The Devils Punchbowl - Greg Iles

“Probably some nut job, if not the girl herself. There’s the car. Come on.”

Caitlin unlocks the car we drove here, a Corolla owned by the newspaper. Before we get in, I realize that if someone did follow us here, they could have planted a listening device in the car while we were gone. I feel like hammering my fist against the roof in frustration, but instead I take Caitlin by the upper arms, lean into her neck, and kiss her below the ear.

“Don’t say anything about this stuff in the car,” I whisper, surprised by the force of my reaction to her scent. “We can read the note on the way to Kmart, but don'’t talk about it. We’ll talk in the store.”

She nods and gets behind the wheel.

Before I get in, I crouch between the cars, take out the Star Trek, and call Kelly. When he acknowledges, I ask, “Are you at the hotel?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re driving to the Kmart, just up the highway. I want you to cover us.”

“No problem. Everything okay?”

“I may have good news. Stay close to us.”

“Don’t worry.”

As soon as I'm inside the car, I pull the tape from the bottom of the plate and confirm that it’s a standard minicassette. Slipping it deep into my left front pocket, I dig out what the girl shoved down my right pocket. It’s blue-ruled newsprint from the kind of tablets first-graders use when they'’re learning to write block print. It’s been folded and refolded many times, like a love note someone passes you in junior high.

“Let’s get some food for this afternoon,” I say casually. “For postcoital munchies.”

Caitlin laughs convincingly. “What do you want?”

“Chips and dip, drinks and stuff. You don'’t have anything at your house.”

“What do you expect after a year and a half?”

She backs out of the parking space and carefully negotiates the packed vehicles. Soon we’re coasting down the long, curving hill that leads to the highway below the bridge. Across that highway is the Visitors’ Center, where only yesterday I blew Caitlin off in the parking lot. That feels like three days ago. She drops a hand from the wheel and makes a fast “hurry up” motion.

After I get the note unfolded, I see a woman’s printed script, the fancy, tightly written kind some girls use when they write poems or diary entries. It begins like a thousand other letters and e-mails I’'ve received in the past two years—“Dear Mayor Cage”—but when I read the first line after the salutation, my heart starts pumping at twice its normal rate.

My name is Linda Church. I am hiding out and can’t speak to you in person.

Please

don'’t try to find me. Tim is dead, as you probably know, and they were going to kill me too, but I escaped with my life. Just barely, though. I am hurt, but some good people are helping me. I'm writing to you because on the night Tim was murdered, I learned some things that I think he would have wanted you to know. Honestly, though, I'm afraid even to tell you these things. But

TIM TRUSTED YOU

, so I am taking this risk. I pray that you did not betray Tim and cost him his life. I loved him and still do, and there must be some good men left in this world.

Caitlin is poking my leg; she wants to know what’s in the note. To put her off, I place my thumbnail under the first line and hold the note where she can read it. The shock on her face tells me I'’ll have to read it where she can see it too, even at the risk of an accident.

A young man named Ben Li is probably dead by now. He worked on the boat sometimes, but we hardly ever saw him. Tim told me his job was computers. I doubt you will find his body, as I'm pretty sure they have fed him to the dogs. This dogfighting that upset Tim so much is still going on. I don'’t know what all Tim was trying to get from the company, and I don'’t know if he got whatever it was to you. I can only hope that he did, that he didn't die for nothing. You should know that Mr. Sands and Mr. Quinn are

MONSTERS

. They are not just cruel, or sick men. I knew men like that in Las Vegas, and everywhere else I’'ve lived too. But Sands and Quinn are demons who live on other people’s pain. I have

prayed on this and know it to be true. I have sinned by lying with Sands, but I was in fear for my life, and I believe now to some extent that it was rape. Sands has sex with lots of girls who work on the boat, not always by their choice. He is not who or what he pretends to be. He is a demon wearing a human skin. Quinn is not a demon but he is an animal. No, worse. Animals would never do the awful things he has done. But I'm losing my track. What’s important is the facts, and it’s hard to keep facts in my head right now. I think my leg is infected and maybe broken too. But I can’t risk going to a doctor. I feel so guilty about Julia and the baby. I hope they are going to be all right. If I get out of this alive and I ever manage to make any money, I am going to send some to Julia (Anonymous) to make up for whatever pain and worry I have caused her.

