After several curses and mistakes, she finally got into her digital mailbox and called up the file attachment she needed. Blocking out the pain of her injuries, she focused on the tiny screen, processing her own words with ruthless efficiency, deciding which elements of the existing lead story could function as a foundation for the new one she would dictate before they reached the sheriff’s department. As she stared at the glowing LCD, it finally sank in how profoundly the world had changed in the two hours since she’d written that piece. The entire story would have to be rewritten.
A wave of exhaustion rolled over her, giving her the sense that she was being smothered. When at last she caught her breath, her stomach rolled with nausea. The only thought she could hold in her mind was of the poacher, Rambin. Only days ago, this stranger had contacted Henry Sexton with an offer to guide him to the Bone Tree for a price. But did Toby Rambin know what he claimed to know? Henry had been misled by greedy “guides” before. And since he’d been attacked the night after Rambin contacted him, he’d been unable to keep his scheduled rendezvous. In a narcotic fog in his hospital room—only minutes before a sniper fired a bullet at his head—Henry had given Caitlin the poacher’s telephone number. With a twinge of guilt she recalled altering the entry in Henry’s cell phone so that no one else would be able to find the right number if they checked his phone. As ruthless as that was, Caitlin was glad now that she’d done it. She only hoped she could reach Rambin before the poacher heard about Henry’s murder and fled the state.
Calm down, she told herself. Caitlin closed her eyes and tried to blank her thoughts, but the image of Henry Sexton immolating himself and Brody Royal only grew more distinct in her mind’s eye.
She opened her eyes and punched the keypad of Deputy Wells’s cell phone.
“Caitlin?” Jamie said. “Is that you?”
“Have you had any word from the press operator?”
“None. Nick’s dropped off the face of the earth.”
“With a lot more money than he had last week,” she muttered.
“You really think Nick would help somebody hurt you?”
“I doubt he thought they would kill me. But . . .” Caitlin fell silent as another memory from the basement returned to her. “Jamie . . . before he died, Brody Royal was bragging about how little it had cost him to buy one of our people.”
“Okay. And?”
“I’m pretty sure he said he’d bought a journalist. A scribbler, he said. I remember now. So even if Nick was the one who locked me out, he might not be the only person Royal bribed. I mean, would Nick know where we were keeping Henry’s journals? Would he know how to work the computers, navigate our intranet? Would he know the user names or passwords of the reporters?”
“No. But if Nick didn’t delete the files, then it could be anybody. How the hell do we go forward from here?”
“Think hard about who you trust. With Royal dead, the mole will assume their payday is over. So from this point forward, they might just go back to doing their job.”
“I guess. It still creeps me out, though. And it pisses me off.”
A worrisome thought struck her. “There’s another possibility. When Royal mentioned the mole, he said he had taken a page out of Forrest’s book. He was talking about Forrest Knox, chief of the Criminal Investigations Bureau of the Louisiana State Police. That means Knox was also paying a reporter somewhere. Probably Baton Rouge, where he lives, I’d guess. Or maybe New Orleans. But if Forrest knows about Royal’s mole at the Examiner, who’s to say he can’t extend the arrangement?”
“What if Forrest Knox’s mole was at Henry Sexton’s paper?” Jamie asked. “Or at half a dozen of them? Why limit a good thing, if you’ve got the money to spend?”
“You’re right. Jeez, that would explain a lot. We’ll have to keep our plans confined to a very tight circle. Tomorrow’s stories will have to be written on two computers only, yours and mine. No sharing files, no Internet connection for them.”
“Okay.”
Caitlin looked out at the lights flashing by outside the cruiser. At last she recognized a building. “I’m only five minutes from the sheriff’s office. I need to start dictating.”
“I’m ready.”
“Jamie, this really is the most—”
“You’re not seriously going to waste time telling me how big this is, are you? Go.”
She took a deep breath, then shut her eyes and began to compose her new story on the fly. “Last night, Henry Sexton of the Concordia Beacon laid down his life for a fellow journalist. That journalist was me . . .”
As Caitlin spoke, a soft voice at the center of her mind asked a deeply troubling question: Could Jamie be the mole? Almost instantly another voice answered, No way. She had known her editor for six years. He was a flaming liberal, a crusader for justice who hated greed and repression in all their forms. But probably more persuasive than this, Jamie—like Caitlin herself—was rich. He’d been born into a family with money, and thus had the luxury of being immune to blandishments that might tempt those less fortunate.
“Caitlin?” Jamie said. “What the hell? Are you there?”
“Yeah, can you not hear me?”
“You stopped talking thirty seconds ago.”
“I’m sorry. God, it’s been a crazy night. Where was I?”
“The last thing you said was, ‘This lone reporter, working from a tiny newspaper in the slowly dying delta of Louisiana, accomplished more than an army of FBI agents did in forty years—’ and then you trailed off.”
“Okay . . . okay. Ready?”
“Go,” Jamie said.
Banishing the mole from her mind, Caitlin picked up the story again.
CHAPTER 6