Turning Angel
Turning Angel
Greg Iles
The second thriller in the New York Times No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a man who must face the dark heart of the Deep South – and question everything he believes in…One dead girl. And a town full of secrets…Rape and murder aren’t new to the Deep South, but when the body of a popular high school girl is found dumped in the local river, the whole town of Natchez, Mississippi, is shocked.Penn Cage no longer practises law, but when his best friend Drew is accused of the murder and asks for help, Penn must face the hardest questions of his life:Can he defend Drew against the town, the police and overwhelming evidence?Or could it be true that his friend is a brutal killer who has deceived Penn and everyone else?
GREG ILES
Turning Angel
Copyright (#ulink_e25260bf-31c3-5f10-a24b-aa5854fa87bb)
Harper
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Greg Iles 2005
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2013 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Greg Iles asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007546541
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007546657
Version 2018-07-30
Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature’s power.
Camille Paglia
Table of Contents
Cover (#u2f95e884-2927-5a06-81db-eb0907cf2904)
Title Page (#ud2f0ed0e-9e58-59ba-8222-3adf971c1c1e)
Copyright (#ufbda9eba-ee86-5c30-8c17-726e3dd50868)
Epigraph (#ud2652a49-e068-5539-ad03-0c376e4105a8)
Prologue (#u83751917-9ab2-5ddc-969c-99c684ae2665)
Chapter One (#u565c52aa-82e9-5c34-9611-4b23c5ed5ec5)
Chapter Two (#u9ea1ffc3-caac-523f-9237-47005aeb2b81)
Chapter Three (#ucc94b7ad-4882-54d5-88a8-e846e30ce01a)
Chapter Four (#u4c45b088-dac2-5479-bb2e-e4dd7a5326bb)
Chapter Five (#u2a30202e-a1c0-5fd9-bb04-ef0e16fa7f72)
Chapter Six (#u6f5b5477-6c23-51d7-b67b-1d5a821a349a)
Chapter Seven (#u6651bfa1-04a9-5d22-96e0-84c08b0f9ba9)
Chapter Eight (#u00a56d98-c25f-5df9-81f1-6f7145e0939b)
Chapter Nine (#ue860ca68-7d92-56a3-89e3-55abdb9ad08b)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Greg Iles (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_38b4b297-ed37-5f95-98f9-dd9c75f429dc)
The rain kept falling, swelling the creek until it lifted the girl into its muddy flood. She swept down through the town, unseen by anyone as she passed the grassy mounds where three hundred years ago Indians worshipped the sun. She bobbed in the current beneath the Highway 61 bridge, naked and unbloodied, not yet gray, limp as a sleeping child. She rolled with the creek, which wound through the woods toward the paper mill and crashed into the Mississippi River in a maelstrom of brown waves. The girl made this journey alone and unknowing, but soon she would whip the town into another kind of maelstrom, one that would make the river seem placid by comparison.
She never meant to cause trouble. She was a quiet girl, brilliant and full of life. When she laughed, others laughed with her. When she cried, she hid her tears. She was blessed with many gifts and took none for granted. At seventeen, she had already brought honor to the town. No one would have predicted this end.
But then no one really knew her.
Only me.
ONE (#ulink_323a4282-acdb-5e05-aaef-d6889b082583)
Some stories must wait to be told.
Any writer worth his salt knows this. Sometimes you wait for events to percolate in your subconscious until a deeper truth emerges; other times you’re simply waiting for the principals to die. Sometimes it’s both.
This story is like that.
A man walks the straight and narrow all his life; he follows the rules, stays within the lines; then one day he makes a misstep. He crosses a line and sets in motion a chain of events that will take from him everything he has and damn him forever in the eyes of those he loves.
We all sense that invisible line of demarcation, like an unspoken challenge hanging in the air. And there is some wild thing in our natures that makes us want to cross it, that compels us with the silent insistence of evolutionary imperative to risk all for a glinting shadow. Most of us suppress that urge. Fear stops us more often than wisdom, as in most things. But some of us take that step. And in the taking, we start down a path from which it is difficult and sometimes impossible to return.
