Fear flashes across her face. “I don’t see that at all! None of those old klukkers is going to confess anything. They don’t really believe they’ll be sent to jail. They never have been before.”
“You’re right, but that’s not my real goal. If we can hit them hard enough—really hurt them—then we’ll knock them off balance and force them to defend themselves. Forrest Knox is the power behind the Knox drug business, and the one who stands to lose the most if things go south. He’s also the one leading the hunt for Dad and Walt. A wave of arrests will be a major distraction for him, and that should ease the pressure on Dad and Walt. Maybe enough for them to get somewhere really safe. Now, if—”
Before I can get out another word, my mother throws her arms around me and hugs me so tightly I can scarcely breathe. “When is Sheriff Dennis carrying out these drug busts?”
“In about four hours.”
She draws back, her eyes wide. “We’ve got to get you in the bed. You need to be rested for that.”
“I am exhausted,” I admit. “But my thoughts are spinning so fast, I’ll probably just lie there until dawn, waiting for the alarm.”
Without a word Mom goes into the kitchen, fishes loudly through her purse, then returns with a bright yellow pill in the palm of her right hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Temazepam. It’s like Valium. I take one every night. Take this now, and I’ll wake you up at five fifteen.”
“I don’t think I should risk oversleeping.”
“Take the damn pill, son. Sometimes I take two, if your father has the TV up loud enough, and you outweigh me by nearly a hundred pounds.”
“You’re not trying to keep me from going with Sheriff Dennis?”
“No. I think you’re right about knocking the Knox family off balance. That can only help Tom.”
I take the pill and swallow it with a big gulp of gin.
My mother pulls me to my feet and ushers me downstairs to one of the guest bedrooms in what I call the basement, though technically it’s the first floor of the chalet. At the threshold, she gives me a hug and says, “I’ll wake you at five fifteen.”
Then she whisks herself back up the stairs to see to Annie.
Whether it’s the sleeping pill, the alcohol, or the exhaustion produced by the battle at Brody Royal’s lake house, I can barely stand erect through the ritual of brushing my teeth. By the time I reach the guest room bed, I can’t even pull back the quilt. I simply fall facedown onto it, my mind cycling between total blankness and nightmare images from the smoke-filled hell of Royal’s basement. Behind these pictures drones the voice of John Kaiser, but I can’t make out his words. Through the black boiling smoke I don’t see the burned corpses of Henry and Royal, but rather my father and mother, young and improbably beautiful, sitting in a homey restaurant while a grinning man with stony black eyes hugs them and raves about his red sauce. A fat accordion player steps forward and begins to play, drowning out Kaiser’s voice, and then with a final slap on my father’s back, Carlos Marcello struts back into his kitchen, the big door with the round glass window swinging behind him.
CHAPTER 17
BY THE TIME Tom Cage reached Jefferson County, Mississippi, exhaustion, his various illnesses, and his bullet wound had pushed him into a sort of trance. The road in front of the unfamiliar car he was driving wavered in the darkness, his headlight beams an illuminated tube into which startled deer charged with alarming regularity, nearly sending him off the shoulder more than once.
Tom’s short-term memory had gone haywire; the events of the past hour flickered through his head like a piece of film with random sections spliced out by a drunken editor. After dumping the Knox assassin in a barren field, he’d driven away with his headlights extinguished, making for the home of his wife’s brother. Tom had meant to approach the farmhouse carefully, but in the end he’d just turned into the driveway and honked his horn. He hadn’t the strength for more than that.
John McCrae had emerged from his farmhouse with a shotgun in his hand. The McCraes were clannish folk, driven out of Scotland during the Clearances, and congenitally mistrustful of authority. But Tom would never forget the look of compassion on McCrae’s face when he realized that the bloodied man sagging against the wheel of the strange pickup was his sister’s husband. McCrae’s wife had been terrified by Tom’s sudden appearance, and what it might mean for her family, but John had only asked Tom what he needed and how he could help. Tom told his brother-in-law that he couldn’t stay; the risk for them was too great. Neither could he seek medical care or turn himself in to the police. What he needed was to get back across the river into Mississippi.