The Devil's Punchbowl

  “Look,” says Caitlin, pointing to a wooden swing hanging from an oak limb in the backyard. “Let’s just sit here.”

  I sit slowly, taking care not to bang my wounded arm on the swing or chain. Dad prescribed pain pills and antibiotics for my injuries, but my head still throbs from Sands’s blows, and my arm burns where his Bully Kutta ripped the skin.

  “What do you think Kelly is up to?” she asks, pulling her fleece jacket close around her. “Why bring us all the way out here?”

  “It could be anything. The Justice Department might be trying to arrest him. He might need help getting out of the country. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you what happened to Quinn?”

  “Are we off the record?”

  Caitlin nods, her gaze on the mirrorlike surface of the lake beyond the cypress trees.

  “Quinn’s dead.”

  She sighs deeply, but asks nothing more.

  Caitlin has been strangely quiet tonight, especially during the forty-five minute ride from town. The chaos that followed the explosions on the Magnolia Queen meant one of the biggest news stories in the town’s history, but she has acted as if covering it hardly interests her. I think her greatest fear was that I would not survive the near-disaster, which she’d watched from the bluff near the Examiner offices. When I called her cell phone and told her that the Coast Guard had rescued me from the river, something in her gave way, and a sort of delayed shock set in—probably caused by whatever she’d endured while being held prisoner with Linda Church. As we drove through the dark farmland between Natchez and Ferriday, we simply held hands and dwelled in our own thoughts.

  There was a lot I didn’t know when I was dragged aboard the Coast Guard river tender that responded to the distress call from the Magnolia Queen. I didn’t know what had happened to the barge itself, or to the passengers, and it took some time for Logan, the Coast Guard, and the fire chief to determine those things.

  Jonathan Sands had rigged all the mooring cables with Primacord—a ropelike explosive with a wide range of uses—in case the meeting I had demanded proved to be a trap. The foundering casino would provide the diversion he needed to escape, should it prove necessary. By sheer luck, one of the wireless detonators failed, leaving a single cable intact. This proved strong enough to keep the casino from careening downriver toward the twin bridges a mile downstream. There were 753 people aboard the Queen when the cables snapped, and no lifeboats are required on such a barge. Had the casino collided with the bridge pilings, many lives could have been lost. But that possibility paled compared with what might have happened.

  As Sands had claimed in the hold, two unexploded charges remained in the bowels of the barge when he went through the hatch—not Primacord, but C-4. If he had blasted out the bottom of the Magnolia Queen while she was in the main channel of the river, everyone aboard would almost certainly have perished. Despite having a brave crew, the Coast Guard vessel at Natchez doesn’t have the resources to rescue large numbers of people from a fast-sinking ship.

  As for why Sands blew the cables when he did, Chief Logan sussed this out in short order, much to his chagrin. A member of Logan’s handpicked team had called Seamus Quinn’s cell phone just as Quinn and Sands emerged from the elevator after our meeting. This was the call I’d seen Quinn take before the cables blew. Alerted by the traitor, Quinn simply leaned into Sands’s ear and repeated the news he’d just heard: that we’d planted recording devices on the boat, and Logan’s team was about to retrieve them. Sands had known then that, no matter what happened to Edward Po, I intended to make sure the casino manager spent the rest of his life in a Mississippi prison.

  Chief Logan blamed himself for the leak. He’d kept our plan to himself until the penultimate moment, but as he waited at the head of the escalator for me to appear, his nerves got the better of him, and he confided their true mission to his men. There were twelve cops on that detail, and eleven proved loyal. The biblical symbolism of the numbers escaped no one. After reporting this betrayal to me by phone, Chief Logan drove to City Hall and handed me his letter of resignation. I tore it up while he watched, then told him to get back to work.

  The status of Edward Po remains unknown. Just before Logan arrested William Hull on the riverbank, the lawyer took a call from the NSA, informing him that Po’s jet had turned back for Spain six minutes after Sands blew the cables. Improbable as it seems, Po was apparently bound for Louisiana in the belief that the planned gladiatorial spectacle would take place. Had Logan’s traitor not caused Sands to panic, Hull’s plan to capture the Chinese crime lord might actually have worked.

