Greg Iles 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Quiet Game, Turning Angel, The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles
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she says, “You’ve got a visitor, Penn.”
“Who is it?”
“Caitlin Masters.”
I wasn’t expecting Caitlin, so she must have news. “Bring her in.”
“She’s playing with Annie.”
When Mom disappears, Dad says, “How much does Masters know?”
“Nothing about the blackmail.”
“Don’t tell her what happened to Ray. Not yet.”
Caitlin comes to the door carrying Annie in her arms, then passes her off to my mother and promises to be back in the kitchen in a few minutes. She’s wearing black jeans, sandals, and a white pinpoint button-down with her sable hair spilling around the collar. She looks harried but also ready to burst with excitement.
Dad stands as I make the introductions, and as soon as Mom closes the door, Caitlin says: “I just hit the jackpot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I traced Lester Hinson. The guy in the article from the Leesville Daily Leader?”
“What’s his story?”
“He’s a small-time crook who spent most of his life in Angola Prison. He lives in New Orleans now.”
“You talked to him?”
Too excited to remain in one place, Caitlin begins pacing. “More than that. I found out exactly how he ties in to the Payton case. In April of 1968 Lester Hinson and a supply sergeant named Earl Wheeler ripped off an arms depot at Fort Polk and started selling the stuff on the black market. A month later they were busted by the Army CID. That’s what the article was about, right? Well, Hinson was a civilian, and he got a visit in jail from Special Agent Dwight Stone. Stone wanted to know if the pair had sold C-4 to anyone from Mississippi, particularly Natchez. They had. Stone had to get the charges pled down to find out who the buyer was, but he didn’t mind that at all.”
“The buyer was Ray Presley,” I say in a monotone.
Her mouth drops open. “You’re not guessing, are you?”
“No. We just placed Presley at the crime scene when the bomb went off.”
“How did you do that?”
“You finish first. I can’t believe Hinson just spilled his guts to you.”
“He didn’t. I did what cops do.”
“What’s that?”
She grins. “I paid him. I told him what I wanted, then wired five hundred dollars to a Western Union office in New Orleans. I told him I’d wire him another five hundred if he told me what I wanted to know. He would have talked all day for that money.”
Dad gives Caitlin an admiring look.
“Forget that,” she says. “How did you put Presley at the scene?”
“You were right about what Stone was trying to tell us. There was another witness to the murder. One who never made it into the police report.”
“Who?”
“Her identity isn’t important right now. What matters—”
“Not important!”
Caitlin isn’t going to like this. “This witness can only implicate Ray Presley. Presley probably killed Payton, but he almost certainly did it for someone else. That’s how he worked. And I don’t want to move on Presley until we have the man who ordered the crime.”
Caitlin is shaking her head. “But that’s how you get to the top guy, isn’t it? You squeeze the little fish until they talk.”
“Usually, yes. But Presley’s a special case. He’s never scared easy, and now he has terminal cancer. He doesn’t have a lot of fear of earthly punishment. So, he bought some plastic explosive in 1968. The statute ran out on that long ago. The witness who saw him in the Triton parking lot is a terrified woman who’s now married and respectable, but who happened to be committing adultery in a car when the bomb exploded. I seriously doubt she would make a statement to the police, much less testify in open court.”
“Penn, I can’t believe I’m hearing this. We now have means and opportunity for Presley to have committed homicide. The motive could be racial prejudice. He’s a lock for it. If we don’t squeeze Presley, how can we get any further?”
“We’ve just been discussing that.”
She looks from one to the other of us, her green eyes probing. “You guys know something I don’t. Right? Something about Presley. Something that’s keeping you from going after him.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. Not at this point.”
The familiar pink moons appear high on her cheeks. “What kind of bullshit answer is that? Are we partners or not?”
I trust Caitlin implicitly, but I cannot trust her with my father’s secret. “If I could tell you, I would. But I have to ask you to trust me for now.”
“You ask me to trust you, but you don’t trust me.” She looks at my father, who is staring pointedly at the floor, then back at me. “You think Leo Marston hired Presley?”
“Don’t you?”
“There’s no evidence of that.”
“Ike Ransom says it’s Marston, and Dwight Stone said the same thing in so many words.”
“But neither of them will go public.”
“There’s been another development as well.”
She sighs and looks at the floor. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Stone lied to us in Colorado. He knew John Portman a hell of a lot better than he led us to believe.”
“How do you know that?”
I quickly explain Althea Payton’s call about seeing Portman on CNN, and my subsequent verification that he worked in Mississippi in 1968.
Caitlin gropes backward for her chair and falls into it. “Holy shit. Do you realize what this means?”
“Tell me.”
“This story just went national. This story is huge.”
“Remember our deal. You print nothing until I say so.”
“When I made that promise, I didn’t know you were going to obstruct the investigation for reasons you don’t see fit to tell me.”
“There were no conditions on the promise. And I expect you to abide by it.”
She purses her lips. “Could I please point out a couple of things? One, we have no real investigative power. Two, the files we need are under government seal, and we’re unlikely to get that changed without a protracted court battle. Three, the Payton case somehow involves the director of the FBI, who has practically unlimited power to interfere with us. Four, the case also involves Leo Marston, the single most powerful man in this county, possibly in the state. Five, no one directly involved in the case wants to talk to us.” She holds up her hands in desperation. “What do you want to do? I think the media is the only weapon we have.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“I simply want to use it in a different way than you.”
“How?”
“To scare the shit out of Portman and Marston, and see which way they jump.”
Now I have her attention. “How can you do that?”
“By making them think we can