Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

ALSO BY GREG ILES

Third Degree

True Evil

Turning Angel

Blood Memory

The Footprints of God

Sleep No More

Dead Sleep

24 Hours

The Quiet Game

Mortal Fear

Black Cross

Spandau Phoenix

SCRIBNER
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by Greg Iles

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2008049551

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9463-5
ISBN-10: 1-4165-9463-9

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For
Madeline and Mark
Who pay the highest price for my writing life.

Thank you.

No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow thats in the right and keeps on a comin.

Captain Bill McDonald, Texas Ranger

Youre an animal.

No, worse. Human.

Runaway Train

THE DEVILS PUNCHBOWL

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
1

Midnight in the garden of the dead.A silver-white moon hangs high over the mirror-black river and the tired levee, shedding cold light on the Louisiana delta stretching off toward Texas. I stand among the luminous stones on the Mississippi side, shivering like the only living man for miles. At my feet lies a stark slab of granite, and under that stone lies the body of my wife. The monument at its head reads:

SARAH ELIZABETH CAGE

19631998

Daughter. Wife. Mother. Teacher.

She is loved.

I havent sneaked into the cemetery at midnight to visit my wifes grave. Ive come at the urgent request of a friend. But I didnt come here for the sake of friendship. I came out of guilt. And fear.The man Im waiting for is forty-five years old, yet in my mind he will always be nine. Thats when our friendship peaked, during the Apollo 11 moon landing. But you dont often make friends like those you make as a boy, so the debt is a long one. My guilt is the kind you feel when someone slips away and you dont do enough to maintain the tie, all the more painful because over the years Tim Jes sup managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble, and after the first eight or nine times, I wasnt there to get him out of it.My fear has nothing to do with Tim; hes merely a messenger, one who may bear tidings I have no wish to hear. News that confirms the rumors being murmured over golf greens at the country club, bellowed between plays beside high school gridirons, and whispered through the hunting camps like a rising breeze before a storm. When Jessup asked to meet me, I resisted. He couldnt have chosen a worse time to discover a conscience, for me or for the city. Yet in the end I agreed to hear him out. For if the rumors are trueif a uniquely disturbing evil has entered into my townit was I who opened the door for it. I ran for mayor in a Jeffersonian fit of duty to save my hometown and, in my righteousness, was arrogant enough to believe I could deal with the devil and somehow keep our collective virtue intact. But that, Im afraid, was wishful thinking.For months now, a sense of failure has been accreting in my chest like fibrous tissue. Ive rarely failed at anything, and I have never quit. Most Americans are raised never to give up, and in the South that credo is practically a religion. But two years ago I stood before my wifes grave with a full heart and the belief that I could by force of will resurrect the idyllic town that had borne me, by closing the racial wounds that had prevented it from becoming the shining beacon I knew it could be, and bringing back the prosperity it deserved. Halfway through my four-year term, Ive learned that most people dont want change, even when its in their best interest. We pay lip service to ideals, but we live by expediency and by tribal prejudice. Accepting this hypocrisy has nearly broken me.Sadly, the people closest to me saw this coming long ago. My father and my lover at the time tried to save me from myself, but I would not be swayed. The heaviest burden I bear is knowing that my daughter has paid the highest price for my illusions. Two years ago, I imagined I heard my dead wifes voice urging me onward. Now all I hear is the empty rush of the wind, whispering the lesson so many have learned before me: