Mississippi Blood

  Annie actually giggles at this.

  “Does it burn?” I ask.

  “Oh, it burns. But it beats the hell out of being dead in the street.”

  I shake my head at her bravado.

  “I got that gel on there pretty fast,” Tee says. She gives Mia a tight but grateful smile. “You saved my ass with that, girl.”

  Mia’s face goes pink. “I’m just glad I had it.”

  “Maybe that’ll spare me the complications Keisha had,” Tee adds softly.

  I nod, praying she’s right.

  “Have you heard anything about Tim and his guys?” Tee asks.

  I shake my head, recalling our bodyguards lying motionless on the street.

  “I’m still not sure what happened,” she says. “Sounded like shotguns at first contact. But I didn’t see any blood.”

  “I thought you were hit.”

  “I was. They must have been using some kind of nonlethal rounds. Beanbags or rubber bullets. So maybe the guys aren’t hurt too bad.”

  “I don’t think I’m bleeding either,” I realize, twisting to examine my shirt. “But I couldn’t move at all. How the hell did you manage to get up?”

  “Army reflexes, baby. I hit the deck at that first bang, when they shot Tim. They only caught my arm with that next shot.”

  “I think they killed our driver, though.”

  Serenity nods, her expression bleak. “Yeah, the sound was different. And I . . .” She trails off, but I remember the second biker dropping like a dead deer after her shots. The one who was trying to help snatch Annie.

  That’s who they were after, say Serenity’s eyes. You know that, right?

  I nod again, then pull Annie close.

  “Hey?” Tee says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who was that guy in the white hat? Was it Walt Garrity?”

  “You better believe it,” I tell her, my eyes stinging.

  “I thought so. That was old school, man.” Tee flinches from the paramedic’s gloved hand. “Is he gone?”

  “Yep.”

  She shakes her head.

  “You were pretty old school yourself back there,” I tell her.

  “No more than Mia. She grabbed hold of Annie like a mama tiger.”

  This time Mia blushes full red. “I had to do something.”

  “And you did,” Tee says. “I’ll hang with you anytime, girl.”

  I give Mia’s shoulder a squeeze, then ask Serenity, “Why the hell did you run after the van instead of chasing it with the Yukon?”

  “Our driver had already taken out the keys. My choice was to hunt for them or start running. I figured here in town, the van might have to stop pretty quick. So I hoofed it.”

  “We need to get going,” says the paramedic.

  I raise my hand and salute Tee in my clumsy civilian fashion. “We’ll see you at the hospital.”

  “Bring me a shot of vodka. Good vodka. Make that a bottle.”

  The paramedic laughs out loud, but Tee only glares at him. “I’m serious as a ruptured hemorrhoid, mister.”

  The paramedic blinks in surprise. “I believe you.”

  Before we walk away, I hear the hum and chatter of voices in the street. The neighbors have come out to see what all the noise was about.

  “Do you have an extra sheet in that ambulance?” I ask.

  The paramedic nods.

  Trudging over to the open door, I rip a white sheet off a collapsed gurney and carry it to where Walt’s body lies on the sidewalk. A few residents have edged up to within twenty feet of him. Whipping the sheet open with a loud pop, I drape it gently over Walt’s upper body and head. To my surprise, Mia catches the other end and pulls it over his legs and feet.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, looking back for Annie.

  She’s standing beside Serenity, her eyes filled with awe. Mia starts to say something, but the screech of rubber drowns her voice. Two dark sedans have stopped twenty yards away, and the first man out of the lead car is John Kaiser. He runs toward us with his pistol out, and behind him come four more FBI agents, two brandishing what look like MP5 submachine guns.

  “Who’s under the sheet?” he asks.

  “Walt Garrity. The VK just tried to snatch Annie outside my house. It was an ambush. They took out our bodyguards. Walt stopped them.”

  “They shot him?”

  “No. Their van ran him over.”

  Kaiser grimaces. “Christ. He was a rough old cob. This is going to be tough on your father.”

  The words hit me like a hammer.

