While Caitlin glares, my intercom clicks. “Shad Johnson on One, Mayor.”
With a quick surge of adrenaline, I put Shad on the speakerphone.
“I’m accepting your earlier invitation,” I tell him. “I need a couple of minutes of your time.”
“You’ll have to wait forty-five minutes. I’ve got somebody coming in.”
“Not a campaign consultant, I hope?”
The DA chuckles, and his voice doesn’t sound even slightly anxious. “Still got your sense of humor, I see. That’s good, considering. Later, Mayor.”
Shad’s confident tone unsettles me, but when I hang up, Caitlin gives me the pitiless stare of a warrior’s wife. “No mercy,” she intones. “I mean it. You show that arrogant prick a future working as a goddamn paralegal.”
“I intend to.”
She gives my hand one last squeeze, her eyes burning into mine. “You know what’s thicker than water.”
I nod once.
After a light kiss on my forehead, she’s gone.
I look down at the nearly weightless stub of plastic and metal in my hand. Can this harmless-looking object keep my father out of jail? For two months I’ve believed that the digital image stored within this USB flash drive represented Shad Johnson’s career. But today I have an unsettling feeling that my old nemesis is a step ahead of me.
CHAPTER 37
TOM CAGE STOOD over his office desk, packing a leather weekend bag with necessities. After a brief stop at home, and a not-so-brief disagreement with Peggy, he’d returned to the office and seen quite a few patients. He’d worked on his records through lunch, trying not to dwell on the possibility that he might be making the last written notes of his medical career. Then he’d driven to the mall bookstore, a minor rebellion against the strictures of his bail agreement, and also a journey meant to gain time alone, where he could reflect one last time on his plan. After returning to the office and seeing a few more patients, he’d retired to his private office and begun packing the things he’d secretly brought from home.
Melba knew not to disturb him when the door was closed. Already in the bag were two changes of clothes, a Ziploc containing a month’s worth of prescription drugs, a prescription pad, and a short-barreled Magnum .357. To these Tom added a plastic case containing diabetic syringes, two packs of insulin vials, and his first edition of The Killer Angels, which contained the fading Polaroid of Viola he’d shot in 1968. After compulsively looking up to be sure the door was closed, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed another Ziploc bag. This one contained two vials of adrenaline, a syringe exactly like the one stored in the evidence room at the sheriff’s department, some powerful narcotics, a vial of local anesthetic, and six pairs of latex gloves. It also held a small pewter box that concealed three baby teeth belonging to Lincoln Turner. Tom tucked this Ziploc carefully into the weekend bag, then closed his desk drawer.
On impulse, he turned to the shelf behind his desk and picked up a framed family photo. A neighbor had taken it in 1988, before Jenny left for her teaching job in England. In it, Tom, Peggy, Jenny, Penn, and Sarah stood before their old house—the one the kids had grown up in, the one that had held Tom’s beloved library. That library was gone now, up in smoke, just like Penn’s first wife. Annie had not yet been conceived when this picture was shot; nor had the first malfunctioning cell in Sarah’s breast begun to fulfill its terrible destiny. Tom closed his eyes and thought of his daughter-in-law for a few moments, a penance for the relief he’d felt when Penn finally proposed to Caitlin Masters.
For some years, Tom had worried that part of his son had died with Sarah, the way part of Tom had perished when Viola left for Chicago. But Caitlin had not only proved stronger than Penn’s grief; she’d also brought some light back into Tom’s life. The medical books on Tom’s shelves described no clinically measurable “life-force,” but after more than forty years of practicing medicine, he was certain that some people were born with an extra ration of it. Caitlin certainly had been, as had Viola Turner. A few boys in Korea had possessed this special quality, the ones who’d survived wounds that would have killed any ordinary soldier. Viola’s thirty-seven years in Chicago had all but killed her unique vitality, and Tom knew now that he’d had more to do with that premature death than he ever suspected.
Taking a wooden tongue depressor from a jar, he pried the back off the picture frame, then slipped the family portrait into The Killer Angels alongside the snapshot of Viola. All that remained on his desktop now was a Sony videotape cartridge, the tape he’d removed from Henry Sexton’s camcorder on the morning Viola died. Tom stared down at the tape but did not touch it. After some reflection, he walked to the window and looked out at the office parking lot. For the past quarter hour he’d been watching for a tall, silver conversion van called a Roadtrek. The only silver vehicle in the back lot now was a Natchez city police car. The cruiser appeared to be empty, but Tom’s heart began laboring every time he looked out at it.
Returning to his desk, he fixed his gaze on the tape, an artifact of one of the stupidest decisions he’d ever made. Rubbing his eyes hard, he turned to another framed photo on his shelf. This one showed two shirtless young men of eighteen standing in front of a snow-covered mountain. Both men wore army fatigues, both held cigarettes, and both were grinning despite the fact that dried blood covered their hands and forearms.
Tom jumped at a loud rapping on his office door. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Melba Price leaned in, her face somber.