I nod again. “He just squeezed my shoulder and said, ‘She was a trouper, son.’” My voice cracks, and I take a moment to regain my composure. “I can’t tell you what that means when Dad says that about somebody. He’s seen a lot of death.”
“Oh, Penn … I’m sorry it was so bad.”
“It’s over now. Long over.”
“Not really. It never will be, not completely. I’m just glad Annie wasn’t old enough to know how bad it really was.”
“Me, too. The treatments are a lot better now, just seven years later.”
“Are you positive Tom helped her at the end?”
I shrug. “He never said he did. But looking back … yeah, I’m sure.”
“Did her parents know?”
“Her mother did. But all she ever said was that Sarah was lucky to have Dad treating her at the end.”
“They were right.”
“I hope she still feels that way. Because a trial like this will drag a magnifying glass over Dad’s entire career.”
“Oh, God.” Caitlin’s green eyes fix me with laserlike intensity. “You’ve got to kill this thing in the cradle, Penn. I’m dead serious. Your father won’t survive this kind of stress.”
“I’m working on it. But I don’t think there’s any way to prevent an arrest tomorrow.”
She raises her eyebrows like a schoolteacher silently reprimanding a student.
“You’re thinking about the photo. The nuclear option.”
“I’m thinking about survival,” she says.
“Let’s wait and see what Dad says tonight. An arrest isn’t the end of the world. The charge is more important. I already let Shad know the stakes, and I think he got the message.”
Caitlin makes it clear that this answer doesn’t satisfy her. Suddenly the heat is too much for me. “I need to get out.”
“Me, too,” she says, almost in surrender.
She waits for me to stand and then pull her to her feet, which is our habit. Afterward, we hug for a few moments, but soon the chill is too much. Lifting towels off a nearby chair, we dry off in front of the gas heater.
“Stop staring at my butt,” she says, whipping her towel behind her to block my view. “As soon as you get back from your parents’, I’m going back to work. And I’m going to search all my databases while you’re gone. Isn’t there something you can give me to work on that might help Tom? You know what I can do, Penn. Exploit me, for God’s sake.”
As I close my eyes in forbearance, a little voice says, You’d better use every resource you have on this. Even if I give Caitlin nothing, she’ll be an expert on the Double Eagle group within two hours. Taking hold of her shoulders, I look hard into her eyes.
“I’m going to give you two names. Don’t ask me any questions. Not whether they have any relation to each other, or even to these cases. But if you can find out everything there is to know about them—without them knowing you’re digging—it will be a big help.”
She smiles with her eyes. “Deal.”
“The first is Brody Royal. The second is Forrest Knox.”
She’s already committed the names to memory. “That’s it?”
I nod. “Go do your thing. And stay below the radar. This case is more dangerous than you know.”
“Have these guys really threatened your family?”
“I don’t know for sure. I do know that one is a ruthless killer. The other may be a corrupt cop.”
Caitlin slowly shakes her head, her eyes burning with desire to strike back at anyone who would threaten us. Her fierce resolve gives me more inspiration than Henry’s noble but slow-burning commitment. Caitlin stirred to action is an unstoppable force. Two months ago, she was compelled to listen to a woman being raped in a room next to the one in which she herself was being held captive. Since then, she has become a tireless crusader for victims of sexual violence, raising money and awareness on a national scale.
“There’s one more thing,” I say softly. “I’m breaking my word to Henry to tell you, but this bears on Lincoln’s paternity.”
“I understand.”
“Viola Turner was gang-raped by the Double Eagle group just before she left Natchez. On two different occasions. Henry thinks one of those rapists is Lincoln’s biological father. I just thought you should know. For Dad’s sake.”
Caitlin opens her mouth but says nothing. Her chin is quivering like Annie’s did an hour ago, and her eyes blaze with a hatred I can scarcely imagine. “Anything else?” she asks hoarsely.
I shake my head. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
She drops her towel to the floor and walks stark naked into my bedroom to get dressed. Paradoxically, I’m reminded of nothing so much as a soldier girding herself for war.
CHAPTER 30
DRIVING TO MY parents’ house, I call Henry Sexton to let him know Kirk Boisseau will be diving the Jericho Hole at dawn. The reporter sounds beside himself with excitement. He’s already informed the FBI of Glenn Morehouse’s death and relayed the Double Eagle’s confirmation of the murder of Bureau informant Jerry Dugan in 1965. As a result, at least one Bureau agent has promised to look into the Morehouse case immediately, and Henry believes he meant what he said. Before he lets me go, Henry apologizes for calling my father’s honor into question, and I tell him I’ve never developed the habit of shooting the messenger. By the time we hang up, I’m nearing my parents’ house, so I call ahead.
“Dr. Cage,” says the confident baritone that’s greeted every late-night caller for the past forty-three years.
“It’s me.”
“The garage door’s open. Come in that way. I’m in the study.”
“Is Mom all right?”
“More or less. You know your mother.”
Yes. Her picture is in the dictionary under “steel magnolia.” “I’ll see you in a minute.”
I park behind his old 740 and quickly make my way through the dark garage. This house has never grown familiar to me—the house I grew up in was burned to the ground by Ray Presley in 1998. Once I gain the hall, I spy a faint glow beneath Dad’s study door. Walking softly, so as not to wake my mother, I find him sitting at his study desk, smoking a Partagas and poring over a thick book, his trifocals gleaming in the light of the reading lamp.