Forrest and my father . . . What could Shad know about Knox and my father? Whatever it is, I’d rather find out now than sit here wondering about it for the next few hours. After a long sigh, I get to my feet and move up to the bars. Shad’s eyes become clearer as I get closer, and in them I see a strange, hyperexcited light.
“I’m telling you this,” he says in a near whisper, “because you’re one of the few southern white males I’ve met who’s capable of appreciating irony. Two days ago, Forrest Knox came to me and told me he was either going to kill your father or let him go free. If Dr. Cage went free, he said, I was to drop all charges and leave the crime unsolved. If I didn’t, Knox would destroy me. I don’t know if that bastard had the power to do it, but he talked like he did.”
Shad’s eyes flicker in the shadows between us. He’s watching me for signs of emotion. “Do you see?” he whispers. “If you’d let Forrest live today, I’d have had no choice but to drop the charges against your father. And you would never have been charged with killing him. That almost beggars belief, doesn’t it?”
I can tell from Shad’s voice that he’s telling the truth. And what he said fits with what I know. Forrest probably went to see Shad before he offered me the deal for my father’s safety. He wanted to be sure the district attorney could and would kill the case against Dad. Which means that Forrest meant to stand by that deal, if he believed I could compromise my principles and do the same. This terrible irony sinks into me like the spear I drove into Forrest’s throat, and this time I can’t hide the pain.
Shad’s eyes devour my anguish the way death row convicts in solitary drink in their allotted hour of sunlight. “Strange, isn’t it?” he asks. “I’ve dedicated so many hours to paying you back in kind, and in the end I didn’t have to do anything. You’ve destroyed yourself. It’s positively Greek, isn’t it?”
As he stands mulling over my fate, the irrational rage that possessed me a few hours ago lights up my nerves like copper wires, and my muscles fill with blood. Shad perceives the change, but he doesn’t recognize it for what it is.
“I never thought I’d see you like this,” he goes on, a distinct note of pleasure in his voice, like that of an oenophile drinking a rare wine. “Not in my wildest fantasies. Your father, yes. But you? . . . Never. Just goes to show you. I suppose your mother will have to raise your daughter. Unless your sister takes her back to England. I only hope Mrs. Cage lives long enough to—”
Without even thinking I grab Shad behind the neck and snatch his head against the bars with a muted clang. The security footage of this assault might tack attempted murder to my charge sheet, but at this point, what does it matter?
As Shad screams and tries to jerk himself free, the other residents of the cellblock shriek like crazed zoo monkeys. Before Shad can get away, I bring up my right fist and drive it against his skull with all the follow-through I can muster.
The impact hurls him against the opposite cell, where another prisoner kicks him in the back, knocking him to the floor. When he rolls over, I see pure terror in his eyes. Something crunched when I struck him—either my hand or his skull—and rather than try to get up, he covers his face with his hands and lies there shuddering.
Ten seconds later, two white deputies rush into the block and help Shad to his feet while a bigger black one charges my cell with a Taser. I back against the wall with both open hands held high. The deputy roars something at me, but his warnings are drowned by those of Shad Johnson, who’s now yelling that I’m going to get the death penalty for killing Forrest Knox, just like my dad will for killing Viola.
My fellow inmates’ cacophony has reached such a frenzied ecstasy that I expect a half-dozen armor-suited deputies to flood in and blast us with pepper spray, but no one else appears. The two deputies with Shad help him limp to the steel door, while the black one remains in front of my cell. Just before exiting the block, Shad turns back to me, his face dark with rage and shame.
“I told them about Lincoln,” he says. “The reporters at the press conference. I told them you two are brothers, and that your father killed that boy’s mother. You should have seen them eat it up. Like dogs gobbling raw hamburger. Your life is over, Penn. Life as you know it, anyway. Your mother won’t even be able to walk down the street. They’ll hiss her out of church. And your daughter? Wait till she gets back to St. Stephen’s. Can you imagine what they’ll be calling her?”
Shad strides out of the cellblock door under his own power, the deputies flanking him. Only then do I realize that the black deputy with the Taser is the one who brought me the message from Quentin Avery. Amid the prisoners’ rabid screams, he looks at me sadly and shakes his head.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Mayor. No matter what he said to you. I figured you’d know better.”
I lower my hands, then shrug. “What does it matter now?”
The deputy’s sad eyes linger on me with a sort of clinical empathy. “Everything matters in here, Mayor. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 91
TWO MONOTONOUS HOURS have passed since I assaulted Shad Johnson. When the big deputy appears before my cell again to announce that I have a visitor waiting, I assume Billy Byrd is about to inform me that new charges have been added to my sheet. I do the convict shuffle as I follow the deputy out of the cellblock, so that my leg manacles don’t abrade my ankles. But when he takes me into the visiting room with the solitary chair and the wire screen, I find not Billy Byrd but Special Agent John Kaiser waiting for me.
“All those years in the Houston DA’s office,” he says, “and you never learned that punching a district attorney is a bad idea?”
“I actually wanted to punch the DA about once a month over there.”
When Kaiser forces a smile, I realize he’s doing it because of Caitlin. He looks as though he hasn’t slept since I last saw him, and his shoulders seem bowed beneath some great weight.