Sonny hadn’t seen the Bone Tree since 1966, but he remembered it all too well. The colossal cypress reared up out of the swamp like the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. But this was no paradise. More than a dozen men Sonny knew of had died under that tree, and Frank claimed the real number was over a hundred. He’d shown Sonny hand-forged chain links embedded in the bark that dated back to slave times. Runaway slaves had supposedly been hanged or hobbled beneath this cypress. High inside the hollow trunk, Sonny had seen carvings Frank swore were Indian sign, from before the French came. Sonny didn’t need those facts to make him wary of this place. The things he’d seen done to men beneath the Bone Tree were seared into his brain. He was half tempted to carry Jimmy Revels to Baton Rouge and put him on a northbound bus rather than make the journey out of this snake-infested swamp alone.

“Glenn don’t know how easy he’s got it,” Sonny muttered. “Compared to this, dumping Luther’s car in the Jericho Hole is nothing.”

A heavy swish in the water to his right made Sonny’s sphincter lock up. He knew that sound. Sure enough, when he squinted, he saw the armored back of an alligator swimming alongside the boat. When his heartbeat finally slowed to normal, Sonny looked forward and saw the Bone Tree towering a hundred feet above him, its base as broad as a building blocking his path. The fibrous bark looked like the leathery skin of some great creature, not dead but only sleeping, and high above, its branches joined the crowns of other trees to form a thin canopy. Killing the motor, Sonny let the johnboat glide up onto the edge of the hummock that surrounded the massive trunk. A narrow, A-shaped crack of utter darkness offered entrance to the hollow tree, and Sonny wondered what lay inside that cavelike space on this night. Soon Jimmy Revels could tell him.

Sonny stood and pointed his pistol down at Revels’s bloody form. “Get out,” he said, kicking Revels’s foot.

The nigger didn’t move.

“Come on, boy!” Sonny’s voice sounded higher and thinner than he’d intended. “I know you’re playing possum.”

Revels remained still.

“By God, I’ll shoot you where you lay.” Sonny was lying. The slug from his .357 Magnum would likely go through Revels and punch a hole in the bottom of the boat. He didn’t plan to spend the night surrounded by water moccasins and alligators. Hell, there were bears in this swamp.

“What difference does it make?” Revels moaned at last.

“Get up, damn you! Or I’ll shoot you in the pelvis. That’ll make a difference, I promise you.”

“Tell me where my sister is. Then I’ll get up.”

“I don’t know!”

“But ya’ll ain’t done nothin’ else to her?”