“He’s already called the FBI,” Wilma Deen says in a shaky voice. “Don’t say nothin’. This is a trick. He’s trying to get us to talk.”

“No, darlin’,” Snake says, his eyes on Lincoln. “Kunta Kinte there is gonna shoot us.”

Wilma Deen’s eyes are wide with fear. I figured her for a stone-cold bitch, but this obviously isn’t her kind of situation. Maybe the dead guy on the floor has given her a premonition of her future.

“Will you talk?” I ask.

Snake’s eyes move from Lincoln’s to mine. “You killed my nephew, Cage. Hard to believe, really. I guess he figured you didn’t have it in you.”

“You raped my mama,” Lincoln intones. “You tortured my uncle. And you either killed him or ordered it done.”

“Your mama killed my brother, Mr. Turner.” Snake turns up his hands. “But hey . . . what’s done is done. Right?”

“Except we ain’t done, cracker.”

“Do you know how an air bubble kills a person?” Alois asks in a strange voice.

“Shut up,” Snake says softly.

“It moves through your veins until it reaches your heart. Then, if there’s enough air, it creates a vapor lock, the way air will do to any pump. The heart muscle is fighting for all it’s worth to pump blood, but there’s nothing there. No blood to prime it, see? So you lie there with a sledgehammer slamming the inside of your breastbone, and then your heart starts squirming, and then finally your whole inner works just seize up, and then”—the blond kid snaps his fingers with a startling report in the little room—“your brain burns out like a light.”

Snake Knox has maintained a placid expression through his son’s description of his brother’s murder, but I’m pretty sure he’s gritting his teeth. After a long, slow breath, he says, “My son’s clearly got a lot to learn about forgiveness. He wasn’t raised on the Good Book.”

I feel I’ve just heard Satan preach the gospel. Knox’s words trigger a memory of Dolores St. Denis describing Snake howling scripture as he raped her in the Lusahatcha Swamp, and that brings to mind the preacher father who raped both Snake and Forrest when they were boys.

“They’re playin’ us!” Wilma cries, her eyes frantic. “They got the FBI outside listening!”

While Snake disabuses her of this notion once and for all, I press record on the little Sony.

“You blinded a young woman,” I say to Wilma. “Didn’t you? Threw acid in her face.”

Wilma Deen shakes her head violently. “I didn’t do no such thing.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Alois mutters. “Own it, why don’t you? Sure, she did. That little nigger bitch asked for it.”