The Devils Punchbowl

When Linda limped down off the levee, she hadn'’t known what Pastor Simpson’s argument with the Oneness people was, nor had she cared. All she knew was that for years Simpson had been a good pastor and tried to help people, especially the poor. There’d been some talk about him and a couple of the young girls in the congregation, but she’d never had any trouble with him.

He’d recognized Linda almost immediately, and he’d taken her into the church and washed her wounds with water from the sink in the one bathroom they had. She hadn'’t told him the truth of course—not because she didn't trust him, but because she was afraid she might bring terrible harm down onto him or his followers. He’d sat there for half an hour with his silver hair and red skin and sympathetic eyes while she told him a lie about getting involved with a man she’d met on the gambling boat, a man who’d been in prison, who had almost killed her with a beating, and who would kill her if he found her. No, she couldn'’t go to the police, she said, because the man had friends in the police, on both sides of the river. Pastor Simpson had shaken his head and promised to do all he could to help, including getting her out of town. And he’d stood by his word, so far. When she’d written out the long note for Mayor Cage, Simpson had called one of the girls in his church to come out from town and pick it up, a girl named Darla, and Darla had promised to deliver it, and to make sure the mayor had no idea where any of them were, or even who she was.

Linda wished time would speed up. She’s going to have to move soon because there’s an evening service coming, and the pastor told her to be hiding in the shed well before the first car pulled up. She dreads that fifty-foot walk like nothing in a long time, but she’ll do it somehow. Because after the service, the pastor’s nephew is going to drive her to Shreveport, to stay with another group of Wholeness worshippers. There she will be safe from the “convict” who is hunting her. Linda lifts her shirt and wipes the sweat from her

brow, which is burning like the skin around her torn leg. She needs a doctor, but she can hold out another few hours. They might even have a doctor in the church in Shreveport, she thinks. No matter how bad things look, God has taken her into his blessed hands. To know that’s true, all Linda has to do is think about Ben Li.

CHAPTER

30

“You can talk in here,” Kelly says, gunning the 4Runner and heading out of the parking lot. “No bugs, guaranteed.”

“We’re going to the cemetery.”

“Okay. Why?”

“The disc is there. Not only that—Linda Church is alive.”

Kelly looks at me. “How do you know that?”

I quickly relate what happened at the Ramada and describe the contents of the tape and the note. Caitlin supplements my account from the backseat.

“Wait a minute,” says Kelly, turning onto Homochitto Street. “Two different people approached you at this one event?”

“Yeah, I figured you saw them.”

“I saw a girl watching you early on, but I was looking for males. I'm thinking of the coincidence.”

“I know, but remember what you asked me early this morning? Everyone in town knew I would be at that event. It was published in the newspaper. Both Jewel and that girl knew they could talk to me without seeming to try to. It could look accidental. But what about you? You said we have a problem.”

“One thing at a time. Do you know where Linda is?”

“No, but she’s safely hidden, and her note says she’s leaving town.”

“You didn't recognize the girl who gave you the note?”

“You said she looked familiar,” Caitlin reminds me.

“I could say that about almost everyone in this town. Do you know how many people I’'ve spoken to since becoming mayor? And during the campaign? I think the part of my brain that connects names and faces has been short-circuited.”

“I wouldn'’t mind having Linda Church in our back pocket,” Kelly says. “I think you’re going to need her as a witness before this mess is through.”

“What the hell’s going on? What’s the problem you talked about?”

“Blackhawk got a bounceback on Jonathan Sands.”

“A bounceback?”

“A return query. Rebound request. Someone in Washington wants to know who’s asking about Sands.”

Caitlin’s eyes meet mine. “Washington?” she says. “

Who

in Washington?”

“They wouldn'’t tell me, and that’s not a good sign. The company says they'’re covering for me, but I’'ve got to be straight with you. Seventy-five percent of Blackhawk’s revenues come from the Defense Department, and that number goes up every month. If Washington demands something, sooner or later the company’s going to cave. They value my services, but in the end I'm just a grunt.”

A wave of fear rolls through me. “Are you saying Blackhawk might give up Annie’s location if the government pushed hard enough?”

“No, no. But they might give up my name, and maybe yours. Sands could find out I'm involved and figure you’re trying to bust him, not help him.”

“I see.”

Kelly gives me a sidelong glance. “What

are

you going to do with that disc, if you find it?”

The truth is, I'm not sure, but I keep that to myself. “I hope you’re about to find out.”

“So how did you figure out the clues?” Kelly asks.

“He hasn’'t even told me that,” Caitlin says with pique.

“When I searched the cemetery yesterday, I searched the graves of everyone Tim and I both knew. Classmates we’ve lost, people from

St. Stephen’s who died young. I even searched all the famous graves I knew. But I left out one grave. It never even

occurred

to me that Tim would use it.”

“Whose was it?”

“A high school senior who was killed by a drunk driver in 1979.”

Caitlin leans up between the seats. “Why didn't you think of him the other day?”

“Because Tim Jessup was the driver who killed him.”

“My God. But how did the clue make you think of him?”

“The boy’s name was Patrick McQueen.”

Kelly smiles after a moment, but Caitlin shrugs. Sometimes a ten-year age gap causes issues.

“The Great Escape?”

I prompt. “Steve McQueen…? He ran from the Nazis on a motorcycle? Crashed into barbed wire at the end?”

“Oh…okay, I get it.”

“I never considered Patrick’s grave because I couldn'’t imagine Tim thinking about him in a desperate moment like that. Tim spent a year in jail because of that accident, and it ruined most of his life. I figured he’d done everything he could to get Patrick out of his mind. But I should have known better. He’s probably thought about Patrick every day of his life since that night. Especially lately. I think he’d been trying to make up for what he did by living a good life.”

Caitlin shakes her head sadly.

“But what does ‘dog pack’ mean?” Kelly asks. “What’s that part of it?’

“Tim and I used to ride our bikes in the cemetery when we were kids. Once a pack of wild dogs chased us there. I'm not positive about the connection, but I think I know. We’ll be sure in two minutes. When you get up to the flat part of this road, you’ll see the river on your left. Turn at the main gate.”

As Kelly does so, Caitlin touches my shoulder. “Are you sure you can’t remember anything else about the girl who gave you the note? Something must have triggered that feeling of familiarity. What was it?”

I try to recall the girl’s face, but the harder I concentrate on it, the less distinct it becomes. “I really can’t place her. I have this vague

feeling…she reminded me of a girl who used to wait on me across the river somewhere. A store or a restaurant in Vidalia, maybe. But the girl I'm thinking of was really heavy, and a lot plainer. I'm probably way off.”

“Don’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it will come to you later.”

“I do better with remembering when I'm not trying to.”

Despite this assertion, I plumb my memory for some connection to the girl’s face, but as we climb Maple Street toward the hill from which the Charity Hospital used to look down upon the cemetery, a very different memory rises. In the summer after sixth grade, a bunch of us were staying overnight with a friend who lived downtown. Most of us lived in subdivisions, but a few schoolmates still lived in ramshackle Victorians fronted with wrought-iron fences and backed by narrow alleys and deep gullies. We’d ride our jerry-built banana bikes downtown, pretending to be Evel Knievel, then spend the night tearing around the city streets, trying to do enough yelling to get the police to chase us.

We were just old enough that when Davy Cass suggested we should invade the cemetery, no one dared to say he was afraid to do it. I certainly didn't. Partly it was the idea of a deserted graveyard that scared me, but another part knew that the cemetery lay on the north side of town, uncomfortably close to the Negro sections of the city. During that era, no black male with his wits about him would have dared say a cross word to a white child, but we didn't know that. There was old Jim Clay, who lived in a shack on the Fenton property and who would fire rock salt from a shotgun if we got too near his place. Nook Wilson at the gas station had killed his wife with a butcher knife and sometimes looked at you like he’d just as soon kill you too. That was who I thought about when our bike routes took us close to the north side after dark, and not Ruby Flowers, our maid, who lived out that way and would have coldcocked anyone who tried to hurt me. But mostly—and wisely—we feared the unknown.

Our first thirty minutes in the cemetery were euphoric. We flashed down the narrow lanes between the mausoleums like the superheroes we worshipped, riding no-hands and seeing who could shut his eyes the longest without crashing. I rode from the main gate to Catholic Hill without once touching the handlebars, holding my

arms out like wings (and only peeking a couple of times). But this hyperexcited state ended with the sound of a single growl. Barks wouldn'’t have frightened us, since most of us owned dogs. But when Davy suddenly skidded to a stop, the rest of us slammed into him from behind, and then we saw what had stopped him.

Crouching in the middle of the path was a black cur that had to weigh sixty pounds. Behind him a dozen more dogs stood alert, awaiting an attack signal. The cur had his teeth bared and his ears back, and when I saw his feverish eyes glint in the moonlight, I cringed with prehistoric fear. The lane cut between walls of earth twelve feet high, so our only escape route lay behind us. I felt my bladder turn to stone, then communal panic flashed through our little tribe. By the time we got our bikes turned, fifteen or twenty dogs were in pursuit. We’d had trouble with wild packs before, usually in the woods, and every summer our mothers reminded us that Billy Jenkins had been forced to take twenty-three rabies shots in his stomach because of a dog bite. This knowledge made us pedal like madmen for the gates, praying for deliverance as the frenzied animals snapped at our legs.

We didn't have a chance. Only the savant-level survival instincts of Trey Stacy saved us. When he jumped from his bike and dashed for the low-hanging branch of an oak tree, the herd instinct kicked in. Soon seven boys were treed like coons in the great gnarled branches of the oak. The furious dogs leaped and gnashed their teeth, barking and howling like demons among the gravestones, but that was their undoing. Their baying eventually drew the attention of a passing motorist, who called the police. The first cop shot one dog with his pistol, but the pack didn't retreat until his red-haired partner killed the alpha male with a shotgun. Several boys were crying as the police hauled us back to our sleepover, not for fear of their parents, but from the shock of seeing the dogs killed. I was shivering myself and glad when my father arrived to take me home rather than let me stay the night.

Caitlin touches my shoulder again and says, “Penn? We just went through the main gate. Where are we going?”

I point along a rank of oaks that line the nearby lane. When we reach the oak of my memory, I tell Kelly to stop. Its trunk is massive now, and its great branches hang so low that weather-treated four-

by-fours have been propped beneath to keep them from sagging to the ground. Across the lane from the tree, beneath a twisted limb, lies the grave of Patrick McQueen.

With Caitlin trailing, I walk to his gravestone, a tall slab of granite with the text of Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young” engraved on its face. One quick scan tells me that no disc is hidden beside the stone, but I'm certain now that Tim told me what I need to know. Leaving the stone, I walk out to where the crooked limb almost touches the grass. Then I set my foot in its crook, grip the rising branch with both hands, and begin climbing toward the trunk of the tree.

I don'’t have to go far. Fifteen feet from where I mounted the limb, wedged into a forked branch, is a hardcover copy of my third novel,

Nothing but the Truth.

The sight of its jacket moves me strangely, but the feeling passes as I look down and see Patrick McQueen’s grave almost directly beneath me. For an infinite second, I feel as though I

am

Tim Jessup, clinging here in the dark, desperate to preserve the evidence I’'ve stolen from the men I hate so deeply. Closing my eyes for a moment, I let this déjŕ vu bleed out of me. Then I fan the pages of my own book.

A flash of silver makes my heart thump. Lying between pages 342 and 343 is a DVD in a transparent plastic sleeve. There’s no mark or label on the disc, and from the purplish color and look of the data side, it appears to be homemade.

“What did you find?” Caitlin calls from below. “It looks like a book.”

“The disc is in it. We need a computer with a DVD drive.”

“I can grab a notebook computer from the office.”

Kelly steps up beside her, his blond hair bright beside her black mane. “I’d feel better with four walls around us. And we need to make some copies.”

“We’re two minutes from the office,” Caitlin says. “We can lock the building. If Sands tried to storm the

Examiner,

that would make national headlines.”

“That doesn’'t mean he won'’t,” says Kelly. “We don'’t know what’s on that disc. I'’ll cover the building while you two check it out. If there’s anything you think I should see, call me on the Star Trek.”

Closing the disc back into the book, I slide a little way down the limb, then drop six feet to the soft earth below.

“Tim died for this.”

Caitlin nods slowly, then puts her arms around me and lays her head on my chest. “You can’t bring him back. All you can do is finish what he started.”

“Is that the plan?” Kelly asks.

My thoughts on Annie, I pull away from Caitlin and put the book into her hands. “What do you think?”

She looks back at me with the least feminine expression I’'ve ever seen on her face. “I'm not your mother. I say nail the son of a bitch to the wall.”

Caitlin and I are sitting in front of an Apple Cinema Display in the office of the

Examiner

’s publisher. Behind us Daniel Kelly stands alert, a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun in his hands. Kelly thought he should stand guard outside, but I want him to see whatever’s on the DVD. He certainly knows more about data encryption than Caitlin and me.

“It’s coming up now,” Caitlin says, pointing at a small, spinning beach ball on the blue screen. Then the screen goes black. “Do you think there’s any risk of destroying the data by playing it on the wrong machine or anything?”

“I doubt it,” says Kelly. “The disc may not boot without a code, though. Let’s see. Look—”

From out of the blackness comes an image of weathered, old Corinthian columns against a summer sky. The camera pans along the leaves of the capitals, then pulls back to reveal a square of great columns with no building between them, fronted by a set of broad steps that lead into thin air.

“What the hell?” asks Kelly.

“I know that place,” says Caitlin. “That'’s the Windsor Ruins, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say, a chill of foreboding in my chest.

“What’s the Windsor Ruins?” Kelly asks.

Caitlin’s shaking her head in confusion. “It’s where Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift filmed

Raintree County.

” She turns and looks at me with disbelieving eyes. “Penn, is this…?”

“Maybe.”

A couple of years after Caitlin moved to Natchez, she watched

Raintree County

with me on cable one night. When I told her that part of the movie had been filmed close to Natchez, she’d insisted on visiting the burned-out mansion. We took a video camera with us, and as we toured the columns, which stand like silent sentinels in the deep woods north of town, we thought it would be fun to film a romantic kiss on the steps where Taylor and Clift had shot their scene. As was common during that phase of our relationship, things quickly got heated, and we retired behind the huge base of one column to finish what we’d begun on the steps. We’d had some wine, and since we were alone at the site, Caitlin suggested we leave the camera running. I have a feeling that the results of that suggestion are about to flash up on the screen before us.

“Oh, God,” Caitlin cries, as a shot of her moving ardently beneath me fills the screen. Feminine moans come from the computer’s speakers.

“I'’ll close my eyes,” Kelly offers, “but will somebody tell me what the hell is going on? Did you put in the wrong disc?”

They both turn to me as though I'm playing some childish joke on them.

“That'’s the DVD that was in the book,” I say softly. “What the hell?”

There’s a jerky cut, then Caitlin is sitting astride me, her bare breasts flushed, her neck mottled pink.

“You want me to leave?” asks Kelly, staring in confusion at the screen.

“I don'’t care if you see my tits,” Caitlin snaps, “I want to know what’s going on!”

I'm about to stop the player when the scene changes. This image is lower resolution than the first, because it was shot on an early eight-millimeter video camera, one my father bought around 1993. In this video, Annie is three years old, and she’s pretending to make her way hand-over-hand across a horizontal ladder. Beneath her, trying to stay out of the frame, are her mother and me. Annie giggles with the unalloyed joy that no parent can hear without a tug at the heart, and Sarah laughs every time Annie giggles.

“You’re almost there!” Sarah yells encouragingly. “You’ve almost done it!”

Explosive giggles fill the soundtrack as Annie reaches out and

grips the last crossbar with her plump little hand. When I pull her free and set her on my shoulders, Sarah hugs us both, then raises her hand in triumph. Too upset to speak, I reach out, turn the red trackball on the desk, and pause the video.

“Penn?” Caitlin says worriedly. “What is this? Are you okay?”

“It’s not the videos that bother me,” I say, lying just a little. “That first one? The one of us doing it?”

“Yes?”

“I didn't want Annie to see this tape by accident, so I put it in my safety-deposit box at the bank.”

Caitlin blinks rapidly, trying to work out what’s going on.

