ANNIE AND I are doing our “homework” together in the den. She’s working on a paper about Benjamin Franklin, while I pretend to work on the proposal for the restoration of the Forks of the Road slave market site. Jewel’s smuggled preliminary autopsy report sits beside me, and the lines I’m writing in my notebook have more to do with criminology than history. Even so, having this shared time with my daughter is one benefit of being mayor that I never anticipated. In my previous jobs—writing novels and preparing capital murder prosecutions—I had to be alone while I worked, but being mayor doesn’t require nearly so much concentration. In fact, the job has been done by men with less intellectual power than my daughter has at age eleven.
The despair I felt outside Shad’s office dissipated further after my visit to Pithy Nolan, but I still haven’t figured out how to free my father from Shad Johnson’s net of vengeance. The Double Eagle group’s sole vulnerability seems to be their involvement in the meth trade. To exploit that, I’d need the power I once wielded as a prosecutor: the authority to subpoena witnesses, make arrests, and offer plea bargains. As Henry pointed out last night, I don’t have that. Brody Royal’s vulnerability—if he has one—remains unknown. All I know at this point is that Royal has far more to lose than the Eagles (at least in terms of wealth and reputation), and he won’t hesitate to violently defend those assets. I feel certain that, through the Eagles, Brody has already threatened our family, and I’ve been pondering ways to protect us—thus freeing my father to reveal what he knows about them. But again, I’ll require official help to accomplish this.
More disturbing, I still haven’t heard from Quentin Avery, Dad’s best hope for a first-rate legal defense. With Shad moving so aggressively on the legal front, and bail revocation possible at any moment, we should already be planning Dad’s defense. My father himself is no help in this regard, of course. And though I still have no proof of physical intimacy between them, instinct tells me that I cannot trust him where Viola is concerned. Before I can ponder the significance of this, Annie looks up from her work and snaps her fingers with a loud pop.
“I need a break,” she says from the sofa. “How about some Blue Bell?”
“I don’t need ice cream,” I tell her, rubbing my thickening middle. Once December arrives, I find myself running less and less.
“Caitlin doesn’t care about your tummy.”
If only that were true … As I set aside my files on the Forks of the Road project, our home phone rings beside me. I pick up the cordless and check its LCD, which reads: CONCORDIA PARI.
“Penn Cage,” I answer.
“Mayor, this is Walker Dennis. I’ve got bad news. Real bad. Henry Sexton was just attacked outside the Beacon offices. Stabbed, and beat half to death with a baseball bat. He’s in critical condition.”
I grit my teeth to stifle a cry. “Where is he now?”
“Mercy Hospital in Ferriday.”
Exquisitely sensitive to any mood change, Annie is staring at me like a baby antelope watching its mother for a signal to flee.
“‘Half to death’ is a pretty vague term, Walker.”
“He was stabbed in the belly. He’s got a couple of broken bones, a severe concussion, scalp lacerations, a bruised heart. His mouth is busted up, and his face is so swollen I can hardly recognize him. He looks like he was in a car crash.”
All I can think of is Henry standing in my office today, looking flustered by Caitlin’s offer to hire him at the Examiner. “Is he conscious?”
“In and out. They were gonna chopper him out, but Henry kept mumbling that he wanted to stay where he was, and now the doctor thinks they can probably handle it here. The bone doctor’s on his way to the hospital.”
“Who’s staffing the ER over there?”
“That new doctor, Waheed-something. Foreigner. Henry doesn’t have a doctor of his own. His mother doesn’t think he’s been to see one since your father treated him as a boy.”
Typical male. “Walker, I’m going to ask Drew Elliott to drive over there. Tell the ER doctor that Drew is Henry’s doctor of record. Unless they have a board-certified ER doc, we want Drew in charge of Henry’s care.”
“I hear you, buddy. And thanks. I’ll take care of it.”
“Do you have any idea who attacked him?”
“Just a vague description. Three white males between twenty and thirty.”
“That young?”
“That’s what Lou Ann Whittington said. She’s the secretary over there. It was just luck that she walked outside to leave for the night. She carries a .38 in her bag. She told the bastards to stop hitting him, and when they didn’t, she started shooting. She hit one, and they took off. That lady saved Henry’s life, no question about it.”
“I thought Henry was going to call you for an escort at quitting time.”
“He was supposed to. The dispatcher was waiting for his call, and I had a man ready to go at a moment’s notice. Apparently Henry went out to his Explorer to get a computer drive, and they jumped him. He managed to Mace them, and that stalled things enough so that Lou Ann came out in time.”
“Did Henry recognize any of them?”
“He thinks he might have known one of them, but he couldn’t give me a name. Seems like they meant to kidnap him, but when he resisted they decided to kill him. I’ve got to wait to question him again. Poor guy’s out of his head.”
Annie reaches out and takes my hand. Her skin is cold. I squeeze tight.
“They stole a bunch of Henry’s files, too,” the sheriff adds. “Busted out his back window.”
“What files?”
“Mrs. Whittington thinks it was all his old Klan stuff. He was going to take it all over to his girlfriend’s house. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Anyhow … tell Dr. Elliott to hurry. I’ll let you know if they decide to medevac Henry down to Baton Rouge.”