Dr. Andrew Elliott is such a man.
I have known Drew since he was three years old, long before he was a Rhodes scholar, before he went to medical school, before he returned to our hometown of twenty thousand souls to practice internal medicine. And our bond runs deeper than that of most childhood friends. When I was fourteen, eleven-year-old Drew Elliott saved my life and almost lost his own in the process. We remained close friends until he graduated from medical school, and then for a long time—fifteen years, I guess—I saw him hardly at all. Much of that time I spent convicting murderers as an assistant district attorney in Houston, Texas. The rest I spent writing novels based on extraordinary cases from my career, which gave me a second life and time to spend with my family.
Drew and I renewed our friendship five years ago, after my wife died and I returned to Natchez with my young daughter to try to piece my life back together. The early weeks of my return were swallowed by a whirlwind of a murder case, but as the notoriety faded, Drew was the first old friend to seek me out and make an effort to bring me into the community. He put me on the school board of our alma mater, got me into the country club, talked me into sponsoring a hot air balloon and a Metropolitan opera singer during Natchez’s annual festivals. He worked hard at bringing this widower back to life, and with much help from Caitlin Masters, my lover for the past few years, he succeeded.
All that seems a distant memory now.
Yesterday Drew Elliott was a respected pillar of the community, revered by many, held up as a role model by all; today he is scorned by those who venerated him, and his life hangs in the balance. Drew was our golden boy, a paragon of everything small-town America holds to be noble, and by unwritten law the town will crucify him with a hatred equal to their betrayed love.
How did Drew transform himself from hero into monster? He reached out for love, and in the reaching pulled a whole town down on top of him. Last night his legend was intact. He was sitting beside me at a table in the boardroom of St. Stephen’s Preparatory School, still handsome at forty, dark-haired, and athletic—he played football for Vanderbilt—a little gray at the temples but radiating the commanding presence of a doctor in his prime. I see this moment as clearly as any in my life, because it’s the instant before revelation, that frozen moment in which the old world sits balanced on the edge of destruction, like a china cup teetering on the edge of a table. In a moment it will shatter into irrecoverable fragments, but for an instant it remains intact, and salvation seems possible.
The boardroom windows are dark, and the silver rain that’s fallen all day is blowing horizontally now, slapping the windows with an icy rattle. We’ve crowded eleven people around the Brazilian rosewood table—six men, five women—and the air is close in the room. Drew’s clear eyes are intent on Holden Smith, the overdressed president of the St. Stephen’s school board, as we discuss the purchase of new computers for the junior high school. Like Holden and several other board members, Drew and I graduated from St. Stephen’s roughly two decades ago, and our children attend it today. We’re part of a wave of alumni who stepped in during the city’s recent economic decline to try to rebuild the school that gave us our remarkable educations. Unlike most Mississippi private schools, which sprang up in response to forced integration in 1968, St. Stephen’s was founded as a parochial school in 1946. It did not admit its first African-American student until 1982, but the willingness was there years before that. High tuition and anxiety about being the only black child in an all-white school probably held off that landmark event for a few years. Now twenty-one black kids attend the secular St. Stephen’s, and there would be more but for the cost. Not many black families in Natchez can afford to pay five thousand dollars a year per child for education when the public school is free. Few white families can either, when you get down to it, and fewer as the years pass. Therein lies the board’s eternal challenge: funding.
At this moment Holden Smith is evangelizing for Apple computers, though the rest of the school’s network runs comfortably on cheaper IBM clones. If he ever pauses for breath, I plan to tell Holden that while I use an Apple Powerbook myself, we have to be practical on matters of cost. But before I can, the school’s secretary opens the door and raises her hand in a limp sort of wave. Her face is so pale that I fear she might be having a heart attack.
Holden gives her an annoyed look. “What do you need, Theresa? We’ve got another half hour, at least.”