Kelly gets there first. “Sands made this disc. Or Quinn. Sometime before this afternoon, they found the real disc, then made this one and replaced the original with it. That'’s what you’re saying, right?”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“And the tape of you and Caitlin—the one in your safe-deposit box was the only copy?”

“Absolutely. Does that mean someone at the bank helped them?”

“Not necessarily. Sands may have a box at the same bank. Depending on bank procedures, he or Quinn could have gone in to see their box, then broken into yours. They probably did it as soon as Sands perceived you as a threat. Same with your house. That'’s probably where he got the old home movies, right?”

“No. Those were in my dad’s house.”

“The fact that he got to this stuff is the message. Even though he got his stolen disc back, he’s saying he can get to you anyplace, anytime.”

“We’d better watch the rest of the tape, just to be sure.”

Caitlin looks at me. “Are you sure you want to see it?”

“Me? What about you?”

“Kelly already saw me naked. Big whoop. It’s you I'm worried about.” Her voice goes quiet. “Stuff with Sarah? Things you might not want to see with me? Or me to see at all?”

I take her hand, and Kelly looks away. “It’s okay. Whatever there is, you can watch.”

Caitlin swallows hard, and her eyes soften. Then she sighs, composes herself, and clicks the button on the trackball.

On the screen, Sarah and Annie and I fade to black. Then Annie

appears again, alone this time. She can’t be more than ten months old, and she’s sitting on the steps of our house in Houston. She looks into the lens, then reaches for someone outside the frame. When no one takes her, her eyes fill with confusion and she begins to cry. Just as Sarah’s hands enter the frame to take her, the sound of maddened dogs bursts from the speakers. The savage cacophony hurls me thirty years back in time, to the night Tim and I pedaled for our lives in the cemetery. From the sound, five or six dogs are fighting over something, but then the snarls and snapping teeth are punctuated by a sound that freezes my blood. It’s a man screaming—first like a man, then like a little boy being torn apart by wolves. Male voices shout in the background, but I can’t make out distinct words. The screams become shrieks, rising in pitch and volume until they'’re suddenly cut off. What follows can only be the sound of animals fighting over meat. As we stare in stunned horror, the screen goes blue.

“That'’s the worst thing I’'ve ever heard,” Caitlin says. “Do you think the disc has fingerprints on it?”

“Yours,” I say. “These guys don'’t make that kind of mistake.”

“Who

are

these people? That wasn'’t dogfighting.”

“That was a snuff tape,” Kelly says, a strange awe in his voice. “I'’ll bet they have video too. They just couldn'’t risk showing it to us.”

“You think it shows them?” I ask.

“Maybe. I'’ll bet we could ID the victim from it.”

“Ben Li?” I suggest.

Kelly shrugs. He’s already read Linda’s note and listened to the tape of Tim’s car chase. “Could have been. This guy sounded older to me when he first screamed, though. Late thirties, forties maybe.”

“Jesus,”

says Caitlin. “You can guess people’s ages by their screaming?”

The Delta veteran shrugs again. “Occupational hazard.”

She turns to me and starts to speak, then steps close. “Penn? I’'ve never seen you look like that. Except maybe…after Ruby was in the fire.”

“Sands got what he wanted, right?” I say too loudly. “He found his missing disc. So why go to all this trouble? Why keep

fucking

with me?”

“Because they'’re still vulnerable,” Kelly says. “They don'’t have all

the variables locked down. The USB drive copy may still be out there. And now we find out this Ben Li kid may have kept some kind of insurance. Sands means to keep you on the hook for that stuff too. That'’s what he’s saying with this.”

“Surely if they found the DVD, they found the other stuff long ago. They’ve known about Ben Li from the beginning.”

“I doubt they hired the kid because he was stupid.”

The screen saver has started on the Mac’s display; pastoral scenes of the four seasons fade in and out, providing jarring visual counterpoint to what we just heard.

“What do we do now?” Caitlin asks.

“I'm tempted to call Sands,” I say. “Tell him that as far as I'm concerned, everything is settled. He’s got his DVD, and I'm going back to normal life.”

Kelly shakes his head. “That won'’t accomplish anything. Not unless you’re really backing off. Is that what you’re doing?”

Caitlin looks at me expectantly.

“You mean tonight?” I ask. “The kayaks? The photo op?”

Kelly nods. “They probably feel more secure right now than they have since the night Jessup died.”

I close my eyes, trying to see the larger picture.

“Look at it this way,” Kelly says. “Do you feel good about bringing Annie back to town as things stand?”

“No.”

“There you go.”

“How did Sands find that DVD?” I ask. “Even if he somehow heard Tim’s message—if Shad Johnson played it for him—he couldn'’t have understood Tim’s clues.”

“Who knows?” says Kelly. “Metal detector, maybe. He’s probably had flunkies searching that cemetery ever since Jessup died. Don’t worry about it.”

An insistent buzzing starts in the room.

“Is that your cell phone?” Caitlin asks Kelly.

Kelly reaches into his pocket and silences the phone. “There’s only one way to get these guys out of your life. Send them to prison or kill them. We can put an end to this thing tonight. Three good photos and you'’ve got them on felony charges. Then you can take backbearings and fill in the missing pieces. Linda Church. The USB

drive. Ben Li. The freaking ‘bird’ thing, whatever that is. What do you say, boss?”

“I'’ll get the boats. Are Danny and Carl on line for it?”

“What do you think?” Kelly smiles at Caitlin. “Why don'’t you make a few copies of Linda’s note? It wouldn'’t hurt to dub Tim’s voice memo either, and make some backups of the last part of that DVD.”

She nods excitedly, glad for something to do.

Kelly looks at me. “Are you going to share any of this with Chief Logan?”

I don'’t answer immediately, but I know what my gut is telling me. “I don'’t think we can risk anyone finding out that Linda Church is alive.”

Kelly nods in agreement. “Logan didn't tell you about the voice memo, did he? Even though it was meant for you.”

This hadn'’t struck me until now. “I wonder if he knows about it. Maybe Shad Johnson took the phone the night of the murder, and Logan never saw anything but the texts. When I asked him at the station if he had the phone, he wouldn'’t tell me.”

“So we’re definitely not showing the DA anything?”

I actually laugh at the absurdity of this idea, then sit back on the chair, suddenly drained by the release of tension. When Kelly takes out his phone to check his message, it’s instantly obvious that something is wrong. Before I can ask him what, he hands me the phone. There’s a text message on the screen, short and to the point:

Cease all inquiry re Jonathan Sands immediately. Conflict of interest. The assets will be protected, but you’re to stand down in Mississippi soonest. TOC Kabul 48 hours. Burton. PS Don’t push this.

“Daniel?” I say, handing the phone to Caitlin. “Are Annie and my mother the ‘assets’?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, no,” Caitlin says. “This is crazy.”

“Are they truly safe, Kelly?”

“Absolutely. I’'ve checked on them twice today.”

“It looks like things are changing fast.”

Kelly squats beside me, his eyes intense. “Personal protection is what Blackhawk was founded on. They’ve never lost a client, and they can’t afford to now. Especially people related to someone who can make as much noise as you can.”

“I don'’t feel reassured.”

“Me either,” says Caitlin.

Kelly squeezes my shoulder. “I know the guys guarding them, Penn. Both shifts. Even if someone at the company gave out information, these guys would take out anybody who made a move.”

“What if Blackhawk people showed up at the door?”

Kelly licks his lips, then seems to take a silent decision. “Look, they'’re not even where the company thinks they are, okay? Not anymore. As soon as I got the call about that bounceback on the Sands query, I told the guys to move them.”

My heart begins to race. “So you

are

worried.”

“No. I just don'’t take chances. Annie’s fine, man. I told you how to make her truly safe. Stick to the plan. When you get this deep in, only one thing can get you out. Leverage.”

“You made that plan before you got the text message.”

“The message changes nothing.”

“

What?

You’re ready to lose your job over this?”

Kelly’s blue eyes are as steady as a man’s can be. “I took that risk the minute I moved Annie and your mother. I don'’t know who’s protecting Jonathan Sands, but I know this: They’re on the wrong fucking side.”

CHAPTER

31

The river is black glass tonight, and I'm thankful for it. It’s been three months since I’'ve been on water in anything but a ski boat, and then only on a lake. We put in our kayaks a half mile above the city, on the Louisiana side of the river. The western shore is dark except for the digital depth markers the push boat pilots use to find the main channel. The sky to the south glows from the ambient light of Natchez. The air over the water is chilly and calm, but high above us black clouds are scudding across the face of the moon.

Kelly paddles beside me with smooth assurance, like a wingman flying escort. He learned his moves when his Delta team did an exchange program with Britain’s Special Boat Squadron; their commandos taught him the mysteries of handling small craft of all types. Our kayaks are Seda gliders, nineteen-foot touring boats with razor bows that move through the water like Kevlar arrows. With a seasoned paddler in the cockpit, they can do twelve miles an hour going downstream. The steamboats of the 1870s moved only slightly faster than this. I'm a recreational paddler, but I’'ve mastered the art of powering the boat with my torso and hips, using the rudder pedals as braces for my long touring stroke. Kelly uses a power stroke, keeping his offset blades close to the kayak throughout his movement.

We can easily talk as we paddle, as long as he stays within ten or

fifteen feet of me, which he has made a point of doing. Kayaks are inherently unstable, and push boats can throw up four-foot waves in their wake as they drive their barges up and down the river. I can almost feel Kelly tensing to perform a rescue every time our boats hit a boil in the otherwise smooth river.

We almost scrubbed tonight’s mission five minutes before we put the kayaks in the river. That was when I confessed to Kelly that I’d contacted my closest friend in the FBI about Jonathan Sands. I probably wouldn'’t have risked it if it weren’t a Sunday, but I knew Peter Lutjens would be home with his family, and not in the Puzzle Palace—FBI headquarters—where he works in the IT department of the National Security Division. The result wasn'’t what I’d hoped for. In less than two hours, Lutjens called back and told me that no information could be given out about Sands under any circumstances, and I should be very careful whom I questioned about him.

I was about to hang up when Lutjens asked about Annie. I answered briefly, and then we chatted for a while about his son, who was having trouble with a science project. Lutjens told a lengthy anecdote about a next-door neighbor who’d turned out to be a retired physicist, who’d helped the boy finish the project. “Sometimes,” Lutjens concluded, “help comes from the most unexpected places.” I thanked him for his time, wondering what he could mean by that. Whatever he meant, it’s unlikely to help us on the river tonight.

Our kayaks glide past the northern reaches of Vidalia and Natchez almost without sound, the lights of the houses on Clifton Avenue glittering above us. Three-quarters of a mile to our left, the casino boats line the foot of the bluff, spaced about evenly for almost a mile. First comes the

Magnolia Queen,

then the

Zephyr,

the

Evangeline,

and finally the

Lady Belle.

I think of Tim as I pass the

Queen

because the cemetery sits on the ground high above it, but guilt will not help me tonight. Kelly didn't even want me along, and I mean to prove that I won'’t slow him down.

Danny McDavitt and Carl Sims are somewhere in the sky to the south of us, shadowing the VIP boat. Danny must be flying very high or very low because I can’t hear his helicopter. Our journey has been a milk run so far, but that will soon change, and knowing that Carl is riding shotgun in the chopper with his sniper rifle gives me a sense of confidence I might otherwise lack.

“Looking good,” Kelly says, his voice coming clear over the water. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Trying to get used to working the rudder again.”

“The real work’s below the waist.”

“I feel it.”

As the twin bridges slide past high above our heads, Kelly stops paddling and adjusts the ear bud connected to the Star Trek in his pocket.

“Any word from Danny and Carl?” I ask.

“The VIP boat’s still cruising south, but not in any hurry.”

He pulls back a piece of canvas and checks the GPS unit Velcroed to the coaming of his boat. “We’'ve been doing six miles an hour. Not bad, but let’s see if we can find some faster water.”

His kayak shoots forward without apparent extra effort on his part, then turns toward the middle of the river. I grip my two-bladed paddle and pull as strongly as I can, trying to stay up with him. On a river as broad as the Mississippi, the surface moves at different speeds in different places. Soon we’re moving at a steady nine miles per hour, and the lights of the town fall quickly behind us.

The land beyond the levee to our right is all former plantation land, and most of it’s still farmed today. From faintly silhouetted landmarks such as grain silos, I can tell we’re passing the old Morville Plantation, the one my father mentioned as a den of white slavery and gambling in the 1960s. Remembering this gives me a feeling of futility, as though Tim’s effort to stop what he saw as the rape of his hometown was nothing more than a vain quest to fight vices that will always be with us. The ironies are almost unbearable, if I think about them. Kelly and I are paddling this river to photograph men committing illegal cruelty upon animals, in order to “save” a city built upon the incalculable cruelty of slavery. The land on both sides of this river was watered with the sweat and blood of slaves, and their descendants still struggle to find their place in the life of the community. I’'ve dealt with the consequences of that history every day of my term as mayor, and it lies at the root of the most intractable problem I’'ve ever faced.

“Something weird’s going on,” Kelly says. “The VIP boat’s barely moving, but they still haven'’t stopped anywhere.”

“What do you think?”

He looks across the space between us. “Could they be fighting dogs

on

the boat? Down below or something?”

“I guess. Caitlin told me urban dogfighters hold fights in basements and places like that. But that’s an expensive cabin cruiser. I can’t imagine them fighting dogs in there.”

Kelly stops paddling and lets his boat drift with the current. “In five minutes we’ll be at the place they docked last night. If they haven'’t stopped anywhere by then, I say we get out and wait. Scout the place out. They could actually be coming back to the same spot.”

“You think?”

Kelly chuckles softly. “They might just be cruising around drinking, getting hyped up for the fight. Maybe the handlers haven'’t got the dogs here yet. Yeah, this might be perfect. We can videotape everybody as they get off the cruiser.”

“What if somebody heard Danny’s chopper, and it spooked them?”

Kelly’s smile vanishes. “Don’t put the hex on us, man. Let’s go.”

He digs his paddle into the black water and heads for the Louisiana shore. Another mile of river slides beneath us, then Kelly holds up his hand. After I stop paddling, he checks his GPS, then says, “We’re there. Let’s take ’em in.”

“I see a sandbar. Do you want to land there?”

“Let’s go about forty yards farther down, where those weeds are.”

To my surprise, Kelly lets me lead. I pull up my rudder with the lanyard, then drive the bow of my boat onto the gently sloping river bottom. When my motion stops, I lay the shaft of my paddle behind me, just aft of the cockpit, and brace the flat of the blade on the sand. Using this to stabilize the boat, I extricate my legs from the cockpit and step out into the water. Kelly does the same as I drag my kayak into the weeds, and soon we’re standing under some small cottonwoods, surveying the land where Danny saw the VIP boat anchor last night.

Kelly takes a night scope from his pack and glasses the darkness in front of us. To me the landscape looks like a black-and-white photograph tinted slightly blue. The hum of insects is annoyingly loud, and the only light comes from the half-moon over our heads. Kelly’s

view is completely different, of course. To him this night is a montage of ghostly greens, one he can navigate with the sure-footedness of a deer feeding at dusk.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“Nothing much. Let’s move inland.”

All I can do is follow orders and walk in his tracks. The soil is sandy, the weeds and nettles thick. As we get farther from the river, the cottonwood trees tower above us.

“Any signs of people?”

“There’s a shed about forty meters to the north,” he says. “No lights. Looks like a swing set or something beside it.”

As we pick our way through the tree trunks, Kelly adds, “I see a few benches and chairs.”

Though the chill of fall was in the air on the river, here the night is thick with the smell of green foliage, and I’'ve begun to sweat. It’s as though we’ve stumbled into some low-lying region where summer never ends.

Kelly curses as I collide with his back. He stands immobile, head cocked as though he’s listening for something. When I start to speak, he flips up a hand and whispers, “Give it a second. You’ll understand.”

Then I do. The smell of death is in the air—thick and powerful enough to smother the green scent I savored only moments ago. The odor isn’t alien; it’s what you smell when you’re forced to drive slowly past an armadillo that’s been dead for two days.

“This place feels deserted,” I whisper.

Kelly lowers the scope, then raises his neck and turns his head like a meerkat moving in slow motion. “No, there’s something here. Something alive.”

“Deer?”

“Let’s find out.”

