The Devils Punchbowl - Greg Iles

Once again, because of prevailing winds, the race course crosses the river from Mississippi to Louisiana. More than half of the pilots have decided to stay for the remainder of the festival, and half of these have already crossed the river and are sailing southwest under a glorious blue sky. The remaining balloons are stretched out to our left at various altitudes, from the twin bridges back to the launch site at the Natchez Airport. The wind has settled down since this morning, and from this distance the balloons look painted on the sky.

To the west, the Adams County sheriff’s helicopter is running along the levee on Deer Park Road like a gunship preparing to lay down suppressing fire on enemy troops.

“I think they’ve got the primary mission under control,” McDavitt says over the interphone. “What say we get to work?”

“I still don'’t know exactly what we’re doing,” Carl Sims confesses, looking back from the front seat. “I'm happy to help, but a little detail would be appreciated.”

I don'’t see any reason to burden McDavitt or Sims with more knowledge than they need. “Guys, let me put this as simply as I can. Last night, a friend of mine was murdered. Who did it isn’t important at the moment. But they’ve threatened my family. Right now we’re looking for my friend’s car. It’s a blue Nissan Sentra, five or six years old. I'm not sure what it can tell me, but there might be evidence inside that could nail the people who killed him. Is that enough for you?”

“Where are we looking?” McDavitt asks.

“I think they caught him somewhere out past the city cemetery, on Cemetery Road or one of the dirt roads that turns off it.”

The major executes a pedal turn and heads toward Weymouth Hall, a mansion atop the bluff not far from Jewish Hill. As we approach the widow’s walk atop the house, he turns north and starts following Cemetery Road at about four hundred feet. The cars parked at the houses and shacks below are easily identifiable, and this gives me some hope.

“Got a license plate number?” Carl asks.

“No.”

“I can get that for you. One call to the dispatcher in Athens Point.”

“Can’t risk it. This has to be totally under the radar.”

After a brief glance at McDavitt, Carl says, “Right. Blue Nissan Sentra.”

The Athens Point helicopter is brand-new, and far more advanced than the Adams County chopper, having been purchased after the crash Hans Necker mentioned during our stop at the old Triton Battery plant. It’s a Bell JetRanger, with a lot of bells and whistles I don'’t understand, but one that I do is FLIR, or Forward Looking Infrared Radar. This formerly military surveillance system is based around a pod mounted beneath the chopper’s nose, which contains an array of sensors that detect both infrared and visible light. Its readings are processed by a computer, then displayed on a screen mounted on the instrument panel in front of Major McDavitt. Modern FLIR units are so sensitive to heat that they can “see” the transient “handprint”—actually a heatprint—of a fugitive who has momentarily touched a car as he flees from police in total blackness. In daylight, FLIR signals can be blended with the signals from visible light cameras to create a sort of God’s-eye view of the terrain below. The Athens Point unit was donated by a lumber millionaire and avid hunter who occasionally uses it to monitor the white-tailed deer population on the thousands of acres he owns.

McDavitt seems to be flying with one eye on the ground and the other on the FLIR screen. When I ask about this, he explains that he flew Pave Low helicopters in Afghanistan, one of the most advanced choppers in the world, and that he became accustomed to using instruments as his primary interface with the world. Carl Sims searches the old-fashioned way, as befits a former sniper. His forehead is pressed to the curved windshield beside him, and he takes

occasional breaks to survey the ground through the “chin bubble” below his feet.

Our main problem is not that Cemetery Road runs through a vast forest, but that this forest is laced with dozens of dirt roads, most cut long ago by loggers or oil drillers, and few are well maintained. If Tim was fleeing from pursuers in his car, he could have turned down any of these roads, hoping to find a wooded sanctuary.

“How far off the road do you want me to look?” McDavitt asks, obviously sharing my concern.

“Half a mile, I guess. Much more than that, and we won'’t be able to see anything anyway.”

“Half a mile, it is.”

The pilot begins banking from side to side, and as the chopper dips and rolls, my stomach begins to churn. Following advice I’'ve heard about seasickness, I fix my gaze on the horizon line across the river. Carl and Danny make occasional comments about the landscape below, and several times the pilot drops to treetop level to examine a car more closely. Sims even spots a Sentra, but when we descend to check it, we find that its paint is actually green.

