Now we’ve come full circle, back to cuckooland. “That’s great, John. But I’ve got no time for conspiracy theories.”
I reach for the door handle again, but Kaiser catches hold of my arm. “Yes, you do. Because your father knows the same thing we do. He’s known it for forty-two years.”
Kaiser’s words don’t quite seem real. “If you believe that, you don’t know my father at all.”
He concedes this with a small nod. “Are you sure you do?”
This freezes me in my seat. I want to argue, yet everything that’s happened over the past three days has happened because my father has refused to speak about the past—a past that it’s becoming increasingly clear is very different from the one I believed in only days ago.
“Penn, your father’s being hunted for killing a state trooper. I need very much to talk to him. And ultimately, his only chance to survive is to turn himself in to me.”
My heart leaps at this new tack. “Are you saying you’ll take him into protective custody?”
“I don’t know yet. I was trying to set it up with the director, but after all the deaths tonight, it’ll be a hard sell. However—if Dr. Cage can link the Double Eagles to the Kennedy or King assassinations, I will make the case and spirit him out of harm’s way before the Louisiana State Police even know what happened.”
Why does Kennedy’s death mean more than all the civil rights martyrs put together? “What about Dad’s fishing boat story? The Frenchman talking about Dallas? Is that enough?”
“Too thin. We need more.”
“I’ve got a photograph taken on that trip. Henry gave it to me. It shows Dad, Presley, Royal, and Devereux in the stern of the boat.”
Kaiser’s eyes widen. “Is the Frenchman in the shot?”
I shake my head.
“Damn. Where is this picture?”
“Caitlin has it. It’s probably at the Examiner.”
“Okay. I’m going to be grilled by the director once more tonight, and I’ll do what I can to push protective custody for your father. For now, let’s hope I’m right about him and Garrity lying low somewhere safe. But between now and tomorrow morning, I want you to wrack your brain, talk to your mother, do anything you can think of to locate your father and Garrity. And if you do, tell Dr. Cage that information about Carlos Marcello and the Kennedy assassination is his salvation.”
“Honestly, John, there’s no way he’s sat on that kind of information for forty years.”
“He kept quiet about Brody Royal and the murders of Albert Norris and Dr. Robb, didn’t he? Why should the Kennedy stuff be any different?”
I’m not sure I can articulate my feelings about this. “Because that’s not . . . personal. Not local. It’s history. And history is almost like a religion to my dad.”
“All history is personal,” Kaiser replies. “I’m betting Dr. Cage knows that.” For the first time tonight, the FBI agent’s voice sounds almost kind. “Your father was close to Ray Presley for most of his life. Before Presley moved to Natchez, he was a New Orleans cop on the pad for Carlos Marcello.”
“I know that.”
“Henry told me he told you about the Bureau surveillance reports that mention your father. On at least four occasions, Marcello soldiers drove north to Natchez to get medical treatment from your father in the late sixties and early seventies. Why would they drive a hundred eighty miles for treatment?”
I start to repeat my father’s explanation for this, but another answer comes to me—the one Brody Royal supplied. “Whatever Dad did, John, he did it to protect Viola. After her rape, and the murder of her brother, he made some kind of a deal to save her. He must have. The Eagles would have killed her otherwise. Maybe that deal was with Marcello.”
“I think you’re right,” Kaiser concedes. “But we need to know for sure.”
After several seconds of silence, he leans across me and reaches into his glove box for a folded sheet of paper. This he patiently unfolds, then hands to me and switches on the Crown Victoria’s interior light.
I’m holding a low-resolution grayscale photograph printed on copy paper. It looks like a telephoto image of a man in profile, driving a light-colored sedan that dates to the 1960s. Something about the car is familiar, or maybe the man, but the photo is too blurry for me to figure it out.
“That was taken outside the entrance of Churchill Farms,” Kaiser informs me, “a sixty-four-hundred-acre tract of Louisiana swampland owned by Carlos Marcello. Churchill Farms was Marcello’s most secluded hideaway.”
“Okay. Who’s driving the car?”
“You don’t recognize him?” Kaiser asks softly. “Or the vehicle?”
“The car looks familiar. The man, too. But it’s too blurry.”
“That’s your father, Penn. He’s thirty-six years old in that photo. Nine years younger than you are now.”
My heart lurches in my chest.
“And the car,” Kaiser goes on, “is—”
“A 1966 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight,” I finish, as a rush of scents and feelings from my childhood pass through me. “Our old family car.”
Kaiser nods. “That’s right. Your father visited Churchill Farms for sixty-two minutes on April eleventh, 1968. The Bureau’s organized-crime unit had routine surveillance set up out there at the time. Also, you can’t see him in this photo because of the angle and the graininess, but Ray Presley was sitting in the passenger seat. He went down there with your dad. And Carlos was definitely in residence at the time.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell does this mean?”
“I don’t know. But we need to find out.”
“How long have you had this? Henry never saw this, did he?”
“No. I saw it myself for the first time today. It came in a big transmission of the Bureau file on Carlos Marcello, which is a massive collection.”
I’m trying to focus on the micro, not macro. “April of ’68 was the month Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis were killed.”
“Close enough. They probably died on March thirty-first.”
“That’s right. And Viola had been raped in March, as well. She was abused again when they were tortured, but Presley saved her. So my father must have made some kind of deal with Marcello shortly afterward, to protect Viola.”
“That’s why I need to talk to him. He knows a lot more than you think he does about all this.”
I close my eyes before I ask the next question. “John, what the hell’s going on? Seriously. How did we get from Viola Turner and euthanasia to the assassination of John Kennedy?”
“You know how. Through the Double Eagles. Specifically, the Knox family. Remember what I said about history? It’s all personal. In 1963, Carlos Marcello ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It wasn’t the CIA, or Castro, or Cuban exiles. It wasn’t the Russians or the military-industrial complex. It was Carlos Marcello. The Little Man used the Knox family to carry out the hit, and he did it for the oldest motive in the world.”
“Money?”
“No. Survival.”
Another question was forming in my mind when the sight of a white pickup truck parked down the block drove it from my head. A few seconds of watching shows me an exhaust plume coming from the tailpipe.
“What’s the matter?” asks Kaiser. “Are you looking at that truck?”
I nod. “That’s Lincoln Turner’s truck. The son of a bitch has been following me again.”
“Again?”
“He’s been stalking my house.”
Kaiser cocks his head, his eyes on the truck. “I tell you what. I’ve given you a lot to absorb. You go on up to your office and get your keys. I’ll take care of Mr. Turner for you. He won’t be here when you come back out.”
“Really?”
“No problem. You just think about what I said. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Should I just go?”
Kaiser smiles. “Yep. Take off. I’m going to abuse my authority for a minute.”
He opens his door and begins marching down the block like a military officer on a mission. Though I’m tempted to watch the confrontation, I exit the car and trot up to the door of City Hall. Lincoln Turner has a big chip on his shoulder and a lot of nerve, but something tells me Kaiser can handle him. For the first time since arriving at the sheriff’s office, I think about Annie and my mother hiding out at Edelweiss. They’re probably mad with worry by now, and as much as I’d like to check on Caitlin at the newspaper, I know she can take care of herself. I need to hug my daughter, and I need sleep. Tomorrow’s battles will be here all too soon.