“Henry didn’t believe any Double Eagle would break his oath of silence under police pressure. Kaiser, either.”
Walker snorts with contempt. “Forgive me speaking ill of the dead, but Henry Sexton didn’t know shit about law enforcement. And Kaiser’s a big-picture guy. It’s time to keep it simple. I’m a cop, you’re a prosecutor. Meth trafficking carries a mandatory fifteen-to thirty-year sentence in this state. Somebody on the Knox payroll will give us a Double Eagle or two to keep their asses out of Angola. And once we have an Eagle in my jail, it’s Katy-bar-the-door. Those old bastards are in their seventies now. You think they want to die on Angola Farm with a bunch of black lifers? Hell, no. Think about Glenn Morehouse facing cancer. He cracked, didn’t he?”
“That’s different.”
“You think so?” A bitter laugh escapes the sheriff’s lips. “Given a choice between dying of cancer in a nice hospital and rotting in Angola with a bunch of pissed-off soul brothers who know I used to be in the Ku Klux Klan? I’ll take the cancer every time, bubba. At least you get morphine to cope.”
The sheriff just might be right about this. Some accused criminals live in mortal terror of incarceration—dirty cops, for example—but given the racial demographics of American prisons, I imagine former Ku Klux Klansmen rank right up there with child molesters when it comes to those who have real reason to fear going to jail.
“All right,” I say softly. “I’m with you.”
Walker glances at me, excitement in his face. “Seriously?”
“Let’s do it.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Since Dennis is going out on a limb for my father, I feel I owe him the truth. “Battle tactics. Forrest Knox is driving the manhunt for Dad and Walt. If we hit the Knox organization as hard as we can tomorrow, and keep hitting them, Forrest will have to devote a lot of energy to defending himself. And every minute he puts into fighting you and me is one less he has to track down my father.”
“Damn straight,” Walker says. “When in doubt, run it up the middle. Don’t even give Forrest time to think about your daddy. I just wish we could get Agent Kaiser out of the way somehow, so he can’t interfere.”
As soon as Walker says this, a memory of Brody Royal describing the murder of Pooky Wilson at the Bone Tree comes to me. “I might just be able to do that. Though not in the next six hours.”
“Anything will help. Hey, look.” Sheriff Dennis points across the westbound lanes at the jarringly modern silhouette of the 1970s courthouse. “We made it. And no state cops in sight.”
As Walker gives me a thumbs-up, I turn in my seat to make sure Walker’s brother-in-law is still behind us, and that Caitlin is still his passenger. Thankfully, I can see both their heads silhouetted by the headlights of the vehicle behind them.
“Hey,” Walker says sharply. “Earlier today you said you wanted to ride with me on the busts. Do you still want to do that? Or should you lie low and let me take the heat?”
I don’t even have to think about this question. “I’ve got my mother and daughter well hidden. What’s the point in letting you have all the fun?”
The sheriff smacks his steering wheel and smiles. “All right, then. In six hours we hit those sons of bitches. And I’ll lay odds that in twenty-four hours we’ll have at least one Double Eagle in my jail, begging to tell us everything he knows.”
Dennis pulls around to the left side of the courthouse, the site of his motor pool.
“I’d better call Chief Logan now,” I say, the weight of dread and guilt in my voice. “He needs to know he probably lost a man tonight.”
The smile melts off Walker Dennis’s face. “You tell him we’re going to get to the bottom of that tomorrow, too. Tell Logan I promised him that.”
“I will.”
Dennis switches off the engine, then looks at me. The eyes in his fleshy face burn with fearsome conviction. “Before I’m done, Forrest Knox is gonna wish his family never set foot in my parish.”
Forrest Knox’s ancestors probably arrived here generations before Dennis’s did, but the sheriff could not care less about that. Subtlety isn’t his strong suit. Special Agent John Kaiser is like a Predator drone, circling high above Forrest Knox and the Double Eagle group with an array of precision-targeted missiles. Sheriff Dennis is more like the iron bombs that dropped from the bellies of B-17s during World War II: dumb and heavy, but deadly enough to bring down a city block. And for my new purpose, Walker Dennis is just what the doctor ordered.
CHAPTER 5
CAITLIN MASTERS HAD wasted no time after getting into the cruiser. The deaths she’d witnessed, the torture she’d endured—all that was working its way through her like slow poison, she knew, but there was no quick antidote. And if what Brody Royal had said about having a mole at her paper was true, then every passing minute might mean more deleted computer files. She prayed that if there was a mole, he had not located the digital scans of Henry Sexton’s journals. The fire wasn’t even out of sight when she said, “I need to call my editor, Deputy. May I use your cell phone?”
Deputy Grady Wells pulled a Nokia from his shirt pocket and passed it over. “Walker said you could. I just hope to hell the state police don’t find out about this.”
“Don’t worry, you’re on the side of the angels tonight.”
Wells grunted skeptically.
Her editor’s cell phone rang four times, but then he answered. “Jamie Lewis. Who’s this?”
“It’s me, Jamie.”
“Christ, I was afraid you were dead.” Lewis’s crisp northern speech sounded alien compared to the drawl of Deputy Wells.
“I almost was. And some people are sure going to wish I was.”
“One minute you were here arguing with Penn, and the next you were gone. Now the police scanner’s going nuts about an explosion on Lake Concordia.”
“I was in the damned explosion. Or next to it, anyway. Don’t say anything more, Jamie. Just listen and do what I say.”