The Devils Punchbowl

“You spoke in the past tense. Why are you here now?”

“Because you’re in danger. The deeper you look into Tim Jessup’s death, the more likely it is you’ll be hurt.”

I see disbelief in her eyes, but not because she doubts the danger. “You know I’'ve worked stories like that before.”

“This is different. I’'ve worked dangerous cases. But these people will kill without hesitation.”

“What people?”

“We may get to that. But you need to know that you can’t trust your phones—not your cell or the landlines at home. I'm not sure about the newspaper phones.”

Now she doubts me. “Who are you talking about? Who can tap landlines? Bad cops? The FBI again? Who?”

“It’s complicated. You also have to realize that people like Julia Jessup tell other people you'’ve questioned them. They say that on open phone lines. And the wrong thing in the wrong ear will get you dead.”

“Where’s Annie?” Caitlin asks, ignoring my warnings.

I shake my head.

“Is she even in town? Your house never looked so empty.” Caitlin thinks for a moment. “You sent her away, didn't you? Penn, what’s going on?”

“Just wait a second. Do you remember the agreement we used to have about cases like this?”

“Of course.”

“What was it?”

She rolls her eyes. “We tell each other all we can, but we don'’t use anything the other says has to stay secret.”

Right, so far.

“And…?”

She sighs in exasperation. “I don'’t publish anything until you clear it. And you don'’t put anything in your novels that I want to save for myself.”

“Okay. Can we go forward with that understanding?”

She purses her lips as though trying to judge whether I might be trapping her in some way, but at length she relents. “All right. Deal.”

“I need your help, Caitlin. That must be obvious, since I wouldn'’t be here otherwise.”

This seems to wound her. “What kind of help? I'm here, okay?”

“For how long?”

“You mean how long will I be in Natchez? You know me. That'’s open-ended. What exactly do you need? You don'’t want to manipulate the newspaper, do you?”

“No. I need physical cover.”

“Translate that.”

“I need a girlfriend.”

“A

girlfriend

?” Wry amusement touches her mouth. “didn't you just get rid of one?”

“I'm not kidding. The people I'm dealing with have very sophisticated surveillance equipment and enough time to watch me around the clock, if they want to. I need an excuse to disappear sometimes. Like into your house. Or to go on a drive. They already know who you are, and they know we have a past. It’s a credible cover.”

“I see. And what do I get out of this arrangement? Are you proposing a friends-with-benefits kind of deal?”

The look in my eyes must be all the answer she needs, because she immediately holds up both hands in apology.

“What did you always get out of this arrangement?” I ask.

“Stories.”

“

Big

stories.”

“Okay, okay. I'm in. I just wanted to be sure. So what’s the story? Crystal meth in the Deep South? I really hope not.”

“What do you know about dogfighting?”

“

Dog

fighting?”

“Yes.”

Her face goes blank. “Nothing. Less than nothing.”

“Time to learn.”

CHAPTER

24

Captain Walt Garrity crosses the Mississippi River Bridge at Vidalia, Louisiana, one callused hand on the wheel of his 2004 Anniversary Edition Roadtrek RV and the other wrapped around a thermos of hot coffee. He saw the lights of Natchez long ago, twinkling high on the bluff that towers over the flatland of Louisiana. The last time he crossed the Mississippi here there’d been only one bridge, the one built right before World War Two. He’d been on Ranger business then, coming to pick up a fugitive on a murder warrant. The guy had gotten drunk, cut somebody in Under-the-Hill, and wound up in the Natchez clink. The local cops had treated Walt well, a little hero worship for a Texas Ranger was common in cops who’d been raised on Saturday-matinee westerns as boys. Walt knew better than to expect deference now. These days he rarely mentioned he’d been a Ranger, since some people (mostly Mexicans) tended to make assumptions based on the checkered history of the troop.

He’s been driving for nine straight hours, not counting a stop for gas. Even with the built-in head in the Roadtrek, his first instinct when he feels the need for a bathroom is to piss in a Coke bottle, something he became adept at while racing across long stretches of Texas in the late fifties. It helps to have a long Johnson—or so say the fellows who claim to have one; Walt has to make do with what God gave him, which has always proved sufficient. Not that it matters much lately. At seventy, his pride has gone soft on him. He’s heard a lot about the blue pills, but you can’t take them if you’re on heart medicine, and Walt has been taking nitrates since his bypass a decade ago. Carmelita, the Mexican woman who lives with him, has stayed on in spite of this, despite being ten years his junior.

“Tirar

isn’t everything,” she always says. Then she winks and adds, “And there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

At the midpoint of the bridge, it strikes Walt that the last time he crossed here his wife was the woman waiting back in Nacogdoches. Frances would have been about thirty then, shining with the glow of her second pregnancy. But even that glow faded whenever Walt chugged down the long driveway and off to work. Frances was a worrier; his fellow Rangers always said that if worry and prayer could keep you alive, Walt didn't have a thing to worry about when the bullets started flying. Naturally, it was Frances that fate had taken too soon. Walt shoves down the memories and thinks again of Carmelita. She never worries when he leaves, though she knows some of his recent jobs have gotten hairy. Crime has changed in the past twenty-five years, even in Texas. Whatever code that once kept some sort of restraint operating among the criminal class vanished with the appearance of crack cocaine. Even so, says Carmelita, life is too short to spend it worrying, especially about old dogs like Walt, who always seem to find their way home in one piece.

Walt takes his gaze off the city’s cathedral steeple and looks down to the foot of the bluff, where the riverboat casinos hug the shore like remora fastened to a shark’s side. Two boats north of the bridge, two to the south. Walt chuckles to himself. Mark Twain would roll over in his grave. These “boats” may have been floated down the river to reach their present locations, but they were never meant to go anywhere under their own power; they don'’t even have engines. They’re floating entertainment complexes, like something from Walt Disney World. They exist for one reason: to drain money from as wide an area as possible and funnel it to the owners of the casinos, few of whom would deign to cross the borders of a state like Mississippi.

Walt has never been a gambler by constitution. He played some poker in Korea to keep his mind off the cold, and he won enough spending money to visit the clean whores in town rather than the girls hiding in the hills by the camp, all of whom carried exotic strains of VD. He’d also done some gambling in his various undercover roles, both as a Ranger and as a special investigator for the Harris County district attorney—Penn Cage’s old boss. Winning at poker was a matter of judging men quickly and accurately, and that wasn'’t much different from Rangering. Walt had found that his emotional detachment from games of chance gave him a significant edge over men who had the itch in their blood.

As the Roadtrek rocks and bounces down off the bridge, he swings left on Canal Street and heads into downtown Natchez. He hasn’'t seen Tom Cage in close to ten years, but when you'’ve served with a man in combat, the passage of time means nothing. You’re brothers until death—and beyond, if there is such a thing. From what Tom said, they need to work fast, and that means Walt establishing a cover as quickly as possible. He’s traveling under one of his favorite legends—J. B. Gilchrist, a Dallas oilman—and with a little help from the Cages, he’ll embed himself in the fabric of the town, then draw the target to him as surely as honey draws a bear.

It helps that Natchez is an oil town. There isn’t much business left here—mostly workovers being done by men trying to suck the last few barrels from wells drilled in the 1950s and capped in the 1980s—but some big fields were discovered in the old days, and the town enjoyed remarkable prosperity. Quite a few Texas outfits still have interests in the area, and with Tom arranging for a geologist friend to let it out that J. B. Gilchrist has an override on a well being drilled next week, the town’s history will firm up his cover just fine.

Walt turns on Main Street and parks outside the lobby of the Eola Hotel. As he dismounts from the big van, he sees several trailers parked crosswise in the crowded lot, most with colorful balloons painted on their sides. At the back of the lot, a couple of crews seem to be packing suitcases into their trucks rather than unpacking, as Walt would have expected. He brought the Roadtrek because Tom had told him he wouldn'’t be able to rent a hotel room during the festival weekend, but Walt senses that the introductory scene he’d planned to play in the lobby might just pay off with a room.

The Eola is a classy hotel from a bygone era, a grand old dame that makes even Walt feel young again. He walks up to the brass cage of the desk and nods to the harried-looking desk clerk whose name tag reads BRAD

.

“Can I help you?” asks the young man, not meeting Walt’s eye.

“J. B Gilchrist, checking in.”

“Yes, sir. Do you have a reservation?”

“Course I do. Check your screen there. It’s

G-I-L,

then the name of our Lord. You follow?”

Brad looks perplexed. “Sir, ah…I'm checking under

G,

but I don'’t show a

Gilchrist.

Could the reservation be under another name?”

“How could it be under another name?” Walt asks, upping his volume enough to turn a few heads. “I only got one name, son. Big Jim Gilchrist. And I'm tired from a damn long drive. Now, I was happy when I walked in. Why don'’t you get me fixed up so I can stay happy?”

“Sir, I'm afraid this is one of the most crowded weekends of the year, and—”

Walt cuts the boy off with a withering glare. “Listen, son, let’s skip the formalities and get your supervisor in on this, so we can have an executive decision. Hotels always keep a couple rooms on standby for when they make mistakes, like you’re making now. You just tell your boss to release one of ’em, and everything will be fine.”

“Mr. Gilchrist, I don'’t think you understand the—”

“Supervisor,” Walt cuts in. “Boss man,

jefe

—are you reading me? Call whoever you got to call to make this right.”

Walt turns away from the desk and walks toward a long, black grand piano that looks like an idling limousine awaiting a driver. He begins hammering out “Chopsticks,” drawing curious and annoyed glances from the guests in the lobby.

“Mr. Gilchrist?” Brad calls. “Sir?”

Walt doesn’'t stop banging the keys, but he cuts his eyes toward the desk. “I'’ll bet you'’ve got some good news for me.”

“Well, actually, it turns out that we do have an unexpected checkout. If you don'’t mind a room that hasn’'t been made up yet?”

Walt laughs good-naturedly. “Son, before I struck it big, I stayed in places a cockroach would have run from. You just print me out a key. I'm ready to get down to one of them boats and lose some money.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

Walt looks around and sighs expansively. “Seems like a lot going on for this town. This ain’t Pilgrimage month, is it?”

“No, sir. It’s the Balloon Festival. The only reason this room is free is because we had a problem this morning with the flight.”

Walt’s inner sentry goes on alert. “What kind of problem?

“Well, someone took a shot at one of the balloons.”

“I'’ll be dogged. Kill anybody?”

“No, sir. But they did have to crash-land the balloon. And the mayor was in it.”

“The mayor?” Walt barks a laugh as he thinks this through. If Penn had been badly hurt, Tom would have called despite instructions not to save in dire emergency. “No kidding? He make it?”

“He’s fine. They just had a hard landing.”

“He must have pissed somebody off, huh? Wrote the wrong ordinance or something. I’'ve known a couple mayors I wouldn'’t have minded shooting.”

“They think it was squirrel hunters.”

“I'’ll be dogged,” Walt says again. “Balloons flying tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir, Sunday too. But everybody’s nervous, and some of the pilots have left town. It’s a pilot’s room you’re taking tonight.”

“Sounds like I owe the lone gunman a favor. Otherwise I wouldn'’t have a room in this fine establishment.”

The clerk slides a form toward him. “If you’ll just initial here, and here, and sign at the bottom. Please note the fine for smoking in the room.”

“Hell, I'’ll just pay you now.”

Brad frowns. “It’s two hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Gilchrist.”

Walt laughs like a man for whom $250 is a minute’s pay, then signs his name with a flourish. “Just pulling your chain, Brad.”

As the clerk tries to pull back the form, Walt leans in close. “Say, what’s the action like around here?”

Brad looks confused. “The casinos are all beneath the bluff. Our concierge can help you with anything else, but he’s busy right now.”

Walt slides a $100 bill across the desk. “I'm talking about girls, Brad. I know where the gambling is, but that’s only half the party. I’'ve been hankering for a colored girl, to tell you the truth. Been a while, you know? This seems like the right town for that. They got girls on the boats or what?”

Obviously offended, the clerk lets his voice take on a haughty tone. “I'm sure I don'’t know, sir.”

“What about cockfighting? I know you got some of that around here. That'’s the kind of action I'm talking about. Blood sport.”

Brad straightens up and squares his shoulders. “Sir, if you don'’t mind, there are people waiting.”

Walt snatches back the bill. “You’re in the wrong job, sonny. You say the concierge is busy? You got an elevator man? Somebody around a hotel has to know what’s what.”

The clerk’s cheeks are red. “Will you be needing help with your luggage?”

“I need a bellboy who can earn that C-note with some useful information, that’s what I need.”

“Perhaps someone can help you on one of the boats.”

Walt walks away muttering loudly, “I never heard of a deskman in an oil town who don'’t know nothin’ ’bout the local trim.” He turns and shouts, “Send a bottle of Maker’s Mark up to my room from the bar. You know what that is, don'’t you?”

“A full bottle?”

“Jesus, Brad, where’d they find you? I want whiskey, and if you'’ve got a pretty maid who can bring it up, send her up with it.”

There was a time when the way he’d behaved in the last five minutes wouldn'’t have shocked any hotel man in the South, and not many around the country.

I guess times do change,

Walt thinks.

But not that much.

The clerk would gripe to somebody about the old asshole he’d had to deal with, then repeat what Walt had asked for, and soon enough, like ripples in the proverbial pond, word would reach the proper ear. It was simply a matter of waiting.

Any fisherman could tell you that.

CHAPTER

25

“Do you have any food in your backpack?” Caitlin asks. “I think better when I'm eating.”

“No food, sorry.”

She’s pacing the supply room of the

Natchez Examiner,

studying my handwritten transcription of the text message Chief Logan showed me, the one Tim sent to Linda Church shortly before he died. I’'ve told Caitlin all I know of the case so far, but true to character, she has set aside the larger questions to focus on an immediate challenge. She’s something of a savant with puzzles, and nothing if not obsessive in all pursuits.

