“Did Dad mention Marcello any other times?”

An almost wistful look comes over my mother’s face. “No, but . . . I actually met him a couple of times. Both times in restaurants. Tom and I couldn’t afford to eat out back then, you know. I was teaching across the river, just to pay the rent on our little apartment in the French Quarter. But one night Tom took me to Felix’s Oyster Bar, and this short, grinning man came over to our table and asked if everything was all right. He spoke like an illiterate tradesman, but after he left the table, Tom told me he was the Mafia boss of Louisiana.”

I can scarcely take this in as my mother continues.

“The second time was near Waggaman. A nice, homey Italian restaurant called Mosca’s. The same thing happened. And I think Tom may have told me that Mr. Marcello owned that place. I’m not sure.”

“Do you remember whose idea it was to go there?”

“Oh, Tom’s, of course. It was our anniversary. Seventh, I think.”

“I see,” I tell her, which is a lie.

“Why are you asking about Carlos Marcello?” Mom asks, suddenly worried. “He’s been dead for ages, hasn’t he? What could he have to do with anything?”

For a moment my mind fills with the blurry image of my father visiting Carlos’s swamp hideaway in 1968, but it would be pointless to ask my mother about that. Whatever really took my father to Churchill Farms in 1968, he’d have told Mom nothing about it. And it would serve no purpose for me to tell her now. While I ponder this, my mother squeezes my right hand in both of hers.

“I wish I could help you, Penn. I wish I knew more. And I especially wish you could trust your father.” She wipes tears from the corners of her eyes. “And don’t you wear a hair shirt over that man you shot tonight. I’ve heard plenty over the years about Randall Regan, and how he abused his wife. You only did what any husband would have done, considering what they did to Caitlin. What any man worth the name would have done.”

This is exactly what I’d expect to hear from my mother, who carries genes and mores forged in the Scottish Highlands. I wonder how many mothers said similar things to their handcuffed sons in the Houston jail while I was preparing to prosecute them?

I lay my hand on her shoulder. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day, and you and Annie need to be ready for it. Sheriff Dennis is going to hit the Knox family hard, and I’m going to help him. They’re involved in a major crystal meth operation in Louisiana, and Walker’s going to arrest as many low-level people as he can. By threatening them with mandatory prison sentences, he hopes to force a Double Eagle to turn state’s evidence. If one of them knows who killed Viola Turner, we might be able to force Shad to drop the murder charge. Then hopefully Dad’s jumping bail will seem more defensible.”

Mom is looking at me like she doubts either my sanity or my intelligence. “But isn’t that exactly what your father said not to do? He said it was pointless for you to try to get to the bottom of this mess.”

All I see in her eyes is adamant refusal to question her husband. “Doesn’t that make you even the slightest bit suspicious? Don’t you get it, Mom? What Walker and I are doing tomorrow may be Dad’s only hope.”

Fear flashes across her face. “I don’t see that at all! None of those old klukkers is going to confess anything. They don’t really believe they’ll be sent to jail. They never have been before.”

“You’re right, but that’s not my real goal. If we can hit them hard enough—really hurt them—then we’ll knock them off balance and force them to defend themselves. Forrest Knox is the power behind the Knox drug business, and the one who stands to lose the most if things go south. He’s also the one leading the hunt for Dad and Walt. A wave of arrests will be a major distraction for him, and that should ease the pressure on Dad and Walt. Maybe enough for them to get somewhere really safe. Now, if—”

Before I can get out another word, my mother throws her arms around me and hugs me so tightly I can scarcely breathe. “When is Sheriff Dennis carrying out these drug busts?”

“In about four hours.”

She draws back, her eyes wide. “We’ve got to get you in the bed. You need to be rested for that.”

“I am exhausted,” I admit. “But my thoughts are spinning so fast, I’ll probably just lie there until dawn, waiting for the alarm.”

Without a word Mom goes into the kitchen, fishes loudly through her purse, then returns with a bright yellow pill in the palm of her right hand.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Temazepam. It’s like Valium. I take one every night. Take this now, and I’ll wake you up at five fifteen.”

“I don’t think I should risk oversleeping.”

“Take the damn pill, son. Sometimes I take two, if your father has the TV up loud enough, and you outweigh me by nearly a hundred pounds.”

“You’re not trying to keep me from going with Sheriff Dennis?”

“No. I think you’re right about knocking the Knox family off balance. That can only help Tom.”

I take the pill and swallow it with a big gulp of gin.

My mother pulls me to my feet and ushers me downstairs to one of the guest bedrooms in what I call the basement, though technically it’s the first floor of the chalet. At the threshold, she gives me a hug and says, “I’ll wake you at five fifteen.”

Then she whisks herself back up the stairs to see to Annie.

Whether it’s the sleeping pill, the alcohol, or the exhaustion produced by the battle at Brody Royal’s lake house, I can barely stand erect through the ritual of brushing my teeth. By the time I reach the guest room bed, I can’t even pull back the quilt. I simply fall facedown onto it, my mind cycling between total blankness and nightmare images from the smoke-filled hell of Royal’s basement. Behind these pictures drones the voice of John Kaiser, but I can’t make out his words. Through the black boiling smoke I don’t see the burned corpses of Henry and Royal, but rather my father and mother, young and improbably beautiful, sitting in a homey restaurant while a grinning man with stony black eyes hugs them and raves about his red sauce. A fat accordion player steps forward and begins to play, drowning out Kaiser’s voice, and then with a final slap on my father’s back, Carlos Marcello struts back into his kitchen, the big door with the round glass window swinging behind him.

CHAPTER 17

BY THE TIME Tom Cage reached Jefferson County, Mississippi, exhaustion, his various illnesses, and his bullet wound had pushed him into a sort of trance. The road in front of the unfamiliar car he was driving wavered in the darkness, his headlight beams an illuminated tube into which startled deer charged with alarming regularity, nearly sending him off the shoulder more than once.

Tom’s short-term memory had gone haywire; the events of the past hour flickered through his head like a piece of film with random sections spliced out by a drunken editor. After dumping the Knox assassin in a barren field, he’d driven away with his headlights extinguished, making for the home of his wife’s brother. Tom had meant to approach the farmhouse carefully, but in the end he’d just turned into the driveway and honked his horn. He hadn’t the strength for more than that.

John McCrae had emerged from his farmhouse with a shotgun in his hand. The McCraes were clannish folk, driven out of Scotland during the Clearances, and congenitally mistrustful of authority. But Tom would never forget the look of compassion on McCrae’s face when he realized that the bloodied man sagging against the wheel of the strange pickup was his sister’s husband. McCrae’s wife had been terrified by Tom’s sudden appearance, and what it might mean for her family, but John had only asked Tom what he needed and how he could help. Tom told his brother-in-law that he couldn’t stay; the risk for them was too great. Neither could he seek medical care or turn himself in to the police. What he needed was to get back across the river into Mississippi.