I shake my head, then release Walt’s arm.
As the old Ranger hurries through the back door, Mom clenches my knee. “Penn, what’s happening? Did Walt say Tom is turning himself in?”
“Yes.”
She nods and shudders with conflicted relief. “Do you think the FBI would let me see him? Just for a minute?”
I can hardly answer, so profoundly shaken has this turn of events left me.
“Penn?” Mom says again.
Henry’s funeral is over. The coffin has departed, Reverend Baldwin has released the crowd with a barely audible prayer, and the doors at the back of the church have been thrown open, letting in a broad shaft of gray-white light.
“Walt said Quentin’s out back,” I tell her. “Go through the door behind the lectern and find him. He’ll help you.”
Mom grabs my hand and places it over Annie’s, then rushes through the door beside the altar.
As the excited mourners stream outside, and a couple of the journalists scrawl in notebooks produced from their suit jackets, Annie tugs at my sleeve. When I look down, I see her holding Caitlin’s cell phone to her ear. Her eyes are wide with an emotion I cannot read.
“Daddy, you need to listen to this.”
“What, Boo?”
“I finally broke Caitlin’s passcode! She left a message on her phone.”
Only then do I remember that Caitlin originally bought the Treo because it had a Voice Memo function that allowed up to an hour of voice recording, an invaluable tool for a journalist. “That’s a new phone, Boo, but she’s probably got an hour of memos on there already. I’ll listen to them after we get home.”
As Annie speaks again, a commotion erupts outside, so loud that I can hear it through the back wall. Several voices shout out for someone to stop something, and then “Leave him alone!”
“Daddy?” Annie asks worriedly.
“Dr. Cage!” someone screams.
Caitlin’s cell phone forgotten, I grab Annie’s hand and race through the door by the altar, into the blinding sunlight.
“Over there!” Annie cries, pointing at the crowded parking lot.
A burly man in a black T-shirt is gripping my father’s arm with one hand and aiming a pistol at him with the other. Four FBI agents and Walt Garrity have surrounded the gunman, but they seem helpless as the big man yells, “This man’s a fugitive! I’m making a lawful arrest!”
Only when I get close enough to read BAIL RECOVERY AGENT on the T-shirt do I understand what’s happening. Half of Kaiser’s men have their weapons out, but they’re not aiming them at the bounty hunter yet.
“Penn, do something!” cries my mother, who’s being restrained by an FBI agent.
“Everybody back off!” the big man yells. “This man’s wanted for the capital murder of a Louisiana State Police officer! I’m taking him into custody.”
As I let go of Annie and run toward the group, Walt’s hand disappears under his jacket. A voice that sounds like Kaiser’s yells for Walt to stop, but Kaiser might as well have shouted for a meteor not to fall. Out comes a black semiautomatic, and Walt orders the bounty hunter to release my father. Recognizing the steel of an armed lawman’s voice, the bounty hunter turns toward Walt and finds the barrel in his face.
“Texas Rangers,” Walt says. “Just take your mitts off him, junior. Nice and easy.”
“Take it easy, Captain Garrity,” Kaiser says in a level voice, motioning for his agents to holster their weapons. “Put that gun away.”
The bounty hunter stares back at Walt, and then his eyes narrow in suspicion. “Texas Ranger, my ass. This son of a bitch is wanted, too! What the hell’s going on around here?”
“You’re disturbing a funeral,” Walt says with eerie calm. “And that’s bad manners in any jurisdiction.”
“Manners?” the big man scoffs. “I just made a lawful arrest. There’s a hundred witnesses here. You’ll get the death penalty if you shoot me in front of all these people.”
Walt shakes his head so slightly that only the men who have witnessed lethal violence realize how close they are to it.
“I’m Special Agent John Kaiser, FBI,” Kaiser says to the bounty hunter. “I’ve already taken Dr. Cage into protective custody. If you don’t holster that weapon and leave now, you’ll be spending tonight in a federal lockup.”
This threat should be sufficient to defuse the situation, yet somehow it doesn’t. I can’t understand why the bounty hunter would disobey Kaiser unless . . . unless he’s waiting for some kind of backup.
“John, you need to get Dad out of here,” I say in a taut voice. “Right now. Walt, too, if you can. Something’s wrong about this.”
“Put down that gun, Garrity,” Kaiser orders.
“Him first,” Walt says, and for the first time I sense that Walt may be the sanest one of us.
I step closer to Kaiser. “This guy could be working with Forrest, John. He could be waiting for state SWAT to show, or for a kill shot to come out of the trees across the road.”
This prospect galvanizes Kaiser beyond anything I expected. He whips out his service weapon and plants its barrel on the temple of the bounty hunter. “You’re under arrest for violation of the USA PATRIOT Act. Drop your weapon now or I will fire. You have three seconds. One, two—”
“Wait! Shit!” The bounty hunter’s gun hits the ground and his hands fly skyward, his eyes bugging in shock and fear.