I have no desire to walk any closer to whatever is producing that reek. But when Kelly creeps forward, I realize I have even less desire to stand here by myself.

As I follow him, the stench of death grows overpowering. I can barely suppress my gag reflex. Beneath the putrid smell of decay is a pungent, ammoniac funk that almost burns the nostrils. Lifting the

crook of my left arm to my face, I bury my nose in my jacket sleeve and survey what little I can see by moonlight.

There’s the swing set Kelly mentioned. It’s a standard A-frame set, like the one my parents bought at Western Auto in the 1960s, but no swings are attached to its crossbar—only some heavy-gauge springs and short links of chain. The chains end in hooks, while large carabiners dangle from the springs. Fifteen yards to my right is some sort of contraption that looks like a piece of antique playground equipment. It has two metal arms jutting from a central pillar that looks as though it’s meant to rotate so the arms can turn in a circle. But I can’t quite solve the puzzle of its function. One of the arms ends in a hook, and a short length of chain dangles from the second, a few feet behind that one.

“What is this place?” I whisper.

“It’s for training,” Kelly murmurs, clicking on a flashlight with a red filter on its lens. “They hang things the dogs want from the hooks and springs. Pit bulls will leap up and bite and hang there for hours. They do it to strengthen the dogs’ jaws.”

“What’s that thing that looks like a homemade merry-go-round?”

“You don'’t want to know.”

“I do.”

Kelly points his red beam at the strange machine and walks over to it. “See this front arm?” He points to the one that ends in a hook. “They hang a pet caddy from this hook with a kitten or something else inside it. Then they chain the dog to this arm back here. The cat goes crazy from terror, of course, and the dog chases it, pushing against the resistance in the machine.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s sort of like dog races—only with this deal, when the dog’s through running, they let him kill the cat. Sometimes they don'’t even use a pet caddy. They just hang the bait animal from the hook. I’'ve seen that in Kabul. I think they call this thing a jenny, or something like that.”

Suddenly the red beam vanishes, and I feel Kelly’s hand on my arm.

“What is it?” I ask, feeling my heart kick. “Did you hear something?”

“A cat, I think. Listen.”

He’s right. Beneath the whine of insects, I hear a tiny feline mewling, like the kind you hear behind Dumpsters at fast-food restaurants.

“I think it’s coming from the shed,” Kelly says. “Come on.”

I follow reluctantly, still thinking about the jenny.

Kelly quickly covers the distance to the shed, but as I follow, my right foot bangs into a bucket on the ground, sending a hollow clang through the trees. Before the sound dies, a cat screams inside the shed. Then something scuffles against the wall boards.

“Very smooth,” Kelly says, trying the door handle. “It’s locked.”

“I saw a silencer on your pistol. Just shoot it off.”

“No.” He runs his hand down the faces of the weathered boards. Slipping his fingertips into a crack between two boards at shoulder level, he yanks a board right off the shed, then jumps back as though he expects a wildcat to leap out of the dark opening. When nothing emerges but the stench of old urine, he switches on his flashlight and shines it into the shed.

“This is fucked-up,” he says.

“I can smell it. I don'’t need to look.”

“You said you needed to be able to testify about what we found, right? Well, here it is.”

I peer through the hole long enough to see half a dozen malnourished, extremely dehydrated cats. Three or four others appear to be dead. Half-buried piles of excrement litter the dirt floor. My horror deepens when I realize that some of the cats are wearing collars. Mercifully, Kelly shines his light into the corner of the shed away from the animals, onto some short metal bars leaning in the corner.

“What are those?” I ask.

“Break sticks. Bars to pry a bulldog’s jaws loose from something.”

Kelly takes out his camera and begins videotaping the contents of the shed.

“We’'ve got to let them go,” I say.

Kelly makes a humming sound I can’t interpret, but it sounds negative. “We don'’t want anybody to know we were here. I'm going to put that board back in place.”

I look back at him for a few seconds, then kneel and yank one end

of the bottom-most board away from the wall. While Kelly stares with a curious look on his face, two cats shoot through the opening and race away into the darkness.

“Put the other board back up,” I tell him. “They don'’t know how many cats were in here.”

“There go the rest,” says Kelly, pointing at several dark shapes escaping cautiously through the opening. The last cat through seems barely able to keep its feet.

“Okay, Gandhi,” says Kelly, hammering the top board back on with his hand. “Let’s put it back like we found it.”

As I wedge the bottom board back into place, a chilling sound reaches my ears. It’s a low, haunting howl, coming from somewhere deeper in the trees. It sounds like the crying of a soul that’s wandered lost for a thousand years.

“I

know

I don'’t want to see that,” I whisper. “Whatever it is. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Wait,” says Kelly. “Danny’s talking to me.”

I’d forgotten that Kelly’s still wearing his earpiece.

“The VIP boat’s getting close to where we are,” he says.

“What do we do?”

“Let’s check out that noise, and by then we’ll know if they'’re going to put in here or not.”

With a silent groan I follow him toward the wavering howl.

“We’re on a path,” he says, shining the red beam along a sandy track worn through the grass. “I bet this ends where they fight the dogs.”

Thirty yards farther on, the path terminates in a small clearing. In the middle of the clearing lies a shallow pit dug in the earth. It’s about eight feet square, and eighteen inches deep.

“That'’s where they do it,” says Kelly. “One place, anyway. In Afghanistan they fight them right in the street, but most places use a pit.”

Staring into the hole, I try to imagine two heavy-muscled pit bulls exploding out of the corners and smashing into each other, dueling for a death grip. But even standing in this spot, it’s difficult to believe that happens here. The howl comes again—lower in pitch, but much closer now.

“Over there,” Kelly says, pointing the beam toward the trees.

He trots across the ground, and I reluctantly follow. The first thing I see when I reach the trees is some sort of block and tackle hanging from a branch, the kind deer hunters use to gut animals. But as I try to look closer, the red light vanishes. Kelly has knelt to examine something at the base of the tree.

“Easy now,” he says, as though talking to a child. “Just take it easy. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Dread flows into me like an icy tide, but after a deep breath, I force myself to take a step to my right. Four feet in front of Kelly, at the base of a cottonwood tree, a pit bull terrier lies shivering on its belly. It’s a brindle, I think, but so much of its coat is covered with dried blood that it’s hard to be sure. The howling has stopped. Now all I hear is panting, accompanied by a strange whistling sound.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, wondering why the dog hasn’'t bolted in terror. “Can’t it move?”

“I don'’t think so,” says Kelly. “I think her back is broken.”

“How do you know it’s a her?”

“No balls. Just checked.”

“Can a dog break its back in a dogfight?”

“No way. Easy, girl, easy,” Kelly murmurs, sweeping his beam around the tree. The light stops at the trunk of the next tree. “That'’s what did it.”

Leaning against the next tree, a blue aluminum softball bat gleams dully in the red light. Like the dog, it’s covered with dried blood. Beside the bat, three car batteries stand on a small square of plywood. Kelly shakes his head and aims the beam back at the wounded dog. The terrier’s eyes look plaintive, almost human, but shock and exposure have obviously taken their toll. Both forelegs have deep, suppurating gashes at the shoulder.

Kelly edges forward, but I grab his arm. “That dog can still take your hand off.”

“Don’t worry, I know what I'm doing.”

As he moves closer to the dog, I ask, “What’s that whistling sound?”

He leans over the animal, training the beam on the top of its skull. Even with its back broken, the dog instinctively jerks its head away from Kelly’s arm.

“Christ,” Kelly says in a stunned voice. “They cracked her skull with the bat. When she breathes, the air goes through it. Kind of like a sucking chest wound, I guess. I can’t believe she’s still alive.”

As I stare in horror, Kelly takes out his camera and videotapes the wounds, then painstakingly videotapes everything in the clearing. As sick as it makes me, I can’t take my eyes off the suffering animal. Her plight is beyond understanding, like that of so many human victims I encountered in Houston. The sound of running footsteps makes me jump, then Kelly is at my side.

“What is it?” I ask. “Did the VIP boat land here?”

“No, it passed us. Goddamn it!”

“Maybe they

are

fighting dogs on the boat.”

“No. That cruise was some kind of con—a diversion. It’s like they knew we were coming. I think we’d better get out of here.”

He stuffs his camera into his pack and starts walking away.

“Wait,” I call. “What about her?”

He stops and looks back at me. “I told you. They can’t know we were here. We got nothing tonight, unless Sands himself owns the land we’re standing on. We’re going to have to do this

again.

”

“We can’t leave her like this. Can’t you…”

“What?”

“Shoot her?”

Kelly shakes his head. “I can’t be sure the wound wouldn'’t show, and I can’t get close enough to stick the gun in her mouth.”

“We can’t leave her like this,” I insist.

He sighs like a soldier being forced to consider the feelings of civilians. “You want to put her out of her misery?” He shines his flashlight back on the softball bat. “There you go.”

A wave of nausea rolls through me. “They already hit her with that,” I stammer, recoiling at the thought.

“They weren’t trying to help her. They were having a party. If you hit the cervical spine as hard as you can, death should be instantaneous.”

I look down at the dog, then back at Kelly.

“You wanted to come,” he says, shining the light in my eyes. “If you want to finish it, finish it.”

This is not like Kelly at all. Whenever we’ve worked together, he’s always been ready and willing to do whatever dirty work was

required. I’'ve never completely understood the dynamic between us, or what motivated him to go beyond what I consider the call of duty. He’s always operated by a private code, one I thought I understood. It’s as though together, we function as a complete man—a rational mind capable of enforcing its decisions with implacable force. But in the past, I realize now, Kelly’s willingness to kill has always been demonstrated while he was protecting me or my family. This situation falls outside those parameters. In fact, letting the dog die in agony is probably the safer choice, from that perspective. But I can see that Kelly feels for the animal. Is he testing me? Is the iron fist performing a gut check on the mind that wields it? Or is he trying to find out whether I'’ll let my emotions override my reason? Knowing there’s no sure answer to any of these questions, I walk to the tree and lift the bat, certain that the last person who did so was the one who battered the helpless dog into what huddles at my feet now.

“Wait,” says Kelly.

I stand over the shivering dog, waiting to feel the bat taken from my hands.

“Danny thinks he’s got something. Uh-huh…Right…How far?” He checks his watch, then says, “Shit, we can do that. We’ll come in the boats…. No, no, if you drop us in close enough, they’ll hear the chopper. Stay well clear. If they leave before we get there, try to get a license plate, but don'’t let them know you’re there. I'’ll radio our coordinates en route…. Right. Out.”

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Danny saw something suspicious earlier on the FLIR, down past where the VIP boat turned around. He went back and checked it out. It’s a big metal building, and it’s throwing off heat. There’s a couple of SUVs out front with men sitting behind the wheel like drivers waiting for people.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Tonight’s dogfight. I think they tried to pull a fast one on us. They knew we might be following the boat, so they handled transport a different way.”

“Where are they?”

“An island. About five miles downriver.”

“Five miles?”

“Yeah. If we dig in, we can make it in twenty or twenty-five minutes.”

“Won’t the fight be over by then?”

“Not necessarily. A single dogfight can go two hours or more. But we don'’t have time to waste. Put the bat back, and let’s move.”

“Damn it, Kelly, just shoot the dog. We can throw her in the river. They’ll never know.”

“Bullshit. Dogs aren'’t like cats to these people. They were punishing this dog, probably for losing a fight. They know she can’t move, and when they come back, they’ll expect to find her here, dead. Come on.”

Kelly takes two backward steps, but he doesn’'t turn away. I feel the weight of his gaze upon me. There’s a pregnant tension between us, but I won'’t kill a helpless creature because a man is testing me. Stepping over the dog’s rump with my left foot, I brace my foot against a tree root, then grip the bat’s taped handle with both hands and raise it over my right shoulder. The terrier lifts her head, trying to look back at me, but before her eyes find mine I swing the bat with all my strength, aiming for the neck, where the spine meets the skull. In the adrenaline-flushed second that the bat completes its arc, instinct tells me to shut my eyes, but I keep them open, knowing that to look away could result in more torture.

The bat doesn’'t ring on impact, but it jolts my arms and rattles my spine down to my pelvis as a wet crack like a boy stomping on a sodden limb echoes through the trees. The awful whistling has stopped. The dog lies motionless. I stumble back to the other tree, lean the bat against it, then march past Kelly toward the river.

As I wedge my knees through the cockpit of my kayak, he walks into the shallow water and looks down at me. “You did the right thing. But I think that’s enough for tonight. I should take it from here.”

Thrusting my legs forward, I set my feet against the pedals, jerk the lanyard that flips down my rudder, and push away from the sandbar. “I'’ll see you down there.”

CHAPTER

32

Walt Garrity takes a sip of ice-cold Maker’s Mark and gazes around the vast gaming floor of the

Magnolia Queen.

Most casino boats are floating barns filled with slot machines and few table games, but the

Magnolia Queen

is magnificent, harkening back to the days of the floating palaces that cruised the river after the Civil War. The

Queen

has a three-hundred-foot salon built in the style known as steamboat Gothic, with Gothic arches, stained-glass skylights, gilt pendants, and eight massive chandeliers. There are hundreds of slot machines, yes, but there are also table games of every type.

Walt spent the first part of the evening putting on the same kind of show he’d given on the

Zephyr

last night, making a spectacle of himself at the craps table and tipping everyone beyond all reason. He’s stayed with Nancy because since their scene in the RV they’ve had a certain understanding about the sexual component of their relationship that he doesn’'t want to explain to a succession of prostitutes.

She stands a few feet away, losing wads of Penn Cage’s money at the blackjack table. Nancy doesn’'t seem to mind Walt’s frequent absences, so long as the flow of chips and alcohol continues uninterrupted. She probably assumes that a man of his age is making repeated trips to the restroom. In fact, Walt has conducted a casual but very thorough inspection of Golden Parachute’s floating casino. This is the second time they’ve been aboard the

Queen

today. They

first visited it after lunch, then spent some time on both the

Zephyr

and the

Evangeline.

Walt was glad to learn that the opulence of the

Magnolia Queen

would justify J. B. Gilchrist’s spending most of his time in Natchez aboard her, and not the lesser boats.

During his first visit, Walt twice saw Jonathan Sands—the first time coming down the escalator from the upper deck where Walt now knows Sands’s office is, and the second in the cashier’s cage, talking to some employees. Despite his bespoke suit, Sands moved like an alert and graceful animal padding through a herd of less sentient creatures. Most of the gamblers on the boat blunder around like shoppers in a mall, their eyes on the slot machines, the tables, or the young women that seem so plentiful. Sands’s eyes miss nothing. He actually made eye contact with Walt long enough to register that he was being watched as he descended the escalator. Even after seeing Sands only twice, Walt knows the Irishman will be a difficult man to outwit, much less capture.

Walt has paid some attention to the women as well. Several of the younger ones are Chinese, and from their behavior he guessed they were prostitutes. Nancy confirmed this when Walt asked about them and showed more than a little jealousy when she did. Apparently this perk of the

Magnolia Queen

is becoming well-known to out-of-town businessmen, who don'’t seem to mind that the girls speak little or no English. Walt understands the attraction. As a young soldier in 1953, he fell in love with a young Japanese girl during an extended R&R in Kobe, Japan. Most of the women he’d met in Korea were prostitutes, but Kaeko was a nurse he met by chance in a restaurant. Walt had married his high school sweetheart before shipping out, and he’d sworn to be faithful while he was overseas. Kaeko had tested his vow to the limit, not physically so much as by slowly and completely inhabiting his soul.

The Chinese girls on the

Magnolia Queen

look different from Kaeko, but their resemblance is enough to trigger a feeling in Walt that shames the twinge of lust he felt when Nancy bared her bottom in the van.

“Why do you keep running off?” Nancy asks. “You’re tired of me, aren'’t you?”

“No, I'm just taking it all in. I’'ve been on a lot of boats, but I haven'’t seen one like this in many a year.”

Thus reassured, Nancy begins chattering mindlessly, but Walt suddenly becomes aware that several people are looking up over his shoulder. When he turns, he sees one of the most beautiful women he has ever encountered descending the escalator. She looks like a princess being carried down steps in a royal litter. She wears a jade green dress that lies close against her petite body, and her hair is long and straight. What strikes Walt, though, as it must have the other watchers, is the sense of self-possession radiated by the girl. Reaching behind him, he takes hold of Nancy’s cheap dress and turns her so that she can see the escalator.

