“The sheriff’s name is Billy Ray Ellis. He’s eating lunch with some hunting buddies now.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m about to ruin his day. Good ol’ Billy Ray is about to feel the full weight and power of the federal government.”
I thank Kaiser and click off, then push the accelerator to the floor. The S4 eats up the miles like a starving beast, its Quattro drive holding me in the curves when most other cars would spin off the steep shoulders and into the trees below.
I reluctantly brake as I reach the outskirts of Woodville, Mississippi. The turn for Highway 24 East isn’t far ahead, but my cell phone rings yet again before I reach it.
It’s Carl again.
“Talk to me, buddy,” I tell him.
“Danny and I got the chopper! Agent Kaiser lit a serious fire under the sheriff’s ass. Billy Ray’s spittin’ mad, but we’re cleared to go into Valhalla if we need to. A judge is signing the warrant now. Right now we have to decide where to search. Do we run the roads and turnarounds? Or do we start searching the swamp first? We’d rather you make that call.”
“The swamp, no question. She’s got a map to follow, and she wouldn’t hesitate.”
“I thought she lost her map when she dove on Whelan’s corpse.”
“She did, but Jordan Glass shot a picture of it before it was lost. But if this Harold Wallis is a poacher, he may know where the Bone Tree is anyway. That’s what she’s after. How much do you remember of Rambin’s map?”
“Enough to get us in the general area of where that X was.” There’s a static-filled pause. “But there’s a million or so cypress trees down there, Penn. The only way to find that tree without the map is to grid-search the whole area, tree by tree.”
“Screw the tree. We can search for Caitlin’s cell phone, if you have the equipment.”
“We’re already up and trying, but we haven’t found a trace of it.”
I look at the Audi’s nav screen and make a quick calculation.
“Carl, in two minutes, I’ll be on Highway 24 and moving toward you guys at close to a hundred miles an hour. Can you set down on the road in front of me? Will Danny do that?”
“He’ll do it. You still driving that black convertible?”
“Yep. I’ll have my headlights on.”
“We’ll see you in a minute.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
Dropping my cell on the passenger seat, I slam the accelerator to the floor. The Audi’s rear end nearly slings out from under me as I start around a sweeping curve, but at the last instant the tires catch the wet pavement and the increasing G-force presses me back in the seat.
“Come on, Caitlin,” I whisper. “Call me. . . .”
CHAPTER 68
CAITLIN SAT IN the bow of Harold Wallis’s narrow pirogue, the rain shell of her jacket pulled tight around her as they trolled slowly under overhanging cypress branches. The steady hiss of rain on the black water was as familiar now as the stink of decaying vegetation. Beneath the hiss ran the hum of the trolling motor Harold had bolted to the side of the pirogue’s stern. Pirogues were usually powered by a human with a pole, but the boy had cleverly worked out a way to save himself a lot of labor.
Harold navigated the swamp much more deftly than Mose Tyler had earlier in the day. Perhaps it was his youth—and the better vision that came with it—but he threaded his slender boat through the tangled jungle almost noiselessly, leaving no trace of their passing. Only the hum of the trolling motor marked their passage.
Caitlin had brought along the little point-and-shoot camera she carried in her glove box in case of traffic accidents, and she’d already shot a mother alligator lying on a half-sunken log, four babies clinging to her back. The pirogue passing ten feet away hadn’t fazed the gator at all. This was her territory, not theirs. If Harold actually led Caitlin to the Bone Tree, she was going to wish she’d borrowed Jordan’s Nikon, but in that event, a hundred professional photographers would descend on this swamp. Today her tiny Casio would have to do.
In the pocket of her fleece jacket, Caitlin clutched her cell phone. She’d checked it every two or three minutes since they put in to the water, but the LCD had yet to register a single bar. This worried her a little, she wouldn’t deny that. Because Harold Wallis, while a companionable guide, had begun acting like a nervous point man on combat patrol five minutes after they put into the water. She’d considered calling Penn before they left Athens Point behind, but he would have forbidden her to go into the swamp without Carl Sims as an escort. Nor could she call upon Carl or Danny. They were already in serious trouble for helping her, and she didn’t want to jeopardize their jobs any further. Besides, she was armed, and Harold had his .22. She hoped that would be enough to drive off anyone who might have come out to the Bone Tree to remove whatever incriminating evidence lay inside it.
But the deeper they penetrated into the ghostly stands of cypress trees, the clearer her memory of Henry Sexton’s Bone Tree journal became. Not the legends of ghosts and demons riding through the fog-shrouded swamp, but the real men on horseback who’d surely prompted those legends, men who had killed for a dozen different causes, but always with ruthlessness, rage, or hatred. Today she was more likely to encounter angry rednecks riding souped-up ATVs rather than horses. The thought made her clench the pistol in her jacket pocket.
She was glad that most of the Double Eagles were in jail today. Of course, Forrest Knox remained free, as did his cousin Billy—not to mention the intimidating Redbone who served as Forrest’s right-hand man. Caitlin shivered at the memory of his flat, cruel stare the night she’d encountered him outside the Concordia hospital.
“You know where you are?” Harold asked softly.
Caitlin took the map out of her left pocket and studied it, then peered through the rain, trying to orient herself.