Morehouse’s eyes opened, looking suspicious. “How do I get the fentanyl?”
“Tell us everything you told the reporter. You hold back, you die a gelding.”
Morehouse was struggling to swallow. Sonny picked up a glass of water from the bedside table and helped him take a sip.
“There you go,” Sonny said. “All primed up now. Spill.”
“I didn’t tell Sexton nothin’, boys. I didn’t trust him.”
“He was here for a whole hour this morning,” Snake said. “You must have told him something.”
Morehouse shook his head.
Snake held up the knife and turned it in the lamplight. “I’ve only got three questions, Mountain.” Stepping forward, he slid the point under Morehouse’s inflamed eye. “First, did you say the name Forrest Knox? Did your lips form those two words?”
“Jesus, no. I ain’t crazy!”
“You’re lying, Glenn. I’m gonna cut this eye out.”
“No!” Morehouse wailed.
“What about Brody Royal? Did you say anything about Brody?”
At the mention of this name Morehouse lost his color. “I swear before God, boys. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Did Sexton ask about Brody or Forrest?”
“Neither one. He just wanted to know about …”
“Us?” Snake finished.
Morehouse nodded, then pulled up the covers and hugged himself beneath them.
“How much did you tell him?”
“Nothin’ about ya’ll. I talked about the war mostly. All he cared about was Albert Norris. I think him and that nigger was related or something. I told him I thought Pooky had killed Albert and run off with whatever whiskey and cash Albert had stashed in the store. Or reefer, that he kept for them musicians.”
“Did Sexton tape any of this?”
“Hell, no. I wouldn’t let him. I told him that, straight up.”
Snake gave Sonny a sidelong look. Glenn actually sounded convincing.
“I can’t sleep no more, Sonny!” Morehouse cried. “Every time I close my eyes, I see the things we done. I can’t get no peace. It’s like when I got back from the war. I keep seein’ Jerry Dugan down in that acid tank, and that Lewis boy a-bleedin’ under that tree. That alone’s enough to send us all to hell.”
“Do you see Jimmy Revels?” Snake asked in a perverse voice. “I figured you’d see him most of all. Considerin’ what you done to him. And how much you liked it.”
“Ya’ll made me do that! I didn’t know what I was doing. That still don’t make it right, I know. Not to God.”
“That’s between you and God,” Snake said. “Not you and some newspaper reporter.”
Glenn’s shallow respirations sounded like a breeze blowing through dry leaves. Sonny saw tears running down his pale cheeks. He seemed to struggle on the bed, his movements spastic.
“You drugged me,” Glenn said, his accusing eyes searching out Wilma in the darkness. “You … you helped them kill me. God sees you, Sister.”
Wilma’s slippers hissed on the parquet floor. “I’m gonna wait in the kitchen,” she said. “Ya’ll don’t hurt him no more’n you have to.”
“Can’t stand to see your handiwork?” Glenn cried, his eyelids falling, rising, falling again.
Sonny motioned for Wilma to leave, but she leaned over her brother with bitter anger in her eyes. “You broke faith. You didn’t leave me any choice.”
“Not with God, I didn’t!” Morehouse bellowed.
“Blood first, Glenn,” she said with utter conviction. “God after.”
Wilma gave her brother a glare of challenge, but he said nothing. As she turned to go, Sonny caught her arm and whispered, “When was the last time a nurse stuck him for blood?”
“The home health nurse pulled some this morning. They poke him all the time now.”
“Where? Has he still got a good vein in the elbow?”
“He’s got a PICC line in.” She slid her arm from Sonny’s grasp. “You can inject whatever you want in there.”
“I didn’t tell Henry half of what I should have!” Glenn cried with newfound strength. Sonny heard righteous anger, and saw the fear draining from Glenn’s face like life from a dying body.
“I didn’t tell Henry nothin’ about Forrest,” Glenn vowed. “Or Brody. But I’ll say it now. The hell I’m going to tonight is nothing compared to what awaits you two with them.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Snake growled. “He’s gettin’ off easy, you ask me.”
“Let’s just get it over with,” Sonny said. Unzipping his camo shoulder pack, he drew out a syringe prefilled with a lethal dose of fentanyl. “You want me to do it?”
“No. Just hold it till I’m ready.” Snake walked around the hospital bed and took hold of Glenn’s forearm—an arm once strong enough to snap a man’s cervical spine—to examine the PICC line. When Glenn started to struggle, Snake passed his knife over the bed to Sonny. “He keeps fightin’, sever his jugular.”
“Don’t fight it, baby,” Wilma said from the doorway, shocking Sonny. Apparently she meant to stay to the end. “You’re just making it worse.”
Glenn stopped struggling at the sound of his sister’s words, but his eyes had taken on a sudden alertness. They had been dull before, but now they glinted with … what? Triumph?
“Something’s wrong,” Sonny said, and Snake looked up sharply.
“His hands!” Wilma yelled. “Check his hands!”
Sonny ripped back the coverlet. One of Morehouse’s fists was clenched around a chunk of plastic with a chain on it.
“Shit!” Snake cursed. “That’s one of them Live Alert things!”
Snake tried to wrench the necklace from Morehouse’s clawlike grasp, but Wilma cried, “Don’t worry about it! That thing don’t even work! I quit paying the bill after he moved in with me.”
Sonny couldn’t take his eyes from Morehouse’s face. His old friend wouldn’t look so proud of himself unless he’d foxed them somehow.
“Make him give it to you,” Sonny said, passing the knife back to Snake.