The Devil's Punchbowl

  “Surely if they found the DVD, they found the other stuff long ago. They’ve known about Ben Li from the beginning.”

  “I doubt they hired the kid because he was stupid.”

  The screen saver has started on the Mac’s display; pastoral scenes of the four seasons fade in and out, providing jarring visual counterpoint to what we just heard.

  “What do we do now?” Caitlin asks.

  “I’m tempted to call Sands,” I say. “Tell him that as far as I’m concerned, everything is settled. He’s got his DVD, and I’m going back to normal life.”

  Kelly shakes his head. “That won’t accomplish anything. Not unless you’re really backing off. Is that what you’re doing?”

  Caitlin looks at me expectantly.

  “You mean tonight?” I ask. “The kayaks? The photo op?”

  Kelly nods. “They probably feel more secure right now than they have since the night Jessup died.”

  I close my eyes, trying to see the larger picture.

  “Look at it this way,” Kelly says. “Do you feel good about bringing Annie back to town as things stand?”

  “No.”

  “There you go.”

  “How did Sands find that DVD?” I ask. “Even if he somehow heard Tim’s message—if Shad Johnson played it for him—he couldn’t have understood Tim’s clues.”

  “Who knows?” says Kelly. “Metal detector, maybe. He’s probably had flunkies searching that cemetery ever since Jessup died. Don’t worry about it.”

  An insistent buzzing starts in the room.

  “Is that your cell phone?” Caitlin asks Kelly.

  Kelly reaches into his pocket and silences the phone. “There’s only one way to get these guys out of your life. Send them to prison or kill them. We can put an end to this thing tonight. Three good photos and you’ve got them on felony charges. Then you can take backbearings and fill in the missing pieces. Linda Church. The USB drive. Ben Li. The freaking ‘bird’ thing, whatever that is. What do you say, boss?”

  “I’ll get the boats. Are Danny and Carl on line for it?”

  “What do you think?” Kelly smiles at Caitlin. “Why don’t you make a few copies of Linda’s note? It wouldn’t hurt to dub Tim’s voice memo either, and make some backups of the last part of that DVD.”

  She nods excitedly, glad for something to do.

  Kelly looks at me. “Are you going to share any of this with Chief Logan?”

  I don’t answer immediately, but I know what my gut is telling me. “I don’t think we can risk anyone finding out that Linda Church is alive.”

  Kelly nods in agreement. “Logan didn’t tell you about the voice memo, did he? Even though it was meant for you.”

  This hadn’t struck me until now. “I wonder if he knows about it. Maybe Shad Johnson took the phone the night of the murder, and Logan never saw anything but the texts. When I asked him at the station if he had the phone, he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “So we’re definitely not showing the DA anything?”

  I actually laugh at the absurdity of this idea, then sit back on the chair, suddenly drained by the release of tension. When Kelly takes out his phone to check his message, it’s instantly obvious that something is wrong. Before I can ask him what, he hands me the phone. There’s a text message on the screen, short and to the point:

  Cease all inquiry re Jonathan Sands immediately. Conflict of interest. The assets will be protected, but you’re to stand down in Mississippi soonest. TOC Kabul 48 hours. Burton. PS Don’t push this.

  “Daniel?” I say, handing the phone to Caitlin. “Are Annie and my mother the ‘assets’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, no,” Caitlin says. “This is crazy.”

  “Are they truly safe, Kelly?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve checked on them twice today.”

  “It looks like things are changing fast.”

  Kelly squats beside me, his eyes intense. “Personal protection is what Blackhawk was founded on. They’ve never lost a client, and they can’t afford to now. Especially people related to someone who can make as much noise as you can.”

  “I don’t feel reassured.”

  “Me either,” says Caitlin.

  Kelly squeezes my shoulder. “I know the guys guarding them, Penn. Both shifts. Even if someone at the company gave out information, these guys would take out anybody who made a move.”

  “What if Blackhawk people showed up at the door?”

  Kelly licks his lips, then seems to take a silent decision. “Look, they’re not even where the company thinks they are, okay? Not anymore. As soon as I got the call about that bounceback on the Sands query, I told the guys to move them.”

