FORREST KNOX SAT AT the Dell computer in his home office, working on notes for the press conference he would call at noon. Inkjet printouts of child pornography pulled from Colonel Mackiever’s work computer lay spread on the right side of his desk. Forrest should have been at headquarters by now, but something was nagging at him down deep. The obvious problems were bad enough. Henry Sexton’s death had triggered a media storm, and Caitlin Masters’s newspaper coverage had only magnified it. (Today’s online edition of the Examiner hovered just behind the Word document containing Forrest’s notes for the press conference.) Thankfully, Masters had focused primarily on Royal and the Double Eagles, and stopped short of accusing Forrest of anything. But that wouldn’t last.
What had kept him at home were the two phones calls he’d received a half hour earlier. The first was from a contact he had in the New Orleans federal court. The woman hadn’t identified herself, but she hadn’t needed to. She simply told Forrest that the FBI had filed National Security Letters requesting the phone and e-mail records on Forrest Knox, Alphonse Ozan, and two other officers in the Criminal Investigations Bureau. Forrest had hung up without a word, but he couldn’t pretend the call hadn’t rattled him. Had he not had that contact, he would never even have known the Bureau was digging into his past. Before he could fully process this news, the second call had come, this one from one of the wealthiest developers planning the post-Katrina transformation of New Orleans. Brody Royal’s death—and the scandal brewing in its wake—had hit those multimillionaires where they lived, and their answering message to Forrest was clear: get Mackiever out of his job ASAP and tamp down the trouble in Concordia Parish by any means necessary. If he couldn’t, their support for him would evaporate like smoke.
A loud barking from behind the house startled Forrest. Traveller, his pit bull, was letting him know he was running late. Forrest forced himself to ignore the dog and focus on the Word document. He was glad when his encrypted phone distracted him from the computer screen.
“What is it?” he said, reading a sentence that needed to be a lot better than it was.
“Mackiever’s back home,” Ozan informed him. “About ten minutes now.”
“Any idea where he’s been?”
“Nope.”
“I should have had him followed from New Orleans.”
“Spilled milk, boss. You think he’ll go in to HQ today?”
“I wouldn’t.” Forrest glanced down at the naked little boy on his desk.
“He’s a proud old bastard,” Ozan said. “He’s liable to go over to the governor’s office to personally hand in his resignation.”
“She’s ready to accept it.”
“What about your press conference?”
Forrest suddenly knew what he was going to do. “I’ve changed my mind about that.”
“What do you mean? You gonna wait? Give him the full forty-eight hours?”
“No. I’m going to leak the full story.”
“Who you gonna give it to?”
“Don’t worry about that. Just call me when you hear it’s circulating.”
“Got it.”
“No word on Dr. Cage?”
“Negative. Bermuda fucking Triangle.”
Forrest grunted. “Keep looking. Out.”
He pressed END, then deleted the document he’d been writing. Taking his regular cell phone from his pocket, he called a former vice detective he’d partnered with long ago. The man answered after three rings.
“Yo, Colonel. You the boss yet?”
“Not quite. Are you still tight with that woman at the Advocate?”
“Sure.”
“And the TV station? WAFB?”
“You know me. Finger on the pulse.”
“I know the pulse that finger likes to take.”
The detective barked a laugh. “I ain’t changed, partner. Who does? You want me to pass something on?”
“Yeah. But not on the phone. I’ll give you an envelope.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“You won’t believe it when you see it.”
“Who’s the target?”
“The cowboy colonel.”
The detective was silent for a moment. “Sounds like I’m doing you a real service.”
“You know I’m big on gratitude.”
“That I do, old buddy. How about one of those weekend hunting trips with diablitos and whores included?”
“Do this and you’re comped.”
“Oh, hell yeah. Where’s the handoff?”
Forrest thought about it. “How about the Home Depot parking lot, College Drive? I’ll be in my cruiser. Twenty minutes.”
“That’s quick, but I can make it. Can’t wait to see it.”
Forrest heard the floor creak behind him, then a sharp scream. He knew without turning that his wife had made the sound, but it took him a moment to realize why. When he did, he swept the photos on his desk into the top drawer. His wife was accustomed to seeing grisly crime scene photos, but the kiddie porn that Ozan and some of the guys in vice had pulled off a server in the Netherlands was truly sickening.
“What was that?” his wife gasped.
“A case,” he said gruffly.
“I don’t want that in our house.”
He looked up at the woman who knew his own proclivities about as well as any woman who still walked the earth. But even for someone of her experience and disillusionment, those photos were beyond the pale.
“I don’t either,” he said.
“Why do you have them?”
Forrest decided to test his strategy. “Tech Division pulled these off Colonel Mackiever’s computer. He’s been downloading them at work for months.”
His wife’s hand flew to her mouth. “I don’t believe it. Griffith Mackiever?”
He nodded once, watching her closely.
“Dear Lord.” She shook her head as though she could never accept the idea, but then she said, “I guess you never know anybody, do you?”
Forrest shook his head, but he was smiling inside.
KEEP WALKING, WALT TOLD himself, moving steadily up the street with his picklocks nestled in his inside jacket pocket. Straight and steady, like an old man out for a constitutional.
Knox had left the neighborhood first, his wife about five minutes later. But the most welcome sight had been the silhouette of the pit bull in the backseat of the state police cruiser. Given this gift from the gods, Walt had decided that the best tactic would be to simply walk along the street with a normal gait, then turn up Knox’s driveway as though he were a meter reader or repairman. Mackiever had assured him that no call from Knox’s home security system would alert anyone. It was wired directly to state police headquarters, and Mac had assigned his nephew to disable the connection through the departmental computer system.