The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,43

was sitting in the passenger seat. He went down there with your dad. And Carlos was definitely in residence at the time.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“What the hell does this mean?”

“I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

“How long have you had this? Henry never saw this, did he?”

“No. I saw it myself for the first time today. It came in a big transmission of the Bureau file on Carlos Marcello, which is a massive collection.”

I’m trying to focus on the micro, not macro. “April of ’68 was the month Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis were killed.”

“Close enough. They probably died on March thirty-first.”

“That’s right. And Viola had been raped in March, as well. She was abused again when they were tortured, but Presley saved her. So my father must have made some kind of deal with Marcello shortly afterward, to protect Viola.”

“That’s why I need to talk to him. He knows a lot more than you think he does about all this.”

I close my eyes before I ask the next question. “John, what the hell’s going on? Seriously. How did we get from Viola Turner and euthanasia to the assassination of John Kennedy?”

“You know how. Through the Double Eagles. Specifically, the Knox family. Remember what I said about history? It’s all personal. In 1963, Carlos Marcello ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It wasn’t the CIA, or Castro, or Cuban exiles. It wasn’t the Russians or the military-industrial complex. It was Carlos Marcello. The Little Man used the Knox family to carry out the hit, and he did it for the oldest motive in the world.”

“Money?”

“No. Survival.”

Another question was forming in my mind when the sight of a white pickup truck parked down the block drove it from my head. A few seconds of watching shows me an exhaust plume coming from the tailpipe.

“What’s the matter?” asks Kaiser. “Are you looking at that truck?”

I nod. “That’s Lincoln Turner’s truck. The son of a bitch has been following me again.”

“Again?”

“He’s been stalking my house.”

Kaiser cocks his head, his eyes on the truck. “I tell you what. I’ve given you a lot to absorb. You go on up to your office and get your keys. I’ll take care of Mr. Turner for you. He won’t be here when you come back out.”

“Really?”

“No problem. You just think about what I said. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Should I just go?”

Kaiser smiles. “Yep. Take off. I’m going to abuse my authority for a minute.”

He opens his door and begins marching down the block like a military officer on a mission. Though I’m tempted to watch the confrontation, I exit the car and trot up to the door of City Hall. Lincoln Turner has a big chip on his shoulder and a lot of nerve, but something tells me Kaiser can handle him. For the first time since arriving at the sheriff’s office, I think about Annie and my mother hiding out at Edelweiss. They’re probably mad with worry by now, and as much as I’d like to check on Caitlin at the newspaper, I know she can take care of herself. I need to hug my daughter, and I need sleep. Tomorrow’s battles will be here all too soon.

CHAPTER 12

IN THE END, Caitlin decided to enter the Examiner by her usual route, the employees’ door at the rear of the building. If Billy Byrd had a deputy lying in wait, Jordan Glass was ready to snap fifty pictures of the arrest with her motor-drive Nikon. As Caitlin walked through the rear parking lot, noting the familiar cars of her reporters, she spied the door that had been locked against her by one of her own staff. Without warning she flashed back to the kidnapping with a clarity that made her pulse pound and her breath go shallow. She saw Penn being held on tiptoe with an arm around his throat and a pistol to his head. Then came a rush of images from all that had followed, from the basement, and the fire.

How close we came to dying, she thought, touching her burned cheek for the first time since the lake. And if I had died, the child I’m carrying would have died with me, and no one would have known—not unless they discovered it in the autopsy. Caitlin had only known about the baby herself for twenty hours or so, and she’d only told one soul on the planet about it: Tom Cage, via text message. Tom hasn’t even seen that message, she