by Greg Iles
“Can I help you?” Keisha asked.
“I hope so,” said the woman, who had stringy gray hair and a harsh edge to her voice. “Here’s a present for you, pretty girl!”
Then she threw the contents of her cup in Keisha’s face.
The shock of the liquid hitting her skin and eyes made Keisha gasp and drop her backpack. She shook her head like a dog trying to dry itself, then held up her hands in case the woman meant to physically attack her.
No attack came.
Keisha didn’t realize her eyes were closed until she heard laughter, and some part of her brain registered that the laughter was receding.
The woman was retreating, thank Jesus.
“Goddamn,” Keisha sputtered, pulling the tail of her blouse from her jeans and using it to wipe her face and eyelids. “Crazy bitch.”
As she wiped, her eyes began to burn.
She blinked several times, then tilted her head back, but this did nothing to relieve the burning, which seemed to be worsening.
Shit, she thought as the pain rapidly grew intolerable.
Keisha gasped, then cried out and wiped harder. The pain kept ratcheting up the scale. Then she realized her face was burning as well.
Panic detonated in her chest, robbing her of breath and judgment. By the time she thought of her garden hose, she could barely see. Stumbling across the St. Augustine grass, Keisha began to scream.
“What’s that?” Annie asked sharply.
I stopped with a spoonful of oatmeal nearly to my open mouth. “What?”
Mia froze halfway to her feet. “Somebody screamed.”
When the second scream came, Mia bolted from the kitchen, Annie on her heels.
“Wait!” I yelled. “Damn it! Tim’s not out there! He’s in the bathroom! Wait!”
By the time I got outside with my pistol, I saw Annie and Mia racing across the street toward Caitlin’s house. In the front yard, Keisha Harvin was stumbling around like Patty Duke playing Helen Keller. At first I thought it was some kind of prank, so clumsy and strange did Keisha look, but with the next scream I recognized genuine pain and horror.
Scanning the street for threats, I leaped down the steps and sprinted across the pavement, praying Tim wasn’t far behind. Mia was trying to question Keisha, but the reporter only sobbed and babbled unintelligibly. I knew only one thing: Keisha was in terrible pain, and her face and eyes seemed to be the source of it.
“This is Penn, Keisha! What happened?”
She screeched for a couple of seconds, then said, “She threw Coke in my face!”
“Who threw a Coke in your face?”
“White lady!”
Looking closer, I saw that Keisha’s blouse was wet, as was the skin of her upper chest. As I noted this, my gaze locked onto the skin itself, which did not look right at all. Something corrosive had gotten at it—
“Oh, God,” I breathed. “Mia! Did you touch her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Go rinse your hands with the hose.”
“Make it stop!” Keisha screams. “It’s burning!”
“Annie, did you touch her?”
“No! Daddy, what’s the matter with her?”
“Run home and call 911! Then get me the rubber gloves out of the washroom.”
Annie stared transfixed at Keisha’s pouring eyes.
“Annie, right now! We need an ambulance and police!”
“I’m going!” she cried, sprinting back toward the house.
“I can’t see!” Keisha wailed. “All I can see is light. What did she do to me?”
“Breathe, Keisha,” I said in a level voice, fighting the urge to take hold of her and comfort her. “Stop talking, just breathe. I want you to sit down where you are. I’m going to get the garden hose. Do you hear me?”
Her fingers found her reddening cheeks. “Oh no—my face . . .”
“Sit down, right here. Or better yet, lie on your back.”
“On the ground?”
“Yes. Mia, bring the hose!”
A sprinter in high school, Mia covered the distance to me in three seconds and clapped the hose into my hand. Keisha was still sobbing, but I figured the tears were good for her eyes.
“Keisha, I’m going to rinse your face, your eyes, everything. I need you to help me by staying calm. There’s going to be water in your face—a lot of it—but just keep breathing through your mouth. We’re going to rinse your skin until the ambulance gets here. Even under your eyelids.”
“Hurry, hurry—”
I turned the thick, clear stream of water on her face and brought the hose to within three inches of her skin. In the sluicing torrent I could see the beginnings of some sort of deep burn, but with her dark skin it was hard to tell how bad it was.
“What can I do?” Mia asked, staring at Keisha with horror.
“Call Drew and tell him we have a severe acid burn, a facial burn. Tell him we’re going to need an ophthalmologist as well.”
“What else?”
“Get Tim over here to cover us. This might not be the end of it.”
Four blocks from Washington Street, Wilma Deen opened the door of a Toyota club cab pickup and climbed into the backseat. Alois Engel hit the gas before she even got the door closed, which told her he was overly keyed up by the proximity to violence, as usual.
“Did you get her?” he asked, glancing back over the seat.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“Goddamn it, did you get her?”
Wilma thought back to the confusion in the young girl’s face when the acid hit her, before she realized how much pain and suffering had been flung from that go-cup. “I got her, all right. She’ll never be the belle of the ball again.”
“Holy shit.”
Wilma felt the truck speed up as they moved toward Canal Street, which would take them to the Louisiana bridge.
“Slow down, Alois. I don’t want to spend ten years in Parchman.”