Like most employees of St. Stephen’s, Theresa Cook is also a school parent. “I just heard something terrible,” she says, her voice cracking. “Kate Townsend is in the emergency room at St. Catherine’s Hospital. They said … she’s dead. Drowned. Kate Townsend. Can that be right?”
Holden Smith’s thin lips twist in a grimace of a smile as he tries to convince himself that this is some sort of sick prank. Kate Townsend is the star of the senior class: valedictorian, state champion in both tennis and swimming, full scholarship to Harvard next fall. She’s literally a poster child for St. Stephen’s. We even used her in a TV commercial for the school.
“No,” Holden says finally. “No way. I saw Kate on the tennis court at two this afternoon.”
I look at my watch. It’s nearly eight now.
Holden opens his mouth again but no sound emerges. As I glance at the faces around the table, I realize that a strange yet familiar numbness has gripped us all, the numbness that comes when you hear that a neighbor’s child has been shot in a predawn hunting accident, or died in a car crash on homecoming night. It occurs to me that it’s early April, and though the first breath of spring has touched the air, it’s still too cold to swim, even in Mississippi. If a high school senior drowned today, a freak accident seems the only explanation. An indoor pool, maybe? Only I can’t think of anyone who owns one.
“Exactly what did you hear and when, Theresa?” Holden asks. As if details might mitigate the horror of what is upon us.
“Ann Geter called my house from the hospital.” Ann Geter is an ER nurse at St. Catherine’s Hospital, and another St. Stephen’s parent. Because the school has only five hundred students, everyone literally knows everyone else. “My husband told Ann I was still up here for the meeting. She called and told me that some fishermen found Kate wedged in the fork of a tree near where St. Catherine’s Creek washes into the Mississippi River. They thought she might be alive, so they put her in their boat and carried her to the hospital. She was naked from the waist down, Ann said.”
Theresa says “nekkid,” but her word has the intended effect. Shock blanks the faces around the table as everyone begins to absorb the idea that this may not be a conventional accident. “Kate was bruised up pretty bad, Ann said. Like she’d been hit with something.”
“Jesus Lord,” whispers Clara Jenkins, from my left. “This can’t be true. It must be somebody else.”
Theresa’s bottom lip begins to quiver. The secretary has always been close to the older students, especially the girls. “Ann said Kate had a tattoo on her thigh. I didn’t know about that, but I guess her mama did. Jenny Townsend identified her body just a couple of minutes ago.”
Down the table a woman sobs, and a shiver of empathy goes through me, like liquid nitrogen in my blood. Even though my daughter is only nine, I’ve nearly lost her twice, and I’ve had my share of nightmares about what Jenny Townsend just endured.
“God in heaven.” Holden Smith gets to his feet, looking braced for physical combat. “I’d better get over to the hospital. Is Jenny still over there?”
“I imagine so,” Theresa murmurs. “I just can’t believe it. Anybody in the world you could have said, and I’d have believed it before Kate.”
“Goddamn it,” snaps Bill Sims, a local geologist. “It’s just not fair.”
“I know,” Theresa agrees, as if fairness has anything to do with who is taken young and who survives to ninety-five. But then I realize she has a point. The Townsends lost a child to leukemia several years ago, before I moved back to town. I heard that was what broke up their marriage.
Holden takes a cell phone from his coat pocket and dials a number. He’s probably calling his wife. The other board members sit quietly, their thoughts on their own children, no doubt. How many of them have silently thanked God for the good fortune of not being Jenny Townsend tonight?
A cell phone chirps under the table. Drew Elliott lifts his and says, “Dr. Elliott.” He listens for a while, all eyes on him. Then he tenses like a man absorbing news of a family tragedy. “That’s right,” he says. “I’m the family doctor, but this is a coroner’s case now. I’ll come down and speak to the family. Their home? All right. Thanks.”
Drew hangs up and looks at the ring of expectant faces, his own white with shock. “It’s not a mistake. Kate’s dead. She was dead before she reached the ER. Jenny Townsend is on her way home.” Drew glances at me. “Your father’s driving her, Penn. Tom was seeing a patient when they brought Kate in. Some family and friends are going over there. The father’s in England, of course, but he’s being notified.”
