“How? That man with the gun looked really mean. The guys in the black truck looked scary, too.”

Quentin leans toward her with a confident smile and then winks. “Don’t you worry, pretty girl. Bullies are my specialty.”

“But they were a lot bigger than you are. And . . .”

The old lion’s smile broadens. “And they’re not in a wheelchair?” Quentin reaches out and taps Annie’s forehead. “Looks can be deceiving, darling. That’s an important lesson. Ask your daddy about it on the way home.” He gives me a mock salute. “I’m off, my brother. Keep your chin up, and remember what’s important.”

“Which is?”

“Those women on either side of you.”

As Quentin’s wheelchair hums off toward a white Mercedes van, Doris Avery climbs out and opens the side door, then deploys the ramp. She sees me watching, but she does not wave. This is exactly the kind of situation she wanted to avoid when she urged Quentin not to take Dad’s case, which already seems a lifetime ago.

Looking around for Mom, I see that Walt has taken her aside to explain what happened with the bounty hunter. For a brief moment I feel released from the weight of supporting her, and into that vacuum rushes all my grief and anger at my father. The logistics of getting to Henry’s funeral—and the intensity of the event itself—had distracted me from it for a while, but now the nearly unendurable reality returns with shattering force: Caitlin is still dead, and two days from now we have another funeral to attend.

“Daddy?” says Annie. “You need to listen to that message now.”

“I told you, babe, I’ll listen to it when we get home. I promise.”

“Now,” she insists, her face angry. “It’s important!”

There’s a desperate note in my daughter’s voice that I can’t ignore. “All right. Okay. You start it for me.”

Annie goes to work on the keypad with fingers as deft as her mother’s once were—and Caitlin’s, too.

“The passcode was ya’ll’s wedding day,” she says. “Or what it was supposed to be. All numbers. Lean down by me to listen.”

I do.

Annie presses a button, and then—as though calling from some plane beyond the grave—the second love of my life begins to speak in a strained whisper:

“Penn . . . this may be the last time you hear my voice. I’ve been shot. In the heart, according to your father.” The rasp of labored breathing comes from the phone’s tiny speaker. “Tom was . . . trying to help me, but his hands were cuffed, and . . . now he’s passed out. I’m afraid he may be dead. I’m going to try to save myself, but . . . in case something goes wrong . . . I want to tell you some things—”

“Daddy?” Annie asks, her eyes wide. “Daddy, are you okay?”

CHAPTER 88

THE ROAD FROM the AME Church to the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve has passed like a hallucination. I couldn’t say whether I’ve been driving thirty seconds, thirty minutes, or thirty hours. All the way I’ve played back Caitlin’s last words, spoken into her cell phone before she performed that last, desperate self-mutilation in an effort to save her life. Her message is a sequence of broken sentences punctuated by gasps, gurgles, wheezes, and wracking coughs. Each sound of distress makes it plain that she has little time to live. Yet I’m as powerless to stop listening to it as I am to stop breathing.

“I did something stupid, Penn. . . . I went looking for the Bone Tree by myself. I found it and . . . got myself shot . . . my own damn fault. A black kid offered to show it to me and . . . because he was black . . . I just assumed we were on the same side. Anyway . . . he shot me with a .22. Otherwise I’d be dead. . . . I scared him away with my pistol, but . . . doesn’t matter now . . . wasn’t him anyway. . . . Forrest Knox . . . did this to me. The kid . . . who shot me told me . . . Forrest promised to get his brother paroled . . . from Angola . . . if he killed me.

“After the boy ran . . . I realized Tom was in the tree . . . don’t know how he got there. He was unconscious . . . sugar shock, I think. . . . Thought he was dead at first . . . revived him with . . . a goddamn peppermint. I’m sorry I sound this way. . . . Veins in my neck are filling up. . . . Can’t get my breath. Tom said I have . . . pericardial something . . . my heart’s being smothered by blood . . . in the sac around it. Sorry . . . the point was to tell you some things. . . . I feel like that guy on Mount Everest . . . who got to talk to his wife on the radio before the end. . . . I heard a chopper a couple of minutes ago. I hope it’s you . . . or at least Danny and Carl. Anyway . . . here goes nothing.”

There were more savage wheezes, and then she said, “First, I love you. I . . . don’t know why the hell we waited so long . . . to get married. . . . Stupid, I guess. Second . . . you have to forgive your father. There’s stuff . . . stuff you need to know. Viola and Tom killed Frank Knox. . . . Frank was hurt, but . . . Viola finished him off. She shot his heart full of air . . . and Tom stood by while he died. . . . Covered it up. That’s why Tom kept silent all those years. . . . He thought Viola would go to prison . . . he’d be jailed and taken from his family, or . . . killed by the Double Eagles. . . . Oh, God, I feel like my neck’s going to burst. . . . I don’t want to pass out.”

There was only gasping and wheezing for a few seconds, and when Caitlin spoke again, her voice was much weaker, and far less coherent. “. . . to think about. . . . Forrest raped Viola . . . when he was a teenager. He raped another woman, too . . . here at the Bone Tree. . . . I think Forrest may be Lincoln’s father. . . . Look at his skin color. Anyway . . . can’t believe I actually found the Bone Tree. . . . I’m leaning against the thing . . . but didn’t find what I was really looking for. . . . Tell John that Frank Knox kept something . . . something from the assassination. . . . It tied him to Marcello. . . . Frank killed JFK, Penn. . . . I believe that now. . . . Tell John to look for a letter written in Russian. . . . Snake told Morehouse about it. . . .”

At this point her voice constricted into a strangled squawk, and I feared I would hear no more. Then she coughed and somehow went on:

“I’ve got my multi-tool . . . tell Jordan it saved me . . . fucking pen in my chest. . . . Need some kind of suction . . . but Tom can’t help me. . . . I’m afraid he’s dead, Penn. . . . Oh, God. . . . If I don’t make it, tell Annie . . . I loved her . . . like she was my own. . . . I want to tell her myself, though, because . . . I don’t want to die in this fucking swamp. Okay . . . this is me, babe, signing off. . . . Heard rotors again . . . hope to God you’re in that chopper. . . . Don’t ever blame yourself for this. . . . I asked for it and . . . I got it. I love you. . . . Bye for now.”

The first ten times I listened to this recording, her voice was like a blade shaving shreds of muscle from my heart. Then I started to curse Caitlin for talking so long, talking to me when she could have been trying to save herself. But finally I realized the terrible truth: she’d known all along that without my father’s help her efforts would be futile. Whatever she said into that cell phone would be the last words I would ever hear from her. Typical that she spent so much of that precious time catching me up on facts, as though the message were her final news story.

When I get within a mile of where I expect the Valhalla road to be, I start watching the turns that lead into the woods between the highway and the Mississippi River. I try two that lead nowhere, logging roads that wind through the dense trees and then peter out. But then I come to an asphalt lane blocked by a wrought-iron gate set between two enormous stone pillars. A gleaming sign on one reads: