“And while I can empathize with that goal, I can’t allow it to torpedo criminal cases of historic significance.”
Dennis starts to reply, but Kaiser beats him to the punch. “Sheriff, I know you lost a relative a couple of years back—a deputy you believe Forrest Knox had a hand in killing. You also lost two deputies to that booby trap at the warehouse. I’ve lost agents, myself. I lost fellow soldiers in Vietnam. A lot of them. But you can’t give in to the hunger for quick payback. It never works out like you think it will.” Kaiser glances at me, then back at Dennis. “What I want from these sons of bitches is the truth, no matter who gets jailed or exonerated. The truth, men. That’s why if anybody goes in to question them today, it should be me.”
“But you’re not even convinced they should be questioned,” I point out.
Kaiser shrugs. “Obviously, we can’t unbreak that egg. They’re in custody now.”
“Damn straight,” Sheriff Dennis says.
“But I need you to understand something, Sheriff. I’ve been working to nail these bastards longer than you think. I know things about them that even Henry Sexton didn’t know. With all due respect, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“I know the Knox family, all right.”
“Do you?” Kaiser reaches into a thick leather bag beside his chair and drops a stack of worn files on the sheriff’s desk. “Why don’t we see how well you know them?”
Dennis sighs heavily, glances at his watch, then motions for Kaiser to get on with it.
As I pray I won’t have to listen to a rehash of the file I read last night, Kaiser pats the top file with the flat of his right hand, then launches into a more concise version of exactly that. Sheriff Dennis appears surprisingly interested in this information, particularly the tales of mutilation carried out by Knoxes serving in the armed forces.
“There were official records of this?” he asks, taking a pinch of Skoal and tucking it into the right side of his lower lip.
“Absolutely,” Kaiser says. “And they weren’t unique to the Knoxes. The practices were so widespread that the brass couldn’t stop them. In 1944, one ‘picture of the week’ in Life magazine showed a U.S. sailor’s girlfriend writing him a thank-you note for a Japanese skull he’d sent her from the Pacific. Vietnam vets took a lot of heat over severed-ear stories, but that kind of savagery has always been a part of war—especially in societies that value hunting as proof of masculinity.”
“Like the Deep South?” I ask.
“The South has no monopoly on brutality,” Kaiser says without missing a beat. “A Pennsylvania senator gave President Roosevelt a letter opener made from the arm bone and tanned skin of a Japanese soldier. Roosevelt only returned the gift after a scandal broke about it. Hundreds of gold teeth and ears were taken by American soldiers on Guadalcanal, sometimes from living owners.”
“So you’re saying that normal men committed these kinds of acts?”
“Yes—if the word ‘normal’ means anything when it comes to war. But the Knoxes don’t belong in the middle of the curve.” Kaiser lets me see the passion behind his eyes. “I believe the Knoxes are sociopaths—all of them, to one degree or another. And I believe that America’s wars—and later the civil rights struggle—offered them an arena in which to exercise their particular appetites.”
“Henry Sexton had a similar theory,” I tell him.
“The damned thing of it is,” says Sheriff Dennis, “it sounds like Forrest Knox was a hell of a soldier. Killing all those VC out on his own like that, and leaving half-dollars in their mouths . . . he scared the hell out of the Cong.”
Kaiser smiles strangely. “Sociopaths often make effective soldiers, at least in small-unit actions. Killing is the objective, after all. But over time, their various paraphilias have a corrosive effect on morale.”
Dennis gives a somber nod. “I swear to God, when I read Caitlin’s article this morning, about the Double Eagles slicing off those black boys’ service tattoos, I damn near puked. Anybody who did that to a vet ought to be hung.”
“I’m working on it,” Kaiser promises. “Just like Henry was.”
“I thought the Double Eagle gold piece was the Eagles’ sign,” Dennis says, glancing at his watch. “Why did Forrest use half-dollars on the VC?”
Kaiser smiles like a patient college professor. “Only the older guys had gold pieces. The mints stopped pressing the Double Eagle in 1933. All the younger members carried ’64 JFK half-dollars. Confidentially, that may have had to do with the Kennedy assassination.”
“You said something about that in the hospital yesterday morning,” Dennis recalls. “What’s the deal on that?”
I sigh wearily, dreading a Kaiser soliloquy on his pet conspiracy theory, but he says, “We don’t have time to go into the details, Sheriff. And I don’t have the authority to give them to you. Let me just say that one or more of the men in your jail at this moment may know who killed John F. Kennedy. They may even be related to the assassin. Most important, they may possess evidence that could prove his guilt.”
Dennis can see that Kaiser is serious, and he’s appropriately impressed. “Well, since they’re facing mandatory thirty-year sentences, why don’t you take this opportunity to squeeze the truth out of them?”
Kaiser takes his time with this question. The idea must surely be tempting to him. But his response is exactly what I expect.
“Because,” he says, “anything I get them to say based on a threat that might later be proved, ah . . . less than genuine, shall we say, would be inadmissible in court. I can’t risk a case that big under those circumstances.”