“You think you’re going to scare me into cooperating with you?” Caitlin challenges.
“No. But I don’t understand your reluctance. Are you hoping to solve these murders yourself? Henry tried that, and look at the result.”
“At least he didn’t sit on his ass for forty years, like the FBI.”
I step between them, silently warning the Bureau man to back off.
“Look,” says Kaiser, trying to stay calm, “we all have different pieces of this puzzle, and we all want the same result. Don’t we?”
“Do we?” asks Caitlin.
“You can’t blame her, John,” I interject. “The Bureau has got a pretty bad record in the sharing department. Henry wasn’t the Bureau’s biggest fan, either.”
“I’m not the Bureau,” he says angrily. “Not on this case. I’m Dwight Stone. Dwight and every other agent who bucked Hoover and the system to try to do the right thing, all the way back to 1963, when Medgar Evers was shot. This won’t be a one-way flow of information. I’m not keeping things from you guys.”
He turns on his heel, walks to the Suburban, and knocks on the driver’s window. The glass slides down and someone hands him a bag. When he returns, he takes his flashlight from his pocket, unzips the bag, and removes a large clear Ziploc containing a badly rusted hunk of metal with a strangely familiar shape. That shape hurls me back to every World War II movie I’ve ever seen.
“That looks like a Luger,” I comment.
“Doesn’t it?” says Kaiser. “This was rusted to the inner wall of Luther Davis’s trunk. The agent who found it said he thought about The Rat Patrol the second he saw it.”
“Is it a Luger?”
“No.” Kaiser opens the Ziploc and takes out the heavily oxidized but still graceful weapon and examines it from several angles in the beam of the flashlight.
“What is it?” asks Caitlin.
“A Nambu.”
“A what?”
“N-A-M-B-U. It’s a Japanese pistol widely used by their officers during both world wars. It was designed by General Kijiro Nambu, the Japanese John Browning. Takes an eight-millimeter cartridge. It looks like a Luger, but the works are completely different. Quite a few Pacific vets brought them home as trophies.”
“Like Frank Knox?” I guess.
Kaiser’s eyes glint with triumph. “Yes, sir. Frank Knox was known to possess a Nambu. Picked it up on Tarawa. Best of all? Nobody’s seen that gun in forty years.”
“Oh, man. You knew this all along?”
“Let’s just say I had a feeling this gun might have gone into the ground wherever Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis were buried. I wasn’t far wrong, by God.”
“Why would they dump the gun with the body?” I ask. “They should have thrown it in the river.”
“Frank Knox would have,” Kaiser says. “But Frank was dead by the time Jimmy and Luther were killed. Whoever shot Luther obviously had access to Frank’s pistol, though.”
“His little brother?” I guess. “Snake?”
Kaiser nods. “Snake Knox is an arrogant man. Crazier than his big brother, and not nearly so careful. Snake took over the Eagles the day Frank died, and Jimmy and Luther were never seen again.”
“Any chance of getting a serial number off this gun?” Caitlin asks.
“No, but that’s irrelevant. This weapon was a battle trophy, never registered.” Kaiser turns to his wife, who’s standing just behind me. “We need a good set of photos of this pistol. A set of high-res printouts, too.”
“No problem,” Jordan says.
“Make sure Ms. Masters gets a good one for the Examiner.”
Caitlin goes still, her eyes wide.
Kaiser looks her full in the face. “You have my permission to report this find in your paper. Same with the handcuffs and Luther’s ID. That’ll make a hell of a headline. After what happened tonight, we’re about to be enveloped in a media storm, but you’ll have the exclusive story.”
“But only if I turn over Henry’s files to you?”
“Fair’s fair,” says Kaiser, looking to me for support. “Right now I need to know who the mysterious ‘Gates Brown’ is. I’m guessing that information is somewhere in Henry’s files.” He looks back at Caitlin, his eyebrows arched. “Or maybe you already know?”
“No.” She debates silently with herself. “I’m sorry. I’m not ready to make that trade. Not without more thought. Too much has happened tonight.”
“I need to see those files, Ms. Masters. And your withholding them comes very close to obstruction of justice.”
“Whoa, John,” I cut in. “If you’re going to talk like that, you’d better talk to her lawyer. And tonight that’s me.”
Kaiser starts to speak, but Caitlin holds up her hand and says, “I feel sick. Seriously. I need to get to the ladies’ room.”
Kaiser looks more suspicious than sympathetic. “You’d better go with her,” he says to Jordan. “With Ozan’s people coming and going, the hospital’s no longer secure.”
“I’ll go with her,” I say, but Kaiser grabs my upper arm and holds me in place. “I still need to talk to you. Please.” He gives Caitlin a look of apology. “We’ll be here in the car when you guys come back.”
I’m tempted to jerk my arm from Kaiser’s hand, but Caitlin shakes her head at me, then nods assent to Jordan and starts toward the hospital entrance.
As Jordan follows her, Kaiser bags the Nambu and beckons me toward a black Crown Victoria two spaces away. He puts the evidence bag in the backseat, then starts the car and turns on the heater. By the time I close the passenger door, the front windshield is completely fogged.
“You were a little rough on her back there,” I tell him.
He turns to me with startling urgency. “I need those files, Penn. The Double Eagles came within an inch of assassinating Henry Sexton while he was under police protection. I don’t have time for your fiancée to play Lois Lane, or whoever the current role model is.”
“I think Caitlin’s hero is your wife.”