  “John, can you watch the girls?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “I can’t let my dad hear this from somebody else.” I break into a run, heading down Washington Street. The jail is probably four hundred yards away, close enough for Dad to have heard the gunfight from his cell.

  “Penn, let me drive you!” Kaiser shouts, but I can’t stop. The last thing I hear is the FBI man yelling, “Go after him! Keep him covered!”

  Chapter 60

  When I reach the jail, I find Quentin facing Dad through the scarred wire mesh of the visiting cubicle. I squeeze in behind Quentin’s wheelchair and brace my hands on its seat back, my right shoulder blade pounding with pain.

  “What’s happened?” Dad asks, his face partly obscured by the wire. “We heard shooting from the cellblock. Then some kind of alert. Don’t tell me it’s Annie.”

  He’s leaning forward in anticipation of terrible news, the fingers of one hand threaded into the mesh. If I had to tell him Annie had been kidnapped, I don’t think he could survive it. Walt’s death will be bad enough—

  “It almost was Annie,” I say. “They tried to kidnap her, Dad. The VK guys, I think. The bikers.”

  “Oh, no. Oh . . . Lord.”

  “They didn’t get her. Walt stopped them.”

  Dad’s eyes widen. “Walt?”

  “They knocked down our bodyguards with gunfire, and they got Annie partway into a van. Mia jumped in and fought them, but they were getting away. Then Walt stepped out of nowhere and shot the driver.”

  Dad hasn’t blinked. “And?”

  “Walt stopped the van. But . . . not before it ran him over.”

  My father looks down and swallows. “How bad?”

  I hesitate, as we always do in these situations, but waiting only prolongs the torture. “He’s gone, Dad. His injuries were catastrophic.”

  At first he does not react, unless perhaps his eyes squint a little more tightly. But then he leans forward until the crown of his head touches the screen, and a moan escapes his lips.

  “Dad . . . are you okay?”

  Reaching out, I touch my fingers to his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to hear it from somebody else.”

  Dad keeps his head down.

  “Who else was hurt?” Quentin asks from below me.

  “Tim Weathers was hit; I don’t know his condition. I’m pretty sure our driver was killed. Serenity and I were hit with some kind of nonlethal rounds, and then she had acid thrown on her—”

  “Nonlethal rounds?” Quentin interrupts.

  I nod, realizing that my right shoulder blade and arm are still mostly numb. “Most of the attackers used some kind of nonlethal round.”

  “They must have been trying to avoid murder charges.”

  “I guess so. But I’m pretty sure our driver was hit with a lead bullet.”

  “What about the attackers?” Dad asks.

  “I think two VK were killed. One by Walt, the other by Serenity.”

  “This is out of control,” Quentin mutters. “Why would they do that? Why go after your daughter?”

  “Leverage,” Dad says, looking up at last. “Snake’s a survivor. He’s always going to try to neutralize the greatest threat to him. This morning that was Will Devine. Who is it now?”

  “You?” Quentin suggests, nodding at Dad.

  “Maybe,” he allows. “But having Annie also gives them leverage over Penn.” Dad’s eyes d
elve into mine. “Do you have it in your power right now to hurt Snake, or to remove some urgent threat against him?”

  I shake my head, but my mind is churning through scenarios.

  “Who’s in a position to send him to jail?” Dad presses.

  “Dolores St. Denis,” I say softly.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The woman you told me about whose husband got killed in the Lusahatcha Swamp back in the sixties. Her name was Booker then. Dolores Booker. She was raped, and her husband killed. She can testify against Snake over those crimes.”

  Dad blinks in confusion. “But . . . I thought she killed herself.”

  “Her family told that story to make the Double Eagles forget about her.”

  Quentin says, “Where is she now?”

  “She was living in New Orleans. I found her and brought her up here. But she’s under FBI protection now. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Snake thinks you do,” Dad says. “He needs to silence that woman—to kill her—and he doesn’t know where to find her. He figures you can find out for him. And threatening Annie is the only conceivable way he could make you do that.”

