CHAPTER 85

“FBI’S PULLING OUT,” said Alphonse Ozan. “I just got word. They’re staying down at the Bone Tree, but they’re pulling out of the lodge.”

“Wasn’t anything there for them to find,” Forrest said.

The two men faced each other across Forrest’s kitchen counter. His wife had left for her yoga class fifteen minutes ago, and Forrest had brewed a second pot of coffee.

“So what now?” Ozan asked.

“We go right back in there like we have nothing to hide. I’ll call Billy and get him headed toward Valhalla in his plane. I want Kaiser and Mackiever to see I’m going to brazen this through.”

“And Snake?”

“Snake did what he said he was going to do. At this point, the best thing is to let him be himself. Given what I read in the paper this morning, I’m betting somebody’s not going to live through this day.”

“Who?”

“I’m not sure. But I’ll make one prediction. The mayor’s under round-the-clock protection, but I think there’s a good chance he’ll show up at Henry Sexton’s funeral. Dr. Cage will want to go too, out of guilt, but he won’t be able to risk it. There’s bound to be some FBI agents there—paying their respects, if nothing else.”

“You think Mayor Cage will want go to that funeral right after his fiancée was killed?”

“Especially after that. I figured he might be a pallbearer, but he’s not.”

Ozan looked unconvinced. “Would Snake really try to hit Cage at a funeral with FBI agents present?”

“Why not? This isn’t like the hospital, where he had to shoot through glass. The service is at Early’s Funeral Home. Mourners have to walk in from their cars, then walk out again. Probably wait in line, too, at this service. Snake could stand off with his sniper rifle, pop anybody he wants from five or six hundred yards out, and still get away clean.”

Ozan thought about this. “I guess it’s a good thing he’s not coming after us, huh, boss?”

Forrest felt a ripple of foreboding along the skin of his arms. “You’re damn right. Snake’s gotta believe we’re on his side right up to the second I put a hollow-point in his head.”

THE TWENTY-EIGHT-STORY state capitol building dominated the Baton Rouge cityscape like a spike against the sky, and it was the key offices in that building to which Colonel Griffith Mackiever had been trying to gain access for two days. Stymied at every turn, he’d finally been forced to settle for a glass-and-steel box within sight of the capitol: a branch of one of the wealthiest private banks in Louisiana. Victor Marchand, its chairman, was not only an architect of the secret plan to transform post-Katrina New Orleans into a much whiter city that could bring back the corporate tenants it had lost in recent decades, but also one of Forrest Knox’s most powerful supporters in his bid to be the next superintendent of state police. Marchand’s influence in the political corridors of Baton Rouge was second only to his power within the less visible conclaves of New Orleans. Short of the capitol, there was no better place to test the power of the weapon Walt Garrity had given Mackiever than Marchand’s office.

The colonel watched the banker sit behind his desk and fold his arms in what Mackiever could only interpret as a combative position. A handsome and urbane fifty-five, Marchand was dressed to the nines—probably for some fund-raising luncheon—but Mackiever couldn’t imagine an honest citizen giving this man any money. An executive assistant stood behind his boss like a cross between a bodyguard and an attack dog.

“I assume,” said the banker, “you understand that I don’t relish being asked to come into my office on a Saturday to see a child molester.”

“Alleged child molester,” Mackiever said, nervously gripping the notebook computer in his lap.

“It’s only at the strong insistence of the FBI that I’ve agreed to see you.”

But here you sit, Mackiever thought. After being publicly pilloried by the media, he could not deny the degree to which he would enjoy the next two minutes.

“I’m sorry to have to say this,” said Marchand, not sounding sorry at all, “but I see absolutely no reason to postpone your resignation, which frankly we expected long before now. No matter what you have to show me, neither I nor my associates in government can possibly intervene in a matter that will soon be under adjudication. We’re going to have to let law enforcement and the courts settle this.”

Mackiever opened his computer and made sure it was powered up with the appropriate file cued in the viewing program.

“I hope that contains your resignation letter,” the banker said.

Mackiever stepped forward and set the computer on the desk, the screen facing Marchand. “If you’ll just hit Play, I think you’ll understand a lot better where things actually stand.”

“What am I about to see?” the banker asked irritably. “Not anything illegal, I hope?”

“Very much so, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not going to look at child pornography.”

“Just hit Play. You’ll understand.”

After a heavy sigh, Marchand started the video. Mackiever knew from watching Kaiser’s face what he should expect, or he thought he did. But the banker’s eyes went so wide during the executions that he looked as though he were watching the kiddie porn that Mackiever had been accused of trafficking in.

“Are those men doing the firing police officers?” he asked.

“At least two are. And they are under the direct command of Forrest Knox.”

Marchand swallowed, then glanced at his assistant. “When did this happen?”

“One day after the storm made landfall, before General Honoré took over the city.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And who was that I saw shot?”

“Drug dealers. Specifically, African-American drug dealers.”

“Why were they shot like that?”

“Because they were cutting into the profits of Forrest Knox’s ongoing drug operations. And by that I do not mean his anti-drug law enforcement operations. I mean his family’s drug sales operations.”

The banker blinked in disbelief. “Are you saying—”

“That Forrest Knox uses his troops as a private enforcement arm of his family’s drug smuggling and sales organization? Yes.”

Marchand closed his eyes. He had just glimpsed the beginning of a PR disaster that could bring down not only politicians, but also any known private sponsor of the man who had ordered these murders.

“Do you have proof of what you just said?” Marchand asked.

Mackiever let the banker twist in the wind for a few seconds, so he could better appreciate the abyss yawning beneath him. “As we speak, the FBI is interviewing the man giving the kill order in that video.”

Marchand’s face went completely white. “You went to the Bureau before you came to us?”

“No one in the state government would even return my calls. About the manufactured charges Knox leveled against me? They went straight to the media and called for my head.”

“But this could destroy . . . destroy the effectiveness of the state police for years.”

“It could destroy a lot more than that,” Mackiever said softly.

Marchand looked back at his assistant, who obviously had nothing to offer.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “What are we going to do about this?”

LESS THAN FIVE MILES from Victor Marchand’s bank, Special Agent John Kaiser sat in the backseat of a black FBI Suburban. Beside him sat the state police sergeant whom Griffith Mackiever’s son-in-law had finally identified as the man giving the kill order in the Katrina sniping video. Kaiser’s agents had snatched the sergeant right off the street as he walked out of a coffee shop down the block from the parking lot where they now sat, watched over by four heavily armed FBI agents.