The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,73

And I mean everything.”

CAITLIN MASTERS HAD RARELY experienced a media frenzy like the one that began Thursday morning, and never in a small market. Henry Sexton’s work had penetrated much deeper into the national media consciousness than she’d suspected, and his violent death had caught the attention of journalists from coast to coast. The fact that it was associated with a violent Ku Klux Klan offshoot and unsolved civil rights murders pushed the story toward critical mass. But it was the deaths of Brody Royal, Royal’s daughter and son-in-law, Sleepy Johnston, and a Natchez police officer that magnified the story to epic proportions. Reporters were converging on Natchez from every corner of the country, and even from overseas. All the major national papers were sending people, and the TV networks had been calling without letup. Friends Caitlin hadn’t spoken to in years were calling to get an inside track on the story, and she simply hadn’t time to spare for them.

Special Agent Kaiser had taken over the Examiner’s conference room and turned it into an FBI command center. There were now nine special agents spread across Natchez and Concordia Parish, plus a half-dozen technicians of different types, and more manpower was on the way. FBI computer experts had begun the laborious task of trying to reconstruct the deleted scans of Henry Sexton’s files and journals from the Examiner’s servers. And while they did that, Kaiser had been working with Jamie Lewis in an effort to identify a possible second mole among Caitlin’s editorial staff. She felt conflicted about giving the Bureau access to personnel records, but she couldn’t risk another security breach while they were working such critical stories.

The proximity of Kaiser and his team had made it tough for Caitlin to contact Toby Rambin, the poacher who’d offered to guide Henry Sexton to the Bone Tree. Three times during the night she’d risked calling the number Henry had given her, but each time she’d gotten no answer. By researching the numerical prefix, she learned that the number was a landline, so she figured Rambin might be out in the swamp plying his trade. Caitlin also wanted Kaiser out of the building so that she could review Henry’s most recent journal—the one she’d saved from the burned ruins of the Concordia Beacon—but she wasn’t about to risk Kaiser discovering that. Along with Henry’s journal containing his leads and meditations on the Bone Tree (which, thankfully, she’d kept separate from the group that had been stolen and burned), this was all that remained of the brave reporter’s original records. Right now the two Moleskine journals lay atop Caitlin’s tall office credenza like holy relics hidden from an invading pagan army. Those journals—along with Toby Rambin—represented her only investigative advantage over the FBI, and the crux of her head start against the army of journalists descending on Natchez.

Just before dawn, Kaiser had told her that he was trying to organize a massive search of the Lusahatcha Swamp, in hopes of locating the Bone Tree and the bodies that might still lie there. This prospect gave Caitlin hives, and she’d felt immense relief when Kaiser slammed down her desk phone and complained that Washington had denied his request. A few minutes later, Jordan Glass confided to her that the director’s position wasn’t exactly unreasonable. Within twenty-four hours of sending “his best New Orleans agent” to Concordia Parish, half a dozen bodies had piled up, and the director was afraid that more would follow. He wasn’t about to organize a military-scale search in Mississippi without more cause than Kaiser had given him so far. He wanted to proceed with “cautious deliberation.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure Kaiser had given up his plan for the swamp search until word came in that Penn and Sheriff Dennis were sweeping up Concordia Parish’s meth cookers and dealers. It was then that she saw what John Kaiser looked like when he truly lost his temper. She didn’t envy Penn being on the receiving end of that anger. While Kaiser fumed, she pled ignorance and went about her business, thanking her stars that the Bone Tree would remain undiscovered by the FBI for some time yet.

At 7:45 A.M. Caitlin received one request she could not ignore: a summons to appear before the Adams County sheriff, Billy Byrd, for questioning. After telling Kaiser to send the cavalry if she hadn’t returned in an hour, she went out to her car, trusting that Henry’s journals would be fine where they were until she returned.

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