CHAPTER 58

AS WALT AND I race toward Old River, a dead-end channel still connected to the Mississippi River by a narrow chute, the atrocities Kaiser wrote me about spin through my mind like curling strips of black-and-white film. To accept that men capable of such acts have control of my father is tantamount to resigning myself to his death. For while Snake Knox and his crew are behind bars at this moment, they had half the night to work their will on my father, and Forrest—the feared ghost of the Vietnamese Highlands—had him before Snake did.

As I focus on holding the wheel steady on the gravel road, Walt points along the row of bizarre stilt houses that line Old River. This part of the parish always floods when the river rises, hence the tall metal stilts beneath every structure. The little cabins look like ugly cranes on long, thin legs, waiting for an unwary fish to swim down the brown channel behind them. Most of the cabins have a crude elevator system, fashioned from a welded iron cage and an electric truck-winch to lift it.

I’m suspicious of Sonny’s claim that Dad is unguarded, but Walt insists that speed is everything now. As soon as I pull into the driveway he tells me to, Walt leaps out with his pistol and boards the cage that will carry him to Sonny’s raised deck. Walt tests the machine by gripping the rail and heaving himself from right to left, then lays his hand on the lever that will start the winch.

“You take the staircase,” he says. “If somebody comes out, start shooting, because I’m a sitting duck in this thing.”

I look at the four flights of steps that lead the thirty feet up to the cabin. “My fire will be blocked as I near the top.”

“Then get up there before I do, and if they start shooting, kick in the back door and kill them from behind.”

“Okay.”

Walt flips the start lever on the winch, and with a grinding hum he begins rising toward the tree house–like structure. I sprint for the base of the staircase, then start pumping my legs as I did running the bleachers as a high school football player. In seconds my chest is pounding and my throat burning, but the door isn’t far away. I’ll beat Walt to the cabin by ten seconds.

Once I reach the deck behind the cabin, I tiptoe to the back door, my ears tuned to the slightest sound. I hear nothing. A clang from the winch around front tells me Walt has reached the front platform. The fact that no one has opened up on him must be a sign that Sonny was telling the truth about no guards.

The back door is locked. As I raise my foot to kick it in, Walt yells, “Front door’s open!”

Worried that someone might be lying in ambush for him, I kick open the flimsy back door and burst into the den of the little structure. The cabin stinks of mildew and looks to have been furnished with cast-off pieces or actual junk. A plywood square has fallen from a footlocker that served as the base of a makeshift coffee table, and the Naugahyde sofa against the wall has been patched all over with silver duct tape.

“I’ll check the back,” Walt says, gesturing at a narrow doorway with his pistol.

I nod, but my belief that Dad might still be here is evaporating fast. Two medicine bottles lie on a square of shag carpet that looks like its purpose is to serve as a toilet for an incontinent dog. Picking one of them up, I read the label: PATIENT: Thomas Cage. PHYSICIAN: Drew Elliott, M.D. Nitroglycerine, 0.4 mg.

“He’s not back there,” Walt says, emerging from the doorway. “Maybe he got away?”

I shake my head. “He’d never have left his drugs. There’s nitro and pain pills on the floor. He couldn’t do without either. Not for long, anyway.”

Walt kicks the plywood sheet against the wall, plops down on the patched sofa, and kicks his feet up on the footlocker. “You think they knew we were coming?”

“How? Sonny couldn’t have told them. More likely, Forrest figured out where they were and took them back.”

“Damn it. What about Sheriff Dennis? Could he have warned them by phone?”

“No fucking way. Dennis hates the Knoxes.”

“Yeah. I was reaching.”

“It had to be Forrest, Walt. Unless . . .”

“What?”

“Unless Snake came back here and moved him somewhere else. I think Sonny was telling the truth. He believed Dad was here. But you heard him. He said Snake was worried about a setup. He wanted insurance. Maybe Snake worried that Sonny was too weak to stand much interrogation, so he made sure that nobody but him knew where Dad really was.”

“Well, we can’t question Snake. Kaiser won’t let us near him.”

I think back to Snake’s smug countenance. “Nope. And questioning Forrest is pointless, unless we’re willing to do what we just did to Sonny. And even if we were, that’s easier said than done with him.”

Walt nods thoughtfully. “I know where Forrest is. The Bouchard lake house, Lake Concordia. Forrest and Ozan were on the outside deck, and I searched the whole place.”

“Could you have missed Dad?”

“No. Tom could’ve been in the boathouse, I suppose, but I just don’t think Forrest would keep a hostage that close to him. Much more likely Tom would be out at Valhalla.”

“But you were there, too.”

Walt shrugs. “They could have moved him back to either place since I left. If we can’t talk to Snake, then Forrest is our best chance. But we’ll have to fight our way in there, unless either Sheriff Dennis can get us a warrant—”

“That won’t happen.”

“—or you set up some kind of negotiation with Forrest.”

“The way I did with Brody Royal? That didn’t end too well.”

“I didn’t say it was a good plan. But it might be the only one.”

“No matter what happens, Forrest could order Dad killed, then say he died while resisting arrest. Not only that, he could arrest you as a fugitive, and me for interfering on your behalf.”

“Can you get a warrant for Valhalla?” Walt asks.

“Lusahatcha County is in our court district, and I know the circuit judge in Natchez. I can probably get a warrant, but I don’t know that Sheriff Ellis would serve it. From what I’ve heard, he’s pretty cozy with the local hunting camp owners, including the Knoxes. Plus, Valhalla is known to be connected with the Knoxes. I don’t think they’d stash him in a place we could find using common knowledge, paperwork, or computers.”

“Shit,” says Walt, spitting on the floor.

“You just left your DNA here,” I observe.

“Fuck some DNA. We’re way past that now.”

We sit in silence for several seconds, and in the strange vacuum, a profound fear begins to flow through me. “Walt,” I say in a flat voice. “What does your gut tell you? Do you think they’ve killed him?”

“I’ve worried from the start they meant to kill him so he’d go down as Viola’s killer, and that investigation would stop. And with the trooper hanging around our necks . . . we just made it too easy for them.”

Walt’s tone of despair leaves me feeling hollowed out. Short of getting Snake Knox in that CPSO broom closet with Walt and a wet towel, I don’t see that we have an option.

“Hey,” Walt says, shoving the old footlocker with his foot.

“What?”

“You see this? This is a marine footlocker, World War Two vintage. It’s made of wood. I saw a few of ’em in Korea.”

“So?”

“So it’s got a brand-new padlock on it. A Chubb. Take a look.”

Looking down, I see a pitted, flimsy-looking latch with a heavy, shining padlock on it. Above the circular latch is a metal nameplate with the letters CPL. SONNY THORNFIELD stamped on it. The same letters are stenciled on top of the oblong box, but they’ve faded to near invisibility.

Walt taps his thighs, his eyes on the padlock. “Why does an old gomer like Sonny lock up his piece-of-shit footlocker like it’s holding the crown jewels?”