“Look!” says Caitlin, pointing to her right. “That’s Jordan Glass.”
Forty yards past the trucks, an athletic-looking woman about my age is crouching on a log, shooting pictures through a long telephoto lens. The fleece jacket tied around her waist tells me she’s already learned that December in Natchez isn’t discernibly cooler than in New Orleans.
Parking beside Kirk’s truck, I notice a knot of men standing on the far side of the semi trucks. They seem to be studying a map.
“Penn!” cries a voice from my left, startling me. “You believe this shit?”
I turn and find Kirk Boisseau watching me with flushed cheeks and an excited smile. He’s wearing a wetsuit with a down jacket over it.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I had to show them where I found the bones.”
“But how did you get here? I mean, how did they find you?”
He shrugs. “I figured you gave them my name.”
“I didn’t.”
Kirk shrugs again. “That Kaiser guy just called me out of the blue, late last night. He said the FBI needed my help, and they wanted to hire me as a diver. He’s a marine, too. Vietnam. What was I going to say?”
A tall, brown-haired man has detached himself from the group and is coming toward us. He’s carrying a neoprene bag in his hand.
“That’s him,” Kirk says quickly. “He brought a couple of FBI divers up with him, and they’re damned good. We’ve already brought up most of the bones.”
Kaiser has almost reached us.
“And those trucks?” I whisper.
“Pumps. King Kong shit, man.”
“Hello, Mayor,” says Kaiser, leaning forward and shaking my hand with a firm but not overzealous grip. “I see you and Kirk found each other.”
I nod and smile, trying to read him as well as I can before we get to anything that matters. John Kaiser looks younger than I imagined, but he has the wise eyes of a man who has seen much—maybe too much. His hair is longer than that of most FBI agents I know.
“Kirk,” he says, “do you mind if the mayor and I take a walk?”
“Nah. You guys do what you need to do. I’m gonna get some heat going in my truck.”
Kirk heads for his truck, but before we can move away, Caitlin gets out of the car and plants herself in our path. Even as I introduce her, Kaiser takes out his cell phone and calls his wife. Looking up the shoreline, I see the brunette stand and put a cell phone to her ear, then wave and start walking toward us.
Jordan Glass looks very well put together, but not in the way of models or pinup girls. She looks like the kind of woman who could easily run fifteen miles if her car broke down. As she nears us, I sense Caitlin vibrating like there’s a motor inside her.
“Jordan Glass,” says the woman, holding out her hand to Caitlin. “You’re Caitlin Masters?”
“Yes.”
“You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”
Her familiarity leaves Caitlin uncharacteristically quiet. The photographer looks between forty and forty-five, and though she wears little makeup, she doesn’t suffer from the lack. Her eyes are clear and bright, her forehead and cheekbones high, and her mouth only faintly lined at the corners. She has shoulder-length hair, but it’s pulled back and bound with a multicolored elastic hairband, which gives her an almost bohemian look among the government agents.
“How many bones have you found so far?” Caitlin asks Kaiser. “And from how many different people? Can you tell?”
Kaiser’s lips widen in an understanding smile. “Off the record, Ms. Masters?”
“All right,” Caitlin concedes, though I know it must pain her to do so.
“All the bones appear to be from one skeleton.”
“Have you identified it yet?”
“Not conclusively, so I don’t want to say more than that.”
“What’s in the bag?” I ask.
Kaiser unzips the neoprene bag, then carefully removes a corroded set of handcuffs.
“From the car?” I ask.
The FBI agent nods. “They may have just used them to chain the body to the car. But from what I know about these murders, I’m betting he was alive when he went into the water.”
Caitlin’s eyes are locked on to the dripping handcuffs, which look like something raised from the wreck of the Titanic. “Is it Revels or Davis?” she almost whispers.
Kaiser hesitates. “Probably one or the other. Let’s not go any further than that just yet.”
Jordan touches Caitlin on the shoulder. “You want to walk down the shore with me? I think these boys are about to go way off the record.”
Caitlin gives me a frustrated glare, but after looking back at Glass, who seems to be treating their imminent exclusion as a juvenile exercise by her husband, she says, “Sure. Why not?”
As soon as they are out of earshot, Kaiser’s face loses any trace of humor. “Do you know where your father is?”
The shock of this question almost prompts me to speak frankly, but at the last instant my protective instinct kicks in. “I assume he’s at work. Why?”
Kaiser studies my face for several seconds in silence. Then he says, “I’m sure you’re right. Let’s take a walk.”
CHAPTER 65
AS THE FBI agent and I walk down the muddy shore of the Jericho Hole, I wave my arm toward the great machines behind us, hoping to buy myself time to think.
“What’s on those trucks? Pumps?”
“Not just pumps,” Kaiser says, still looking after the girls. “Monster pumps. Each one moves twenty-eight thousand cubic feet per minute. This hole has fifty million gallons of water in it, give or take, and they’ll drain it dry in fifteen hours. They’ve already been running for nearly three.”
Looking closer, I see a ring of damp earth several feet wide already surrounding the Jericho Hole, and the small hollows of bream beds in the mud.
“Where’s the water going? The river?”
He nods and points to four big-bore hoses running off to the east, away from the levee.
“How did you get this equipment up here so fast?”