“Before you do that, tell me, will you be examining this witness at length?”

Quentin smiles affably. “I will, Your Honor. Since the district attorney saw fit to end his case with Korea, I thought I’d start mine there. So we could be here for some while.”

Shad sits blinking like a blindsided driver after a minor collision. “Objection, Your Honor. Irrelevant. The State has no record of a Karl Eklund being present in or around the ambulance where the events Major Powers testified about occurred.”

“That’s because Colonel Eklund was not present in the ambulance,” Quentin says, “or anywhere near it.”

“Then how is his testimony relevant?” Shad asks in a challenging tone.

Quentin’s smile broadens. “You’ll find out soon.”

Doris Avery is heading down the aisle toward the door when Judge Elder says, “Mr. Avery, I’ve reconsidered your earlier request, and I think we should adjourn for the day. Tomorrow we can be assured that your witnesses will be present and ready to testify, that the jury will be fresh, and that your health needs will be attended to.”

Quentin is taken aback by this decision, but he recovers quickly. “Thank you, Judge. I know the jury will appreciate the break as much as I do.”

Shad says, “Your Honor, as I said before, if Colonel Eklund wasn’t present in the ambulance, his testimony is obviously irrelevant to the present case.”

Every lawyer in the courtroom looks at Shad, amazed that he would have the nerve to say this when the entirety of Major Powers’s testimony should never have been allowed.

“Mr. Johnson, you opened the door to Korea. How do you suggest I stop Mr. Avery from walking through it?”

“But Your Honor—”

“I’ll rule on relevance as his testimony proceeds,” Judge Elder says ominously. “Court is adjourned until nine a.m. tomorrow.”

Chapter 43

Snake Knox stood on wet sand just south of Rodney, Mississippi, and watched a fiery sun slip into the river. Sky and wind told him there would be rain tomorrow, and that suited him fine. It had taken most of the day to set up a secure hideout and redundant escape routes, but Snake no longer settled anywhere, not even for a day, without doing both. His Air Tractor was chocked under some trees in a field one mile north of Rodney. Across the river, just west of St. Joseph, Louisiana, was a Cessna 182 he’d had a share in for the past twenty years. And thirty feet away, tied to a cottonwood tree, floated a twenty-four-foot Four Winns Horizon speedboat. The city of Natchez lay only twenty-five miles to the south by river. Snake could get there in forty minutes in the Four Winns, and he was only thirty minutes from Natchez by road, if he used the old pickup he had borrowed from Red Nearing, who owned the little farm they were using at Rodney.