“You all right?” Quentin asks.
“Penn, listen,” Dad says, his eyes filled with urgency. “You’ve got to get Annie away from Natchez. Far away. Peggy, too, if she’ll go.”
“You know she won’t. But I’ll get Annie and Mia to some kind of safe house. Kaiser will help me.”
“Good, good.”
“Dad . . . why was Walt following us? Did you tell him to do that?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. Then he says, “Do you remember when you visited me at the Pollock prison?”
I nod.
“I told you then that so long as Snake Knox walked the earth, my acquittal would accomplish nothing. You saw that proved a few minutes ago.”
“Did you ask Walt to kill Snake? To hunt him down?”
My father focuses on some indeterminate point between himself and Quentin. “The morning of Henry Sexton’s funeral, I told Walt that Snake needed to die. That was the only way to stop the killing. Walt agreed, but he wasn’t willing to take the risk. He was happy with his wife, and he didn’t want to make her a widow.”
And now she is. Quentin and I share a look. Dad is talking like he’s in some kind of trance, and perhaps he is. A trance of grief.
“What changed?” I ask him.
Dad bites his bottom lip, trying to work it out himself. “Not too long after Forrest’s death, Walt came to me at Pollock and told me he’d realized that the Knoxes were our cross to bear. Our generation’s evil, our blight to remove from the world. He’d decided to kill Snake.”
Quentin cradles his forehead in his left palm.
“The problem,” Dad goes on, “was finding him.”
“Is that why you put me on the trail of Will Devine and the other Eagles? You were using me as bait?”
“Snake was always going to come after you, Penn. You killed his nephew. And I killed Frank—his brother. I don’t know how much Snake knows about Frank’s death, but he knew who’d killed Forrest. In Snake’s eyes, that’s a blood debt. Until he’s dead, you’re living on borrowed time. That’s why Walt shadowed you for so long. He was waiting for Snake to raise his head.”
“Tom,” Quentin says quietly, “don’t ever speak of this again. And pray to God that Billy Byrd hasn’t bugged this cubicle.”
“But back at the prison,” I murmur, unable to get past the idea that Dad used me to bait Snake Knox, “you—”
“I told you what you needed to hear.” Dad’s eyes flash with emotion. “And you actually turned Will Devine, by God. Today we almost broke the Double Eagles for good. From the inside out. That’s always been the only way to get them in court.”
I grimace and look away, unsure of what I’m feeling. “This trial isn’t really about getting you acquitted, is it? It never was.”
Dad holds up his hands. “Let’s not talk about the trial.”
“Quentin,” I ask, “could I see you outside for a minute?”
I step outside, and thirty seconds later, Quentin carefully backs his chair out of the cubicle. The sheriff’s department seems eerily empty, but I know why. Nearly every available man is combing the county, searching for VK members. Not even a wingnut like Billy Byrd can allow biker gangs to shoot up his town and hope to get reelected.
“Did you tell him about the tapes?” I ask Quentin.
He nods. “Right before you got here.”
“And?”
“Tom claims he knows nothing about that second tape.”
“The Dumpster tape?”
Quentin nods.
This takes me aback. “Do you believe him?”
The old lawyer closes his eyes as though in prayer. “No. His lips denied it, but in his eyes . . . I saw the ledge, Penn. And Tom’s damned close to it.”
A wave of nausea rolls through my gut. “What’s below the ledge?”
“Hell, I think.”
“Then we have to go back in there and break him down. We can’t go back into court tomorrow not knowing what might be on that tape. And he absolutely cannot take the stand.”
“You can’t change his mind, Penn. People have died on this road already, and he hasn’t given an inch.”
“You’re right. And that’s not rational.”
“Or it’s supremely rational.” Quentin tilts his head, pondering the possibility. “Inhumanly rational.”
“That makes no sense. Quentin, Dad has spent months refusing to tell me anything about the night Viola died. Now he wants to get up in front of the whole town and tell everything?”
Quentin groans deep in his chest. “Stop trying to reason it out. You heard Colonel Eklund’s testimony. A man who did what Tom did in Korea doesn’t think like the rest of us. Not when it comes to the big things. In any case, there’s no point in you pushing him. Say good-bye and go back to your mother. I’ll try to find a way to get him to open up about the tape.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then tomorrow should be a mighty interesting day in court.”
“Do you think Judge Elder will proceed after what’s happened to Walt?”
“It’s a murder trial, Penn. We still have a defendant, and we still have a jury.”
With that Quentin spins his chair and reenters the cubicle.
When I step in after him, I see that my father has been crying. The white, cracked skin of his face has turned an unhealthy pink, and there’s moisture in the white whiskers on his cheeks.
“I need a phone,” he says. “I need to call Carmelita.”
Carmelita Cruz, the jewel of Walt Garrity’s later life. “We can’t pass a phone through the wire.”
“I’ll hold mine up to the screen,” Quentin says, “after Penn says good night.”
He really is showing me the door.
Dad looks small and vulnerable sitting there, his hands folded on the little metal shelf before him. “Walt thought he owed me something for Korea,” he murmurs. “But he didn’t. We were always even.”
“Tell his wife that,” I suggest.
“I will.”
Quentin tosses his head to send me on my way, but I hang back long enough to take hold of the wire mesh and shake it. “Dad, what’s going to happen in court tomorrow?”
This time his eyes find mine, and they are free of dissimulation. “The truth’s going to come out. One way or another. Once and for all.”
It’s half past ten, and the house seems emptier than it has in a long time. After strident arguments and tearful partings, Annie and Mia have been transported by the FBI to private dorm rooms at the minimum-security facility at Pollock, the same place where Annie used to visit my father while he was in protective custody. After hearing about the street battle, Mia’s mother was elated that her daughter would be entering federal protection until the conclusion of the trial. My only consolation is that Annie and Mia will remain together, and this should carry them through their separation from the rest of us.