“Daddy, I'm

playing,”

she protests. “Hit,” she tells the dealer. “Stay.”

“Do you know who that is?” Walt asks.

“Who?”

“That girl on the escalator.”

Nancy turns and stares for a few seconds. “No, I never seen that one before. She looks like she thinks her you-know-what don'’t stink, though.”

Nancy’s harsh voice intrudes on Walt’s reverie like the squawk of a crow startling a man contemplating a pristine dawn. He cannot imagine that the girl on the escalator could be for sale. If she were, the price for a night with her would have to be ten times that for a night with the Nancys so common on the boats. But Walt knows one thing: If her time is for sale, he intends to buy as much as he can afford.

CHAPTER

33

As we near the island, I start to ease my kayak along the sandy shore, but Kelly pulls alongside and points. “Farther down. That brush’ll keep the boats out of sight if a patrol comes down to the main bank.”

I nod and wait for him to lead the way. I almost vomited during our sprint downriver from the first stop. Sweat is pouring off me, but not from the eighty-strokes-per-minute pace Kelly set. Not even from the shock of killing the dog, which was an act of mercy by any measure. What has shaken me to the core is that the glimpse of hell I saw under the trees was less than five miles from the place where I grew up. My meditation on the ironies of Tim’s “heroic quest” as Kelly and I paddled down from Natchez has filled me with shame, and any doubt about our purpose tonight has vanished. Standing among the chains and hooks and infernal machines, I felt as though I’d stumbled into a death camp, one designed for animals rather than humans. The eerie whistling of the dog breathing through its skull will haunt me to my grave.

“Penn? You with me?”

“Right behind you.”

Kelly turns his rudder and knifes silently toward the shore. He pulls parallel to an overgrown bank that looks a little steep for my taste—not to mention snaky—then braces his paddle and climbs out

of his cockpit. As I pull in behind him and follow suit, Kelly drags his boat behind some kudzu, then unloads his pack and takes out his night-vision scope.

“Come on,” he says, seizing the grab handle on my bow and dragging the Seda into the weeds.

I insert the earbud Kelly gave me for my Star Trek—which I’'ve discovered is on the blink—and follow Kelly up the bank. According to Danny McDavitt, no dogs or guards are on the river side of the towhead, only a couple of men by the building that he believes could be the site of tonight’s dogfight.

When I get up to the sandy hump where Kelly stands, I see that we’re in a line of trees beside a marshy field. Across the field, faint yellow light spills from a windowless metal building that looks like a small warehouse, and beyond this stands a black wall of trees.

“Turn off your Star Trek,” Kelly says.

“Why?”

“You’re going to be with me, and we don'’t need any noise-pollution accidents. Also, we want Danny to airlift us off the river later, and your radio is our spare batteries.”

Before I obey his order, he lifts his Star Trek and says, “How we looking on sentries, Pave Low?”

Pave Low

is McDavitt’s code name for tonight; it’s the model of helicopter he flew in the air force.

“You got a couple of dogs prowling on the far side of the building,” he answers. “Pay attention.”

“What about the field?”

“Nothing. Some deer bedded down in the tree line about seventy meters to the north of you.”

Standing in near darkness, it’s strange to know that Danny McDavitt is looking down on us with a God’s-eye view that sees every warm-blooded creature around us.

“Hold up,” McDavitt says in my ear. “Do you see that?”

Across the field, a horizontal bar of light appears, growing rapidly into a rectangle.

“That'’s an overhead door,” says Kelly. “Shit!”

As the rattling whine of a chain drive reaches us, a black SUV roars out of the building, followed by two more just like it. Their headlights flash on when they leave the spill from the open door.

“We’re too late?” Kelly says in disbelief. “What the…?”

“What do you want me to do?” McDavitt asks. “Cover you or go with the vehicles?”

“Go with the SUVs!”

“Ten-four.”

Kelly winces, then looks longingly across the field. “I'm tempted to go into that building and see what they left behind.” He keys his Star Trek. “Did they take the dogs with them?”

“Negative.”

“Okay, we’re bugging out. We’ll see you a couple miles downriver.”

Through the trees I see three pairs of headlights cutting through the dark, moving north at gravel-road speed. Carl Sims’s voice replaces McDavitt’s.

“I can take out those dogs for you, no problem.”

Kelly considers this. “No. We don'’t know that we’ll get anything from the building. If you waste the dogs, they’ll know we know about this place. Find out where the SUVs go—that’s all.”

With a last look across the field, Kelly shakes his head. Far to my right, the headlights turn away, and I see taillights that remind me of those I saw on Cemetery Road the night Tim died.

“All this work,” I mutter, “and it’s come to nothing.”

“Maybe not nothing. We’ll see what Danny turns up.”

“Should we just call the Highway Patrol and have them stopped on some pretext?”

“No, they'’re clean now, away from the scene. Honestly, I'’ll be surprised if the plates on those SUVs are traceable. But we’ll find out who owns this land and see if we can learn something that way.”

As Kelly turns away from the field, a pale shadow flashes across my sight from right to left. I fall backward as Kelly goes down with a thud. Scrambling to my feet, I see a huge white dog mauling his left arm, trying to reach his throat. I yank out my Star Trek and yell, “Danny! Carl! We need help!”

Kelly’s gun is still in his gear bag, and the bag is behind him. As I crab-walk toward it, my eyes on the attacking dog—a Bully Kutta, I see now—the dog whips its head from side to side, trying to rip off Kelly’s blocking arm. Kelly’s struggling to get his right hand under the dog’s belly. Yanking the gear bag clear of the fight, I struggle with

the zipper, but before I get it open, the Bully Kutta arches its back, its four paws galloping in midair as it tries to wrench away from Kelly, who is jerking a knife from the dog’s scrotum to its rib cage. When I see a loop of intestine spill out in silence, I know that this dog too has had its vocal cords removed. As the animal rolls on the ground in its death throes, Kelly cinches his belt around his left biceps as a tourniquet.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “I couldn'’t get the bag open!”

“It’s okay. Find me a rock.”

“A rock?”

“A rock! Half an inch thick—flat, if possible.”

Three feet away I find a flat pebble smoothed round by the river. Kelly takes it and wedges it under his tourniquet, against the artery, I guess. Both sides of his forearm show puncture wounds, and the flesh is ripped near his inner elbow.

“This isn’t good,” he says, staring at the wounds. “I don'’t even know—”

A sound like running hoofbeats makes us whirl. This time the flying shadow is black, not white. Before I can even backpedal, I hear a bullwhip crack, and the wolf-size dog slides harmlessly to my feet, a quivering pile of muscle and bone. I leap backward, but Kelly just shakes his head and holds up his wired earpiece.

“That dog knocked it out of my ear,” he says.

“What just happened?” I ask, trying to get my breath. “Did you shoot that dog?”

“Hell no.” Kelly pulls his pistol from the gear bag and shows it to me. “Carl shot it from the chopper.”

Kelly inserts his earpiece and says, “Thanks, buddy. You cut that kind of close.”

“You’re lucky I even saw the damn thing,” Carl replies. “I missed with my first shot. That was the second.”

McDavitt’s voice cuts through the chatter. “What’s the situation down there, Delta? You want me to follow the vehicles or do you need a hospital? My partner says it looks like a dog got to one of you.”

“We’re fine,” Kelly lies. “We need to ID those vehicles.”

“I already got a license plate.”

“I want to know where they'’re headed.”

“Okay.”

“Are there any more of these monster dogs out there? That old Ranger sure was right. I didn't hear a damned thing till it hit me.”

“The two dogs by the building are still there. I don'’t know where those came from.”

Kelly chuckles darkly. “I think they'’re the ‘deer’ you thought you saw bedded down. They’re big, man.”

“Penn? Penn, are you there?”

Kelly looks sharply at me as the new voice breaks into the conversation, but I recognize the tone immediately. It’s my father.

“I'm here,” I tell him. “What’s the matter?”

“Jenny was just run off the road in Bath. Her car flipped.”

I swallow hard as an image of my sister lying dead beside an English motorway flashes through my mind. “Is she alive?”

“Yes. She called me from the hospital, and I spoke to her doctor. She’s in mild shock, but she could easily have been killed.”

“When did it happen?”

“About an hour ago. She’d dropped the kids with a friend and was on her way to the university.”

A wave of heat rushes over my face as guilt suffuses me. “Where are you?”

“On my way to the safe house.” Kelly insisted that we have an empty house within ten miles of the operation to review any evidence we collected without having to go to a place Sands could know about. “Caitlin’s with me,” adds my father.

“Doc?” Kelly cuts in. “I know you’re upset, but go easy on the names, okay?”

“Fuck that,” says my father. “I’'ve had it with these sons of bitches.”

“How soon will you reach the house?” Kelly asks, his eyes moving right and left like those of a man thinking fast.

“Twenty minutes. And I want you there. I want everybody there.”

Kelly looks down at the corpse of the white dog. His left hand is balled into a fist, probably against pain, but I sense that he’s weighing the possibility of progress against the immediate crises. His entire posture communicates frustration; he looks as though he’s about to kick the dead dog.

“Pave Low?” he says into the Star Trek.

“Here.”

“Come get us.”

“Ten-four. You want me to set down right where you are?”

“No. We can’t be sure that building’s empty. We’ll find a sandbar downstream. A mile, maybe.”

“I'’ll be flying right over the water, coming upstream. Out.”

I key my Star Trek again. “Dad, we’re on the way.”

“I heard. Don’t waste any time.”

As I shove the walkie-talkie into my pocket, the sound of my father angrily carving a Sunday roast makes me turn. But it’s a trick of the mind. Kelly has the Bully Kutta’s head wedged between his knees, and he’s sawing through the lower part of its neck like a man being paid for piecework, not by the hour.

“What are you

doing

?”

“Rabies,” he grunts without looking up. The spinal column slows him down for a few seconds, but Kelly’s obviously field-dressed a lot of game in his time. “I don'’t know if this fucker’s had his shots or not. You gotta get the brainstem and everything for that test.” When the head tears free, Kelly lifts it by its wrinkled face and stuffs it into his gear bag. Then he straps on his pack, heaves the dog’s carcass over his right shoulder, and stands with a groan. “What are you waiting for? Pick up the other one.”

“Where are we going?”

“To throw them in the river.”

With a strange buzzing in my head, I kneel beside the black dog, lever my right arm under it, then wrestle it over my shoulder in an awkward fireman’s carry. The damn thing must weigh a hundred pounds, and it stinks. I'm winded before I cover twenty yards, but Kelly’s already far ahead.

This is one time I should have let him do the job alone.

When I reach the river’s edge, the white carcass is already spinning slowly downstream under the stars, and Kelly is stuffing the dog’s head into the rear cargo hold of his kayak. With the last of my strength, I stagger downstream from the boats and heave my burden into the current. The Bully Kutta disappears with a splash, then bobs to the surface.

“They actually went after my sister,” I say with breathless disbelief. “I haven'’t heard my dad sound that upset since Ruby died.”

Kelly squats and rinses his wounded forearm with river water. “I'’ll tell you what I think,” he says softly, scrubbing the half-clotted blood from his skin.

“What?”

He looks up, his mild blue eyes like those of a choirboy. “I think Jonathan Sands has become a one-bullet problem.”

CHAPTER

34

“A one-bullet problem?” Caitlin asks, echoing Kelly’s repeated phrase. “You mean you want to kill Sands? In cold blood?”

Kelly looks around the circle of faces in the room. Along with Kelly and Caitlin, Carl Sims, my father, and I are seated in chairs in the den of a lake house owned by Chris Shepard, my father’s youngest partner. Because it’s after Labor Day, most of the houses used as second homes by Natchezians are empty now. As I drew the curtains over the broad glass doors on the far wall, I saw the narrow black line of Lake Concordia, the oxbow lake that carries the name of the parish, behind the house. I also saw James Ervin, who’s guarding us from the lake side, while his brother Elvin guards the road entrance. Danny McDavitt is sitting in the chopper across the lake road, in the cotton field where we landed.

“Actually,” says Kelly, “my blood is still pretty hot at this point.”

“Mine too,” says my father. “Gutless bastards.”

While my father dressed Kelly’s wounded arm, we listened to his account of Jenny being attacked on the highway (not even the British police believe it was an accident), then brought Dad up to speed on the events on the river. While we talked, Carl tied the Bully Kutta’s severed head in a trash bag, then stored it in the refrigerator, so that its brain can be examined by the path lab in the morning. Coming after the events beside the river tonight, this scene was so surreal that

I could scarcely separate thought from emotion. Kelly’s assertion that the time has come to kill Jonathan Sands seems perfectly natural to me, given the situation. I can tell by Caitlin’s hard-set face that she doesn’'t agree. She doesn’'t want to antagonize my father, but she’s not going to be silent when the matter at hand is assassination.

“Look, I want the guy to go down,” she says. “He’s scum, okay? No question. But you can’t just kill him. I mean, if it’s all right for you to decide who lives and dies, the same goes for everyone else. Who empowered you? If you’re free to do that, where does it end? Back in the cave, that’s where.”

Kelly listens patiently until she stops. “Let me tell you a secret, Caitlin. We’re still in the cave. It’s just bigger, and we wear nicer clothes. We make alliances and try to be civil, we save the weak instead of leaving them out in the cold to die. But guys like Sands, Quinn, Po…they play by the ancient rules. To them, life is a zero-sum game. You win or lose, live or die. And the most important rule of all is, you take everything you can, when you can, until somebody draws a line and says, ‘No more.’”

“Is that your view of life?”

“If it were, I wouldn'’t be offering to kill a man in front of witnesses. You probably studied existentialism in college, right? Survey of philosophy course? I'm not trying to patronize you, okay? But I

am

an existentialist. A soldier. Asleep or awake, in uniform or out. There’s war in Afghanistan, but there’s war here too. When Sands threatened to kill Penn’s child, he opened hostilities and declared the rules of engagement. We know from Linda Church’s note that Sands probably murdered Ben Li, or else ordered it done. It’s a miracle Linda isn’t dead too—

if

she’s still alive, which we don'’t know for sure. I'm sure they'’re hunting for her as we speak.”

Caitlin shivers at this thought.

Kelly nods with certainty. “Given where things stand now, we have only one practical solution. Remove Sands from the equation.”

“You’re willing to do that?” Dad asks. “If we say here and now that that’s what we want…then Sands will die?”

Kelly nods soberly. “Quinn too, I think. Unavoidable.”

Caitlin shakes her head in amazement. “And you’ll go back to Afghanistan and never lose a night’s sleep over it?”

“I'’ll sleep better.”

What strikes me most about Kelly’s cool assertion is that a couple of hours ago, he was unwilling to put a dying dog out of its misery. But that mystery will have to wait. I look at my father, who’s rubbing his white beard with arthritically curled hands.

“It’s tempting,” Dad says. “When I think of Jenny rolling over in that car, I could do it myself.”

“I'm sorry to be a drag here, guys,” Caitlin says. “But this is

way

over the line. What does killing Sands even accomplish? If Edward Po is the problem, who’s to say he won'’t carry on the vendetta and send men here to kill Penn and every member of his family?”

“She’s got a point,” Carl says. “You’d be crazy not to consider that.”

“I’'ve considered it,” Kelly says. “Edward Po is a businessman. Whatever he’s up to here, he ultimately views it in terms of profit and loss. You can’t go around murdering government officials in small-town America. It draws the wrong kind of attention. That'’s bad business. Sands is Po’s cat’s-paw, his control mechanism for Golden Parachute. If Sands dies, Po will simply order Craig Weldon to put someone else in that job.”

“Yet you’re arguing that Sands

will

murder government officials,” Caitlin points out. “Or their families.”

“I think he’s proved that he will. I don'’t think Sands is motivated primarily by money.”

“You don'’t know that Po is either. You’re ignoring the question of face. If Po is a criminal, can he afford to let other criminals know that his lieutenants can be killed without reprisals?”

“I considered face,” Kelly says patiently. “Also

guanxi.

I think killing Sands is actually the most elegant solution to our problem—and not just for us. If Sands is killed, I suspect Po will claim credit for the murder—unofficially, of course. Competitors will assume that Po had Sands murdered for interfering with his niece, Jiao, whom Po vowed to protect from people like Sands.”

