WILMA DEEN TURNED the stolen pickup right on Auburn Avenue, cruised for a quarter mile, then turned left on Duncan Avenue. This took her once more past the house that Penn Cage had pulled out of this morning, and where Forrest Knox had told her Tom Cage might be hiding. For the second time she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in blue jeans walking in the front yard of the two-story house. Wilma was sure he was a guard, and she’d wanted to know if there was another in back. After she crossed over a rise in the street, she pulled over to a tall stand of hedges and stopped.
A blond, wiry twenty-five-year-old roustabout named Alois Engel stepped out of the hedge and climbed into the backseat of the truck. All Wilma knew about Alois was that Snake Knox had fathered him by some honky-tonk slut, and he worked for the Double Eagles in some capacity. She thought she remembered Sonny Thornfield once telling her the kid was into white supremacy, but he didn’t look like much to her. The most distinctive thing about Engel was the anger that bled steadily from his eyes. He looked hungry for retribution, but Wilma had no idea for what. Nor did she care. She was here for one reason: to make sure her brother had not died for nothing.
“Any guards in back?” Wilma asked, accelerating down State Street, which was lined with expensive cars.
“One,” said Alois. “An old nigger. I think he’s a city cop, or used to be. The guy out front looks like an old hippie or something, doesn’t he?”
“He looks pretty tough to me. I think I’ve seen him doing dirt work across the river.”
“Fuck him. We just need a diversion to make sure we can get the bombs to the door.”
“We don’t have a go order yet, do we?”
“We will. I heard it in the colonel’s voice.”
Alois jerked a dirty towel off the box sitting beside him on the backseat. In the box were three sealed wine bottles filled to the neck with a mixture of gasoline, kerosene, tar, and potassium chlorate. Taped to the side of each bottle were two windproof matches.
“Who did you say designed these things?” Wilma asked. “The Russians?”
“The Finns,” Alois said irritably. The kid fancied himself a connoisseur of World War II weaponology. “They used them in the Winter War.”
“Against the Russians?”
“Against the Germans.”
“Okay, okay, BF deal. Somehow they don’t look like real Molotov cocktails without the rag hanging out.”
Alois grunted. “Do you want to look cool while you set yourself on fire, or really hurt the people who wasted your brother?”
Wilma said nothing. This kid had no idea what was really going on. To him Glenn Morehouse had been just a fat old guy who’d lived in her house, not an unstoppable force that could be pointed at a target like a tank.
“How well do you know Forrest?” Wilma asked.
“Well enough to know that when he asks you to do him a favor, you do it. He’s about the baddest son of a bitch I ever met, and I’ve met some.”
Wilma laughed. “I just bet you have, blondie.”
The truck jounced over a speed bump, and the bottles clanked ominously in the box.
“Stuff that fucking towel in there!” Wilma snapped. “Wedge it between the bottles. I don’t plan on burning up in this truck.”
Alois obeyed with surprising delicacy. Then he reached down to the floor and brought up a heavy Sig Sauer pistol.
“You know, if that guy doesn’t go in for a break pretty soon, I’m just going to walk up and blow his shit away.”
“Forrest didn’t say anything about shooting guards,” Wilma said.
“Well, he doesn’t want us waiting on the street all day.”
“Just hold your water. He’ll have to take a leak soon. You got the masks?”
Alois lifted a Walmart bag from the floor. “You get the Harry Potter. I’m taking Spider-Man.”
She shook her head in derision. Kids.
ONLY ONCE IN HER life had Peggy Cage had her faith in her husband tested as it was being tested now, and she wasn’t sure she was up to the challenge. Still, she put the best possible face on things, as she’d been taught to do from birth. Despite her protestations to Penn, having Kirk Boisseau close by had improved her sense of security. Like a lot of Natchez men of his generation, Kirk had been taught English by Peggy at St. Stephen’s Prep back in the early 1970s. He’d grown up to be quite an imposing adult, and today she was glad of it. Tom’s elderly patient James Ervin was guarding the back of the house—unless it was his brother Elvin; Peggy could scarcely tell the difference between the retired cops. With both James and Kirk on guard, it seemed that physical security was not a problem, and yet Peggy felt deeply unsettled.
One reason was Annie. As the mayor’s daughter, Annie Cage had become even more adept than her grandmother at putting on a public face, but the girl couldn’t fool Peggy. Though she’d managed an animated discussion with Kirk, Annie was clearly worried about her father and Caitlin—and terrified for her grandfather. Annie had also suggested to Peggy that Penn and Caitlin were having “relationship trouble.” Though she had only her intuition and Caitlin’s continued absence to support this assertion, Peggy suspected she was right.
Early that morning, Annie had sat down in the den and made a great show of reading Caitlin’s most recent articles aloud from the newspaper Kirk had brought with him. Peggy tried to look interested, but the only stories that held her interest anymore were those dealing with the murder for which Tom had been indicted, and there had been precious little information printed on that case after the initial story.
“Gram!” Annie cried, getting to her feet with her cell phone held aloft. “Caitlin just texted me!”