Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

Caitlin pockets her cell phone and walks toward me, her green eyes intent, probing mine with the power of the quick mind behind them.

“One minute,” I tell her.

“I just heard the flights are going to continue.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way you would have supported that unless you knew that the shooting today was directed at you alone.”

“What do you want, Caitlin?”

I try to keep the frustration out of my voice, but my resentment at her decision to leave Natchez has not left me. She looks hurt, but also resolved to press forward.

“I just saw some pictures that were found at Tim Jessup’s house. Nude pictures. Of a woman who worked on the

Magnolia Queen.

”

“Some cop is going to lose his job this week.”

“Listen to me, Penn, please. I think someone is trying to play me. I'm not even having to fight to get this stuff out of them. They’re using me to put out a story, I can feel it.”

I don'’t respond.

“Won’t you tell me what’s happening? Let me help you.”

“Don’t you mean help yourself? You’re in the hunt for another Pulitzer, aren'’t you?”

Her eyes flash. “I'm hunting for the truth. As always.”

“I can’t help you.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“What else do you have?”

She takes a deep breath, looks off toward the crowd, which is dis

persing into the cars now. “Not much. But that’s going to change. You know it will.”

Conscious of my rendezvous with McDavitt, I make a fast decision. “Caitlin, let’s pretend no time has passed since we were together. None. No hurt feelings, nothing. I'm telling you that if you pursue this thing, your life is in danger. More than when we worked the Del Payton case, even. You won'’t be helping Tim or what he was trying to do. You won'’t be serving the public interest. And you’ll be putting me and my family at risk, as well as yourself. In a few days, I may be able to tell you more, but for now, that’s it.”

She looks back in disbelief. “So, I'm just supposed to walk away?”

“Weren’t you planning to anyway? I thought you were on your way to New Orleans with your friend?”

“He’s already gone.”

“Why aren'’t you?”

She starts to answer, then bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “I don'’t know. I really don'’t. Thanks for the minute. It was a real education.”

She turns and follows Labry’s path up toward the Visitors’ Center, her jet hair blowing in the breeze from the river.

Eight hundred feet over the Mississippi River, my stomach starts to go on me. The balloon crash was too recent; I have to belt myself tightly into the chopper just to keep my nerves together. Danny McDavitt is sitting in front of me, in the left seat of the Athens Point sheriff’s department helicopter. Folded into the right-hand seat is a tall, lean black man in his twenties named Carl Sims. Carl is the former marine sniper that Daniel Kelly told me about on the phone. He works as a deputy for the Athens Point sheriff’s department, but today, like most people who live within fifty miles of town, he was attending the Balloon Festival. His black jeans and blue hoodie contrast with McDavitt’s faded khakis and polo shirt. Though Sims and McDavitt are thirty years apart in age, they seem to know each other well. They communicate in brief phrases or dry jokes, and even their silences seem charged with exchanges of information.

Ostensibly, we’re flying the course of the afternoon balloon race,

watching the ground for signs of snipers. In fact, we’re searching for Tim Jessup’s car. When a child is kidnapped, the Investigative Support Unit of the FBI recommends getting a helicopter airborne as fast as possible, equipped with a vehicle description. Choppers are remarkably effective at locating cars on the run, and I don'’t see why they should be any less effective at locating cars that have been abandoned. If Tim’s car has purposely been hidden, of course, our search is probably pointless. But since I have access to the chopper, searching for the missing car seems a better use of my time than riding shotgun for a bunch of balloons that won'’t be fired on unless I'm flying in one of them.

Once again, because of prevailing winds, the race course crosses the river from Mississippi to Louisiana. More than half of the pilots have decided to stay for the remainder of the festival, and half of these have already crossed the river and are sailing southwest under a glorious blue sky. The remaining balloons are stretched out to our left at various altitudes, from the twin bridges back to the launch site at the Natchez Airport. The wind has settled down since this morning, and from this distance the balloons look painted on the sky.

To the west, the Adams County sheriff’s helicopter is running along the levee on Deer Park Road like a gunship preparing to lay down suppressing fire on enemy troops.

“I think they’ve got the primary mission under control,” McDavitt says over the interphone. “What say we get to work?”

“I still don'’t know exactly what we’re doing,” Carl Sims confesses, looking back from the front seat. “I'm happy to help, but a little detail would be appreciated.”

I don'’t see any reason to burden McDavitt or Sims with more knowledge than they need. “Guys, let me put this as simply as I can. Last night, a friend of mine was murdered. Who did it isn’t important at the moment. But they’ve threatened my family. Right now we’re looking for my friend’s car. It’s a blue Nissan Sentra, five or six years old. I'm not sure what it can tell me, but there might be evidence inside that could nail the people who killed him. Is that enough for you?”

“Where are we looking?” McDavitt asks.

“I think they caught him somewhere out past the city cemetery, on Cemetery Road or one of the dirt roads that turns off it.”

The major executes a pedal turn and heads toward Weymouth Hall, a mansion atop the bluff not far from Jewish Hill. As we approach the widow’s walk atop the house, he turns north and starts following Cemetery Road at about four hundred feet. The cars parked at the houses and shacks below are easily identifiable, and this gives me some hope.

“Got a license plate number?” Carl asks.

“No.”

“I can get that for you. One call to the dispatcher in Athens Point.”

“Can’t risk it. This has to be totally under the radar.”

After a brief glance at McDavitt, Carl says, “Right. Blue Nissan Sentra.”

The Athens Point helicopter is brand-new, and far more advanced than the Adams County chopper, having been purchased after the crash Hans Necker mentioned during our stop at the old Triton Battery plant. It’s a Bell JetRanger, with a lot of bells and whistles I don'’t understand, but one that I do is FLIR, or Forward Looking Infrared Radar. This formerly military surveillance system is based around a pod mounted beneath the chopper’s nose, which contains an array of sensors that detect both infrared and visible light. Its readings are processed by a computer, then displayed on a screen mounted on the instrument panel in front of Major McDavitt. Modern FLIR units are so sensitive to heat that they can “see” the transient “handprint”—actually a heatprint—of a fugitive who has momentarily touched a car as he flees from police in total blackness. In daylight, FLIR signals can be blended with the signals from visible light cameras to create a sort of God’s-eye view of the terrain below. The Athens Point unit was donated by a lumber millionaire and avid hunter who occasionally uses it to monitor the white-tailed deer population on the thousands of acres he owns.

McDavitt seems to be flying with one eye on the ground and the other on the FLIR screen. When I ask about this, he explains that he flew Pave Low helicopters in Afghanistan, one of the most advanced choppers in the world, and that he became accustomed to using instruments as his primary interface with the world. Carl Sims searches the old-fashioned way, as befits a former sniper. His forehead is pressed to the curved windshield beside him, and he takes