“You don’t know that, Penn,” Stone says sadly. “We haven’t even talked about the deeper New Orleans dimension of the plot. And by that I mean Lee Oswald.”
“Is that what the ten minutes you wanted is about? Oswald?”
“And your father. And New Orleans. That’s the one thing Oliver Stone got right. The whole key to the JFK assassination was hidden in New Orleans.”
“In plain sight, I suppose?”
“No. This part was as secret as anything ever gets.”
They’ve got me, and they know it. Though I couldn’t care less about the Kennedy assassination right now, I can’t leave this room without knowing the full extent of my father’s exposure. Besides, I really have nowhere to go. Caitlin is busy for the next few hours, and while Annie would love to have me home, if I were there, all I would be thinking about is what Stone and Kaiser didn’t tell me. Before I agree to hear any more, however, I need to do one thing.
“Give me five minutes in the hall.”
“Take your time,” says Stone. “I’m afraid I need another trip to the bathroom. These drugs are killing me.”
Kaiser looks worried, but I don’t know whether it’s because he’s afraid I’ll take off, or because he’s dreading cleaning up more vomit from the bathroom floor.
Once in the hall, I move far enough down so that the peephole lens in the door won’t allow Kaiser to monitor my actions. Then I take out my tape recorder and check it. The tape ran out before I left the room. I only hope it recorded Kaiser saying that he believes that Forrest Knox, and not my father, killed Viola Turner.
Opening the machine’s cover, I flip the microcassette, hit RECORD, and then slip the Sony back into my inside coat pocket. It may not make a great recording, but I’ve used it in that pocket before and gotten usable tape. If Stone and Kaiser are about to reveal classified information about the Kennedy case—or make exculpatory statements about my father—I want a record of it. If they do the opposite, I can always toss the tape into the river as I cross the bridge back to Natchez.
As I walk back toward Stone’s door, Kaiser leans out and says, “Dwight’s back in the bed.”
“You thought I’d bolted,” I tell him, walking slowly back toward 406.
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“Mine, too.”
CHAPTER 37
CAITLIN PERCHED ON the edge of the coffee table, Tom’s hands in her own. He had told her a tale of love and hate and rape and murder that she could not begin to imagine living through.
“That’s why I could never speak to Henry,” Tom concluded. “Or the FBI, or anyone. I knew Brody Royal belonged in the gas chamber. The Knoxes, too. But I couldn’t risk trying to put him there—for the same reason Viola couldn’t. She had a child, and I had two. But there was something else. Because Frank Knox had carried out the worst of the killings, and because Viola and I had killed Frank, at times I felt like we’d done our part to balance the scales. Something, anyway. Sacrificing ourselves to try to do more wasn’t going to bring anybody back from the grave.”
Caitlin was almost overwhelmed by emotion. “I understand now,” she said, squeezing his crooked fingers softly.
Tom pulled back his hands and once again ran them through his white hair with frantic energy. “Earlier today, I think I passed out, from the pain meds or exhaustion. While I was out, I dreamed or hallucinated some things. I think I remembered something Ray Presley told me, years after all this happened. About Viola’s rapes.”
“What did Ray Presley know about that?”
“It was Ray who rescued Viola from the Knoxes. The second time, after Frank died. I didn’t know who else to go to.”
“I remember now. Brody told us that you and Ray Presley had saved Viola.”
Tom nodded. “Snake went mad with rage after Frank died. He ordered Viola kidnapped and taken to the machine shop where he was holding her brother and Luther Davis. They ran all kinds of rednecks through that machine shop, giving them a peek at the festivities. God only knows what horrors Viola suffered. She saw her brother shot, I know—wounded, not killed. And that tattoo cut off his arm.”
“Brody Royal was there, too,” Caitlin said. “He told us that. Bragged about it.”
Tom grimaced like a man suppressing bone-deep pain. “She never told me that. I’d have killed that son of a bitch, if she had. Maybe she knew that. . . . Anyway, Ray found the bastards somehow. He faced them down with a gun. He managed to get Viola out, but not her brother or Luther.” Tom shook his head. “Viola never forgave me for that.”
“You said you remembered something Ray said, when you passed out today?”
“Yes. Ray told me there was a kid in there when he went in to get Viola out. A teenager, maybe sixteen, with dark skin, like some Cajuns. Creole blood, you know?”
Caitlin felt a premonitory tingle on her neck. She reached out and took Tom’s hands again, trying to comfort him as he relived this terrible memory.
“And earlier, Walt told me he’d learned from a buddy of his that Forrest Knox is a dark-skinned man. As soon as I thought about the ages, it clicked in my head that the teenager Ray saw in that machine shop was Frank’s son. His second son. His first died in Vietnam in the midsixties.”
“You’re saying Forrest Knox was present when Revels and Davis were tortured and killed?”
“And for Viola’s rape, yes. I think he was there when they raped Viola in her house, too. The night Viola died, she told me one of her rapists that first time had been only a boy.”
“My God.” Caitlin squeezed Tom’s hands so hard he jerked them back in pain. “And this is the man you want to make a deal with?”
“I’ve made deals with worse.” He looked down.
A rush of butterflies in Caitlin’s stomach told her she was nearing the heart of the whole complex mystery. “Tom . . . who are you talking about?”
He shook his head, said nothing.
“Are you talking about Carlos Marcello?”