  This explanation closes a circuit in my brain, and I collapse against the wall of the cubicle, one hand on the left handle of Quentin’s wheelchair.

  “You all right?” Quentin asks.

  “Penn, listen,” Dad says, his eyes filled with urgency. “You’ve got to get Annie away from Natchez. Far away. Peggy, too, if she’ll go.”

  “You know she won’t. But I’ll get Annie and Mia to some kind of safe house. Kaiser will help me.”

  “Good, good.”

  “Dad . . . why was Walt following us? Did you tell him to do that?”

  He doesn’t answer immediately. Then he says, “Do you remember when you visited me at the Pollock prison?”

  I nod.

  “I told you then that so long as Snake Knox walked the earth, my acquittal would accomplish nothing. You saw that proved a few minutes ago.”

  “Did you ask Walt to kill Snake? To hunt him down?”

  My father focuses on some indeterminate point between himself and Quentin. “The morning of Henry Sexton’s funeral, I told Walt that Snake needed to die. That was the only way to stop the killing. Walt agreed, but he wasn’t willing to take the risk. He was happy with his wife, and he didn’t want to make her a widow.”

  And now she is. Quentin and I share a look. Dad is talking like he’s in some kind of trance, and perhaps he is. A trance of grief.

  “What changed?” I ask him.

  Dad bites his bottom lip, trying to work it out himself. “Not too long after Forrest’s death, Walt came to me at Pollock and told me he’d realized that the Knoxes were our cross to bear. Our generation’s evil, our blight to remove from the world. He’d decided to kill Snake.”

  Quentin cradles his forehead in his left palm.

  “The problem,” Dad goes on, “was finding him.”

  “Is that why you put me on the trail of Will Devine and the other Eagles? You were using me as bait?”

  “Snake was always going to come after you, Penn. You killed his nephew. And I killed Frank—his brother. I don’t know how much Snake knows about Frank’s death, but he knew who’d killed Forrest. In Snake’s eyes, that’s a blood debt. Until he’s dead, you’re living on borrowed time. That’s why Walt shadowed you for so long. He was waiting for Snake to raise his head.”

  “Tom,” Quentin says quietly, “don’t ever speak of this again. And pray to God that Billy Byrd hasn’t bugged this cubicle.”

  “But back at the prison,” I murmur, unable to get past the idea that Dad used me to bait Snake Knox, “you—”

  “I told you what you needed to hear.” Dad’s eyes flash with emotion. “And you actually turned Will Devine, by God. Today we almost broke the Double Eagles for good. From the inside out. That’s always been the only way to get them in court.”

  I grimace and look away, unsure of what I’m feeling. “This trial isn’t really about getting you acquitted, is it? It never was.”

  Dad holds up his hands. “Let’s not talk about the trial.”

  “Quentin,” I ask, “could I see you outside for a minute?”

  I step outside, and thirty seconds later, Quentin carefully backs his chair out of the cubicle. The sheriff’s department seems eerily empty, but I know why. Nearly every available man is combing the county, searching for VK members. Not even a wingnut like Billy Byrd can allow biker gangs to shoot up his town and hope to get reelected.

  “Did you tell him about the tapes?” I ask Quentin.

  He nods. “Right before you got here.”

  “And?”

  “Tom claims he knows nothing about that second tape.”

  “The Dumpster tape?”

  Quentin nods.

  This takes me aback. “Do you believe him?”

  The old lawyer closes his eyes as though in prayer. “No. His lips denied it, but in his eyes . . . I saw the ledge, Penn. And Tom’s damned close to it.”

  A wave of nausea rolls through my gut. “What’s below the ledge?”

  “Hell, I think.”

  “Then we have to go back in there and break him down. We can’t go back into court tomorrow not knowing what might be on that tape. And he absolutely cannot take the stand.”

  “You can’t change his mind, Penn. People have died on this road already, and he hasn’t given an inch.”

  “You’re right. And that’s not rational.”

  “Or it’s supremely rational.” Quentin tilts his head, pondering the possibility. “Inhumanly rational.”