“I don'’t think this is a password,” she murmurs to herself. “It’s too long, plus it’s counterintuitive. Have you gone to this URL, www.thief.com?”

“Yes. I don'’t see how the site could be related to any of this. And there’s no dot-com in the text message. We’re just assuming that one follows.”

“Right, right. What

is

in the backpack?”

“A gun and a satellite phone.”

She looks up, checking to see if I'm joking. When she sees I'm not, her gaze drops back to the message. “I suppose there could be more to the Web address, and Tim knew Linda would know what the rest

of it was. But if that’s the case, we’re not going to find that without Linda. Not easily, anyway.”

“Obviously it could be a code of some kind, but it’s not simple enough for me to break it.”

“Maybe,” Caitlin concedes. “But the words that follow don'’t appear to be random. ‘Kill mommy. Squirt too.’ But they don'’t actually say that, do they? Are these letters exactly what you saw in the police station?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And you don'’t believe Tim would have tried to get rid of his wife and kid to run off with this Linda woman?”

“No way in hell. He lived for that kid. I'’ll be surprised if it turns out he was even having an affair with Linda.”

“I won'’t.”

Caitlin makes another tight circuit of the room, then stops with her forefinger on the paper. “You know what?” she says, her voice suddenly bright with excitement.

“What?”

“I think this message is just what it looks like!”

“Which is what?”

“A text message.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just a second.” She rummages through her purse, then pulls out a small flat pen and a business card. Setting them aside, she taps at the keys of her cell phone for half a minute. Then, after scrawling on the back of the card for a few seconds, she drops the pen back in her purse and shoves the card at me with a look of triumph. “There you go. There’s your message.”

I look down and read aloud what she’s written: “

They know. Run.

Is that it?”

“That'’s it.”

“So he was warning her to get off the boat?”

“Yep.”

“How did you get that?”

“The cell phone Tim used to send this message was in predictive text mode. Either he didn't know that or he forgot, and he typed the message without looking at the screen. Otherwise he would have

seen what was happening to his intended message. Was this sent from his personal phone?”

“I don'’t…yes. This actually makes sense. He was being chased in his car. He couldn'’t take time to try to use his extra phones, or even to look down at his own phone.”

“A lot of girls I know can do that,” Caitlin muses. “Not so many guys.”

“Tim probably could.”

“But he didn't warn her in time. Did he?”

“I don'’t think so. I think Linda Church is dead. Or worse.”

“What’s worse?” I actually see the memory of my describing Tim’s tortured body come back to Caitlin. “Oh. Never mind.”

I turn over the card she gave me.

Zeitgeist Films HD.

“Ah. Your friend.” She gives me a look like

Give me a break,

but I don'’t. “What’s the deal with that guy? What did you tell him?”

“He had interviews to do in New Orleans. I didn't.”

“Does he expect you down there?”

“Not so much. Look, he was starting to get on my nerves, if you want to know the truth.”

“And this little adventure gives you a good excuse to blow him off.”

“You don'’t want me to blow him off?”

“I just need to know I can count on you being here for three or four days. Without interference.”

“The answer is yes. And don'’t forget, I'm already paying my way. I just broke your code for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Should we tell anyone else?”

“No.”

“Then can we get out of here and get some food?”

“Not if you want to keep talking about the case.”

She gives me a crafty smile, says, “Give me forty seconds,” then leaves the supply room. She returns in less time than that, a set of keys with a Chrysler ring in her hand.

“This van is a mess, but there’s no way it’s bugged. No one would even get into it without a hazmat suit. Come on. We can talk in there.”

Walking out to the van, I scan the parking lot and the street. I don'’t see anyone watching, but that doesn’'t mean anything.

As predicted, the van is a wreck, but I do feel more secure in it. The best way to beat surveillance—or even terrorists—is to abandon all patterns, to make random decisions. This is a good one.

Caitlin drives us over to Franklin Street, where a recent arrival has opened a Greek fast-food joint in an old fried-chicken restaurant. He still serves fried chicken and catfish, but now the black section of town—where this restaurant is—is getting a taste of pita and souvlaki. So far, the place is still open, and it has a drive-through window.

“So what about your high school girl?” Caitlin asks, after ordering gyro plates to go for both of us. “You two still talk?”

“Give me a break. You know nothing happened.”

Her eyebrows arch for a split second. “So you say. Still at Harvard?”

“Yes.”

“I thought she might flunk out, pining away for you and all.”

I shake my head and look away, pressing back thoughts of Mia Burke and what she might be doing tonight. She has e-mailed me several times, and I have responded twice. But I have kept her at a remove.

“So, what are you

doing

about Tim’s death?” Caitlin asks. “I still haven'’t heard a plan of action.”

“Daniel Kelly’s on his way here from Afghanistan. He should be here early tomorrow morning. Like six a.m.”

“That'’s a good first step. Rambo with a blond ponytail.”

“Sometimes that’s what you need.”

“Oh, I know. I was kidding. What about the local cops? You don'’t think you can trust Chief Logan?”

“I think it’s more a matter of him not knowing who he can trust.”

“Will he work Tim’s murder, at least?”

“I don'’t think it matters much, unless he finds a smoking gun. Which he won'’t. Even if he did, Shad Johnson could still make it difficult to prosecute the people involved.”

“And of course the FBI hates your guts.”

“There are still a couple of people there I think I could talk to. I’'ve thought about calling Peter Lutjens, just to have him troll through the computers for what can turn up on Jonathan Sands.” Lutjens is

an agent who works in the Puzzle Palace—FBI headquarters—and has access to almost everything in their digital data banks.

“You nearly got him fired last time,” Caitlin reminds me.

“Not ‘nearly.’ He was fired.”

“They reinstated him.”

“The point is, Peter might be able to help, but I'm reluctant to put him in the same position again. I also worry that any query on Sands might trigger some kind of automatic response.”

“Okay, there’s my problem with this. How could a guy working in a casino in Natchez, Mississippi, be that important?”

“If we knew that, our problems would be over.”

The window attendant hands Caitlin a white bag, and she pays with a credit card. As we pull away, she plucks a triangle of pita bread from the bag and eats it in a bite. “Food of the gods,” she says. “What about the Chinese angle? In the post-9/11 world, surely foreign investors in American casinos must be investigated by the CIA, even if the gaming commission gives them a pass because they have a nominally small share.”

“I agree. That part doesn’'t make sense. If one of these Chinese investors has a criminal record, or is dirty in some way, I don'’t see the government allowing him to purchase part of a casino company.”

“And you never thought Tim’s theory of Sands ripping off the town by shorting taxes made sense. So what is he really up to?”

“When I was in Houston, I heard about some cases where casinos had been used for money laundering. An Indian casino in particular, I remember, with links to organized crime on the East Coast. But if that’s what they'’re up to, why risk the operation with side action like dogfighting and prostitution? I mean, maybe a guy like Sands would risk it, but not some Chinese billionaire. At least I don'’t think he would.”

“Superrich freaks exist,” Caitlin says. She laughs, then digs out a strip of meat to eat with another piece of pita. “In fact, they'’re probably the rule, not the exception. Plenty of rich Japanese freaks, when it comes to sex and violence. China, I don'’t know. I’'ve been there twice, but only as a tourist.”

“You mean you didn't sleep with any natives?”

“No, I still like older white guys, for some unfathomable reason. What do you expect out of Kelly?”

“Security, for one thing.”

She looks up with utter seriousness in her eyes.

Annie?

she mouths.

“Safe. That'’s all that matters. But Kelly won'’t show up empty-handed. He’ll have whatever Blackhawk finds on Sands, Quinn, and Golden Parachute. Those guys don'’t miss much.”

Caitlin gives a skeptical little

hmph.

“What’s that for?”

“They do a lot of work in Iraq, right? That hasn’'t turned out so well, in case you haven'’t noticed.”

“Yeah, well, Kelly’s on the first team. And he’ll push to get a thorough job on this.”

“I agree. Besides, I miss having a guy around who can handle a mob attack or home invasion, if I get into that kind of situation.”

I know she’s keeping up this patter to try to keep me from sinking into depression, but just bringing her up to speed has exhausted me. Two bites of food is like taking a shot of Demerol.

“I wasn'’t kidding when I said you look terrible,” Caitlin says. “What were you going to do next? Like right this minute?”

“Tonight I'm going to fly the river with Danny McDavitt and try to see where the VIP boat goes.”

“The VIP boat?”

“The excursion boat owned by Golden Parachute. I forgot to tell you, Tim said they usually take the excursion boat to these dogfights.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I got a few hours last night.”

“Bullshit. Your eyes look like they'’re bleeding.”

I flip down the visor and look in the vanity mirror. She’s not exaggerating by much. If I don'’t recharge my batteries soon, I'm going to be no use to anybody. “Actually…I guess the last time I slept was in my office yesterday. Couple of hours on a cot. And I only got four hours the night before that.”

“What were you going to do if you found the VIP boat?”

“Nothing. Stand off and find out where it anchors. Then go home and wait for Kelly.”

“I think your pilot could handle that job on his own. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, I think he could. But—”

“You’re in no condition to make decisions. You’ve done well up to now, but you need sleep. You’re coming back to my house and crashing until an hour before Kelly arrives. Tell McDavitt to call me if there’s a problem. I'’ll man the satellite phone, whatever.”

“That'’s a tempting offer.”

“It’s not an offer. It’s an order.”

“Okay. Let me speak to Danny. I need to check on something anyway.”

As Caitlin drives along Homochitto Street, I roll down the window and call Danny McDavitt on the satellite phone. His usually laconic voice sounds worried from the first syllable.

“Carl’s not back yet,” he says.

“From the Devil’s Punchbowl?”

“Right.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“I don'’t know exactly what time he went in, but he’s almost three hours past due now.”

“You think he got stuck down there in the dark?”

“He may have. He’d probably spend the night down there rather than try to climb out in the dark.”

“I hope that’s it.”

“How are you doing?” McDavitt asks.

“I'm pretty whipped. Haven’t slept for two days. Do you think you could make tonight’s flight without me?”

“Just do what we talked about earlier?”

“Yeah. And stay far enough away so that they don'’t hear the chopper.”

“I might have to make one pass at an audible level to get a good fix. FLIR has its limitations, especially when you can’t afford the top of the line.”

“Just be careful.”

“Always. Hey, I heard from Hans Necker. He examined the wrecked balloon, and he’s pretty sure the shots came from the levee road. So most likely they were fired from a parked vehicle, or from the trees near one. And definitely from a silenced rifle.”

“Okay. Tell him thanks if you talk to him again, but we already know who ordered those shots fired. I was just hoping they’d been

fired from private property, and we could get the name of the landowner. How are Necker’s legs?”

“One bad sprain, one fracture. He’s a tough bird though. I also heard from our blond friend. He’s landing in Baton Rouge about three this morning. I'm going to fly down and get him, if you’ll pay for the fuel.”

“Absolutely.”

“We can be at the rendezvous by four thirty a.m., if you want to wake up that early.”

When Danny dropped me off at my car, we decided that as soon as Kelly arrived, we’d meet on a piece of private property owned by one of my father’s two partners. “That'’s great. The sooner the better.”

“Do you want a report before then?”

“Only if Carl turns up.”

“Right. I'm out.”

“Thanks, Danny.”

“Everything okay?” Caitlin asks.

“I don'’t know. The guy who’s checking out Tim’s car hasn’'t come out of the Devil’s Punchbowl.”

“You think he’s in trouble?”

“I just hope he’s not down with a snakebite or something.”

“You said he was a marine, right? He’ll be okay.”

“I guess. That food is really hitting me now. Jesus. I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“Close them. I'’ll wake you when we get to my house.”

“If my cell rings, ignore it. If the satellite phone rings, answer it. But be very careful what you say, once we’re in your house.”

She reaches out and brushes my hair away from my eyes. “Just let go, okay? We’ll be home soon. You did the right thing telling me.”

“Did I?” I ask, but my mind is already sliding into blankness.

“Penn, wake up.”

“What?” I jerk to a half-alert state of panic. We’re still in the car, parked against a vanilla brick wall. “What’s happening?”

“Chief Logan just called.”

“What time is it?”

“You were only asleep for a couple of minutes. We were almost home and your phone rang.”

More panic. “The satellite phone?”

“No, no, your regular cell. I wouldn'’t have answered, but I recognized his number.”

“You what?”

“I don'’t forget numbers, you know that.”

I look out the window and see the Entergy building. “We’re at the police station?”

“Logan said he needs to talk to you face-to-face.”

“What else did he say? Sands’s people can listen to my regular cell.”

“He said the problem was Soren Jensen and Shad Johnson. I think you’re okay. Apparently the boy hasn’'t been arraigned yet, and your old girlfriend has been raising hell. That'’s good cover, right?”

“Best we’re going to get. Is Libby here now?”

“No. Wasn’t she a lawyer before she ran that bookstore?”

“A corporate lawyer. And she’s not licensed to practice in Mississippi. Look, do you mind waiting in the car?”

Caitlin gives me a disappointed look. “You don'’t trust me?”

“It’s not that. Logan’s not going to speak freely in front of you.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think anybody followed us here?”

“I don'’t think so. But what do I know? I haven'’t been stalked since college.”

“Even so, we can’t use this car anymore. If Sands’s people heard that call, they’ll cruise by just to see what vehicle I'm in.”

“I can get more cars,” Caitlin says. “Get going. You know I hate waiting.”

Chief Logan looks five years older than he did yesterday.

“What’s up, Don?”

“I’'ve got the autopsy report.”

“Looks like you don'’t like what’s in it. How long have you had it?”

“A few hours.”

“What does it say?”

