“I can’t say that I do.”
Knox gives me a skeptical look. “Are you sure? See, it’s the same as with killing. Until you’ve killed a man, you haven’t become a man. I know you know that, because you’ve killed men. You know it transforms you. Most men don’t, these days. That’s why I’m paying you the courtesy of this audience. But there are many levels to the mystery of life, Mayor. And at bottom, what you learn is that there is no mystery. There are sheep and there are wolves. That’s it. You follow?”
“Maybe you’d better enlighten me.”
“Since you’re not wearing a wire, I will.” Knox takes a tin of Copenhagen from his desk drawer and stuffs a plug behind his bottom lip. “The only gods who ever existed were men who had the courage to live as gods. You follow? Men who seized the power of life and death, embraced it, ruled through it.”
“You’re the Ubermensch, huh?”
“You think I’m ignorant,” he says, betraying some bitterness. “Unread, like my father. But you’re wrong. You, your father, Henry Sexton . . . do you know what kind of men you are? You’re the ones who plant crops in the river valleys, who invent gods, who pray for rain. You build houses and write laws, then beg forgiveness for every natural impulse.”
Knox leans forward, puts his elbows on his desk, and speaks with naked disdain. “I’m nothing like you. I’m like my father was. We’re the men who swept down off the steppes on horseback like a storm. We burned your cities, devoured your crops, salted your fields, pillaged your treasure, raped your women, and left them pregnant and wailing. Men like your father took black slaves to do the hard work, then mated with them and corrupted both races. But to us, you’re all slaves: to be used, worked, fucked . . . and finally killed, if necessary.”
“You did some mating yourself, I believe,” I say in a neutral voice. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re Lincoln Turner’s father.”
Forrest barks a laugh. “So? What could I possibly care about that?”
“You’re as guilty of corrupting your race as anybody else. That’s my point.”
Knox leans sideways and spits in a trash can. “The difference is, I don’t give a shit whether some nigger whelp lives or dies. A man takes his pleasure where he will and moves on, same as the buck.”
“You’re full of shit, Knox.”
Startled from his rant, he regards me as he might some a mentally defective child. “How’s that?”
“You think you fucked Viola Turner, but she fucked you ten times over.”
Suspicion comes into his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Viola Turner killed your father, dipshit. She killed the great Frank Knox.”
At last my words have struck home. The whites of Forrest’s eyes have grown larger. “Are you drunk?” he asks softly.
“I wish I was. It’s hard to think about this shit sober. But I’m going to, because you need to hear it. See, two days after you and your father’s crew raped Viola, Frank was brought into my father’s office, hurt. Viola saw her chance at payback and took it. She injected him with enough air to stop his heart. That doesn’t sound much like a sheep, huh? I’ll tell you something else, too. My father saw it happen, and he didn’t do a damned thing to stop it. He watched your father die like a dog, Forrest. Not a lion. A dog. Or a sheep, maybe.”
Knox’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.
“Frank Knox died in terror on a cold tile floor,” I press on. “He died helpless and begging for mercy from a black woman who cursed him while he bled out.”
Forrest has gone so still that I wonder if he’s even breathing. The blood has finally drained from his face. He raises a callused hand and rubs his jaw, the sound like the scrape of sandpaper.
“Doesn’t sound like the death of a Hun to me,” I say simply. “Sounds like one more broke-dick factory worker too dumb to see death coming for him.”
Knox’s eyes have narrowed to slits, yet I sense that he no longer sees me. Rather, he sees his father dying under the hand of a woman they both raped nearly forty years ago. Suddenly his eyes clear, and I feel the single-minded stare of a true predator upon me.
“You just signed your daddy’s death warrant,” he whispers. “Your mother’s, too. And your kid. And last of all . . . you. You’re going to watch them all die, Cage. And then, when you least expect it . . . I’ll step out of the shadows and gut you.”
In the wake of Caitlin’s death, his threats mean nothing to me. Perhaps this is a sign that my mind has come unmoored from reality.
“I’d like to do it now,” he says. “But too many people know you’re here.” His eyes suddenly flash with comprehension. “Or do they?” He raises a hand and points at me. “You came here to kill me, didn’t you? You want to cut my fucking throat. Only you can’t do it without going to jail.” A weird glint comes into his eyes. “Shit, Cage, you might just have some potential after all. Same as your old man. I guess Daddy was right. The blood never lies.”
I take a deep breath, then slide back my chair and get to my feet.
“You going somewhere?” Forrest asks.
“Yes. But you haven’t seen the last of me.”
“Oh, I know that. Well . . . there’s one thing I forgot to mention. I’d spare you, but the medical examiner’s going to tell you anyway, so I might as well enjoy it.”
Something in me rises to his goad, like iron filings to a magnet. “What are you talking about?”
Just before he answers, I feel a sickening dread that he’s going to tell me he raped Caitlin—which I could not bear. Because of her past experiences, Caitlin had a special hatred for rape, and it was an ever-present fear.
“Your fiancée was pregnant,” Forrest says. “Ain’t that a shame? You thought you just lost one person, but you lost two.”