  I’ve wondered privately whether Jiao—who also watched the explosions from the bluff—might have warned her uncle that he hadn’t chosen the best day for a visit to the United States. But I suspect it was one of the young Chinese prostitutes aboard the Queen. Jiao has not fled the city, as I feared she might, and she has reaffirmed her intent to sign a plea agreement and provide a full description of the stunning variety of criminal activities overseen by Jonathan Sands.

  Sands himself was plucked unconscious from the river by Carl Sims, who was hanging from a skid on Danny McDavitt’s helicopter. By then the sheriff’s department rescue boat and chopper had arrived, so McDavitt airlifted Sands to St. Catherine’s Hospital. There he was stabilized, then sent north to the University Medical Center in Jackson, where he lies chained to a bed under round-the-clock guard by the Mississippi State Police. The legal wrangling over his case has scarcely begun, but like me, Shad Johnson intends to make sure that Sands spends the rest of his life at Parchman Farm.

  The only real mystery of the night was the disappearance of Kelly and Quinn. The sheriff’s department and the Coast Guard combed both sides of the river for hours but turned up nothing. By ten p.m., a consensus was building that the river had taken both men, as it had so many before them. Knowing Kelly as I do, I wasn’t as quick to write him off, but even I was relieved to hear his voice on the phone when he called my office three hours ago.

  “Look,” says Caitlin, pointing out toward the lake. “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “A light. There.”

  Out over the water, probably at the end of Drew’s pier, a yellow flashlight beam flashes twice in quick succession.

  “That’s got to be him,” I say, getting to my feet. “Come on.”

  “What if it’s not?” Caitlin asks. “What if it’s Quinn?”

  I start to say this is ridiculous, but something stops me. “Quinn’s dead. Kelly told me himself.”

  “Still. I don’t like this. Did you bring a gun?”

  “In the car. Should I go back and get it?”

  The light flashes again, then stays lit, shining upward. In the haze of its beam I see the glint of long blond hair. Then I hear a high, keening whistle that I’ve only ever heard from the lips of Daniel Kelly.

  “That’s him! Come on.”

  As we trot down to the pier, the light vanishes. Our feet make hollow bangs on the sun-warped boards, but as we reach the end of the dock, the rumble of an engine rolls over the water.

  “Down here!” Kelly calls. “In the boat. Get in.”

  Peering down from the platform, I see Kelly sitting behind the wheel of Drew Elliot’s newest toy. Drew’s old boat was the Bayrider parked in the metal building where we met Walt and Carl and Danny. This is a thirty-foot Four Winns, with an enclosed cuddy cabin below the forward deck. It’s really too much boat for this lake, but Drew sometimes takes it out on the Mississippi, or even down to the Gulf to fish with his wife and son.

  I help Caitlin down the ladder, then follow her into the boat. After giving Kelly a long hug, she sits in the padded passenger seat behind the windshield. I sit behind her. Kelly gives me a little salute, then pushes the throttle forward. The boat glides away from the pier with a softly churning wake behind it.

  St. John is much larger than Lake Concordia, where Chris Shepard has his summer house. When we’re fifty yards from the pier, Kelly pushes the throttle again, and the big
Volvo engine propels the bow up out of the water. In seconds we’re racing over the glassy surface, headed to the western end of the oxbow lake. Kelly looks pretty good, considering what he’s been through. His blond hair flying in the wind gives him a deceptively youthful cast.

  “Where are we going?” Caitlin asks, leaning back to me. “Seriously.”

  “I don’t know. With Kelly, you just have to be patient.”

  Thirty seconds of silence is all she can manage. “Danny McDavitt’s going to drop out of the sky and pick him up, isn’t he? We’re here to take the boat back.”

  “I truly have no idea.” Reaching out with my foot, I touch Kelly’s hip. “What are we doing?” I call over the whipping wind.

  “Getting closure,” he replies.

  Caitlin looks curiously at me, but Kelly offers nothing further.

  He’s steering toward the far end of the lake—the shallow end, as Tim referred to it on the night we first met in the cemetery. The boat is really moving now, hydroplaning with perfect trim, the sensation as close to flight as you can get without lifting completely off the water. We’re making more noise than I’d like, and Kelly is running without navigation lights, but he seems unconcerned. The houses thin out on this end of the lake, and there’s zero chance of a patrol boat this late.

