Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

the California entertainment lawyer, will finally gain control of the company he naďvely thought was his in the first place. The Golden Parachute casino boats will run as legitimate businesses now, and continue to pump much needed money into Mississippi’s struggling economy.

William Hull’s days as a rogue lawyer are over, but I doubt he’ll spend a day in prison. Like the men he pursued, Hull was the type to maintain detailed records of all he did in the service of his masters. Such is the currency of politics, and Hull was, if anything, a political creature. This was verified when Shad Johnson received a call from the Director of Homeland Security, asking that Hull be released into federal custody. To Shad’s credit, he called to ask my opinion before he agreed. After some thought, I decided that I had no moral authority to judge Hull. Last week, I almost ordered Kelly to assassinate Jonathan Sands without even the semblance of due process. As for what happened on Lake St. John…though I'm loath to admit it, the difference between Hull and myself is one of degree rather than kind.

No one has learned the fate of Seamus Quinn. Perhaps those who rolled over in their beds during the wee hours of that night on Lake St. John have an inkling that something happened, but gunshots are common there, and it would take a small skirmish to warrant a call to the sheriff’s department. The ignorance of the public doesn’'t mean Quinn is forgotten. Kelly will remember him as one more face in the shadow gallery of those who saw him last upon the earth. For Kelly, the existentialist, there is no moral issue: The deed is done, today is a new day. For Caitlin and me, however, the thing is more complex. Here in this place where the past is never dead, or even past, Quinn rises between us at odd moments, most often when we moralize or make the easy generalizations that we as “liberals” tend to make. Caitlin now knows that all the fine words spoken down the centuries mean nothing when you have watched someone remorselessly brutalize a member of your tribe—even if that tribe includes all the women of the world. When offered a choice between certain death for the transgressor or a fair trial with the prospect of acquittal, she came close to choosing death. I did also. Moreover, she did not shy from delivering blows herself. The temptation we felt that night haunts us both and makes us question all we’d stood for until last week.

The awful philosophical musings that Quinn shared with Caitlin and Linda in the kennel are partly true, and they echo what Kelly told Caitlin in Chris Shepard’s lake house:

We’re still in the cave.

As with the dogs that Sands twisted into killers, there are urges in the blood that that no amount of socialization will ever remove. Lies and cruelty and murder are in us all.

All.

“Is that it?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a deep seam in the overgrown riverbank.

“Maybe,” I say, throttling back and getting to my feet in the gently rocking boat. “I just don'’t know.”

The “it” she’s referring to is the Devil’s Punchbowl. The real one. We figured that since the great defile lies north of town, it would be a good landmark to use for spreading Linda’s ashes on the water. From there they would drift down past the remaining casinos, then under the bridges and past the old plantations where Sands imprisoned dogs and women alike, as other men had done before him. Three or four days later, what’s left of Linda Church would flow through New Orleans and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

“I don'’t think we’re going to find it without a GPS,” I confess. “The bank’s still too overgrown.”

Caitlin shrugs. “It doesn’'t matter. We’re far enough north. Let’s do it out in the main channel.”

I turn the boat to port and push the throttle forward. When we’re midway between Mississippi and Louisiana, I kill the engine. I don'’t like doing that in the middle of the river, but given the occasion, it seems necessary. Caitlin removes a simple bronze urn from beneath one of the seats and rests it on the gunwale.

“Should we say something?” I ask.

“Anything we say now is too late.”

Squinting into the sun, she looks back at Natchez high on the bluff, then across at the levee on the Louisiana side. I don'’t know what she’s thinking, but I don'’t intend to disturb her. The extremity of what she endured with Linda in the kennel remains unknown to me. And while I take Kelly at his word that Quinn never raped Caitlin, the few details she has revealed were enough to convince me that Seamus Quinn deserved an express ticket to hell. Whatever

really happened, it inspired Caitlin to pay for Linda’s cremation and memorial service, which was attended by a handful of cocktail waitresses and no one else.

“I'’ll never forget her,” Caitlin says, still looking westward toward the place of their captivity.

“She’d be glad to know that.”

“She would. She had a high opinion of me, for some reason. She taught me how lucky I was to have the childhood I had. I'm not a poor little rich girl anymore. Linda gets the credit for that.”

I smile at this rare display of self-deprecation.

“You want to know a secret?” she says, removing the lid from the urn. The breeze catches some dust from the opening and sends it dancing over the water like a swarm of gnats.

“Sure.”

Caitlin raises her eyes until we’re looking directly at each other. “I sprinkled some of this over Tim’s grave this morning.”

“Did you really?”

“I couldn'’t see the harm. Julia will never know, and it would have meant the world to Linda.”

“To Tim too.” I can’t help but smile. “Just when I start believing you’re a real cynic, you show your romantic streak.”

Caitlin turns back to the water. “I’'ve always been a romantic. You know that. Here goes nothing.”

Lifting the urn by its base, she flings the ashes far over the orange-red water. A hiss like falling rain reaches the boat, and then only a small cloud of dust hangs over the river, dissipating slowly in the wind.

“How long till she gets to New Orleans?” Caitlin asks.

“That depends on a lot of things. No more than a week. Maybe sooner.”

She watches the ashes drift away from the boat. “The other day, you asked me if I’d learned anything about Tim’s last minutes while I was with Linda. I did, actually. Quinn told her about it between the rapes. To torment her.”

“Christ.”

“I'm going to tell you, but I don'’t ever want to talk about it again. Nothing about Quinn.”

“All right.”

Caitlin sits on one of the padded seats and crosses her legs. She tugs at the end of her ponytail as she speaks, her gaze on the fiberglass deck. “When Tim stole the DVD from the

Magnolia Queen,

there was already a homing device on his car. Quinn tracked him sometimes to see if he was at Linda’s apartment. Ben Li woke up and called Quinn to warn him just after Tim left the casino. Quinn and a couple of goons tracked Tim up to the cemetery in a security van. Then they switched on a cell phone jammer and started hunting. They found Tim’s car right away. They left one guy guarding it, then fanned out through the graveyard. Tim must have been hiding the DVD in the tree about then.”

“Because he couldn'’t find me.”

Caitlin pauses, then nods in sober agreement. “After he hid the disc, Tim somehow got back to his car and overpowered the guard, then took off for town. But Quinn had already called for help. The second vehicle blocked the road, so Tim turned and headed out Cemetery Road as fast as he could.”

“That'’s when he made the voice memo in his phone.”

“Right. The plan he mentioned in his memo was simple. He ran his car off the cliff into the Devil’s Punchbowl and dived out at the last second. He was trying to make them think he’d spun out and killed himself.”