THE TSA SUPERVISOR AT THE KNOXVILLE AIRPORT nodded, then motioned me through the checkpoint, allowing me to walk to the gate with Jeff and his family. The plane was almost finished boarding; the phalanx of FBI agents had held us back until the last minute.
“Please change your mind,” Jenny pleaded. “Get on the plane; we’ll pay for the ticket when we land. Come to Toronto with us. We’ll buy you some more clothes there.” She tried a smile, but her tears gave her away.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said. “This’ll be over soon.”
She hugged me tight. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered fiercely. “What if we never see you again?”
“You’ll see me again,” I said. “I promise.”
Jeff hugged me next. He tried to speak, but could not, so I spoke for both of us. “I know,” I said. “I love you, too. You’re a good man—a good son, a good husband, a good father—and I’m so proud to be your dad.”
Tyler and Walker came up, one on each side of us, and wrapped their arms around us. “I love you, Grandpa Bill,” said Walker.
“I love you, too,” I told him.
“Be careful,” said Tyler. “Remember, you promised you’d speak at my high school graduation.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “Now go.”
And they went, through the gate and down the Jetway and up into an empty, ice-blue November sky.
“GET YOUR FAMILY TO SAFETY,” BRUBAKER HAD said, when the task force had conferred the day after Waylon’s death. “Send them away. Someplace that requires a passport; someplace he can’t get to. Make him come after you.”
It was a brilliantly simple idea. And a terrifying one.
“You’re saying I should turn myself into bait on a hook?”
“You already are bait on a hook,” Brubaker clarified. “Trouble is, there’s other bait, on other hooks. What you need to do is get the other bait out of the water. Make yourself the only bait. Irresistible bait.”
“How do I do that? Mock him?” I seemed to remember that sometimes investigators would make disparaging comments at news conferences, insulting the intelligence of serial killers, hoping to goad them into acting rashly. “Go on television and talk about what a tiny penis he’s compensating for?”
“That only works for presidential candidates,” he said, and several of the people at the conference table smiled grimly. “Satterfield’s too smart to fall for it.”
“Then what?”
“Well, let’s think about this. Bait on a hook. What kind of bait do fish go for?”
“Worms,” I said. “I should make myself wriggly and slimy?”
“Think ‘lures.’ Artificial lures. Shiny. Sparkly. The shinier you look, the more he’ll notice you. The more he’ll hate you. The more satisfaction he’ll get out of reeling you in and gutting you on the dock.”
“Wait, wait,” I said. “I thought he was the fish, not the fisherman. You’re saying the fisherman is gonna take the bait?”
“Don’t be so literal, Doc. What I mean is, the shinier you look, the more he’ll want to chew you up and shit you out. How’s that?”
“More consistent but still gross,” I said. “But let me see if I’m following you. If I were put under a big, bright spotlight—if I were hailed as the greatest thing ever to happen to UT and Knoxville and the state of Tennessee—that might make Satterfield come after me sooner?”
“Well, yeah, it might. But that’s a big if, Doc. It’s not always easy to arrange a coronation on a week’s notice.”
“Watch me,” I said.
“I’M SORRY, DR. BROCKTON, HE’S STILL TIED UP,” said the provost’s secretary, for what must have been the hundredth time. I had been back from the task force meeting for more than an hour, and for more than an hour, she’d been telling me that the provost was tied up.
“Well, go untie him,” I snapped.
“I’ve given him your messages,” she said. “All seventeen of them. I’m sure he’ll return your call—your many, many calls—at his first opportunity.”
I sighed. Clearly I was being punished. Banished to the doghouse. As far as I could tell, there was no telephone service in the doghouse, so I doubted that the provost would call me at his first opportunity, or at any opportunity. Clearly it was time to up the ante. “Tell him I’ll do it,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Tell him I’ll do it. Accept the award in Neyland Stadium. At Homecoming. At halftime.”