The Adams County Sheriff’s Department was waiting for me when I finally drove up to my house on Washington Street. The deputies didn’t even let me go to the door before hauling me the six blocks to the jail. Mom and Annie ran out onto the porch as they handcuffed me and forced me into the back of a cruiser, and I could hear Annie’s screams through the glass.
All I remember of the drive home from Valhalla is forty miles of oak and pecan and pine trees covering the rolling land. A few times I flashed back to Forrest Knox lying in the corner of his study like a bag of bones, but I felt no emotion. I now believe I was slowly decompressing from a state of mind that attorneys used to call “irresistible impulse.” At one time this principle was an important component of the insanity defense. Essentially, it was a way for sane people to plead diminished capacity, by arguing that even though they knew the difference between right and wrong, they could not have restrained themselves from killing. It was sometimes called the “policeman at the elbow” defense. In other words, if I would have killed my victim even with a policeman standing at my elbow, then surely I could not be responsible for my actions. After John Hinckley was declared not guilty by reason of insanity, most states threw out this component of the defense, and it’s a shame. Because I’m a living argument for the validity of that statute.
It was the memory of Walt Garrity that reawakened my emotions: faithful Walt, who despite being badly wounded had insisted on going God knows where to check out the key he’d found in Forrest’s pocket. As he drove away from me, the silver Lincoln he’d borrowed from Pithy Nolan’s maid had weaved all over the road, but then he got the car centered in a lane and disappeared over the hill.
After I reached Natchez, I drove aimlessly around the city, much the way I once had as a teenager. I drove down Broadway and paused in front of Edelweiss, the house that Caitlin will never live in. I suppose I was waiting for some insight, or even a blind impulse to push me in a particular direction. But none came. Walt was right: my only real choice, other than to turn myself in for murder, was to go home.
And there I found Billy Byrd’s welcoming committee. The speed with which they identified me as Forrest’s killer was impressive, and during the booking process Byrd lost no time bragging about what had gone down. Forrest Knox’s cousin Billy had flown into the Valhalla airstrip from Texas and discovered the bodies shortly after Walt and I left the camp. After calling the Lusahatcha County sheriff (yet another Billy, albeit Billy Ray), Billy Knox got the idea of checking the deer cameras strapped to pine trees on the Valhalla property. Several had missing SD cards, but in one Billy found not only a card, but also a photograph of me. The photo was dated and time-stamped, which definitively placed me at the scene of the crime near the time the two men were killed. Sheriff Ellis immediately issued an APB for first-degree murder, and based on this, Sheriff Byrd had started combing Adams County for me. Since I drove straight home, more or less, I was an easy catch.
I’m surprised that Shadrach Johnson hasn’t come up to my cell to gloat, but perhaps Shad senses that right now, any punch he lands on me will strike an anesthetized man. Better to wait until the awful reality of my situation has sunk fully into my soul.
My prospects are grim indeed. When I tore out of Clayton, Louisiana, bent on confronting Forrest Knox, I laid my daughter’s future down on the green felt of God’s roulette table and spun the wheel. So long as that wheel remained spinning, I felt the wild rush of seizing fate in my hands and twisting it to my purpose. When I impaled Forrest on his own spear (and Walt spirited me away from the scene of the crime), the gleaming ball appeared to drop into my chosen color: black. But at the last possible moment—thanks to forces beyond my control—that ball skipped over into a red slot. Now, less than one hour later, I’m locked behind bars, the remainder of my life held in escrow.
Sheriff Byrd gave me my own cell, something I know enough to appreciate even in my deadened mental state. At best, cell mates are an irritating annoyance; at worst, they’re sociopaths who will beat you, rape you, kill you, or provoke you to murder in self-defense. My block has six cells, five of which hold two or more men, a mixture of blacks and whites. Most are here on drug charges, but two have been charged with armed robbery, and one—the lone Mexican—with murdering his wife. My father isn’t housed on this block, and for that I’m grateful. I have no desire to see him now. According to a man two cells down from me, Dad was here for a while, but they transferred him out half an hour before I was brought to my cell. To my knowledge, Walt has not been arrested or even found, so perhaps the deer camera didn’t capture his presence at Valhalla.
A harsh buzz announces that the block door is about to open, and with a low clang, it does. A big black deputy enters and walks slowly down the line of cells as though checking for mischief. The closed-circuit TV system monitoring the cellblock doesn’t show every inch of every cell.
“What you lookin’ at, mook?” he challenges someone down the block. “Lemme see them hands. Both of ’em! Thass right.”
He moves steadily up the block, getting closer to me.
“Miss Francine say we gon’ have chicken and greens tonight, boys. What you think about that? Maybe even a biscuit for every man this time.”
The whoops and hollers that greet this news tell me fried chicken and biscuits is a rare treat in these environs. As excited conversation breaks out, the deputy pauses in front of my cell and focuses heavy-lidded eyes on me.
“Come here,” he says. “Move.”
I get up from my cot and shuffle warily toward the bars, expecting some kind of taunt. But when I near him, the guard whispers, “I got a message for you. Quentin say don’t say nothing to nobody, no matter what they tell you. He’ll be up here soon as he can.”
My pulse kicks up several beats. “Who told you that?”
“Mr. Q.,” he whispers.