WALT GARRITY CRUISED slowly up the gravel road in pitch darkness while Tom studied the scope monitoring the GPS tracker on Sonny Thornfield’s truck. A hundred yards down the slope to their left lay Old River, once a great bend in the Mississippi River but now a lake created by a cutoff dug by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1932. You could still access the Mississippi from Old River, through a channel a half mile east of here, and that’s why all the fishing camps along Old River were built on thirty-foot-high stilts. When the Mississippi flooded, Old River did, too, and the only way in or out was by boat. But the people who owned camps here loved that isolation, and that, Tom figured, was what Sonny Thornfield had come here to find.
“Let’s hope he’s alone,” Walt said.
Tom had made house calls down here before. A few of the camps were luxurious, but most were little more than shacks on stilts, with three flights of iron steps for access. All had makeshift elevators, metal cages hauled up and down a metal track system by a truck winch mounted at the top.
“Shouldn’t that one be it?” Walt asked, pointing up into the darkness, where a faint yellow light burned.
“I think so,” Tom said, still trying to decipher the screen.
Walt made a sharp left into an empty driveway next door to the camp where Thornfield had parked, and cut his engine. “No point wasting time,” he said, touching the derringer that hung on a chain beneath his shirt. “Same signal as the steak house, okay? If you see anything strange, start the engine.”
“I will. You be careful.”
Walt saluted, then got out of the van and silently closed the door.
Tom quickly lost sight of him in the darkness, but he felt confident that Walt would succeed in his mission. A seasoned hunter of men, the old Ranger wouldn’t hesitate to use force if things got dicey. Walt had given Tom a handheld radio to monitor, and reiterated that Tom must leave his cell phone switched off. Tom felt exposed sitting in the empty driveway, even in the dark. But at least most of the camp houses had RVs of various types parked beneath them. As he waited in the van, alone but for the ticking of the cooling engine, his mind began to wander.
All day, he had been quietly contemplating a biblical tale his father had despised. On the Day of Atonement, the priest of the temple had chosen two goats by lot. One would be sacrificed on the altar for the sins of Israel, the other cast out into the desert, bearing the sins of the people on its head. The first goat was known as the Lord’s Goat. The second—the Azazel—became known as the scapegoat. Because the scapegoat was sent away to perish, it came to represent any person blamed or punished for the sins of others, or to distract attention from the real cause of a crime. The Bible was replete with examples: Eve blamed for original sin, Jonah for a storm at sea. Barabbas, the thief, was allowed to live while Jesus, the Lord’s Goat, died for the sins of man. In the New Testament, Satan had become the scapegoat for God’s harsher side.
Tom’s father, a man of rigid moral rectitude, had condemned this practice as an expression of man’s basest urges. He’d recounted countless historical examples: Alfred Dreyfus rotting on Devil’s Island; royal whipping boys beaten bloody; medical patients scapegoated for epidemics; Jews being led to the ovens as Tom approached puberty. Percy Cage had ingrained in his son the conviction that a man of honor admitted his mistakes, took responsibility for them, and stoically accepted his punishment. Evading responsibility for sin was cowardice, plain and simple. Yet in the present circumstance, Tom thought, he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live with his family for the final year of two of his life, and not in a locked cage.
He thought of Glenn Morehouse, the simple-minded factory worker he’d treated so long ago. Morehouse was probably the least guilty of all the Double Eagles, because he’d had the least free will. He’d also possessed some remnant of a conscience, because he’d been murdered for trying to unburden his soul before death. But Glenn Morehouse, too, had committed murder. He’d participated in Viola’s rape, and probably countless other acts of brutality. Few tears, if any, had been shed at his death. And since Morehouse was dead, what more fitting scapegoat could there be for Viola’s murder?
Tom’s radio crackled in his lap. Then Walt said, “He’s moving around inside.”
Tom’s chest tightened. He reached down into his bag for his short-barreled .357 and laid the heavy pistol in his lap.
“Get ready,” Walt said. “I think he’s coming out.”
Tom got to his feet—he had to stoop inside the van—then opened the side door and stepped out into the night. The smell of dead fish and rotting vegetation assailed him. He stuck the .357 into his waistband and crunched up the gravel driveway, then crossed over into some shadows thrown by the light beneath Sonny’s camp house. He’d barely found a place to wait when he heard a screen door bang against its frame high above him.
A new sound puzzled him for a few seconds. Then he realized that Thornfield was pissing off the deck high above. By the light of the moon, Tom saw urine falling in a thin, irregular stream to his right. Old man’s prostate, he thought. Tom had little doubt that Walt would make use of Thornfield being indisposed to get control of him. Sure enough, he heard a squawk of surprise, and the trickle of urine abruptly stopped.