“I’ve already done it,” Snake said, turning back to the sandy road that led to the house. “Wilma ought to have that venison about ready now. Let’s get back inside. I gotta figure a way to trace that woman from Athens Point. I spent twenty minutes fuckin’ her in the swamp, and I doubt she’s forgot a second of it. She can put my white ass in Angola.”
“To hell with that,” Alois said, desperate to know what his father had planned. “What have you got going?”
As Snake passed Alois, he let his eyes fall on those of his son. “That trial’s over,” he said. “Tom Cage will never see the light of morning.”
Not long after midnight, Deputy Larry McQuarters opened the cellblock door and strode between the cells to check the prisoners. Several were still awake, and a couple begged him to bring treats or let them borrow his cell phone. Larry ignored them. He’d come to check on Dr. Cage, who was a special friend of one of Larry’s favorite people. On Quentin’s advice, Larry had varied the intervals between his checks, but even so, he hadn’t discovered anything that troubled him about Dr. Cage’s treatment. Everybody knew Sheriff Byrd didn’t care for Tom Cage, but more than a few deputies didn’t care much for Sheriff Byrd, either—
Larry stood before Dr. Cage’s cell with his mouth open.
The cell door was closed, but the cell was empty.
“Where Dr. Cage at?” Larry called. “Hey! Where Dr. Cage gone?”
“He said he needed some medicine,” answered a drug dealer from a bunk in the adjacent cell. “His chest was hurtin’ him.”
Alarms rang in Larry’s big head. “Who come got him?”
“Dunwoody.”
Dunwoody? Sheriff Byrd’s pet rat . . .
Larry turned and ran for the door, which required considerable effort since he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. His first stop, once he got through the cellblock door, was the monitor station, where one of several computer screens would display whatever was going on in the infirmary, one floor below.
The monitor that ought to be showing the infirmary was black.
Dead? Larry thought.
Monitors frequently malfunctioned in the jail, due to a lack of funds and qualified maintenance techs, but something in Larry’s belly told him this was no accident.
He bolted for the stairs, wrenched himself sideways to fit through the door, then pounded down to the second floor, where he crashed through the door and veered left, toward the little infirmary room. With every step he saw Dr. Cage lying motionless on the infirmary floor, his lips and fingernails blue. Or worse, hanging from a belt like so many inmates Larry had seen in his life.
When he pushed open the infirmary door, Larry saw Dr. Cage sitting in the blood-drawing chair, his open hand held out before him. Deputy Gilbert Dunwoody was passing him one of the little white cups they used to dispense pills.
Three strides carried Larry across the room.
Dr. Cage didn’t even look his way, so lethargic did he seem, but Dunwoody backpedaled immediately, like a man with a guilty conscience. Larry closed his hand around Dunwoody’s wrist, which he could easily break.
“What you got in that cup, Woody?”
“Nothing!” cried Dunwoody. “Lemme go!”
Larry looked back over his shoulder. Dr. Cage appeared only marginally alert. “Did you axe for medicine, Doc?”
“I was having chest pain. I need a nitro pill.”
“Well . . . let’s see what kind of pill Dunwoody got in his cup here. Come over here, Doc.”
As Tom Cage leaned forward, Dunwoody dropped the little cup from his pinned hand, then stomped on the cup and the floor around it with his boot.
“Dr. Cage already took his pill!” Dunwoody said. “Let’s see you prove different.”
Larry closed his hand tighter around Dunwoody’s wrist and looked hard at the floor. He saw a fine white powder around the crushed cup.
“Ahghh! You lemme go, goddamn it! You’re gonna have to explain this to the sheriff!”
“Fuck the sheriff,” Larry growled. “I’m gonna go down to one of them TV trucks and tell ’em you just tried to kill Dr. Cage. How ’bout that?”
Dunwoody’s eyes went wide.
Larry squeezed tighter, tight enough for Dunwoody to know how badly he could hurt him if he wanted to. Then Larry released the bony wrist.
Dunwoody cried out in relief, then scrambled for the door. After it banged shut, Larry turned to Dr. Cage, who was looking dazedly at him.
“What you think that powder is, Doc? Some kind of poison, you reckon?”
Tom Cage followed Larry’s pointing finger with his eyes, then shrugged as though the matter didn’t interest him.
“You want me to call Quentin? Or the FBI maybe?”
Dr. Cage shook his head.
“It’s okay, Doc,” Larry said gently. “I’ll get you some more medicine. The right kind this time. And I’ll sit by your cell till morning.”
Friday
Chapter 62
I awaken this morning with a sense that Walt Garrity is alive and Serenity Butler sleeping peacefully two floors above me. Three seconds later, reality collapses upon me with crushing finality.
Walt is dead.
Serenity lies suffering in a hospital a hundred miles away.
Annie and Mia are hiding in FBI custody at Pollock FCI.
I remember this cruel trick of the brain from when my wife died, and from Caitlin’s death, too, of course. I suppose it’s akin to phantom-limb pain. Unable to accept such profound loss, the mind tries vainly to reset itself each night, in the hope that it can reset reality as well.
But nothing can.
I shower quickly, then hurry down to the kitchen to make some breakfast and try to think of a way to bolster my mother for today’s ordeal. My primary anxiety is whether the FBI has been able to restore the two erased videotapes, or will in time for them to be entered as evidence in the trial. But under that anxiety, like incipient panic bubbling beneath a surface of manageable fear, is the prospect that my father might, against all logic and advice, take the stand to testify in his own defense. A less cynical man than I might hope that his father wants to testify because he knows he has nothing to fear from whatever information those tapes contain. But I know better. You don’t blast a videotape with a high-intensity magnetic field because you have nothing to fear from it.
As I sit down with my coffee, I find a copy of the Natchez Examiner on the table. One of our guards probably left it for me. I skim the article about the gunfight and chase that ended Walt’s life, then turn to the opinion page. Instead of the expected piece by Miriam Masters, I find a long editorial by none other than Serenity Butler. Above the headline is a head shot cropped from the book jacket photo. Seeing those eyes that I now know so well, I feel a jolt of something I can’t put a name to.
Then I begin to read.