Instinct told him to get out while he could, but he forced himself to remain in the pantry. Either Knox or Ozan was hunting him. Walt kept his pistol aimed at the door. After what felt like five minutes, he opened the pantry door, walked straight into the garage, and picked up the shovel he’d left there. Then he shoved his pistol down his pants, left the shadows of the garage, and started shuffling up the driveway with the gait of a man in his eighties.

For forty yards he felt as though a laser scope was burning a hole in his back, but he forced his brain to short-circuit the urge to run. When he was fifty yards from the Bouchard house, he turned right and started across the open ground to the neighbor’s home. Given that Tom was not with Knox or Ozan, and he had no way to question them, Walt could hardly stand the delay. As soon as he reached the house, he would take out his cell phone and do what Tom had forbidden from the beginning.

It was time to call Penn.

SONNY AND SNAKE WERE sitting on the lower bunk in their two-man jail cell when Deputy Spanky Ford made a pass through the cellblock. After surveying all the Double Eagles, he stopped before the cell and beckoned the two of them over. Snake looked up and walked over to the bars.

“How’s it hangin’, Spanky?”

“Not too good,” the deputy replied. “Seems like the whole world’s turned upside down.”

“You’re goddamned right it has,” Snake muttered.

Ford looked over his shoulder, then whispered, “I’ve got a message for you.”

Snake glanced back at Sonny, then said, “None too soon. Let’s hear it.”

“Forrest says to hang tough. He’s gonna get you out today. He’s got a lawyer on the way. Just hang tight, he said.”

“Hang tight?” Snake spat on the floor near Spanky’s boots. “I’ve got a message for the young colonel, Spanky. You be sure and remember every word. Tell Forrest I said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

Spanky Ford’s eyes went wide.

“Tell him we’d better be out of here in an hour. One fucking hour, you hear me?”

“Yeah.” Ford was sweating now, clearly fearful of any further interaction with Forrest Knox—especially this kind.

“And one more thing. You tell him I’ve got Tom Cage.”

Spanky gulped.

“Yeah, you heard right. Tell Forrest I’ve got the doc, and what I decide to do with him will be based on what Forrest does in the next sixty minutes.”

Ford looked ready to bolt. “Is that all of it?”

Snake chuckled. “You don’t think that’s enough?”

Ashen-faced, Ford hurried out of the cellblock.

Sonny waited for Snake to back away from the bars. Then he said, “Do you think that was the smart way to play it?”

Snake looked down at Sonny, his eyes cold. “Are you kidding? Who do you think put us in here, Son? The same guy who’s promising to get us out today. Grabbing Tom Cage last night was about the smartest thing I’ve done in a long time. All we gotta do now is sit tight and watch Forrest jump to it.”

Snake chuckled, then walked back to the bars.

“Listen up, boys,” he said. “We’re gonna be out of here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. We all know that dope was planted on us. All you gotta do is sit tight and keep your mouths shut. Most of you are pretty good at that, and the ones that ain’t . . . well, you know the price of flappin’ your gums.”

“Damn straight,” said an older Eagle named Will Devine, a contemporary of Frank Knox’s, and the seventh Double Eagle initiated into the group. “We know what to do, Snake.”

“Good man, Will. Everybody just take this chance to catch a nap. Meanwhile, I’ll be thinkin’ on how we’re gonna pay back the fools who put us in here. Okay?”

A low murmur of agreement passed through the concrete cells.

Sonny stretched himself flat on the hard mattress of the bottom bunk. He shivered as the stink of mildew entered his lungs. He had a feeling they might not be leaving these accommodations quite as quickly as Snake expected.

CHAPTER 55

WALKER DENNIS HAS reclaimed his desk, and now Kaiser sits before the furious sheriff like a supplicant, just as Henry Sexton and I did three days ago. Walker has deigned to give the FBI agent ten minutes to make his case, unless the Double Eagles can be processed and booked in less time than that. Kaiser’s face was taut with anger when he first came back into this office, but he’s managed to calm down and present his objections without quite accusing Sheriff Dennis of planting evidence on the Double Eagles. Walker has listened with surprising patience, though he’s checked and sent several text messages during the monologue.

“Agent Kaiser,” Walker says during the first sufficient pause, “I realize you’ve questioned a lot of serial killers and such, and that’s real important work. But what we’ve got here is a drug trafficking case. Open and shut. And I’ve got some personal experience in handling that kind of case.”

Dennis points at me. “Mayor Cage here also has considerable experience handling felony cases. In the big city, too. From drug cases right up to capital murder. And he’s been duly deputized by me as a special deputy of Concordia Parish, so there won’t be any bullshit about jurisdiction from the ACLU.”

“Sheriff, let me stop you there,” Kaiser interjects. “Penn has not come here to solve civil rights cases, or even drug trafficking cases. He’s here to save his father.”

I feel my face reddening.

“And while I can empathize with that goal, I can’t allow it to torpedo criminal cases of historic significance.”

Dennis starts to reply, but Kaiser beats him to the punch. “Sheriff, I know you lost a relative a couple of years back—a deputy you believe Forrest Knox had a hand in killing. You also lost two deputies to that booby trap at the warehouse. I’ve lost agents, myself. I lost fellow soldiers in Vietnam. A lot of them. But you can’t give in to the hunger for quick payback. It never works out like you think it will.” Kaiser glances at me, then back at Dennis. “What I want from these sons of bitches is the truth, no matter who gets jailed or exonerated. The truth, men. That’s why if anybody goes in to question them today, it should be me.”

“But you’re not even convinced they should be questioned,” I point out.

Kaiser shrugs. “Obviously, we can’t unbreak that egg. They’re in custody now.”

“Damn straight,” Sheriff Dennis says.

“But I need you to understand something, Sheriff. I’ve been working to nail these bastards longer than you think. I know things about them that even Henry Sexton didn’t know. With all due respect, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“I know the Knox family, all right.”

“Do you?” Kaiser reaches into a thick leather bag beside his chair and drops a stack of worn files on the sheriff’s desk. “Why don’t we see how well you know them?”

Dennis sighs heavily, glances at his watch, then motions for Kaiser to get on with it.

As I pray I won’t have to listen to a rehash of the file I read last night, Kaiser pats the top file with the flat of his right hand, then launches into a more concise version of exactly that. Sheriff Dennis appears surprisingly interested in this information, particularly the tales of mutilation carried out by Knoxes serving in the armed forces.

“There were official records of this?” he asks, taking a pinch of Skoal and tucking it into the right side of his lower lip.

“Absolutely,” Kaiser says. “And they weren’t unique to the Knoxes. The practices were so widespread that the brass couldn’t stop them. In 1944, one ‘picture of the week’ in Life magazine showed a U.S. sailor’s girlfriend writing him a thank-you note for a Japanese skull he’d sent her from the Pacific. Vietnam vets took a lot of heat over severed-ear stories, but that kind of savagery has always been a part of war—especially in societies that value hunting as proof of masculinity.”