“I don’t know. But he told me to tell you, ‘Every dog has its day.’”
A slow smile spreads across my face. “I think I know.”
“All right. Well, just sit tight and don’t assault anybody else, no matter how badly they provoke you.”
“Don’t worry.”
He reaches up to the wire screen and flattens his hand. “I know this is a fucked-up time, but I’m glad for you, Penn. And as for Forrest . . . I wanted to be the one to take him down, but if I’m honest, what happened was probably the best thing in the end. That guy had too much power. He could have had every one of us hit while he was awaiting trial.”
With an almost overwhelming rush of emotion, I raise my hand and press my palm against his. “Thanks, John.”
“I’m so sorry about Caitlin,” he says, his jaw set tight. “But you know what? She went down swinging. What more can any of us do?”
I nod but say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak.
CHAPTER 92
THE NEXT TIME a deputy tells me I have a visitor waiting, I assume it’s Quentin Avery and follow him without question. But this time my surprise guest truly stuns me speechless. The black man sitting in the adjacent room is not Quentin, but Lincoln Turner. Lincoln offers us an expansive smile.
“I’ve got nothing to say to this man,” I tell the deputy, a comically skinny white man of about thirty. “Take me back to my cell.”
“Can’t do it. Sheriff says you gotta stay here ten minutes.”
Thanks, Billy. “The sheriff can’t make me see a civilian I don’t want to see.”
“He’s your goddamn brother,” says the deputy, backing through the door with a smirk on his face. “You don’t have to say nothin’ to him if you don’t want to. But you gotta sit there.”
“What about these?” I ask, holding up my handcuffs.
The deputy grins, then closes the door.
Lincoln’s smile has vanished. Now he simply watches me through the wire screen, his face inscrutable. Just as I did in the black juke out by Anna’s Bottom, and beside Drew Elliott’s lake house, I find myself searching his face for similarities to my own. But now I don’t really expect to find them. All my instinct tells me Caitlin was right: if this man’s father wasn’t Sonny Thornfield, it was Forrest Knox.
“I don’t know why you’re here,” I tell him. “But you pushed that case against my father for the wrong reason. He’s not your father, no matter what your mother told you. You’re going to find that out eventually.”
Lincoln shakes his head as though he’s dealing with an idiot. “I guess you haven’t heard.”
“What?”
“Dr. Cage had a DNA test done on some baby teeth of mine that Mama kept. He got the results back today. It was positive. He’s my father for sure.”
I don’t want to believe him, but I see no a trace of deception in his face.
Lincoln’s eyes play over my face like those of a man trying to read a hidden code. “I had a feeling he might not have told you. You never really believed it, did you? That you and me were brothers.”
“Half brothers, you mean. No. I guess I didn’t.”
He shrugs again. “Blood don’t lie, man.”
“Well . . . now you’ve told me.”
Lincoln just sits there staring as though he has all day to study me. “Maybe you know how I feel now,” he says at length. “That Knox guy killed your woman, and you killed him right back. Well . . . Dr. Cage killed my mother, and I feel that same hole. I want him to pay, too.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say in a flat voice. “I know you’re hurting, but you’re hiding something. I’ve dealt with too many witnesses in my day, Lincoln. Dad may be your father . . . I can believe that. But there’s more to it somehow. I know there is. And if you push this thing, the rest of the story’s going to come out, I promise you. I hope you’re ready for that, because it always does.”
A resentful hardness comes into his eyes. “Well, you won’t have to worry about it. You’ll be on trial yourself, for murder.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
As if on cue, the door to the visitation room bangs open behind Lincoln. I first see the big deputy who first brought me into this room, but with surprising grace he steps sideways so that the man behind him can see into the room. That man is Quentin Avery, seated in a motorized wheelchair with two stump supports jutting out from the seat. Quentin’s wearing a beautiful three-piece suit, the pant legs sewn shut beneath what remains of his legs. For a moment there is only silence. Then Quentin raises his right hand and points a long forefinger at Lincoln.
“Get this bum out of my sight, Larry.”
Black rage darkens Lincoln’s face. “You don’t talk to me like that, you Tom motherfucker.”
The big deputy leans into the room and glowers at Lincoln. “Don’t be callin’ Mr. Avery names, now. I’m the one gon’ escort you out, remember.”
“You kiss my ass, too, Larry,” Lincoln spits. “I’ll kick your fat ass down those stairs and sue you out of a job.”
The deputy shakes his head without rancor, but I remember him charging into the cellblock like a blitzing linebacker, and I wonder about Lincoln reaching the exterior of the jail without injury.
“Don’t pay that chump any mind, Larry,” Quentin says affably. “Just make sure he gets outside in one piece.”
“All right, Mr. Q.”
“Yassa, boss!” Lincoln mocks. “Anything the house nigger say do, I gwine to hop right to it!”
Quentin’s deep-set eyes focus on Lincoln. “Like I said, Larry . . . ignore him.”
“I’m a lawyer, too, old man,” Lincoln says. “Just like you.”