A couple of minutes after this disappointing reconnaissance, McDavitt says, “Son of a bitch,” and brings the ship into a hover over a high bluff not far from the river. He points to the FLIR screen. “Look at that, Carl.”

“I'm seeing it.”

“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward into the cockpit.

“A car,” the pilot answers. “And it’s hot.”

On the screen I see a tiny black rectangle partially obscured by masses of gray that must represent the foliage. “How hot?”

“It was probably still on fire this morning.”

“Vehicles can burn for a long time,” Sims explains. “Upholstery and stuff. I saw it in Iraq.”

“It looks…I don'’t know, sort of far away. A lot lower than the trees.”

“It’s in a hole,” says McDavitt.

“How deep?”

“I can’t tell. I tried putting the laser on it, but there’s too much vegetation to get an accurate reading. Just guessing, I’d say three hundred feet below those treetops.”

I lean into the window and gaze out over the Mississippi River. After orienting myself to the angle of the bend, and the lake not far beyond the river, a sense of certainty much like triumph settles in me.

“I know where we are.”

“Where?” Carl asks.

“The Devil’s Punchbowl.”

The sniper whips his head around and stares at me. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“How do you know?” asks McDavitt.

“I spent the night down there once. A long time ago.”

“Bullshit,” says Sims.

“Seriously. I was seventeen. It was a Boy Scout thing. Merit Badge. Camping out overnight by yourself. Being a typical teenager, I chose the scariest place I could think of.”

“I never knew anybody who’s actually been down there,” Sims says. “I always heard outlaws dumped the bodies of their victims there back in the old days. Heads separated from the bodies, and all.”

McDavitt points at the FLIR screen. “I think somebody else heard the same stories. Got inspired, maybe.”

“Maybe so,” I agree, trying to let the truth of what happened last night find its way to my consciousness.

“What did you see down there?” Carl asks me. “Find any skeletons?”

“No. Wildlife, mostly. Lots of deer, foxes. I saw some black-bear tracks. I almost stepped on a six-foot rattlesnake.”

“How deep is it? For real?”

“I didn't have any way to measure it. But it got dark down there in the afternoon. And I almost drowned that night. It started raining, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a flash flood.”

McDavitt chuckles softly. “I always heard that Jean Laffite might have hid his treasure down there. You didn't find any pieces of eight, did you?”

“Not for lack of trying. I took a metal detector with me. And I did find a treasure, of a kind. But not pirate gold.”

“What did you find?” Sims asks, his eyes bright.

For a few moments I resist answering. This memory I’'ve always kept to myself. “A cougar. I saw a cougar down there. They’re sup

posed to be extinct in these parts, but I know what I saw. He was on a limb looking down at a game path. There were deer tracks all through there. He was waiting for supper to walk by.”

“What happened?”

“He looked at me, I looked at him, and then he was gone. Never made a sound. I didn't sleep a wink. All night I expected him to pounce on me out of nowhere. But he never did.”

“He didn't like the smell of you,” Carl says.

“Can’t say I blame him,” McDavitt says in a deadpan voice. “I’d have to be awful hungry to choose you over venison. But let’s not get sidetracked. Anybody watching this ship is going to see us hanging over this hole like a buzzard circling a carcass. What’s the plan?”

“That'’s got be Tim’s car,” I aver. “The question is, did he run it down there himself, or did the bad guys dump it there?”

“Why would he do it himself?” Carl asks.

“If they were chasing him, he might do it to make them think he’d crashed and died.”

McDavitt nods thoughtfully. “If he did that, then the bad guys might not have searched it yet.”

“If they know it’s there, they’ve searched it. And they probably do know,” I say, recalling Sands’s certainty that Tim did not e-mail the stolen data to anyone. “But we can’t be sure.” I could call Seamus Quinn and save myself a lot of trouble, but if Quinn doesn’'t know about the car…“I need to get down there, guys.”

“How you going to do that?” McDavitt asks. “My hoist won'’t even get you halfway.”

“Same way I did when I was seventeen, I guess.”

“How long did that take you?”

“Most of a day.”

An intermittent beep sounds in the muffled hum of the JetRanger’s cabin.

“What’s that?” McDavitt scans his instrument panel. “That'’s not coming from the chopper.”

