“I know about that.” Quentin reaches out and squeezes my wrist. “Go home, Penn. Take care of Peggy and Annie. They shouldn’t have seen what they did today.”
As I go through the door, I look back and focus on the white shock of hair, the shelled-pecan skin, the owl’s eyes. “Quentin, do you know what really happened in that house that night?”
This time, when he looks back at me, I know that he doesn’t. Not any more than Walt Garrity did when he called his wife one lonely night three months ago.
“My God, you’re flying blind. You can’t let Shad get at him, Quentin, no matter what. Shad will tear him to pieces.”
Quentin nods with something near to anguish. “Tell me this, brother. How am I supposed to stop him?”
Chapter 59
The irrevocable events of our lives happen in seconds, sometimes fractions of seconds. A teenager leaps from the wrong rock and breaks his neck in shallow water. A single cell mutates, evades immune surveillance, races down the road to cancer. You pull distractedly into an intersection and wind up paralyzed. A young girl forgets to text a bodyguard and gets acid thrown in her face. A man settles into a witness chair . . .
As a prosecutor, I dealt with countless people who suffered from split-second breaks of fate, and most never stopped wondering: What could I have done to avoid that? If only I’d locked my car doors, if only I’d turned left instead of right, if only I’d skipped that last drink, if only I’d listened to my instinct and given that guy a fake phone number, if only I’d remembered my pepper spray or bought that gun I looked at in the sporting goods store . . .
Hindsight is always 20/20, foresight rarely better than a blur.
The shock of Will Devine’s death was very much with us as I rejoined my family in City Hall after the conference in Judge Elder’s chambers. As it turned out, one of Tim’s guys had rounded up Serenity from the general melee after the courtroom stampede, and we found her with Mia, Annie, and my mother in the lounge down the hall from my office. Serenity wanted to be on the street covering the aftermath of the murder, but Tim persuaded her that she should stick with us for the time being. Although she and I are still playing the role of platonic friends in Annie’s presence, Serenity seems to sense that something has seriously rattled me—something beyond the murder of Will Devine. Her eyes cut to mine repeatedly, silently asking questions, so often that I motion for her to wait until we get home.
On the ground floor of City Hall, we divide into two groups. While Annie, Mia, Serenity, and I take the Yukon back to my Washington Street house, Mom and Jenny will be escorted to my parents’ house to get “some things” my mother forgot to pack when she first got back to town for the trial. (My gut tells me these “things” probably fall into the benzodiazepine category.)
Emulating our courthouse procedure, we make a fast transfer from the side door of City Hall to the vehicle, and breathe sighs of relief only when the armored doors slam shut with reassuring thuds. Tim Weathers sits in the second row with Annie and me, while his second-in-command, Joe Russell, covers the third seat with Mia and Serenity. The air-conditioning raises the hair on my arms. As Annie leans close to get warm, the driver hands my .38 over the front seat, and I slip it back into my ankle holster.
“Ease off on the air,” Tim says as acceleration presses us back into the leather seats.
“Thanks,” I say, slipping my arm around Annie’s shoulders. “You guys did a great job back there, covering everybody.”
Tim winces; I’m sure he’s second-guessing every move he made, and even wondering if he could have taken out Snake Knox if he’d somehow been a little better, a little faster.
“At least our crew’s okay,” he concedes, but his eyes add a postscript: We’re up against some dangerous motherfuckers, my friend . . .
Thankfully, we don’t have far to go: two and a half blocks southeast, one block southwest, and half a block northwest. I’d like to say something to reassure Annie and Mia, but after watching a man murdered before their eyes—while supposedly in an iron ring of security—there’s not much I can say. I’m only glad they know nothing about the videotapes John Kaiser just dropped on us like grenades tossed back into a foxhole after being flung out once before. The possible implications of the tape erased in the MRI machine are so grave that Will Devine’s murder already seems like a circus sideshow by comparison. No matter how I try to rationalize it, I can’t escape the conclusion that the “Dumpster tape” was inside Henry Sexton’s camcorder while Viola was being murdered, and that’s why my father tried to destroy it.
A lot of people are on the streets as we make our way home—standing outside businesses and residences as we roar up State Street, then veer right on Union. Obviously word of the courthouse attack has spread quickly.
The driver turns hard right again on Washington.
“Almost home,” I murmur, squeezing Annie.
“I’m okay,” she says, obviously trying to comfort me.
The armored Yukon pulls up in front of my house like an airliner with its thrust-reversers engaged—momentum keeps the heavy body moving forward even as the brakes stop the chassis and drivetrain. Then the body settles backward on the reinforced shocks.
“Everybody ready?” Tim asks, scanning 360 degrees around the vehicle for people and oncoming vehicles.
“Ready,” Serenity answers from the backseat.
“We’re all getting out at the same time. My group on my side, Joe’s group on the other. Understood?”
I look around to be sure everybody gets it. Mia and Serenity nod. I scoot Annie toward Tim so that Joe can push my seat forward in preparation for the quick exit. When the seat comes up, Tim says, “Three count. Ready? And . . . three, two, one—”
He shoves open the door and exits the vehicle, taking a combat stance outside as Annie and I leave the Yukon. Joe is first out on the other side, with Mia and Serenity following.
“Take Annie into the house,” Tim tells me, scanning the roofs of the nearby houses.
I’m pulling Annie onto the sidewalk when a thundering report reverberates between the houses. Shotgun, says a voice in my head as I snatch Annie into my arms.
One glance over my shoulder shows me Tim Weathers lying facedown on the pavement. Fear and anguish blast through me, but I force my feet to move, aiming for the house. While my eyes search for Mia and Serenity, a sledgehammer smashes into my right shoulder blade, driving the air from my lungs and numbing my whole right side. I try to cling to Annie, but all I can manage is to twist as I fall, so that my weight doesn’t crush her when we hit the sidewalk.