Everyone is silent, not least because Kelly seems two steps ahead of us all.

“We either kill him or we back off,” Kelly concludes. “Conventional methods are too slow. They’re just going to get someone we care about killed.”

“Carl?” Caitlin says pointedly. “Would

you

kill Sands?”

The sniper gives her a “Why me?” look, like a grade-school student being called on by his teacher. “Kelly’s a free agent,” he mumbles. “The man makes his own decisions.”

“I'm asking about

you.

”

“Depends on the situation. If somebody was going to die because I didn't, I would, yeah.”

“But would you shoot him sitting at his breakfast table?”

Carl turns up his palms. “I don'’t think so, but it’s complicated. I

have

shot somebody who was eating dinner, because the Marine Corps told me he needed to die. Now, I don'’t know Jonathan Sands from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. But if I knew he was going to kill my sister or my mother…then I’d vaporize him.”

Caitlin turns to me, as though I'm the court of last resort. “You’re an attorney, sworn to uphold the law. You’ve sent people to death row for doing exactly what Kelly’s offering to do now. Are you really going to send him out of this house to commit murder?”

The fact that I think Kelly is right surprises even me. I’'ve been in similar situations before, with the power of life and death over someone almost as evil as Sands, and I chose to use the court system, even with the chance that they might escape punishment. But Sands is a special case. I wish Caitlin and I could have this discussion in private, because she tends to get more stirred up when she’s in front of people. But there’s no alternative now.

“I have sent people to death row,” I concede in a level voice. “But not for doing something like this. This is a unique situation. Tim stumbled into something far bigger and more complicated than he knew. Blackhawk’s position and Peter Lutjens’s warning prove that. We still don'’t really know what we’re dealing with. We only know that the government is involved in some way, and that Sands and Quinn are prepared to kill to prevent anyone from learning what they'’re doing. I also know that wherever they are, my mother and Annie are scared to death. They’re holding their chins up, but they'’re terrified that they’ll get a phone call saying that Dad or me is dead. And I believe that’s a real possibility.”

“That sounded like a summation, not an answer,” Caitlin says, her tone still challenging.

“Caitlin…this is like a stalking case. When I was a prosecutor, I saw a lot of women die needlessly because the police had no effec

tive way to intervene until after they were dead. A lot of the men who killed those women went to prison afterward. But the women were still dead.”

This time I get no ricochet response.

“In this case, there are four women who could die,” I go on, “all of whom I love. And one of them is you.”

“Don’t do that,” she says with startling intensity. “Don’t use me to justify killing someone.”

“Maybe we should take a vote,” Kelly suggests.

“No!” snaps Caitlin. “We’re not taking any goddamn vote. No one here has the right to vote on murder. If you kill Sands, you'’ve done it on your own.”

“What would you do if he went through with it?” I ask. “Would you report Kelly to the police?”

She gets to her feet and turns to my father. “Tom, you’re not seriously condoning this?”

Dad looks up at her with sad eyes. “I understand your feelings, Kate. I believe in the rule of law. And Sands hasn’'t killed a member of my family—yet. But that’s only thanks to chance. My daughter could easily have died two hours ago.”

“But she

didn't,

Tom. She’s going to be all right. We have time to take another path.”

“What path would that be?”

“We could go public. I can have this story on the front page of twenty-three papers tomorrow, and a lot more than that, if I bring my father into this. I’d hate to do that, but if we’re to the point of assassinating someone, then I think it’s time to break the story nationwide.”

“If we go public,” I point out, “Edward Po won'’t set foot on U.S. soil for ten years, at least. Whatever he’s doing here, he won'’t be nailed for it.”

Caitlin looks at me like I'm an idiot. “What do you think Po is going to do if you murder Sands? You lose Po that way too.”

“What exactly would you print?” I ask. “Unsubstantiated allegations?”

Kelly leans forward and says, “I know going public seems like a magic solution, throwing light onto people who live in the shadows. But men like Po don'’t see the world the way you do. They’re not

politicians. While you’re stirring up your media storm, they will be

acting.

To them, this is war. And if they take you out, or Annie or Peggy or Penn, none of us is going to feel comforted by the fact that you splashed Sands’s and Po’s names in the paper. Because that won'’t bring back the dead.”

Dad seems to be weighing all the arguments in his mind. “You saw those two old black men outside?” he says to Caitlin. “The ones watching over us?”

She nods.

“Before they were cops, before there even

were

black cops in Natchez, they were members of something called the Deacons for Defense.”

“What’s that?”

“A group of men who got fed up with their friends and neighbors being terrorized, beaten, and killed. They patrolled their neighborhoods with pistols, lay out all night in ditches with shotguns, all to keep their people safe. They did that because they couldn'’t turn to the police. The law had failed to protect them, so they did it themselves.”

“Has the law failed to protect us?” Caitlin asks, looking around our circle. “We haven'’t even

asked

for help yet.”

“Kate,” my father says gently. “Let me tell you a story a patient of mine once told me. Back in the sixties and seventies, they had gambling and prostitution not far from where we are now. A place called Morville Plantation. Very close to where Penn and Kelly got attacked. Some of the girls who worked at Morville were held there against their will. God only knows where they’d been taken from, or what hell they’d been through. But one day, one girl got away from there. Half naked, she walked all the way to the sheriff’s department. She was crying with relief while she told her story. The sheriff listened, then put her in his car and drove her right back to the whorehouse.”

Caitlin stares at my father in silence.

“Kate, you’re sitting in a parish that didn't have jury trials for almost ten years—from 1956 to 1966.”

“We’re not living in that time anymore,” Caitlin says quietly.

“That'’s true. But how far are we from the story of that poor girl? If we believe Tim Jessup, the same thing is going on today.”

Dad’s mention of Tim seems to move Caitlin to silence.

“This is what I know,” I conclude. “Peter Lutjens warned me to stay away from Sands, said he could give me no information whatever. Peter would only do that if Sands was involved with the government in some way. Sands is either a target, an agent, or an informant. I'm almost afraid to find out which. But the fact is, he’s been committing felonies since he arrived here, up to and including murder. Yet he’s still roaming free.”

“Maybe the government doesn’'t know he’s doing that!” Caitlin argues.

“The same government you want to pillory for its handling of Katrina and Iraq?” I shake my head. “Either we’ve stumbled into something really rotten, or something so serious that we can’t even grasp its significance. Either way, we have to assume that if Tim’s death didn't matter to whoever’s in charge of this mess, none of ours would either.”

Caitlin looks as if she’s winding up again, but before she speaks, Dad says, “I think Penn and I have to make this decision alone. Caitlin, you and Carl will have no part in it.”

“But we

know

about it. We

are

a part of it, whether we want to be or not.”

As passionate as she is about this, some part of me wonders about Caitlin’s true motive.

“If we decide to go ahead,” Dad says, “you do whatever you feel you must.”

The room is so quiet that my cell phone vibrating in my pocket stops the conversation. It’s late enough that I feel I need to check it. The screen shows one new text message. The area code is 202—Washington, D.C.—but I don'’t recognize the number. The message reads: GO OUTSIDE AND TURN ON YOUR SATELLITE PHONE.

“What is it?” Kelly asks, seeing the color drain from my face.

I toss the phone to him. He reads the screen, then jumps to his feet and grabs his gear bag.

“What is it?” Dad asks worriedly. “Is it Annie or Peggy?”

“I don'’t know what it is,” Kelly says, “but it ain’t good.” He looks at me. “Who have you given the sat number to?”

“Nobody.”

“Shit. Either it’s someone from Blackhawk, or they gave the number to somebody in D.C.”

“What do I do?” I ask. “How do they know I'm inside?”

“They tried to call the satphone and you didn't answer. Take it easy. They can’t see us or anything. But you'’ve got to take the call. I'’ll go out with you.”

We brush aside the curtain and go out the patio doors. Caitlin follows. As soon as Kelly sets up the link to the satellite, the phone starts to buzz.

“This is Penn Cage.”

“Hello, Mr. Cage,” says a voice with a vestigial Southern accent. “My name is William Hull. I'm an attorney with the Justice Department.”

“They’re a pretty big employer. Could you be more specific?”

“I'm special counsel to the Department of Homeland Security.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Very boring, I assure you. Being an assistant DA in Houston is twice as exciting.”

“What are you calling about, Mr. Hull? And how did you get this number?”

“We have some mutual friends. They were kind enough to give me your private number. As for the purpose of my call, it’s about Jonathan Sands.”

“What about him?”

“Well, this is a delicate matter. We—”

“Mr. Hull, when you say

delicate,

I hear

dirty.

”

Hull pauses, his rhythm disturbed. “Jonathan Sands has an important relationship to the federal government at this time.”

I look at Kelly and shake my head in disbelief. “You mean he’s an informant.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Well, what did you say? Is Sands employed by the federal government?”

“Of course not.”

“Is he a close personal friend of someone in the administration?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then he’s an informant.”

Hull sighs like a man unaccustomed to frustration. “Mr. Cage, there’s an investigation pending—a very large and complex investigation—that began almost three years ago. It involves both the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, through the Special Task Force on Money Laundering. The target is a Chinese national named Edward Po.”

“I know who Po is.”

“Do you? In any case, Mr. Sands is important to the aforementioned investigation. That'’s all I am authorized to tell you, and given my position, it should be enough.”

“Well, it’s not. I’'ve played this game before, Mr. Hull. I’'ve dealt with some pretty unsavory characters in order to nail worse ones, so I know the rules. But I also know that at some point you have to draw a line. Being a confidential informant isn’t a free pass to commit murder.”

Hull takes his time with this. At length he says, “You were an assistant district attorney in Houston, Texas. You were dealing with state crimes. I'm talking about the national security of the United States.”

“That rubric has been stretched to cover a lot of sins lately. The last time I checked, Mississippi was part of the United States. And her citizens count just as much as those in Georgetown or Chevy Chase. What happens to Sands after your investigation of Po is concluded? Does he walk?”

There’s another hitch in Hull’s rhythm. “That hasn’'t been determined yet.”

“Then tell me this: What chance do you really have of nailing a Chinese billionaire in U.S. federal court?”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“You’re telling me somebody up in the Justice Department has finally grown some balls?”

“It happens. Mr. Cage, I need your personal assurance that you won'’t interfere any further, as of this moment.”

“You’re not going to get that. Not tonight, anyway.”

“I'm sure I don'’t need to remind you that you have no law enforcement authority. You’re no longer a prosecutor.”

“The local DA reminds me of that all the time. I am, however, an American citizen.”

“Meaning?”

“Hull, if you'’ve forgotten what that means, we might as well hang up now.”

“I sense a certain naďveté in your attitude, Mr. Cage. Maybe you'’ve been out of the city too long.”

At last my outrage boils over. “Do you have any idea what kind of criminal acts Jonathan Sands is committing down here?”

“Knowing the man’s résumé, I can guess.”

“My sister was nearly killed in England two hours ago by a hit-and-run driver.”

“You can prove that was linked to Jonathan Sands?”

“It wasn'’t coincidence. But even that pales next to kidnapping and murder.”

“Are you referring to the death of Timothy Jessup?”

“And possibly others.”

“Mr. Cage, try to set aside your personal concerns and listen to me for one minute. A little over a month ago, more than two thousand people drowned in New Orleans. If the numbers I'm seeing are any indicator, we’re likely to find another thousand corpses or so, and many will remain unaccounted for. So, as for a few dogs being fought in some backwater Louisiana parish, we don'’t have time for it. As for prostitution and gambling, the authorities in Babylon had the same problem. It’s not going away.”

“I'm not talking about dogfighting and prostitution.”

“I heard you. Murder is serious business—if murder is in fact what you have down there. But Edward Po is smuggling illegal aliens into this country by the hundred, some of whom will work in industrial jobs, others as prostitutes or drug couriers. More importantly, through massive and complex money-laundering schemes, Po is meddling with the currency of the United States. The number of people who’ve been injured because of his criminal enterprises probably can’t be overestimated. So while I'm sure Mr. Jessup was a close friend of yours, you need to take a step back and get some perspective. The target here is Po, not some Irish punk who likes to fight dogs and run whores in his spare time. I talked to your old boss Joe Cantor. He told me that you generally have a good sense of priorities, but that you’re an idealist. In these times, idealism is a luxury we can’t afford. Am I getting through to you?”

“You’ve made your position clear.”

“That'’s not what I'm asking.”

“That'’s the only answer you’re going to get. I'’ll consider what you'’ve said, but you should be aware of this. My family has been threatened by your informant. I’'ve had to send my mother and daughter into hiding. Because of that, I’'ve taken certain steps. If I or my father die or disappear for any length of time, every detail of these matters will be made public in the most sensational way I could contrive.”

This silences Hull for some seconds. “Mr. Cage, there’s no need for threats. We’re on the same side.”

“That'’s the one thing I'm not clear on after this conversation, Mr. Hull. Good night.”

“Wait! Please don'’t do anything rash. For your own sake. You have my phone number now, on your satellite phone.”

“I don'’t need your number. You can tell your masters this. Besides being a citizen, I'm also a lawyer. And I don'’t cringe when I say that. I'm not a backroom, Washington Beltway, cuff-links-and-suspenders kind of lawyer—and by that I mean

your

kind of lawyer. I'm a trial lawyer. A former state prosecutor. And when somebody starts treating the laws of my state like their own personal toilet paper, I know how to tear them a new asshole. Am I getting through to you, sir?”

“In graphic detail. Mr. Cage, you remind me of what I loved and hated about the South.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“Take care of yourself. And please inform Daniel Kelly that he’s made himself subject to severe criminal penalties for misappropriating army property. He can be arrested at any time.”

When I click END, I realize that my father has come outside as well. He and Caitlin are watching me with a mix of concern and awe.

“I love you,” says Caitlin, hugging me tight. “You realize that, right?”

“Jesus.”

“That was…freaking awesome.”

“No, it was stupid. This isn’t a Frank Capra movie.”

“Who were you talking to?” Kelly asks.

“Claimed he was special counsel to the Department of Homeland Security. Name of Hull. Ever hear of him? William Hull.”

“No. But it sounds like we’d better forget what we were talking about back in the house.”

“Yeah. Killing federal informants is a bad idea.”

“Sands is a government informant?” Dad asks.

“He’s their leverage against Po. And they want Po for all sorts of major crimes. Human smuggling, prostitution, money laundering. All the stuff Walt talked about the other night. If my experience is any guide, Sands is probably part of a sting designed to lure Po onto U.S. soil. Then they can grab him, and Sands can testify against him.”

Kelly sighs in disgust. “And then Sands walks? Is that the deal?”

“I honestly don'’t know. But with a target that big, and in this paranoid security climate, it’s possible. They couldn'’t care less what crimes Sands is committing down here. For all we know, Sands could be doing that stuff specifically to lure Po here.”

“That'’s just

nuts,

” Caitlin sputters. “It’s fascism!”

My father lays a hand on her shoulder. “It burns me up to think they’d write off what we’ve been going through, but the government makes those kinds of decisions all the time. All governments do.”

“But

ours

isn’t supposed to.”

Kelly laughs cynically. “Caitlin, you sound like a schoolgirl, not a journalist.”

“So, we’re just going to back off?” she says in disbelief. “That'’s what you’re all saying?”

“You think we want to back off?” I ask incredulously. “We’re the ones who wanted to shoot the son of a bitch!”

“There’s got to be a middle path,” she says doggedly.

“Don’t go Buddhist on us,” Kelly says wearily, probing his wounded arm. “We’'ve got new information now. We’'ve got to pull back a little to reassess. I’'ve got four guys risking their careers to protect Annie and Peggy right now. That'’s asking a lot of men who don'’t even know them.”

“Hull knows all about you,” I tell Kelly. “The Star Treks, everything. Blackhawk sold you out. Hull threatened you with arrest.”

Kelly shrugs as if this were only to be expected. “You could still try to nail Sands on murder charges after the feds get custody of Po, right?”

“Yes. They don'’t have the power to grant Sands immunity on state charges. Not unless they’ve suspended the Constitution.”

Caitlin stares at me with narrowed eyes, then steps forward. “Don’t do this, Penn. You can’t cave in to bastards like Hull.”

