Two FBI agents hustle him through the crowd, while another jerks Walt’s pistol from his hand. One agent starts to arrest Walt, but Kaiser waves him off. Then I hear tires spinning as an FBI vehicle leaves the lot, hurling gravel behind it.
The standoff has stunned everyone within sight of it. The faces in the crowd run the gamut from green looks of seasickness to fascinated stares. As I pull Annie into my arms, a black Suburban with tinted windows rumbles up beside Dad, who is hugging my mother like he’ll never see her again. Kaiser gently separates them, then shepherds my father toward an open door halfway down the passenger side. Dad turns, possibly looking for me, but I look down and put an arm around Annie’s shoulders so that I don’t have to endure whatever he wants to communicate to me.
After he’s been closed into the SUV, it waits only for Kaiser to board. The FBI agent climbs in, then rolls down the window and addresses us through it. “We’ve federalized the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office. I emptied out the jail. Let us get Dr. Cage processed into custody, and then you can see him.”
My mother clenches Kaiser’s hand and thanks him, and then the Suburban speeds away. As Mom falls into my arms, I hear a strange whir to my right. Turning, I see Quentin Avery rolling up in his motorized wheelchair. Despite missing both legs, he manages to look more debonair than any male present, thanks to his still-handsome face and his five-thousand-dollar suit.
At least a hundred people stand behind him, watching expectantly. Beyond them I see Swan Norris on the church steps, looking serene and resigned as people mob her with what politeness they can manage. Her grandson, too, is shaking hands with well-wishers. Quentin rotates his chair to face the mourners and, in the voice of a man with an enviable ability to stop and smell the roses, says, “That Swan sure sang Sam Cooke pretty, didn’t she?”
“She sho’ did,” someone agrees.
Annie tugs anxiously at my trousers. “Daddy, where were they taking Papa?”
I lean down and give her a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, Boo. Mr. Quentin’s going to take care of Papa.”
“How? That man with the gun looked really mean. The guys in the black truck looked scary, too.”
Quentin leans toward her with a confident smile and then winks. “Don’t you worry, pretty girl. Bullies are my specialty.”
“But they were a lot bigger than you are. And . . .”
The old lion’s smile broadens. “And they’re not in a wheelchair?” Quentin reaches out and taps Annie’s forehead. “Looks can be deceiving, darling. That’s an important lesson. Ask your daddy about it on the way home.” He gives me a mock salute. “I’m off, my brother. Keep your chin up, and remember what’s important.”
“Which is?”
“Those women on either side of you.”
As Quentin’s wheelchair hums off toward a white Mercedes van, Doris Avery climbs out and opens the side door, then deploys the ramp. She sees me watching, but she does not wave. This is exactly the kind of situation she wanted to avoid when she urged Quentin not to take Dad’s case, which already seems a lifetime ago.
Looking around for Mom, I see that Walt has taken her aside to explain what happened with the bounty hunter. For a brief moment I feel released from the weight of supporting her, and into that vacuum rushes all my grief and anger at my father. The logistics of getting to Henry’s funeral—and the intensity of the event itself—had distracted me from it for a while, but now the nearly unendurable reality returns with shattering force: Caitlin is still dead, and two days from now we have another funeral to attend.
“Daddy?” says Annie. “You need to listen to that message now.”
“I told you, babe, I’ll listen to it when we get home. I promise.”
“Now,” she insists, her face angry. “It’s important!”
There’s a desperate note in my daughter’s voice that I can’t ignore. “All right. Okay. You start it for me.”
Annie goes to work on the keypad with fingers as deft as her mother’s once were—and Caitlin’s, too.
“The passcode was ya’ll’s wedding day,” she says. “Or what it was supposed to be. All numbers. Lean down by me to listen.”
I do.
Annie presses a button, and then—as though calling from some plane beyond the grave—the second love of my life begins to speak in a strained whisper:
“Penn . . . this may be the last time you hear my voice. I’ve been shot. In the heart, according to your father.” The rasp of labored breathing comes from the phone’s tiny speaker. “Tom was . . . trying to help me, but his hands were cuffed, and . . . now he’s passed out. I’m afraid he may be dead. I’m going to try to save myself, but . . . in case something goes wrong . . . I want to tell you some things—”
“Daddy?” Annie asks, her eyes wide. “Daddy, are you okay?”
CHAPTER 88
THE ROAD FROM the AME Church to the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve has passed like a hallucination. I couldn’t say whether I’ve been driving thirty seconds, thirty minutes, or thirty hours. All the way I’ve played back Caitlin’s last words, spoken into her cell phone before she performed that last, desperate self-mutilation in an effort to save her life. Her message is a sequence of broken sentences punctuated by gasps, gurgles, wheezes, and wracking coughs. Each sound of distress makes it plain that she has little time to live. Yet I’m as powerless to stop listening to it as I am to stop breathing.