Tom’s father, a man of rigid moral rectitude, had condemned this practice as an expression of man’s basest urges. He’d recounted countless historical examples: Alfred Dreyfus rotting on Devil’s Island; royal whipping boys beaten bloody; medical patients scapegoated for epidemics; Jews being led to the ovens as Tom approached puberty. Percy Cage had ingrained in his son the conviction that a man of honor admitted his mistakes, took responsibility for them, and stoically accepted his punishment. Evading responsibility for sin was cowardice, plain and simple. Yet in the present circumstance, Tom thought, he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live with his family for the final year of two of his life, and not in a locked cage.

He thought of Glenn Morehouse, the simple-minded factory worker he’d treated so long ago. Morehouse was probably the least guilty of all the Double Eagles, because he’d had the least free will. He’d also possessed some remnant of a conscience, because he’d been murdered for trying to unburden his soul before death. But Glenn Morehouse, too, had committed murder. He’d participated in Viola’s rape, and probably countless other acts of brutality. Few tears, if any, had been shed at his death. And since Morehouse was dead, what more fitting scapegoat could there be for Viola’s murder?

Tom’s radio crackled in his lap. Then Walt said, “He’s moving around inside.”

Tom’s chest tightened. He reached down into his bag for his short-barreled .357 and laid the heavy pistol in his lap.

“Get ready,” Walt said. “I think he’s coming out.”

Tom got to his feet—he had to stoop inside the van—then opened the side door and stepped out into the night. The smell of dead fish and rotting vegetation assailed him. He stuck the .357 into his waistband and crunched up the gravel driveway, then crossed over into some shadows thrown by the light beneath Sonny’s camp house. He’d barely found a place to wait when he heard a screen door bang against its frame high above him.

A new sound puzzled him for a few seconds. Then he realized that Thornfield was pissing off the deck high above. By the light of the moon, Tom saw urine falling in a thin, irregular stream to his right. Old man’s prostate, he thought. Tom had little doubt that Walt would make use of Thornfield being indisposed to get control of him. Sure enough, he heard a squawk of surprise, and the trickle of urine abruptly stopped.

Angry words passed above him, and then, as Walt had predicted, someone started down to the ground in the makeshift elevator. Walt had told Tom to expect Sonny in the cage, and ten seconds later, the old Double Eagle appeared, clinging to the bars of a flimsy metal elevator as the winch groaned and whined high above him.