would probably have killed Bobby then. And five years later, when Bobby announced his presidential run, he put himself right back in Marcello’s sights. If Frank Knox hadn’t died in your father’s office in March of ’68, Robert Kennedy might