“They worked for Brody Royal’s oil company.” Though Caitlin couldn’t let her mind rest on the thought for more than a split second, some part of her was already certain that the dead man in the water was Tom Cage. “They might have dumped Tom where other victims were dumped earlier this week.”
“Don’t borrow trouble. Let’s just get over there and find out.”
“You gonna have to swim,” Mose said.
“For God’s sake,” Jordan snapped, “he’s just a man who drowned.”
“No, he ain’t. A blade cut dat head off. See dat dere?” He pointed at the severed neck, but Caitlin had already noticed the wound. “They used to hunt men back in here in the old times, you know.”
“How long ago were the old times?” Caitlin asked.
“Back in the twenties, I know. Maybe the forties and fifties, too. My daddy told me about the year of the Great Flood, how they brought colored men in to hunt that year. And in slave times, too, he told me. A man ain’t the fastest or the strongest game, but he’s the smartest. And some men got a taste for dat meat. Call it ‘long pig.’”
“I don’t care,” Caitlin said. “You take us up to that body so I can try to identify it.”
“No, ma’am. I ain’t got to do dat. I’m takin’ you back to your car.”
Almost crazed with fear and exasperation, Caitlin remembered the radio Carl had given them. “Jordan, call Carl and tell him to get his ass back here.”
Jordan wasted no time, and she seemed quite at home with the radio. But when Carl’s voice came from the speaker, Caitlin’s feeling of dread only deepened.
“We’re on our way back to the airport,” Carl said. “I was just about to call you and tell you to get out of there.”
“Why?” Jordan asked, peering into the trees as though an army might emerge from the shadows.
“We weren’t over Valhalla for more than sixty seconds when the sheriff called us. Somebody at the camp called in and complained. He ordered us to get the hell out of their airspace. Said we were ruining a hunt and spooking their breeding animals. Can you believe that?”
Jordan was shaking her head. “All that’s academic now,” she said. “We just found a body in the swamp. I presume the sheriff won’t write that off to natural causes.”
“What do you mean, a body?” Carl asked.
“A dead man in the water. And he doesn’t have a head. If you guys could start this way, we damsels in distress would sure appreciate it.”
The radio crackled and hissed for half a minute. Then Carl said, “We’re coming to you. I’ll call you in a few minutes to guide us in.”
“Thanks. And while you’re at it, would you tell our guide to take us in where we can get an idea of who the deceased might be? Caitlin is worried it might be Dr. Cage.”
The radio crackled some more. Then Carl said, “Mose, you do whatever those ladies tell you to do, or I’m bustin’ you for all the stuff I know you do when you think we’re looking the other way.”
In the stern of the johnboat, the old fisherman hung his head.
“Ten-four,” Jordan said. “I think he got the message. Out.”
KAISER SHOULD NEVER HAVE asked Sonny Thornfield about JFK. Not until after the plea deal was done. The old Eagle is sitting as smug as a mob soldier who knows his godfather will have him out of jail in time for happy hour at his favorite bar.
“John, come on,” I say in the most reasonable voice I can muster. “Don’t let him play you like this. How critical is the Kennedy stuff, given the overall situation? Even if he tells you Frank Knox killed JFK? Frank is as dead as Kennedy, and he has been for nearly as long.”
As tense as a pointer nearing a quail, Kaiser holds up his hand to silence me. “It’s not enough to say Frank killed him. He has to prove Frank killed him. Can you do that, Sonny?”
Again the little-boy smile animates Sonny’s mouth, and his eyes flicker with secret knowledge. “I can give you chapter and verse, boss. Frank himself told me the story one night, when he’d drunk damn near a gallon of moonshine.”
Kaiser looks like Ahab after having sighted the milky head and spout of the white whale. Nothing could turn him aside from his obsession now. I feel like slapping him upside the head.
“He’s read you like a book,” I say angrily. “He’s telling you what you want to hear, and there’s no way to cross-check anything he says. Make him give you details on crimes we know about. The Double Eagle killings. Then we’ll know whether he’s full of shit or not.”
Thornfield gives me a ratlike glare. “I ain’t sayin’ shit about that until my family is here and they agree to protection.”
As Kaiser works his mouth around in frustration, my cell phone vibrates. This time, when I take it out of my pocket, I see Carl Sims’s name in the LCD window.
“Carl?” I ask. “What’s up?”
A burst of static makes me jerk the phone away from my ear, but then Carl’s voice pops from the speaker with a tinny timbre. “Penn . . . girls found a body . . . swamp. . . . No ID yet. . . . Caitlin trying to reach it. . . . Altitude, Danny. . . . Penn?”
“Carl!” I cry. “I can’t hear you! The girls found a body?”
“Ten-four. . . . Lusahatcha Swamp. . . . Haven’t reached it yet. . . . Going down to try to help. . . . Call you soon as we know. . . . Out.”
My pulse pounds in my ears as the phone goes dead. A body in the swamp? From the sound of Carl’s voice, he wasn’t talking about old bones, but a fresh corpse. An image of my father floating facedown in the swamp rises behind my eyes, and my legs go weak. What if I had to call my mother and tell her that Dad had been found dead? Impossible—
“What’s happened?” Kaiser asks. “Is it your father?”
“It sounds like it. Caitlin and Jordan found a body in the swamp. They haven’t ID’d it yet, but Carl wouldn’t have called me unless he was afraid it’s Dad. Goddamn it!”
I take two steps toward Thornfield, then force myself to stop, my face burning with rage. “Did Snake kill my father and dump him in Lusahatcha Swamp?”