I don’t really want to see my father, but I don’t see that I have much choice. There are two federal correctional institutions at Pollock, Louisiana. One is a medium-security facility that houses violent felons. The other is a minimum-security country club for nonviolent offenders, and this is where John Kaiser chose to house my father during his period of protective custody.
Relaying Snake Knox’s message to Dad meant driving back along the same rural roads Tim Weathers and I drove last night when the two VK bikers followed us, and where we ultimately killed them. Tim insisted on riding with me this time, and also on putting a chase car behind us with two more security men. Tim said he didn’t fancy being surrounded by a hundred Harleys on a country highway with only the two of us to make a stand. The guys in the chase car had some heavy weaponry that a motorcycle gang would not be expecting.
I didn’t ask for details.
After what seems an interminable drive, Tim turns the big Yukon into the prison entrance, we pass the gate, and I remember that Pollock’s not that bad, as prisons go. Nothing remotely like a state facility—Parchman, for example, which for a visitor is a shitty experience from start to finish, and for a prisoner can be hell on earth. The Pollock FCI feels more like an inexpensive but clean motel, one that happens to have bars, barbed wire, or mesh over every opening big enough for a human hand to pass through.
Being processed in reminds me of my years as a prosecutor, and it also makes me wonder how Annie has felt going through this, week after week. But if experience has taught me anything, it’s that kids seem to do very well handling prison visits; it’s the adults who seesaw between high anxiety and depression.
Before long, I find myself seated alone in a room the size of a large office cubicle. I was searched twice, despite my father being supposedly held in protective custody. But prisons have their procedures, and woe betide any guard who dares to break them—at least publicly. Annie and my mother must be very familiar with this sterile room.
I’ve visited a lot of witnesses in a lot of prisons, but seeing my father in this place will not be easy. When I hear the door open, I turn, my neck and back painfully stiff from last night’s action.
But it’s not my father who comes through that door.
First I hear an electric whir. Then a wheelchair scoots through the opening, bearing a man who was six feet four inches tall when he still had his legs. Now a crocheted comforter covers his lap, and also the space where the lower extremities that diabetes took from him would normally rest.
I wasn’t expecting Quentin Avery, since he divides his time between Washington, D.C., and a palatial home in Jefferson County, Mississippi, which is a good hundred miles away. But something obviously drew Quentin here today, and I’m pretty sure it was me.
Expertly manipulating the wheelchair’s joystick, he rolls to within inches of my chair and gives me a fond smile. The tight white Afro and skin light enough for freckles always give his face a friendly cast, and his greenish eyes often have a twinkle in them. But I have also seen those eyes blaze with fire, and ice over into opacity. The voice usually emerges as a soft southern drawl, but this man has argued landmark cases before the Supreme Court, and in such venues he can call forth a booming God-from-the-burning-bush bass that shakes judges in their seats. Today, though, he’s my benign uncle Quentin, ready to dispense wise advice for those smart enough to take it. Or so he would have me believe.
“I heard you had some trouble last night,” he begins, with a wink in his voice.
“Little bit.”
“You’re turning into a regular cowboy this year.”
“I’m not here to see you, Quentin. Where’s Dad?”
“Easy, Trigger. He’ll be out in a minute. I thought we ought to have a word first. What prompted this visit after all the distance?”
“The guy I shot gave me a message last night. A message for Dad. And for you.”
The green eyes register surprise. “A message from . . . ?”
“Snake Knox. And I did not tell the FBI that.”
Quentin rolls his tongue around his mouth, then swallows, as though drinking down this information. “What’s the message?”
“Word for word, he said, ‘Your daddy’s nigger lawyer’s gonna try to blame that old woman’s death on Snake.’”
“Colorful. Reminds me of my youth.”
“Then he gave me Snake’s message: ‘Wives and children have no immunity.’”
Quentin reflects on the words.
“What does that mean, Q?”
“It’s a threat, obviously. Against Peggy and Annie, I imagine.”
“That’s all? Nothing more?”
Now he looks blank. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. This was almost the last thing this guy said on earth. And I felt like there was more to it than a simple threat. He wanted to be sure I got the exact words.”
Quentin reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You were in the heat of action, boy. You’d just shot a man. Your neurons were firing at a thousand times their normal rate. Don’t read too much into it.”
I think about this for a while. “Is it true, what he said? Are you going to try to blame Viola’s death on Snake Knox?”
Quentin looks down at the floor and sighs. “Penn . . . I have been specifically instructed not to talk to you about my case strategy.”
“By Dad.”
A nod.
“Jesus Christ. Do you have evidence that Snake killed Viola?”
He looks up again, empathy and regret in his face. “I can’t talk about the case.”
“If you have such evidence, why not give it to the police or the FBI?”
“I can’t discuss it, Penn. But I will tell you this: There’s no way in hell that Snake or anybody else could have any idea of what my strategy is. Because I don’t know myself yet.”
This silences me for a few seconds. “Then why is Snake afraid that you might try to pin Viola on him? If Snake’s afraid of that, that must mean either he killed her, or he was there on the day of the murder and he’s afraid you can prove it.”
Quentin pushes out his lower lip. “All food for thought.”
“Okay, Quentin. Okay. I get your position. But I have to ask you one thing. Given all the physical evidence I know about, I’ve worked through every imaginable scenario of what could have happened in that room on the night Viola died. Natural causes, suicide, physician-assisted suicide, and murder. And I know one thing for sure: unless the videotape stolen from Henry Sexton’s camera recorded the actual murder—and it exists somewhere and is played in court for the jury—nobody can say for sure how Viola died. Which gives you reasonable doubt. If you paint a convincing enough story, the jury should have no trouble voting to acquit.”