“I hear you, don’t sweat it. Gimme some details, though. I didn’t get to see shit.”
Wilma slid down until her face was below window level and closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking about Keisha Harvin, but her own brother, Glenn. How he had looked when he realized his sister had sided with Snake and the Double Eagles over her own kin. That decision had been a revelation to Wilma, too, but she hadn’t regretted it. Not often, anyhow.
She’d spent nearly three months in hiding, and truth be told, she’d gotten cabin fever. Living on the run was Shitsville, as her daddy used to say. One of the few things he’d been right about.
“FBI’s gonna go batshit over this,” said Alois. “The mayor, too.”
“Good. I’m tired of hiding every goddamn day. I needed some action.”
Alois nodded and took a long, gradual right turn, which meant he must be following the ramp down to the twin bridges over the Mississippi.
“We’re about to get all the action we can handle,” he said. “It’s about damned time, too.”
Wilma settled back in the seat and closed her eyes, but she didn’t see darkness. She saw the colored girl’s mouth fly open in shock as the acid hit her. By now she was suffering the torments of hell. Deep in her chest Wilma felt a twinge of something she’d thought was dead. It was empathy. But she gritted her teeth against it when she remembered her brother’s eyes while she helped Snake and Sonny inject him with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Once you’d gone that far . . . there was no going back. You could only go forward.
What had most appealed to her about the acid attack was that by carrying it out, she would earn the respect of the VK club, who’d been handling their concealment from the FBI. And not only of the mamas—who were catty, slutty bitches—but the bikers themselves. The leader of the VK, a tough old Vietnam vet named Lars Dempsey, reminded Wilma a little of Frank Knox, or what she remembered of Frank, anyway. She wasn’t sure how Snake kept Lars doing his bidding. In that world, the big ones ate the little ones, and she couldn’t see
a man of Snake’s age surviving for long. But she had to give him his due: it had been almost three months since Forrest died, and the VK were following Snake’s orders like an obedient army.
I guess the Knoxes are just born leaders, she thought, half resentfully. And I reckon that’s a good thing, ’cause without Snake I’d be in jail or dead in a ditch right now.
Chapter 7
“You did well, washing her face and eyes so thoroughly,” says Drew Elliott, holding a penlight to Keisha Harvin’s cheek. “You mitigated some of the external damage.”
My father’s younger partner has been working over Keisha for half an hour, but he only let me into the St. Catherine’s ER treatment room two minutes ago. He’s been applying a solution of something called calcium gluconate to every affected surface of Keisha’s skin. To my relief, he’s given her an IV narcotic for pain, and she appears to be unconscious, which makes it easier for me to remain calm while he examines her facial skin under the light.
“Will she suffer any permanent vision loss?” I ask.
Drew looks up at me, apparently confused. Then softly he says, “She’ll probably lose her sight, Penn. Forever. We won’t know for a few hours yet. I’ve called in Pat Crosby for an ophthalmological consult. But her corneas are already cloudy. It doesn’t look good.”
This recalibration of my worst-case scenario starts my heart thumping again. “How bad will the facial scarring be? She’s a pretty young girl.”
Drew moves the beam of light down to her neck. “That’s not my main concern. The question is, will she survive?”
This jars me to the core. “What? She’s twenty-five years old. I realize she’ll never be on the cover of Vogue after this, but . . . you’re saying it could kill her? Was there poison in the acid or something?”
“No, but there doesn’t have to be. The acid in that cup wasn’t hydrochloric or sulfuric—which would have been bad enough, but mostly limited to skin and eye damage. It was hydrofluoric. Hydrofluoric acid bonds with calcium ions, which means it passes through the skin and goes deep into the body, all the way to the bones.”
My face feels cold. “What happens then?”
“The resulting reaction releases a flood of calcium into the bloodstream. And if you get enough calcium in your blood, it stops your heart. Permanently.”
“But . . . surely you can do something to counteract that?”
Drew bends to get a better view of Keisha’s neck. “Not enough, I’m afraid. It comes down to how much acid got into her. I just read about a case where a guy in a college laboratory spilled about a cup of hydrofluoric acid onto his lap. He jumped into a nearby swimming pool and stayed there for thirty minutes trying to wash himself. They initially thought he was okay, but a few days later they had to amputate both legs.”
“Oh, God.”
Drew clicks off the light and sets it on the instrument tray. “Ultimately he died. Heart damage.”
I turn away and walk over to a sink, trying to wrap my mind around what Drew has said. Standing in the cold air of the ER, I remember the message Snake Knox sent to my father three weeks ago: Wives and children have no immunity. A wave of nausea rolls through my belly, and I’m thinking of darting into the toilet when Drew removes his gloves with a pop, drops them in the trash can, then lays his hand on my shoulder.
“Who would do that to this girl? The Double Eagles?”
Wives and children have no immunity. “Had to be. Keisha’s been pretty hard on them in the newspaper.”
“Penn . . . what if that had been Annie?”
“Don’t even say that, man.”
Drew drops his hand from my shoulder and looks me directly in the face. “I know you’re thinking it. If you’re not, you’re crazy. Maybe it’s time you get her out of town. Out of the country, even. Mia, too. And maybe you should go with them.”
