I park on oil-stained concrete under the sagging awning/canopy that covers the pumps, and Tim pulls in behind us. As soon as he exits the Yukon, Annie jumps out and runs into the station. Tim follows, and Mia and I trail them inside.
The temperature’s dropped ten degrees since we left the prison. The interior of the station smells of scalded coffee, old grease, and disinfectant. A lone attendant is working the night shift, an elderly woman wearing a hairnet. She stands behind a greasy glass case holding the last of some fried chicken and potato logs. While Annie uses the restroom, I scan the meager offerings on the snack rack, then ask if the woman has fresh coffee. She says she’ll make a new pot.
“Where’s your men’s room?”
“Outside. Turn right when you walk out.”
Tim starts to follow me out, but I point at my left ankle and ask him to stay with the girls. He nods and tells me to keep my eyes open.
The darkness outside carries the faint sweet scent of airborne herbicide. I didn’t notice it during my short walk into the station. It’s too early for crop dusting; maybe a farmer is mixing chemicals somewhere nearby. That odor hurls me back to childhood. When I was a boy in my grandfather’s fields, I’d run beneath the toylike biplane as it dropped billowing clouds of poison, joyfully waving my arms, never dreaming those clouds could seed cancer in my blood and bones.
The men’s room also takes me back to childhood. A closet-size cubicle, cold as a deep freeze yet fetid with the stench of human waste and chemical cleaners, a heavy funk with an astringent tang that would burn your throat if you breathed it too long.
Sliding the flimsy bolt into a hole in the door frame, I square up to the tall old wall urinal, unzip my fly, and piss against the stained porcelain. How many times have I made this drive between Natchez and the federal prison? I wonder. Two and a half months, driving it once and sometimes twice a week. Nine times, I guess, and every time I waited alone while Mom and Annie met with Dad in the visiting room.
Zipping up, I reach out to flush, then decide not to touch the rust-pitted handle. As I turn to the door, a shoe crunches on the walk outside. It’s probably Tim, but for some reason the sound makes me freeze.
Ten seconds pass . . . then twenty.
Did I imagine it? Female laughter penetrates the wall behind me. The girls are still inside the station. And if they’re still inside, then Tim is, too.
So whose footstep did I hear?
Taking my cell phone from my inside coat pocket, I start to call Tim, then stop. I’m probably being paranoid, but I don’t want to drive him into an ambush. Shifting my phone to my left hand, I crouch, pull up my left pant leg, and draw my Smith & Wesson Airweight .38 from the ankle holster I’ve worn since December. Then I back against the urinal.
The pistol’s wooden grip is chipped from being hammered against Forrest Knox’s gravestone. Using only my left thumb, I text Tim: Heard something outside rr. Possible threat. Stay inside with girls. I’m locked in.
As I press send, the bathroom door handle turns, then stops.
My hand tightens on my pistol.
Then the door presses against the bolt, testing its resistance.
“Just a minute!” I call, as any man would in a normal situation. “Almost done in here.”
No reply.
Using my left thumb, I text Tim: Call cops.
Out of the pregnant silence comes a muffled voice, barely audible through the thin metal door: “I’ve got a message for you, Mayor. Come out and get it.”
Jesus.
With a shaking hand I text: Threat real!
“A message from who?” I ask.
“You know. Now come out and hear what I got to say. If you keep fucking around in there, your daughter’s gonna walk out of the station, and things are going to get bad real quick. So shake your dick and come on out.”
There’s no way that’s Snake out there, I think, even as I wonder if it could be. John Kaiser is positive that the old Double Eagle has fled to a foreign country. But if it’s not Snake . . . then who? And whoever it is, is he alone?
“Are you coming, Cage? Or do you want your little girl to take the message for you?”
All the saliva has evaporated from my mouth. A strange compulsion pushes me to open the door, but somewhere in my brain burns the certainty that I’ll be shot the moment I expose myself.
My heart lurches when my phone pings in my hand.
Backup on way, reads Tim’s reply. I’m coming to you. Stay put unless you hear shooting. If you do, come out firing, just like I taught you.
Don’t leave the girls! I think, but before I can text those words, the man outside jiggles the handle, then rattles it hard. For a half second I consider firing through the door.
Who would I be killing? What if the guy isn’t armed?
Either way, I can’t stand here while Tim risks his life to protect my child.
Moving to the side of the door, I reach toward the bolt with my left hand, but before my fingers touch metal, the door crashes open, numbing my arm to the elbow.
I see no one.
Then an indistinct figure takes shape a few feet from the door, a white T-shirt cloaked in darkness. No one is more surprised than I when my right forefinger pulls the trigger on the .38. Thunderous concussions blast through the tiled cubicle, and the bald crown of a head appears as my target stares down at the holes stitching his belly and chest.
I’m suddenly, sickeningly sure that I’ve shot some hapless truck driver who was too deaf to hear me say the bathroom was occupied.
Then the figure falls onto his back.
One leg of his jeans rides up his calf as he falls, revealing the bone hilt of a Bowie knife protruding from a motorcycle boot. Then the glint of nickel flashes in his left hand—a pistol. Edging up to the bathroom door, my .38 still gripped tight, I peek outside, glancing left and right.
Nothing.
Darting forward, I kick the pistol from the downed man’s hand, then jerk back like I would from a shot rattlesnake, half expecting it to strike in a death spasm. The pain etched in the downed man’s face signifies life.
“Goddamn it!” shouts someone from my left.
As I whirl toward the voice, a stranger standing at the corner of the station levels a pistol at me, and before I can aim my own a shot rings out. I tense against an impact that never comes. The stranger teeters, then grabs for the wall to steady himself.
“Freeze!” shouts a voice with military authority.
The wounded man raises his gun again, but before it comes level with me, something snatches away part of his skull.
He drops to the cement with a thud that tells me he was dead when he hit.
“Sitrep, Penn!” Tim calls from around the corner.
“Two down. I don’t know if there’s anybody else.”
“Assume there is! I’m coming to you.”
Tim appears at the corner in a combat shooting posture, then turns in a fast but deliberate circle, reading the encircling darkness.
“Annie and Mia?” I ask.
“Locked in a cold storage inside. Your guy dead?”
“Not yet. I disarmed him.”
“Let’s get clear. We’ll have to come back to talk to the sheriff and staties, but that’s later.”