“No. We just had a plane go down.”
“A plane? What plane?”
“A Bureau jet. A small Citation. It took off from Concordia Airport fifteen minutes ago, headed for Baton Rouge and then D.C. Looks like it crashed in East Feliciana Parish, not far from Zachary.”
“Who was on board?”
“Two pilots. But they weren’t the target.”
“Target? What do you mean?”
Kaiser’s face looks as grim as I’ve ever seen it. “Somebody brought that plane down on purpose. It was loaded with most of the evidence we’ve gathered over this past week.”
“You’re kidding.”
Kaiser shakes his head. “The bones, Jimmy Revels’s tattoo, even the Marina Oswald letter.”
“Jesus, John. What brought it down?”
“We don’t know yet. All I know is that it took off from the same airport that Dr. Leland Robb’s plane took off from thirty-six years ago—the same airport where Snake Knox’s crop-dusting service is based.”
Unbelievable. And yet . . . “Where’s Snake now?”
Kaiser pulls his lips back over his teeth like a man suffering bone-deep pain. “We lost him two minutes after he was released from jail this morning. And two minutes ago, I called Will Devine, the Eagle I turned last night. He gave me an emergency number. I got no answer. I think they played me, Penn.”
There’s nothing I can say to this.
“Your family’s going to need protection,” Kaiser goes on. “Around the clock, most likely. These guys aren’t going to lie down and wait for us to round them up.”
“My mother’s going over to Vidalia to see Dad. Can I have a couple of minutes with my daughter before we head home?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
I walk back to Annie, then tell Walt that he and Mom should start for the Concordia Parish jail. Walt raises his eyebrows for an update, but I shake my head. After Mom kisses Annie and they depart, my daughter leads me westward down the street, toward the bluff and the river. Our Washington Street house lies four blocks in the other direction, but Annie whispers in my ear that she wants to visit “our new house” before we go home. Taking her hand in mine, I lead her slowly down the slope to Broadway, where Edelweiss stands above the vast emptiness that stretches west from the bluff over the river.
As soon as we reach Broadway, everything changes. The wind is stronger here, racing up over the face of the bluff after its long journey across Texas and Louisiana. As we turn the corner in front of Edelweiss, I look back and see John Kaiser following at a discreet distance. He means to make sure we’re safe, even if he has to provide the protection himself.
Annie and I climb the steps side by side, then walk to the rail of the wide gallery that overlooks the river. A long string of barges is rumbling downstream toward the twin bridges, the red-and-white pushboat behind them looking almost festive against the dark water. I expect Annie to chatter as she so often does, but the loss of Caitlin has affected her as profoundly as it has me. We still have each other, of course, but the road we’ve anticipated walking for so long has disappeared, and the way forward feels far from certain.
“Is Papa going to be all right?” Annie asks without looking up. “Gram’s really scared. She won’t say so, but I can tell.”
“I know. I’m not sure yet what’s going to happen with Papa. We’re just going to have to do all we can to make sure Gram gets along as best she can.”
After some thought, Annie says, “Okay.”
She waits until the barges vanish around the bend. Then, very softly, she says, “Somebody at the jail said you killed the man who killed Caitlin. He whispered it, but I heard him anyway. Did you really do that, Daddy?”
I consider lying, but what would that achieve? One day she’s bound to learn the truth. I suppose today is as good a day as any.
“Yes, Boo,” I tell her, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s a secret. We can’t tell anyone else. But I did.”
Annie blinks twice, then looks up at me with wide eyes I can’t quite read. After studying my face for a while, she takes my hand again and looks out over the river. “I’m glad,” she says. “I’ve been really scared, too.”
This hurts me more than anything I’ve heard in the past week. “You don’t have to be scared anymore, Boo.”
A mile downriver, another long string of barges appears, pushing slowly upstream. We watch it labor through the current for a while, then Annie points to a spot in the middle of the river, where two tiny kayaks glide and bob like reeds over the surface. Though they’re far away, I can just make out the sea bags secured to the sides of the boats. Those voyagers probably began their journey up in Minnesota, or even Canada. If so, they’ve traveled far, but they still have many tortuous miles to go before they reach New Orleans and the Gulf. For nearly a minute, the colossal train of barges threatens to overrun the little craft. Annie’s hand tightens on mine as their courses converge, but at the last second the kayaks squirt from under the bow of the iron giant, and she relaxes.
“They made it,” she says with relief.
“They did,” I agree. This far, anyway.
CHAPTER 94
FIFTY MILES SOUTH of Natchez, Snake Knox piloted a Cessna 182 along the floor of the cloud ceiling above Zachary, Louisiana. His son Billy sat beside him, trying to hide his fear. This was a dangerous area to depart from regulation procedures. Baton Rouge’s main airport lay only ten miles to the south, and even though Snake had filed no flight plan, commercial airliners might pick him up with their anti-collision radars, not to mention the possibility of an actual collision. Snake had already been challenged once by an air-traffic controller from the airport, but he’d ignored the call. If he hung around much longer, he might find an F-16 on his wingtip.