His eyes meet mine. “I have a feeling you already know.”

“I knew last night what it was going to say. Murder. You knew it too.”

“Yeah. I guess I was hoping this really was a drug murder. Or just a straight killing. Over a debt, a woman…something.”

“There’s nothing straight about this, Don. What did Shad say about the autopsy?”

“Our illustrious district attorney claims this

is

a drug murder. Drugs and adultery.”

“So why did they torture him?”

“That'’s easy to explain, if you’re trying.”

“What about Linda Church? Any word on her?”

“Nothing. It’s like she fell off the face of the earth.”

“I think she has. She knew way too much to keep breathing.”

Logan sighs heavily.

“What are you going to do now, Chief?”

“Same thing I always do. Work the case.”

“How?”

“That'’s what I’'ve been down here thinking about. What would you do, if you were in my place?”

“I’d get a warrant for the security tapes on the

Magnolia Queen

for the twelve hours prior to Tim’s death.”

Logan’s mouth falls open. “You’re kidding, right? What would they show?”

“I don'’t know. But the company’s reaction to the search would tell you a lot. What about the SUV Tim jumped out of before he was killed?”

“Three local casinos own similar vehicles. Golden Parachute alone owns eight of them. But I don'’t have a plate, so what can I do?”

“Make them account for every one of them. Look for time sheets. Try to spot the vehicles on surveillance cameras.”

Logan leans back in his chair. “Jessup did something on that boat, didn't he? That'’s why he’s dead.”

“I have no idea, Chief.”

“Sure you don'’t.”

For a moment I consider telling Logan that I know where Tim’s car is, but that’s a risk I'm not prepared to take until I know Carl Sims is alive and well. “I’d also check every business and home on Broadway for security cameras. Maybe somebody has a tape of the minutes before Tim went over the fence and doesn’'t even know it yet.”

“I’'ve checked. No luck. In Natchez, you generally only find cam

eras at gas stations, convenience stores, and banks. Liquor stores, of course.”

“And casinos,” I add.

“I hear you. But what judge is going to give me a search warrant for those tapes?”

“Judge? I thought you had a stack of presigned warrants over here that you just fill out when you need one.”

Logan shakes his head. “Once upon a time, maybe. But those days are gone. I can pick up the phone and get a search warrant for almost anywhere in the city, probable cause or not. But the security tapes of a casino boat? No judge wants to get into a pissing match with those people and their lawyers.”

“An honest judge has nothing to worry about. You’ll get the warrant if you ask for it. Try Eunice Franklin.”

Logan gives me a weary sigh. “I'’ll think about it, okay?”

“Don’t think too long. Tapes can be erased. Actually it’s probably hard drives, not tapes. I’d get on top of this fast.”

“In an ideal world.”

“The world is what we make it,” I say softly.

Logan steeples his fingers and regards me with a cold eye. “You know, when you won for mayor, I was looking for some big changes. And I think you were ready to make them. So why haven'’t things changed much?”

“I take your point. I realize you don'’t have a lot of power, Don. But you do have some. And no one can fault you for working a homicide case hard. Certainly not the average citizen. If you say you need those tapes, I'’ll back you up, and so will the people of the town.”

“The people of the town won'’t be sued for harassment by a battery of attorneys.”

“Who do you think pays if you lose a suit? Ultimately, it’s the town.”

“Okay, okay. But let me turn this around. What are

you

doing about Jessup’s death?”

“Nothing,” I say flatly.

Logan seems surprised, but after a few moments he seems to reconcile himself with the fact that I can’t or won'’t say more. “Penn,

what did Jessup steal? What’s on that USB drive he hid up his ass? If I knew that…”

I turn up my palms and give him a helpless shrug. Unless he’s a very good actor, Don Logan is an honest man. That he’s in the dark about the missing data tells me that. But his power to help me with my problem is limited. “Are your men as ignorant of that as you are?”

His eyes never leave mine. “I wish I knew.”

“Have you been threatened, Don?”

“Not in so many words. But it’s no secret that nobody wants a cash cow to stop making milk.” Logan gets up and gets himself a cup of coffee from a small carafe on a table to his left. “I thought I was being put through the ringer, but you look pretty rough, brother.”

“I feel worse than I look.”

“You’d better get some sleep.”

“I'm about to. Maybe things will be better when I wake up, huh?”

Logan sips his coffee. “I wouldn'’t count on it. If this were a hurricane, I’d say it hadn'’t even made landfall. Yet.”

I get to my feet and walk slowly toward his door. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“Any last advice?” Logan asks.

“Think hard about who you assign to this case.”

“Who would you suggest?”

“Family men with no history of financial problems or substance abuse. And none with expensive habits.”

He studies me in silence for a while. “What if they actually turn up some evidence?”

“I’d keep it to myself until I talked to the mayor.”

Logan clucks his tongue. “What about the district attorney?”

“Obviously the DA has to be informed. At some point.”

“That sounds like a dangerous game.”

“It has been from the start. We just didn't know we were playing it.”

When I step outside, Caitlin actually gets out and opens my door for me. “A new black Cadillac Escalade parked in the lot three minutes after you went inside.”

“Where is it now?”

“The second you appeared in the entryway, it took off, headed downtown.”

“It didn't pick up anybody or drop someone off?”

“No. And it had tinted windows. I couldn'’t see anything.”

Only after I'm in and seated do I notice my open backpack on the floor at my feet. My pistol is lying on the dashboard.

“Good girl.”

“Maybe it was nothing,” she says.

“Don’t think that for a second. You’re in the middle of this now. You’ve been in it ever since you wrote the story on Tim’s death.”

“Should I drive back to the office and get my car?”

“No. This van’s blown now. Let’s take the shortest path to your house. I need a bed.”

She pulls out of the lot and turns right, heading toward town through widely spaced pools of sodium-pink light. “What did Logan want?”

“He knows Tim was murdered. He knows it has something to do with the

Magnolia Queen.

Beyond that…I don'’t know.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I think he’s clean on this. But he knows something’s wrong, and that it runs deep in the town.”

“Can he help?”

“Not much, if at all.”

The smell of the leftover Greek food combined with the mess already in the van makes my stomach roll.

“What is it?” Caitlin asks anxiously.

“Just queasy. Exhaustion.”

I feel her hand close on my left knee. “Three minutes, you’ll be in my bed.”

A strange laugh comes from my lips, but it sounds like someone else’s voice. “I thought that would take a lot more work than this.”

“Oh, I'm not worried. I don'’t think you could do anything about it even if you wanted to. Certainly not up to my standard, anyway.”

I want to offer a riposte, but my synapses don'’t seem to be firing properly. My eyelids are closing when my cell phone rings. I start to ignore it, but then I see that the caller is Seamus Quinn.

“Our friends from the Emerald Isle,” I mutter. “Hello?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Quinn asks with his usual diplomacy.

“Making sure the police don'’t turn my ex-girlfriend’s son into hamburger.”

There’s a short pause. “Where are you now?”

“With my old girlfriend.”

“What girlfriend? The bookstore woman?”

“No, my

old

old girlfriend. The mouthy cunt, as your boss called her.”

Caitlin shoots me a sidelong look.

“What kind of game are you playin’, counselor?”

“No game. You told me to do what I would normally do. The chief called me about Soren Jensen, I went to deal with it. I'm still looking for your property.”

“And you haven'’t found it?”

“I covered the whole cemetery today, but I couldn'’t find anything.”

“Keep lookin’.”

On a hunch, I decide to take a gamble. “I did find Tim Jessup’s car.”

“Did you, now? Where was that?”

“Bottom of the Devil’s Punchbowl.”

“Ah. Well. That doesn’'t interest me.”

So they already knew about the car. They may even have burned it and run it into the Punchbowl. But from Quinn’s tone, I don'’t think he has Carl Sims on his radar. “Does your company own a black Escalade?”

“Don’t know what you’re blathering on about,” Quinn says. “But stick her once for me tonight, eh? She’s a hot piece.”

Caitlin obviously heard this last remark. She’s acting like she can’t believe the guy would say that, but she knows better, and she leans close to hear the rest of the conversation.

“I'’ll keep that in mind. I'm sleeping at her place. Tell your goons to keep their distance.”

“High and mighty,” Quinn says. “Know her type well. They want it nasty. She looks a bit young for you. Give me a ring if you run out of steam.”

Quinn is laughing as I click END.

“Was that Sands?” Caitlin asks.

“No, his security chief. He’s a thug. A monster, probably. Sands talks like the Duke of York. At least until he takes off the mask. Then he sounds like what you just heard.”

“Charming.”

“Don’t try to find out for yourself.” I slide lower in my seat, trying to find a comfortable position. “These guys are predators, you can’t forget that. Tim told me that the first night, and I didn't let it sink in. Don’t make the same mistake.”

Caitlin nods thoughtfully in the dark, but her eyes are bright. As it does most people, evil fascinates her. Like me, Caitlin has probed the dark side of human nature through her work. But unlike me, she has not become exhausted by the effort. As I descend into sleep, I recall a line of Wilde’s that she once quoted to me:

The burnt child loves the fire.

CHAPTER

26

It doesn’'t take long for a hooker to latch onto Walt. He’s playing the craps table in high style, like an oilman with money to burn, and nothing draws girls like burning money. This one’s young, and that fits his role: sugar daddy on the prowl. She’s a bottle blonde with skinny legs, a hard face, and hard little tits, but she’s not more than thirty, so she’ll do. Walt likes dark-haired women, but he’s somebody else tonight—J. B. Gilchrist from Dallas, Texas—and picking a wrong woman makes it easier to remember that.

Walt’s working the

Zephyr,

not the

Magnolia Queen.

In a market this small, word of a big player will spread plenty fast. His goal is to lose enough of Penn’s money that by tomorrow night, every pit boss and dealer in town will know his name.

The crowd on the

Zephyr

is mostly black, which he’d expected when a guy on the shuttle bus joked about him going to the

African Queen.

The majority of this clientele clearly doesn’'t have money to lose, but here they are, dropping their dollars into the slots and looking longingly at the table games. He feels guilty sliding the brightly colored chips across the felt under their watchful eyes, but he’s got a job to do, and there’s no point worrying about something he can’t change.

It takes about fifteen minutes—and a good deal more of Penn’s cash—before the table hits a hot streak. Walt’s not the roller when it happens, but that hardly matters: Craps is the most social of casino games, with the players rooting for each other, united against the house. By laying down hundreds per bet, Walt’s become the de facto “table captain,” and all eyes are on him. If he wins, everybody wins, at least in spirit.

By the time the roller has hit his fifth point, Walt’s up by thousands, and the hooker’s snuggling closer on his arm. His fellow players’ eyes go from Walt, as he makes his bet, to the tumbling dice, then back to Walt, who’s increased his line bets to a thousand dollars.

A couple of men in Western-style suede sport coats have joined the swelling crowd waiting for an opening at the table. Well-heeled rednecks by the look of them—one older with gray whiskers, the other a Tim McGraw look-alike in his midthirties—father and son, maybe. If they stick around, Walt might ask them about finding some action. They’ll ogle the blonde and say, “It looks like you already found some, partner,” but he’ll shake his head and draw them in close and ask about some real sport. They might act confused, play it carefully, but the young guy’s wearing an Angola Prison Rodeo belt buckle, so he can’t be from too far away. Walt suspects that he, at least, knows the score.

“Five, five,” the stickman calls out. “No-field five.” He pushes the dice to the red-hot roller. “High, low, yo, anyone?”

The stickman’s pushing for prop bets, bad-odds wagers that only amateurs make.

“Thousand on the yo.” The crowd hushes, watching as Walt tosses out two purple chips. “One for me and one for the boys.”

“Thank you very much for the action, sir,” says the stickman loudly, placing the chips in the middle of the table, one representing Walt’s bet, the other $1,000 bet for the stickman, the pit boss, and the two dealers running the table. Now Walt has the employees’ attention as well. If his bet hits, the dealers will win a tip that comes only a handful of times in a career.

“Whew,” breathes the girl on his arm. “That'’s a lot.”

Walt grins like he’s lapping it up. “That'’s the secret of this game, hon. Soon as you get a good run going, you ride it. Ride her till she bucks ya and go home happy.” He leans down to her ear and adds, “And ride some more.”

“You go, Dad,” says the rodeo fan. “Show ’em how it’s done!”

Walt gives the kid a hard look, then softens it into a smile, hugging the girl to his side. “This’un here’s the only one who gets to call me daddy.”

There’s general laughter from the crowd, and the roller tosses the dice.

The crowd whoops as the dice come up eleven.

“Yo eleven,” says the stickman, barely controlling the excitement in his voice. “Pay the line, and pay the gentleman. Thank you again, sir.”

Walt gives a casual nod as the dealers collect a total of $16,000 in tip money to divide as they see fit.

He lays down the same bet again, to sincere thank-yous from the crew. Predictably, it misses. And just as predictably, the roller’s hot run ends a few throws later. Gradually, the dice make their way around the table. When they reach Walt, he gestures graciously to the hooker that she should take his roll. She squeals and squeezes his arm, then takes a gulp from her rum and coke. He drops the dice into her moist palm, tells her to blow on them before she rolls. Her eyes light up like a penny slot machine. She blows on the dice, then flings them down the table like a kid skipping rocks on a pond.

“Seven,” says the stickman. “Winner, seven. Pay the line, take the don'’t.”

The crowd roars as usual, and Walt uses its attention like a spotlight. “Let’s do another bet for the boys,” he says generously. “You can win it for them, right, honey?”

The hooker giggles wildly as the stickman places another thousand-dollar “yo” bet for himself and his coworkers.

The hooker rolls the dice, establishing a point of four, but losing the prop bet. The crowd sighs.

“Sorry, boys,” Walt says. “Let’s hit that point. What do you say, Fancy?”

