Henry offers me his hand. I shake it, then climb into my Audi and head for the Natchez bridge. As I arc over the river, my cell phone pings, and I find a text message from Rose, my secretary, whom I asked to find out all she could about Judge Joseph Elder’s health and job situation. The LCD reads:

Judge Elder will be back at work next Monday. Still planning to resign and move to Memphis so far as I can find out. No word on his replacement. Putting out feelers everywhere I can—on the DL, of course. Good luck.

“Next Monday,” I say aloud, as pain hits high in my stomach. If Shad decides to take my father’s case before the grand jury and have his case placed on Judge Elder’s docket, then Elder could arraign Dad and revoke his bail, even if he won’t be the judge who actually tries his case down the road. And as I realized yesterday, for my father, jail almost certainly equals death. Whether Shad follows this course is a purely political decision, and I haven’t enough information to predict what he might do. But the relief I felt this morning at hearing Judge Noyes’s low bail has vanished. Depending on Judge Elder’s mood and philosophy, Shad could take my father’s freedom at any time.

CHAPTER 35

LIEUTENANT COLONEL NATHAN Bedford Forrest Knox sat at his desk in Louisiana State Police headquarters in Baton Rouge, writing an assessment of the need to maintain a permanent state police presence in the city of New Orleans. State police SWAT teams had deployed there the first day after the storm and operated 24/7 for eight weeks before returning to normal duties. No one had doubted the need then. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, three hundred New Orleans Police Department officers had deserted their duties, and the Crescent City had become a free-fire zone in which criminals roamed at will, homing in on the drone of generators to rob citizens struggling to survive amid the floodwaters. So far as the public knew, such crimes had been checked by Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, the so-called Ragin’ Cajun, an appellation that made Forrest laugh. Honoré was a Creole by birth, not a Cajun.