“Dad?” I say softly.
He looks up and smiles. “Come in, son. I tried to sleep earlier, but it was no use.” Closing the book on a brass marker, he sets it aside. “I’ve been reading Shelby Foote.”
Naturally. My father’s future hangs by a thread, and he’s reading Civil War history.
“Did you know he died this past June?” he asks, as though we have nothing more urgent to discuss. “Heart attack, secondary to a pulmonary embolism.”
“I didn’t know that.” I take a seat in the more comfortable of the two chairs that face his desk. Behind him, his shelves are filled with rare books sent by dozens of friends and dealers who felt compelled to offer some tangible expression of solace after his library burned. Only now do I realize that Dad is wearing a multicolored robe that my sister and I gave him for Christmas thirty years ago.
He’s not going to change his mind, I realize. He’s really going to make my mother watch him walk to a sheriff’s cruiser in handcuffs.
“Dad, Billy Byrd is going to arrest you tomorrow morning.”
His smile fades but doesn’t quite disappear. “He’ll enjoy that.”
“What’s the deal there? Shad says Sheriff Byrd has some kind of personal grudge against you.”
“Oh … well, I treated Billy’s wife for years. She had a long history of suspicious bruises and lacerations, plus one fracture. Need I continue?”
“Sheriff Byrd is a wifebeater?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And he knows you know that?”
“Yes.”
“The wife told him?”
“No. Billy came in for a physical, and I told him that if his wife showed up in my office with another suspicious injury, I’d swear out a warrant against him with the chief of police.”
I sit back and try to process this. “Well, given that history, don’t you think you’d do well to stay out of the county jail?”
Dad lays his hand on the volume of Foote and sighs. “I’ve treated most of those deputies down there, or their parents. I think that will probably balance the sheriff’s ill will. Billy finally divorced that wife, by the way, to her everlasting good fortune.”
“Dad, from what I know, the physical evidence at the death scene is against you. The facts as I know them are against you. That doesn’t bode well for your legal prospects.”
He puts the Partagas between his teeth, and a blue nimbus of smoke floats out of his mouth as he speaks. “Old Shelby said something interesting about facts: ‘People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.’”
How do you respond to a guy who talks like this? He should write a book: Zen and the Art of Evading Questions, by Tom Cage.
“You said you spoke to Henry Sexton,” he reminds me. “What did he tell you?”
I want to probe Dad about the extent of his relations with Viola, but I can’t quite bring myself to open with such an invasion of his privacy. “Do you remember a man named Glenn Morehouse?”
“I think so. Big fellow? Hypertensive.”
“That’s him. He was murdered tonight, for talking to Henry Sexton.”
Dad’s eyes widen slightly behind his glasses. “I see. I imagine Morehouse knew a lot about … Henry’s special areas of interest.”
“That’s an understatement.” I can’t temporize any longer. “Dad, forgive me, but earlier you told me you’d take a DNA test regarding Lincoln Turner’s paternity. I have to go one step further. Could you conceivably be Lincoln’s father? Is there any chance of that?”
He takes the cigar from his mouth and sets it in his ashtray. “No,” he says, his voice and eyes steady.
Thank God, I say silently, trying not to show my relief. “Well, Lincoln seems to believe you are. He was parked outside my house tonight when I got home.”
Real alarm comes into Dad’s face. “Did he threaten you?”
“Only with exposure of the truth, which he said would destroy you.”
After a few moments, Dad waves his hand. “Don’t pay any attention to that.”
“Could Viola have told him he’s your son?”
Dad sighs. “If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d have said no. But after what I saw these past weeks … it’s possible. Viola was depressed, even desperate. And considering the alternative story …”
So Dad knows about Viola’s rape. “All right, then. We need to get the DNA test out of the way as soon as possible, so both Shad and Lincoln can start seeing this thing more objectively.”
“Is Lincoln Turner all Henry spoke to you about?”
“No. He told me a lot, but we both need to get some sleep soon. Based on what Henry told me, there are three questions I’d like to ask you.”
He sits back and laces his fingers across his belly. “Go ahead.”
“Did Dr. Leland Robb tell you who killed Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson before he died in that plane crash? Have you known for all these years and kept quiet about it?”
Dad shifts forward and sits straighter in the chair. “What’s the second question?”
“You can’t answer that one first?”
“I’d prefer to hear all three before I answer.”
This is like questioning a guilty client. “All right. Glenn Morehouse told Henry that Viola would have been killed in 1968 if it hadn’t been for you and Ray Presley.”
This time he remains motionless, but something subtle changes in his eyes.
“I assume I know why you saved her,” I go on. “But how did you do it? When she was on the wrong side of the Double Eagles and …”
“And what?”
“That’s my third question.” I lean forward and slide the picture of Dad on the fishing boat with Brody Royal, Claude Devereux, and Ray Presley across his desk. “I think she was a threat to Brody Royal as well.”