You need to know that Quinn bragged to me that “big things” were coming up soon or about to happen. “Big people” coming into town for something, I don'’t know what. But I worked one of those dogfights, and it is probably something like that, even though they are horrible things. The animals die and the men have orgies on the girls and stuff like that. If you could just bust one of those fights, you would find enough drugs to put them all in jail until Judgment Day. I hope I have not made a mistake in writing to you, Mr. Cage. I am trusting Tim’s instinct, but I'm afraid that was not very good in life. If it was, he might still be with us and not in Heaven.

The people who are hiding me are going to get me away to somewhere safe. May the Lord bless you and keep you safe if you are doing His work.

Yours in Christ, Linda Mae Church.

The sound of Caitlin’s opening her door brings me out of my trance. With one inquisitive look she asks if I still want to go into Kmart. I nod, then refold the note and put it back in my pocket. Motioning for her to hand me her purse, I take the satphone from my backpack and stuff it into her bag, then shove my pistol into my pocket.

“Let’s go.”

When we’re ten yards from the car, Caitlin says, “You still think Tim didn't have an affair with her?”

“Wait till we’re inside the store to talk. I'’ll get the chips and dip and see if we’re being tailed. You get the recorder, some triple-A batteries, two pairs of cheap headphones, and a miniplug splitter. You know why?”

“Because those cheap recorders only put out a mono signal.”

It’s good to be back with somebody who needs no spoon-feeding.

Inside the Kmart, I walk to the snacks section and grab some Doritos, then watch the store entrance. A few people come in and out, but most are black, and none look remotely like Quinn’s goons. The white people are Pentecostals or older folks wearing gardening clothes. Less than five minutes pass before Caitlin appears at the head of my aisle with a stapled bag held low beside her. I walk past her and whisper, “Men’s clothing department.”

Grabbing two pairs of pants off a rack, I ask an older woman staffing the ladies’ department to open a fitting room. She recognizes me as the mayor, makes a show of offering all the help she can, then leaves me with the room. A second later, Caitlin slips into my dressing room and opens the bag. It takes all my strength to get the plastic packaging off the tape recorder, but Caitlin’s deft fingers make short work of inserting the batteries and setting up the headphones and splitter. When this is done, I take the cassette from my pocket, insert it into the recorder, and hit PLAY.

A hiss fills my left ear. Caitlin’s head is tilted, tensely poised, her eyes wide and bright as though reflecting every bit of light in the cubicle. She’s hearing the same thing I am, a low-quality copy of a low-resolution voice memo made on a cell phone and played back through the cheapest equipment available. Yet when I hear Tim’s voice, it pierces me to the quick. He’s breathless, as though he’s sprinted most of a mile, but the whine of an overrevved engine in the background tells me he’s in a car.

“Penn, where are you, man? I waited as long as I could, but they'’re onto me. I had to run. I tried to call you, but both my phones say ‘No service.’ They’re jamming the signal like they do on the boat sometimes. They blocked Cemetery Road, so I'm headed out into the county…almost to the Devil’s Punchbowl now. I'm going to have to shut off this phone, because they may be tracking me with it. I can’t say much, because they might get the phone. I'm doing eighty on gravel, man!”

Caitlin’s eyes go wide as the creak of a car seat conjures an image of Tim craning his neck around as he races down Cemetery Road.

“They’re still back there. I found what we needed, okay? It’s a DVD disc. I got it through the guy who shot the cell phone pictures I showed you. He’s a computer genius named Ben Li. I got him so stoned he didn't know up from down, then sedated him. He must have woken up early. He probably panicked and called them, he’s that dumb. Anyway, here’s how to find the disc in case anything happens to me. Ready? ‘Dog pack.

The Great Escape.’

Okay? You’ll figure it out, but I hope to God you don'’t have to. If I don'’t make it, then look where the sun don'’t shine, as Coach used to say. I'’ll be all right, though. These bastards don'’t know Adams County like I do. I'm going to—wait, wait, shit, I forgot—”

It sounds like Tim dropped the phone. He yells,

“Fuck!”

and groans as if he’s bending double, then his voice is close again.

“Ben said something while he was stoned. See, I always thought he had more pictures than what he showed me. Insurance, you know? To protect himself. He said I should ask his birds about the pictures. He had two cockatoos, but all I ever heard them say was stupid lines from movies. I searched their cages and couldn'’t find anything. Shit, they'’re gaining…I’'ve got to shut down. No airplane mode on this bitch. I love you, man, but you picked a hell of a time to be late. Bye for now—”

The electric silence in the headphone is cut off by a blank hiss.