“I hate to say it, but I’'ve been in the same position he’s in. Not exactly the same, but similar ones. Justice is about compromise, Caitlin. Trade-offs.”

“

Justice?

Don’t shit on that word by using it to describe what’s about to happen here.”

I sigh heavily, then lift the satellite phone and call the lawyer back.

Dad takes Caitlin’s arm. “Let’s just be thankful Jenny wasn'’t killed, and that none of us was either. We’'ve been lucky, considering what we’re mixed up in.”

In her present mood, Caitlin would jerk her arm away from anyone else. But not my father. Instead, she leans into him and rests her head on his shoulder.

“Hello, Mr. Cage,” Hull says in a smug voice. “Have you thought things over?”

“Yes.”

“I know emotions are probably running high down there. But with your legal background, I felt certain you’d see the logic of things.”

“I have a precondition for backing off, Mr. Hull.”

“What’s that?”

“You call off the dogs, as of this moment. That means Sands, Quinn, and any goons who are watching us. Also any agency that’s eavesdropping, trying to find my kid, whatever. All that stops as of this moment. Is that understood?”

There’s a brief silence. “I can’t speak to those specific concerns, but I feel sure you can stop worrying about your loved ones from this point forward. No one knows better than I that Sands can be difficult to deal with. Things probably got a little out of hand down there. I may be coming down myself soon, to help manage things.”

“If you want your prosecution to succeed, please don'’t make me call you again.”

“More threats?”

“That'’s no threat. How would you like this story to go page one across the country? We can make that happen, if you push us.”

This silences Hull longer than anything else.

“Do we have an understanding?” I ask.

“D’accord,”

he says. “You go back to your lives, we’ll go back to making America safe. Good-bye.”

I kill the connection. “God, what an arrogant bastard.”

“Let’s go,” Caitlin says in a flat voice. “How are we getting back?”

“You two ride in the helicopter with Danny and Carl,” Dad says. “Kelly and I will follow in the car. If that’s okay with you, Kelly. I’d like to keep an eye on that arm.”

“Sure.”

The subtext is clear: No one wants to be around Caitlin for the thirty minutes it will take to drive back to town. I’d just as soon ride in the car with Kelly and Dad, but that wouldn'’t go over well with the offended lady.

“Let me get that dog’s head and lock the house,” Dad says, “and we’ll run you over to the chopper.”

“It’s only a couple of hundred yards,” Caitlin says. “We’ll walk it. There’s no danger anymore, right?’

Dad’s face darkens. “I'm not so sure—”

“We’ll walk it,” I tell him, looking over at the running lights of the chopper on the far side of the lake road.

Kelly squeezes my arm and says, “I'’ll see you back at the house.”

“You sticking around town awhile?”

He somehow manages a grin as my father walks back to the door. “I can’t afford to lose this gig. You’re my only employer now.”

“Good, because I need you to bring Annie back from Texas. You’re definitely still on the payroll.”

“Sounds like a pretty cushy job.” Kelly stops smiling and points past me. “You better look after her.”

Caitlin has already started walking toward the helicopter. I don'’t hurry to catch up, but my longer stride brings us even soon enough. At first she says nothing. But when I don'’t speak, she says, “You know what’s funny about the way that just went down?”

“What?”

“Two minutes before that lawyer called, you were ready to wipe Jonathan Sands off the planet without even a warning. But the second some Beltway lawyer told you that Sands should go scot-free for God and country, you bent over and said, ‘Thank you, sir, may I have another.’”

“Caitlin…nothing I say is going to make you feel better.”

“No, I want to hear your rationale. Is there something more than the ‘good German’ defense here?”

“Yes, unpalatable though it may be. Edward Po represents a greater threat to a larger number of people than Sands. If the only way to nail Po is to let Sands walk, then that’s what the government will do. They’re choosing to stop the greater of two evils. If that sounds lame, let me tell you something. When I was an ADA, I once had to go down to the port and walk into a ship container that held twenty-seven bodies. They were Mexicans who’d died of dehydration. Five extended families, all dead. Men, women, children. Put Chinese faces on those bodies, and you get an idea of the kind of thing Edward Po is into for profit.”

Caitlin is shaking her head in frustration. “But you’re just taking their word about Po. What do you really know about him?”

“We got Po’s history from Blackhawk before they sold Kelly out. The bottom line is that however crazy Sands may be, he’s protected right now. That'’s a fact of life. And if he feels threatened, he won'’t hesitate to kill my father, my mother, my daughter, or even you. It would be insane to risk that.”

“I told you not to use me to justify murder. Don’t use me to justify chickening out either. Aren’t you putting an awful lot of trust in a bureaucrat you'’ve never met, to keep Sands in line?”

She’s right about that much,

I think, as we cross the black strip of asphalt in the night. Carl’s probably watching us through his night scope from the helicopter and wondering why we’re risking this walk across open ground without Kelly.

As we draw close enough to hear the slowly turning rotors whoosh through the air, she says, “I really feel down. I can’t explain it. It’s more than just what happened tonight.”

“No, it’s not. After I told off Hull, you were flying high. Now, facing reality, you’re depressed. I know I’'ve disappointed you. But I have too much at stake to fight Hull and Sands. You want me to leave you out of my calculations? Okay. The bottom line is this. I have a child, you don'’t. That was a big part of my reasoning about executing Sands, as well. Until you have a child of your own, you can’t understand the absolute imperative you feel to protect that innocent life.”

Caitlin stops short of the helicopter and looks up at me, her eyes bright and wet. “I

want

a child. I wanted one with you. I always have. That'’s why I’'ve been treading water for a year and half, even though I'm almost thirty-five. You think

I

can’t deal with reality? What about you and your fantasy of saving Natchez?”

I reach out to take her hand, but she slaps mine away. “You told me you ran for mayor to save your hometown. That'’s what you told yourself, your parents, Annie, and everyone else. Well, I wasn'’t sure it could be saved from the things you wanted to take on. Not by one person. But I know this: It damn sure needs saving now. And what are you doing? Folding your tent. Pissing on the fire and calling in the dogs, as they say down here.” She shakes her head and starts to turn away. “Honestly…I don'’t think I’'ve ever been more shocked in my life. Or more wrong about someone.”

At this point, a wise man would offer an apology and get into the helicopter. But something’s been nagging at me ever since the argument about killing Sands.

“As long as we’re being honest,” I say to her back, “let me ask you one question. When you argued so passionately against killing Sands, was that really because you believe it would be morally wrong to do it?”

“Of course!” she snaps, whirling on me. “What did you think?”

“I wondered whether you might be arguing that way because, if we’d gone that route, you’d never have been able to write the story. Not as it really happened, anyway.”

Caitlin has pale skin, but what little color she has drains from her face. “You son of a bitch.” She looks as if she’d like to gouge my eyes out, but instead she simply turns and climbs into the cabin of the helicopter.

I look back at the road, where my father’s nine-year-old BMW is swinging onto the asphalt to head back toward Mississippi. No matter what I told Caitlin, there’s no escaping one unalterable reality: Despite my deal with the devil, Tim Jessup’s blood still cries out from the ground. And I am not deaf. Only one thought brings me solace now.

My daughter is coming home.

CHAPTER

35

Linda is sitting in the front pew of the church, near the wooden rail. Pastor Simpson sits facing her, his hands hanging between his knees. He looks like a laborer forced to put on a suit for a funeral, but when you feel his hands, you know he hasn’'t done real labor in years. He’s a talker, soft-spoken and sincere. He’s been talking to Linda about the totality of God, but she can’t keep her mind on the words. She’s burning up, her leg is throbbing, and her ride is late, hours late, picking her up.

“I'm sorry it’s taken so long, honey,” Simpson says for the twentieth time. “That dern nephew of mine can’t hardly get no work, and now he gets called out to rig like this…and after what you said, I didn't think we should tell nobody else but Darla about you being here.”

“I understand,” Linda says, trying to keep her mind clear through the fever. “But the Bargain Barn closed a long time ago.”

“I told you, hon, Darla sits with sick folks sometimes after she gets off, and tonight she had to check on a patient. Somebody probably ran off and stuck her with their mama or something. Happens all the time. Darla don'’t charge half of what professional sitters charge, so people are all the time taking advantage.”

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Oh, you’re gonna love it. My brother’s got a place way out in

the country. Ain’t nothing there but trees and ponds. Nobody to hurt you, or even see you. Just an old cabin. You can stay out there however long you need, till the coast is clear.”

“All by myself?”

“Well, Darla can stay awhile to get you fixed with food and sundries. But after that—” Simpson falls silent at the sound of an engine. “See there? All that worry for nothing.”

Linda feels a dizzying rush of relief. The pastor reaches out and steadies her. “She’s gonna knock three times, so we’ll know it’s her. Okay?”

“Okay. You said Mayor Cage got my note, right?”

“That'’s what Darla said. Now, let’s get on down the aisle.”

As Simpson helps Linda to her feet, three loud knocks reverberate through the cold church, like someone banging on a castle door.

“Come in,” the pastor calls. “We’re coming.”

The door opens, and Linda sees a tall silhouette in the door. Darla, for sure. But as the silhouette moves forward, Linda perceives its narrow waist and broad shoulders. Then a shaft of light falls on the handsome face of Seamus Quinn.

Linda’s stomach heaves in terror, and she whirls toward Pastor Simpson, who’s looking at her with terrible shame on his face.

Quinn strides up the aisle with two big men flanking him. Linda recoils and tries to run toward the altar, but her torn knee gives way and she collapses in the aisle. The two men rush forward and lift her to her feet.

“How can you do this?” she asks, her eyes on Pastor Simpson. “You’re a man of God!”

“Just a man, Linda. I'm weak, like everybody else. I sin like everyone else. It’s the curse of my life.”

Simpson turns to Quinn and says, “We’re square now, right? That'’s what you said? All debts canceled?”

Quinn gives him a broad grin and slaps his back. “No worries, Padre. For now. I'm sure you’ll be back at the tables soon enough.”

“No!” Simpson cries. “Never. This finishes all that!”

Quinn’s laughter reverberates through the church as they drag Linda toward the door.

“They’re going to kill me!” she screams, looking back at Simpson with pleading eyes. “You know they are!”

“The Lord will keep you, child! Have no fear. You’re a child of God, perfect in his eyes. But I must to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. My family needs me, Linda. My congregation needs me. You’ll be saving all of that with your sacrifice, just as our Lord did at Calvary!”

“Fuckin’ hell!” Quinn shouts, laughing. “Shut your fucking gob already! You’re worse than the bloody Taigs!”

As Simpson falls to his knees at the altar and begins to pray, Linda’s knee gives way at the door. The men lift her bodily and carry her toward a black SUV.

“Who’s going first?” asks one of the men holding her.

“High card wins,” says the second.

“Get your arses up front,” snaps Quinn. “Age before beauty, that’s the rule.”

He lifts the rear gate on the SUV and the men slide Linda into the cargo area on her back. “Get on with you,” Quinn says. “This is no peep show.”

One man slams the rear door down, and they get into the front seat. After the motor starts, Quinn leans down beside Linda’s ear. “You led me a merry chase, darlin’. But I like a game bitch. I’'ve been waiting a long time for this. I’'ve already seen pictures, now let’s see the real thing.”

Linda struggles as his hand slides down her stomach, but when a razor-edged knife grazes her throat, she freezes. Seconds later, her pants have been cut from her body as smoothly as if by a nurse in an ER.

Quinn’s eyes glint in the dark. “So that’s what kept the boss in such a state,” he whispers. “Not bad…not bad.”

“What do you want?”

“Everything you gave

him,”

Quinn whispers. “Then more.”

Linda’s shock and fever have held her at some chemical remove from the situation, but now reality is settling into her bones. God has not delivered her anywhere but into the hands of Tim’s murderers.

“Please don'’t hurt me any more,” she whispers. “I'’ll do anything you say.”

“Course you will.” Quinn laughs harshly, then hits the front seat twice to signal the driver to go. “Everybody does, in the end.”

CHAPTER

36

Kelly and I are standing at the foot of the broad gangplank of the

Magnolia Queen,

having a last talk before we go aboard. Kelly believes Sands needs to hear directly from us that we’re disengaging from our covert war, and we need his assurance that he’s doing the same. I’'ve agreed because I want no misunderstanding on that score, especially since Kelly and Danny McDavitt are flying to Houston this afternoon to bring back Annie and my mother.

“We’re just going to talk, right?” I ask a little anxiously.

“Clear the air,” Kelly says. “Everybody can get whatever they have to say off their chests, and we can all relax a little.”

“That'’s kind of hard for me to visualize, given the past few days.”

“Nah. Come on.”

As I follow him up the broad gangplank, I say, “Did that SAS sergeant ever get back to you? About Sands’s life pre-1989? The Northern Ireland stuff?”

Kelly’s face darkens. “He did, but he didn't have anything for me. He thinks Sands probably isn’t a real name. I faxed him a photo, but that could take longer. My guy’s not on active duty anymore.”

“I just wish we knew more about this asshole.”

“We’re about to. You’re not carrying a weapon or a wire, are you?”

“No. Why?”

“They’re bound to search us. Wand us, everything.”

“I'm clean. You?”

Kelly rolls his eyes. “I asked you first.”

At the end of the gangway we pass through the main entrance, where a guard in a burgundy uniform stands greeting gamblers. Seeing us, he speaks into a collar radio. Seconds later, two men appear at our sides and lead us to an elevator hidden behind a wall partition. As we rise to the upper floor known as the hurricane deck, our escorts pat us down thoroughly, then run wands along the lengths of our bodies.

“Rub a little harder down there,” Kelly quips. “You’re giving me a chubby.”

The guy pulls back, muttering something about queers and ponytails. He’d probably be shocked to learn that this ponytailed hippie could take him apart without raising his pulse rate.

The other guy finishes Kelly’s patdown, stopping at his left forearm. Kelly pulls up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, exposing a white bandage. “Dog bite,” he says with a smile. The guy fingers the entire length of the bandage while Kelly grits his teeth. Then the man presses a remote in his pocket.

The doors open onto a carpeted corridor where the jangling sound of slots does not intrude. The men motion for us to walk past simulated gasoliers to a set of stainless-steel doors at the end of the hall.

As we reach them, the doors part as though by magic, and I catch my breath. The steamboat-Gothic motif that dominates the

Magnolia Queen

ends at the door of Jonathan Sands’s office. Behind his sleek black desk stands a solid glass wall that offers a breathtaking vista of the upstream bend of the Mississippi River, the great reddish tide flowing down out of verdant green bluffs on the east, and flat delta earth to the west. Sands sits behind his desk wearing an olive green commando sweater with patches on the elbows. He’s furnished the room with Barcelona chairs, an Eames lounger, and several other iconic pieces. The office feels as though it was ordered in a single shipment from Ultra Modern or Design Within Reach.

“Well, Mr. Kelly,” he says. “We meet at last.”

Kelly nods but says nothing.

“Where did you come from, if you don'’t mind my asking?”

“I flew in from a place called Qalat. You know where that is?”

Sands gives a surprised smile. “Actually, I do. I passed a few years there one afternoon, back in the nineties.”

“I figured maybe you had. Or somewhere like it.”

“So. Brothers-in-arms.”

“I wouldn'’t go that far.”

“Well, get on with it. Why are you here?”

“Diplomacy. To make sure something’s understood.”

“I'm listening.”

“At the request of the government, we’re going to cease and desist trying to nail your hide to the barn door.”

As Sands laughs, the doors hiss open behind us. When I glance back, I see Seamus Quinn, his face clouded with suspicion. After Quinn comes the white Bully Kutta I last saw at Sands’s house. The dog walks around us and sits calmly to the right of Sands’s desk, the piercing eyes staring out of its wrinkled face.

“That'’s already been communicated to me,” Sands says.

“From Hull, no doubt,” I say.

“We’re here to add the personal touch,” Kelly says. “I have a message of my own for you.”

Sands raises one eyebrow.

“I want you to understand that the only thing keeping you alive is this man standing here.”

Sands looks back and forth from me to Kelly.

