BACK ON THE STREET, the full import of what happened in Shad Johnson’s office finally sinks in. For a few seconds I think I might actually vomit. I’ve been through many tense confrontations in my career, but not with my father’s life hanging in the balance.

“This thing’s going to trial,” I murmur. “Christ.”

Until a couple of minutes ago, I believed that the photo of Shad torturing that pit bull was my weapon of last resort, like Israel’s nuclear stockpile. Now I’ve opened my arsenal and found my plutonium replaced with baking powder. The realization that nothing can hinder Shad from going after my father with maximum intensity—from exploiting every sordid detail of this situation in the media—is almost paralyzing.

“Afternoon, Mayor,” says a lawyer’s secretary, hurrying past, her coat wrapped tight against the wind.

The temperature is dropping fast. To avoid further human interaction, I back into a recessed doorway and gaze at the wall of the sheriff’s office and jail, whose high slit-windows give it the look of a Stalinist prison. Huddling in the nook while people stride past, I try to get my bearings and make a plan.

Nothing comes to me.

Taking out my cell phone, I dial Quentin Avery’s house in Jefferson County. His cell phone rings eight times, and then a sterile female voice informs me that the AT&T customer I’ve called has not set up his voice mail. “Of course he hasn’t. He’s a fucking fossil.”

Slowly it comes to me that in this town that once nurtured me—the town that, in theory, I rule—I have no power to alter the course of events. Mayor Penn Cage. What a joke. The title is meaningless. My Mississippi law license grants me more power than my political office. As I consider heading to the City Hall parking lot for my car, one of Billy Byrd’s growled taunts comes back to me with cutting power: Your daddy shoulda wore a rubber when he screwed that hot chocolate back in the day.

Why do so many people seem ready to assume that my father and Viola were lovers? I’m almost certain that Shad painted this scenario for the grand jury this afternoon, and their true bill proves they believed it. Last night, even Caitlin told me I should assume that Dad had made love with Viola, given her beauty and the closeness of their work relationship.

Am I the only fool involved in this mess?