  My heart begins to race. “So you are worried.”

  “No. I just don’t take chances. Annie’s fine, man. I told you how to make her truly safe. Stick to the plan. When you get this deep in, only one thing can get you out. Leverage.”

  “You made that plan before you got the text message.”

  “The message changes nothing.”

  “What? You’re ready to lose your job over this?”

  Kelly’s blue eyes are as steady as a man’s can be. “I took that risk the minute I moved Annie and your mother. I don’t know who’s protecting Jonathan Sands, but I know this: They’re on the wrong fucking side.”

  CHAPTER

  31

  The river is black glass tonight, and I’m thankful for it. It’s been three months since I’ve been on water in anything but a ski boat, and then only on a lake. We put in our kayaks a half mile above the city, on the Louisiana side of the river. The western shore is dark except for the digital depth markers the push boat pilots use to find the main channel. The sky to the south glows from the ambient light of Natchez. The air over the water is chilly and calm, but high above us black clouds are scudding across the face of the moon.

  Kelly paddles beside me with smooth assurance, like a wingman flying escort. He learned his moves when his Delta team did an exchange program with Britain’s Special Boat Squadron; their commandos taught him the mysteries of handling small craft of all types. Our kayaks are Seda gliders, nineteen-foot touring boats with razor bows that move through the water like Kevlar arrows. With a seasoned paddler in the cockpit, they can do twelve miles an hour going downstream. The steamboats of the 1870s moved only slightly faster than this. I’m a recreational paddler, but I’ve mastered the art of powering the boat with my torso and hips, using the rudder pedals as braces for my long touring stroke. Kelly uses a power stroke, keeping his offset blades close to the kayak throughout his movement.

  We can easily talk as we paddle, as long as he stays within ten or fifteen feet of me, which he has made a point of doing. Kayaks are inherently unstable, and push boats can throw up four-foot waves in their wake as they drive their barges up and down the river. I can almost feel Kelly tensing to perform a rescue every time our boats hit a boil in the otherwise smooth river.

  We almost scrubbed tonight’s mission five minutes before we put the kayaks in the river. That was when I confessed to Kelly that I’d contacted my closest friend in the FBI about Jonathan Sands. I probably wouldn’t have risked it if it weren’t a Sunday, but I knew Peter Lutjens would be home with his family, and not in the Puzzle Palace—FBI headquarters—where he works in the IT department of the National Security Division. The result wasn’t what I’d hoped for. In less than two hours, Lutjens called back and told me that no information could be given out about Sands under any circumstances, and I should be very careful whom I questioned about him.

  I was about to hang up when Lutjens asked about Annie. I answered briefly, and then we chatted for a while about his son, who was having trouble with a science project. Lutjens told a lengthy anecdote about a next-door neighbor who’d turned out to be a retired physicist, who’d helped the boy finish the project. “Sometimes,” Lutjens concluded, “help comes from the most unexpected places.” I thanked him for his time, wondering what he could mean by that. Whatever he meant, it’s unlikely to help us on the river tonight.

  Our kayaks glide past the northern reaches of Vidalia and Natch
ez almost without sound, the lights of the houses on Clifton Avenue glittering above us. Three-quarters of a mile to our left, the casino boats line the foot of the bluff, spaced about evenly for almost a mile. First comes the Magnolia Queen, then the Zephyr, the Evangeline, and finally the Lady Belle. I think of Tim as I pass the Queen because the cemetery sits on the ground high above it, but guilt will not help me tonight. Kelly didn’t even want me along, and I mean to prove that I won’t slow him down.

  Danny McDavitt and Carl Sims are somewhere in the sky to the south of us, shadowing the VIP boat. Danny must be flying very high or very low because I can’t hear his helicopter. Our journey has been a milk run so far, but that will soon change, and knowing that Carl is riding shotgun in the chopper with his sniper rifle gives me a sense of confidence I might otherwise lack.

  “Looking good,” Kelly says, his voice coming clear over the water. “You feeling okay?”

  “Yeah. Trying to get used to working the rudder again.”

