At that moment Alphonse Ozan came back into the office.
“I just got a call from Grimsby. Penn Cage showed up at the Elliott lake house, poking around. Grimsby and his partner were trying to find out if he knew where his daddy was when a big nigger in a white truck pulled up with a sawed-off shotgun and ran them off.”
Forrest dropped his hands from Claude’s neck and walked back to his desk. He was nearly to his chair when he kicked it across the room. The pit bull sprang away, startled into confusion.
“A big jig in a white truck,” Forrest muttered. “That sounds like Lincoln Turner to me.”
“Yep,” Ozan agreed.
“What the hell is he doing protecting the son of the man he wants to send to death row?”
“I got no idea, boss.”
Forrest sat down on the desk and began tapping out a rhythm on his knee. “Claude, you do just what I told you. Except you tell Billy I want him to fly over with his daddy. Got it?”
Claude nodded, impressed by the decisiveness in that voice. Forrest Knox truly was his father reincarnated.
“Alphonse, I’m going to leak the rest of the story on Mackiever.”
Claude cocked his head, curious as to what this might mean.
Forrest smiled. “We’ve got a couple of male prostitutes who’ll swear under oath that Colonel Mackiever paid them for sex on multiple occasions. They’re both underage, and all the dates match up. Nobody can give old Griff an alibi.”
While Claude stared openmouthed, Forrest clapped his hands and stood. “Okay, everybody knows what to do. I expect Snake and the boys at Valhalla by five. If Snake gets ornery, tell him he can bring his sniper rifle. That’ll give the old bastard a hard-on. By the time they touch down, he’ll think he’s in a Charles Bronson movie.”
Claude couldn’t help but chuckle. Forrest knew his uncle well. “May I go?”
Forrest gave him a sidelong glance, then an easy smile. “Sure, Claude. Just don’t go too far.”
Claude cleared his throat. “Meaning?”
“Don’t leave the country. If I call, you come. Are we clear?”
Devereux nodded, then shook the younger man’s hand and hurried out of the office as though urgent business awaited elsewhere. Truth be told, he had tickets for a Virgin Atlantic flight leaving New York tonight. But he wasn’t about to use them now. If he disobeyed Forrest Knox’s edict, no country could provide him sanctuary.
MELBA PRICE PULLED INTO the parking lot of a Walgreens drugstore, got out, and walked inside to the rack of Natchez Examiners near the cash registers. Half an hour earlier, the office receptionist had told her that a caller identifying himself as the husband of “Doris Avery,” an old patient of Dr. Cage’s, was asking for her. Melba had never heard of any such patient, but the surname was enough to make her expect to hear Quentin Avery’s voice when she picked up the phone. Once she got on the line, though, she quickly recognized the voice of Jack Cage, Tom’s younger brother from California. Pretending to be “Fred Avery,” Jack gave her a list of drugs and other items that “his wife” needed, and asked if there was any way Melba could drop them by Doris’s house that afternoon. He knew that was asking a lot, he said, since their house was near Fayette, but Doris really needed the medicine. With a shiver Melba realized that Tom must be hiding at Quentin Avery’s house in nearby Jefferson County. She told Jack that she was sorry Doris was hurting, and promised to get the medicine to her as soon as possible.
During the next twenty minutes, Melba had bagged several bottles of drugs from the sample room, then told Dr. Elliott that exhaustion and stress had overcome her. She needed to go home and lie down. Once Drew released her, she’d headed for the Walgreens to get the newspaper. Tom had not put this on his list; she’d made this stop to check whether she could spot anyone following her.
As she paid for the newspaper, Melba recalled her promise to call Penn if Tom contacted her again. But she had no intention of doing that. Personal loyalty meant more to Melba than any abstract concept of right and wrong, and Tom would have to do more than he’d been accused of thus far to make her abandon him.
Standing a few feet back from the glass doors, Melba scanned the parking lot for familiar cars. Then she looked across the bypass, toward St. Catherine’s Hospital. She realized then that she’d chosen her location poorly. This section of town had some of the heaviest traffic in the city.
After taking a deep breath, she walked back out to her car, started the engine, and set off for the Walmart two miles away. The cash cell phones were the most important item on the list, Jack Cage had told her, as important as the drugs. Melba hoped she would find Quentin Avery with Tom when she finally reached his home. She was of two minds about the wily old lawyer, but she knew one thing for sure: no attorney in the country stood a better chance of keeping Tom out of jail. As she drove north, Melba kept her eyes on her rearview mirror.
CHAPTER 28
CAITLIN’S CAR IS parked outside Washington Street when I arrive. When I unlock the front door, I find her standing on the other side, wearing a smile like a hastily painted door on a storm-damaged house. The circles beneath her eyes are so dark that her makeup can’t mask them, and the Band-Aid on her left cheek reminds me of the painful burn beneath it.