“And what did you find out?”
“Reverend Ransom says most of his flock still love your father, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think he’s human. What they call ‘outside children’ are a fact of life, especially from white fathers, so they have no problem buying that Lincoln could be Tom’s son. That obviously might have led to some real problems between Tom and Viola.”
“Great.”
Caitlin finally turns back to me, her arms folded across her chest almost defensively. “How’s Dwight Stone doing?”
“Worse than I expected. I don’t think he has long. Days, at the most.”
“God. I should go see him.”
Not wanting to encourage this, I say nothing.
“If he’s that sick, what’s he doing here?” she asks, fixing me with her gaze.
And here we come to it: do I lie or tell the truth? After all I heard in room 406, I’ve got no desire to tease through every new fact with Caitlin, especially those dealing with Dad’s possible complicity in crimes. Nor do I want her hounding a dying man for a scoop on the JFK assassination. “After Henry’s death and all John’s discovered, he couldn’t stay away. I think this trip was Dwight’s last hurrah on the unsolved cases from his past. That’s probably all that’s keeping him going now.”
“The JFK thing? Or the civil rights cases?”
“The Double Eagle stuff, mostly.”
Caitlin looks almost disappointed by my answer. She turns and drops a tea bag into her mug, then looks over her shoulder and says, “So . . . what’s this big surprise you wanted to show me?”
“You’ll see, sooner or later. It’s really too dark now.”
She shrugs. “Your car has headlights, doesn’t it? What is it we’re trying to see?”
Since Edelweiss stands atop the bluff facing the Mississippi, the combination of streetlamps, the house lights, my headlights, and the moon might be enough to create quite a dramatic reveal. And since the last thing I want to do is sit in this office while she probes me about my meeting with Kaiser and Stone . . .
“Come on!” I say, bouncing up from the chair and taking her hand. “Let’s get our minds off all this bullshit for half an hour.”
The sound of her sudden laugher is almost a shock after the last couple of days. “Where are we going?” she screeches as I try to drag her into the hall. “Wait!”
She darts back into the office long enough to turn off her teapot, then follows me down the hall. Hand in hand, we run through newsroom together, laughing with near hysterical relief, not knowing why, only sensing that the terrible weight of the past few days has been lifted for a few precious moments. Caitlin’s reporters and staff people look up openmouthed, but a few of them smile. For them, the Double Eagle murders are just a story—a big one, to be sure, but only a way station on the long careers they see ahead. Whereas for Caitlin and me . . .
The stakes are life and death.
CHAPTER 39
SHADRACH JOHNSON AND Sheriff Billy Byrd had been talking in the DA’s office since Byrd walked over at 5:45 P.M. Neither man could quite believe the turns that the Tom Cage matter had taken, or the casualties that had swiftly mounted in and near their jurisdictions. Together, they had worried every thread of the Viola Turner case until Sheriff Byrd pulled a flask of bourbon from his pocket and started drinking.
For Shad, meeting with Billy Byrd was always a little uncomfortable. For while they shared common cause against the Cage family, Billy was no good old boy with his heart in the right place. He was an unreconstructed redneck who—if it were thirty years earlier—would have liked nothing better than to horsewhip Shad for daring to walk on the same sidewalk with him. Beyond that, Byrd wouldn’t have been able to get hired as a janitor at Harvard Law, while Shad had the school’s diploma hanging on his wall. Yet in the present circumstances, Shad was forced to treat the corpulent, Skoal-dipping sheriff like an equal.
Shad was about to suggest that Byrd continue his drinking elsewhere when he heard pounding feet on his staircase. Five seconds later, someone threw open the door with such force that Billy Byrd grabbed for his gun.
“Goddamn it, don’t do that!” the sheriff cried, pointing his flask at Lincoln Turner, who stood in the door like an angry juke-joint bouncer.
Lincoln ignored Byrd and looked straight at Shad. “I think I’ve found Tom Cage.”
“Where?”
“That big green house at the top of Silver Street, looking over the river? Looks like a Swiss chalet or something.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Shad said. “Nobody lives there.”
“Maybe not. But I just followed Penn Cage and that Masters girl to it, and they walked right up on the porch like they were playing a scene in a movie.”
Shad couldn’t believe the speed with which Sheriff Byrd heaved his bulk from the chair and bolted through the door.
“Wait!” Shad cried, yanking open his top drawer in search of his car keys. “Wait for me, damn it! A lot of people go up there to look at the river! Don’t do anything crazy, Billy!”