“It’s Nancy,” the girl says with an exaggerated pout.

Walt grins for the crowd. “I knew a Fancy in New Orleans once. Or was it Dallas? Hell, I can’t remember. But I sure remember her. How ’bout you be Fancy just for tonight?”

The hooker looks uncertainly around at the attentive eyes, then down at Walt’s long rack of high-value chips. Her eyes flash, and she pumps her fist like a high school cheerleader at a pep rally.

“Fancy Nancy!” she cries. “Gimme those damn dice!”

The crowd chatters while Walt places the maximum odds bet on his four, then falls silent, waiting for the throw.

“Roll ’em, Fancy,” Walt says. “Put the magic on ’em, baby. Give us a four. Make those old bones pay, I know you know how to do that.”

The crowd laughs again, but the girl’s past caring now. Walt feels like a son of a bitch, but it takes a son of a bitch to get his rocks off watching two dogs tear each other to pieces to please men who don'’t care if they live or die, except as extensions of their own pride.

Nancy blows on the dice again, then gives them a backhand throw, but the pit boss’s eyes are on Walt now. Just like the PTZ cameras in the hanging domes on the ceiling. The guys in the security room were probably bored shitless when he started his run, but now they'’re watching with the same hunger as the people leaning against the table, wishing somebody would beat the house and walk away flush.

Suckers every one,

Walt thinks.

How empty does your life have to be to spend your nights in this place?

The dice come up three and one—the needed four. Nancy shrieks, and the crowd surges against Walt like a tide. It’s so easy to win when you don'’t care one way or the other.

Walt ups his line bet, and Nancy rolls, establishing a point of four again. Walt takes the maximum odds, then places two thousand-dollar bets on “hard four”—one for him, and one for the dealers. Another crazy bet, way past the edge of probability. But a thrumming on that old taut wire stretched from his balls to his throat tells him that tonight is his night.

“Get ready, boys!” he says, feeling like Joe Namath before Super Bowl III. “You’re going home with folding money tonight!”

Nancy skips the dice across the table with evanescent excitement, and they rebound half the table’s length, wobbling over to a two and a two.

The dealers blink in astonishment as the crowd goes wild around them.

“Four the hard way,” the stickman says with unaccustomed awe. “Hard four. Pay the man.”

“And don'’t forget to pay yourselves, son,” Walt says with grandiose intimacy, having won both men another two grand each to take home. “You’re gonna remember J. B. Gilchrist, aren'’t you?”

The stickman smiles with genuine gratitude. “Yes, sir.”

“Color me up,” Walt tells the dealers, and the crowd falls silent. The dealers change his winnings into high-denomination chips that he can carry easily to the cashier.

Walt pockets the chips, then grabs the hooker and dips her low, like Fred and Ginger. Nancy squeals, but the crowd claps and cheers as Walt brings her back up, red-faced from the effort. “Time to move on, hon!” he bellows. “I like action, and the action’s always moving. Anybody knows where to find it, you come talk to me. I'm always looking!”

The crowd parts as though for a prophet, and Walt leads his hooker across the casino floor like a king escorting a royal consort. He hasn’'t felt this good about a job in a long time. He’d never gamble with his own money, but he does believe in luck. Any man who’s been in combat has seen luck in all its infinite variations, and Walt has been putting his life on the line for fifty years since he got back from Korea. He’s the last of the Rangers from his old company still doing law enforcement work, and while he knows that judgment and experience have helped get him this far, without luck he would have died long ago. Driving out from the ranch, he’d wondered if he might be pushing a little too hard this time, tempting the lady to turn against him. But tonight he feels the fullness of his abilities in all their old potency. He’s got his mojo working, as an old Houston cop used to tell him.

“I'm waiting for you,” he says softly, thinking of the man who threatened Tom Cage’s granddaughter. “Come on and take a nibble, sonny. I'’ll set the hook so hard it’ll break your goddamn jaw.”

In the parking lot on the bluff, Walt tips the driver of the shuttle bus, then steps off and joins Nancy on the pavement of the parking lot.

“Where’s your car?” the hooker asks, looking up the line of modest cars in the lot. “I'’ll bet you drive a big old Cadillac or something, don'’t you? Old school, right?”

“Hell no,” says Walt, pointing to the big Roadtrek van. “That'’s me right there.”

The girl’s mouth falls open. “Where? That?”

“That'’s me.” Walt clicks open the locks from his key ring. “Wait till you see her.”

The girl looks wary, but she follows him into the van, which is finished as finely as a boat cabin. “Ain’t no regular RV, is it?” she marvels, turning in the small space. “You got a stove and a microwave and a flat panel and a refrigerator and a—”

“Shower,” he finishes.

“Man! What did this thing set you back?”

“’Bout a hundred,” Walt says.

Nancy shakes her head and eyes the sofa in back doubtfully. “You’re not sleeping in this thing, are you? I mean, you got a hotel room, right?”

“Sure. I'm at the Eola.”

She smiles and nods knowingly. “Well, hell. Let’s get this thing going and get up there. We’ll open up the minibar and have us a party, Daddy.”

Walt opens a cabinet over the sink and pours himself a shot of Maker’s Mark. Then he sits at the table in back and drinks it, feeling the burn in his gullet.

Nancy looks puzzled. “You got any rum, by any chance?”

“Rum is for pirates and high school girls. You’re out of high school, aren'’t you?”

She giggles. “Maybe I am and maybe I ain’t. Do you want me to be?”

“What I want is for you to pour yourself a little whiskey and sit here by me.”

Nancy pours a glass of whiskey and sets it on the table, then sits beside Walt and nuzzles her face into his neck. For an instant he feels a shiver of desire, but then her hand creeps across his thigh and down between his legs, rubbing insistently.

“Don’t you want to get on over to that hotel?” she coos. “We wanna be where we can spread out. Don’t we?”

Walt doesn’'t want to take the girl back to the hotel. He wants to go back to his room alone and call Carmelita. He can’t do that, of course, not without breaking cover. He never had any intention of screwing Nancy. He figured he’d get her to do a little striptease, overtip her, then pretend to pass out and hope she didn't try to rob him. If she did, he’d “wake up” and ease her out gently. But now that they'’re alone, he knows he doesn’'t have the stomach for even that. Seeing those little tits drop out of that dress wouldn'’t do anything but make him think about the kids she has waiting at home, and the idea of her working with mechanical urgency to make him climax nauseates him.

What he really feels like doing is talking to her. Asking the same stupid question he asked the whores back in Korea—“How did you wind up doing this?”—which was all the more pointless back then because almost no one could answer even the simplest queries in English. Only in Japan had he received a real answer, on his extended R&R, and that had almost changed the course of his life.

“Don’t you want it, Daddy?” Nancy murmurs, rubbing clumsily at his trousers. “Huh?”

He drinks off her shot, then says, “Listen, Nancy,” and gently moves her hand out of his crotch. “You brought me some good luck in there, and I sure appreciate it. But I think I'm gonna call it a night.”

The girl’s face falls. “What’s the matter, J.B.? You don'’t like me?”

“Oh, I like you. A lot. But I'm gettin’ on up there in age, in case you haven'’t noticed.”

Nancy gives him a conspiratorial laugh.

“Hell, I got kids older than you. I like having a girl on my arm, putting on the dog a little. But the truth is, honey, old J.B. can’t really get it up no more.”

Her brow furrows as though she’s trying to understand an algebra problem. “What about Viagra?”

Walt chuckles as though with embarrassment. “I’'ve got a bad ticker, hon. Can’t take that stuff.”

Nancy looks almost frantic. “Well, there’s other things I can do. I mean, you got me out here and all. And I got to make a living, you know?”

“Oh, I know that, sweetheart. Don’t you worry ’bout that.” He digs out his roll and peels off five $100 bills. Nancy almost licks her lips at the sight of them, but she waits until he passes them to her. “Does that cover your time?”

The glow in her eyes tells him she hasn’'t seen that kind of money in a long time, if ever. “What about my tip?”

Walt hesitates, then winks like a man who knows he’s being taken advantage of and peels off another hundred, which he folds into the damp little palm.

“How long you gonna be in town, J.B.?” Nancy asks, obviously thinking about her future prospects. “I can put on the dog all you want, darling.”

“I'’ll be around all week. Got a piece of some Wilcox wells down here. You’ll see me around the boats. If I'm with somebody else, you just give me the high sign, and I'’ll come get you if I can. If not, I'’ll catch you the next night. Okay?”

She nods soberly. “I got you.”

Walt smiles with genuine gratitude. “Can you get home all right?”

“Yeah, my car’s in the lot here.”

“Where?”

“Other side.”

Walt gets up and cranks the Roadtrek, then follows Nancy’s pointing finger to the other side of the vast lot, where he stops beside her wreck of a car.

“It’s a junker,” she admits, “but it runs good. My ex is a mechanic.”

Walt feels like giving her the rest of the roll, but that would be pushing it.

Nancy raises her slim frame from the seat, leans down, and kisses him on the top of the head, then walks to the door in the side of the Roadtrek. As he looks back to watch her go, she pauses and lifts her tight skirt over her hips. A thin band of black elastic encircles her surprisingly feminine hips, and the thong disappears between the firm cheeks of her rump. She bends and touches her toes without effort, then stands and turns to face him, drawing the thong away from her pubis. The hair there is trimmed flat, a dark shadow over taut skin and protuberant lips. This time something stirs in him, something beyond thought or reason, the old Adam in him coming back to life.

“Do you miss it, J.B.?” she asks softly. “Don’t you just want to put your finger in it sometimes?”

Walt tries to laugh this off, but something sticks in his throat.

“Everybody wants to,” she says. “You don'’t never get too old for that.”

Walt looks into her eyes, then back at the triangular shadow.

“I'’ll be around,” she says, letting the thong pop back into place. “You let me know.”

She pulls down the clingy skirt, opens the door, and steps out of the van.

Walt drives away without looking back. Her groping touch had repelled him, but that last, unexpected display, her frank lack of embarrassment, arced across the space between them and struck something vital. It’s enough to make him want to stop the van and pour another drink. A girl he wouldn'’t have looked at twice ten years ago has pierced his armor with a simple tease. The confidence he felt on the boat has been shaken. As he climbs the long road that leads up the bluff, he wonders,

Am I getting too old for this game?

CHAPTER

27

After two nights without sleep, seven hours’ rest is not enough, but ten minutes in a steaming shower at least make me feel human again. Caitlin woke me from a dead sleep at 3:45 a.m. and led me to her bathroom. Now, as I'm toweling off, she comes in and sets a cup of coffee beside the lavatory. I wrap the towel around my waist, and she perches on the edge of the commode. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on at the police station.

“Have you slept?” I ask her, taking a hand towel off the rack to dry my hair.

“I’'ve been reading about dogfighting.”

“And?”

“My mind is blown. I'm serious. This is a worldwide sport—if you can call it that—and it goes back centuries. It’s been outlawed almost everywhere except Japan, but it’s still thriving all over the world. Did you even Google this?”

“I haven'’t had time.”

Caitlin shakes her head as though I'm hopeless. “I pictured, you know, a mob of hicks with twenty-dollar bills in their hands gathered around a couple of bulldogs. But this is a big-money business. There’s a whole American subculture out there. Two subcultures really: the old-timer rednecks—who specialize in breeding ‘game’ dogs and pass down all the knowledge about fighting bloodlines

from the 1800s; then there’s the urban culture—the street fighters, they call them. Hip-hop generation and all that. It’s a macho thing. They fight their dogs in open streets, basements, fenced yards. But as different as the two subcultures are, they have a lot in common. They’re highly organized, they train the dogs the same way, and they expose their kids to it very young to desensitize them…It’s

sick.

”

“‘Game dogs,’ you said. Is that what they call fighting dogs?”

“No, no. ‘Gameness’ is a quality that a dog has or doesn’'t have. If a dog is ‘game,’ that means he’s willing to fight to the point of death, no matter how badly injured he is. Truly game dogs will keep fighting with two broken forelegs.”

“Jesus.”

Caitlin stands, outrage animating her. “Apparently pit bull terriers are among the most loyal dogs in the world, and it’s that loyalty that these assholes twist to create animals that will sacrifice their lives to please their masters. You should see some pictures. When they'’re not fighting, these dogs live on heavy three-foot chains or on the breeding stand. That'’s it. And they don'’t live long. You know what happens to dogs that aren'’t considered game?”

“I can guess.”

She nods. “They kill them. Kill them or use them for practice. ‘Practice’ means letting other dogs tear them to pieces, to give them a taste for blood. If it’s the first option, they shoot them, hang them, bash in their skulls with bats, electrocute them, run them over with trucks. Sometimes they just let them starve.”

“It’s hard to grasp,” I say, knowing this is hardly adequate. “I need my clothes.”

“They’re in the dryer. I'’ll get them. Though I kind of like seeing you this way. It’s been a while.”

This is what you get with a journalist like Caitlin. She can talk about horrific details in the same sentence with her desire for food or sex. I guess it’s like doctors talking about suppurating infections while they eat. After a while, they just don'’t think about it.

“Yes, it has,” I agree.

She looks at me for a few moments more, then leaves the bathroom.

The hook has been set. She will not let go of this story until she finds everything there is to know. This probably puts her in more

danger than she was in before, but at least now she knows what she’s dealing with, and I will be close enough to protect her.

After I dress, we take my backpack and slip out a side window, then through a neighbor’s yard to a street two blocks away. There a female reporter named Kara picks us up in her Volkswagen. She drives us to her apartment on Orleans Street, tells Caitlin to be careful, and disappears. Then Caitlin takes the wheel and follows the directions I’'ve given her.

