These actions had utterly expended his energy. He felt light-headed enough that he worried about his blood sugar, but he hadn’t the equipment to check it. He thought about calling out for Quentin, who was diabetic, but Quentin and Doris were probably still asleep. For a few seconds Tom saw an image of the would-be killer he’d abandoned in the dark cotton field last night: the anger in the man’s features, the childlike desolation in his eyes. Had that man reached Forrest Knox yet? Had he even tried? Or had he feared the punishment for failure so much that he’d simply run for his life?
“Time will tell,” Tom muttered. Then he slid back on the couch and slipped into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 20
THE CONCORDIA HOSPITAL emergency room is a Babel of frightened wives, wailing children, and deputies so furious they’re ready to kill someone—anyone who might have played a part in the warehouse explosion. In the wake of that lethal blast, the most the hospital staff could do was try to stabilize the injured deputies and evacuate them to the nearest urban hospitals via helicopter. Walker Dennis has been circulating among the families of his men, doing what he can to instill calm, but it’s a tough job with one deputy dead and at least one other barely clinging to life. I can’t help but think of last night, when an unknown sniper killed Henry Sexton’s girlfriend just down the hall from this ER and came close to killing Henry himself. Walker is standing in the door of one of the treatment rooms, comforting the sons of one of his less seriously injured men. I’m trying to decide how long I should hang around when Special Agent John Kaiser marches through the main ER doors, scans the area, then homes in on me.
“What in God’s name possessed you to do something this stupid?” he asks, taking little care to keep his voice low.
“We obviously didn’t believe it was stupid,” I counter, motioning for him to quiet down.
“I told you last night how risky this kind of attack would be. And pointless.”
“We didn’t attack anybody. Sheriff Dennis simply enforced the law, which has been a neglected practice in this parish of late.”
Kaiser glances at Dennis, whose back is to him, then looks back at me. “Oh, bullshit. You hit the Knoxes, and they hit you back. Nothing surprising about that.”
“I’d bet money Forrest Knox was surprised this morning.”
Kaiser shakes his head in exasperation. “Do you realize I had the director sold on a massive search of the Lusahatcha Swamp? He was talking to the Mississippi National Guard commander and the sheriff of Lusahatcha County. He’d even contacted Dwight Stone to consult about the 1964 search. If you hadn’t started this fiasco, we might have found the Bone Tree by sundown today. We might have had Jimmy Revels’s and Pooky Wilson’s remains. But now? There’s no way I can leave to run that effort. I’m stuck doing damage control. Only this time the damage is so great, I don’t know if it’s fixable.”
“We’re not your problem, John. You’re working a massive case that could take months or years. We’re going after some drug dealers and crooked cops. It’s that simple.”
“More bullshit. You’re going after the same targets I am, only you’re doing it in the stupidest possible way.”
My temper is starting to rise, which tells me Kaiser might be taking his life into his hands if any of the nearby deputies are listening. “We’re taking the shortest distance between two points, which in my experience is a good strategy. Besides, after last night’s conversation, I thought you were after Carlos Marcello, not the Knoxes.”
At last Kaiser lowers his voice to an angry whisper. “I told you I was after Forrest Knox. It’s all the same case anyway.” Before the FBI agent can vent more fury, Sheriff Dennis walks over from the treatment room. “Can I help you, Agent Kaiser?”
Kaiser manages to rein in his anger slightly. “I’m sorry for what happened to your men, Sheriff. But I have to ask: what did you really hope to accomplish with these raids?”
Dennis squares his shoulders like a man preparing for a fight. “Aside from upholding the law and protecting the people of this parish?”
“You’ve confiscated some precursor chemicals, and you’ve got a truckload of low-level perps locked up. Do you really think they’re going to give up the Double Eagles? Do you think they even know anything worth giving up?”
Walker gives a surprisingly calm shrug. “Since they’re facing mandatory minimums, I’d say there’s a good chance that one or more will talk.”
Kaiser shakes his head. “You have no idea what you’re up against, Sheriff. The punks you arrested this morning don’t know enough to jail one Double Eagle, and they don’t know jack shit about Forrest Knox.”
“I reckon we’ll see,” Dennis drawls. “But I’m betting at least one of them knows more than you think.”
“Bad bet, Sheriff.”
“John,” I cut in, hoping to prevent further escalation, “I don’t think we’re going to find much common ground this morning. You ought to think about vacating the premises. Some of these deputies are . . . in a highly irritable state of mind.”
“I’ll go you one better,” Dennis says aggressively. “I’m gonna call in the Double Eagles for questioning today.”
The FBI agent clearly can’t believe his ears. “You mean get warrants for their arrest?”
“No, no,” Walker says. “Just ask ’em nicely to come in for a chat.”
Kaiser actually laughs. “How are you going to contact them?”
Dennis shrugs again. “It’s a small parish. I’ll figure a way. If they’ve got nothing to hide, they shouldn’t mind coming in.”
“I’ll save you the trouble, Sheriff. Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield are in Texas, at Billy Knox’s fishing camp. It’s on the Toledo Bend Reservoir. And they won’t come back here to talk to you, no matter how nicely you ask them. Especially after this morning. Because they do have plenty to hide.”
Sheriff Dennis works his lower lip around his dip of snuff. “Well . . . I reckon I’ll ask anyway. Can’t hurt none.”
“You’re wrong,” Kaiser says in a grave voice. “If all you guys were doing was jumping the gun on a drug case, I’d shut up and go back to New Orleans. But you’re throwing a wrench into one of the biggest conspiracy cases the Bureau’s ever been involved with, and I can’t stand by while you do it.”