Dennis has the grace not to take this as a personal insult. “Those charges are going to stick, Mr. Kaiser. And they should stick. Because those bastards have been selling that poison in this parish for years. And people have died from it.”
“I know they have, Sheriff.” Kaiser fans through a file without looking at it. “But the men you’re trying to nail aren’t simply meth dealers. Nor are they merely violent racists. They’re serial rapists and murderers related by blood and tribal ties. I don’t think there’s any comparable case in the literature, at least not on this scale. The linking crime signature is the trophy taking. It crosses all the generations. Two separate sources have mentioned that Elam Knox had a Bible bound in human skin, possibly given to him by his youngest legitimate son, Snake.”
“Holy Christ,” Dennis says, as if finally appreciating the scope of the battle he has taken on. “I should have gone ahead and crushed that asshole’s windpipe back there.”
“Then we’d be booking you for murder,” Kaiser observes. “Sheriff, I’m begging you to look at this thing objectively. If you won’t postpone these interrogations, at least let me handle them. I’m an expert on the Knox family, and I have far more experience than either of you at questioning sociopaths.”
“On that point,” Dennis says, “unless I’m mistaken, you also nearly killed a convict you were interrogating as part of an FBI research project. A handcuffed convict.”
Kaiser’s face colors. “That’s true. He was trying to get under my skin, and he did. He described a little boy he’d violated and killed eight years earlier with a power drill. I snapped and went for him, just like you did earlier with Snake. It was a mistake, and I’m lucky he didn’t die. You should—”
Someone has knocked at the office door.
“What is it?” bellows the sheriff.
A tall deputy pokes his head in. “Everybody’s printed and processed and locked up tight.”
“I’ll be there in a second, Silas.”
“Who you want first, Sheriff?”
“Snake fucking Knox.”
Kaiser clears his throat. “Sheriff, could I have another sixty seconds before you make that decision?”
Dennis tells the deputy to wait for confirmation on who to bring to the interrogation room.
After the door closes, Kaiser looks back and forth between us. “You two probably figure that Snake Knox is the leader of the Eagles that we have here and therefore possesses the most information. You’re right on both counts. But Snake is also the toughest of all six suspects. You just threatened to kill him, and he spit your threat right back in your face. He’s not worried about that crystal meth, Sheriff. You can’t break a guy like that. Not legally, anyway. And maybe not even with torture.”
Dennis’s face darkens. “Well, who would you question first, hotshot?”
“Sonny Thornfield. He’s got a daughter and two grandkids that I know about, and maybe more. One grandson is in the army. Sonny was probably present at most of the Eagles’ worst crimes, but nothing in his background indicates the kind of sociopathic behavior that the Knoxes and some others have displayed. Sonny’s also got severe heart disease, and he knows he’d never survive prison. Hell, he nearly died three days ago after Dr. Cage and Garrity questioned him in that van. If any Eagle ever had incentive to cut a deal, it’s Sonny Thornfield. I think that’s why Dr. Cage picked him.”
Sheriff Dennis turns up his palms as if it makes no difference to him. “So I’ll start with Sonny. Thanks for the tip.”
Kaiser shakes his head wearily. “No . . . if you do that, you’ll tip Snake that we know Sonny is the most vulnerable. The thing to do is start with Snake, but don’t truly go after him. I’ll show him the gun we pulled out of Luther’s Pontiac, maybe a bone or two. I’ll keep hammering at him with that, and he’ll keep stonewalling. Then we swap him for Sonny. But once Sonny’s in there, we show him what we really have. Not the meth, but everything I know about the Double Eagles and the Knoxes.”
“Compared to the meth, that’s nothing,” Dennis says. “If you had enough to nail him, you’d have arrested him already.”
“Sonny won’t forget about the meth,” I think aloud, as I realize what Kaiser is doing. He’s not going to make himself party to using planted evidence, but he doesn’t mind exploiting the fear that evidence has produced.
“Trust me, Sheriff,” Kaiser says. “If I make it plain that Sonny’s going to spend the last years of his life in Angola if he doesn’t turn state’s evidence—and at the same time offer him and his family federal witness protection—Thornfield will crack.”
Kaiser is right. In terms of planning his interrogation, Walker Dennis probably never got much past walking in, slamming the meth down on a table, and giving Snake an ultimatum. And that would be effective enough to accomplish my initial goal—distracting Forrest from hunting my father. But if Kaiser is willing to use the fear created by the planted meth, and pile what he knows on top of that, then Sonny might actually agree to flip on his comrades. If he does that, we might learn not only where Dad is, but also who killed Viola—not to mention getting enough testimony to send Forrest and Snake to prison. Closing deals like that often takes days, of course, not hours; but if I don’t at least admit the logic of Kaiser’s argument, he’ll suspect I was part of the planted meth gambit from the start.
“He’s making sense, Walker,” I say, still wondering if Sheriff Dennis condemned himself to prison by planting meth at Billy Knox’s residence.