Greg Iles - The Quiet Game

“Did you keep any personal notes from the Payton investigation?” I ask, recalling the habits of that cop Stone brought to mind a moment ago. “Something you didn’t turn in to your superiors, maybe?”

His gaze wanders to the rear window, where the stream rushes along the rocks. “You want to learn what I learned back in 1968?” He looks back at me, his eyes burning into mine as though striving to communicate something he cannot say aloud. “Do what I did. Talk to the eyewitnesses. Have you done that? Have you talked to the eyewitnesses?”

I admit that I haven’t.

“You didn’t convict Arthur Lee Hanratty by sitting in your office, did you? Pound the bricks. Talk to everybody who’ll talk and pressure those who won’t. That’s what we did back then. And we learned the truth.”

This statement hangs in the air like a volatile gas.

“Then why didn’t anyone go to jail?” Caitlin asks softly.

Stone’s jaw muscles clench in an effort to control his rage. “For the same reason this country is going to hell in a handbasket. And don’t ask me that again.”

“What was your partner’s name?”

“We didn’t have partners,” he says, his eyes still on me. “Not like municipal police. I worked a lot with Henry Bookbinder. He died of cirrhosis back in seventy-four.”

“I know you’re fond of quotes. Have you heard this one? ‘You yourself are guilty of a crime when you do not punish crime.’ ”

Stone’s right hand squeezes into a fist. “I think your half hour’s up, pardner.”

“May I ask you one more question?”

He stands and stretches his back muscles. “What is it?”

“Do you remember a cop named Ray Presley?”

Just before Stone’s eyes glass over, I glimpse an anger even more personal than that which I have seen to this point.

“I remember him,” he says in a flat voice.

“Do you think the police made an honest attempt to investigate the case?”

“That’s two questions.” Stone turns to Annie, who’s now touching a clay pot that looks like Pueblo work. “How’d you like that hot chocolate, little darling?”

“Mmmm. It was great!”

He walks to the door, leaving us little choice but to follow. I take Annie’s hand and lead her after him.

“Sorry you folks had to come all this way for nothing,” he says, opening the door to the dark vista of Gothic Mountain rising above the mesa. “Rain coming. That’s October for you.”

We’re on the porch now. The sibilant sound of the Slate beckons from the edges of the cabin.

“I don’t think it was for nothing,” Caitlin says, turning to Stone with a look of absolute frankness. “I think something evil happened in Natchez in 1968. I think you know what it was. I realize we sort of ambushed you here, and I apologize for that. But we want justice for Del Payton. I think you do too.” She takes a card from her pocket and passes it to Stone. “You’re going to do a lot of thinking after we leave. You can reach us at this number.”

His jaw tightens as he examines the card. “You’re a goddamn reporter?”

“A publisher. An honest one.”

He looks at me, his eyes brimming with outrage.

“She won’t print a word you said,” I assure him. “She won’t even print your name. She prints nothing at all until this whole mess is resolved.”

Stone shifts his gaze to Caitlin.

“I want the truth,” she says. “The truth, and justice. Nothing else. Thank you for your time, Agent Stone.”

As we walk to the Cherokee, he stands in his doorway looking-for the first time since we’ve seen him-a little unsure of himself. It strikes me that he liked Caitlin using his old rank. Despite all his deep-rooted anger, Stone is still proud to have been an FBI agent.

Unlocking the door, I hear the scuff of boots behind me. Stone has come down off the porch. He puts his right arm on my shoulder in a fatherly way and looks into my eyes.

“You’ve got too much to lose to dig into this mess, son. The world has already changed too much for it to make any difference.”

“I don’t agree.”

A strange recognition lights his eyes, and I am suddenly sure that in me he sees a shadow of the man he was years ago. “I’d like to give you one more quote,” he says. “If you don’t mind.”

“Whatever.”

“The hour of justice does not strike on the dials of this world.”

I look away from his sad eyes, wondering what could possibly have driven a man of his strength and experience into such a miasma of defeatism. “No offense, Agent Stone, but I think you’ve been doing too much reading and not enough soul-searching.”

To my surprise, this does not anger him. He squeezes my shoulder. “You have more illusions than you think. I wish you luck.”

“I wouldn’t need it if you’d tell me what you know.”

He shakes his head and takes a step back. “Whatever you do, you send that little girl someplace safe before you take another step. You hear?”

“That I’ll do.”

As he retreats to his porch, I buckle Annie into her safety seat and join Caitlin in the front. She looks at me with fire in her eyes.

“Did you catch what he said inside?”

“About Payton’s murder not being about civil rights?”

“No. When you asked him if he had any personal notes he kept from his superiors.”

Stone is still watching us from the porch.

“He said if we wanted to learn what he did, we should do what he did.”

She nods excitedly. “Talk to the eyewitnesses, right? That was the first thing he said. He looked at you real hard. Remember?”

“Yes. Like he was trying to communicate something nonverbally. Do you know what it was?”

She gives me an almost taunting smile. “Talk to the eyewitnesses.”

“What is it, for God’s sake?”

“Penn… he used the plural. According to all accounts, there was only one eyewitness to the Payton bombing.”

She’s right. Frank Jones, the scheduling clerk. Had Dwight Stone tried to tell me-without telling me-that there was more than one witness in the Triton parking lot on the day Del Payton died?

“I told you I was good at this,” she says, smiling with triumph. “Let’s get out of here.”

I start the Cherokee and wheel it around until we’re pointed back toward the jeep track. “What did you think of Stone?”

“I think he’s scared.”

“Me too.”

We spent the night in Gunnison. We might have rushed and made our flight, but none of us really wanted to race back to the heat of Mississippi. We took a suite at the Best Western and ate a long meal in a local steak house. Caitlin and I tried to list every possible reason Del Payton could have been murdered besides civil rights work, but Annie didn’t cooperate with this effort, which made it virtually impossible.

Back in the suite, we rented The Parent Trap on the in-house movie channel and watched it from the big bed. Annie lay between Caitlin and me, facing the TV, while we leaned back against the headboard, the pillows from both beds padding our backs. When Annie allowed it, which wasn’t often, we speculated about Stone and his cryptic statements. But watching TV with a four-year-old means watching it.

Lying in bed with Annie and Caitlin catapulted me back to a time so innocent and wonderful that I could hardly bear to think about it. Before Sarah got sick. Before the hospitals. Just us and our baby, laid up on Sunday mornings watching Barney with no fear of the future. When our biggest problem was deciding where we wanted to go for dinner.

When The Parent Trap ended, Annie said she wanted another movie. As I punched in the code for Beauty and the Beast and Caitlin called room service for ice cream, I wondered if Annie was experiencing the same memories I was, or at least the safe warm feeling she once knew with her mother and me. I thought perhaps she was, because two minutes after she finished her ice cream, she began snoring at the foot of the bed.