“Why the long face?” I ask him. “You must have found a treasure trove of evidence at the Bone Tree.”
“Yes and no. Plenty of bones, but they’ll take a long time to process. All in all, though, this is shaping up to be one of the crappiest weeks of my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“For one thing, I was about to nail Forrest Knox’s hide to the barn door when you decided to relieve him of the burden of living.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to apologize.”
Kaiser sniffs and bites his bottom lip. “That’s not all. Dwight Stone died this morning.”
This bald statement hits me like a gut punch.
“His daughter was with him, at least.”
“Shit. You told him everything Sonny Thornfield told us, right?”
“Yeah.” Kaiser rubs his right thumb against his fingertips with a dry, urgent rustle. “It meant a lot to him. His daughter told me that.”
“That’s something, at least. So . . . is that what you came to tell me?”
“Partly. But I’ve also got some more news for you. Quite a bit, actually.”
“Good or bad?”
“I think you’ll like it. Do you know who Griffith Mackiever is?”
“Sure. Forrest Knox’s boss. The one accused of child pornography.”
“Right. Well, Colonel Mackiever is going to quite a bit of trouble to get you released from jail.”
“Released? Why would he do that?”
“A couple of reasons. First, Walt Garrity has been doing some undercover work for him for at least two days.”
“While he was being hunted for killing a state cop?”
Kaiser gives an ironic chuckle. “Yeah. It seems Walt and Mackiever go back to their days as Texas Rangers. Forrest was the one smearing Mackiever, trying to take his job. Mackiever promised Garrity that he’d do all he could for him and your father if Garrity would help him bust Forrest.”
“Bust him?”
“I think ‘remove’ might be more accurate. In any case, you ended up performing that function, and you happen to be very dear to Captain Garrity. Also, according to Walt, Mackiever is one of those rare men who understand gratitude. He’s the personification of ‘old school.’”
“Great. But how the hell can he get me out of killing Forrest?”
Kaiser leans forward and speaks in a nearly inaudible whisper. “Don’t ever let those words pass your lips again. You drove south on Highway 61 and walked through the Valhalla property, but you never entered that lodge. You were distraught, but you came to your senses and drove back home. You never saw Forrest Knox.”
“John . . . how the hell can he make that fly?”
Kaiser speaks a little louder but keeps his voice low. “That’s where I come in. You see, Garrity’s not exactly alone in trying to help you.”
After Shad’s gloating certainty about my fate, the recognition of compassion in Kaiser moves something within me. “I think you’d better explain.”
“Do you remember Garrity telling you he’d found something in Knox’s pocket after he died?”
“Sure. A key. I saw it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Okay . . . “Go on.”
“Well, Garrity figured he ought to do what he could with that key before events took on their own momentum. All he knew was that it went to a Chateau brand lock, which is a very common disk-type padlock. That wouldn’t have meant a damned thing to most people, even most cops. But being the old bloodhound he is, Garrity did something pretty remarkable. He drove to Baton Rouge and looked up rental storage units in the Yellow Pages, and he found two that were within a mile of Forrest Knox’s residence. They contained hundreds of individual units, of course, but that didn’t stop Garrity. He drove to both places, and saw that one had security cameras, while the other didn’t.”
“Forrest used the one without cameras,” I think aloud. “In case whatever he kept there was ever discovered.”
“Exactly. And did Garrity stop there? No. That wounded SOB walked up and down the lines of units, checking every Chateau lock he could find, until he found the one that Knox’s key fit.”
“That sounds just like him, actually. What did he find inside?”
“The jackpot, Penn. I shit you not.”
“Not a body.”
“Better than a body.”
“Goddamn it, John, tell me.”
“Most of the stuff was locked in metal containers, and some were even booby-trapped. Walt figured he’d better leave that intact for a later search—an official search. But just inside the storage unit’s door—like it had just been dropped there—he found two boxes of crap that probably came from the floor safes at Valhalla.”
“What was in them?”
“Not much. But two items were of particular interest to me. One was a U.S. Navy tattoo on a swatch of human skin.”
A chill races up my back. “Jimmy Revels’s tattoo!”
Kaiser nods, his eyes shining. “The one stolen from Sheriff Dennis’s evidence locker yesterday, and now back in our hands. The other item”—he digs into his back pocket—“was this.”
The FBI agent brings up some folded sheets of paper and holds them in the air, just out of my reach.
“What’s that?”
“A letter.”
“From who? To whom?”
Kaiser looks like he can’t decide whether to tell me or not. Then he says, “Lee Harvey Oswald.”
“What?”
The FBI agent nods. “It’s a letter from Oswald to his wife, Marina, and it’s dated November twenty-first, 1963.”
“John . . . that’s impossible.”
“Not if Frank Knox killed John Kennedy. The letter was still in its envelope, by the way.”
Yesterday I wouldn’t have cared one whit about more assassination information, but for some reason, Kaiser’s revelation has stirred something within me. I try to imagine a sequence of events that could have produced the scenario he’s describing, but my mind is too detached to do it. “That can’t be right. No letter like that was ever found. Marina Oswald sure never mentioned it.”
“I don’t think she ever got it. The envelope was addressed and had a stamp on it—five cents—but it wasn’t postmarked.”