A chill runs up my back at the memory of the Valhalla hunting camp. “Is that where Snake is?”
“No, I told you back at your house, he’s in a two-room shack behind a bigger place owned by somebody he knows. It’s a good hiding spot. There’s a couple of ways in and out on land. There’s also a road through some swamp bottom that will take him to the river. He’s got a speedboat tied up down there. His hole card, I imagine. I figure that’s how he got to Natchez without being caught by the FBI.”
“How the hell did you find Knox?”
Lincoln takes his time with this. “Old Mr. Snake’s been in contact with Sheriff Billy Byrd.”
“How on earth could you know that?”
“I’ve been talking to a black deputy who works for Byrd. Been paying him for information.”
“How long?”
“Ever since I got to town. I’ve even got a phone number for a burn phone Knox is using, and this morning I got the GPS coordinates on the Rodney place. I drove down right after the trial and checked it out. He’s there.”
“How did you keep from being seen?”
Another low chuckle fills the truck cab. “Ran a little con, of course. I borrowed a piece-of-shit truck with a lawnmower in back, threw in some cane fishing poles, then rode up here wearing some old yardman shit. Told the only two people I talked to I was looking for work up this way. Gave ’em the idea I needed to get out of Natchez in a hurry. They didn’t think anything about it.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“After tonight, you may be, if you’re not already.”
Thanks for that. “I need to ask you something. Did you put the videotape in Henry’s camera on the night your mother died? The tape Sheriff Byrd’s men found in the Dumpster?”
Fresh bitterness comes into Lincoln’s face, but then a faint smile shows in profile. “Cora loaded that tape in there, like she testified. But it was me who told her to do it. And I told her how to set it so the red light wouldn’t come on. The tally lamp, they call that, in case you’re interested.”
“I figured that was you.”
“Didn’t do me no good though, did it? Daddy Tom found the tape and nuked it in that MRI machine. Pretty smart, really.”
To this I say nothing.
After staring into the darkness for a while, I say, “You said there are three people where we’re going?”
“Last I checked.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“Snake. That blond kid. And a woman, about sixty-five. Looks like a bitchy old redneck.”
“Wilma Deen, probably. Glenn Morehouse was her brother. The kid is Snake’s son. Illegitimate.”
“Lot of that going around, seems like.” Lincoln grunts and scoots forward on his seat like a man feeling drowsy.
“Sorry. The FBI thinks Wilma Deen threw the acid in that reporter’s face. Keisha Harvin.”
“Blinded her, didn’t it?”
“She’s got about ten percent of her vision left.”
“Well, then. No need to worry about collateral damage with those motherfuckers.”
In the silence after this assertion, I realize that I haven’t seen a light for several miles, other than the moon. We have to be getting close to our destination. Though I’ve seen no visual sign, I sense that the Mississippi River lies just to the west of us, a great tide of mud and water that alters the very atmosphere for miles on either side of it.
“Do you have any sort of plan?” I ask in a neutral tone. “Or do you just plan to bust into this little shack with guns blazing?”
“I can come up with something better than that. But don’t kid yourself. We don’t have any options here. You think of that house as a nest of snakes, if it helps you. But don’t start looking for some other way. There isn’t one.”
“There’s got to be. I want to see the layout. How far do we have to go?”
Lincoln taps the brakes and points through the windshield as he eases onto the dark shoulder. “Not far. We’re here, brother.”
A quarter mile ahead, a single light flickers through the trees like a distant star. Lincoln kills the headlights and stops the truck with a crunch of gravel. The high thrumming whine of night insects is so loud it penetrates the window glass.
“Rodney, Mississippi,” he says. “Get your guns. And get your game face on, Mayor.”
The trip from the truck through the nearly lightless skeleton of the old town is like walking back through history. I feel that we are the ghosts who earned the town its name. We walk past the place where the pavement gives out on the east-west access road coming in from the highway, then down the single lane that was the only real street Rodney ever had. The rifle in my hands sends energy vibrating along both arms, and my heart flutters at the realization that I cannot hear our footsteps. There’s enough humidity in the air to keep the dust settled around our shoes, so maybe that’s deadening the sound.
Lincoln keeps to the center of the dirt street, staying well clear of the broken string of buildings that line it, as though they hold sickness. Several appear to be abandoned, including a gutted old Baptist church of brittle wood. The brick church I remember stands across the road from the wooden wreck, and it perfectly matches the image in my mind. I can even see the cannonball in the moonlight, set high in its face. Out front a Confederate battle flag flies from a short pole, and a sign on the pole reads these colors never run.
“Time to get off the main drag,” Lincoln whispers, grabbing my arm and pulling me under some trees where a tiny gravel road runs behind a large, dark house.
As soon as I feel grass beneath my feet, he drops down and begins belly-crawling through it. Slinging the rifle over my left shoulder to avoid aggravating my bruise, I do the same. The pale soil feels sandy beneath the grass, and even here it smells to me of the river.
“There,” Lincoln whispers.
Fifty yards ahead, two windows in a small frame house glow yellow with what looks like lantern light.
“No electricity?” I ask, pausing to adjust the strap of the .308 across my back.
“Listen,” Lincoln says, stopping beside me. “Isn’t that a generator?”
He’s right. A hollow, rattletrap rumble like a car engine from the 1920s fills the bass spectrum of the wild hum of night insects in these deep woods. All I see beside the house is an ancient pickup truck parked near a big poplar tree.
“The generator must be in its own shack or something,” I think aloud. “Not to be any louder than that.”
“Good cover for us.”
“How far behind that house is the river?” I whisper.
“Couple of miles. Straight shot through the swamp on a dirt road.”
The little house before us appears to be a dependency of the larger house nearer the road. We saw no lights in it as we slipped past, but that doesn’t mean it’s empty.
“What are you planning to do?” I whisper.