FORTY MILES DOWN the Mississippi River, Billy Knox waited in the study of the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, which his father stubbornly insisted on calling by its original name: Fort Knox. The massive compound straddled the boundary between Lusahatcha County, Mississippi, and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, both of which lay on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Though much of Valhalla was surrounded and protected by impassable swampland for part of the year, a fourteen-foot-high fence kept trespassers out and valuable game species in. Trophy heads of African antelope, Canadian moose, and whitetail deer jutted from every wall in the lodge, while grizzly bears and alligators guarded the corners with lifelike menace. Behind Billy’s chair, a seven-hundred-pound hog with a spear in its back prepared for a charge. The Teddy Roosevelt décor pegged Billy’s cheese meter, but he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to take any of it down. His cousin Forrest liked the lodge exactly the way it was—the way his father Frank had liked it—and Billy didn’t fancy the consequences of desecrating the memory of Frank Knox.

Billy liked to think of himself as a redneck renaissance man. From humble beginnings, he’d raised himself to a plane where he was able to contemplate spending $250,000 to hire Jimmy Buffett to perform at his upcoming forty-fourth birthday party. Not many men could do that. The fact that he’d broken a multitude of laws to attain his present position was of no consequence. The lesson of history was that every great fortune was built upon a great crime, and great men from medieval popes to modern philanthropists had succeeded by taking this maxim to heart, just as Billy had done.

The drug trade had been Billy’s primary engine of success, but over the past five years he’d expanded into real estate, oil, timber, and hunting equipment. He also produced a reality hunting show for television, one carried on five separate cable channels. Top NASCAR drivers, NFL players, and country music stars had appeared on the show with him, hunting everything from alligators and razorbacks to the prize bucks that roamed the wooded hills of Valhalla. More than a few admirers had observed that Billy fit right in with that elite: with his dirty blond hair and ice-blue eyes, he looked like the lead singer of a 1970s southern rock band. He exuded a daredevil aura, much as his father once had, and society women found his charm irresistible.