I’M SITTING IN my Audi outside the Kuntry Kafé, an old-time diner not far from the music store where Henry and I met Kirk Boisseau after he discovered the bones in the Jericho Hole. Three minutes ago, Randall Regan walked inside alone to eat lunch. As I got up to follow him, I saw through the window that he’d sat down with an attractive woman thirty years his junior, a woman most definitely not his wife. I know from Caitlin’s research that Katy Royal Regan is fifty-nine. The girl laughing with Randall inside is barely thirty. His mistress? A casual conquest? Or an innocent flirtation? The diner is nearly full, yet Regan obviously has no qualms about eating with an attractive young lady, even though he’s married to Brody Royal’s daughter.
For a few seconds I consider waiting for a better opportunity to confront him. But the sooner I rattle the son of a bitch, the sooner he and Brody are liable to say something incriminating on the telephone (or via e-mail or text). After a brief argument with myself, I put my .357 in the glove compartment, lock my car, and walk into the Kuntry Kafé, my entry announced by Christmas bells hanging from the door.
Several people recognize me, and wave, but I walk straight to Regan’s table and sit in one of the two empty chairs. Regan gives me a mildly curious look, but the young woman appears shaken. She looks anxiously at Randall, but he seems content to wait and see what I intend to do.
“I know you,” she says, peering closer at me. “You’re the … the mayor of Natchez.”
I give her a politician’s smile. “That’s right. And everybody else in here is figuring out the same thing about now. They’re all staring at us, and trying to figure out who you are, and why you’re eating with Randall here.”
She looks around at the watchful crowd, then back at Regan, who tilts his head toward the door. Blushing red, she grabs her purse and bolts without a word. Randall chuckles, then gives the crowd a hard look, one face at a time, and they go back to their meals.
Pithy Nolan described him as Black Irish, and as usual, she was right. Regan’s eyes are dark and fey, his nose an off-center testament to the risks of boxing (or street fighting), and his curly black hair lined with silver. Rangy and rawboned, he looks like he’s done enough manual labor to make him harder than most athletes ever get. If a weight lifter challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest, he’d probably snap the man’s wrist just for spite.
Since Regan shows no inclination to question my sudden appearance, I simply start talking. After all, my purpose is to rattle the man into panicking, not to have a conversation with him. I speak just below conversational volume, softly enough that the people at the nearest tables can’t hear exactly what I’m saying, but not whispering, either. I start out by describing the murder of the two Royal Insurance employees at the hunting camp in South Louisiana, using every vivid detail Glenn Morehouse provided to Henry. Then I give Regan a devastatingly accurate summary of Brody Royal’s involvement in the murders of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, Jimmy Revels, Luther Davis, and Leland Robb. To my surprise, the man doesn’t say a word during my monologue. Nor does he get up and walk away.
I’ve had conversations like this before, usually during interrogations of hardened criminals. They’d sit and smoke, or pick their noses, or just give me what they thought was a thousand-yard stare. Eventually most of them broke down, once I found the right psychological lever. But Randall Regan is different. He doesn’t try to intimidate me like most hardasses would. He tucks into his country-fried steak as though I’m some traveling salesman who happened to sit down in the last available seat, and he’s content to endure my patter, like a plowing farmer must endure the rain.
Despite his apparent nonchalance, the one or two times he does meet my gaze, I realize he’s got some of the coldest eyes I’ve ever come across. Recalling Morehouse’s tale of this man who forced one woman to kill her coworker, then raped her and ordered her death, I lose track of my words for a second. Into this gap rushes an image of my father and Walt Garrity running for their lives from men like Randall Regan. Banishing that nightmare, I push on, exercising my practiced prosecutor’s gift for detail. When I finally stop talking, Regan wipes his mouth with his napkin, takes out his wallet, leaves a ten-dollar bill on the table, then tosses his head once and walks out the front door.
I’ve seen that casual toss of the head countless times in my life, usually under friendly circumstances. It generally means “Be seein’ you.” Today it means the same thing, but the context isn’t friendly at all.
As Regan’s V-shaped back disappears through the door, the obvious reality finally breaks through the daze that Walker’s news knocked me into: Regan assumed I was wearing a wire. That’s why he didn’t speak to me. If I had been wearing one, anyone listening to the recording would have concluded that I’d sat in the diner and talked to myself for ten minutes. Still, I reflect, that doesn’t mean my plan didn’t work.
“Randy left already?” asks the waitress, startling me.
“Yes.”
“Well, dern. He usually orders dessert. I’ve got it right here.”
She lowers a saucer with a slice of chocolate pie on it. “You want it instead?”
“No, thank you.”
As she walks away, I go to the restroom to get some privacy. I don’t fancy walking out into the parking lot until I know Regan is gone. Once inside, I sit on the edge of the sink and call John Kaiser’s cell phone. He answers immediately.
“Get ready,” I tell him. “I think the music’s about to start.”
“What did you do?”
“Poked a stick in the rattlesnake’s hole.”
Kaiser is quiet for too long. “You haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what?”
“Penn, there’s no good way to tell you this. A few minutes ago the Louisiana State Police sent a flash APB across five states for Thomas Jefferson Cage, M.D., and Walter Roark Garrity, a retired Texas Ranger. They’re wanted in connection with the murder of Trooper Darrell Deke Dunn, who was shot and killed last night near the borrow pits in rural Concordia Parish.”
As I sit dumbstruck on the sink, my head roars as though I’m standing in the middle of a highway. I feel like someone just told me that a friend of mine ran over a child in the street and fled the scene. Life will never be the same.
“The bulletin says both fugitives are known to be proficient with firearms and should be considered armed and dangerous. Penn? Are you there?”