The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,92

those guys now, or who ordered the hits, anyway. Brody Royal, and he’s dead. If you want to nail Snake Knox and the other Eagles, you need to get on our side. Because Walker and I are going to be squeezing those guys’ balls before you even get your plan into first gear.”

Again I try to move past him, but Kaiser raises the flat of his right hand to my chest. “I know you don’t want to listen to me. But will you listen to Dwight Stone?”

God, is this guy pulling out the stops. “You think a phone call from Stone is going to make me reverse course on busting the Double Eagles?”

“Not a phone call. Stone’s flying in today on a Bureau jet.”

This actually stuns me. “In? Here? For what?”

“To talk to you. He’s been trying to find a way down here since Tuesday night, when I told him about the bones coming out of the Jericho Hole. He was looking into chartering a plane. But you seeing those rifles in Royal’s basement and hearing Royal say the Knoxes killed Pooky Wilson at the Bone Tree convinced the director to authorize a Bureau flight to bring Dwight down here to consult. He’s only going to be here for a few hours.”

“Why such a short stay?”

Kaiser takes a long breath. “Because he’s dying, Penn.”

A sick feeling hits me high in the stomach. “What?”

“Liver cancer.”

“I had no idea.”

“You know Dwight. Old school. A lot like your father, I imagine. He’s scheduled for an operation tomorrow. This visit is the Bureau’s way of giving back a little of the respect Hoover took when he fired Stone in ’72. Before Dwight goes under the knife.”

“Goddamn it, John. When’s he coming in?”

“He ought to be here by six P.M. Can you spare him an hour of your time?”

Kaiser’s revelations are almost too much to process quickly.

“The way I heard it,” he says, “it was Stone who made it possible for you to solve the Delano Payton case seven years ago.”

I nod. “He did more than that. Stone saved my life up in Colorado.”

“So will you come by?”

I have no choice, and Kaiser knows it. “Yeah. But only because it’s him. I think you guys are crazy to believe those rifles are real.”

“The evidence will tell, one way or the other.”

“What does he want to ask me, John? He’s not going to change my mind about anything.”

“I don’t know. I doubt any man alive knows more about the JFK case than Dwight and his colleagues. He was posted in Mississippi and Louisiana multiple times during the sixties, so there’s no telling what he might know about the Double Eagles, Carlos Marcello, or even your father. I suspect Dwight wants to give you the Working Group’s theory of how what happened in Dealey Plaza grew out of Louisiana. Once you hear that, you might be as reluctant as we are to jeopardize any chance of achieving justice in that case.”

“Does Dwight understand the jeopardy my father’s in now?”

“Of course. And he’s trying to convince the director that Dr. Cage should be brought under Bureau protection as a witness in the Kennedy investigation.”

I should have known Dwight would be doing what he could for me. “What are the chances of that happening?”

“Better with Dwight involved. But I won’t lie to you. No sane FBI director wants a public battle with a state police agency over a reputed cop killer, especially with the legal grounds for protective custody being the JFK assassination. That’s a publicity nightmare. The point is, Stone’s doing all he can to help your father. So am I.”

I restrain my temper with some difficulty. “If you really were, you wouldn’t ask me to waste an hour humoring an old man with an obsession.”

Kaiser gives me a sad look. “You’re not seeing this thing straight, Penn. Your fear about your father has distorted your perception. You’re like a guy looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Seventy percent of all Americans believe John Kennedy died as the result of a conspiracy. Justified or not, people believe this country swerved into darkness on that day, and we’ve never recovered from it.”

“Sixty percent of Americans believe in UFOs. Fifty percent believe AIDS was invented by the government.”

The FBI man grabs my left arm. “You’re pretty glib, aren’t you? After Dallas . . . almost anything became possible. I lived through one of the results in Vietnam. So did Forrest Knox. So before you discount this