THE CPSO INTERROGATION room looks pretty much like the ones in Houston, only without the sophisticated video system. It does have a camera though, trained on the table from a tripod in one corner. Deputy Spanky Ford led me to the soundproof observation room on the other side of the traditional one-way mirror, where I stand now. Through it I see John Kaiser sitting on one side of the interrogation table, studying a file. His large leather briefcase stands beside him on the floor. In a few moments, Snake Knox will be led into that room and chained opposite him. Kaiser has the confident look of a soldier who’s just won an important skirmish. If only he knew that somewhere in this building, Sheriff Dennis is separating Sonny Thornfield from his fellow prisoners and moving him to more private quarters, where he can be questioned without constitutional restraint. Under any other circumstances, I would be ashamed, but with my father in the hands of Forrest Knox, I can’t afford to observe the rules.
As soon as Spanky Ford left me, I dialed Carl Sims, a deputy I know in Athens Point, Mississippi, forty miles south of Natchez. A former marine sniper, Carl was born and raised in Lusahatcha County. He’s done security work for me in the past, during off-duty hours, but he has two more important qualifications. One, he’s a good friend of the Lusahatcha County sheriff’s chopper pilot. If anyone can organize an aerial search of the Valhalla hunting camp, Carl can. Second, Carl has a bit of a crush on Caitlin, as well as carrying some guilt about a mistake he once made in protecting her. Carl’s phone rang eight times, but he didn’t answer. It didn’t seem that luck was on my side, but Lusahatcha County is rural and infamous for spotty cellular coverage.
While I wait for Walker Dennis to let me know that Sonny Thornfield is ready for me, a CPSO deputy leads Snake Knox into the interrogation room. Kaiser doesn’t look up as the old man takes his seat, or even when the deputy chains Snake’s hands to a steel ring set in the metal tabletop.
I don’t know how Snake got this nickname, but at that table, separated from his aged subordinates, he does exude the cold-blooded menace of a venomous serpent. He might be asleep, for all the signs of life he shows. But like a cottonmouth moccasin coiled beside a pond, he’s ready to strike. With his slit eyes, pale skin, and stringy muscles, Snake seems a strange crossbreed of mammal and reptile. If emotion could be measured externally, he would likely register zero. The totality of his indifference to Kaiser reminds me of some killers I encountered in Houston—the ones who immediately went to sleep after being arrested for the most heinous of crimes. And yet . . . staring through the one-way glass, I also perceive the face of a young soldier and pilot beneath Knox’s sagging, weathered skin.
“I know you,” Snake says in a flat voice. “You’re John Kaiser, out of New Orleans. You’re married to that photographer.”
This knowledge worries me a little, which is exactly the response Snake intends to arouse in Kaiser. But Kaiser doesn’t look up from his file.
“You know that fatass planted that meth on us,” Snake goes on. “So you’d better say your piece while you have a chance. I won’t be here long.”
“I don’t care about the meth,” Kaiser says, setting down his file at last. He picks up the case and sets it flat on his lap.
“No?” Snake sounds surprised.
“No.” Kaiser opens the briefcase, takes out the rusted Nambu pistol that his agents removed from Luther Davis’s sunken Pontiac, and sets it carefully on the table between them.
Snake regards it like a pile of dog shit.
“Been a while since you’ve seen Frank’s gun, eh?” Kaiser asks.
Snake looks up, amusement in his eyes, but he says nothing.
Kaiser reaches into the briefcase and takes out the rusted handcuffs his divers found locked to the Pontiac’s steering wheel. These he sets beside the Nambu.
Snake studies the cuffs without touching them. Then he says, “Fond memories, my man.”
Given Kaiser’s sober demeanor, it’s hard for me to remember that he’s merely acting out a ruse for Snake Knox. He knows he has no chance of making this man talk by any legal means. Every move is designed to buy him equal access time to Sonny Thornfield. But nothing about Kaiser’s posture or facial expression communicates this. In this moment, Snake must feel he is the prime target of an experienced interrogator.
The FBI agent’s silent presence is so compelling that I’ve forgotten to try Carl Sims again. As I dial, Snake says: “Tell me something, Mr. FBI man.”
Kaiser inclines his head slightly to the side. “What’s that?”
“How do you know Adam and Eve weren’t black?”
When Kaiser refuses to rise to the bait, Snake says, “You ever try to take a rib from a nigger?” A slow grin spreads across the old Double Eagle’s face, the first real expression I’ve seen from him.
“What’s with this comic book racist act?” Kaiser asks. “I know you’re just putting on a show. Don’t you ever look around and realize you didn’t accomplish a damned thing with all your violence?”
Snake smiles expansively. “Oh, you’re right about that. We lost the war, all right. Yes, sir. The world we got now is the proof of that. How do you like it, Agent Kaiser? The liberals got what they wanted, and everything we feared came true.”
After six rings, Carl’s phone kicks me to voice mail again.