Here I have stood for twenty minutes, watching the wind ruffle the black water and trying to get my mind around all that has happened since Shad Johnson called me Monday morning. One of the hardest things to accept is that a friend as close as Drew Elliott would lie to me in such a situation. Could he not see that Dad stopped making sound decisions long ago? The most bizarre development, though, is John Kaiser’s sudden obsession with the JFK assassination, and his belief that Dad might somehow be involved. I can accept that my father probably knew Carlos Marcello, as Kaiser claimed the surveillance photo he showed me proves. After all, my mother verified it last night, or at least that Dad had treated Marcello in the Orleans Parish Prison and Marcello was grateful for whatever Dad had done for him. But that’s a long way from my father knowing anything about a presidential assassination. Still, Kaiser’s stubborn persistence tells me he’s not going to let the subject drop. And if Dwight Stone is really flying in from Colorado to talk to me about it, then they must know a lot that I don’t. That, or else both men have crossed the line into conspiracy psychosis.
I remember the day John Kennedy died. It’s one of my earliest memories. I was sitting on a white vinyl sofa beside my mother, watching our black-and-white TV. My sister was at school, but because I was only three and a half, I still spent my days with Mom while Dad worked at his new job in Natchez. I didn’t really understand that, of course. In my mind, we were still living on the Missouri army base where he’d been stationed after returning from Germany. I don’t remember the assassination announcement on TV, but I do remember my mother suddenly getting more upset than I’d ever seen her, hugging me and sobbing, then frantically trying to reach my father by telephone. We’d recently returned from West Germany, and my parents were acutely aware of the dangers of the Cold War. My sister was crying when she got home, and that evening she and I sat on the floor while Mom and Dad watched the news and spoke in hushed tones. It was only much later that I truly understood what had happened in Dallas, but the emotional crux of it sank into me right then. From that day forward I knew the taste of loss, and I’ll carry the memory with me—in the somber black-and-white of our old television, not the saturated, horrifying color of the Zapruder film—until the day I die.
Three days after the assassination, I watched John Kennedy Jr. salute his father’s coffin. “John-John” was seven months younger than I, but he knew enough to salute when the horse-drawn caisson passed by and his mother prompted him. I didn’t understand much more about the world than he did, but I did realize one very frightening thing: if a boy as special as he was could lose his father, then I could lose mine, too. His dad might have been president, but mine (in my mind, at least) was in the army. I couldn’t know then that my father had already survived the greatest dangers he was ever likely to face, in Korea. But time and fate change all things. Now, forty-two years after JFK died, Dad is running for his life. And in a twist almost beyond understanding, a senior agent of the FBI believes that he may know the truth behind John Kennedy’s death.
Is it possible? I wonder. Could the brutal, unsolved murders that Henry Sexton was working in this quiet corner of the South for decades actually conceal a deeper secret? The truth behind the biggest cold case murder in American history?
“No,” I say to the wind. “Oswald killed Kennedy, and he acted alone. That’s the sad truth.”
As I walk back up the pier toward the shore, I reflect that Hannah Arendt had it right: evil is incomprehensibly banal. The existentialists went her one better: it’s also absurd, and terrifyingly so.
Before I reach the bank, the sound of voices pulls me from my reverie. Looking up, I see two men walking down the hill toward the pier. Both are tall and appear to be about forty. One is wearing orange-tinted Oakley sunglasses, and they give him the look of a bird of prey. Both walk with a surly self-assurance that makes me think of cops, though if they are, they’re wearing plainclothes.
My heart has kicked into overdrive, and only the reassuring hardness of the .357 jammed into the small of my back keeps me from jumping into the water to try to escape. Our paths intersect where the wooden walkway meets the grass, near the blood on the ground.
“Who are you?” asks the man in the Oakleys, who’s standing on my left.
“Penn Cage. I’m the mayor of Natchez. Who are you?”
“Police.”
“Not Ferriday police.”
“That’s not your concern,” says the man on my right, who looks like he hasn’t slept for days.
“It certainly is my concern,” I counter, trying to get a read on their intentions. “I used to be an assistant DA in Houston, and I know my rights. I also believe a crime was committed here last night.”
“What crime is that?” asks Oakley.
I point to my right, at the blood on the ground. “Murder, it looks like.”
The other man laughs. “You’re right about that.”
The certainty in his voice chills me. “Was somebody killed here? Where are you guys from?”
Oakley smiles and shakes his head, then takes a .38 from a holster beneath his coat. “Now, just what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for my father. Dr. Tom Cage.”
The two men look at each other. Then Oakley says, “He ain’t here, Mayor. But he’s wanted for killing a cop. So you’d best get the hell out of here, before you get hurt.”
I respond in a steady voice that I hope hides my fear. “Look, I just want to find my father. I want him to turn himself in. Is there anything you know that would help me?”
“Slow, ain’t he?” says the man on my right. “You sure you were a lawyer? ’Cause you don’t seem to understand the situation.”
Oakley doesn’t bother playing this game. He jerks his .38 at me and says, “You’re going to have to come with us.”
I hold up my hands, wishing I’d drawn my gun before I reached the head of the pier. Before I can say anything, the man on my right says, “I think he’s carrying.”
Oakley points his gun at my face. “Are you?”
“No.” I’m hoping to lull their vigilance for a couple of seconds, but it doesn’t work. Oakley waves his gun, indicating that I should turn around. If I do that, one of them will lift my jacket and see the butt of my .357 sticking out of my pants. But I have no choice. I’m about to turn when the rumble of a heavy engine rolls down the hill from the house. When I look up, I see a white pickup driving about thirty miles per hour down the slope toward the pier.
Clearly confused, Oakley’s first instinct is to conceal his weapon, which tells me he’s probably not a cop. The two men back onto the pier as the truck barrels toward us, and while they do I draw my pistol and hold it along my leg.