I pull off one earpiece of my headset. “Sorry. It’s a satellite phone.” I lift the phone from the floor, click the SEND button, and put the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”

“Penn, it’s Dad.”

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“No, but I think you ought to come by my office.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. There’s somebody here to see you.”

“Can you say who it is?”

“I’d rather not.”

I feel momentary panic. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, don'’t worry.”

“Did you call from your office line?”

“Hell no. I borrowed Chris Shepard’s cell phone.”

“Okay.” Chris Shepard is one of my father’s younger partners.

“Just get over here now, if you can.”

“I'm kind of in the middle of something important.”

There’s a brief silence. Then my father says, “Well, let’s see how important. I’'ve got Jewel Washington sitting here with the results of Tim Jessup’s autopsy, which she’s under instructions not to share with anybody. Is that important enough?”

Shit.

“Don’t let her leave. I'’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“That'’s what I figured.”

I hang up and look down at the forest below, then at the men in the front of the chopper. “I need to get back to my car.”

McDavitt nods. Carl keeps looking at me, then expels a lungful of air. “If you really think what you’re looking for could be down there, I can check it out for you.”

A rush of gratitude flows through me. “Are you sure? That'’s a deep hole.”

Sims laughs. “Yeah, well. I’'ve heard about that place all my life. Might as well see for myself what’s at the bottom.”

“What exactly is he looking for?” McDavitt asks.

“A DVD, probably. Any form of digital media.”

“Any digital media in that car has been burned to a crisp,” the pilot points out.

“Could have been thrown clear,” Carl says. “If it was in a bag or a case, say.”

“You

want

to go down there,” McDavitt says, shaking his head. “Can you tell this guy was a marine or what?”

“You could be right about the fire,” I concede. “But if we don'’t look down there, we’ll never know for sure.”

Carl speaks with his face pressed to the window. “If you got in

and out when you were a Boy Scout, I can sure as hell do it. Can’t be any worse than Iraq, right?”

“I don'’t think they have rattlesnakes or bears in Iraq.”

“Or cougars,” McDavitt adds with sarcasm.

Carl nods thoughtfully. “You got a point there. But I’'ve got good boots. And if I have to shoot, I hit what I aim at.”

“The trick,” says McDavitt, “is seeing the threat in

time

to shoot.”

The sniper smiles. “I'’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Okay,” says McDavitt. “Where’s this traveling circus headed next?”

“My car,” I tell him.

“Then mine,” Sims says. “ASAP. I don'’t want to be at the bottom of that hole when night falls.”

McDavitt swings the chopper out over the river and roars back toward town.

CHAPTER

22

My father’s medical office looks like something that belongs in the Smithsonian Institution, the refuge of a doctor who loves history and the art of medicine, and who exhibits his disdain for modern gadgetry by banishing his notebook computer to the nurses’ station outside his inner sanctum. The office is almost a museum itself, housing a gargantuan collection of medical books, Civil War memoirs, English novels, ship models, antique surgical instruments, and meticulously hand-painted lead soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars, each one accurate to the last detail. Every inch of fabric and leather in the room exudes the smell of cigars, which announces to patients old and new my father’s long-held medical philosophy:

Do as I say, not as I do.

I find Dad sitting behind his desk, his feet resting on a stool, while Jewel Washington laughs at something he said before I entered. I could swear I see a trace of embarrassment in Jewel’s dark cheeks. It’s hard to imagine what would make a nurse who’s made it past fifty blush, but if anybody knows what that would be, it’s Tom Cage. Jewel stands to greet me, and we hug briefly.

“Sit by me on the couch,” she says. “I didn't bring any paperwork, for obvious reasons. I ain’t supposed to show you the autopsy, so how about I just summarize it verbally?”

“Did Shad Johnson tell you not to show it to me?”

Jewel’s eyes glint with submerged meaning. “Let’s say the district attorney advised the county coroner that a homicide investigation is no business of the mayor’s.”

“Duly noted. What did the autopsy show?”

“Your friend was shot.”

A chill races along my arms. I expected anything but this. “Shot?”

“Pathologist in Jackson dug a .22 Magnum slug out of his heart.”

“Why didn't we see the entry wound? Was it masked by one of those dog bites?”

“You got it. Dog mauled that boy something terrible.”