Forrest had sent no attorney to the CPSO. He wanted it to look as though the former Double Eagles meant to cooperate fully, right up until the moment Sheriff Dennis was arrested by one of his own deputies. As soon as that was accomplished, Forrest would make contact with Penn Cage and find out whether or not there was a deal to be made. Now that he had the ultimate bargaining tool in his back pocket—in the form of Tom Cage—the son would have no option but to negotiate. Whether such negotiating would result in a deal remained an open question, since Forrest’s real worry wasn’t the mayor, but Cage’s goddamned fiancée.
He owed his knowledge of Mayor Cage’s whereabouts to Sheriff Billy Byrd, who had assigned one of his deputies to follow Kirk Boisseau, the former marine who’d accompanied Penn when he confronted Brody Royal at the hospital on Wednesday night. At 6 A.M. that deputy had followed Boisseau to a house that turned out to be owned by the parents of an old schoolmate of Cage’s. Boisseau and Cage had walked one circuit of the house, then had gone inside for five minutes, after which Boisseau returned home. A half hour later, binocular surveillance had revealed the mayor’s mother as she’d briefly parted the curtains to look outside. Thankfully, rather than storming the house in search of Tom Cage, who he believed was hiding there, Sheriff Byrd had called Forrest about his discovery. He claimed to have done this out of a sense of obligation to a fellow officer who’d had one of his men murdered in the line of duty by Dr. Cage. Nevertheless, it had taken some creative manipulation for Forrest to persuade Byrd that no immediate action should be taken against that house. Forrest, of course, knew that Tom was currently on ice at the Royal Oil field near Monterey, Louisiana. But he couldn’t tell Billy Byrd that. Instead, he’d told the hyped-up sheriff that two plainclothes police officers had checked the Abrams house with infrared technology and determined that it contained only an adult woman and a juvenile female. This, and a promise to keep Byrd updated hourly, had proved sufficient to forestall a SWAT assault.
Forrest looked down at the wrought-iron patio table, where a copy of the Natchez Examiner lay open. While yesterday’s sensational stories had made no mention of him, today’s main article had reported that Colonel Griffith Mackiever was under fire for child pornography allegations and quoted an unnamed “FBI source” who claimed that Mackiever’s second-in-command might be behind those charges. A side article by Caitlin Masters suggested that dirty politics lay at the root of this scandal, and Masters had taken great pains to point out the connections between Forrest and his extended family, nearly all of whom had been members of the Ku Klux Klan, and some even suspected Double Eagles. Forrest had a feeling that Masters’s FBI source was John Kaiser, the same agent who had drained the Jericho Hole. He was starting to think he’d been behind the curve where that particular FBI agent was concerned. He needed a line into Kaiser’s plans, and he had a good idea how to get one.
As his coffee went cold, Forrest began to feel a little anxious. He’d expected the call informing him of Sheriff Dennis’s arrest by seven A.M., and it was ten past now. The deputy in charge of the bust hadn’t checked in since before six. Forrest took out his cell phone and speed-dialed the moron.
“Hunt here,” said a country-ass voice.
“You know who this is?”
“Yes, sir!”
“What’s the holdup?”
“The sheriff’s still in his house, Colonel. He’s usually in his office by now, and already drunk his morning coffee. I don’t know what the holdup is. You want me to just knock on his door with the K-9?” Deputy Hunt asked. “I could tell him we got an anonymous tip?”
Forrest looked at his watch. “No, hell no. Maybe his wife decided to give it up this morning. Give him ten more minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are you parked? Can he see you?”
“I’m down the street in a friend’s SUV. No markings. Sheriff won’t recognize it.”
“And you have backup?”
“Yes, sir. Parker and McGown. They’re out of sight, too.”
“Okay. The questioning’s going to start pretty soon over at the department, so ten minutes is the limit. If he’s not outside by then, bust him right in front of his family.”
Hunt made a noise that sounded like a gulp.
“Are you up for this job, Deputy?”
“Yes, sir. No problem.”
“All right, then. If you see anything suspicious, call me. Otherwise, follow orders. Out.”
Forrest hung up and looked out over the narrow lake. A glittering gold bass boat arrowed along the opposite shore, trailing a silver wake that rolled gently into the cypresses. He sipped his coffee, then held his hand high in greeting.
Across the lake, the fisherman waved back.
CHAPTER 50
“PENN? PENN, WAKE UP.”
My mother’s face materializes above mine, only inches away. It takes a few moments for reality to assert itself, and longer for my sense of time to reengage. Then I glance at my watch, and a rush of adrenaline blasts through me.
“It’s nearly seven! Did you oversleep?” I sit up in the bed, unintentionally giving my mother an accusatory look.
“No,” she says purposefully.
Of course she didn’t. She’s fully dressed, and I can smell coffee and bacon all the way from the first-floor kitchen. Undoubtedly Annie is down there eating breakfast. “Then why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
Mom sits beside me on the bed, her brow knit with worry. “Are you sure you need to go question the Knoxes? You said there would be other law enforcement people there. The FBI even. Do they really need you?”
“Sheriff Dennis wants me there. I told you last night I needed to do this.”
“I know you did. But I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t usually pay attention to that kind of thing—women’s intuition and all that. But today is different. That Knox family is bad news. We lived fifty miles away from Ferriday and never left the farm, but our men knew about Elam Knox. They kept their daughters home when he came around with his ratty old revival tent. And the apples apparently didn’t fall far from the tree.”