  Caitlin turns her captain’s chair sideways and takes my hand in hers. Normally, I’d expect her to be chattering about what happened to the Magnolia Queen, or badgering Kelly about our destination, but she seems withdrawn, even depressed. For the first time it strikes me that she might not be thinking about the recent past, but the future. About leaving Natchez again.

  Leaving me.

  As I ponder this reality, Kelly pulls back on the throttle, and the bow settles into the water. Except for our collapsing wake, the lake is perfectly still, with thin fog hovering low over the surface. As we glide forward at a fraction of our former speed, thick cypress trunks close around us. The bellow of bullfrogs is startlingly loud, and a chorus of chirping insects joins in. The smell of decay is claustrophobic, like the floor of a swamp, thick with rotting vegetation and dead fish, burping methane. As the trunks come within a few feet of the boat on both sides, the cypress limbs arch into a ceiling above us, blocking out the moon in some places.

  “You’re going too fast,” I say. “There are fallen trees under the water here. You don’t want to hole out down on this end.”

  “No?” he says, staring into the darkness ahead of him.

  “Take my word for it.”

  Now and then there’s a wet sound as of something heavy sliding into the water. Caitlin squeezes my hand tighter. I wouldn’t want to be driving this boat with only moonlight to steer by, and I don’t feel particularly safe even with Kelly at the wheel.

  “Dude,” I say, “there’s nothing down here but an old fishing camp. What’s the mission?”

  He pulls back on the throttle until we’re barely moving, but he’s too late. A second later the boat shudders as though we’ve struck a granite boulder. I feel nausea as it rebounds and floats backward.

  “What are we doing?” Caitlin asks, looking up at the overhanging limbs. “Didn’t you tell me water moccasins hang off of those limbs and drop into fishing boats?”

  “Sometimes,” I admit. “If it happens, don’t jump out of the boat. We’ll be all right.”

  Kelly carefully reverses direction, eases forward, then puts the engine in neutral. The cypresses surround us like ranks of giant soldiers in the night, stretching back to muddy banks thick with undergrowth. Switching on his flashlight, Kelly shines it onto the deck, reflecting enough light upward to see our faces.

  “Everybody good?”

  “No,” says Caitlin. “Enough with the mystery. Let’s do whatever we came to do.”

  “We’re about to. But before we do, I want to show you something.”

  Kelly sweeps the yellow beam along the waterline at the base of the cypress trunks. There, among the smooth wooden knees, dozens of red eyes reflect the light back to us with chilling effect.

  Caitlin leaps from her seat and seizes my arm. “What the hell is that? Penn? What are they?”

  Another thud comes from below, but this time the boat doesn’t shudder.

  “Did we hit something else?” Caitlin asks anxiously.

  In answer, Kelly sweeps the light along the waterline on both sides of the boat, then aims it into the cypresses again. The red eyes glow in pairs, some only a couple of inches apart, others more widely spaced.

  “What are those things?”

  “Alligators,” I say. “Locals call this place Alligator Alley.”

  As she shakes her head in disbelief, a loud slapping sound reverberates over the lake.

  “They’re headslapping,” Kelly says. “Warning us to get out.”

  “I want to go back,” Caitlin says anxiously. “This is crazy.”

  “This is karma,” Kelly says enigmatically. “We’ve all been through a lot this past week, but nobody more than you. Nobody who lived, anyway.”

  She looks back at him in confusion. “And?”

  “You remember that talk we had at that other lake house? About Sands being a one-bullet problem?”

  Now he has her attention. “Yes.”

  “Tom told you it wasn’t up to you, only to him and Penn.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, this time you get a vote.”

  “A vote?” She glances at me, then looks back at Kelly. “On what?”

  He passes the flashlight to me, then steps down and opens the door to the forward cabin.

  “What’s he doing?” Caitlin asks.

  Kelly disappears into the cabin and pulls the door shut behind him.

  “I’m not sure.” Even as I say this, I know it’s a lie. I’ve known Kelly too long to be surprised. Now I know what he means by closure.

  I hear muted ripping sounds, some scuffling, and then the cabin door opens and Kelly drags a human form up onto the deck. When I shine the light down onto it, Caitlin gasps.

