Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

I'm trying to remain calm, but even DeWitt can see my excitement. “How did he get up there? I don'’t see a ladder.”

“He borrowed my extension ladder.”

“Would you mind if I borrowed it for a minute?”

“Hell, no. I'’ll get it for you. You want to look at that birdhouse?” He looks puzzled, but not particularly bothered, by my request.

“I do. Can you tell me where it is?”

“It’s back there in those limbs that hang over the fence, about twenty-five feet up. In the winter you can see it plain as day, but with the leaves still on the trees, you can’t hardly find it. The pole’s set in the ground right behind the fence.

Two minutes later, I'm climbing the aluminum extension ladder that Bobby DeWitt has leaned against a high oak limb. Ten feet above me is the simple white birdhouse that you see in half the yards in Mississippi. Only this one looks as if it were hand-painted by an Asian artist. The three circular holes in the wall of the house have a tracery of exotic leaves painted around them, and several ladybugs that look almost real have been painted under the eaves of the roof.

“You okay?” DeWitt calls from below, where he’s holding the ladder steady.

“Yeah.”

Suppressing my excitement, I slip two fingers into the first hole and feel in the dark space, hoping I won'’t find a brown recluse spider. There’s nothing inside but bare wood. The center hole holds a few small twigs and something that feels like crusted bird crap. But as my fingers probe the leftmost hole, my fingertips touch plastic.

Moving them back and forth, I know immediately that I'm touching a Ziploc bag. It’s taped to the inside wall of the birdhouse. Tugging gently, I remove the baggie from the hole, taking care not to let DeWitt see it. As I look down, my heart begins to race.

Inside the sandwich-size Ziploc is a stack of SD memory cards, the kind used in some digital cameras. I count five of them, and the topmost card is labeled 2G HIGH SPEED. Keeping my hand close to my body, I slide the baggie into my front pants pocket. I can barely keep my balance as I descend the ladder, and when I release the aluminum rails, my hands are shaking.

“Find anything up there?” DeWitt asks.

“No. I'm not even sure what I was looking for.”

“Huh, I wondered. You ain’t the only one’s been around here looking. Some guys searched his house a couple nights ago, before the fire. I figured they were cops, but I had a funny feeling about them.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I was standing outside when they come out. And they looked at me like I was just dogshit. On my own property too.”

“Did they ask you any questions?”

“Hell, no. I wouldn'’t of told them nothing if they had.”

Intoxicated with hope, I slap DeWitt on the back and say, “Good man, Bobby. I'’ll see you around, okay?”

“Anytime. Hey, you reckon you could get something done about these potholes on our street?”

I laugh and turn my head as I'm running to my car. “Bobby, by next week, this street will be smooth as a baby’s butt!”

“I'’ll believe that when I see it!”

“Count on it!”

CHAPTER

64

As I feared, the data on Ben Li’s SD cards were encrypted. Normally, this would have stopped me for at least a couple of days while I located an expert, but Kelly is accustomed to such challenges. Three and a half hours ago, he transmitted the data to a retired buddy from the Army Signal Corps.

Caitlin has spent that time reading the file Peter Lutjens FedEx’d to my father yesterday. Dad had dressed her hands and feet with bandages after treating the lacerations, but she insisted on keeping her fingers free to turn pages. Apparently the detailed history of Edward Po, his extended family, and his worldwide criminal operations is the only thing capable of taking Caitlin’s mind off the horrors she endured while being held prisoner. She’s still sitting cross-legged on the sofa in the den when Kelly comes running in from my study.

“Decryption’s coming through. And from the sound of Joey’s e-mail, it’s hot stuff.”

Caitlin sets the file aside and hobbles toward the study. Soon the three of us are gathered around my computer to review the result of Joey’s efforts.

Caitlin presses a button on my trackball, and over a hundred tiny thumbnail images appear on my display. Some of them represent data files, but others are clearly JPEG images.

“Do I see frontal nudity?” asks Kelly, leaning closer and squinting.

“You do,” says Caitlin, double-clicking on one image. “Oh my God…look.”

On the screen, Linda Church leans over a bathroom counter, bracing herself on her forearms while Jonathan Sands thrusts into her from behind. Sands’s left hand seems to be yanking her head back by the hair, while his right holds a digital camera high to capture the scene. The camera’s flash is a bright star in the mirror of what looks like a hotel bathroom.

Caitlin turns away. “I'm sorry. It’s not the sex, I just can’t look at her, knowing what I know.”

“There’s one question answered,” I say. “Sands shot the nude pictures of Linda that were planted in Tim’s house.”

“Can I change the picture?” Caitlin asks in a distressed voice.

“Sorry, yeah, go.”

She clicks the trackball again, and a photo of Sands having sex with a different woman fills the screen.

“Ben Li couldn'’t have taken these, could he?” asks Kelly.

“No. He must have hacked into Sands’s private computer and copied whatever he found. Keep going. Skip down a ways.”

“There’s a

lot

more folders,” Caitlin says, scrolling through the contents of the disc. “They’re mostly pictures too.”

I'm beginning to understand. “Ben Li shot the cell phone pictures that Tim showed me in the cemetery that first night. I'’ll bet those pictures are in here too. Stuff from the dogfights. I think Ben Li liked pictures.”

“I don'’t get this,” Caitlin says in a puzzled voice.

“What?”

“If Ben Li had all these pictures of Sands, why didn't he use them to save his life? Why sit there and be tortured and yell elliptical clues? It doesn’'t make sense.”

“Think about it,” I tell her, having solved this riddle during my drive back from Li’s burned house. “He has these pictures stashed. When he wakes up and figures out Tim has been using him, he calls Sands or Quinn and reports what happened, probably thinking he has no choice. Next thing he knows, they’ve got him strapped in a chair with an electrode up his behind. Aside from the obvious stupidity of calling Quinn, this kid was a genius. Simply telling Sands

and Quinn that he had these pictures—or anything else that might be on these discs—wasn'’t going to save him. They’d just retrieve the discs from the birdhouse and kill him anyway. He needed to figure out a way to barter the discs for his life. He probably passed out while he was trying to do that. And he was high as a kite, remember, from whatever Tim had given him. He probably didn't wake up until he was in Quinn’s boat.”

Caitlin is nodding slowly. “And when he tried to stop Quinn from getting Linda, Quinn shot him.”

“Right. So the discs stayed hidden.”

Caitlin lowers her head for a few moments, then raises it and clicks on another thumbnail image. Now we’re looking at a well-known local attorney—a very married attorney—having sex with a Chinese girl who looks barely sixteen.

“Is that who I think it is?” asks Caitlin.

“It is.”

“Jesus.”

“Keep going. This is important, but it’s not what we need.”

She clicks through several more images of people having sex, mostly Sands with a variety of women. But several familiar local faces pop up, as well, most of them of people with political or financial influence.