Kate’s father, a British citizen, has lived in England for the past five years.
A woman sobs at the end of the table.
“I’m adjourning this meeting,” Holden says, gathering up the promotional literature from Apple Computer. “This can wait until next month’s meeting.”
As he walks toward the door, Jan Chancellor, the school’s headmistress, calls after him, “Just a minute, Holden. This is a terrible tragedy, but one thing can’t wait until next month.”
Holden doesn’t bother to hide his annoyance as he turns back. “What’s that, Jan?”
“The Marko Bakic incident.”
“Oh, hell,” says Bill Sims. “What’s that kid done now?”
Marko Bakic is a Croatian exchange student who has been nothing but trouble since he arrived last September. How he made it into the exchange program is beyond any of us. Marko’s records show that he scored off the charts on an IQ test, but all his intelligence seems to be used only in support of his anarchic aspirations. The charitable view is that this unfortunate child of the Balkan wars has brought confusion and disruption to St. Stephen’s, sadly besmirching an exchange program that’s only won us glory in the past. The harsher view is that Marko Bakic uses the mask of prankster to hide more sinister activities like selling ecstasy to the student body and anabolic steroids to the football team. The board has already sought my advice as a former prosecutor on how to deal with the drug issue; I told them that unless we catch Marko red-handed or someone volunteers firsthand information about illegal activities, there’s nothing we can do. Bill Sims suggested a random drug-testing program, but this idea was tabled when the board realized that positive tests would probably become public, sabotaging our public relations effort and delighting the board of Immaculate Heart, the Catholic school across town. The local law enforcement organs have set their sights on Marko, as well, but they, too, have come up empty-handed. If Marko Bakic is dealing drugs, no one is talking about it. Not on the record, anyway.
“Marko got into a scuffle with Ben Ritchie in the hall yesterday,” Jan says carefully. “He called Ben’s girlfriend a slut.”
“Not smart,” Bill Sims murmurs.
Marko Bakic is six-foot-two and lean as a sapling; Ben Ritchie is five-foot-six and built like a cast-iron stove, just like his father, who played football with Drew and me more than twenty years ago.
Jan says, “Ben shoved Marko into the wall and told him to apologize. Marko told Ben to kiss his ass.”
“So what happened?” asks Sims, his eyes shining. This is a lot more interesting than routine school board business.
Clearly put off by the juvenile relish in Bill’s face, Jan says, “Ben put Marko in a choke hold and mashed his head against the floor until he apologized. Ben embarrassed Marko in front of a lot of people.”
“Sounds like our Croatian hippie got what he deserved.”
“Be that as it may,” Jan says icily, “after Ben let Marko up, Marko told Ben he was going to kill him. Two other students heard it.”
“Macho bullshit,” says Sims. “Bakic trying to save face.”
“Was it?” asks Jan. “When Ben asked Marko how he was going to do that, Marko said he had a gun in his car.”
Sims sighs heavily. “Did he? Have a gun, I mean.”
“No one knows. I didn’t hear about this until after school. Frankly, I think the students were too afraid to tell me about it.”
“Afraid of what you’d do?”
“No. Afraid of Marko. Several students say he does carry a gun sometimes. But no one would admit to seeing it on school property.”
“Did you talk to the Wilsons?” Holden Smith asks from the doorway.
Bill Sims snorts in contempt. “What for?”
The Wilsons are the family that agreed to feed and house Marko for two semesters. Jack Wilson is a retired academic, and Marko seems to have him completely snowed.
Jan Chancellor watches Holden expectantly. She’s a good headmistress, although she dislikes direct confrontations, which can’t be avoided in a job like hers. Her face looks pale beneath her sleek, black bob, and her nerves seem stretched to the breaking point. They must be, to bring her to this point of insistence.
“I move that we enter executive session,” she says, meaning that no minutes will be taken from this point forward.
“Second,” I agree.
