Snake could scarcely imagine a safer hiding place. In the early 1800s, this little town had nearly become the capital of the Mississippi Territory. Though small, it had been a famous crossing point of the Mississippi River since Indian times, and it was surrounded by wealthy plantations. But a sudden shift in the course of the river had changed all that, and by 1870, Rodney had become a ghost town. Today about fifty people clung to their old houses, but they were ghosts themselves. Nobody came here but a few tourists, to stare at the Yankee cannonball that had stuck high in the brick wall of the church during some brief shelling by an ironclad during the Civil War. It wasn’t even the original cannonball, Snake knew, the real one having been stolen long ago. Rodney’s surviving public buildings were falling to pieces, and you could barely see most of the houses, thanks to the chest-high weeds choking the yards. The main traffic was hunters, and most of them had Confederate flag decals behind the gun racks in their pickups.

Rodney was friendly territory.

Alois and Wilma had wanted to stay by the boat and watch the sunset, but Snake had told them to get back up to the house. He was sick of listening to them yap. They wanted to know what he was going to do next, but if he’d learned anything from Frank, it was keep your plans to yourself until the last possible moment.

Being forced to leave the sod farm at Sulphur hadn’t sat well with Snake at first, but once Wilma had told him about Viola Turner killing Frank in Dr. Cage’s office—and Tom Cage likely covering it up—Snake had been glad to get closer to Natchez. The truth was, while Forrest was alive, Snake had had to be careful about how he approached Dr. Cage’s situation. Forrest believed violence was bad for business, except where it was a direct requirement of business, and he wanted it minimized. But with Forrest’s death at the hands of Penn Cage, Snake had gained the freedom to deal with Dr. Cage as he wished, though being hunted as a fugitive had limited his options.

Initially, he’d been content to let Dr. Cage be convicted of murder and die in Parchman. Snake had meant to let the son endure this heartbreak, then suffer his own retribution for killing Forrest. That would likely involve the death of his daughter first, and only later the death of the mayor himself. But the revelation that Dr. Cage had covered up Frank’s murder for his nurse had scrambled Snake’s thinking. His sense of being in control of events had slipped.