“You do that. We’ve got Mackiever by the balls right now. The last thing we need is a hardass like Garrity giving him hope that he can save himself.”

Forrest gave the Monroe cop a last measuring glance. “You let an arthritic old man kill your partner. How does that feel?”

The cop’s eyes smoldered with hatred and embarrassment. “Not good.”

“You want to kill Dr. Cage?”

“Just give me one shot at him, Colonel.”

“You already had your shot. And you didn’t take it.” Forrest leaned back in his chair. “Go out to the bunkhouse and get a few hours’ rest. You’ll have new orders when you wake up.”

The cop didn’t move.

“Go, goddamn it,” Forrest said mildly. “Before I have Captain Ozan here give you the punishment you deserve.”

The cop stood, and with an awkward salute he left the room.

After the sound of his boot heels faded, Forrest sighed and shook his head. “That’s some piss-poor manpower right there, Alphonse. A sad state of affairs.”

Ozan let some time pass before he spoke. “What you think about Dr. Cage’s message? If he can do what he said, it kind of throws a new light on things, don’t it?”

Forrest smiled. “It offers the possibility of a low-body-count solution, which we could sorely use right now. If we start killing public officials, even if we blame it on Snake, we’re asking for trouble we may not be able to handle. But—Dr. Cage’s solution requires trusting not only him, but also his son and the Masters girl to go along with his promise to protect us. And that would take a lot of convincing for me to buy.”

Ozan didn’t reply to this.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the good doctor,” Forrest mused. “And what I’ve decided is, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Dr. Cage was never really any threat to me. He might be to Snake and Sonny and the other old men, but he can’t hurt me at all.”

Ozan looked intrigued by this idea.

“And if he really killed his old nurse, he probably did us all a favor.”

“What do you mean if?” Ozan asked.

“I’m not so sure he did it. Hell, all we have to go on is Snake’s word.”

“And Sonny’s.”

“Sonny Thornfield wouldn’t cross Snake—not if Snake told him to lie. And neither of them would want to tell me they’d disobeyed my orders.”

“But if Dr. Cage didn’t kill the old woman, why did he jump bail?”

Forrest shrugged. “We’ll ask him that when we find him. We’re talking about a man and a woman, Alphonse. Ain’t no telling what might have gone on between them over the years, or in that house that night. But I know Snake wanted her dead. He always did. The Eagles had a death warrant on her if she ever came back to Mississippi. I don’t know what she knew, but cancer wasn’t quick enough for Snake. He nearly busted a gut when I told him he couldn’t waste her. Anyway, my point is, the Double Eagles themselves are more of a threat to me than Tom Cage ever was. The Eagles truly know shit about me.”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” Ozan said in a cautious voice. “Dr. Cage and Garrity had Sonny Thornfield in the back of that van before Deke Dunn pulled up and got hisself killed. So Cage and Garrity might know whatever Sonny knows about you.”

Forrest couldn’t believe he’d forgotten something so obvious. “You’re right. So we either have to cut a deal with Cage or kill him, tout suite.”

“Then we’re basically back to our original dilemma,” Ozan said. “Sit tight, kill ’em all, or try the doc’s approach?”

As Forrest nodded, he realized he’d already decided to hold off on the scorched earth strategy. “I’m going to take a chance on Tom Cage. But step one is to find him. I’m not about to cancel that APB until he looks me in the eye and swears he can do what he claims he can.”

“And then?”

“Then we need to verify that his son and the Masters girl will follow suit. God only knows what Brody might’ve said to them before he died. I guess we might read it in this morning’s paper, no matter how fast we move.”

“That’s one uppity bitch,” Ozan said. “At the hospital, she got right up in my face even after Kaiser had backed down. I wanted to pistol-whip her so bad I could taste it.”

Forrest shook his head. “That’s one pleasure you’re unlikely to get. If anybody kills her at this point, it’ll be Snake.” Forrest got up from behind the desk and stuck the dead cigar in his mouth. “Change the orders to our people. Find Dr. Cage, but don’t kill him. Not unless he forces the issue.”

“Got it. What about Garrity?”

The specter of Walt Garrity allied with Griffith Mackiever rose to the forefront of Forrest’s mind. “If they find Garrity alone, they should waste him. We’ll pin Deke Dunn’s death on him, and that’ll clear the books, freeing us to cut a deal with Dr. Cage. The doc will just have to live with Garrity’s death as the price of his freedom.”

Ozan seemed to like this solution. “And Snake? When he finally reads what’s in the Examiner in the morning—and he will, the online version—he’ll be ready to kill that Masters bitch, just like you said.”

“Leave Snake to me. I’ll tell him we’re going to take everybody out, but he needs to stay in Texas while we do it. Then if I change my mind, I’ll tell him we couldn’t bring it off, and we need him to do the wet work.”

At last Ozan seemed satisfied.

“Now, find me Tom Cage.”

“It can’t be that goddamn hard,” Ozan declared. “Especially with him and Garrity split up. He’s got to still be in Louisiana, probably within twenty miles of where he dumped Floyd. There’s no way he crossed the Mississippi River. We’ve got roadblocks at every bridge, and even a cruiser at the St. Francisville ferry, in case he thinks it’s still running.”

Forrest wasn’t so sure. “He’s proved to be a resourceful son of a bitch, Alphonse. If we don’t find him in the next two hours, we might need to pull that APB on him and just leave it on Garrity.”

“You think that’ll bring him out of the woods?”

“Who knows? For now, put every man you can into LaSalle, Catahoula, Franklin, and Tensas parishes. Check out the wife’s relatives’ houses. And keep the tech division going back over all electronic communications of Dr. Cage, his family, his partners, everybody. If there’s a deal to be made, we’ve got to do it quick. Otherwise, we turn Snake loose and get ready for the Sam Peckinpah ending.”

“The what?” Ozan asked.

“Nothing. Get to it, Captain.”

As the Redbone left the study, Forrest reflected on the irony that he could probably have a more enjoyable conversation with Tom Cage than with any of the men he worked with every day. That included his cousin Billy, who was a serious reader, at least by Knox family standards. Once more Forrest thought about his father and Dr. Cage joking around while the doc gave him his football physical. Then he banished the thought. For at bottom, he felt strangely sure that before another day had come and gone, he would have to kill Tom Cage, either with his own hands or by sending other men to do his will.

CHAPTER 16

I’M STANDING IN the third-floor bedroom of Edelweiss, the historic house I bought for Caitlin as a wedding present, looking down at my daughter’s sleeping face. There’s just enough light leaking through the cypress shutters to illuminate Annie’s profile against her pillow. I’ve done this hundreds of times in my life. The nights I remember most were those after Annie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer—immediately after getting the news, of course, and then later, after her treatments had failed, and hope failed with them. On those desolate nights, I stared down at my three-year-old daughter and shivered in the strangling grip of mortality, forced to accept that all my hope, faith, strength, intelligence, friends, and money could not even slow the progression of the disease that would take Annie’s mother from her and leave me to do a job for which I felt completely unprepared.