Jan gives me a quick look of gratitude. “As you all know, this is merely the latest in a long line of disruptive incidents. There’s a clear pattern here, and I’m worried that something irreparable is going to happen. If it does—and if it can be demonstrated that we were aware of this pattern—then St. Stephen’s and every member of the board will be exposed to massive lawsuits.”
Holden sighs wearily from the door. “Jan, this was a serious incident, no doubt. And sorting it out is going to be a pain in the ass. But Kate Townsend’s death is going to be a major shock to every student and family at this school. I can call a special meeting later in the week to deal with Marko, but Kate is the priority right now.”
“Will you call that meeting?” Jan presses. “Because this problem’s not going to go away.”
“I will. Now I’m going to see Jenny Townsend. Theresa, will you lock up when everyone’s gone?”
The secretary nods, glad for being given something to do. While the remainder of the board members continue to express disbelief, my cell phone rings. The caller ID shows my home as the origin of the call, which makes me unsure whether to answer. My daughter, Annie, is quite capable of pestering me to death with the phone when the mood strikes her. But with Kate’s death fresh in my mind, I step into the secretary’s office and answer.
“Annie?”
“No,” says an older female voice. “It’s Mia.”
Mia Burke is my daughter’s babysitter, a classmate of Kate Townsend’s.
“I’m sorry to interrupt the board meeting, but I’m kind of freaked out.”
“It’s all right, Mia. What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure. But three people have called and told me something happened to Kate Townsend. They’re saying she drowned.”
I hesitate before confirming the rumor, but if the truth hasn’t already spread across town, it will in a matter of minutes. Our secretary learning the truth from an ER nurse was part of the first wave of rumor, one of many that will sweep across town tonight, turning back upon themselves and swelling until the facts are lost in a tide of hyperbole. “You heard right, Mia. Kate was found dead in St. Catherine’s Creek.”
“Oh God.”
“I know it’s upsetting, and I’m sure you want to be with your friends right now, but I need you to stay with Annie until I get there. I’ll be home in ten minutes.”
“Oh, I’d never leave Annie alone. I mean, I don’t even know what I should do. If Kate’s dead, I can’t really help her. And everyone is going to be acting so retarded about it. Take whatever time you need. I’d rather stay here with Annie than drive right now.”
I silently thank Jan Chancellor for recommending one of the few levelheaded girls in the school to me as a babysitter. “Thanks, Mia. How’s Annie doing?”
“She fell asleep watching a documentary about bird migration on the Discovery Channel.”
“Good.”
“Hey,” Mia says in an awkward voice. “Thanks for telling me the truth about Kate.”
“Thanks for not flipping out and leaving the house. I’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up and look through the door at the boardroom. Drew Elliott is talking on his cell phone at the table, but the rest of the board members are filing out the main door. As I watch them go, an image from our promotional TV commercial featuring Kate rises into my mind. She’s walking onto the tennis court in classic whites, and her cool blue eyes burn right through the camera. She’s tall, probably five-ten, with Nordic blond hair that hangs halfway to her waist. More striking than beautiful, Kate looked like a college student rather than a high school kid, and that’s why we chose her for the promo spot. She was the perfect recruiting symbol for a college-prep school.
As I reach for the office doorknob, I freeze. Drew is staring at the table with tears pouring down his face. I hesitate, giving him time to collect himself. What does it take to make an M.D. cry? My father has watched his patients die for forty years, and now they’re dropping like cornstalks to a scythe. I know he grieves, but I can’t remember him crying. The one exception was my wife, but that’s another story. Maybe Drew thinks he’s alone here, that I slipped out with all the others. Since he shows no sign of stopping, I walk out and lay my hand on his thickly muscled shoulder.
“You okay, man?”
He doesn’t reply, but I feel him shudder.
“Drew? Hey.”
He dries his eyes with a swipe of his sleeve, then stands. “Guess we’d better let Theresa lock up.”
“Yeah. I’ll walk out with you.”
