The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,343

church lurch forward as though to prop him up. But after a moment, he pushes himself erect again and gazes out over the congregation with empathy and sadness.

“Thank you for hearing me out. And now . . . I go to answer for those things I’ve done and left undone. I go to speak the truth as I know it, and pray there’s still time for redemption. But please . . . remember my charge to you: do not let them die in vain. God bless you all.”

With that, my father turns and shuffles to Henry’s coffin, then lays his hand on it, head bowed.

My mother sobs once beside me, overcome with emotion, and then her quivering hand closes around mine. “That’s your father,” she says, her voice filled with vindication.

“I know that,” I mutter, more confused than I’ve ever been in my life.

After his silent communion with Henry, Dad straightens up and walks back through the door whence he came, this time escorted by two FBI agents.

The buzz of voices that rises in his wake sets the walls of the church to vibrating. The energy in this building is palpable, electric, a living force that craves a balancing of the scales. If the surviving members of the Double Eagle group were brought through the doors behind me now, I doubt they would escape this crowd alive.

“Does Kaiser have men out back?” I ask Walt as the pallbearers slowly walk to the bier.

“He’s got everything covered.”

“Are they taking Dad into custody now?”

“Probably. Quentin Avery’s back there, too. Kaiser’s coordinating this with Colonel Mackiever, the Concordia Parish DA, and the big boys in Washington. It’s going to run like clockwork.”

“You’re forgetting the Knoxes, aren’t you?”

Walt squeezes my shoulder again. “I’ll talk to you outside, Penn.”

He starts to rise, but I turn and grab his arm. “What did Dad trade for this, Walt?”

“I don’t know.”

“The JFK stuff?” I whisper. “Or is he going to come clean about Viola?”

“I don’t know, man. And I don’t care. This was the only way to end this nightmare with him alive.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be okay. He’s seen to that.”

I shake my head, then release Walt’s arm.

As the old Ranger hurries through the back door, Mom clenches my knee. “Penn, what’s happening? Did Walt say Tom is turning himself in?”

“Yes.”

She nods and shudders with conflicted relief. “Do you think the FBI would let me see him? Just for a minute?”

I can hardly answer, so profoundly shaken has this turn of events left me.

“Penn?” Mom says again.

Henry’s funeral is over. The coffin has departed, Reverend Baldwin has released the crowd with a barely audible prayer, and the doors at the back of the church have been thrown open, letting in a broad shaft of gray-white light.

“Walt said Quentin’s out back,” I tell her. “Go through the door behind the lectern and find him. He’ll help you.”

Mom grabs my hand and places it over Annie’s, then rushes through the door beside the altar.

As the excited mourners stream outside, and a couple of the journalists scrawl in notebooks produced from their suit jackets, Annie tugs at my sleeve. When I look down, I see her holding Caitlin’s cell phone to her ear. Her eyes are wide with an emotion I cannot read.

“Daddy, you need to listen to this.”

“What, Boo?”

“I finally broke Caitlin’s passcode! She left a message on her phone.”

Only then do I remember that Caitlin originally bought the Treo because it had a Voice Memo function that allowed up to an hour of voice recording, an invaluable tool for a journalist. “That’s a new phone, Boo, but she’s probably got an hour of memos on there already. I’ll listen to them after we get home.”

As Annie speaks again, a commotion erupts outside, so loud that I can hear it through the back wall. Several voices shout out for someone to stop something, and then “Leave him alone!”

“Daddy?” Annie asks worriedly.

“Dr. Cage!” someone screams.

Caitlin’s cell phone forgotten, I grab Annie’s hand and race through the door by the altar, into the blinding sunlight.

“Over there!” Annie cries, pointing at the crowded parking lot.

A burly man in a black T-shirt is gripping my father’s arm with one hand and aiming a pistol at him with the other. Four FBI agents and Walt Garrity have surrounded the gunman, but they seem helpless as the big man yells, “This man’s a fugitive! I’m making a lawful arrest!”

Only when I get close enough to read BAIL RECOVERY AGENT on the T-shirt do I understand what’s happening.