Greg Iles: Cemetery Road

Once again, Denny snorts in contempt.

“You know what I’m thinking?” I say.

“Nope.”

“The next thing we need to know is where Buck’s truck is. He drives an old GMC pickup. It’s bound to be upstream from where he was found—unless something isn’t what it appears to be.”

Denny is nodding. “You want me to fly the banks and look for his truck?”

“Seems like the thing to do, doesn’t it? You got enough battery left?”

“Two is one, one is none.”

“What?”

“Navy SEAL motto. Meaning I brought some extras.” Denny leans over the fence and looks down the sharp incline of Front Street. “Looks like they’re loading him into the coroner’s wagon. Let the deputies get clear, and I’ll fly the drone back up here, change out my battery, and start checking the banks.”

“Sounds good. Let’s try the Mississippi shore first.”

“Yep.”

We stand at the fence together, looking down into Lower’ville, which on most mornings would be virtually empty (except in March, which is peak tourist season for our city). But on this May morning, death has drawn a crowd. Though they’re almost stick figures from our perspective, I recognize Byron Ellis helping the deputies slide the sheet-covered body from his gurney into the old Chevy. Watching them wrestle that mortal weight, I hear a snatch of music: Robert Johnson playing “Preachin’ Blues.” Turning back to the road, I look for a passing car but see none. Then I realize the music was in my head. “Preachin’ Blues” was one of the first songs Buck taught me on guitar. The harmless man lying beneath the coroner’s sheet with his skull cracked open salvaged my young life. The realization that he has been murdered—possibly on the river—is so surreal that I have to force it into some inaccessible place in my mind.

“Hey, are you okay?” Denny asks in a hesitant voice.

I wipe my eyes and turn back to him. “Yeah. Buck and I were close back when I lived here. When I was a kid.”

“Oh. Can I ask you something?”

He’s going to ask me about my brother dying, I think, searching for a way to avoid the subject. Seeing Buck pulled from the river has already knocked me off-balance. I don’t want to dwell on the nightmare that poisoned the river for me.

“Sure,” I reply, sounding anything but.

“I knew you won a Pulitzer Prize and all, when you were in Washington. But I didn’t realize what it was for. I was online last week and saw it was for something you wrote about being embedded in Iraq. Were you with the SEALs or somebody like that? Delta Force?”

A fourteen-year-old boy’s question. “Sometimes,” I tell him, relief coursing through me. “I was embedded in Afghanistan before Iraq, with the Marines. But in Iraq I was with private security contractors. Do you know what those are?”

“Like Blackwater and stuff?”

“Exactly. Most guys who do that work in Afghanistan are former soldiers: Rangers, Delta, SEALs. But a lot of them in Iraq were just regular cops back in the world, believe it or not. And lots of those were from the South. They go over there for the money. It’s the only way they can make that kind of paycheck. They earn four times what the regular soldiers do. More than generals.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s not.”

Denny thinks about this. “So what’s it like? For real. Is it like Call of Duty come to life?”

“Not even close. But until you’ve been there, you can’t really understand it. And I hope you never do. Only a few things in life are like that.”

“Such as?”

“That’s a different conversation. One for you and your mom.”

“Come on. Tell me something cool about it.”

I try to think like a fourteen-year-old for a minute. “You can tell what units the contractors came from by the sunglasses they wear. Wraparound Oakleys for Delta Force. SEALs wear Maui Jims. Special Forces, Wiley X.”

“No way. What about Ray-Bans?”

“Over there? Only for punks and phonies. Over here, that’s what I wear.” I glance at my wristwatch. “I need to call Buck’s wife, Denny.”

“Sure, okay. But like, how did you get that kind of job? I mean, that kind of access?”

“A guy I went to high school with helped me out. He was an Army Ranger a long time ago, during the Persian Gulf War. He got me that gig with the private contractors. He also saved my life over there. That’s what won me the Pulitzer, that assignment. What I saw over there.”

Denny nods like he understands all this, but I have a feeling he’ll be buying my book online this afternoon.

“Save your money,” I tell him. “I’ll give you a copy.”

“Cool. Who was the guy? Your friend?”

“Paul Matheson.”

His eyes widen. “Kevin Matheson’s dad?”

“That’s right.”

“That dude’s like, rich. Really rich.”

“I guess he is, yeah. Paul didn’t go over there for the money, though. It started as a sort of Hemingway trip for him. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“Not really.”

“A macho thing. He had problems with his father. He felt like he had a lot to prove.”

“That I understand.”

I’ll bet you do.

“Hey,” Denny says, his voice suddenly bright. “We should go up to the cemetery to run this search. That ground’s like forty feet higher than here, counting the hills. Better line of sight up there, which gives me better control.”

The thought of the Bienville Cemetery resurrects the dread I felt earlier. “Let’s just do it from here, okay? I’m on a tight schedule this morning.”

The boy gives me a strange look. “What you gotta do?”

“They’re breaking ground on the new paper mill at eleven A.M. I need to be there for that.”

He laughs. “The Mississippi Miracle? I’ll believe it when they build it.”

Denny sounds like he’s quoting someone else. “Where’d you hear that line?”

He looks sheepish. “My uncle Buddy.”

Denny’s uncle is a mostly out-of-work contractor who spends his days getting high in front of the TV. “That paper mill’s the real deal. The Chinese have the money. And a billion-dollar investment could put this town in the black for the next fifty years.”

Denny looks a little less skeptical. “My mom’s been kind of hoping to get work out there.”

“I’ll bet. The average salary’s going to be sixty thousand dollars. And that, ” I think aloud, “is why I’m afraid that the new paper mill might have played some part in Buck’s death.”

Denny’s head whips toward me. Even a fourteen-year-old boy can put this together. “I read your article about the artifact Buck found. Would that mess up the paper mill somehow?”

“It could. It scared the shit out of most people in this town. The whole county, really.”

“You think somebody would kill Buck over that?”

“I can think of about thirty-six thousand suspects at this point.”

“For real?”

“Kids are killing kids over cell phones in this town, Denny. What do you think people will do for a billion dollars?”

“A billion dollars?”

“That’s what the Chinese are investing here, not counting all the millions that will come with the new bridge and interstate.”

“Wow. I see what you mean. Well …” He looks over the fence again. “The coroner’s splitting. I’ll get the drone back up here and start checking the riverbanks.”

I give him a thumbs-up. “I’m going to walk down the fence and make a few calls. Holler if you see anything.”

“I will.”

For a second I wonder if I could be putting him in danger by having him search for Buck’s pickup, but I can’t see how. Turning, I walk north along the fence, looking down at the roof of the coroner’s wagon as it hauls Buck’s remains up from the river for the final time. I really have only one call to make, because the call I want to make, I can’t. Not for several hours yet. The call I must make I’d give anything to avoid.