Tom shrugged and kept hacking at his face. “It’s been a while.” He rinsed white hair from the blade and went back to the task.
Yeah, like fifty years, Walt thought. He hadn’t seen his friend without facial hair since Korea. Tom’s white mustache and beard had become so much a part of his identity that their absence was almost tangible. The new face being revealed in the mirror disoriented him. The strong jawline Walt remembered from the army had emerged, taking ten years off his friend.
“You look like a man with a plan,” Walt said.
“Maybe. Where’s Caitlin’s body?”
Walt didn’t like the sound of that. “I imagine they’ve got her down in Baton Rouge, awaiting autopsy. She was DOA from a gunshot, so it’s a coroner’s case.”
Tom closed his eyes and breathed like a man forced to expend a significant fraction of his energy just to move his diaphragm.
“Are you okay?” Walt asked.
“I’m functioning. Which is more than I can say for that poor girl.”
Walt waited for whatever was going to come next. Grief did strange things to people, and Tom was unlikely to be an exception.
He turned to Walt, squinching his mouth up so that he could shave the whiskers between his lips and chin. “What was Caitlin doing down in that swamp? I didn’t even ask her.”
Walt shrugged. “Searching for bodies, probably. And if she hadn’t gone down there and found you, yours would have been the next one.”
“So she took my place. You think that’s a fair trade? A thirty-five-year-old with her whole life ahead of her for a man at death’s door?”
Walt shook his head. “Life don’t work that way, pard, and you know it. What happens, happens. There’s no sense to it.”
Tom rinsed the razor again, examined his face, then went back to scraping off the remains of his beard.
“Come on,” Walt said. “What are you thinking?”
“First . . . I need to call Penn. I need to apologize.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not unless you’re ready to turn yourself in. Penn’s being guarded by the FBI, and he’s probably pretty upset with you today. If you call him, they’re going to trace you, and—”
“I am ready, Walt.”
Walt blinked in confusion. “Ready for what?”
“On top of everything else I’ve done this week, I got Caitlin killed and I’ve turned you into a fugitive. It’s too late for me to help Caitlin, but not to help you. I figure we’re down to two choices. We can either kill Forrest Knox, or I can turn myself in to the FBI.”
Walt didn’t answer right away. He’d given the first option considerable thought during the night, and he’d decided it was suicidal. Of course, Tom already knew that, and he was probably resigned to it. Or maybe resigned wasn’t the right word. He was at peace with it. Drawn to it, even. The way a lot of guilty men were drawn toward death.
“As for door number one,” Walt said, “I’m not anxious to make Carmelita a widow. And I can’t see us getting out of that play alive.”
Tom turned to him and held out his right arm. “Then will you pull this damned IV out? I did it once yesterday, and it wasn’t much fun.”
“I will, if you tell me about that second option.”
Tom dropped his arm to his side. “On Thursday, Caitlin told me that Agent Kaiser would offer me protective custody if I could give the Bureau information about the Kennedy assassination.”
Walt had to think about this for a minute. “The Kennedy assassination?”
“That’s right.”
“What the hell do you know about that?”
“More than you’d think, I’m sorry to say. I knew Carlos Marcello back in New Orleans, when I was a medical extern at the parish prison. Our paths crossed a few times after that, and I got pulled into something I didn’t really understand.”
Walt felt as though the floor had shifted beneath him. “Well, ain’t you full of surprises.”
“The point is, I may be able to buy protection from Kaiser with what I know. Hopefully for you and me both. And I think it’s high time I did.”
“How exactly are you going to do this without getting killed?”
“You’re going to coordinate the negotiation, with those burn phones of yours. And I’m going to arrange a surrender in a very public place.”
“It sounds like you already have somewhere in mind.”
“I do.”
Walt sighed, dreading the answer. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“It’s somewhere I would have gone anyway. Henry Sexton’s funeral.”
“Oh, hell. That’s crazy. You’d be recognized and arrested before you could cross the church parking lot.”
Tom patted his clean-shaven face. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s your idea of a disguise?”
Tom nodded with surprising confidence.
Walt had to admit he might not have recognized his friend in a crowd if he hadn’t known about the missing beard ahead of time. And even then . . .
Tom tossed his wet towel into the bathtub, where it landed with a slap. “I’m the last person the Knoxes would expect to show up at that funeral. And if they show, we’ll let Kaiser worry about them.”
“Where’s Sexton’s funeral gonna be? Louisiana, I’d guess.”
“The Early Funeral Home in Ferriday,” Tom confirmed. “Jim Early owns that business. I’ve known him thirty-five years. He’s buried many a patient of mine. Visitation probably doesn’t start until nine A.M. at the earliest. It’s only six thirty now. Jim’ll let us in before anybody gets there, and then he can smuggle us over to the church without anybody the wiser.”
Walt slapped his thigh. “You’re some damn piece of work, I swear. You’ve got cops from two states and the FBI on your tail, and you want to visit a funeral home to see a dead man who’ll never even know you were there? If you want to turn yourself in, call Kaiser and arrange to do it in the middle of nowhere. Hell, do it here! This old mausoleum is perfect.”