Our destination is a hundred acres of gated land called Hedges Plantation. Just off Highway 61 South, it’s owned by Drew Elliott, my father’s first junior partner, and a friend of mine since grade school. Dad is supposed to have got the key so that he can let us onto the property at 4:30 a.m. Danny McDavitt and Kelly are flying in from Baton Rouge, and McDavitt can probably set the chopper down there without anyone being the wiser. Though Hedges is surrounded by the newest residential developments on the south side of town, it’s mostly wooded, and protected from casual observation on every side. Drew originally planned to build a home here, but now I hear he plans to build a high-end subdivision. Modern medicine in a nutshell. There are a couple of aluminum buildings on the property, and it’s one of these that I’'ve chosen for our rendezvous.

“Is that the one?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a narrow gravel road just past the entrance to an antebellum home on the right.

“No, the next one.”

“I see it. Okay.” She slows the car, and the wheels crunch on gravel. “The thing about dogfighting,” she says—it’s standard procedure for Caitlin to return without warning to a previous discussion—“is that when the police do bust fights, which is rarely, they always turn up evidence of other crimes. Drugs, weapons, prostitution. The gambling goes without saying.”

“Kill your lights.”

“What?”

“There’s enough moonlight to get us down this road.”

She switches off the lights but keeps talking. “I don'’t mean random stuff either. The same criminals who run drugs and guns and girls love fighting dogs. It’s like the ultimate expression of the male lust for power and violence.”

“Your Radcliffe education is showing.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“I know. That'’s why I called Kelly.”

She gives me a tight smile. “Yeah, I get it now.”

As we roll up to a metal gate, a tall, white-haired man steps from behind some cedar trees to our right. My father. Caitlin smiles and starts to roll down her window, but Dad pulls open the gate and motions for us to drive quickly through. After we do, he locks the gate behind us and comes to the passenger door of the Volkswagen. I get out and squeeze into the back, leaving the front seat for him.

“Well, Kate,” he says, his eyes glinting as he looks at Caitlin. “It’s sure been dull without you around.”

“No more boredom,” she says with a smile. “I guarantee that, at the very least. Have you heard from Peggy and Annie?”

Dad shakes his head. “We’re talking as little as possible. And only on the satellite phone.”

“I have it with me,” I say. “We can get an update after this meeting.”

“Good. I have a surprise for you, Son.”

“What’s that?”

“Walt’s here.”

“Garrity?”

“Right.”

“What do you mean ‘here?’ In Natchez? Or

here

here?”

“He’s in the shed now, talking to Kelly.”

For the first time, I feel a rush of real optimism.

“The sly son of a bitch just appeared in my house,” Dad says. “Almost gave me a coronary. I have James Ervin watching me, and he had no idea Walt was even there.”

James Ervin is a black cop my dad used to treat. “That'’s not encouraging.”

“Walt’s pretty slick,” Dad says.

“Who’s Walt Garrity?” Caitlin asks.

“A Texas Ranger,” Dad explains. “Met him in Korea, when we were still boys. He’s semiretired, but I guess once you learn to sneak past Indians and Mexicans, retired city cops aren'’t much of a challenge. This will be the only night we see him. He wants to work totally apart from everyone else.”

As well as I got to know Walt in Houston, there are many things

I don'’t know about him. For example, I know that my father saved Walt’s life during the Korean War, and that Walt later returned the favor, but I don'’t know the circumstances of either episode. Both men belong to a generation that doesn’'t talk about certain things without a compelling reason.

“I'm sure Walt knows best,” I say. “We’ll talk about your security later.”

Dad ignores this and motions for Caitlin to continue up the road. She gives his hand a squeeze, then begins driving us deeper into the forest.

We’re meeting in a sixty-by-forty-foot shed of galvanized aluminum, the kind you see along highways all over the South. My father leads Caitlin and me past a ski boat on a trailer, a 1970s-vintage Corvette with a hole in its fiberglass, an orange Kubota tractor, a zero-turn lawn mower, and various other power machinery used for grounds maintenance. Near the far end of the building, sitting in folding lawn chairs beneath two camouflage-painted deer stands, are Danny McDavitt, Carl Sims, Walt Garrity, and Daniel Kelly. At first glance, they look incongruous, like an illustration of different American types: an astronaut, an NFL cornerback, a cowboy, and a surfer with a blond ponytail. I'm surprised to see Carl Sims here, but before I can ask about his descent into the Devil’s Punchbowl, Walt Garrity drawls, “Look what the cat drug in.”

Rising from his lawn chair, Walt catches sight of Caitlin and quickly doffs his Stetson. “Ma’am. I didn't realize we’d be having female company.”

Kelly rises to give Caitlin a hug. They met seven years ago, when we were drawn together by the Delano Payton case. “What do we have here, Penn?” Kelly asks. “The Seven Samurai?”

Carl Sims smiles from his chair. “Kind of looks like it, if you count the lady.”

“Oh, she pulls her weight,” Kelly says.

Gratitude shines in Caitlin’s eyes as she shakes hands with Carl and Danny.

“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “Leaderless soldiers gathered to save a village.”

“Well, I'm impressed,” Caitlin says. “An air force pilot, a marine sniper, a Texas Ranger, a Delta Force commando, and a doctor.”

“You left out lawyer and reporter,” McDavitt points out.

“Superfluous on any important mission, I'm sure,” she quips, getting a chuckle all around and putting everyone at ease.

“Not these days,” Kelly says. “Even the army needs a legal department and a propaganda machine.”

He unfolds three more chairs, and we sit in a tight circle, surrounded by chain saws and Weed Eaters and the oily smell of two-stroke engines. I look across the circle to Carl.

“So, you made it out of the Punchbowl?”

The sniper grins and shakes his head like a man who’s spent a week crossing a desert. “Took a while, but I finally did.”

Danny McDavitt says, “I would have called and told you, but I figured you needed the sleep.”

“Thank you,” says Caitlin. “He did.”

“Did you find anything down there?” I ask.

“Not a damn thing. Not in the car or around it. I grid-searched on my hands and knees. If there was anything down there, somebody else already got it.”

“Do you think the car burned when it crashed, or somebody torched it and dumped it there?”

“Somebody torched it, but I don'’t think they did it until yesterday. I think somebody else made the same climb I did, either to find something or to be sure they destroyed something.”

As I recall the USB drive Tim concealed in his own body, Dad says, “So, where do we start? Is everybody on the same page, or whatever they say these days?”

Walt leans back and speaks from beneath the brim of his hat. His voice has been roughened by years of cigarette smoke, and the clear eyes in the weathered face give him a natural authority that the others seem ready to defer to, at least for now.

“Mr. Kelly was just telling me some things his company has learned in the past few hours. Reckon he ought to start us off.”

“Everybody good with that?” Kelly asks.

The group nods as one.

“As most of you know, I work for Blackhawk Risk Manage

ment. We have a research department, and they’ve been checking out Jonathan Sands. In some ways, our research people aren'’t much different from those at any other corporation. They use Google, Nexis, et cetera. But Blackhawk also employs former counterterror operators from the U.S., Britain, Israel, Germany, South Africa—basically every major military power. We also employ former government lawyers and retired line officers. So our informal network of sources is pretty good. The initial bio I got back is detailed, but it only goes back to February 1989, when Sands left the UK. Northern Ireland, to be exact. This was just after some of the worst fighting in the so-called Troubles over there. The Brits are stonewalling on exactly what Sands did before ’89, so we’ll have to be content with what we have for now.”

“Why would they hold back?” I ask.

Kelly shrugs. “We don'’t know that yet. But he has an amazing story, and I’'ve heard a few. When Sands left Northern Ireland—one step ahead of somebody, is my guess—he worked as a mercenary for almost a decade, then settled in Macao. He started in the security department of a casino owned by Edward Po. Po is a legend, a whole separate story, so let’s forget him for now. Suffice to say he’s a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese billionaire, utterly ruthless and notoriously kinky. The important thing is that Sands arrived just before Macao was returned to Chinese sovereignty. It was about to expand from a serious-gamblers-only city to a Vegas-style destination, and Sands proved a valuable asset to Po. He was white, he could pass for English, and he had the kind of skill set that rough boys develop in Northern Ireland, plus what he’d learned in the interim. That doesn’'t explain his meteoric rise within Po’s organization, though. He was promoted very quickly, and within three years he was often seen with Po at various public functions in China. And not as a security officer, but a corporate officer. Sands even seemed to overtake Po’s son, whose name is Chao.”

“What explains that?” asks my father.

“Dogfighting,” says Kelly. “That'’s what I think. It’s Po’s passion. He’s a famous breeder of Japanese Tosas, and he definitely fights them on a circuit.”

“You think Sands picked up the taste for it there?” Carl asks.

Kelly shakes his head. “My gut tells me Sands grew up around it.

Specialized knowledge about the sport would have got him noticed by Po.”

Caitlin says, “I found a lot online about dogfighting in England and Ireland, going back centuries.”

Kelly nods sagely. “Let’s rewind a few years. Before Sands arrived on the scene, Edward Po had a younger brother named Yang, who died of cancer. Yang Po was a Christian, a Baptist converted by Scottish missionaries, and he ultimately married one of their daughters. Yang had a daughter named Jiao—half-caste, white blood. Very hot—in pictures, anyway.”

“I met her,” I say. “She’s striking, all right.”

Caitlin cuts her eyes at me. “Is she part of whatever’s going on here?”

“I think so, yeah. That'’s the vibe I got.”

“That'’s interesting,” says Kelly. “Because Yang Po had no involvement in his brother’s casinos or any other criminal activity. He was a professor—a

law

professor, if you can believe that. Edward, on the other hand, was neck-deep in every racket you can run in China, and that’s saying a lot. He’s since exported a lot of his operations to the U.S. and Europe, as well. What’s important for us is that Edward Po promised his dying brother that he’d not only take care of Jiao, but shield her from the sinful lifestyle. And he tried. He sent her to Cambridge, in fact. But when Jiao returned to Macao, she naturally fell for Sands, the Irish bad boy, much as her uncle seems to have done. Po hoped she’d grow out of it, but when she didn't, he told Sands to get out of town or else.”

“Or else what?” asks Caitlin.

“If Sands left China without Jiao, he’d get a nice severance package and the highest recommendation. If he stuck around or tried to take Jiao with him, they’d sever his genitals from his body, then his head from his neck.”

Caitlin’s eyebrows arch with interest, if not surprise. “So what did he do? Jiao’s here now. Did Sands risk the reprisal and take her with him?”

“He’s not the type to cave to threats,” I say.

“Depends on who’s doing the threatening,” says Kelly. “The IRA thinks they know something about torture? Trust me, you have to go to Asia to learn about pain. Sands had seen Po’s organization

from the inside, and he knew what would happen. He did exactly what the boss wanted. He left the girl

and

China. Anyone want to guess where he went?”

“Land of opportunity?” prompts Danny McDavitt.

“You got it. Las Vegas, to be exact. With Po’s recommendation, Sands got a top security job with the Palm Hotel group. Turned out his ambition was to own a casino himself. I think that’s what Sands was doing with the niece in Macao, trying to marry into the business. Fast-forward a few months, and enter Craig Weldon, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer who liked to hang out at the Vegas Palm. Weldon owns a sports management agency, and he had the same dream as Sands, to own a casino. The difference was, Weldon had the money to build one. That'’s how Golden Parachute was born. They made a simple plan to go into secondary markets—like Mississippi—and beat out the competition. They wanted to clean up out in the sticks, then return to Vegas as conquering heroes ten years later. Not a bad plan. But while they were putting all this together, Jiao showed up in Vegas. Couldn’t stay away. True love, and all that. Now, did Sands try to send her back to China? Did he ask her to stay? We don'’t know. All we do know is that Po didn't send an unlicensed surgical team to castrate Sands. He let the Golden Parachute get completely unfurled, ready to catch wind, and then…”

“What?” asks Caitlin.

“He stole it,” says Walt. “Right?”

Kelly smiles. “Lock, stock, and barrel. This is speculation, but probably very close to what happened. Right before Sands and Weldon applied for their license, Po showed up and said, ‘Hello, Jonathan, my faithful servant. I appreciate all the legwork, but Golden Parachute Gaming is about to become a subsidiary of Po Enterprises, Ltd. Unofficially, of course.’ And what could Sands do but grin and bear it? He knew he wouldn'’t live five minutes if Po decided otherwise. So, Po’s name went into the five-percent silent-partner pool as a token investor, but in reality, the bulk of the money that funded Golden Parachute was his. Craig Weldon became a figurehead, either bought off with massive payoffs or scared into silence. Chinese gangsters are pros at both. California still has Triad-affiliated youth gangs who can enforce whatever the higher-ups want. Forget Sands and Quinn—Craig Weldon owns a lot of L.A.

real estate, and an L.A. youth gang could permanently fuck up his portfolio with one weekend’s arson and vandalism.”

I wait for Kelly to go on, but he seems to have come to the end of his story. “So Golden Parachute is actually owned by a Chinese billionaire?”

“That'’s what my employers think.”

“Does the U.S. government know that?”

“That I don'’t know.”

After digesting this, I say, “What do you think Sands’s real position is with the company? Does he even have an equity stake?”

Kelly shrugs. “Whatever his title is, he might as well be chief cook and bottle-washer. He’s under Po’s thumb. It’s like he never even left Macao.”

“Except he has the girl,” Caitlin points out. “Jiao.”

“How happy did he look to you?” Kelly asks me.

“Not very. Which brings us to the question I’'ve been asking since Tim Jessup first came to me. What the hell is Sands really doing here? And is he doing it on his own, or for Edward Po?”

“Your father told me about Jessup’s theory,” Kelly says. “Sands

could

be stealing from the city to try to make his own pile. Get a stake and haul ass, with or without the girl. But is he that stupid? The world’s not big enough to hide from Edward Po. If that’s Sands’s plan, he’s a moron.”

