P.S. Don’t try to find the Bone Tree alone. You’ve got too much to live for.
Caitlin looked up from the papers, her eyes wet and her heart beating fast. The letter in her hands was a voice from the grave. Henry had felt alive to her as she read his words, but he was not. He was dead, now and forever. He had foreseen the possibility, and he had passed his torch to her. No one else alive knew about Toby Rambin and his offer, and no one else would—
Her heart lurched as the door opened and Jackie Cullen stuck her head inside.
“Agent Kaiser is looking for you,” she said. “I told him I hadn’t seen you, but I wouldn’t count on privacy for long.”
“Thanks, Jackie. Go.”
Caitlin gathered up the pages and photos and slid them back into the envelope. Then she flattened the brass closure tabs, went out into the lobby, and opened the door to the hall that led to her office. She was ten steps away when John Kaiser came around the corner beyond her door and waved.
“You look like you just translated the Rosetta stone,” he said. “Want to let me in on it?”
He stopped and waited beside her office door. Flustered speechless, Caitlin went into her office and dropped the folder on her credenza as if it meant nothing, then sat behind her desk.
“Everything okay?” Kaiser asked. “Seriously. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, too sharply. “I’m just functioning on zero sleep.”
“What’s in the envelope?”
“Business crap. Advertising reports. The paper shuffling doesn’t stop just because I’m working on the story of a lifetime.”
“That’s for sure,” Kaiser said, taking a seat in the chair opposite her. “I’ve got one of my agents doing nothing but filing reports for the rest of us. A total waste.”
“What can I do for you?” Caitlin asked. “Have you found my mole?”
“No. But we will. I should tell you that the original deleting of files was done by ‘User 23,’ and that ID belongs to your editor, Jamie Lewis—”
“Jamie!”
“Relax, he didn’t do it. He’s a rich, liberal Yankee, and I questioned him myself. Somebody hacked into Lewis’s intranet account, which I’m pretty sure is well beyond the abilities of your missing press operator, Nick Moore.”
“Do you have any idea who it could have been?”
“Not yet. It could be an employee, but it could also have been someone who hacked in from outside. You just leave the mole hunt to us. Why don’t you go home and grab a nap?”
“Are you kidding? This town’s filling up with reporters so fast that we’ll run out of hotel rooms. I’ll sleep when this story’s finished.”
The FBI agent crossed his legs and toyed with a shoelace as if he had all day to sit there.
Caitlin shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “What’s on your mind, John?”
“Henry Sexton’s journals.”
She kept her features immobile.
“I’ve been watching our tech try to reconstruct your server’s drives, which is a bit like watching children try to reconstruct shredded pages one strip at a time. We’re making progress, and getting a pretty good idea of how the journals lay out. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“None of the pages seem to describe any of Henry’s work over the past two months. I can only conclude that we must be missing a journal.”
Caitlin pursed her lips and pretended to think about this.
“Did Henry say anything to you about his most recent one?” Kaiser asked bluntly.
“No,” she answered truthfully. After all, she’d discovered that journal on her own. The Moleskine had been in Henry’s pocket when he was attacked outside the Beacon, and she’d found it in the ashes of the Beacon fire later that night.
“It just seemed to me from reading your stories this morning that you had a lot of detail on the Jimmy Revels case. The RFK plot, all of that.”
“I’ve got a good memory.”
Kaiser smiled. “Also the murder of Pooky Wilson. The crucifixion. Royal told you that happened at the Bone Tree?”
“That’s right.”
“But he didn’t say where the tree was? Other than the Lusahatcha Swamp?”
“It wasn’t that kind of conversation.”
A thin smile. “No. I imagine not.” The FBI agent looked at her for a long time without speaking. “I spent seven years in the ISU, Caitlin—what they used to call the Behavioral Science Unit. And this just doesn’t add up. Henry Sexton was a creature of habit, like all of us. There has to be a last journal, and it’s got to be somewhere. It’s too bad that sniper’s bullet killed his girlfriend.”
Caitlin made a sympathetic noise and blanked her mind. As impossible as it was, she felt strangely sure that if she thought of the slightly scorched Moleskine lying atop the tall credenza behind her, Kaiser would see it too—in his mind. As he studied her, she thought, I should be put in jail. I’m like a raging id with a body—no governing conscience at all.
“Was there anything else?” she asked.
Kaiser’s eyes stayed on hers. She could almost feel the pressure of his gaze. “Have you talked to Penn recently?” he asked.
“Only for a second. It sounded pretty bad across the river.”
“Penn’s not too happy with me right now. Nor I him. We both think each other’s priorities are screwed up.”
Caitlin shrugged. “We’ve all got different agendas. The way of the world, right?”
“Jordan said the same thing.”
“Smart woman. Wait, that was redundant.”
Kaiser rolled his eyes.
“I figured I’d see a lot of Jordan today,” Caitlin said, fishing.
“You probably would have, if I weren’t here. She’s a little upset with me right now.” He glanced at his watch. “She’s still a pro, though. She’s photographing everyone who shows up at Glenn Morehouse’s funeral as we speak. Did you know she’s scheduled to go to Cuba tomorrow, to photograph the Castro brothers?”
“She mentioned it.”