Side by side, we walk through the front atrium of St. Stephen’s, just as we did thousands of times when we attended this school in the sixties and seventies. A large trophy cabinet stands against the wall to my left. Inside it, behind a wooden Louisville Slugger with thirteen names signed on it in Magic Marker, hangs a large photograph of Drew Elliott during the defining moment of this institution. Just fourteen years old, he is standing at the plate under the lights of Smith-Wills Stadium in Jackson, hitting what would be the winning home run of the 1977 AAAA state baseball championship. No matter how remarkable our academic accomplishments—and they were many—it was this prize that put our tiny “single A” school on the map. In Mississippi, as in the rest of the South, sport overshadows everything else.
“Long time ago,” he says. “Eternity.”
I’m standing on second base in the photo, waiting to sprint for the tying run. “Not so long.”
He gives me a lost look, and then we pass through the entrance and pause under the overhang, prepping for a quick dash through the rain to our cars.
“Kate babysat for you guys, didn’t she?” I comment, trying to get him to focus on the mundane.
“Yeah. The past two summers. Not anymore, though. She graduates—was supposed to graduate—in six weeks. She was too busy for babysitting.”
“She seemed like a great kid.”
Drew nods. “She was. Even these days, when so many students are overachievers, she stood out from the crowd.”
I could point out that it’s often the best and brightest who are taken while the rest of us are left to carry on, but Drew knows that. He’s watched more people die than I ever will.
His Volvo is parked about thirty yards away, behind my Saab. I pat him on the back as I did in high school, then assume a tight end’s stance. “Run for it?”
Instead of playing along with me, he looks me full in the face and speaks in a voice I haven’t heard from him in years. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The emotion in his eyes is palpable. “Of course.”
“Let’s get in one of the cars.”
“Sure.”
He presses a button on his key chain, and his Volvo’s lights blink. As if triggered by a silent starter pistol, we race through the chilly rain and scramble onto the leather seats of the S80. He slams his door and cranks the engine, then shakes his head with a strange violence.
“I can’t fucking believe it, Penn. It’s literally beyond belief. Did you know her? Did you know Kate at all?”
“We spoke a few times. She asked about my books. But we never got beyond the surface. Mia talked about her a lot.”
His eyes search out mine in the shadows. “You and I haven’t got beneath the surface much either these past five years. It’s more my fault than yours, I know. I keep a lot inside.”
“We all do,” I say awkwardly, wondering where this is going.
“Who really knows anybody, right? Twelve years of school together, best friends when we were kids. You know a lot about me, but on the other hand you know nothing. The front, like everybody else.”
“I hope I see past that, Drew.”
“I don’t mean to insult you. If anyone sees beneath the surface, it’s you. That’s why I’m talking to you now.”
“Well, I’m here. Let’s talk.”
He nods as if confirming a private judgment. “I want to hire you.”
“Hire me?”
“As a lawyer.”
This is the last thing I expected to hear. “You know I don’t practice anymore.”
“You took the Payton case, that old civil rights bombing.”
“That was different. And that was five years ago.”
Drew stares at me in the glow of the dashboard lights. “This is different, too.”
It always is to the client. “I’m sure it is. The thing is, I’m not really a lawyer anymore. I’m a writer. If you need a lawyer, I can recommend several good ones. Is it malpractice?”
Drew blinks in astonishment. “Malpractice? You think I’d waste your time with bullshit like that?”
“Drew … I don’t know what this is about. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”
“I want to, but—Penn, what if you were sick? You had HIV, say. And you came to me and said, ‘Drew, please help me. As a friend. I want you to treat me and not tell a soul.’ And what if I said, ‘Penn, I’d like to, but that’s not my specialty. You need to go to a specialist.’”
“Drew, come on—”
“Hear me out. If you said, ‘Drew, as a friend, please do me this favor. Please help me.’ You know what? I wouldn’t think twice. I’d do whatever you wanted. Treat you without records, whatever.”
