The Bone Tree

“I’m not asking you for Tom’s sake! I’m asking for Peggy’s. If your mother asks you to go across the river with her, you need to go.”

“Quentin, I’m not—”

“I ain’t flappin’ my gums to hear myself talk, boy!”

His shout stuns me into silence. A shocked face appears in the window to my left. I signal that we’re okay.

“You know what’s going on here?” Quentin asks. “You’re like the angry parent who thinks the best thing for a wayward child is to spend a night in jail. But this is your father, Pe

I look down at the floor, Caitlin’s last message playing in my head. You have to forgive your father, she said.

“What can Dad want from me but absolution, Quentin? And I’m not empowered to give him that. That’s up to Mom.”

Quentin drops his hand from my wrist. “Pe

“I’m forty-five years old, Quentin.”

The old man shakes his head sadly. “Age got nothing to do with it. I know eighty-year-old men still obsessed with the slights of their youth. They wouldn’t know forgiveness if they stepped in it. You’ve got to open your heart to let the pain out. Ask any nurse, she’ll tell you. Doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. Better out than in.”

I haven’t the energy to resist Quentin’s gift for persuasion. “You know, sometimes I really do believe you spent time in jail with Martin Luther King.”

“Hell, that’s established fact. Now— Hang on.” He takes his cell phone from his coat pocket and checks it. “Doris just sent me a text message. The reporters out on the steps just left. Must have gone to get something to eat. Let’s get out while the gettin’s good.”

His whirring chair leads me to the wide swinging door monitored by a video camera. When the door buzzes open, Quentin rolls through the door like an aged black knight on a charger, ready to do battle with anyone who would obstruct us. Beyond him I see a motley crowd lining the seats against the walls, wearing clothes that look like they were snatched out of a Goodwill bin and worn directly to the jail. Half the people in the crowd are talking on cell phones, while several toddlers bound through the lobby as if playing in their own backyards.

In the midst of this chaotic scene my mother stands like a duchess at the center of a Renaissance painting. With her perfectly coiffed silver hair and sky-blue pantsuit, she clutches a purse under one arm and holds my daughter’s hands in hers. Walt Garrity stands beside them like a tired cowboy who mistakenly wandered into the painting and can’t find his way out.

A

CHAPTER 93

DURING OUR WALK from the jail lobby to the courtyard outside the sheriff’s department, Quentin must have communicated to my mother that I now know the results of the DNA test. Otherwise, she would have already asked me to ride over to Vidalia with her and visit my father. She hasn’t, and after a few awkward moments, I realize she doesn’t intend to. She will cross the river with Walt as an escort and only asks that I take care of A

Quentin straightens in his wheelchair to accept a bent-over hug from my mother, then follows Doris to their Mercedes van. Backing his wheelchair onto the mechanical lift, he watches me while it raises him into the van’s belly. His reproving eyes tell me he expected more compassion from me than this. My last image of him is of a proud man looking determinedly forward as his younger wife and de facto nurse drives him away from a block where he’ll be spending a great many hours during the next six months.

We four who remain exchange hugs, but as we separate, John Kaiser walks briskly through the main lobby doors, scans the sidewalk, then turns directly toward me. I can see from his face that something has changed, and not for the better. At this point, having tasted freedom, my greatest fear is that Billy Byrd has decided to keep me in jail until a judge orders him to release me. Giving A

“What’s happened, John? Don’t tell me I’m going back inside.”

“I wish that was it,” he says.

Now I’m truly afraid. “Don’t tell me my father died.”

“No. We just had a plane go down.”

“A plane? What plane?”

“A Bureau jet. A small Citation. It took off from Concordia Airport fifteen minutes ago, headed for Baton Rouge and then D.C. Looks like it crashed in East Feliciana Parish, not far from Zachary.”

“Who was on board?”

“Two pilots. But they weren’t the target.”

“Target? What do you mean?”

Kaiser’s face looks as grim as I’ve ever seen it. “Somebody brought that plane down on purpose. It was loaded with most of the evidence we’ve gathered over this past week.”

“You’re kidding.”

Kaiser shakes his head. “The bones, Jimmy Revels’s tattoo, even the Marina Oswald letter.”

“Jesus, John. What brought it down?”

“We don’t know yet. All I know is that it took off from the same airport that Dr. Leland Robb’s plane took off from thirty-six years ago—the same airport where Snake Knox’s crop-dusting service is based.”

Unbelievable. And yet . . . “Where’s Snake now?”

Kaiser pulls his lips back over his teeth like a man suffering bone-deep pain. “We lost him two minutes after he was released from jail this morning. And two minutes ago, I called Will Devine, the Eagle I turned last night. He gave me an emergency number. I got no answer. I think they played me, Pe

There’s nothing I can say to this.

“Your family’s going to need protection,” Kaiser goes on. “Around the clock, most likely. These guys aren’t going to lie down and wait for us to round them up.”

“My mother’s going over to Vidalia to see Dad. Can I have a couple of minutes with my daughter before we head home?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

I walk back to A