The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,74

east onto Main Street, Caitlin checked the Motorola cell phone she was currently using—she’d sent one of her advertising people out to replace the Treo 650 that Brody Royal had burned—and saw that she’d received twenty-six text messages in the past fifteen minutes. For the next few days, she was going to have her hands full merely evading friends, much less the remainder of the media locusts. If she couldn’t find a way to set her team’s course for the day and then get out of the office—preferably to meet Toby Rambin—she would be overrun.

As she turned onto Wall Street, Caitlin saw two TV trucks parked in front of City Hall: one from WAPT in Jackson, the other from WLOX on the coast. After passing the trucks, she glanced right and saw two more parked in front of the courthouse: KNOE out of Monroe and WBRZ from Baton Rouge. There were more to come. When she turned west onto State Street, she saw a big CNN truck parked between the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office, and beyond that was a minivan that read MPB—the Jackson PBS station.

Slowing to scan the block for parking spaces, Caitlin saw Shadrach Johnson giving an on-camera interview on the steps of his building. As usual, he was dressed to the nines and standing as straight as a man announcing his candidacy for governor. When she looked left, she saw Sheriff Byrd doing the same on the steps of the ACSO building across the street from Shad. At least five reporters had microphones jammed into Byrd’s face, and he looked as happy as a pig in slop.

Caitlin parked around the corner near Judge Noyes’s chambers, then walked back to the ACSO building. Byrd was winding up the interviews as she approached, and he motioned for her to follow him inside. She soon found herself sitting before his desk like a schoolgirl called to see the principal. Her chair had been chosen to drop male visitors half a head lower than the potbellied sheriff, so she was forced to sit ramrod straight to achieve any sense of being on equal terms.

Squinting down at her like a caricature sheriff from some 1960s western, Byrd announced that he’d brought her there because of complaints filed by the Royal family, who claimed she’d broken into Katy Royal Regan’s house and harassed the woman until she committed suicide. However, it quickly became apparent that the sheriff’s real objective was discovering why Penn had been riding shotgun in Sheriff Dennis’s cruiser during the drug raids. Caitlin only smiled and asked whether Sheriff Byrd planned to make a similar sweep of Adams County. Bristling, Byrd declared that Adams County had no significant meth problem, which was ridiculous, since only the river separated Natchez from Concordia Parish, and traffic flowed over the twin bridges twenty-four hours a day. Caitlin only smiled and kept pressing him.

After Byrd realized she wasn’t going to give him anything on Penn, he began questioning her about the stories in the morning edition of the Examiner. Byrd was obviously accustomed to women deferring to him, so Caitlin played the game, hoping to discover how much or how little he knew by way of his inept questioning. The risk was negligible. Fooling Billy Byrd was child’s play compared to dealing with Kaiser.

Ninety seconds of back-and-forth told her that Byrd knew nothing of the real situation, and she was trying to think of a way to gracefully extricate herself from his office when his cell phone rang. He held the phone away from him and squinted at its LCD, then took the call. After listening for a few seconds, he turned pale and sat up straight.

“How many?” he asked, his face darkening.

Caitlin took the opportunity to check her cell phone, which she’d silenced before entering Byrd’s office. The last text message was from Penn. It read: Disaster at the warehouse. One deputy dead, others critical. I’m ok, headed to C hospital w Dennis.

Caitlin felt the blood drain from her face.

“Call me as soon as you know more,” Sheriff Byrd said, and slammed the phone down on his desk.

“What happened?” Caitlin asked, fighting the urge to bolt from the office.

Byrd cursed and rubbed his forehead. “Sheriff Dennis just lost a man in an explosion. Looks like a booby-trapped drug warehouse. He’s got three more men in critical condition, some being airlifted out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I know you’ll have a lot to do.” Caitlin got to her feet and headed