WALT GARRITY’S SILVER Roadtrek hummed northward on Highway 61 in the diffuse glow of the setting sun. He and Tom had been making mile-long laps on a stretch of Highway 61 while Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield ate supper at a nearby Ryan’s Steakhouse.
Tom had told Walt enough to convince him of the tactical soundness of his plan, but thankfully his old friend had not pressed him for more information. Even with the bond of shared combat—and worse—Tom was not sure he could tell Walt everything. There was no risk of losing their quarry, because earlier Walt had affixed a GPS tracking device beneath Knox’s pickup, which could be monitored on a screen he’d plugged into his cigarette lighter. Walt had done this at the Concordia airport, while Knox visited the service hangar. When they traced Snake to Ryan’s to test the GPS tracker, Tom had recognized Sonny Thornfield getting out of another pickup truck nearby. Apparently, the two men had met for an early supper. Walt intended to attach a tracker to Thornfield’s pickup as well, but he was worried he might be seen from one of the restaurant’s broad windows.
Walt drove with a plastic Coke cup between his legs, while Tom munched on a Wendy’s cheeseburger in the passenger seat. Every now and then Walt’s police scanner chattered—too low for Tom to make out the messages, but Walt apparently missed nothing. The codes meant nothing to Tom anyway, except for a few he remembered from his days staffing the St. Catherine’s ER.
“Food all right?” Walt asked.
“Good,” Tom said, reaching for iced tea to wash down his cheeseburger. “Peggy would kill me if she knew I was eating this.”
Walt gave an obligatory chuckle. Then his voice dropped, and he said, “I know you don’t like lying to your boy.”
“It’s better this way,” Tom said, trying to believe it. “Penn’s got too much weighing on him already. And I don’t want him worrying Quentin to death.”
“Does that old lawyer know how to keep his mouth shut?”
Tom nodded. “When Quentin Avery goes to his grave, a lot of people will rest easier.”
“From what you said, it doesn’t sound like that’ll be a very long trip.”
Tom looked out at what remained of the little town of Washington, which had been the capital of the Mississippi Territory until 1802. “None of us knows the length of that trip, do we?”
Walt slowed and began a careful U-turn near the entrance to Jefferson Military College, where John James Audubon had once taught as a professor. “Some are closer than others. A grunt walking through a minefield is likely to buy it a lot sooner than a Remington Raider.”
“Remington Raider” was what they’d called rear-echelon typists in Korea. Tom tapped the window absently, his mind on other things. He’d missed a house call earlier that day, on one of his favorite patients, an elderly woman dying of emphysema. “Brother, at this age we’re all in the minefield.”
“Speak for yourself. I intend to be keeping Carmelita just as happy ten years from now as I am today.”
Tom watched his breath fog the window glass. He hoped his friend would be that lucky. He’d watched so many friends and patients die over the past ten years that life seemed the most fragile and tenuous state imaginable. Korea had taught him that lesson early, but somehow he’d blinded himself to it in the intervening years. You basically had to, to function in the world. But the steadily lengthening list of the dead—Viola’s only the latest name to be added—had forced him to confront the fact that he had little time left himself. That was tough enough from an existential perspective; but to have his perception of his whole history shattered, and with it his legacy, as had happened in the past two days, had pushed him into uncharted territory. Tom had never felt so alone and isolated.
Jumping bail on a murder charge was probably the most extreme action he had taken in his life. Had he followed the mildly restrictive terms of his bail, he would have been entitled to the presumption of innocence by all men and women of goodwill. But now he was a fugitive, his flight a tacit admission of guilt. Any cop who recognized him could use deadly force to take him into custody, and if he died in the process, no one would ask too many questions. Tom had actually been counting on that. But that didn’t make the reality easier. Walt Garrity was risking his life at this moment. Tom had already let so many people down, Viola and Peggy first among them. Penn, after that. But there were others, and the tragedy was that he might never be able to explain his behavior to them.
“Screw this,” Walt muttered. “I’m going to plant that tracker when we make this next pass. You keep lookout.”
A ripple of fear went through Tom’s chest. “Are you sure?”
“Hell, yeah. Those two are in there digging into a couple of T-bones, not watching the parking lot.”
This time, when they reached the steak house, Walt turned into the big lot and parked two spaces away from Sonny Thornfield’s pickup.
Tom popped a nitro under his tongue, hoping to head off his angina.
“Two minutes,” Walt said, holding the magnetized device in his hand. “I’m gonna wire this baby into his electrical system, just like the other one. We’re not gonna risk having dead batteries when it comes to the action. If you see those assholes coming out of the restaurant, start the engine. I’ll hear it.”
Tom started to warn his friend to be careful, but Walt had already left the van.
CHAPTER 42