To Claude Devereux’s surprise, Brody got to his feet and pointed at Forrest Knox with a steady hand. “I’ve been waiting fifty years for this day, boy. And if you think I’m going to let some bleeding-heart reporter screw it up, you need brain surgery. The sooner Henry Sexton and his files cease to exist, the better off we’ll all be. I make no apologies for my actions or Randall’s. I’ll do as I see fit, and you won’t say a word. Your job is to clean up the mess. Is that clear?”
Forrest stiffened and started to speak, but before he could, Royal added, “I know how bad you want to take over the state police. And you know I can blackball you from that post with one phone call.”
Forrest paled, but he held his tongue.
“Now,” said Brody, taking his seat again, “I believe we’re finished.”
Behind him, Randall Regan gestured toward the door.
Instead of leaving, Forrest stepped forward and lifted a letter opener from the old man’s desk, then held it up in the light. The little knife had a dark leather handle and an ivory-colored blade, and Claude shuddered when he recognized it.
“My daddy made this for you,” Forrest said. “He tanned the skin, just like he did the skins of those Japs on the islands back in forty-five. He carved this bone handle, too. He told me it came from that Wilson boy’s arm. The skin came from his cock.”
Royal nodded, his expression curious but unafraid.
Forrest dropped the letter opener on the green felt, then laid both hands on the desk and leaned so far over it that Royal must have felt his breath. “That nigger still fucked your daughter, Brody. What you did afterwards don’t mean nothing. You hear me? You weren’t paying attention when it mattered. Sitting behind a desk for forty years opening letters with a dickskin isn’t the proper training for dealing with me. I may not be quite as mean as my daddy was, but I’m smarter. That can be good or bad for you. Take your pick. But if you cross me again—if I have to come back here like this again—it’ll be the last time.”
The old man’s head quivered with rage, but it was his son-in-law who stepped forward, reaching for the desk drawer that held Brody’s pistol.
“And you,” Forrest said, pointing at Regan, who stopped cold. “If you don’t leave the operations side to the professionals, I’ll have Alphonse come back and make a trophy out of your dick—if there’s enough down there to work with.”
Randall Regan’s face went scarlet, then white. He lunged for the gun drawer, but Forrest only turned on his heel and walked past his Redbone bodyguard, who had already drawn a pistol from his ankle holster.
“Open casket or closed?” Ozan said, a smug grin on his lips. “You got a preference?”
CHAPTER 58
LESS THAN FIVE miles from Brody Royal’s lake house, Caitlin Masters stood outside the smoking ruin of the Concordia Beacon and watched a fire inspector work his way through the building with a high-powered flashlight. Jamie Lewis was sitting in his car, talking on the phone to one of their reporters back at the Examiner. She and Jamie had already interviewed every cop and fireman on the scene, and everyone agreed it was arson. Several firemen had reported the smell of tar, which none recalled having encountered in a long time, except at buildings with tarred roofs, which the Beacon had not had.
While waiting for the fire crew to leave (so that she could search the building), Caitlin had been discreetly searching the area outside, particularly the ground near where Henry had been attacked. Now that Jamie was occupied in the car, she bent over the soot-covered parking lot and switched on her Palm Treo, using it as a flashlight. The glow of the screen was dim, but she didn’t want to risk using the penlight in her purse.
After two or three minutes of searching, she was ready to give up. But just then, something glinted in the soot. Sweeping her gaze in a semicircle, and seeing no one nearby, she reached down and pulled up what appeared to be a small notebook. She brushed off the soot and saw that it was a Moleskine. The cover looked slightly charred, but inside it, between the cover and the first notebook page, she found two photographs. One showed four men in the stern of a fishing boat. The other showed Henry Sexton’s face. It had obviously been shot from a distance with a telephoto lens. Caitlin blinked and turned the photo toward the taillights of a nearby truck that had been left idling. Then she froze.
Someone had superimposed a rifle scope over Henry’s face.
Sliding that photo aside, she peered at the men in the fishing boat. After a few seconds, her pulse began to race. One of the men in the boat was Tom Cage. Another looked a lot like … Ray Presley. Had Caitlin not spent all day researching the names Penn gave her last night, she wouldn’t have recognized the other two men. But now she placed them as easily as she might have a schoolmate from years ago. The man who appeared to be talking in the photograph was a local attorney, Claude Devereux. The man who looked like Charlton Heston was Brody Royal.
“Jamie!” she called, hurrying to the car and dropping into the passenger seat. “Get this thing in gear!”
“I thought you wanted to search the place.”
“I just did,” she said, slamming her door. “Get us back to the paper.”
WEDNESDAY
CHAPTER 59