Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

occasional breaks to survey the ground through the “chin bubble” below his feet.

Our main problem is not that Cemetery Road runs through a vast forest, but that this forest is laced with dozens of dirt roads, most cut long ago by loggers or oil drillers, and few are well maintained. If Tim was fleeing from pursuers in his car, he could have turned down any of these roads, hoping to find a wooded sanctuary.

“How far off the road do you want me to look?” McDavitt asks, obviously sharing my concern.

“Half a mile, I guess. Much more than that, and we won'’t be able to see anything anyway.”

“Half a mile, it is.”

The pilot begins banking from side to side, and as the chopper dips and rolls, my stomach begins to churn. Following advice I’'ve heard about seasickness, I fix my gaze on the horizon line across the river. Carl and Danny make occasional comments about the landscape below, and several times the pilot drops to treetop level to examine a car more closely. Sims even spots a Sentra, but when we descend to check it, we find that its paint is actually green.

A couple of minutes after this disappointing reconnaissance, McDavitt says, “Son of a bitch,” and brings the ship into a hover over a high bluff not far from the river. He points to the FLIR screen. “Look at that, Carl.”

“I'm seeing it.”

“What is it?” I ask, leaning forward into the cockpit.

“A car,” the pilot answers. “And it’s hot.”

On the screen I see a tiny black rectangle partially obscured by masses of gray that must represent the foliage. “How hot?”

“It was probably still on fire this morning.”

“Vehicles can burn for a long time,” Sims explains. “Upholstery and stuff. I saw it in Iraq.”

“It looks…I don'’t know, sort of far away. A lot lower than the trees.”

“It’s in a hole,” says McDavitt.

“How deep?”

“I can’t tell. I tried putting the laser on it, but there’s too much vegetation to get an accurate reading. Just guessing, I’d say three hundred feet below those treetops.”

I lean into the window and gaze out over the Mississippi River. After orienting myself to the angle of the bend, and the lake not far beyond the river, a sense of certainty much like triumph settles in me.

“I know where we are.”

“Where?” Carl asks.

“The Devil’s Punchbowl.”

The sniper whips his head around and stares at me. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“How do you know?” asks McDavitt.

“I spent the night down there once. A long time ago.”

“Bullshit,” says Sims.

“Seriously. I was seventeen. It was a Boy Scout thing. Merit Badge. Camping out overnight by yourself. Being a typical teenager, I chose the scariest place I could think of.”

“I never knew anybody who’s actually been down there,” Sims says. “I always heard outlaws dumped the bodies of their victims there back in the old days. Heads separated from the bodies, and all.”

McDavitt points at the FLIR screen. “I think somebody else heard the same stories. Got inspired, maybe.”

“Maybe so,” I agree, trying to let the truth of what happened last night find its way to my consciousness.

“What did you see down there?” Carl asks me. “Find any skeletons?”

“No. Wildlife, mostly. Lots of deer, foxes. I saw some black-bear tracks. I almost stepped on a six-foot rattlesnake.”

“How deep is it? For real?”

“I didn't have any way to measure it. But it got dark down there in the afternoon. And I almost drowned that night. It started raining, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of a flash flood.”

McDavitt chuckles softly. “I always heard that Jean Laffite might have hid his treasure down there. You didn't find any pieces of eight, did you?”

“Not for lack of trying. I took a metal detector with me. And I did find a treasure, of a kind. But not pirate gold.”

“What did you find?” Sims asks, his eyes bright.

For a few moments I resist answering. This memory I’'ve always kept to myself. “A cougar. I saw a cougar down there. They’re sup

posed to be extinct in these parts, but I know what I saw. He was on a limb looking down at a game path. There were deer tracks all through there. He was waiting for supper to walk by.”

“What happened?”

“He looked at me, I looked at him, and then he was gone. Never made a sound. I didn't sleep a wink. All night I expected him to pounce on me out of nowhere. But he never did.”

“He didn't like the smell of you,” Carl says.

“Can’t say I blame him,” McDavitt says in a deadpan voice. “I’d have to be awful hungry to choose you over venison. But let’s not get sidetracked. Anybody watching this ship is going to see us hanging over this hole like a buzzard circling a carcass. What’s the plan?”

“That'’s got be Tim’s car,” I aver. “The question is, did he run it down there himself, or did the bad guys dump it there?”

“Why would he do it himself?” Carl asks.

“If they were chasing him, he might do it to make them think he’d crashed and died.”

McDavitt nods thoughtfully. “If he did that, then the bad guys might not have searched it yet.”

“If they know it’s there, they’ve searched it. And they probably do know,” I say, recalling Sands’s certainty that Tim did not e-mail the stolen data to anyone. “But we can’t be sure.” I could call Seamus Quinn and save myself a lot of trouble, but if Quinn doesn’'t know about the car…“I need to get down there, guys.”

“How you going to do that?” McDavitt asks. “My hoist won'’t even get you halfway.”

“Same way I did when I was seventeen, I guess.”

“How long did that take you?”

“Most of a day.”

An intermittent beep sounds in the muffled hum of the JetRanger’s cabin.

“What’s that?” McDavitt scans his instrument panel. “That'’s not coming from the chopper.”

I pull off one earpiece of my headset. “Sorry. It’s a satellite phone.” I lift the phone from the floor, click the SEND button, and put the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”

“Penn, it’s Dad.”

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“No, but I think you ought to come by my office.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. There’s somebody here to see you.”

“Can you say who it is?”

“I’d rather not.”

I feel momentary panic. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, don'’t worry.”

“Did you call from your office line?”

“Hell no. I borrowed Chris Shepard’s cell phone.”

“Okay.” Chris Shepard is one of my father’s younger partners.

“Just get over here now, if you can.”

“I'm kind of in the middle of something important.”

There’s a brief silence. Then my father says, “Well, let’s see how important. I’'ve got Jewel Washington sitting here with the results of Tim Jessup’s autopsy, which she’s under instructions not to share with anybody. Is that important enough?”

Shit.

“Don’t let her leave. I'’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“That'’s what I figured.”

I hang up and look down at the forest below, then at the men in the front of the chopper. “I need to get back to my car.”

McDavitt nods. Carl keeps looking at me, then expels a lungful of air. “If you really think what you’re looking for could be down there, I can check it out for you.”

A rush of gratitude flows through me. “Are you sure? That'’s a deep hole.”

Sims laughs. “Yeah, well. I’'ve heard about that place all my life. Might as well see for myself what’s at the bottom.”

“What exactly is he looking for?” McDavitt asks.

“A DVD, probably. Any form of digital media.”

“Any digital media in that car has been burned to a crisp,” the pilot points out.

“Could have been thrown clear,” Carl says. “If it was in a bag or a case, say.”