He’d been working to set up a meeting with Toby Rambin, the poacher in Lusahatcha County who claimed to know the location of the Bone Tree. Henry had held back that information from Penn both last night and today. (You couldn’t give a man everything you had right off, even if you did like him.) He’d also made another phone call to Katy Royal Regan, after confirming that her husband was at the Royal Insurance office. This time the courtesy that Katy had shown during Henry’s previous visit was nowhere in evidence. His call had plainly terrified her, and she screamed that he should never contact her again. Her last words still echoed in Henry’s ears: Pooky’s dead! I’m not! What do you expect me to DO? However upset the woman was, her words certainly seemed to confirm that she remembered something about Pooky Wilson.
This tantalizing development had brought Henry more anxiety than satisfaction. Until that call, he’d pretty much convinced himself that the smartest thing to do was run a front-page story on Thursday that would cover his theories about all the murders he’d been working, even if he couldn’t cite all his sources. Once he did that—if he wrote it right—the Double Eagles would stand to gain nothing by hurting him or his loved ones, and the FBI couldn’t accuse him of holding back evidence. Better still, printing a comprehensive story in the Beacon would assuage his guilt about moving over to the Examiner to cover the more recent developments. Mr. Fraser would have the pleasure and pride of publishing the story that would cap Henry’s years of investigation, and Henry felt he owed the man that. But the idea that Katy Royal might remember enough about the events surrounding Albert’s and Pooky’s deaths in 1964 to convict her father and the Double Eagles made Henry reluctant to jump the gun.
“It’s always something,” he muttered. “Damn.”
He stared at his old Compaq computer with dread. Moving boxes of files was easy compared to trying to copy all the data on his hard drive. But he needed it. He had never used a notebook computer, and now he was going to pay the price for being behind the times.
“Dang,” he muttered, realizing he’d left the external hard drive he’d bought at Walmart in the front seat of his Explorer.
He sighed, then got up and walked past the front desk to the door.
“Did you get finished?” Lou Ann Whittington asked from the desk.
“Not even close. I’ve still got to copy my hard drive.”
Lou Ann was only ten years older than Henry, but she smiled like a proud mother. “Well, don’t sound like that. You’re moving up to the big time.”
Henry grinned. “I don’t know about that. I feel pretty guilty about it, actually.”
“Don’t, hon. It’s the story that matters. Getting it out to the most people. Right?”
“Right.”
“I’m going to leave in a couple of minutes. I’ve got to get home and make supper for Sam. You be sure and call for a deputy before you go. It’s pitch-black out there now, and the last cruiser passed about five minutes ago.”
Henry’s smile vanished. Walker Dennis had kept one or another of his patrol cars sitting outside the Beacon office for most of the day. Henry figured he was doing this as a favor to Penn Cage, or maybe because he didn’t want the embarrassment of Henry being injured on his watch. But there was also the possibility that Dennis was creating a false sense of security in order to set him up. Henry didn’t really believe this, but he also knew that he’d been na?ve in the past. That was why he’d agreed to let Lou Ann lend him her pepper spray, which was now attached to his key ring.
“I will,” he promised. “Tell Sam I hope his gallbladder surgery goes well.”
Lou Ann smiled again. “I will. You knock ’em dead over in Natchez.”
Henry thanked her and went out to his Explorer. The air was cooler than it had been before sundown, but it still wasn’t truly cold. He walked around to the far side of his vehicle to retrieve the new hard drive from his passenger seat. He was putting his key into the lock when he noticed that the Explorer’s rear window had been smashed. As his eyes narrowed, he heard a scratch of gravel on asphalt, then a rush of feet.
Whirling, he saw something fly at his head. He threw up his hands out of instinct, and felt his left forearm break to the musical ring of metal. Baseball bat, he thought, as pain blasted through his body.
“Grab his arms!” someone shouted. “Get him in the truck!”
Adrenaline surged through Henry, turning his heart into a runaway engine. He saw three vague shapes in the darkness, two grasping at him, the third holding high a shining blue bat. Pale faces lunged toward him, eyes blazing with hatred.
They’re just kids, he realized. What the hell?
Powerful hands closed on his broken arm. He brought up his key ring with the other, mashed his thumb on the canister of pepper spray, and waved his arm wildly. The boys began to scream and curse, and then the bat crashed down on his right wrist. He heard his keys hit the cement. He could hardly see through the pain arcing through his head.
“My eyes!” yelled a boy. “I can’t see!”
“Get him in the goddamned truck!”
Groping along the edge of his Explorer, Henry tried to move toward the Beacon building, but the bat glanced against his skull, knocking him nearly senseless. Blood ran into his eyes. He wanted to scream, Why are you doing this? But he barely had the breath to stay on his feet.
The powerful hands grabbed his arm again, and searing agony almost brought him to his knees. Only the blood in his eyes distracted him from the pain. As they dragged him away from his SUV, Henry kicked out as hard as he could with his right leg. He connected with something. A man screamed, and one pair of hands fell away.
“My knee!” shouted a voice. “Oh, goddamn—”
Henry kicked again but this time only felt air.
“By God, that’s enough,” someone grunted.
The bat clanged into Henry skull again, just above his left ear. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. Then it crashed into his jaw. If I fall, I’m dead, he thought dimly. Yet he was too dazed to defend himself any longer.
“Hold him still!” said another voice.
Two boys grabbed his arms and held him up against the Explorer while the third drove the end of the bat into his solar plexus, again and again. The air in Henry’s lungs burst from his throat in agonizing jets.
“You’re gonna kill him! We’re s’posed to take him for questioning first!”
“Screw that! This nigger lover’s said all he ever needs to say. We got his shit. This ends right here.”
Through a curtain of blood, Henry saw the flash of steel at his waist. He tried to beg for mercy, but his throat had locked shut.