My hands are shaking, my heart pounding as though the chase just happened, as though I were in the car with Tim rather than listening to a dead man talk two days after he was murdered. The realization that Tim probably died because I was thirty minutes late makes me dizzy with nausea. My ears roar as an infinite string of what-ifs blasts through my mind like a line of runaway subway cars.

“I can’t believe I wrote that first story,” Caitlin says in a dazed voice. “I wrote just what his killers wanted me to, didn't I?”

She doesn’'t cry often, but there are tears in the corners of her eyes. Behind the tears seethes anger—and wounded vanity. No one likes

to be played for a fool, but some people, usually the vainest among us, truly cannot handle it.

Despite wrestling with my own guilt, I nod.

“I'm going to bury Golden Parachute,” Caitlin vows. “

Bury

them.” Then her eyes snap to mine. “What do the clues mean? Do you know where the disc is?”

In the maelstrom of guilt swirling inside me, childhood memories spin and flicker like buoys glimpsed through heavy rain. “Not yet. I'm thinking.”

“They could be passwords.”

“To what? Tim found a physical object and hid it somewhere.”

“Right, right.”

“

The Great Escape

is a movie. Tim and I were kids when it came out.”

“Did you watch it with him?”

“I don'’t think so.” I think frantically, trying to grasp images that float away like leaves in a swirling current. “The part about the birds was separate from that, right? From ‘dog pack’ and

The Great Escape

?”

“Yes.”

“Because he said that guy’s birds could say movie lines.”

“Yes, but that first part wasn'’t connected to the birds. The first clues were for you alone.”

I'm trying to make the missing connections, but Caitlin’s urgency feels like an overcurrent shorting out my neural processes. “Just don'’t say anything for a minute. I'm thinking.”

She nods, but I know silence requires extreme effort from her. She’s a puzzle-solver by nature, and not having the tools to solve this one must drive her mad.

“Could ‘dog pack’ have something to do with the dogfighting?” she asks.

“Caitlin!”

“Sorry—I'm sorry.”

I try fast-forwarding through my childhood friendship with Tim Jessup, but the memories are blurry, like stock images, shot poorly and faded with age. Many involve bike riding or playing steal the flag, but nothing related to dog packs comes—

“Oh my God,” I groan, first amazed, then appalled as the significance of the second clue drops into place.

She grabs my arm. “What is it?”

“I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

“What? Do you know what it means?”

“Yes.” I reach for the doorknob. “Come on!”

“Where?”

“The cemetery! It’s been there all along!”

“I thought you already searched the cemetery.”

“I did. But it’s huge. Now I know where to look.”

Something vibrates in my pocket. At first I think it’s my cell phone, but then I realize it’s Kelly’s Star Trek. “Peek outside,” I tell Caitlin, suddenly nervous. “Hurry.”

She opens the door and freezes.

“What is it?” I ask, trying to pull the gun from my pocket.

“I'm helping him get the things fitted,” Caitlin says awkwardly.

“It’s

Sunday,

” a woman says with disgust. “There’s kids out here. Why don'’t you just get a

room

?”

Caitlin closes the door. I click the TALK button on the Star Trek and say, “It’s me.”

“We’'ve got a problem,” Kelly says in my ear.

“Short of a death, it doesn’'t matter. I think we’re at the endgame.”

“Tell me.”

“Not over the air. Not even on these things.”

“You found what we’re looking for?”

“I know where it is. Can you cover us to the cemetery?”

“Screw that. You’re in the store now?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the satphone with you?”

“In Caitlin’s purse.”

“Walk straight back to the staff area like you own the place, then leave by their private exit door. Use a fire door if you have to. I'’ll be waiting out back. If anybody tries to stop you, tell them you’re the fucking mayor. If that doesn’'t work, pull your gun. Just get to my car. The game has changed.”

When Kelly’s voice gets tense, I know we’re in trouble.

“We’re on our way.”

CHAPTER

29

Linda Church sits on a folding chair in the corner of a small kitchen and studies her left knee, which is swollen and blue at the front, and purple in back. The joint doesn’'t hurt too bad, but she knows some gristle in it is torn because her skin is stretched tight as a drumhead and the bones slip when she walks. The lower part of her right leg looks worse. There’s a tear in the bruise, and the skin around it feels like it just came out of a microwave oven.