  Seamus Quinn lies on the deck carpet, bound and gagged with duct tape, both eyes blackened and burning with virulent hatred. He’s wearing dark pants, a bloodstained white T-shirt, and one shoe. His other ankle and foot are too grossly swollen to fit inside the other.

  Why has he done this? I wonder. Kelly and I have come to this fork in the road before, and I chose the rule of law. Why would he think I’d decide any different now? My decision to assassinate Sands was defensive; killing Quinn would be revenge. Also, stupid. We need Quinn as a witness against Sands. Although, I reflect, if Jiao continues to cooperate with Shad, Quinn’s testimony would be superfluous.

  There’s something going on here that I don’t understand. Could Kelly simply be flirting with an idea that he knows I’ll never agree to, but one I might push far enough to teach a murderer a lesson he’ll never forget? No. He wouldn’t waste his time hazing somebody. He’s hard-core, all the way. But whatever he’s up to, one thing is sure: He won’t kill Quinn unless Caitlin and I tell him to do it.

  “I thought this guy was dead,” I say.

  Kelly shrugs. “As far as anybody knows, he is.”

  After a few seconds of dazed comprehension, Caitlin breaks away from me and kicks the Irishman savagely in the ribs. He grunts but doesn’t attempt to defend himself. Caitlin draws back her foot and kicks him again, harder this time. When Quinn shows no sign of terror, she throws the flashlight at his head, then hammers her foot into his arm, his neck, and his head. Quinn rolls away from the blows, but the bulkhead stops him. After that, he absorbs the kicks with resignation, like a man accustomed to beatings. Caitlin, by contrast, is crying and whining as she struggles to make Quinn feel some fraction of the pain he inflicted on Linda Church.

  Caitlin stops after half a minute, probably because she’s winded. I too am breathing hard, as though I participated in the assault. But my distress is emotional. Never have I seen Caitlin lose complete control, much less become violent. Even now she seems poised to begin kicking Quinn again. Her chin is quivering, and her eyes are wild. What I thought might be a reflexive d
ischarge of pent-up fury seems to be only the first flicker of an unquenchable anger. What, I wonder, would it take to drive her into such a state?

  And that’s when I realize that Kelly’s decision to bring us here has nothing to do with me. He’s done this for Caitlin’s sake. Because he knows something you don’t, says a childlike voice within me. Something awful. My throat tightens as I perceive something huge and dark beyond the surface of things, like a misshapen form behind a curtain I’ve been unwilling to pull back. Did Quinn’s bruises and blackened eyes result from his fight on the Magnolia Queen? Or when Kelly uprooted every detail of his crimes from the toxic soil of his memory? Kelly knows what happened in the dog kennel, says the voice. And whatever it was, he thinks she needs to witness this kind of punishment to exorcise it.

  Kelly has laid his hands on Caitlin’s shoulders, as though to hold her back. Without knowing why, I kneel and rip the tape from Quinn’s mouth.

  “You going to drown me, Your Honor?” the Irishman asks, working his lower jaw up and down as though to relieve a cramp. “That the plan?”

  “That’s up to the lady,” Kelly says softly. “What do you figure your odds are?”

  “Drownin’s not so bad,” Quinn says philosophically. “I’ve drowned many a runt for the good of the litter. There’s worse ways to go.”

  Kelly smiles appreciatively. “You’re right about that, ace.”

  Caitlin looks warily from me to Kelly, then back to me again. “Is he serious?”

  “Oh, he’s serious, all right.”

  The Caitlin I thought I knew would be yelling for us to take Quinn back to Natchez and hand him over to the police. But the woman before me is not doing that. Instead, she takes the flashlight from me and shines it around the boat in a slow circle, watching the reptilian eyes watch her.

  I try to catch Kelly’s eye, but he’s gazing at Caitlin like a knight awaiting a decision from his queen. Christ. When I first saw Quinn lying on the deck, I thought Kelly had chosen a cruel path by exposing Caitlin to such a situation. But now I understand that she’s already far down a road I wouldn’t have expected her to set foot on before tonight. She’s no longer the woman I knew before she was taken prisoner. She is sister to a thousand women I knew and tried to serve as an assistant DA in Houston. She’s a victim: violated, bereft, forever changed. A rush of emotions too powerful to understand swells in my chest, making it difficult to breathe.