He would. I can’t deny it. But there’s more than this beneath his words. Drew has left much unsaid. The truth is that without Drew Elliott, I wouldn’t be alive today. When I was fourteen years old, Drew and I hiked away from the Buffalo River in Arkansas and got lost in the Ozark Mountains. Near dark, I fell into a gorge and broke my femur. Drew was only eleven, but he crawled down into that gorge, splinted my leg with a tree limb, then built a makeshift litter and started dragging me through the night. Before he was done, he dragged me four miles through the mountains, breaking his wrist in the process and twice almost breaking his neck. Just after dawn, he managed to get me to a cluster of tents where someone had a CB radio. But has he mentioned any of that? No. It’s my job to remember.
“Why do you want to hire me, Drew?”
“To consult. With the protection of confidentiality.”
“Shit. You don’t have to hire me for that.”
He pulls his wallet from his pants and takes out a twenty-dollar bill, which he pushes at me. “I know that. But if you were questioned on the stand later—as a friend—you’d have to lie to protect me. If you’re my lawyer, our discourse will be shielded by attorney-client privilege.” He’s still pushing the bill at me. “Take it, Penn.”
“This is crazy—”
“Please, man.”
I wad up the note and shove it into my pocket. “Okay, damn it. What’s going on?”
He sags back in his seat and rubs his temples like a man getting a migraine. “I knew Kate a lot better than anyone knows.”
Kate Townsend again? The sense of dislocation I felt in the boardroom was nothing compared to what I feel now. Again I see Drew sitting at the table, weeping as though for a family member. Even as I ask the next question, I pray that I’m wrong.
“Are you telling me you were intimate with the girl?”
Drew doesn’t blink. “I was in love with her.”
TWO (#ulink_d37a51d0-90c1-566b-811c-3d64c07a1c42)
My heart is pounding the way it does on the all-too-rare occasions when I run for exercise. I’m sitting in front of the St. Stephen’s Preparatory School with one of the most distinguished alumni who ever attended it, and he’s telling me he was screwing a high school student. A student who is now dead. This man is my lifelong friend, yet the first words that pass my lips are not those of a friend but of a lawyer. “Tell me she was eighteen, Drew.”
“Her birthday was in two weeks.”
I suck in my breath and close my eyes. “It might as well have been two years. That’s statutory rape in Mississippi. Especially with the age difference between you. It’s what, twenty years?”
“Almost twenty-three.”
I shake my head in disbelief.
He takes my arm and pulls it toward him, forcing me to look into his eyes. “I’m not crazy, Penn. I know you think I’ve lost my mind, but I loved that girl like no one I’ve known in my life.”
I look away, focusing on the playground of the middle school, where water has pooled on the merry-go-round. What to say? This isn’t a case of some horny assistant coach who got too chummy with a cheerleader in the locker room. This is an educated and successful man in the grip of a full-blown delusion.
“Drew, I prosecuted a lot of child molesters in Houston. I remember one who had regularly molested an eleven-year-old girl. Can you guess what his defense was?”
“What?”
“They were in love.”
He snorts with disdain. “You know this isn’t like that.”
“Do I? Jesus Christ, man.”
“Penn … until you’re in a situation like this, you simply can’t understand it. I was the first to condemn that coach who got involved with that senior over at the public school. I couldn’t fathom it then. But now … I see it from the inside.”
“Drew, you’ve thrown your life away. Do you realize that? You could go to jail for twenty years. I can’t even …” My voice fails, because it suddenly strikes me that I may not have heard the worst of what will be revealed in this car tonight. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
The blood drains from his face. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What did you expect me to ask?”
“Not that. And there’s something pretty damned cold in your tone.”
“If you don’t like my tone, wait till you hear the district attorney. You and Kate Townsend? Holy shit.”
“I didn’t kill her, Penn.”
I take another deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, of course not. Do you think she committed suicide?”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because we were planning to leave together. Kate was excited about it. Not depressed at all.”
“You were planning to run away together?”
“Not run away. But to be together, yes.”
“She was a kid, Drew.”