  “That makes no sense. Quentin, Dad has spent months refusing to tell me anything about the night Viola died. Now he wants to get up in front of the whole town and tell everything?”

  Quentin groans deep in his chest. “Stop trying to reason it out. You heard Colonel Eklund’s testimony. A man who did what Tom did in Korea doesn’t think like the rest of us. Not when it comes to the big things. In any case, there’s no point in you pushing him. Say good-bye and go back to your mother. I’ll try to find a way to get him to open up about the tape.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then tomorrow should be a mighty interesting day in court.”

  “Do you think Judge Elder will proceed after what’s happened to Walt?”

  “It’s a murder trial, Penn. We still have a defendant, and we still have a jury.”

  With that Quentin spins his chair and reenters the cubicle.

  When I step in after him, I see that my father has been crying. The white, cracked skin of his face has turned an unhealthy pink, and there’s moisture in the white whiskers on his cheeks.

  “I need a phone,” he says. “I need to call Carmelita.”

  Carmelita Cruz, the jewel of Walt Garrity’s later life. “We can’t pass a phone through the wire.”

  “I’ll hold mine up to the screen,” Quentin says, “after Penn says good night.”

  He really is showing me the door.

  Dad looks small and vulnerable sitting there, his hands folded on the little metal shelf before him. “Walt thought he owed me something for Korea,” he murmurs. “But he didn’t. We were always even.”

  “Tell his wife that,” I suggest.

  “I will.”

  Quentin tosses his head to send me on my way, but I hang back long enough to take hold of the wire mesh and shake it. “Dad, what’s going to happen in court tomorrow?”

  This time his eyes find mine, and they are free of dissimulation. “The truth’s going to come out. One way or another. Once and for all.”

  It’s half past ten, and the house seems emptier than it has in a long time. After strident arguments and tearful partings, Annie and Mia have been transported by the FBI to private dorm rooms at the minimum-security facility at Pollock, the same place where Annie used to visit my father while he was in protective custody. After hearing about the street battle, Mia’s mother was elate
d that her daughter would be entering federal protection until the conclusion of the trial. My only consolation is that Annie and Mia will remain together, and this should carry them through their separation from the rest of us.

  Serenity has been gone even longer than Annie. Despite her quick use of Mia’s calcium gluconate, Drew Elliott immediately had her transported to University Medical Center in Jackson. He didn’t want to risk the complications that still have Keisha Harvin in critical condition. I never even got to say good-bye to Tee. The ambulance carrying her had already departed Natchez by the time I left Dad and Quentin at the jail.

  We’ve had some turnover in our security detail as well. While the VK attackers used nonlethal rounds against most of us, Tim Weathers took an impact to the back of his head, and he’s recovering from a severe hematoma in St. Catherine’s Hospital. Our driver wasn’t killed outright, but he too had to be flown to UMC in Jackson for surgery, where he remains in critical condition. Our security detail is now led by Tim’s deputy, Joe Russell, who is a very solid guy, but he doesn’t inspire quite the confidence or sense of intimacy that Tim did.

  One hour ago, my mother went upstairs with a migraine, and I went down to my basement office for the tense wait until dawn. To my surprise, when I went up to the kitchen to scrounge for food, Jenny came in to talk about tomorrow’s prospects.

  I didn’t tell her much. I’ve spoken to Kaiser three times, but all he could tell me was that both tapes have been checked into a special forensic intelligence lab at FBI headquarters, and a team is working on them.

  While Jenny nibbles at a bowl of ice cream, my phone pings, and a text from John Kaiser appears. I assume it will be about the videotapes, but it’s not.

  Snake Knox bought gas in Sulphur, Louisiana, earlier this evening. Paid cash. We got a security cam photo of him and Alois Engel at the payment window. They bought four quarts of beer.

  I texted back: So they’re headed to Texas?

  Unless they double back into the Atchafalaya Swamp to hide out. We’ll find them. Leave ur cell on tonite.

  I text, Will do, then click end and set my phone back on the granite countertop.

  Jenny seems to be staring at a point on my chin, her expression lethargic.