While Quentin told his tale of the assault on Henry, Tom saw an image of a worried little boy who’d stood by while Tom stitched up his mother’s arm after an accident with some kind of farming implement. Tom had met Henry several times as an adult, of course, while treating his parents, but for some reason Tom tended to remember members of the generation behind his own as children.
Unlike Tom, who had spent most of his life trying to distance himself from the 1960s, Henry Sexton had tried to resurrect them, and he’d paid for his efforts tonight—possibly with his life, if he succumbed to his injuries. As the Roadtrek jounced out of the KOA park and onto Highway 61 South, and Quentin Avery’s mellifluous voice filled his ear, Tom said a silent prayer for the reporter. It was an atheist’s prayer, a foxhole prayer, but that was the only kind Tom had been able to manage for fifty years or more.
He put his thumb over the mike on his cell phone and turned toward Walt. “Have you still got them on your scope?”
The old Ranger nodded, his eyes glued to the screen mounted on the dashboard. “Still coming north. You still think Sonny Thornfield is the one to hit?”
When Walt turned, and Tom met his old friend’s eyes, no words were necessary.
“Turn that damned phone off when you’re finished with your lawyer,” Walt grumbled. “I don’t fancy spending the rest of my days in Parchman.”
“I will. You watch the damned road.”
CHAPTER 48
BRODY ROYAL POINTED through the windshield of his son-in-law’s pickup toward a small building at the end of the street.
“Dark as a damn speakeasy,” he said. “I doubt they even have crime scene tape up.”
Randall Regan braked, then tensed as the squeal of rotors echoed down the street. “I don’t see a soul. I figured after what happened to Henry, the sheriff would have posted a man outside.”
“Amateurs,” said Brody. “Just like your nephew and his crew. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They couldn’t drag one fifty-year-old man into a truck?”
“They didn’t figure on a secretary packing a pistol.”
Brody grunted and peered down the dark street. “This town’s dying. There’s nobody on this side, this time of night. Not during the winter, anyway. It was different back in sixty-four. That night we burned Norris’s store, the signal was the end of the last shift at the King Hotel. That meant Ferriday was shutting down for the night.”
“When did the King close down?”
“Oh, hell, thirty years back.”
“There’s not even a crack dealer back here,” said Regan, chuckling as he rolled toward the Concordia Beacon building. “They’re all over on the main drag. They sell their shit right on Wallace Boulevard.”
Brody shook his head with disgust. “We’d have strung them up from the lampposts in my day. One on every block. Slow down, Randall. Just ease right up to the door.”
Regan craned his head over the steering wheel.
“Nose your fender up there and just push the door open.”
Regan drove over the glittering shards of Henry Sexton’s rear windshield, then turned his wheel to the right and slowed the truck to a crawl. The weight and momentum of the fender shattered every inch of glass in the door, like putting a finger through a sheet of ice.
“Back up,” Brody said, reaching for his door handle.
Regan did.
“Get the Flammenwerfer.”
Regan moved quickly. He’d been practicing with the flamethrower for the past two hours, and he’d become quite adept with the heavy unit. He strapped the two cylinders on his back, then took the firing pipe in his hand and walked through the door of the newspaper office.
Brody followed him, his pulse quickening.
“Computers first?” Regan asked.
“No. We need to get his private workroom first, then work our way backward. My source tells me he calls it his ‘war room.’ If he taped Morehouse, that’s where the tape will be. Unless he had it at home.”
“War room?” said Regan, heading down a hallway. “I’ll give him his war.”
He tried a couple of doors but found only storage rooms. The third, however, opened into a small room with maps and photographs covering every wall. Brody stepped inside and whistled. He recognized most of the Double Eagles in the first few seconds. Other photos showed Dr. Robb, a Ku Klux Klan rally, and charts of various kinds.
“Pay dirt,” he said, searching for his own face among the photos taped to the wall.
“You think Forrest is gonna be okay with this?” Randall asked.
“You think I care?” Brody caught sight of his daughter’s face, tacked to the far wall. He almost crossed the room for the picture, but then he backed out of the doorway. “Burn it, Randall,” he said in a strangled voice. “Burn it all.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brody heard a clank and a hiss, followed by a roar that sent chills racing over his body. A jet of liquid flame reached out from the pipe in Regan’s hand, like Lucifer pissing fire on the world. Henry’s Sexton’s war room became an inferno, driving Brody back from the breathtaking heat.
Randall shouted with exultation at the destruction, but Brody just stared into the flames, recalling a time before he’d lost his daughter, when the life he’d always wanted still seemed possible, and his hands had held something more than money and power. Across the room, his daughter’s face curled and turned to ash. Brody stumbled back, his nostrils stinging with the petroleum reek of battle, and staggered out toward the truck.
TWO HUNDRED YARDS UP Tennessee Avenue, Sleepy Johnston sat behind the wheel of a GMC pickup, his Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled low over his face, and stared at the truck parked against the Beacon building. Squinting through the dim light thrown off by the streetlamp, he saw a sign on the truck’s door: ROYAL OIL, INC.