  “The real work’s below the waist.”

  “I feel it.”

  As the twin bridges slide past high above our heads, Kelly stops paddling and adjusts the ear bud connected to the Star Trek in his pocket.

  “Any word from Danny and Carl?” I ask.

  “The VIP boat’s still cruising south, but not in any hurry.”

  He pulls back a piece of canvas and checks the GPS unit Velcroed to the coaming of his boat. “We’ve been doing six miles an hour. Not bad, but let’s see if we can find some faster water.”

  His kayak shoots forward without apparent extra effort on his part, then turns toward the middle of the river. I grip my two-bladed paddle and pull as strongly as I can, trying to stay up with him. On a river as broad as the Mississippi, the surface moves at different speeds in different places. Soon we’re moving at a steady nine miles per hour, and the lights of the town fall quickly behind us.

  The land beyond the levee to our right is all former plantation land, and most of it’s still farmed today. From faintly silhouetted landmarks such as grain silos, I can tell we’re passing the old Morville Plantation, the one my father mentioned as a den of white slavery and gambling in the 1960s. Remembering this gives me a feeling of futility, as though Tim’s effort to stop what he saw as the rape of his hometown was nothing more than a vain quest to fight vices that will always be with us. The ironies are almost unbearable, if I think about them. Kelly and I are paddling this river to photograph men committing illegal cruelty upon animals, in order to “save” a city built upon the incalculable cruelty of slavery. The land on both sides of this river was watered with the sweat and blood of slaves, and their descendants still struggle to find their place in the life of the community. I’ve dealt with the consequences of that history every day of my term as mayor, and it lies at the root of the most intractable problem I’ve ever faced.

  “Something weird’s going on,” Kelly says. “The VIP boat’s barely moving, but they still haven’t stopped anywhere.”

  “What do you think?”

  He looks across the space between us. “Could they be fighting dogs on the boat? Down below or something?”

  “I guess. Caitlin told me urban dogfighters hold fights in basements and places like that. But that’s an expensive cabin cruiser. I can’t imagine them fighting dogs in there.”

  Kelly stops paddling and lets his boat drift with the current. “In five minutes we’ll be at the place they docked last night. If they haven’t stopped anywhere by then, I say we get out and wait. Scout the place out. They could actually be coming back to the same spot.”

  “You think?”

  Kelly chuckles softly. “They might just be cruising around drinking, getting hyped up for the fight. Maybe the handlers haven’t got the dogs here yet. Yeah, this might be perfect. We can videotape everybody as they get off the cruiser.”

  “What if somebody heard Danny’s chopper, and it spooked them?”

  Kelly’s smile vanishes. “Don’t put the hex on us, man. Let’s go.”

  He digs his paddle into the black water and heads for the Louisiana shore. Another mile of river slides beneath us, then Kelly holds up his hand. After I stop paddling, he checks his GPS, then says, “We’re there. Let’s take ’em in.”

  “I see a sandbar. Do you want to land there?”

  “Let’s go about forty yards farther down, where those weeds are.”

  To my surprise, Kelly lets me lead. I pull up my rudder with the lanyard, then drive the bow of my boat onto the gently sloping river bottom. When my motion stops, I lay the shaft of my paddle behind me, just aft of the cockpit, and brace the flat of the blade on the sand. Using this to stabilize the boat, I extricate my legs from the cockpit and step out into the water. Kelly does the same as I drag my kayak into the weeds, and soon we’re standing under some small cottonwoods, surveying the land where Danny saw the VIP boat anchor last night.

  Kelly takes a night scope from his pack and glasses the darkness in front of us. To me the landscape looks like a black-and-white photograph tinted slightly blue. The hum of insects is annoyingly loud, and the only light comes from the half-moon over our heads. Kelly’s view is completely different, of course. To him this night is a montage of ghostly greens, one he can navigate with the sure-footedness of a deer feeding at dusk.

  “What do you see?” I ask.

  “Nothing much. Let’s move inland.”

  All I can do is follow orders and walk in his tracks. The soil is sandy, the weeds and nettles thick. As we get farther from the river, the cottonwood trees tower above us.

