“All that matters now is getting clear of this place. We don’t know who else might be out there.”
He stops me at the door, then opens it a crack and peers through. “We’ve got to run for it. We’ll take the car you brought and drive to mine. I’m down the drive a ways. I don’t know if anybody’s out there, but we’ve got no choice. You ready?”
“I’m right behind you.”
“If I’m hit, don’t stop. Get the hell away, and call Kaiser or Mackiever. Nobody else.”
I nod, recalling the night I told Henry Sexton something similar.
Walt shoves open the door and goes flying down the stairs with amazing speed for an old man. I leap off the porch and quickly pass him, racing for my mother’s Camry.
“Go!” he yells. “Go, go, go! Start the car!”
When the Camry’s engine roars to life under my hands and feet, a manic exhilaration blasts through me. Then Walt slams into the door, yanks it open, and gets in beside me. Three seconds later, we’re fishtailing down the road toward the highway.
“I’ll tell you where to stop,” he says breathlessly, one hand cupped behind his bloody head. “I’m in Pithy’s maid’s car.”
“Screw that. You’re coming home with me.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to take care of something.”
“What?”
Walt digs in his pants pocket, then opens his hand beside the steering wheel. In his palm lies a small silver key.
“What’s that?”
“I found it in Forrest’s pocket.”
“What does that fit?”
“I don’t know. But I think it may be a padlock. I mean to find out.”
“How?”
“Stop here! I’m parked right through those trees.”
I slam the brake pedal and skid to a stop near where he pointed. “You’re crazy if you go off by yourself now. You could die, Walt.”
When he shakes his head, the look in his eyes tells me it’s pointless to say another word.
“Get back to your mother, Penn. Your mother and Annie. You were never here.”
CHAPTER 89
THE BLOOD WAS still wet when Billy Knox walked into his office at Valhalla and saw his cousin lying dead in the corner with Alphonse Ozan sprawled across his legs. Billy had asked his pilot to wait down at the airstrip in case he wanted to make a swift exit, and he thanked God he had. But after the first rush of panic eased, he decided to learn what he could before running back to Texas.
Taking a small Walther from his ankle holster, Billy moved quickly through the office. The floor safes behind the desk were open—open and empty. His second instinct was to call Snake, but then it struck him that his father had been out of jail long enough to have done this himself.
Billy propped his butt on the edge of the desk he’d sat at for so many hours and stared at the sword jutting from Ozan’s back.
What’s the smart move? he wondered. What would Forrest do?
Then he realized that the man he’d always looked to for guidance was dead. For the first time in his life, he was truly on his own.
Before he could make any decision, he had to know whether his father was behind this or not. This desire triggered the first brilliant idea Billy had had in a long time. Keeping his pistol in his hand, he slipped out through the glass doors and trotted around to the front of the lodge, moving swiftly from tree to tree. There were eight or ten game cameras between the lodge and the main road, and at least fifty more on the larger property. But it was the ones near the drive that interested Billy.
The first three he checked had had their SD cards removed, which made him suspect Snake even more. But in the fourth camera he found a card in the slot. In the remaining six he found four more cards. There were no computers left in the lodge (Forrest had removed them prior to the FBI search), but Billy had a laptop in his bag in the plane.
Racing back to the ATV he’d ridden up from the airstrip, he cranked the engine and took off down the rocky trail that led to the bottomland where they’d graded out a runway. If luck was with him, he would soon know who had killed the most dangerous man he’d ever known.
Billy hoped to God it wasn’t his father.
CHAPTER 90
I HAVEN’T BEEN inside a jail cell since my time working as an ADA in Houston, and then it was to visit prisoners. Today I’m the inmate, and the unforgettable ambiance hurls me right back to my former career in Houston. I’m sitting on a plastic-coated mattress on the lower bunk of an eight-by-ten cell. The chemical tang of disinfectant can’t mask the reek of mildew, urine, old vomit, and worse things. The toilet is a stainless steel hole with no seat, and I wouldn’t sit directly on it for a thousand dollars. The scarred walls have been scrubbed and painted countless times, but there’s no shortage of artwork. Above a childlike drawing of a massive phallus entering exaggerated labia lined with teeth, a recent occupant scrawled the encouraging missive Im goin home, but YOUR fucked!
From the mouths of babes.