SNAKE KNOX AND Sonny Thornfield stood beneath a leafless oak, dripping cold water from a brief shower they’d endured with the grim silence of old soldiers. The pin oak stood beside a gravel drive that led to the house where Glenn Morehouse was dying. Sonny wore a camouflaged nylon shoulder pack slung across his chest. Snake’s hands were empty, but he had a pistol tucked in his waistband at the small of his back. They’d driven in from the dirt road back by the levee, then parked behind the trees and walked in, so that no one would see their truck. For twenty-five minutes they’d been waiting for a signal that had not come. The porch light of the solitary house should have gone dark long ago.

“What the hell?” Sonny whispered. “We’re gonna have dogs barking in a minute.”

“That’s why I brought my pistol,” Snake said.

“You fire that hogleg, they’ll hear it all the way to Frogmore.”

Sonny wondered what a passerby would think if he saw two white men in their seventies standing under a tree after an icy rain, not even smoking cigarettes. Of course, there were no passersby out here. Even if there were, he supposed nobody would think twice about two old men standing by the road. Once you passed seventy, no one really saw you unless you put yourself in their way. This rankled Snake, especially where women were concerned, but Sonny didn’t mind. He liked anonymity.

“You think the dumb slut forgot?” Snake asked, pointing toward the lone yellow porch light of the small ranch-style house.

“Not Wilma. Maybe Glenn won’t take his pill or something.”

Snake hiked up his jacket collar to dry his neck. “This is bullshit. Let’s just go in there and do it.”

“Wait,” Sonny said nervously. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call Billy first? I’m pretty sure he didn’t want us to go ahead until he okayed it.”

“Wrong. What he said was, make sure you were convinced Glenn was ratting us out. Shit. Him and Forrest’ll never get past that Martin Luther King thing. Frank always said a man’s biggest enemy is his mouth.” Snake spat. “Well, boss man? Are you convinced?”

Snake’s eyes were menacing in the dark.

“Yeah, I believe it,” Sonny said nervously. After all, Wilma Deen had told them she’d walked in on the tail end of a call that she was almost sure had been to Henry Sexton. But still … “What about Forrest? You think he’s cool with this?”