THE FEMALE LOAN OFFICER who escorted Caitlin into the vault of the Royal Cotton Bank was far too curious for her taste. She was only allowing Caitlin access to the boxes because she was a personal friend of Sherry Harden, who was on the access list. The waspish loan officer had treated Caitlin with marked coolness in the lobby, probably because of the generally liberal columns she wrote for the Examiner. Caitlin didn’t care what the nosy bitch thought about her. It had nauseated her even to enter a building owned by Brody Royal, though she appreciated the irony of Henry keeping his backup files in a bank belonging to the man he meant to destroy with them.
“I hate to be rude,” Caitlin said, after the woman had inserted her keys into the large drawers, “but I need some privacy.”
The loan officer stepped back as though Caitlin had slapped her. “We have a room for that.”
“Look, I’m really in a hurry.”
After giving a prim shake of the head, the loan officer angrily left the vault.
Caitlin crouched before the two numbered drawers, her heart accelerating. She’d expected regular bank boxes, but both these drawers were triple size. She turned the nearest key, then with some effort dragged open the stainless steel drawer.
A warm glow spread through her chest. There had to be three or four thousand photocopied pages stuffed into the drawer. As quickly as she could, she unlocked the adjacent drawer and gasped when she saw what was inside: several external hard drives; a Ziploc bag containing thumb drives and SD cards; and perhaps most intriguing, a stack of Moleskine notebooks held together by a thick blue rubber band.
“I think I just had an orgasm,” she murmured. There was no way she and her team could wade through all this in time to write any sort of comprehensive story by tomorrow. Simply scanning the documents would take days.
She got to her feet and hurried back to the bank’s lobby. Sighting the loan officer across the room, Caitlin beckoned her over with an urgent wave. The woman took her sweet time about coming, but when she finally arrived, Caitlin said, “I’m going to need some boxes and a cart.”
“We don’t provide boxes.”
“How about garbage bags, then? I’ll pay you for them. But I know you’ve got a cart somewhere, and I need it ASAP.”
She turned on her heel and went back to the vault without waiting for an answer. Then she knelt beside the first drawer and began stacking files beside her on the floor, her nerves singing with anticipation.
FORREST KNOX TOOK A last look at the bullet holes in Deke Dunn’s face, then got to his feet and addressed Ozan.
“Small caliber. Didn’t even exit the skull. I’m betting a .22 derringer.”
The Redbone nodded. “Dunn fired a single round from his weapon. I wonder if he hit either of them.”
“And who shot first?” Forrest worked his lower lip around a plug of Copenhagen. “Not that it matters. I can’t figure them leaving Deke’s gun here. That’s damned odd.”
He looked over Ozan’s shoulder, past the chopper with its spinning rotors, at the three Concordia Parish deputies he’d ordered away from the body.
Ozan said, “The records in that Magnolia Queen case say Penn Cage killed the Irish casino manager with a derringer. The weapon was lost in the river, but it belonged to Garrity. You figure the old man replaced it?”
“Everybody’s got a favorite gun. Garrity probably likes his ace in the hole. Get somebody to look back through his Ranger reports. I think Garrity must be making the decisions. Dr. Cage wouldn’t know how to blast the hard drive of the cruiser’s video recorder.”
“True dat, boss. But why didn’t Deke call one of us?”
“My Al Qaeda order,” Forrest said. “If I’d waited one more hour to issue it, he probably would have called you. But he observed radio silence, like a good soldier. Let’s get photos and casts of the tire tracks by the water. Footprints, too.”
“Have the locals do it?” Ozan asked. “Or wait on our evidence team?”
“I don’t want a parish deputy anywhere near this scene.” Forrest spat beside Dunn’s corpse. “I’m going to put out an APB for Cage and Garrity: wanted for killing a state trooper.”
Ozan whistled. “What evidence you gonna hang it on?”
“Sonny Thornfield. We’ll keep his name out of the media, just refer to him as a confidential informant. But I’m going to tell Mackiever the truth. Cage and Garrity kidnapped an old Klansman and tried to frame him for Viola Turner’s murder. He can choke on that. We can bolster the APB with the van sighting, and as soon as we confirm the derringer, we’ll update the bulletin. Every cop in Louisiana will be shooting to kill.”
The Redbone nodded with admiration.
Forrest stepped away from the body and glared at the deputies staring in their direction. “What we need now is some pressure points, in case something unexpected happens. I already know about Cage’s family. What about Garrity?”
“He’s got a Mexican wife in Navasota.” Ozan grinned. “Dry as an old boot, probably, but I imagine she bleeds like any other woman.”
“Make some calls. Before we get back in the chopper.”
“Will do, boss.”
CHAPTER 67