I voiced none of these concerns, of course. And despite the danger, Annie made it clear that she had no intention of leaving her home, especially while “Papa” was about to be tried for murder. Mia took her own counsel for some time before answering. Then she grasped my daughter’s hand and said that Annie needed her, and she had no intention of abandoning her job. Since Mia is only twenty, I wasn’t about to leave it at that. But when Kaiser arrived, he surprised me—and also Mia’s mother—by telling us that the safest option, without question, was for Annie and Mia to remain where they were.
“You see, Mrs. Burke,” Kaiser explained, “as unpleasant as the thought is, by working with this family for the past three months, Mia has already made herself a target. If she were to go home to your house, for example, what protection would she have? Here, she’s got former Navy SEALS guarding her around the clock. Plus police patrols and some FBI protection. Even if she went back to Boston, she wouldn’t be nearly as safe as she is here.”
Meredith Burke began to sob quietly. Her daughter took her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll be okay, Mom, really. Keisha had no protection this morning. But they guard us like the royal family.”
“But when will this end?” asked her mother. “When Dr. Cage’s trial is over? Or will it just go on?”
“If I have anything to do with it,” Kaiser said, “the danger will end before the trial does. Jury selection begins Monday—four days from now—and the trial proper will be under way by Tuesday. Between you and me, I believe Dr. Cage’s trial is going to function like a baited trap. Snake Knox is the source of all this violence, and one way or another the trial is going to bring him to us. Once we have Snake, we’ll roll up the rest without any problem.”
Kaiser’s plan sounded good, in theory. It was the execution I doubted. But I didn’t raise my doubts then. What I wanted was to get Annie and Mia safely and peacefully into bed.
After I’d accomplished that, I went down to my basement office and paced the floor for a while. On some level, I’d been expecting retaliation for my visit to the Kuntry Kafé—a drive-by shooting or Sheriff Billy Byrd’s deputies pounding on the door with an arrest warrant. But either Earl Tarver had decided not to report what I’d done, or my friend Sheriff Walker Dennis had encouraged him not to make a fuss, because by ten p.m. nothing had happened. At eleven Tim Weathers texted me that everything outside was quiet.
Once I began to believe we were in the clear, I started to reflect on what I’d done after leaving Keisha in the ER. As potentially self-destructive as that confrontation was, it broke something loose in my congested soul, a dense impaction of hate, shame, and impotent rage that only action could remedy. This brought fresh clarity to my mind, and I found myself pondering the most puzzling mystery of the past three months—the location of Snake Knox. Unlike Kaiser, who seems willing to accept the proposition that Snake has fled these parts for a life of expatriate comfort, I’m convinced that, like any predator, the old Double Eagle could not bear to be away from his home territory for long.
Despite the hour, I picked up the house phone and called Carl Sims, my good friend and a deputy for the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department. I asked him to keep his eyes and ears open for the slightest sign of unusual activity down his way. The Knox family, while Louisiana natives, had become deeply embedded in Lusahatcha County, Mississippi, over the years, and I had no doubt there were dozens of people down there who would gladly shelter Snake from the FBI. More disturbing still, Carl’s boss, Sheriff Billy Ray Ellis, had been a frequent guest at the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, and he wouldn’t be particularly zealous in following up tips about Snake Knox sightings. Carl said he’d been thinking the same thing, but so far he’d had no luck along that line.
While I had him on the phone, I told the former marine sniper that my father had known a woman from Athens Point who lost her son to a lynching in Lusahatcha County in the mid-1960s. I didn’t know her name, but her daughter-in-law had supposedly been raped the same night. She had ultimately committed suicide, but I hoped that if we could locate the mother, she might remember something damning about the Double Eagles—in particular Snake Knox. Carl told me he’d put his father on it. Reverend Sims knew everybody in Lusahatcha County, and if the woman was still around, he would know her. The question was, would he reveal what he knew?
I thanked Carl and hung up.
I was about to switch off the lights and go upstairs when my cell phone rang. When I looked at the LCD, I was surprised to see the name of my literary agent displayed there.
“Peter?” I said, after pressing send. “What in the world?”
“I’m sorry it’s so late, Penn. I called to ask you a favor, and for someone else, if you can believe it.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
He laughed. “I know, right? I assume you know who Serenity Butler is?”
Serenity Butler. “She’s a black Mississippi writer. Nonfiction. Just won the National Book Award, right? For a memoir?”
“That’s right. The Paper Bag Test. They sent you an ARC about a year ago, hoping for a blurb, but I don’t think you got around to it.”
“Things were pretty crazy around that time.”
“I know. The reason I’m calling is, it turns out that Serenity was close to the reporter who was attacked in Natchez this morning.”
“Keisha Harvin? Really?”
“Serenity teaches journalism at Emory in Atlanta. Apparently Harvin took two of her classes and really impressed her. The girl has been sending Serenity copies of every story she’s written on the Double Eagle stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, the point is that Serenity is driving to Natchez tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Yep. She’s taken a leave of absence from Emory. She’s coming back to Mississippi to find out what happened to Keisha and why. I know because her editor called me. She asked if I could set up a meeting between you two. I told her you were probably buried under the stress of the upcoming trial—”
“Shit. You think?”
“I know, I’m sorry. But my friend says Serenity is totally sincere in her feelings for this girl. And I tell you . . . I read her book. It’s breathtaking.”
This stopped me. I hadn’t heard Peter Smith use language like that about a writer in a long time. While I ruminated over my answer, I walked to my bookshelf and scanned the bottom row, where I tend to stuff galleys sent by hopeful writers, agents, and editors. There it was.
The Paper Bag Test.
I bent and pulled the volume from the shelf. The galley had a plain white front with the title and author’s name, but on the back was a color photo of a remarkably pretty black woman in her midthirties. She was light-skinned, about the color of a paper grocery bag, and her features proclaimed a provocative mixture of Caucasian and African blood. She had luminous eyes, even in the flat photograph, and her camera-ready looks made it hard to believe the bio beneath the photo, which stated that Corporal Serenity Butler had served as a line soldier for the U.S. Army in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.
“Penn? Are you there?”
I swatted the galley against my thigh. “Yeah, Peter. I’ve got the ARC right here.”
“Well. What should I tell them?”
“Tell them you couldn’t reach me.”