“He’s no moron. The opposite, in fact.”

Kelly stands and begins doing dips between two crossbars on the poles supporting the deer stand. His triceps flex like those of an Olympic gymnast. “So,” he says, “whatever game Sands is playing with his accounting, he’s doing it on orders from Po. Or at the very least, with Po’s blessing.”

“That brings us back to my original question. Why risk a gaming license worth hundreds of millions of dollars to steal a few hundred thousand, or even a few million, from a small town in Mississippi? Edward Po can’t be that stupid.”

“He’s not,” Walt Garrity says in the tone of someone who knows.

“Are you familiar with Po?” Kelly asks.

“Not by name,” says the old Ranger. “But from what you'’ve said so far, I think I’'ve got the picture. Po’s Chinese organized crime, right?”

“Right.”

“If he has U.S. operations, they’ll involve human-smuggling, prostitution, possibly drugs, and definitely money laundering.”

“Right again,” says Kelly, looking slightly surprised.

“I wondered about money laundering,” I think aloud.

“Casinos are tailor-made for it,” Walt explains. “Casinos are just banks, really, without all the pesky regulations. Wherever you have casinos, you have large-scale money laundering. The feds have passed a lot of regulations, but there’s so much money to be made, crooks can bribe casino employees to ignore them.”

Caitlin says, “Would the profit be enough to tempt someone as wealthy as Po?”

“It’s not a matter of profit,” Walt says. “Not the way you think of it. The biggest problem any criminal has is what to

do

with his profits. Take drug dealers. Cash money weighs more than the product they sell. Cash is one big pain in the ass. A guy like Edward Po needs hundreds of legitimate businesses to lay off all the cash he takes in. Maybe thousands, if he’s that big in China. Import-export firms, currency exchanges, car dealerships, you name it. But casinos make the best laundries. Casinos and online gaming sites, based offshore.”

Kelly, Carl, and Danny are looking at Walt with new respect. Apparently, they took the older man for what he appeared to be, a tired cowboy who might know his way around a horse and saddle, but not a computer.

“So Tim might have been right about Sands manipulating the casino’s gross,” I reason. “But if I understand you correctly, they could be

exaggerating

the earnings of the casino rather than underreporting.”

“They might run some dirty money through that way,” Walt says, “but they’d be paying county, state, and federal taxes on it, and that gets costly. The bulk of the operation would be handled by wiring large sums into the casino’s bank for gamblers who show up a day or a week later, then gamble for twenty minutes, and cash out their accounts in money that’s now legally clean. The casino makes false reports to the government to understate or misrepresent the wire transactions, and that’s it. It’s a dream setup. How many casinos does Golden Parachute own?”

“Five in Mississippi alone.”

Walt chuckles softly, then begins to laugh outright.

“What is it?” asks my father, who seems to recognize Walt’s tone.

“Those casinos ain’t casinos at all,” says the Ranger, his face reddening. “They’re goddamn Chinese laundries.”

Kelly’s nodding thoughtfully. “That'’s got to be it.”

“If you’re right,” I say, “then why would Sands risk such a sweet deal to do things like fight dogs and run whores?”

Caitlin leans forward and speaks with cutting clarity. “The same reason a dog licks his balls.”

There’s an awkward silence, then the men burst out laughing.

“Because he can,” Carl says.

“It may be just that simple,” Kelly reflects. “Men follow their compulsions wherever they are. I see it all the time overseas.”

My father clears his throat and says, “This Freudian analysis is all fine and good, but what are we going to

do

? My wife and granddaughter are sitting in Houston with strangers because of these bastards. I want to know how to resolve this situation—fast.”

Everyone’s looking at Kelly. He stands motionless for a time, his eyes focused on the floor at the center of our circle with Zen-like calm. He’s thirty-nine years old, with not a spare ounce of fat on him. When he moves, his body ripples with corded muscle, yet his blue eyes seem mild, even amused most of the time. He may work for a security company, but when I see him like this, all I can think is

Delta Force.

“I'm tempted to pay Sands a personal visit,” he muses, still looking at the floor. “Before we do anything else.”

“For what?” I ask.

“To lay out some ground rules. He already threatened your family. He could strike at any time. He needs to know that any move against you will result in him being wiped from the board.”

I hear a couple of audible swallows.

“I can see that,” Walt says pragmatically. “The problem with going that way is you’re unzipping your fly the minute you talk to him. If Sands sees what he’s up against, he could pull in his horns and shut down for a while. That'’s the opposite of what we want. Right?”

Kelly considers this argument, then nods with certainty. “That'’s

why we’re going to end this thing tonight. Sands and Quinn are our immediate problem. We need to get them by the balls as fast as we can. Then the inevitable will happen.”

“What’s that?” Caitlin asks.

“Their hearts and minds will follow,” says McDavitt.

Kelly looks at me. “You said dogfighting’s a felony, right?”

“Right. Even attending one is a felony. And the sentences can be pretty stiff.”

“Then tonight we’re going to run a quiet little op. A photographic expedition. We’ll shoot pictures of Sands, Quinn, and any local dignitaries who might be in attendance, plus the whores and anything else worth shooting. At that point, you’ll have evidence that could put Sands in jail for serious time. Your DA will have no choice but to cooperate. I’'ve seen dogfighting in Kabul. It’s brutal stuff. If Caitlin publishes one photo spread on the

Examiner

’s Web site, the PETA people will be calling for the partners of Golden Parachute to be crucified on the Washington Mall.”

Walt nods. “I’'ve been trying to find out where they fight. Nothing yet, but I'm on it.”

“What do we use for equipment?” I ask.

“I’'ve got night-vision optics in my gear bag,” Kelly says. “Scope, camera, range finder. Carl’s probably got some stuff too.”

The sniper nods. “We got a new scope at the sheriff’s department. I can have it up from Athens Point by tonight.”

“How do we get close to one of these fights without being detected?” I ask.

Kelly smiles cagily. “Most of them happen by the river, right?”

“That'’s what Jessup told me.”

“Then we do a Huck Finn.”

“A raft?”

“Not exactly. didn't you tell me you'’ve done some kayaking with the guy who organizes that annual race here? The Fat something or other?”

“The Phat Water Kayak Challenge.”

“Right.” Kelly tries to puzzle this out. “Is he a rapper or something?”

“No, he’s an ex-marine, force recon. He’s about fifty.”

“Will he lend you a boat?”

“Sure. He’d be happy to guide us to wherever we’re going.”

“That'’s it, then. Danny will fly air support. He’ll be my eye in the sky, with Carl riding shotgun with his sniper rifle. Wherever the VIP boat docks, I'’ll slip into shore a hundred yards away, find the action, photograph it, then get out before they even know I'm there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says McDavitt. “I'’ll bet they go the same place they docked last night.”

“Where was that?” asks Caitlin.

“A spot down the river. Louisiana side. Looked like an old farm, maybe a deer camp now. I was pretty high up, but I saw what could have been a small crowd of men under some trees.”

“Wait a second,” I cut in. “Those kayaks are nineteen feet long, but they only seat one paddler. We—”

“I know they only seat one,” Kelly says, looking hard at me. “It’s not

we

on this trip, buddy. It’s me.”

I feel blood heating my face. “You’re not going without me.”

“I'’ll move a lot faster without you, Penn.”

“You’re missing the point. I need to be there so that I can corroborate the evidence later. We don'’t know what kind of legal proceedings might come out of this. You’re going to go back to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Africa, wherever. I need to be able to say I was there, that I saw you take these pictures and the action they document.”

Kelly takes a deep breath and looks at my father, but Dad says nothing.

“You’re forgetting something, buddy,” Kelly says. “Something I heard your mother told you not to forget.”

“What?” I ask, but it’s coming back to me now. The morning we evacuated them with Kelly’s people.

“Annie,” Caitlin reminds me. “This is no Outward Bound course. There’s real risk here.”

“Believe it,” Walt says. “Dogfighters are like drug growers, obsessed with security. They’re well-armed, high-tech, and highly mobile. You should expect guards—human and canine. You might run into booby traps, laser fences, God knows what.”

Kelly nods as though this is all part of a night’s work. “I’'ve been fighting Taliban insurgents for the past year, Mr. Garrity. I can handle this.”

“Oh, I'm sure you can. I'm just making the point for Penn.” Walt gives me a piercing look. “Your old-time American dogfighting fraternity is a tough bunch of boys. And from what you say about these Irish bastards, they could be worse. If they figure out Kelly’s close, there’s gonna be gunplay, no doubt about it.”

I look around the ring of faces, sensing that everyone agrees with Kelly and Caitlin. “I'm not forgetting Annie,” I tell them. “But I'm not forgetting Tim Jessup either. This isn’t up for debate. If we can take Tim’s killers down tonight, I'm going to be there.”

Caitlin uses her eyes to plead silently with me, but the men are watching my father. Dad rubs his chin for a while, then says, “Peggy was right about Annie needing you. She was right that we’re getting old. But she

isn’t

right that nothing’s more important than your children. Sometimes you have to take a stand. I'm not saying this is that time. But Tim was your friend, and I understand if you feel you have to go.”

“I'm getting two boats,” I tell them. “End of discussion.”

Kelly nods once in surrender. “Okay. We’ll put in upstream and take our directions from Danny in the chopper.”

“What about comm?” McDavitt asks.

Kelly reaches into his back pocket and takes out a small, black box like a cell phone, with a short, fat antenna. “These walkie-talkies are encrypted and guaranteed across ten miles. We call them Star Treks, like the ‘communicators’ on the old TV show. I brought four with me. For God’s sake, nobody lose one. They’re army-issue, Special Forces only, and it’s my ass if I go back to Afghanistan short.”

“What kind of weapons are you taking?” Carl asks.

Kelly looks as if this is the least of his concerns. “I'’ll decide that later. I’d like to avoid violence, if possible. But if they start the party, I'’ll be happy to bust their pińata.” Kelly gives Carl a frank look. “You down with that?”

The sniper turns the question over in his mind. “Somebody shoots at me, I gotta shoot back, don'’t I?”

“What if they shoot at

me

?” I ask.

Carl grins. “Just think about that insurance commercial, the one with the red umbrella. I got you covered.”

“How big is your umbrella?”

“In daylight, over a thousand yards. Nighttime’s a little different. But I won'’t be far away. You just focus on staying quiet while Kelly does his job. Danny and I will take care of the rest.”

“All this testosterone is certainly reassuring,” Caitlin says, “but what if you don'’t

find

a dogfight?”

Kelly shrugs. “We pull back, regroup, and wait for more intel. From what we know about Sands, I don'’t think he’s worried about being caught by the locals.”

“They’ll be fighting tonight,” Walt says with confidence. “Go outside and smell the air.

Feel

it. It’s football weather. The blood is up. Animals are getting itchy, starting to move. Bucks are fighting in the woods. Fighting and fucking’s what it’s all about this time of year.”

I think Caitlin is actually blushing.

“What about you, Mr. Garrity?” Kelly asks. “I know you didn't come all this way to twiddle your thumbs.”

“That'’s a fact,” Walt says. “I came because my old comrade-in-arms was in trouble.” He nods at my father. “And I do have a plan. But I tend to play a long game. I like to move slow and careful and let my prey come to me.”

Carl is listening closely. Undoubtedly, a sniper can relate to this philosophy.

In a good-natured voice, Walt says, “I'm sure that after tonight, I'’ll be redundant personnel. But no matter what happens, this is the last time you folks will see me. I'm like an actor playing a part. Once I get into the role, I don'’t break character. I almost didn't come tonight, but I wanted to see what this mess was really about. I'm glad I did.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you?” Kelly asks.

“I have only one request, and it’s for you.”

“What’s that?”

“I rather you not tell your employers about my involvement.”

“No problem.”

“Why not?” asks Caitlin. “You don'’t trust Blackhawk?”

Walt spits on the concrete floor and looks off into the shadows. “Blackhawk is a Texas outfit, and they have some good men over there. But after 9/11 they ramped up pretty quick—sort of like deputizing a bunch of laymen for a posse. It’s tough to know who you’re getting when you hire that fast.”

“I wouldn'’t argue with you,” says Kelly. “Don’t lose a second’s sleep over it.”

“I appreciate it.”

Walt stands and stretches, and within twenty seconds everyone else has followed suit. As he lowers his arms, I see a leather string around his neck that triggers a powerful memory.

“You still carry that derringer with you?”

Walt smiles, then pops open the top mother-of-pearl snap on his Western shirt and lifts what looks like a child’s toy from where it lies against his chest. Kelly and Carl lean forward. The derringer is smaller than a woman’s hand, with burled-wood grips and metal dulled by years of sweat.

“Two shots?” Carl asks.

Walt smiles. “That'’s one more than you generally get, ain’t it?”

“But I'm firing a .308 round.”

Walt pulls a pin from the gun and removes its cylinder, exposing the brass tails of five bullets. “Two’s generally enough in the kind of situation where you use this thing, but you never know.”

Carl puts his hand out and touches the gun like a talisman, but Kelly says, “I thought Texas Rangers carried Colt .45s.”

Walt chuckles. “Pretty hard to hide my old Colt. I’'ve been patted down many a time without anybody finding this little lady. She’s loaded with .22 long-rifle rounds. They do the job just fine.”

While Carl studies the gun, Kelly looks at me. “What’s your day look like?”

“I'm scheduled to present a citizenship award on the bluff at the Ramada Inn at two p.m. There’s always a big crowd there on Sunday, watching the balloons. Barbecue, lots of city employees, kids.”

“It’s public knowledge that you’re doing this?”

“Sure. Printed in the paper. Why?”

“I may stop by to get a look at whoever’s covering you.”

“You going to give me one of those Star Treks?”

Kelly laughs and passes me the one from his pocket. As I take it, he turns to Walt and says, “How about you, Mr. Garrity? You want one?”

