Caitlin looked around the room as though she might actually find an unexpected visitor. “Who was he?”
“He wouldn’t say.” Henry’s eyes looked dreamy with narcotics. “Just one of Albert’s boys, he said.”
“One of Albert’s boys?” Caitlin had read that phrase in Henry’s journals. “Like Pooky and Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“How old was he?” she asked, figuring Henry had hallucinated a teenager from his youth in Albert’s store.
“’Bout sixty.”
Caitlin blinked in puzzlement. “Was he here just now?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said groggily. “Maybe it was earlier. Maybe when Sherry stepped out.”
“What did he look like?”
“Just a black guy, you know. Had on a black baseball cap. An old one with a white D on it. For Detroit maybe? Yeah. The Detroit Tigers.”
“What did he want here?”
“He thanked me for all the good work I’ve done. That’s all. He said it didn’t matter who he was. It made sense to me.”
I’ll bet, with all the Dilaudid in your system. Caitlin made a mental note to check the deputy’s book for visitors.
“Hey,” Henry said. “Do you think he could have been the one who went to see Pooky’s mama before she died? ‘Huggy Bear’?”
Caitlin recalled Penn telling her about the anonymous caller who’d contacted Sheriff Dennis about the burning of the Beacon building. But the whole idea of that man sneaking in here with a guard outside seemed far-fetched.
“Maybe it was,” she said, deciding not to get Henry too excited with that story. “Henry, do you remember the photograph I showed you before you fell asleep?”
“What?”
“The one of Tom and Brody Royal in the boat. It has writing on the back. It reads ‘BT,’ and then ‘T. Rambin.’ It looks like your writing to me.”
At first Henry said nothing. Then in a reluctant tone, he said, “It is.”
His eyes looked wary, almost hunted. Caitlin said, “I was wondering if ‘BT’ might stand for ‘Bone Tree’?”
The reporter avoided her gaze.
“You see, I read all about the Bone Tree in your journals, and the more I read, the more I started thinking Pooky’s bones might be out there. Maybe Jimmy Revels’s, too. The FBI only brought Luther’s up out of the Jericho Hole.”
“Could be,” Henry said vaguely. “But I looked for that tree … and I never found it. So did the FBI.”
Katy Royal talked about a tree like this, too, Caitlin wanted to say, but she stifled herself. “Who’s T. Rambin, Henry?”
Still the reporter refused to meet her eye.
Caitlin laid her hand softly against Henry’s hair and stroked it. “I know this is hard, to be trapped in this room while other people go out and try to finish what you started. It’s not fair, and I won’t pretend it is. But whatever I find, Henry, your name will be there with mine. I promise you that. Not for the glory—because I know that’s not what you care about—but for the closure. So the families will know it was you who brought them justice.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And for Swan. She’ll see it, too.”
Henry finally turned to her, his eyes more alert than she’d seen them since the attack. “If you try to find the Bone Tree, you could end up just like me. Or worse.”
“I know that. But it’s worth it to me.”
After some moments, he nodded slowly. He tried to roll to his left, but failed. “My cell phone,” he groaned. “In my pants. In that bag, there. Get it.”
Caitlin quickly found a soiled pair of trousers in a shopping bag beside the chair she’d been sitting in. In their right front pocket was a Nokia cell phone.
“Look in my contacts,” he said. “Toby Rambin.”
Caitlin flicked through the buttons with manic dexterity. “Who is he? I looked for a phone number and couldn’t find one.”
“A poacher. Rambin hunts the swamp down in Lusahatcha County. I only found him a few days ago. Didn’t tell anybody. Not Penn … nobody. All he has is a cell phone. Talked to him Monday night. Rambin says he knows where the Bone Tree is. I was setting up a meeting, but … this happened.”
Caitlin’s heart thumped as her eyes zeroed in on the name in tiny text. “Got it.” Quickly, she memorized Rambin’s name and number, then entered the characters in her Treo. “Do you think this guy is for real?”
“Maybe. He sounded scared enough. He wants money, though.”
With a twinge of guilt, she edited Henry’s “Toby Rambin” contact so that the surname “Rambin” became “Smith.” Then she altered the area code of Rambin’s phone number to that of South Carolina. Unwilling to go so far as to delete the information altogether, she saved the changes, then slipped the phone back into Henry’s pants.
When she looked up, Henry was holding out his bandaged hand. Caitlin hurried to his bedside and took it in hers. “You be careful,” he said. “They play rough down in Lusahatcha County. The Knoxes own land down there.”
“I will. Let me ask you one more thing. I found a telephoto shot of you with a rifle scope over your face. What’s the story on that?”
Henry took a couple of shallow breaths, and his eyes clouded with anxiety. “I was … checking into Brody Royal’s land deals … with Carlos Marcello. Got that picture in the mail. Showed the FBI … They never traced it. I backed off. Too chicken, I guess. That time, anyway.”
Caitlin leaned over and kissed the reporter’s forehead. “Screw that. You’re a hero, Henry. I mean it. This is Captain America stuff you’ve been doing.”
Henry’s skin reddened between his bruises. He was blushing.
“We’re going to get them all in the end,” she promised. “Royal, his son-in-law, the Knoxes … every last one. And when we do, it’ll be because of you.”
Henry began coughing, hard. “Hope so,” he finally croaked. “Won’t bring Albert back, though. Or Jimmy … or Pooky.”