I haven’t heard Drew sound this serious since he was jailed on a murder charge himself. “I don’t know if I can do that right now. Leave, I mean.”
“Because Tom’s going on trial? Hell, you haven’t even been to the prison to see him, have you?”
“Once.”
“Are you planning to attend the trial, then?”
“I don’t know. The issue is my mother. I think I’ve got to be here for her.”
Drew studies me for some time. “I understand. But think about moving Annie and Mia. Anybody you or your father care about is a target.”
“You’re right. I will.”
He gives me his professional smile. “I’ve got to get over to my office.”
I look back at the table, where Keisha lies peacefully, at least for the moment. “Please keep a close eye on that girl, Drew.”
“I intend to. I’ve told the nurses to call me if any family members show up. But if she gets any worse, I may have to send her up to University in a chopper.”
“I understand.”
He gives me a fraternal flick of his head in farewell, then heads for the big double doors.
John Kaiser is standing with Annie and Mia when I come out into the waiting room. As soon as he catches sight of me, he tells the girls he needs a minute with me in private. I tell them that Keisha is resting quietly and that Drew has done everything possible for her, that now all we can do is wait. Then I give Annie a hug and follow Kaiser into an alcove where three vending machines stand humming.
“Did she say who attacked her?” he asks.
“She said it was a white woman—older, she thought—but she couldn’t give any real description. Black leather jacket was all she remembered. Sounds like the motorcycle gang, doesn’t it? The VK?”
“That’s the obvious assumption. I’d like to know where Wilma Deen is. She was present the night her brother was murdered, and she vanished right after Snake did. That tells me she’s capable of something like this.”
“I hope it was her. I don’t want to think this was payback for Tim and me killing those two VK guys.”
“You realize they could have hit you the same way, Penn. Or Annie.”
“No, they couldn’t,” I think aloud. “We have protection. She didn’t. That’s why they hit Keisha.”
The FBI agent considers this. “Your father’s trial starts in four days. Could be the VK are sending him and Quentin another message with this attack. Maybe somebody’s getting nervous.”
“Snake?”
“Who else? But why, I don’t know. Only your father knows that.”
I wave my hand, too upset even to discuss that issue. “Still no leads on Snake’s whereabouts?”
“You think I’ve been holding out on you? We’ve got nothing, Penn. Forrest and Snake had a long time to prepare for an emergency exit. And Forrest knew what he was doing. I’ve reached the point where I think the only thing that’s going to give us Snake Knox is luck. And he’s been a lucky son of a bitch all his life.”
“Everybody’s luck runs out eventually. And remember, Snake is his own worst enemy. He likes the spotlight. Once this trial starts, he may not be able to control himself. You think he can just sit somewhere and let this circus unfold? With national TV coverage every day? I don’t know how Snake was tied in to Viola—or even to my father—but sooner or later, he’s going to come sniffing around that trial.”
“We’ll be watching.”
“Meanwhile, I’m going to try to think of a way to draw him out.”
Kaiser looks worried. “Don’t do anything stupid. Use your brain, not your heart.”
“Go in there and look at that girl, John. She’s twenty-five, and she’s going to be blind for the rest of her life.”
“Christ.”
“Drew says she may die. It was hydrofluoric acid.”
“Goddamn. I know what that can do.”
“She’s one of the good guys, man. One of us. A kid. Are we just going to sit here and take this shit?”
Kaiser reaches out and squeezes my upper arm. “Sometimes that’s our only choice. That’s part of being the good guys.”
&nbs
p; I say nothing.
“I’d like nothing better than to go to war with these assholes. But we can’t even be sure who did this.”
I do not share Kaiser’s view. In my mind I see the smug visage of Snake Knox while Kaiser and I tried to interrogate him in the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office. He made us look like fools that day.
“Penn?”
“I’ll see you, John. Please let me know if you learn anything.”
The FBI man watches me carefully as I walk away, headed for the corner that will lead me to my car.
“Hey!” he calls. “Don’t you have a bodyguard?”
“Tim’s with the girls. I’ll text him to meet me at the car.”
“Are you carrying?”
The reassuring weight of my pistol rides my left ankle as I walk. “Never without it now.”
Kaiser nods, then sends me off with a mock salute.
I do text Tim, but not to meet me at my car. I tell him that I’ll be busy with Kaiser for some while, and that I want him to take Mia and Annie back home for the time being. As his reply comes in, I spy Jamie Lewis, the editor of the Natchez Examiner, about twenty feet from my Audi, walking toward the hospital.
“Jamie!” I call.
He waves and approaches me. “I’ve been on the phone with Caitlin’s father. He’s going to up the security for all of us. He’s flagellating himself for not doing it sooner.”
I can’t imagine what kind of agony John Masters must be putting himself through over this attack.
“Seeing Keisha like that is going to kill her brother,” Jamie says.
“The Auburn football player? You know him?”
“I met both her brothers at an Alabama football game. Roosevelt Harvin isn’t a guy you forget. He played defensive tackle. The oldest brother didn’t play college ball, but the dad played at Mississippi Valley State.”