The old ranger smiles. “Where I'm going, they’d just take it off me. A gun they might not mind, but radios are a big no-no.”

“Just making sure.”

“Thanks, but I work alone. Kind of a habit.”

Kelly laughs suddenly, as though at Walt’s expense.

“What is it?” Garrity asks, a little edge in his voice.

“I’'ve been trying to remember something all night. Something my uncle used to say.”

“What’s that?”

“‘One riot, one Ranger.’ That'’s the motto, isn’t it?”

Walt sighs like a man who’s heard this line a thousand times too many. “That'’s the myth, not the reality.”

Kelly says, “I understand,” and offers his hand.

Garrity takes it and shakes firmly. “Good luck to you, soldier. And keep your eyes peeled for dogs.”

“I'’ll hear the dogs,” Kelly assures him.

“No, you won'’t. Dogfighters are like the dopers now. Once upon a time, they used guard dogs to warn you away and alert them to run. Now they sever the vocal cords so there’s no bark to warn you.”

A chill races across my skin.

“My God,” says my father.

“They’re on your throat before you even know they'’re there,” Walt says. “A lot of cops have been hurt like that this past year. Some killed.”

“Thanks,” Kelly says. “I’'ve heard of that before, but I’'ve never seen a dog it’s been done to.”

“I have,” I say softly. “Jonathan Sands has one.”

Everyone turns to me.

“It’s white, and it’s

big.

I think the breed is called a Bully Kutta.”

I’'ve rarely seen astonishment on Kelly’s face, but I see it now. “That'’s a Pakistani breed,” he says. “A war dog. It’s related to the Bully Ker. I’'ve seen those fight in Kabul. The tribesmen fight them against

bears.

Two dogs against a bear, and the dogs always win.”

“Who the hell are these people?” Dad asks.

Kelly pats my father on the shoulder. “I don'’t think we’ll know that until we find out how Jonathan Sands spent the first part of his life.”

“Are we going to find out?”

Kelly nods. “The British government can stonewall Blackhawk all

they want, but I’'ve got personal friends in the SAS, vets who served in Northern Ireland. We’ll have the story before long.”

“By tonight?” Caitlin asks.

“Maybe. In any case, I think we should get out of here. It’s going to be a long day, and an even longer night. Everybody know what their job is?”

After everyone nods, Kelly reaches into his gear bag and brings out two more walkie-talkies. One he gives to Danny McDavitt, the other to my father. Then he looks at Caitlin and me.

“You two are together for the duration, right?”

She nods, and I see color in her cheeks.

“Glad to see it,” Kelly says with a smile.

“I am too,” says my father. “Too bad it takes a goddamn crisis to bring them together.”

“Dr. Cage,” Kelly says, “I’d appreciate it if you’d scope out some safe houses for us, on both sides of the river. Think you can do that?”

“This time of year, I'm sure I can. Both of my partners’ lake houses are empty.”

“Hey,” I say, pointing at Kelly. “Caitlin and I are together until tonight. Then I'm with

you.

”

CHAPTER

28

If it were any other year, this would be my favorite day of the Balloon Festival: the “barge drop” event as seen from the Ramada Inn above the Mississippi River Bridge. The flashy trappings of the festival stand a mile away at Fort Rosalie. Here there is no grand stage, no headline act or spotlights, no carnival rides. But the Natchez Ramada Inn, a monument to bourgeois America, commands one of the most breathtaking views of the Mississippi River on the continent. Soon it will be leveled to make way for yet another casino hotel, but for locals it remains the beating heart of the Balloon Festival. A strong pilot presence gives it the buzz of a military command center from Friday until Sunday evening. You can smell the pork ribs being barbecued by the swimming pool even before you get out of your car. Every room with a river view has been rented for a year in advance, many by local organizations who use the event as an excuse for three days of uninterrupted partying.

The object of the “barge drop” is for a balloon crew to drop a beanbag onto a white cross marked on the deck of a barge holding position in the Mississippi River. Many end up landing—sometimes crash-landing—on the grounds of the hotel itself, or in the neutral ground at the foot of the massive hill the hotel stands on. But the true center of the festivities is the long hill that falls precipitously

from the hotel pool toward Highway 84 and the river. Here hundreds of families gather on blankets and lawn chairs to watch their children slide hell-for-leather down the slope on flattened cardboard boxes, toward a concrete drainage ditch. Each sally is potentially life-threatening, and beyond the concrete lies a much longer slope covered with a thick mat of kudzu. I’'ve seen fathers in their forties make twenty or thirty trips up that hill dragging a scarred Maytag box behind them, with a toddler or two still clinging to it like princes on a magic carpet. It’s a miracle the hotel’s owners allow this ritual in our hyperlitigious age. That a dozen lawsuits don'’t arise from this activity every year says more about the crowd than anything else. They’re the kind of parents who, if their son broke his arm, would tell him it was his own damn fault for not stopping short of the concrete and to suck it up until they could get Dr. Cage away from his bourbon long enough to splint the bone.

I spent my first thirty minutes anxiously searching the crowd for Daniel Kelly or signs of people following me. Several times I felt someone

was

watching me, but whenever I turned, I saw nothing suspicious. Ten minutes ago, I presented the citizenship award to Paul Labry, who had no idea he had been voted the honor. I actually saw tears in Labry’s eyes as he accepted the brass plaque, but my mind was only half on the presentation, because five minutes before my speech, my father had called on Kelly’s Star Trek and told me that Jewel Washington, the coroner, was at the Ramada and had something important to give me. I spotted Jewel right after the speech, serving barbecue under a tent, but she gave no sign of recognizing me, so I decided to stick around until she felt an approach was safe.

Caitlin is roaming the crowd, just in case Jewel sees her as an obstacle to our communication. She has my backpack slung over her shoulder, and in it the satellite phone and my gun. We’'ve done a good job playing the role of reconciled lovers; I only hope Libby Jensen’s not here today. Normally, Libby would be able to handle the situation, but with her son in jail, she might make a scene.

“Mr. Mayor?” someone says nervously from behind me.

Turning, I look into the cornflower blue eyes of a girl of about twenty. She’s mousy-haired and round-faced but pretty in her way, a hillbilly girl who will soon lose her looks along with the blush of youth. She’s either tall or wearing very high heels, because I'm look

ing almost straight into her eyes. My first coherent thought is that someone should teach her how to apply eye makeup, because she could take off half of what she’s wearing and look twice as good.

“Hello,” I say. “Are you enjoying the festival?”

The girl smiles, but her eyes are filled with confusion, or even fear. Something about her seems familiar. Before I can figure out what, she shoves something into my front pants pocket. The contact startles me, but the crowd around us is intent on two balloons that are flying too close together as they sweep in off the river.

“Don’t read that until you’re by yourself,” the girl says. “It’s superimportant.”

“Are you—”

“I gotta go,” she says, then turns and moves into the crowd. I see her leather jacket for a couple of seconds, then only a blur of bodies.

“Who was that?” Caitlin asks, suddenly appearing at my side. She’s staring after the girl, but I can no longer distinguish her from the other people swirling between us and the hotel swimming pool.

“I don'’t know.”

“What was she saying?”

“She stuffed something into my pocket. I think it’s a note. She said to read it in private. Jewel must have sent her over. Somebody must be watching Jewel.”

“Or you.”

“Yeah.”

Caitlin takes my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

I look around the grounds of the hotel. Unless you have a room, there’s no privacy to be had. “We shouldn’t leave until we’re sure I have whatever Jewel needs to give me.”

“Have some barbecue, Mr. Mayor!”

Jewel Washington’s sweating brown face appears before me so suddenly that I can’t quite tell where she came from. She shoves a Chinet plate piled high with tangy-smelling pork into my hands. Before letting go of it, she pinches the back of my hand, then adjusts the plate so that I feel something hard taped to the bottom it. It’s small and rectangular and feels plastic.

“The pork was going fast,” she says loudly. “Paul Labry told me to bring you a plate before we got down to the bone.” Jewel interposes herself between me and Caitlin, then starts talking to Caitlin

in a “girl talk” tone—probably to give me time to remove whatever it is she’s trying to pass me.

“Caitlin’s cool, Jewel,” I say softly. “What’s under the plate?”

Without breaking the rhythm of her conversation, the coroner laughs loudly and squeezes Caitlin’s arm, then pulls the two of us together and leans in as though dispensing romantic advice. “A tape of a voice memo Tim Jessup recorded on his cell phone right before he died. Shad has the phone. He has your cell records too. This case is getting crazy, Penn. You need to watch yourself.”

“You’re crazy, girl!” Caitlin says, playfully shoving Jewel’s shoulder. “But if this keeps up, I might consider moving back here.”

“You come on back!” cries Jewel. “We need you back here gettin’ on people’s case.” She backs away from us. “You two be talkin’ again, so you can share that plate!”

Jewel waves broadly, then makes her way back toward the barbecue tent. Two sheriff’s deputies standing in line watch as she approaches, and they don'’t take their eyes off her as she moves behind the serving table.

Caitlin grabs my arm and pulls me around some shrubs beside the pool. “I don'’t know what’s going on, but let’s get the hell out of here and see what we’ve got.”

Balancing the plate on my right hand, I put my left arm around Caitlin and walk toward the breezeway that leads to the hotel parking lot. Nearly everyone we pass speaks to me, and several call Caitlin by name. A local Realtor tries to stop me and talk about a zoning variance, but I plead official business and push on. The moment we get twenty yards of space around us, Caitlin says, “Is the tape in the freaking barbecue or what?”

“It’s taped to the bottom of the plate.”

“What kind of tape is it?”

“A minicassette, I think.”

“Old school. I have that kind of recorder at the office.”

“Kmart’s only a minute away.”

“Okay.” As we make our way through the crowded lot, Caitlin says, “If the tape is what Jewel had for you, then who’s the note in your pocket from?”

“Probably some nut job, if not the girl herself. There’s the car. Come on.”

Caitlin unlocks the car we drove here, a Corolla owned by the newspaper. Before we get in, I realize that if someone did follow us here, they could have planted a listening device in the car while we were gone. I feel like hammering my fist against the roof in frustration, but instead I take Caitlin by the upper arms, lean into her neck, and kiss her below the ear.

“Don’t say anything about this stuff in the car,” I whisper, surprised by the force of my reaction to her scent. “We can read the note on the way to Kmart, but don'’t talk about it. We’ll talk in the store.”

She nods and gets behind the wheel.

Before I get in, I crouch between the cars, take out the Star Trek, and call Kelly. When he acknowledges, I ask, “Are you at the hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re driving to the Kmart, just up the highway. I want you to cover us.”

“No problem. Everything okay?”

“I may have good news. Stay close to us.”

“Don’t worry.”

As soon as I'm inside the car, I pull the tape from the bottom of the plate and confirm that it’s a standard minicassette. Slipping it deep into my left front pocket, I dig out what the girl shoved down my right pocket. It’s blue-ruled newsprint from the kind of tablets first-graders use when they'’re learning to write block print. It’s been folded and refolded many times, like a love note someone passes you in junior high.

“Let’s get some food for this afternoon,” I say casually. “For postcoital munchies.”

Caitlin laughs convincingly. “What do you want?”

“Chips and dip, drinks and stuff. You don'’t have anything at your house.”

“What do you expect after a year and a half?”

She backs out of the parking space and carefully negotiates the packed vehicles. Soon we’re coasting down the long, curving hill that leads to the highway below the bridge. Across that highway is the Visitors’ Center, where only yesterday I blew Caitlin off in the parking lot. That feels like three days ago. She drops a hand from the wheel and makes a fast “hurry up” motion.

After I get the note unfolded, I see a woman’s printed script, the fancy, tightly written kind some girls use when they write poems or diary entries. It begins like a thousand other letters and e-mails I’'ve received in the past two years—“Dear Mayor Cage”—but when I read the first line after the salutation, my heart starts pumping at twice its normal rate.

My name is Linda Church. I am hiding out and can’t speak to you in person.

Please

don'’t try to find me. Tim is dead, as you probably know, and they were going to kill me too, but I escaped with my life. Just barely, though. I am hurt, but some good people are helping me. I'm writing to you because on the night Tim was murdered, I learned some things that I think he would have wanted you to know. Honestly, though, I'm afraid even to tell you these things. But

TIM TRUSTED YOU

, so I am taking this risk. I pray that you did not betray Tim and cost him his life. I loved him and still do, and there must be some good men left in this world.

Caitlin is poking my leg; she wants to know what’s in the note. To put her off, I place my thumbnail under the first line and hold the note where she can read it. The shock on her face tells me I'’ll have to read it where she can see it too, even at the risk of an accident.

A young man named Ben Li is probably dead by now. He worked on the boat sometimes, but we hardly ever saw him. Tim told me his job was computers. I doubt you will find his body, as I'm pretty sure they have fed him to the dogs. This dogfighting that upset Tim so much is still going on. I don'’t know what all Tim was trying to get from the company, and I don'’t know if he got whatever it was to you. I can only hope that he did, that he didn't die for nothing. You should know that Mr. Sands and Mr. Quinn are

MONSTERS

. They are not just cruel, or sick men. I knew men like that in Las Vegas, and everywhere else I’'ve lived too. But Sands and Quinn are demons who live on other people’s pain. I have

prayed on this and know it to be true. I have sinned by lying with Sands, but I was in fear for my life, and I believe now to some extent that it was rape. Sands has sex with lots of girls who work on the boat, not always by their choice. He is not who or what he pretends to be. He is a demon wearing a human skin. Quinn is not a demon but he is an animal. No, worse. Animals would never do the awful things he has done. But I'm losing my track. What’s important is the facts, and it’s hard to keep facts in my head right now. I think my leg is infected and maybe broken too. But I can’t risk going to a doctor. I feel so guilty about Julia and the baby. I hope they are going to be all right. If I get out of this alive and I ever manage to make any money, I am going to send some to Julia (Anonymous) to make up for whatever pain and worry I have caused her.

