Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

she’d remembered how the snakes had twisted and cracked like whips, and she wondered if they’d been screaming. Could snakes scream? Could they hear each other screaming?

Linda walked until the skin on the back of her neck felt like it would split from sunburn, dragging her throbbing leg behind her, but by then she’d climbed the levee again and figured out where she was—and where she was going. She was on Deer Park Road, and while there were only a couple of farmhouses for many miles, she knew about a church that stood alone at the edge of the cotton fields, and this confirmed God’s participation in her survival. She got so thirsty she licked the sweat from her arms, and this made her smile. Yankees whined about the heat and the humidity, but it was the humidity that made the heat bearable. Louisiana wasn'’t like the barren hills outside Las Vegas, a place so dry you hardly saw the sweat leave your skin. Here there was almost as much water in the air as in your body, and the sweat beaded on your skin like water on a car that had just been waxed.

The last time she’d climbed the levee, she’d seen the church. In her mind it was white and clean and straight, rising from a green ocean of soybeans, but in truth it lay beside an empty cotton field like an oversize box thrown carelessly from a truck. The bright tin roof she remembered was a mosaic of rust and primer, and the steeple looked like a doghouse someone had squashed onto the apex of a roof. But even so, even with the crucifix atop it looking like a broken TV antenna, she’d seen deliverance. Pastor Simpson was alone behind the building, walking from the back shed to the main building with two boxes under his arms.

Linda had wept with joy.

She’d never been to services at that church, but she’d gone to Pastor Simpson’s old church for years. Linda’s father had been strict Assembly of God, but Linda had discovered Pastor Simpson when a friend had taken her to the Oneness Branch of the church. The Oneness people believed God couldn'’t be split into three, but the main thing was, they hated the hypocrisy of the mainliners. Pastors preaching against television while buying big sets for their lake houses, where they thought nobody would see them. But while Linda was in Las Vegas, Pastor Simpson had splintered off from the

Oneness people too and had formed something called the Wholeness Church. It wasn'’t official, but he had a small congregation of forty or fifty hard-core believers, and they’d gotten together to renovate the old church by the river. She’d heard about it when she got back to town and went to work on the boat.

When Linda limped down off the levee, she hadn'’t known what Pastor Simpson’s argument with the Oneness people was, nor had she cared. All she knew was that for years Simpson had been a good pastor and tried to help people, especially the poor. There’d been some talk about him and a couple of the young girls in the congregation, but she’d never had any trouble with him.

He’d recognized Linda almost immediately, and he’d taken her into the church and washed her wounds with water from the sink in the one bathroom they had. She hadn'’t told him the truth of course—not because she didn't trust him, but because she was afraid she might bring terrible harm down onto him or his followers. He’d sat there for half an hour with his silver hair and red skin and sympathetic eyes while she told him a lie about getting involved with a man she’d met on the gambling boat, a man who’d been in prison, who had almost killed her with a beating, and who would kill her if he found her. No, she couldn'’t go to the police, she said, because the man had friends in the police, on both sides of the river. Pastor Simpson had shaken his head and promised to do all he could to help, including getting her out of town. And he’d stood by his word, so far. When she’d written out the long note for Mayor Cage, Simpson had called one of the girls in his church to come out from town and pick it up, a girl named Darla, and Darla had promised to deliver it, and to make sure the mayor had no idea where any of them were, or even who she was.

Linda wished time would speed up. She’s going to have to move soon because there’s an evening service coming, and the pastor told her to be hiding in the shed well before the first car pulled up. She dreads that fifty-foot walk like nothing in a long time, but she’ll do it somehow. Because after the service, the pastor’s nephew is going to drive her to Shreveport, to stay with another group of Wholeness worshippers. There she will be safe from the “convict” who is hunting her. Linda lifts her shirt and wipes the sweat from her

brow, which is burning like the skin around her torn leg. She needs a doctor, but she can hold out another few hours. They might even have a doctor in the church in Shreveport, she thinks. No matter how bad things look, God has taken her into his blessed hands. To know that’s true, all Linda has to do is think about Ben Li.

CHAPTER

30

“You can talk in here,” Kelly says, gunning the 4Runner and heading out of the parking lot. “No bugs, guaranteed.”

“We’re going to the cemetery.”

“Okay. Why?”

“The disc is there. Not only that—Linda Church is alive.”

Kelly looks at me. “How do you know that?”

I quickly relate what happened at the Ramada and describe the contents of the tape and the note. Caitlin supplements my account from the backseat.

“Wait a minute,” says Kelly, turning onto Homochitto Street. “Two different people approached you at this one event?”

“Yeah, I figured you saw them.”

“I saw a girl watching you early on, but I was looking for males. I'm thinking of the coincidence.”

“I know, but remember what you asked me early this morning? Everyone in town knew I would be at that event. It was published in the newspaper. Both Jewel and that girl knew they could talk to me without seeming to try to. It could look accidental. But what about you? You said we have a problem.”

“One thing at a time. Do you know where Linda is?”

“No, but she’s safely hidden, and her note says she’s leaving town.”

“You didn't recognize the girl who gave you the note?”

“You said she looked familiar,” Caitlin reminds me.

“I could say that about almost everyone in this town. Do you know how many people I’'ve spoken to since becoming mayor? And during the campaign? I think the part of my brain that connects names and faces has been short-circuited.”

“I wouldn'’t mind having Linda Church in our back pocket,” Kelly says. “I think you’re going to need her as a witness before this mess is through.”

“What the hell’s going on? What’s the problem you talked about?”

“Blackhawk got a bounceback on Jonathan Sands.”

“A bounceback?”

“A return query. Rebound request. Someone in Washington wants to know who’s asking about Sands.”

Caitlin’s eyes meet mine. “Washington?” she says. “

Who

in Washington?”

“They wouldn'’t tell me, and that’s not a good sign. The company says they'’re covering for me, but I’'ve got to be straight with you. Seventy-five percent of Blackhawk’s revenues come from the Defense Department, and that number goes up every month. If Washington demands something, sooner or later the company’s going to cave. They value my services, but in the end I'm just a grunt.”

A wave of fear rolls through me. “Are you saying Blackhawk might give up Annie’s location if the government pushed hard enough?”

“No, no. But they might give up my name, and maybe yours. Sands could find out I'm involved and figure you’re trying to bust him, not help him.”

“I see.”