A wave of heat flashed over her neck and face. “If you’d let us arrange a safe surrender, yes!”

“I see. And where would this safe surrender take place?”

“If you’d call Penn, I think he can get the FBI to set it up for you.”

“Not after the death of that state trooper.”

“You don’t understand. There’s an agent named John Kaiser who could set it up for you. Penn is with him right now. And not only Kaiser, but Dwight Stone. Do you remember him?”

Tom’s mouth had fallen open. “Dwight Stone? But you—you said Penn was with Peggy and Annie.”

“I lied. He’s meeting with Kaiser and Stone right now, trying to arrange a safe surrender for you. And to be honest, I don’t think they give a damn about Viola Turner or that state trooper. They’re obsessed with the Kennedy assassination.”

Tom had gone pale. “The Kennedy assassination!”

She nodded. “Yes, and Carlos Marcello and the Knox family. Kaiser and Stone seem to think all that is tied together.”

Tom was shaking his head. “Jesus Christ . . . after all these years?”

Caitlin heard something strange in Tom’s voice. “What do you mean? Do you know something about all that? Because Penn said they might well offer you protective custody in exchange for information about the assassination.”

“Caitlin . . . you have no idea what you’re dealing with. Neither do Kaiser and Stone. If they get too close to the Knoxes, Forrest or Snake will kill them, too.”

“You think Forrest Knox would murder FBI agents?”

“Without hesitation.”

She was starting to think Tom had entered the realm of paranoid delusion. “I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that. You kill an FBI agent, you’re asking for a life on the run.”

“Not if you can blame someone else for the crime. And the Knoxes are very good at that sort of thing.”

“Are you saying that’s what happened to you?”

Tom lifted one of the quilts and pulled it over his lap, as if he’d gotten cold. Then he murmured, “The Knoxes have been killers for generations.”

At last they had come to the heart of things. In his desire to persuade her to break faith with herself, Tom had unwittingly taken their conversation into the territory he’d been avoiding for years.

“How long have you known that?” she asked softly.

“Longer than I’d care to admit. Even to myself.”

“Tom . . . Henry Sexton told me that he tried to interview you several times, and you always refused to see him.”

“I couldn’t,” he said simply. “I had enormous admiration for what Henry was doing. He was the bravest reporter ever to come out of this area. But look what happened in the end. He met the same fate you’re courting now. I blame myself, of course. Partly, anyway. But that doesn’t alter the equation as it pertains to you. If you go after Forrest Knox, you’ll die.”

Tom leaned forward, opened two prescription bottles, and swallowed two pills with his tea—one green and yellow, the other large, oblong, and white.

“Are you having chest pain?”

He smiled sadly. “Fact of life, my dear. But that was a pain pill and an antibiotic.”

“Tom, you can’t go on like this.”

“You’re right. And I don’t plan to.”

“Oh, that’s right. You want to make a bargain with the murderer you tell me is too dangerous for me to go after with my newspaper. Tom, even if you physically survived that encounter, you’d die a different kind of death. You’d die on the inside. That son of a bitch is evil.”

“You have no idea, Cait. Snake Knox is clinically insane, and he comes by it honestly. Forrest can’t have fallen far from the tree, either. But that doesn’t change the fact that Forrest Knox is the only man short of the Louisiana governor who can make that APB go away, or blame someone else for Viola’s murder. And I won’t accept any solution that doesn’t extricate Walt from the trouble I’ve got him into.”

At last one of the main reasons for Tom’s intransigence was sinking in. “I understand how you must feel about that. But Tom . . . Forrest is corrupting the whole law enforcement system of Louisiana.”

“Louisiana has been corrupt for three hundred years, Cait. Forrest Knox is nothing new.”

His voice sounded very like her paternal grandfather’s, filled with both disillusionment and wisdom. But she would not let that sidetrack her. “You knew Forrest’s father, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him closely. “Frank Knox?”

“Yes, Frank was a patient of mine.” Tom’s voice had altered slightly, but she couldn’t read the tone.

“I read in one of Henry’s notebooks that Frank died in your office.”

Tom went still, then regarded her curiously.

She pushed on in spite of feeling anxious. “Did you know that Frank Knox murdered Jimmy Revels in the hope of luring Robert Kennedy down here to be assassinated?”

Tom blinked once, slowly. “I never heard anything like that. Is that true?”

“What if I told you that Frank Knox planned that operation at the request of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss?”

“Who told you that?”

“Henry Sexton figured it out. But I think the FBI believes the same thing.” Caitlin decided to go for broke. Maybe that would shake Tom from his delusion of coming to some détente with Forrest Knox. “You were no stranger to Marcello yourself, were you?”

Tom’s eyes had gone flat again. “Leave it alone, Caitlin. Please.”

“I wish I could. But people are dying. And your son is out there risking his life trying to save you. This morning he and Walker Dennis busted every meth cooker and mule in Concordia Parish. And tomorrow morning they’re planning to interrogate the Double Eagles at the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office.”

Tom’s face grew so pale that she feared he might collapse. “Why the hell is he doing that?”

“He thinks that by putting Forrest on the defensive, he’ll buy you enough time to do whatever the hell you’re trying to do. He loves you so much that he’s willing to go to war against the Knoxes to save you.”

Tom dug his fingers back through his hair like a man trying to hold his brain inside his skull.

Caitlin decided to press on. “Did you already know Brody Royal was guilty of the murders I wrote about in today’s paper?”

Tom lowered his hands into his lap and spoke without looking at her. “No. Not for sure.”

“Did Dr. Leland Robb tell you that Albert Norris implicated Brody Royal in his murder before he died? Henry believed he did.”

The stunned look in Tom’s eyes told her she was close to the truth. Caitlin kept her eyes on his, not wanting to give him enough respite to disengage. “You knew Dr. Robb well, didn’t you? Before he died in that plane crash, you traveled to gun shows together in his plane.”

“Henry obviously did his homework.”

“He wanted justice for those victims, and their families. He believed you knew that Royal had killed Albert and Dr. Robb, but you never told the police or the FBI. Henry couldn’t square that with what he knew about your character, and neither can I. But now . . . my gut tells me that it’s true.”

Tom seemed to have aged visibly during the past minute. “Maybe I’m not the man you think I am.”

“Maybe not. I’ve tried to imagine what might keep you silent about something like that, but I’ve come up empty. The only thing that seems relevant makes no sense to me. According to Henry, there are FBI records that you treated some of Carlos Marcello’s gangsters during the late sixties and seventies. The report says they would drive up from New Orleans, and you’d treat them for free. There are actually FBI surveillance reports of that.”

“Dear God.” Tom cradled his head in his arthritic hands. “I guess nothing we do ever stays buried, does it?” After half a minute, he looked up, his face heavy with what seemed to be grief—or perhaps guilt. “Caitlin . . . if I go further now, what I say is off-limits. You don’t print it. You don’t speak to Penn about it . . . nothing. Ever.”