Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“Hello,” I say. “Are you enjoying the festival?”

The girl smiles, but her eyes are filled with confusion, or even fear. Something about her seems familiar. Before I can figure out what, she shoves something into my front pants pocket. The contact startles me, but the crowd around us is intent on two balloons that are flying too close together as they sweep in off the river.

“Don’t read that until you’re by yourself,” the girl says. “It’s superimportant.”

“Are you—”

“I gotta go,” she says, then turns and moves into the crowd. I see her leather jacket for a couple of seconds, then only a blur of bodies.

“Who was that?” Caitlin asks, suddenly appearing at my side. She’s staring after the girl, but I can no longer distinguish her from the other people swirling between us and the hotel swimming pool.

“I don'’t know.”

“What was she saying?”

“She stuffed something into my pocket. I think it’s a note. She said to read it in private. Jewel must have sent her over. Somebody must be watching Jewel.”

“Or you.”

“Yeah.”

Caitlin takes my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

I look around the grounds of the hotel. Unless you have a room, there’s no privacy to be had. “We shouldn’t leave until we’re sure I have whatever Jewel needs to give me.”

“Have some barbecue, Mr. Mayor!”

Jewel Washington’s sweating brown face appears before me so suddenly that I can’t quite tell where she came from. She shoves a Chinet plate piled high with tangy-smelling pork into my hands. Before letting go of it, she pinches the back of my hand, then adjusts the plate so that I feel something hard taped to the bottom it. It’s small and rectangular and feels plastic.

“The pork was going fast,” she says loudly. “Paul Labry told me to bring you a plate before we got down to the bone.” Jewel interposes herself between me and Caitlin, then starts talking to Caitlin

in a “girl talk” tone—probably to give me time to remove whatever it is she’s trying to pass me.

“Caitlin’s cool, Jewel,” I say softly. “What’s under the plate?”

Without breaking the rhythm of her conversation, the coroner laughs loudly and squeezes Caitlin’s arm, then pulls the two of us together and leans in as though dispensing romantic advice. “A tape of a voice memo Tim Jessup recorded on his cell phone right before he died. Shad has the phone. He has your cell records too. This case is getting crazy, Penn. You need to watch yourself.”

“You’re crazy, girl!” Caitlin says, playfully shoving Jewel’s shoulder. “But if this keeps up, I might consider moving back here.”

“You come on back!” cries Jewel. “We need you back here gettin’ on people’s case.” She backs away from us. “You two be talkin’ again, so you can share that plate!”

Jewel waves broadly, then makes her way back toward the barbecue tent. Two sheriff’s deputies standing in line watch as she approaches, and they don'’t take their eyes off her as she moves behind the serving table.

Caitlin grabs my arm and pulls me around some shrubs beside the pool. “I don'’t know what’s going on, but let’s get the hell out of here and see what we’ve got.”

Balancing the plate on my right hand, I put my left arm around Caitlin and walk toward the breezeway that leads to the hotel parking lot. Nearly everyone we pass speaks to me, and several call Caitlin by name. A local Realtor tries to stop me and talk about a zoning variance, but I plead official business and push on. The moment we get twenty yards of space around us, Caitlin says, “Is the tape in the freaking barbecue or what?”

“It’s taped to the bottom of the plate.”

“What kind of tape is it?”

“A minicassette, I think.”

“Old school. I have that kind of recorder at the office.”

“Kmart’s only a minute away.”

“Okay.” As we make our way through the crowded lot, Caitlin says, “If the tape is what Jewel had for you, then who’s the note in your pocket from?”

“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.