You need to know that Quinn bragged to me that “big things” were coming up soon or about to happen. “Big people” coming into town for something, I don'’t know what. But I worked one of those dogfights, and it is probably something like that, even though they are horrible things. The animals die and the men have orgies on the girls and stuff like that. If you could just bust one of those fights, you would find enough drugs to put them all in jail until Judgment Day. I hope I have not made a mistake in writing to you, Mr. Cage. I am trusting Tim’s instinct, but I'm afraid that was not very good in life. If it was, he might still be with us and not in Heaven.

The people who are hiding me are going to get me away to somewhere safe. May the Lord bless you and keep you safe if you are doing His work.

Yours in Christ, Linda Mae Church.

The sound of Caitlin’s opening her door brings me out of my trance. With one inquisitive look she asks if I still want to go into Kmart. I nod, then refold the note and put it back in my pocket. Motioning for her to hand me her purse, I take the satphone from my backpack and stuff it into her bag, then shove my pistol into my pocket.

“Let’s go.”

When we’re ten yards from the car, Caitlin says, “You still think Tim didn't have an affair with her?”

“Wait till we’re inside the store to talk. I'’ll get the chips and dip and see if we’re being tailed. You get the recorder, some triple-A batteries, two pairs of cheap headphones, and a miniplug splitter. You know why?”

“Because those cheap recorders only put out a mono signal.”

It’s good to be back with somebody who needs no spoon-feeding.

Inside the Kmart, I walk to the snacks section and grab some Doritos, then watch the store entrance. A few people come in and out, but most are black, and none look remotely like Quinn’s goons. The white people are Pentecostals or older folks wearing gardening clothes. Less than five minutes pass before Caitlin appears at the head of my aisle with a stapled bag held low beside her. I walk past her and whisper, “Men’s clothing department.”

Grabbing two pairs of pants off a rack, I ask an older woman staffing the ladies’ department to open a fitting room. She recognizes me as the mayor, makes a show of offering all the help she can, then leaves me with the room. A second later, Caitlin slips into my dressing room and opens the bag. It takes all my strength to get the plastic packaging off the tape recorder, but Caitlin’s deft fingers make short work of inserting the batteries and setting up the headphones and splitter. When this is done, I take the cassette from my pocket, insert it into the recorder, and hit PLAY.

A hiss fills my left ear. Caitlin’s head is tilted, tensely poised, her eyes wide and bright as though reflecting every bit of light in the cubicle. She’s hearing the same thing I am, a low-quality copy of a low-resolution voice memo made on a cell phone and played back through the cheapest equipment available. Yet when I hear Tim’s voice, it pierces me to the quick. He’s breathless, as though he’s sprinted most of a mile, but the whine of an overrevved engine in the background tells me he’s in a car.

“Penn, where are you, man? I waited as long as I could, but they'’re onto me. I had to run. I tried to call you, but both my phones say ‘No service.’ They’re jamming the signal like they do on the boat sometimes. They blocked Cemetery Road, so I'm headed out into the county…almost to the Devil’s Punchbowl now. I'm going to have to shut off this phone, because they may be tracking me with it. I can’t say much, because they might get the phone. I'm doing eighty on gravel, man!”

Caitlin’s eyes go wide as the creak of a car seat conjures an image of Tim craning his neck around as he races down Cemetery Road.

“They’re still back there. I found what we needed, okay? It’s a DVD disc. I got it through the guy who shot the cell phone pictures I showed you. He’s a computer genius named Ben Li. I got him so stoned he didn't know up from down, then sedated him. He must have woken up early. He probably panicked and called them, he’s that dumb. Anyway, here’s how to find the disc in case anything happens to me. Ready? ‘Dog pack.

The Great Escape.’

Okay? You’ll figure it out, but I hope to God you don'’t have to. If I don'’t make it, then look where the sun don'’t shine, as Coach used to say. I'’ll be all right, though. These bastards don'’t know Adams County like I do. I'm going to—wait, wait, shit, I forgot—”

It sounds like Tim dropped the phone. He yells,

“Fuck!”

and groans as if he’s bending double, then his voice is close again.

“Ben said something while he was stoned. See, I always thought he had more pictures than what he showed me. Insurance, you know? To protect himself. He said I should ask his birds about the pictures. He had two cockatoos, but all I ever heard them say was stupid lines from movies. I searched their cages and couldn'’t find anything. Shit, they'’re gaining…I’'ve got to shut down. No airplane mode on this bitch. I love you, man, but you picked a hell of a time to be late. Bye for now—”

The electric silence in the headphone is cut off by a blank hiss.

My hands are shaking, my heart pounding as though the chase just happened, as though I were in the car with Tim rather than listening to a dead man talk two days after he was murdered. The realization that Tim probably died because I was thirty minutes late makes me dizzy with nausea. My ears roar as an infinite string of what-ifs blasts through my mind like a line of runaway subway cars.

“I can’t believe I wrote that first story,” Caitlin says in a dazed voice. “I wrote just what his killers wanted me to, didn't I?”

She doesn’'t cry often, but there are tears in the corners of her eyes. Behind the tears seethes anger—and wounded vanity. No one likes

to be played for a fool, but some people, usually the vainest among us, truly cannot handle it.

Despite wrestling with my own guilt, I nod.

“I'm going to bury Golden Parachute,” Caitlin vows. “

Bury

them.” Then her eyes snap to mine. “What do the clues mean? Do you know where the disc is?”

In the maelstrom of guilt swirling inside me, childhood memories spin and flicker like buoys glimpsed through heavy rain. “Not yet. I'm thinking.”

“They could be passwords.”

“To what? Tim found a physical object and hid it somewhere.”

“Right, right.”

“

The Great Escape

is a movie. Tim and I were kids when it came out.”

“Did you watch it with him?”

“I don'’t think so.” I think frantically, trying to grasp images that float away like leaves in a swirling current. “The part about the birds was separate from that, right? From ‘dog pack’ and

The Great Escape

?”

“Yes.”

“Because he said that guy’s birds could say movie lines.”

“Yes, but that first part wasn'’t connected to the birds. The first clues were for you alone.”

I'm trying to make the missing connections, but Caitlin’s urgency feels like an overcurrent shorting out my neural processes. “Just don'’t say anything for a minute. I'm thinking.”

She nods, but I know silence requires extreme effort from her. She’s a puzzle-solver by nature, and not having the tools to solve this one must drive her mad.

“Could ‘dog pack’ have something to do with the dogfighting?” she asks.

“Caitlin!”

“Sorry—I'm sorry.”

I try fast-forwarding through my childhood friendship with Tim Jessup, but the memories are blurry, like stock images, shot poorly and faded with age. Many involve bike riding or playing steal the flag, but nothing related to dog packs comes—

“Oh my God,” I groan, first amazed, then appalled as the significance of the second clue drops into place.

She grabs my arm. “What is it?”

“I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

“What? Do you know what it means?”

“Yes.” I reach for the doorknob. “Come on!”

“Where?”

“The cemetery! It’s been there all along!”

“I thought you already searched the cemetery.”

“I did. But it’s huge. Now I know where to look.”

Something vibrates in my pocket. At first I think it’s my cell phone, but then I realize it’s Kelly’s Star Trek. “Peek outside,” I tell Caitlin, suddenly nervous. “Hurry.”

She opens the door and freezes.

“What is it?” I ask, trying to pull the gun from my pocket.

“I'm helping him get the things fitted,” Caitlin says awkwardly.

“It’s

Sunday,

” a woman says with disgust. “There’s kids out here. Why don'’t you just get a

room

?”

Caitlin closes the door. I click the TALK button on the Star Trek and say, “It’s me.”

“We’'ve got a problem,” Kelly says in my ear.

“Short of a death, it doesn’'t matter. I think we’re at the endgame.”

“Tell me.”

“Not over the air. Not even on these things.”

“You found what we’re looking for?”

“I know where it is. Can you cover us to the cemetery?”

“Screw that. You’re in the store now?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the satphone with you?”

“In Caitlin’s purse.”

“Walk straight back to the staff area like you own the place, then leave by their private exit door. Use a fire door if you have to. I'’ll be waiting out back. If anybody tries to stop you, tell them you’re the fucking mayor. If that doesn’'t work, pull your gun. Just get to my car. The game has changed.”

When Kelly’s voice gets tense, I know we’re in trouble.

“We’re on our way.”

CHAPTER

29

Linda Church sits on a folding chair in the corner of a small kitchen and studies her left knee, which is swollen and blue at the front, and purple in back. The joint doesn’'t hurt too bad, but she knows some gristle in it is torn because her skin is stretched tight as a drumhead and the bones slip when she walks. The lower part of her right leg looks worse. There’s a tear in the bruise, and the skin around it feels like it just came out of a microwave oven.

She remembers leaping from Quinn’s boat but has no memory of hitting the water—only a white flash coming out of darkness. She awakened in terror that she was drowning, but the sound of a motor in the dark told her she couldn'’t afford to splash. Quinn was trolling slowly back the way he’d come, searching for her with a spotlight that lit the fog yellow. She felt sure he would find her since she could hardly swim with the leg, but as the boat drew near, and she prepared to slide under the water, she’d heard something strike the hull—not hard—more like the sound of kicking shoes.

Then she remembered Ben Li.

The spotlight arced up into the sky, and some sort of commotion broke out on the boat. She heard more hollow impacts, then two shots cracked over the water. The echoes seemed to go on forever, and before they died, the big motor revved up and the boat turned south again.

Then God had saved her. She’d had no idea whether she was near the bank or in the center channel of the Mississippi, about to be run down by a barge weighing thousands of tons. But as she floated downstream, thankful for every ounce of body fat she’d cursed until then, she felt her good leg scrape sand. The river was lifting her onto a gently shoaling sandbar as surely as if God himself were holding her in his hand. When she came to rest, her eyes filled with black sky, she felt like Moses in the bulrushes.

Unlike Moses, however, no one found her lying by the river. How long she lay there, she had no idea. But sometime before dawn, she got to her feet and started limping toward the levee. Soon the sand had dirt mixed in it, then she was dragging herself over rich soil, the farmland her grandfather used to hold to his nose and smell as if it were pipe tobacco. She’d wanted to scream as she climbed the levee, but she didn't dare do more than grunt. On top of the levee was a gravel road, and she guessed it ran all the way from New Orleans to Missouri, if not to Minneapolis. The levee made her think of her grandfather too; he’d told her how during the flood of ’27 they’d put the nigras and the cows onto it to save them from the rising water, and kept them there for weeks and weeks.

She knew she couldn'’t walk on the levee, as bad as she wanted to. There’d be trucks coming down it before dawn, and if Quinn sent even one man along the road to look for her body on the bank, he’d pin her in his headlights like a doomed deer. She couldn'’t move well enough to be sure of getting away in time. So she’d slid down the far side of the levee, down to the scrub trees by the borrow pits, from which they’d taken the dirt to build the levees. She limped along the pits until the sun came up, her eyes always on the ground, looking for snakes. She remembered a teenage boyfriend walking along a borrow pit, breaking the backs of moccasins with a heavy branch. Despite this frantic killing, the snakes swirled slowly through the shallows but did not flee to the middle of the pit. This puzzled Linda. Were they lethargic from the suffocating heat? Or was it the poisonous fertilizer chemicals that drained off the fields whenever it rained? Her brother shot snakes with a .22 rifle, but this was different. With their backs broken, the serpents writhed and curled back upon themselves in endless figure eights until they drowned and became meat for the nutrias. Later, when that boy was inside her,

she’d remembered how the snakes had twisted and cracked like whips, and she wondered if they’d been screaming. Could snakes scream? Could they hear each other screaming?

Linda walked until the skin on the back of her neck felt like it would split from sunburn, dragging her throbbing leg behind her, but by then she’d climbed the levee again and figured out where she was—and where she was going. She was on Deer Park Road, and while there were only a couple of farmhouses for many miles, she knew about a church that stood alone at the edge of the cotton fields, and this confirmed God’s participation in her survival. She got so thirsty she licked the sweat from her arms, and this made her smile. Yankees whined about the heat and the humidity, but it was the humidity that made the heat bearable. Louisiana wasn'’t like the barren hills outside Las Vegas, a place so dry you hardly saw the sweat leave your skin. Here there was almost as much water in the air as in your body, and the sweat beaded on your skin like water on a car that had just been waxed.

The last time she’d climbed the levee, she’d seen the church. In her mind it was white and clean and straight, rising from a green ocean of soybeans, but in truth it lay beside an empty cotton field like an oversize box thrown carelessly from a truck. The bright tin roof she remembered was a mosaic of rust and primer, and the steeple looked like a doghouse someone had squashed onto the apex of a roof. But even so, even with the crucifix atop it looking like a broken TV antenna, she’d seen deliverance. Pastor Simpson was alone behind the building, walking from the back shed to the main building with two boxes under his arms.

Linda had wept with joy.

She’d never been to services at that church, but she’d gone to Pastor Simpson’s old church for years. Linda’s father had been strict Assembly of God, but Linda had discovered Pastor Simpson when a friend had taken her to the Oneness Branch of the church. The Oneness people believed God couldn'’t be split into three, but the main thing was, they hated the hypocrisy of the mainliners. Pastors preaching against television while buying big sets for their lake houses, where they thought nobody would see them. But while Linda was in Las Vegas, Pastor Simpson had splintered off from the

Oneness people too and had formed something called the Wholeness Church. It wasn'’t official, but he had a small congregation of forty or fifty hard-core believers, and they’d gotten together to renovate the old church by the river. She’d heard about it when she got back to town and went to work on the boat.