“Penn is your old-school type guy. A gentleman and a scholar. Officer material, you might say. I'm more the direct type. A grunt. A grunt’s grunt might be more accurate. I have certain skills that your average grunt doesn’'t. When the brass sees a problem they can’t solve with a TV-guided bomb or an Abrams tank, they point guys like me at it. The paper pushers call it discretionary warfare. Doesn’t sound very bloody, does it?” Kelly smiles. “But you know the real definition, don'’t you? Mate?”

Sands’s good humor seems to be wearing thin. I doubt he’s accustomed to being challenged in his own office.

“I know what you did to his sister,” Kelly says mildly. “And he told me what you said you’d do to his little girl. I'm a big fan of that little girl. I like the way she smells—like clothes that just came out of a dryer. So when Mayor Cage asked my opinion of your recent

activities, I told him you were a one-bullet problem. Do you require a translation, Mr. Sands?”

Sands chuckles in appreciation. “You’re all balls, aren'’t you, Danny boy? Where was your grandfather from? Derry?”

“South Boston. You can play it as cool as you want, but you see me. You hear me. And I don'’t want any misunderstanding after I leave this room. We’re not your problem anymore, and you’re not ours. You guys can rob this town blind for all we care. Neither I nor the mayor is going to lift a finger to stop you. Am I right, Penn?”

“Right.”

“But,” Kelly adds, “if anything happens to my friend or his family—if his father should suffer a minor heart attack while walking through the produce section of the local Wal-Mart, say…then you, Jonathan Sands, will cease to exist. Your pal standing behind me too—but purely as an afterthought. I’d take him out just to get rid of the bog stink.”

I hear Quinn shifting his weight, but Sands stops him with a glance.

“Are we clear?” Kelly asks.

“Danny, Danny,” says Sands. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

“Rats,” Kelly says. “Informers. But that’s an old IRA tradition, isn’t it? That'’s why you have the kneecapping with the power drills and all that, to try to keep your mates from selling you out for a bottle of Bushmills.”

Sands’s eyes harden remarkably fast.

“You’re ratting Po to the government,” Kelly goes on, despite my trying to shut him up with a glance, “which sounds like a risky proposition to me, even if they get him. But if I were you, I’d be worried about what your lapdog behind me’s going to do if Po

doesn’'t

take the bait. Hull is going to want something to show for his years of investigation. Quinn might decide to flip on you and turn state’s evidence to keep his own ass out of jail. Yeah, I’d be thinking hard about that.”

I hear a quick sliding sound, and then Quinn is flying over Kelly, a gun in his hand. At first I think he’s pistol-whipping Kelly, but when the motion stops, Kelly is wrapped around the Irishman like a boa constrictor, his bulging calf locked across Quinn’s thighs, his forearm wrapped around Quinn’s neck. The Irishman’s spine is

bowed to the point of breaking around Kelly’s other knee. Sometime during this commotion Sands whistled and the white Bully Kutta went alert, but something makes Sands call him off. The dog stands with his forelegs braced three feet from Kelly and Quinn, his clipped ears back, his bunched muscles quivering, tongue panting in frustrated energy.

Then I see why.

Kelly’s free hand is holding something small and black against Quinn’s bulging neck. Thin and irregularly shaped, it looks like the ancient flint knives I used to see in my father’s anthropology books. Where the point should be, I see only skin; then a trail of blood begins to make its way down the flesh of Quinn’s neck. Sands is on his feet behind his desk, as ready as his dog to burst into action, but he can do nothing, short of ordering his dog to attack me.

“Pick up the gun, Penn,” Kelly says in a steady voice.

I look down. Quinn’s automatic is lying on the floor, two feet in front of me. It would be nothing to pick it up—if Sands’s dog weren’t here.

“You give that animal an attack order,” says Kelly, “Quinn will be spurting blood like the

Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

and I'’ll gut the dog before he’s dead. Pick up the gun, Penn.

Now.

”

I feel like I'm reaching into a cobra’s basket, but I bend at the waist and pick up the gun. There’s no question about who’s in charge in this room.

“Don’t point it at the dog,” Kelly says calmly. “Point it at his master.”

I turn to Sands, which brings the barrel of the pistol in line with his stomach.

“That'’s right,” says Kelly, like a man giving instructions to toddlers. “That dog could take three or four rounds from a nine mil, but Mr. Sands will have a hard time surviving one.”

Quinn suddenly jerks hard in Kelly’s grip, but Kelly tightens his arm and leg, and I hear a sound like rope being stretched taut. Quinn groans, then screams in agony.

“How do you like being on the receiving end?” Kelly asks mildly. He drags the black blade farther along Quinn’s neck, and blood begins to stream from the cut.

“You’re a dead man,” Sands says quietly.

Kelly laughs. “It takes one to know one. Open the door, Penn. Nice and slow. Just put your foot in front of it. Anyone but Penn moves, I'’ll sever Quinn’s carotid. Fair warning.”

“He’s bluffing,” gasps Quinn, still struggling against the hold.

With a strained smile, Kelly tightens his calf muscle, and Quinn screams like a heretic on the rack.

“I never bluff,” Kelly says. “You came after me with a gun. I kill you, it’s self-defense all the way. Right, Mr. Prosecutor?”

“Absolutely. Any reasonable person would have been in fear for his life.”

“Yeah, I almost shit myself from fear. Now, open the door.”

I obey, but slowly, the dog watching me all the way.

“Okay,” says Kelly, his voice strained from the effort of holding Quinn immobile, “just so we’re all clear. First, I'm going to let this piece of shit go. Then Penn and I are going to walk off this tub. And you two, after licking your wounds, are going to realize that business is business. You crossed the line when you brought Penn’s family into this, and I’'ve pointed out your mistake. Now we’re all going to go our separate ways.”

“Are we?” says Sands. “I think we have some unfinished business. You killed two of my dogs last night. I had an investment in those animals.”

“Consider it overhead. Now, I know what you’re thinking. As soon as the door closes, Quinn will say, ‘We’'ve got to kill that bastard. I'm not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him.’ But you don'’t have to do that, you see? For two reasons. First, because I'm a man of my word. We’re backing off. And second, because it would be a waste of time. You’d never see me coming anyway.”

Sands is smiling again, but the effect is more frightening than a scowl on a normal person. “Before you go, Mr. Kelly, let me tell you something about myself. I don'’t often do that, but you'’ve earned it, so I'’ll make an exception. You ever hear of the Shankill Butchers?”

Kelly thinks for a few seconds. “Northern Ireland. They were a Prod bunch, right? Mass murderers. More gangsters than political.”

“One of the bloodiest gangs as ever stalked the streets of Belfast. Scum, really. Grabbed Catholics at random off the streets and tortured them. Cut them to ribbons, beat them to death. When they couldn'’t get Catholics, they took whatever they found. I know,

because I worked with them now and again, on legitimate UDF missions. For a while they were protected by the Brits because they occasionally topped an IRA man or two. But eventually, everyone on both sides knew something had to be done.”

“My arm’s getting tired,” Kelly says. “Can you cut to the chase?”

Sands smiles, then rubs the Bully Kutta’s head and speaks in a barely audible voice. “I killed their headman, Mr. Kelly. When two armies of killers who couldn'’t agree on a fucking thing for thirty years decided one of their own needed killing, they came to me. And I wasn'’t even twenty. Oh, it’s a famous murder. Never solved.”

“What’s your point?”

“Let’s don'’t be making threats that it’s in neither of our interests to back up. We’re both tough boys, but there’s room in the jungle for both of us. At least until Mr. Hull and I conclude our business. We have a cease-fire until then.”

“That'’s exactly what we came to get.”

“After that, we can renegotiate new terms, if you like. I hear you may be looking for work soon.” Sands gives me a pointed look. “

You

go back to worrying about city ordinances and garden clubs. However, if you should come across that data that Jessup copied, make sure it gets to me. If you find out somebody else has it, you do the same. No copies. No games. Are we clear?”

“No problem,” I say. “It’s your property anyway.”

“Right.” Sands doesn’'t move, but the sense of dismissal is unmistakable. “I think we’re done here, gentlemen.”

In a burst of motion almost as fast as the one with which he restrained Quinn, Kelly disengages from the Irishman and bounds to his feet. Then he takes the gun from me, and we back out of the office, the dog watching us like a wolf cheated of a kill.

“I'’ll leave the gun with your doorman,” Kelly says. “Have a grand day altogether, gentlemen.”

The doors hiss closed.

Outside, stepping off the far end of the gangplank, I finally take my first easy breath.

“I know that was tense,” Kelly says, “but it was necessary. Especially if I'm leaving town for a few hours to get Annie back.”

“Why did you provoke them like that?”

“Guys like that only understand one thing. Force. I wanted them to know who they'’re dealing with, and I wanted more information about Sands than we had before. I accomplished both things.”

“You did that, all right. Sands shocked me when he asked about the USB drive. I’'ve assumed they had that for a while now.”

“I think Quinn has it,” Kelly says. “But he’s keeping it for himself. It’s his ace in the hole if the Po sting goes bad. A chip in the game with Hull. That'’s one reason Quinn flipped out and attacked me. I was dead right about him getting positioned to stab his boss in the back.”

“Do you think it’s really safe to bring Annie back?”

“As long as we stick to the agreement. They have nothing to gain by antagonizing you further, and now they understand they have a lot to lose.”

“What do you mean?”

“They know we’ll bypass the law as easily as they will. That'’s something they needed to know.”

I look into Kelly’s eyes for a while but say nothing. When I start to shake his hand, he turns and starts walking toward the parking lot.

“What’s the matter?”

“Quinn’s bound to be watching us. We don'’t want anything that looks like a good-bye scene. We want them thinking I'm right around the corner, day and night.”

“Sorry.”

Kelly laughs softly as I catch up to him. “That felt good, didn't it?”

The last knot of tension is starting to uncoil in me. “I’'ve got to say, seeing Quinn on the floor with the knife to his throat beat any courtroom moment I ever had. How did you get the knife in there?”

“Flint doesn’'t show up on the wands. No metal.”

“Where was it hidden?”

“Lower back, in the little valley over my spine. I guess it’s my version of Walt Garrity’s derringer necklace. People miss it all the time.”

“A flint knife,” I marvel. “A caveman’s weapon.”

Kelly turns back and gives me a serious look. “Remember what I told Caitlin last night. We’re still in the cave. It’s just bigger now.” He pats my shoulder. “Tonight you’re going to eat dinner with your little girl. Let’s get to the airport.”

CHAPTER

37

Linda Church crouches naked and shivering in the corner of the kennel stall, praying for deliverance to a God she has almost given up on. There’s a dog collar around her neck, and a heavy chain runs from the collar to a steel post anchored in cement. The kennel is a long, low building with a tin roof, hidden entirely beneath a tall shed so that it can’t be seen from the air. The two rows of gated stalls are made of Cyclone fencing, with an office and a storeroom made of plywood at one end. There’s a barred window in her room, but she doesn’'t dare try to break out of it. The kennel is surrounded by a high fence, and a half dozen ravenous pit bulls roam free between the outer wall and the fence.

That'’s why Quinn feels confident leaving her alone here. Even if she could somehow get the chain off, Linda couldn'’t leave the kennel. But the truth is, she hasn’'t the strength for any of that.

When someone is hurting you and you beg them to stop—and they don'’t stop—something breaks inside you. Linda learned that very young, and she’s lived most of her life trying to escape that feeling, to heal what was broken inside her. Tim was the first man who ever really helped her with that, and Quinn killed him. He’s already admitted that. The first time Quinn raped her in the kennel, he described Tim’s last minutes on earth, the desperate attempt to make them think he had wrecked his car, his flight into the woods

near the Devil’s Punchbowl. But Tim hadn'’t counted on Sands’s dog. The Bully Kutta had run him down in minutes and savaged him before the men could pull him off.

Linda shuts her eyes and tries not to think about last night, but it’s impossible. On top of her infected leg and torn knee, she’s getting a urinary-tract infection. The pain is almost unbearable when she pees, like a razor blade in her urethra, and she shivers for two or three minutes after she’s finished. She stopped drinking water to keep from having to endure any more pain, but that seemed to make it worse. She can’t understand why a man would want to have sex with a woman in the shape she’s in, but Quinn does. Maybe the pain arouses him; maybe that’s the whole point.

She’s cried until she has no tears left. She believed with all her being that her escape from the boat had been divine providence, that she was really going to get clear as a reward for her bravery on the boat—which had in reality been a willingness to accept death, if necessary. To take that step and then be betrayed by the very servant of God, or one who put himself up as that…this had broken her. She feels valueless. Doomed. Like the altar boy must feel when he realizes that the priest who is using him doesn’'t love him, doesn’'t care for him at all, but sees him only as a means to an end.

Linda has never truly wished for death, despite enduring very hard times. She’s known girls who committed suicide, but she could never believe that they hadn'’t had some better choice, if only they had looked hard enough. But here, in this place, she sees no hope of deliverance. Only more rape, more pain, and a terrible death in the end. Quinn has told her he means to feed her to the dogs when he tires of her, and she knows he will do it. He has hated her for being Sands’s favorite, and thus unavailable to him. Quinn would sometimes come sniffing around the Devil’s Punchbowl, but he couldn'’t risk it often because the cameras were always on, and Sands might see him from the security suite or the interrogation room. Still, she always felt Quinn’s eyes creeping over her body whenever he was near. She’d turned to find him staring at her so many times that she’d come to think of his hungry gaze as she did the hairy black caterpillars she’d feared as a child, the ones that injected an anesthetic as they stung you. By the time you looked down and saw one of the revolting things on your leg, you knew it had been there for a long

time, injecting its poison. And half an hour later the burning would begin.

Now Quinn is free to do with her what he will. Linda has never seen so much hatred and anger knotted up inside a man, but she knows she will bear the brunt of it until she can bear no more. So she prays hopelessly for she knows not what, while the wind rattles the fences and the dogs prowl the dirt beyond the plywood wall.

“Please, Lord, help me,” she whimpers in the dead air of the kennel. “Please send me an angel. I'm too sick to help myself. I can’t do no more.”

CHAPTER

38

Caitlin has not come to Tim’s funeral. This morning she called and told me that the way to honor Tim’s life was not to grieve in a church, but to carry on his work. If we couldn'’t do that, she said, she couldn'’t bear to sit in the cathedral and dishonor his memory. When I asked what she intended to do instead, she said she was going down to the newspaper office to think about all that had happened and to try to make some decisions about her future. Her tone made it plain I was not to be a part of this process.

Skipping the funeral wasn'’t an option for me; I'm a pallbearer. Eight of us are sitting behind the Jessup family in the center pews of St. Mary’s, a beautiful Gothic Revival cathedral built in 1843. Most pallbearers in Natchez are old men grown too frail to carry their dead friends, but today I'm seated among seven strapping boys I went to high school with—men now, of course—who have flown in from every corner of the country. Los Angeles, Chicago, Wisconsin, Oregon, Atlanta, D.C., other places. To my surprise and relief, not one man that Tim’s father asked to perform this duty made an excuse not to show. More surprising, at least twenty-five people from our senior class are present, and most have traveled far to be here. Since we had only thirty-two students in our graduating class, this is a significant percentage. Earlier, we held a sort of unofficial reunion outside the cathedral, trading updates on kids, careers, class

gossip. After we pallbearers received our instructions inside, a couple of my old friends asked some pointed questions about what had brought us all together. I told them only that Tim had lost his life while trying to help the city, and that he’d transformed that life before he died.

After the processional was complete, I was amazed to find St. Mary’s filled nearly to capacity. I had worried that, like his wake, Tim’s funeral would draw few mourners, but it seems that a decision has been taken by the congregation to support Tim and his family despite the poison being spread by Charlotte McQueen. These people understand that one of their children could easily have killed someone during a drunken drive to the county line during college, as Tim did, and only the grace of God spared them such a tragedy. The Catholics in Natchez have always seemed to me a great extended family, and they'’re proving it today.

Father Mullen made the right choice in the end: Tim is getting the full Catholic funeral mass. This, along with the presence of my friends and the large turnout, warmed my heart initially. But as the ritual proceeds, that warmth slowly dissipates in the vaulted vastness of the cathedral. Father Mullen, dressed in white vestments, begins a reading through coughs and throat clearings and the stifled cries of infants. He’s chosen a passage from 2 Timothy, one that has more relevance than the name of the book.

