“It wasn’t him,” I echo, though my brain has spun into some zone where it feels disconnected from my voice. “It was one of those missing kids . . . Whelan.”
Thornfield’s head whips up at the mention of the name.
“Thank God,” says Kaiser, squeezing my shoulder. “What about Jordan? Is she okay?”
Dizzy with relief, I half fall toward the metal table. Kaiser steadies me by taking hold of my shoulders, and I rest one hand against the table’s edge to regain my balance.
“Tell John Jordan’s fine,” Caitlin says, the connection much clearer now. “We’ll probably be stuck down here talking to Sheriff Ellis for a while, but we’re both good. There’s no other word on Tom?”
“No.”
“Please call me the moment you hear anything.”
Already the euphoria of relief has begun to evaporate. “All right.”
“I love you!” Caitlin shouts.
“Okay . . . okay. I love you, too.”
And then she’s gone.
I look down at my hand, and a shock of revulsion goes through me. I’d thought Kaiser was squeezing my wrist, but the hand wrapped around my arm belongs to Sonny Thornfield.
“I’m glad for you,” the old man says.
Yanking my arm free, I shake my head and speak with open disgust. “You knew who was in that swamp. You killed Whelan, didn’t you? Or you saw it done. I saw it in your face just now.”
Thornfield’s watery eyes go wide. Then he shuts them tight and covers his face with his hands. Kaiser jerks me away from the old man and shoves me toward the door.
“Get out, Penn. You’ve had some luck just now, but don’t push it.”
I plant my feet at the door and stop us. “Luck is for fools, John. Are you going to give Thornfield his deal?”
He looks anxiously back at the old man.
“You’ve got to get him back to the cellblock soon. You already kept him longer than you did Snake.”
“Hold Penn here,” Kaiser say to his agents. Then he walks back and squats beside Thornfield, just as I did earlier. “Why didn’t you put your name by those victims, Sonny? The only way you could know who killed them was to be there yourself. Come on, man. Take the final step.”
The old man’s body is trembling like a scarecrow in a rainstorm.
“Give me something I can believe,” Kaiser pleads. “Then your family can have a new lease on life. New names, a new town, far out of Forrest’s reach.”
Thornfield’s bloodshot eyes slowly focus on Kaiser. “Something you can believe? How about Jimmy Revels’s last words?”
Kaiser glances back at me. “How do you know them?”
Thornfield shakes his head like a sinner facing his maker. “They’ve haunted me for the last forty years . . . that’s how. That boy whispers in my ears when I sleep.”
Kaiser swallows in anticipation. True detectives live for these moments. “What were they, Sonny?”
“‘I forgive you,’” Thornfield says with utter desolation. “Can you believe that?”
When Kaiser bows his head, I know Sonny’s confession has rung the bell of truth within him.
“Jimmy tried to forgive me with them words,” Sonny says, weeping openly now. “But he damned me forever.”
TWO MINUTES AFTER THORNFIELD’S confession, Kaiser and I stand alone in the observation room while two agents flank him at the interrogation table.
“You’ve broken him,” I say. “But you’ve spent too long with him. If you’re going to fly his family in, you’ll have to send him back to the cellblock in the meantime. Send him in with one mission, John. Find out where my father is.”
Kaiser shakes his head. “Not yet, Penn.”
“You’re going to blow it, man. Don’t get greedy. I know what you want, but you can’t spend another hour in there with Sonny asking about the Kennedy assassination. Snake will realize that he’s flipping. You’ve got to question the other Eagles to keep Sonny safe.”
Kaiser shakes his head, his expression adamant. “I can have other agents question the other Eagles. I’ve already separated them from one another. None of them knows what’s going on in here. Snake sure as hell doesn’t know. I’ve got one of my agents questioning him right now to throw him off.”
“But Snake will know. You know he will.”
It seems incomprehensible, but Kaiser is deaf to my appeals.
“You’ll get the Kennedy stuff with all the rest of it. There’s no deadline on that stuff. Why is it more important than half a dozen civil rights murders? Why is it more important than my father?”
Kaiser clenches his jaw, and for a moment I believe I’ve shamed him back to sanity. But then he grabs my shoulders, his eyes blazing with passion.
“Why do you think, Penn? Dwight Stone is going under the knife in ninety minutes. Once they put him under, he may never wake up again. If I can give him the peace of the answer he’s sought for twenty years, I’m going to give it to him.”
“At the cost of all the other cases? Of Sonny’s life?”
“Sonny’s not going to die.”
“My father might. He’s stuck somewhere without his medicine, if he’s alive at all. He doesn’t have nitro or insulin . . .”
“Fifteen minutes, Penn. That’s all I need. In fifteen minutes Sonny can confirm or deny every critical detail of the assassination. I just want to know whether Marcello was behind it, and whether Frank Knox fired the kill shot.”
“That’s a sixty-second conversation.”
“Christ, can’t you see? After this session, the director will authorize total protection for Sonny’s family, and I’ll bet any amount of money he’ll do the same for your father.”
“Like that matters now?”
Kaiser clutches my arm. “Don’t you want to know whether your father was complicit or not in writing that medical excuse for Frank Knox? Sonny might know that.”
I pull my arm free. “I already know. Whatever’s at the root of my dad’s behavior, it isn’t evil. I know that, even if you don’t.”
“Then at least let’s do this for Dwight. After that, we’ll see if Sonny can wheedle your dad’s location out of Snake.”
At this point, I surrender. Nothing is going to stop him anyway.
CHAPTER 62