The Bone Tree

“Tell Forrest I’ll be waiting for his signal that he accepts my terms.”

“What signal?”

“An a

The hit man folded his arms and shivered in his windbreaker. “Are you really go

Tom thought about the mountains around the Chosin Reservoir. “You think this is cold?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Your friend’s a lot colder.”

Grimsby looked down at the corpse. “Seriously, Doc. You go

“Take your friend’s and put it over yours. He doesn’t need it anymore.”

The hit man looked up in disbelief.

Tom raised his Magnum, and his shoulder screamed with pain.

“You won’t make it twenty miles without hitting a roadblock,” Grimsby said. “Like I said before, you’re a walking dead man.”

Tom gri

Without turning his back on the killer, Tom put one foot on the ru

With a sudden inspiration, Tom switched off his headlights and slowed down until his eyes adjusted to the moonlight. At this point he’d be a fool to let himself be caught because of being sighted by a chopper or high-flying prop plane. He’d switch the lights back on when he reached the narrow strip of pavement they called the main road around here. The thought made him smile, despite his pain. Whenever anyone asked his wife where she was from, Peggy always said “a little farm in the middle of nowhere.” People always assumed she was exaggerating, but she wasn’t.

Tom had never been more grateful for that than he was tonight.

CHAPTER 11

NATCHEZ SLEEPS IN silence as we cross the Mississippi River, as silent as Kaiser and I have remained since we left the sheriff’s office. The town looks as it has since I was a child, a fragile line of lights strung along the rim of the high bluff, with church steeples standing watch over the populace. Given the ruckus at the Concordia hospital early in the evening, a few citizens are probably sitting up, constantly refreshing the Examiner’s Web page, hoping for a Breaking News update that will tell them once and for all whether Henry Sexton was killed by a sniper. How will they react when they learn that Henry survived that attack only to give his life for Caitlin’s hours later? Or that he was only one of several casualties, among them Brody Royal?

Looking back at the dark lowlands of Louisiana, I scan the sky for the column of flame we left behind, but I don’t see it. The levee near that lake stands thirty-five feet tall, and the flames were probably double that, but now the fire’s burned out of sight.

Kaiser turns onto Canal Street and heads into downtown proper.

“Are you going to keep me in suspense all night?” I ask. “I’m not going to sit outside City Hall talking till dawn. I’m wiped out, man.”

When Kaiser begins speaking at last, his voice carries a passion that it didn’t back in the corridor of Sheriff De

This isn’t news to me, but it’s a pretty remarkable statement to hear from a serving FBI agent. “When Dwight Stone discovered who was behind the murder of Del Payton in 1968—a big Nixon supporter, as it happened—Hoover made Stone suppress it. ”

“I know all about that. Stone’s generation of agents saw J. Edgar’s sins firsthand. And as a result, there’s now a group of retired FBI agents—mostly thirty-year men—who’ve never forgotten the sting of those failures. They’ve never let go of the cases they weren’t allowed to work as they should have been. The Double Eagle cases were among those.”

“And the JFK assassination?”

Kaiser nods. “That, too. These men work quietly, in the background, but they’ve done significant investigative work over the years. They’ve even got serious funding behind them now—private money, of course. The current director knows nothing about these guys, but some active agents give them help when possible.”

“Like you?”

A brief nod. “Like me.”

“Is Dwight Stone part of this group?”

“He is. They don’t publicize their activities, so you can’t tell Caitlin about it. If it got out that former FBI agents were actively working the Ke

Kaiser turns right on State Street, rolls past Sheriff Billy Byrd’s sheriff’s department and the courthouse, then turns left again and parks in front of the lit oaks before City Hall.

Dwight Stone’s participation in this group legitimizes it in my eyes, but given tonight’s events, I can’t raise much interest. “Where’s this going, John?”

“My astronauts have been pretty quiet for a while. The civil rights murder cases have stalled, and the few remaining witnesses are dying like flies. Even the agents themselves are dying, more’s the pity. But when Gle

“Except Jason Abbott.”

“That was different. Abbott was just trying to screw the guy who was screwing his wife. But Morehouse was trying to clear his conscience, and in the process he opened a door that the Working Group believed was closed forever. By revealing the co

“How? Just what did Henry tell you, exactly?”

“That Jimmy Revels was murdered to lure Robert Ke

“You don’t doubt that story?”

“Not at all. Carlos Marcello had hated Robert Ke

“Empire?” I mutter in frustration.