Excited laughter burst from Caitlin’s throat. “Where was the real one?”
“They were both real. But while we waited to see the sheriff, I figured he might try something like that. It’s what all third-world policemen do. So I put the card with the most pictures on it where they wouldn’t find it and left the other one in the camera for him to steal.”
“You are crazy.”
“You don’t know the half of it. When I went to the bathroom, I stepped into an empty office, plugged the card into a computer, and printed you a copy of the map.”
Caitlin gasped in disbelief. “Oh, my God.”
Jordan pulled a folded sheet out of her back pocket and passed it to Caitlin. “I’m pretty sure you can see everything.”
Caitlin unfolded the page and saw a high-resolution copy of Toby Rambin’s map, her own thumbs showing above it on either side.
“You’re a superhero,” she said. “Seriously.”
“Well, don’t show it to every deputy in the parking lot.” Jordan unslung her camera bag and tossed it into her car. “Come on. Let’s get you to your new wingman.”
“Wait a second. Where did you hide that memory card?”
“Trade secret.” Jordan winked. “Let’s go.”
SONNY THORNFIELD TURNED HIS head slightly to the left as a big deputy named Isbell led him into the cellblock and toward his cell. When Snake caught Sonny’s eye through the bars, Sonny winked, then put his eyes front again.
“Open number seven!” Isbell barked.
Someone outside the block pressed a button, and the door to Sonny’s cell opened. He went in and sat on his cot without looking back at the deputy.
“Close seven.”
A deep buzzer sounded repeatedly, then the heavy motorized door slid down its track and clanged shut.
“Hey, Sonny, when the fuck we gettin’ outta here?” asked Skillet McCune, a flat-faced welder who had once been a Double Eagle squad leader. “They can’t keep us here like this without a phone call.”
“FBI says we can,” Deputy Isbell cut in. “Patriot Act. They can leave you in this hole till Judgment Day if they want. They can pull out your fucking fingernails, too. They can waterboard your ass, and the Supreme Court can’t say shit about it.”
As the deputy passed Snake’s cell, Snake said, “What’s that chubby wife of yours get up to while you’re standing guard over drunks and crackheads, boy?”
The deputy’s baton was off his belt in less than a second. He cracked the wood against the bars of Snake’s cell, only missing his fingers because Snake jerked them clear in time. Snake got a good laugh from that. Isbell whacked the bars twice more, but Snake only laughed louder. The red-faced deputy cursed and stomped out of the cellblock.
Sonny lay on his cot with his hands behind his head. He felt like a man balanced on a tightrope, with hell on one side and purgatory on the other. As a Baptist, he didn’t believe in purgatory, but he felt like that intermediate state of punishment was about the best he could hope for, given his past sins, with the hope of getting into heaven someday if he could atone in the time he had left.
He was starting to identify with Glenn Morehouse, who had complained so bitterly during the last weeks of his life about all the sins he’d been dragging behind him like lead weights chained to his dying body. For Sonny, the prospect of starting over with his estranged family in some new town was like an unexpected gift. He couldn’t afford to let himself believe too much in it, in case his daughter screwed it up for everyone—which, if the past was any guide, was a real possibility.
He tensed up as he heard Snake sidle up to the bars of the adjacent cell. He could feel suspicion radiating like heat from that direction. Then Snake’s voice floated to him, coarse but insinuating.
“I hear you were gone an awful long time, Sonny. You makin’ new friends out there?”
“Fuck, no. I got no control over how long they keep me. They’re acting like I’m the weak link or something, probably because of my heart attack. But fuck them.”
Snake nodded, seeming to buy Sonny’s brazen act. “How’d they pitch you?”
“They asked me a lot about Dr. Cage, actually. They want to know where he is.”
Snake laughed softly. “You didn’t tell ’em, did you?”
For a couple of seconds Sonny considered saying that the FBI had already raided his cabin and found it empty, but his sanity stopped him. “Right. When the cabin’s in my name? That’d be a genius move.”
Snake didn’t comment on this.
“They also kept telling me I was gonna die in Angola. That fed Kaiser asked me if I thought I’d last a week in a jail full of niggers, once they found out who I was.”
Snake chuckled. “He’s got a point there. It’s a good thing none of us will spend a day on that farm.”
“You really think we should be talking like this? They could be taping everything we say in here.”
“No, they can’t,” said Snake. “That’s against the law.”
“You heard Isbell,” Skillet said from the cell to Sonny’s right. “We’re talking feds here. They don’t give a shit about the law on this thing. Not with that Patriot Act. Hell, they planted that meth, didn’t they? And you can see the cameras right up there in the corner.”
“Those cameras are there to keep morons from killing themselves,” Snake said. “Keeps the state from gettin’ sued. But they don’t record sound. What, you think Kaiser has a platoon of lip-readers out there, watching us?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said a reticent man named Gene Christian, a retired electrician’s helper. “Sonny’s right. Let’s keep our mouths shut. Remember what Frank used to say. A man’s worst enemy in this world is his mouth.”