“Why are we wasting time with this?” Regan asks irritably. “Let’s take them into the range. Introduce her to the Flammenwerfer. If she knows the witness’s name, we’ll have it in thirty seconds.”
Brody gives his son-in-law a chiding look. “Patience, Randall. We’ve got a few minutes before the packages arrive. The problem is that Ms. Masters doesn’t really understand the stakes. And I know why.” He walks very close to Caitlin, then circles slowly around her, missing nothing. “You have my congratulations, Cage. I’d plow this filly all day long just to watch her walk.”
His crude words are all the more startling for the civility that preceded them. “What do you think, Randall?”
Regan looks up from his screen and tilts his head to one side. “A little skinny, but still prime.”
Caitlin’s face goes red, and she looks away from both men.
“You can’t fake that haughtiness,” Royal says with an appreciative smile. “Raised with a silver spoon, this one. Thinks the world has rules, and that her job is to make people abide by them. Except herself, of course. And what she most wants … is to be a star. But she wouldn’t even have the chance, if Daddy didn’t own the company.”
“And you?” she flashes back. “You’re richer than my father ever was.”
Brody barks a laugh. “You really don’t know anything, do you? I met your father once. At the Kentucky Derby. The second I heard him speak, I knew he came from money. And you’re his pride and joy, aren’t you.”
“I hope so.” Pink blotches have come up on her throat.
The old man glances at his watch, then looks at her with startling intensity. “My story’s a little different, princess. My mother died when I was just a tot. We were living on the levee after the Great Flood. The only dry land for fifty miles around. My father was out in a boat, helping rescue trapper families from the marshes. Everybody on the levee was starving, black and white both. One morning, a huge hog swam by. It was eating a bloated old nigra woman. I’ll never forget that sight, so long as I live. Most of the bodies floating past were nigras. They never learned to swim, see? Lots of them still don’t. Anyway, a National Guardsman shot the hog, and two men jumped into the water to get it. They shoved the woman’s corpse away with a pole and dragged the hog back. They gutted it right quick, then strung it up and built a fire under it. But the people were so hungry … they couldn’t wait.”
Royal lowers his voice, and his eyes grow remote. “We were ripping meat off that hog long before it was cooked. I wasn’t much more than a baby, so I was grabbing from down low, where I could reach. The meat I got was cooked, I guess. But Mama pulled hers from higher up, where it was almost raw. I got sick, but I lived. Mama died in agony, five weeks later. Worms in her brain.”
Brody shakes his head, looking lost for a moment. “Rich folks don’t die like that, do they, Ms. Masters? I’ll bet all your people died on clean white sheets, surrounded by nurses.”
I’m stunned to see sympathy in Caitlin’s face. Reflexive guilt over her privileged background? How can she possibly feel guilt when facing a monster?
“But I don’t think you’re going to die that way,” Brody says, his voice suddenly brittle. “Not unless you start talking right now. No clean white sheets for you. No painless passing. Just everlasting fire, like Albert Norris got.”
“I know you’re upset,” Caitlin says carefully. “I’m sure you blame me for what your daughter did. I can understand that. But she needs you now. When I talked to her …” Caitlin trails off when she sees the glacial coldness in Royal’s eyes.
“Tell her, Randall.”
“Katy’s dead, you stupid bitch.”
Caitlin whips her head back toward Royal.
“She died twenty minutes after your fiancé left the hospital,” says the old man.
Even as Caitlin says, “I’m sorry,” the timing of Royal’s daughter’s demise strikes me as highly improbable.
“You killed her,” I say softly, my eyes boring into his.
“You left me no choice. It was a mercy, in a way. Especially for Randall.”
Regan looks at me like a man who has had a crippling burden lifted from his shoulders. Undoubtedly he did the deed himself.
Brody looks hard at Caitlin, who appears horrified by the ultimate consequences of her interview with Katy Royal. “I don’t need your apologies, Ms. Masters. All I need from you is a name.”
Caitlin’s eyes flick back and forth like those of a trapped animal. She’s where I was a few minutes ago. Make up a name and pay the price for lying? Or give Royal a real name and possibly trigger someone’s death? Is there even any point to stalling? John Kaiser seems our only possible deliverance, but without Walker Dennis leading him to Royal … why would he show up?
“Randall, I think it’s time you show Ms. Masters that we’re not playing games here.”
“About time,” Regan says, setting his computer aside and getting to his feet with his cigarette clamped between his teeth.
I start toward Caitlin to protect her, but instead of moving toward her, Regan walks straight to me, spreads his hands wide, and claps them over my ears with stunning force. Though I see the blow coming, my taped hands give me no chance to block it. The simultaneous concussions stun me like nails driven through my eardrums, scrambling all thought.
I hit the floor even before I realize I’m falling.
As I lie on my back, heaving for breath, Regan drops a crushing knee onto my chest and leans over me, the orange eye of his cigarette burning white as he sucks air through it. Grabbing the butt from his mouth, he jams the burning tobacco into my left cheek.
Searing agony whites out his laughing face. For a wild rush of heartbeats there’s only fire in my skin and a hammer pounding in my skull. The next thing to register is a high-pitched scream. Turning my head toward the sound, I see Caitlin’s mouth wide, her eyes red and pouring tears. Royal gives an order that registers faintly in my brain, and then Regan gets off my chest and pulls me to my feet.