“Remember the gospel that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’: it is on account of this that I have to put up with suffering, even to being chained like a criminal. But God’s message cannot be chained up. So I persevere for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they, too, may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Here is a saying that you can rely on: If we have died with him, then we shall live with him. If we persevere, then we shall reign with him. If we disown him, then he will disown us.”

Perhaps my private testimonial to Tim’s heroism moved Father Mullen to be brave. As the priest continues, my gaze drops from his face to the heads and shoulders of the family in front of me. Dr. and Mrs. Jessup are as shattered as any parents whose child precedes them in death. Julia sits beside them with the baby on her lap, bereft and bewildered. She has not made eye contact with me today,

though we’ve stood only a few feet apart more than once. But now her son peeks over her shoulder and finds my eyes, his own filled with bemused innocence. I search for the father in the boy’s face, but where I find Tim is twenty feet closer to the altar, in the gleaming bronze casket I will soon help carry to the cemetery where we met on the night before he was murdered.

That night, Tim told me not to blame myself if anything happened to him. But today the very silence of his closed coffin seems a screaming indictment of all my recent failures. Am I the only one who hears it? I probably look normal, even detached, to those assembled here. But inside, a storm of emotion is slowly gathering force. Here in this mystical atmosphere of candles and incense and holy water, other things Tim said that night come back with the accusatory weight of deathbed charges. I had promised the people so much, he reminded me. How could I consider walking away from a battle I’d scarcely even joined? The silent echo of his words makes me bow my head in shame, and with shame comes anger and resentment.

Stealing a covert glance at the disinterested faces behind me, I wonder how these people would react if I resigned as mayor. They know nothing of the actions of Jonathan Sands, or of the threat posed by the

Magnolia Queen.

My stepping down would send a short-lived wave of gossip through the city, and then someone else would take over the job. Life would go on as before. Many in these pews would be happy to see me go. Several among them fiercely resisted my early efforts to change the educational system in Natchez, as one would expect from a group that supports a strong Catholic school. And all pointed out the contradiction of my preaching a move to the public schools while supporting my alma mater, which is private.

Despite his bold reading, Father Mullen’s homily is vague and aimed squarely at the faithful in the pews. He might have written it specifically not to offend Charlotte McQueen. As he speaks, I sense melancholy regret in the crowd, but not the dazed sorrow people usually feel at the funeral of a man in his forties. Most here today—certainly my peers—always expected Tim Jessup to die young, probably long before now. Except for the lingering questions about how he died, there’s a sense of anticlimax about this ceremony. As people kneel and sit and stand as though controlled by a central computer,

I feel a wild urge to stand, take the pulpit, and do what Dr. Jessup has probably given up hope that I will do—tell the truth about Tim’s life and death.

But what would it accomplish? Would these people rise as one, march down Silver Street, and drag Sands and Quinn off the boat to face a rough justice? Would they burn the

Magnolia Queen

where she lies? Such things have happened in Natchez before. Games of chance and horse racing were always popular here, among both the aristocracy on the bluff and the riff-raff below. But in 1835, when the organized gamblers of Vicksburg fled to Natchez Under-the-Hill after several of their number were hanged, prominent Natchez attorney John Quitman led a group of citizens down Silver Street, rounded up the offenders, flogged them savagely, and drove them out of town. Such “clean outs” occurred regularly in the old days, and sometimes involved more than horsewhips. But no similar uprising would happen today. Such things are left to the police now. If the authorities don'’t pursue a case, people assume there’s no real wrongdoing, at least none they need concern themselves about.

My frustration feels alien after the buoyant exaltation I experienced outside the cathedral, where my old classmates expressed endless admiration for my work as mayor. Seeing so many boyhood friends gathered together was a shock to my system—a different kind of shock than those I’'ve endured for the past few days, but a shock nonetheless. For two years, I’'ve received a steady stream of calls and e-mails expressing thanks and respect for my commitment to the town. All have written or spoken of how much they miss Natchez, and how badly they would like to return. I never doubted their sincerity, at least during their nostalgic moments. But the fact is, almost none

have

returned. Most can’t, of course. They’re successful, ambitious professionals who cannot earn a living in a town without a thriving economy. They’ve established families elsewhere, most in the suburbs of large cities. During holiday visits over the past two decades, they’ve noted that Natchez has declined from the idyllic years they remember, and they’ve expressed a desire to help save it. Yet this urge passes, and few bother to send annual checks to St. Stephen’s Prep, much less to inquire what they can do for the town. I can’t condemn them for that. Prior to moving back home, I experienced the same sentimental feelings during my own rare visits, yet I

didn't move back to Natchez with the intention of staying, but rather to give Annie and me a safe haven to grieve over Sarah. I certainly didn't come back to save the town.

And I have not saved it.

In fact, I have conspicuously failed to do so. Since I was twelve years old, I’'ve known that the key to renewing this city is leading the white population back to the public schools, yet I have proved unequal to the task. The reasons are complex and deeply rooted in the history of the state, but also of the nation as a whole. Sitting with my old classmates, I see that more clearly now. For despite living in suburbs in the north or west, most of their children do not attend public schools. Before the funeral I heard one mother complain (brag) about how long she’d had to camp out to get her youngest child admitted to kindergarten at the most exclusive private school in Portland, Oregon. The petrified truth is that throughout history the affluent have always sent their children to exclusive schools. What makes Natchez’s problem seem special is that the poor and lower-middle-class populations are predominantly black. This results in a system that appears to be racist but which is actually segregated by economics—as are the schools in most other states. Racism may contribute to this economic reality, but that’s a national problem. To imagine that I could solve in four years a problem that the best minds in government have been unable to solve in five decades was pure hubris—as Caitlin pointed out before I ran for office.

Father Mullen is preparing to conduct Communion. As ushers begin escorting the Catholics down the outer aisles, I ponder what my old schoolmates said outside the cathedral. The pipe organ fills the foot-shuffling silence, but when the cantor’s voice joins in, I block out both and focus on my memory of the voices I heard on the cathedral steps. At last I recognize the unfamiliar timbre I heard there. It was the tone one uses when speaking to a martyr, or to a fool. Though they don'’t verbalize this feeling, the men and women I grew up with are amazed that I’'ve been willing to pay the costs of returning home to try to change things. First among those is the education of my child—not because we have a racist school system, but because the first-class education I received at St. Stephen’s is no longer to be had here at any price—

not even at St. Stephen’s.

This

realization steals my breath for a few moments, and to fully accept it is almost more than I can bear.

The only thing that could have prevented the present crisis was foresight during the boom years of my childhood. If community leaders had worked

then

to diversify the local economy away from oil production, and if white citizens had supported the public schools, Natchez would be a different city today. Political and economic opportunities were squandered that may never present themselves again. But short of a time machine, what I need to save this town is the people who have flown in for this funeral. Natchez needs the bright young citizens who benefited during her prime to return the favor. She needs their intelligence and energy, their desire to remake the city into the image of their dreams, a place where their children can experience the kind of childhood they enjoyed, but where those kids can also return and raise their own families if they choose to. But that is a pipe dream. The conversations I had a half hour ago told me that. Tomorrow, my old classmates will say good-bye to their aging parents and fly back to their own families. Other towns and cities will be the beneficiaries of their energy and intelligence; other schools will receive the fruits of their labor. They will always speak wistfully of Natchez, and many may retire here after their children leave for college, but with a few exceptions, that’s it. The same is true of most young black people who leave Natchez after high school.

So,

I wonder, with a wretched emptiness that borders on despair,

what the hell am I doing here?

What does it mean to “save” a town anyway? American towns have been growing and withering since the 1600s. The idea that a city that has survived for almost three hundred years needs me to save it is more than a little egotistical. Natchez will always be here in one form or another. It stands on high ground, well watered and fertile, with a mild climate hospitable to crops. Even in 1927, when the Mississippi swelled to a terrifying seventy miles

wide

at Natchez, the city stood high and dry above the closest thing to Armageddon the Mississippi valley has ever known. In my messianic zeal to resurrect what I saw as the best part of the city’s past, I simply lost sight of the fact that no matter what I do, Penn Cage will be but a footnote in the long history of this once great river town.

As the Communion service proceeds, and Father Mullen drones about the body and blood of Christ, my thoughts turn to my own family. For the past two years, I’'ve tried not to think about what my political crusade has cost, but the price has been high. I lost Caitlin at the outset, because she didn't share my vision. I deprived Annie of the culturally rich experience she might have had in a larger city. I put my writing career on hold, giving up an absurdly large amount of money in exchange for a public servant’s salary. And for this I got the privilege of beating my head against a wall of stubborn provincialism and hidebound tradition for two dispiriting years. Ironically, my actions have actually exacerbated some problems. The magic I worked on Mrs. Pierce opened the gates to the

Magnolia Queen

and all its depredations. Tim Jessup lies dead twenty feet away from me, and despite my national reputation as a prosecutor, I’'ve been unable to bring his killer to justice.

Pathetic.

That'’s my verdict on the Penn Cage administration.

While I waited for Tim in the cemetery that first night, I reflected that I’d rarely failed at anything, and that I’d never quit. True Southerners, I was always taught, surrender only when the means to fight no longer exist. But the Southern mythos of noble defeat gives me no comfort today. Am I to sacrifice the education of my child in a vain quest to “save” something that is merely changing, as all things do?

“Penn?” whispers Sam Jacobs, nudging me in the side. “It’s time to do our thing.”

The Communion service has ended. Father Mullen is walking around Tim’s casket, sprinkling holy water. Rising like a sleepwalker, I take my place beside the casket and help roll it down the long aisle to the cathedral doors.

I recognize almost every face in the pews. As I pass, dozens of eyes seek mine with a beseeching look. What are they asking? How did Tim die? Why did he die? Or do they have deeper questions? In their puzzled faces, I sense a longing to know why the feeling of unity they experience on occasions like this cannot be sustained throughout the year, as it once was in this town. But the answer is sitting among them. A town that cannot sustain its children through adulthood cannot survive, except as a shadow of itself.

When the ushers open the cathedral doors, the sunlight blinds me

for several seconds. Luckily, my pupils adapt by the time we reach the head of the broad steps, where we lift the heavy casket from the gurney and carry Tim down the ten steps that have brought older pallbearers to grief. Without quite admitting it to myself, I had hoped to find Caitlin waiting outside, but one scan of the intersecting streets tells me she’s not here. As we slide the casket along the rollers inside the waiting hearse, Sam Jacobs, a Jew, pats the side of the coffin and says, “See you at the cemetery, Timmy.” In that moment I recall two thoughts I had the last time I saw Tim alive, which was at the cemetery, on Jewish Hill.

One is the lesson my father learned in Korea:

Heroism is sacrifice.

The second is that most of the heroes I know are dead. Tim was one of those heroes. He chose a martyr’s death as surely as some deluded saint from the Middle Ages. Looking down Union Street, lined with the rental cars of everyone but Caitlin Masters, the selfish voice that I usually suppress speaks loud and clear in my mind:

Are you going to live a martyr’s life? Will you sacrifice your daughter’s education and the second love of your life to fight a battle you no longer believe is winnable?

“Penn?” says a man’s voice. “Are you okay?”

Turning away from the hearse, I find Paul Labry standing beside me. Paul is Catholic, but he did not attend St. Stephen’s with Tim and me, and so was not asked to be a pallbearer. Despite this, he’s stayed close to me today, knowing that I'm working under great strain, even if he doesn’'t fully understand the reasons for it.

“I'm fine, Paul. Thanks for asking.”

“Are you riding with Drew and the other guys?”

Looking past Labry, I see Drew Elliott beckoning me to a black BMW a few cars behind the hearse. “I guess so. You’re going to the burial, right?”

“Of course. Unless you need me to do something else.”

“No, I want you to come. I want to speak to you afterward.”

Paul’s face takes on a worried cast, but he knows this isn’t the place to ask for details. The congregation is spilling down the steps now, and car engines are starting all along Union and Main. “Is anything wrong?” he asks softly.

“No, no. I just want to ask you something. Something I should have asked you two years ago.”

Intrigued, Labry takes my elbow and starts leading me away from the crowd, but I pull free and quietly assure him that nothing is wrong. “I'm just upset by Tim’s death,” I tell him. “We’ll talk after the burial, okay?”

“Sure. I'’ll see you at the cemetery.”

While Paul heads up Main Street, presumably to get his car, I tread slowly toward Drew Elliot’s BMW like a man crossing the last mile of a desert. The flicker of an impulse to search for Caitlin’s face among those on the sidewalk goes through my mind, but I don'’t raise my head. She’s not here. She made that decision this morning. Squinting against the glare coming off the concrete, I suddenly realize that I know the answer to my silent questions. Some people have chosen to see me as a hero in the past. I traded on that reputation to gain the mayor’s office. But I'm no hero, not by my father’s measure. I'm certainly no martyr. My work here is not finished, not by a long shot. But I am. This time, when my old friends leave Natchez to return to their families, I will follow them with mine. This time I choose the future, not the past.

My crusade is over.

CHAPTER

39

Caitlin crosses the Mississippi River Bridge with her heart pounding. She is sure she has found the girl who passed Linda Church’s note to Penn at the Ramada, and she did it with two phone calls. The trick was figuring out whom to call. Caitlin had only caught a glimpse of the girl at the hotel, and mostly walking away, at that. But she’d seen enough. The giveaway was the hair. At first glance the girl’s hair had looked short, but as she walked away, Caitlin had seen the telltale mane hanging out from the tail of the jacket. Caitlin hardly ever saw waist-length hair anymore, and when she did, it usually meant one thing—in the Deep South, anyway. The other thing was the girl’s eye makeup. Not only had she worn twice as much as she needed, but it looked as though it had been applied by an eight-year-old trying to imitate her teenage sister. These two things together told Caitlin that the girl was wearing her idea of a disguise. And what she was disguising was her religion.

Caitlin had been fascinated when Penn told her that Mississippi had the highest per capita number of churches and also the lowest literacy rate. Three years ago, she had used these statistics as the launching point of a story on charismatic religions. People speaking in tongues, faith healing. For her, the most disturbing thing about doing the story had been her contact with the younger girls in the churches. She could see that they aspired to be like other teenage girls, but they

had been raised in families with nineteenth-century values, or certainly pre-Eisenhower-era twentieth-century values. Her portrayal of these churches as patriarchal and sexist had upset a lot of their members and got some girls in trouble with their pastors, but it had also opened a lot of eyes to a closed society.

A couple of the women she’d spoken to had remained kind to her, and so the moment Caitlin suspected that the girl who delivered the note might be Pentecostal, she had checked her files at the

Examiner

and made some phone calls. Using what she’d gleaned from Penn’s description, she said she was looking for a tall girl who had probably lost a lot of weight in the past year or two, and who might have a job in Vidalia. That was all it had taken to get the two pieces of information she needed: a name and a location. Darla McRaney, the Bargain Barn on Highway 15.

At first Caitlin had been tempted to tell Penn what she’d discovered. But then she’d realized it would only prove to him that his jab about her penchant for following a story was on target. If this trip led any closer to Linda Church, Caitlin had promised herself, she’d tell Penn immediately.

The Bargain Barn is a long, low-slung building just off the highway, that looks as if it might once have been a brand-name store. During all the time Caitlin lived in Natchez, she’d only been inside it once, but her memory is clear. The store sells everything from clothing to housewares, medicine to ant poison, all of it cheap both in quality and price.

Only a few cars are in the lot. Caitlin parks between two of them, then locks her car and walks through the glass door. An elderly man wearing an orange vest greets her with a puzzled smile, and she walks past him into the clothing section.

“Can I help you?” asks a middle-aged woman sorting dresses on a circular rack.

“I'm looking for Darla McRaney.”

“Darla mostly stays over in housewares.”

Caitlin quickly navigates the empty aisles until she reaches an area filled with thin metal pots and imitation Tupperware. In the next aisle, above a rack of blenders, she sees Darla McRaney’s head. She knows it’s Darla because a girl would have to be almost six feet tall to be seen above the blenders.

Making a U around the end of the aisle, Caitlin approaches Darla cautiously, like a naturalist trying not to spook a timid animal. In spite of this, Darla looks up sharply and takes a step back, blushing scarlet.

“I didn't see you,” she says. “Can I help you?”

“Darla, my name is Caitlin. I'm a very good friend of Penn Cage.”