  “Any signs of people?”

  “There’s a shed about forty meters to the north,” he says. “No lights. Looks like a swing set or something beside it.”

  As we pick our way through the tree trunks, Kelly adds, “I see a few benches and chairs.”

  Though the chill of fall was in the air on the river, here the night is thick with the smell of green foliage, and I’ve begun to sweat. It’s as though we’ve stumbled into some low-lying region where summer never ends.

  Kelly curses as I collide with his back. He stands immobile, head cocked as though he’s listening for something. When I start to speak, he flips up a hand and whispers, “Give it a second. You’ll understand.”

  Then I do. The smell of death is in the air—thick and powerful enough to smother the green scent I savored only moments ago. The odor isn’t alien; it’s what you smell when you’re forced to drive slowly past an armadillo that’s been dead for two days.

  “This place feels deserted,” I whisper.

  Kelly lowers the scope, then raises his neck and turns his head like a meerkat moving in slow motion. “No, there’s something here. Something alive.”

  “Deer?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  I have no desire to walk any closer to whatever is producing that reek. But when Kelly creeps forward, I realize I have even less desire to stand here by myself.

  As I follow him, the stench of death grows overpowering. I can barely suppress my gag reflex. Beneath the putrid smell of decay is a pungent, ammoniac funk that almost burns the nostrils. Lifting the crook of my left arm to my face, I bury my nose in my jacket sleeve and survey what little I can see by moonlight.

  There’s the swing set Kelly mentioned. It’s a standard A-frame set, like the one my parents bought at Western Auto in the 1960s, but no swings are attached to its crossbar—only some heavy-gauge springs and short links of chain. The chains end in hooks, while large carabiners dangle from the springs. Fifteen yards to my right is some sort of contraption that looks like a piece of antique playground equipment. It has two metal arms jutting from a central pillar that looks as though it’s meant to rotate so the arms can turn in a circle. But I can’t quite solve the puzzle of its function. One of the arms ends in a hook, and a short length of chain dangles from the second, a few feet behind that one.

  “What is this place?” I whisper.

  “It’s for training,” Kelly murmurs, clicking on a flashlight with a red filter on its lens. “They hang things the dogs want from the hooks
and springs. Pit bulls will leap up and bite and hang there for hours. They do it to strengthen the dogs’ jaws.”

  “What’s that thing that looks like a homemade merry-go-round?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do.”

  Kelly points his red beam at the strange machine and walks over to it. “See this front arm?” He points to the one that ends in a hook. “They hang a pet caddy from this hook with a kitten or something else inside it. Then they chain the dog to this arm back here. The cat goes crazy from terror, of course, and the dog chases it, pushing against the resistance in the machine.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s sort of like dog races—only with this deal, when the dog’s through running, they let him kill the cat. Sometimes they don’t even use a pet caddy. They just hang the bait animal from the hook. I’ve seen that in Kabul. I think they call this thing a jenny, or something like that.”

  Suddenly the red beam vanishes, and I feel Kelly’s hand on my arm.

  “What is it?” I ask, feeling my heart kick. “Did you hear something?”

  “A cat, I think. Listen.”

  He’s right. Beneath the whine of insects, I hear a tiny feline mewling, like the kind you hear behind Dumpsters at fast-food restaurants.

  “I think it’s coming from the shed,” Kelly says. “Come on.”

  I follow reluctantly, still thinking about the jenny.

  Kelly quickly covers the distance to the shed, but as I follow, my right foot bangs into a bucket on the ground, sending a hollow clang through the trees. Before the sound dies, a cat screams inside the shed. Then something scuffles against the wall boards.

  “Very smooth,” Kelly says, trying the door handle. “It’s locked.”

  “I saw a silencer on your pistol. Just shoot it off.”

  “No.” He runs his hand down the faces of the weathered boards. Slipping his fingertips into a crack between two boards at shoulder level, he yanks a board right off the shed, then jumps back as though he expects a wildcat to leap out of the dark opening. When nothing emerges but the stench of old urine, he switches on his flashlight and shines it into the shed.