“Unless Snake came back here and moved him somewhere else. I think Sonny was telling the truth. He believed Dad was here. But you heard him. He said Snake was worried about a setup. He wanted insurance. Maybe Snake worried that Sonny was too weak to stand much interrogation, so he made sure that nobody but him knew where Dad really was.”
“Well, we can’t question Snake. Kaiser won’t let us near him.”
I think back to Snake’s smug countenance. “Nope. And questioning Forrest is pointless, unless we’re willing to do what we just did to Sonny. And even if we were, that’s easier said than done with him.”
Walt nods thoughtfully. “I know where Forrest is. The Bouchard lake house, Lake Concordia. Forrest and Ozan were on the outside deck, and I searched the whole place.”
“Could you have missed Dad?”
“No. Tom could’ve been in the boathouse, I suppose, but I just don’t think Forrest would keep a hostage that close to him. Much more likely Tom would be out at Valhalla.”
“But you were there, too.”
Walt shrugs. “They could have moved him back to either place since I left. If we can’t talk to Snake, then Forrest is our best chance. But we’ll have to fight our way in there, unless either Sheriff Dennis can get us a warrant—”
“That won’t happen.”
“—or you set up some kind of negotiation with Forrest.”
“The way I did with Brody Royal? That didn’t end too well.”
“I didn’t say it was a good plan. But it might be the only one.”
“No matter what happens, Forrest could order Dad killed, then say he died while resisting arrest. Not only that, he could arrest you as a fugitive, and me for interfering on your behalf.”
“Can you get a warrant for Valhalla?” Walt asks.
“Lusahatcha County is in our court district, and I know the circuit judge in Natchez. I can probably get a warrant, but I don’t know that Sheriff Ellis would serve it. From what I’ve heard, he’s pretty cozy with the local hunting camp owners, including the Knoxes. Plus, Valhalla is known to be connected with the Knoxes. I don’t think they’d stash him in a place we could find using common knowledge, paperwork, or computers.”
“Shit,” says Walt, spitting on the floor.
“You just left your DNA here,” I observe.
“Fuck some DNA. We’re way past that now.”
We sit in silence for several seconds, and in the strange vacuum, a profound fear begins to flow through me. “Walt,” I say in a flat voice. “What does your gut tell you? Do you think they’ve killed him?”
“I’ve worried from the start they meant to kill him so he’d go down as Viola’s killer, and that investigation would stop. And with the trooper hanging around our necks . . . we just made it too easy for them.”
Walt’s tone of despair leaves me feeling hollowed out. Short of getting Snake Knox in that CPSO broom closet with Walt and a wet towel, I don’t see that we have an option.
“Hey,” Walt says, shoving the old footlocker with his foot.
“What?”
“You see this? This is a marine footlocker, World War Two vintage. It’s made of wood. I saw a few of ’em in Korea.”
“So?”
“So it’s got a brand-new padlock on it. A Chubb. Take a look.”
Looking down, I see a pitted, flimsy-looking latch with a heavy, shining padlock on it. Above the circular latch is a metal nameplate with the letters CPL. SONNY THORNFIELD stamped on it. The same letters are stenciled on top of the oblong box, but they’ve faded to near invisibility.
Walt taps his thighs, his eyes on the padlock. “Why does an old gomer like Sonny lock up his piece-of-shit footlocker like it’s holding the crown jewels?”
“Maybe it’s all he’s got in the world.”
Walt slides up to the edge of the sofa and leans forward. “Let’s find out.”
Reversing his pistol in his hand, he hammers at the latch and lock, but they refuse to yield.
I get up and go through the drawers beside the plastic sink against the wall, hunting for a screwdriver. I don’t find one, but in the back of the drawer I find an old rat-tail file, as rusty as some tool left behind by the slaves who built the pyramids. Taking it in my hand, I go to the footlocker, wedge it into the latch, and with one savage twist snap the latch free from the lid of the case.
“Good man,” says Walt. “Let’s see what that old fool thinks is worth protecting. Probably ten years’ worth of Hustler.”
My stomach feels strangely hollow as I lift the lid, just the way it did when as a boy I secretly unpacked my Christmas presents after finding them hidden in a closet. In the dim light of the cabin, I see mementos of Sonny Thornfield’s younger life stacked carefully in layers. A woman must have packed this locker. Digging patiently through it, I find war ribbons and medals; a pistol and bayonet; an ancient tube of Barbasol shaving lotion; a marine forage cap; a Ku Klux Klan hood and several Klan pins—one a fiery cross wrought in gold—lying on what appears to be a folded white robe; a stack of baseball cards from the early 1940s, bound by a dry-rotted rubber band; a cup of multicolored marbles; a Playboy magazine from 1953; a snapshot of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Natchez, probably the big one held in the summer of 1965; two hand grenades that have been emptied of explosive; Thornfield’s birth certificate, along with several other yellowed legal papers, including his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps. But at the bottom of the footlocker, pressed between two ancient hymnals, lies a memento of a different sort—the sort that Kaiser dealt with in his previous life.
What I first think is just a chamois cloth is actually a soft swatch of leather with the letters USN needled into it with dark blue ink. Above these letters are an anchor and a rope. About five inches long, and brown as stained walnut, the skin has rolled a little at the edges. Fighting the urge to gag, I lift the thing from the bottom of the footlocker. The obscene trophy is soft and buttery, like the finest grain leather. It is leather, I remind myself. Tanned to perfection by someone with a deep knowledge of such things.
“Son of a bitch,” Walt intones.