“In some ways. Not many. Kate had a different kind of upbringing. She went through a lot, and she learned a lot from it. She was very mature for her age, both psychologically and emotionally. And that’s saying something these days. These kids aren’t like we were, Penn. You have no idea. By fifteen they’ve gone through things you and I didn’t experience until our twenties. Some of them are jaded by eighteen.”
“That doesn’t mean they understand what they’re doing. But I’ll be sure and run that argument past the jury.”
Drew’s eyes flicker. “Are you saying you’ll represent me?”
“I was joking. Who else knows about this relationship?”
“No one.”
“Don’t be stupid. Someone always knows.”
He sets his jaw and shakes his head with confidence. “You didn’t know Kate. Nobody knows about us.”
The naïveté of human beings is truly breathtaking. “Whatever you say.”
Drew puts his big hands on the wheel and squeezes it like a man doing isometric exercises. In the small space of the car, his size is intimidating. I’m six-foot-one, two hundred pounds; Drew has two inches and twenty pounds of muscle on me, and he hasn’t let himself slip much from the days he played tight end for Vanderbilt. It’s not hard to imagine Kate Townsend being attracted to him.
“It comes down to this,” Drew says in a steady voice. “The police are going to start probing Kate’s life. And if they probe deeply enough, they might find something that connects me to her.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A diary? Pictures?”
“You took pictures?” Why am I asking? Of course they did. Everyone does now. “Did you videotape yourselves too?”
“Kate did. But she destroyed the tape.”
I’m not sure I believe this, but right now that’s not the point. “What about Ellen?” I ask, meaning his wife.
His eyes don’t waver. “Our marriage has been dead for ten years.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I did. You and the rest of the town. Ellen and I mount a major theatrical production every day, all for the sake of Tim.”
Tim is Drew’s nine-year-old son, already something of a golden boy himself in the elementary school. Annie has a serious crush on him, though she would never admit it. “What about Tim, then? Were you going to leave him behind?”
“Of course not. But I had to make the break from Ellen first. I’ll die if I stay in that marriage.”
They always sound like this before the divorce. Any rationalization to get out of the marriage.
“I don’t want to say anything negative about Ellen,” Drew says softly. “But the situation has been difficult for a long time. Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone. She has been for six years.”
Ellen Elliott is a lawyer who turned to real estate in her midthirties, a dynamo who focuses on the upscale antebellum mansions in town. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she seems to have pulled off the rare trick of breaking into the inner cliques of Natchez society, something outsiders almost never accomplish. I’ve never known Ellen well, but the idea of her as a drug addict is hard to swallow. My mental snapshot is a sleek and well-tended blonde who runs marathons for fun.
“That’s kind of hard for me to believe, Drew.”
“You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M&Ms? That’s the reality, man. I’ve tried for years to help her. Taken her to addiction specialists, paid for rehab four times in the last three years. Nothing has worked.”
“Is she clinically depressed?”
“I don’t think so. You’ve seen her. She’s wide open all the time. But there’s something dark underneath that energy. Everything she does is in pursuit of money or social status. Two years ago she slept with a guy from Jackson during a tennis tournament. I literally can’t believe she’s the woman I married.”
“Was she different when you married her? About the money and status, I mean?”
“I guess the seeds of that were there, but back then it just looked like healthy ambition. I should have seen it in her mother, though.”
I can’t help wanting to defend Ellen. “We all start turning into our parents, Drew. I’m sure you have been, too.”
He nods. “Guilty as charged. But I try to stay self-aware, you know? I try to be the best person I can be.”
And that led you to a seventeen-year-old girl? I have more questions, but the truth is, I don’t want to know the gory details of Drew’s personal life. I’ve heard too many drunk friends pour out the stories of how their lives fell short of their dreams, and it’s always a maudlin monologue. The odd thing is that by almost anyone’s estimation, Drew Elliott has led a dream life. But as my mother always said: You never know what’s cooking in someone else’s pot. And one thing is sure: whatever happens as a result of Kate Townsend’s death, Drew Elliot’s touchdown run through life has come to an end.
“I need to get home to Annie, Drew. Mia needs to leave.”
He nods with understanding. “So, what about it? Will you help me?”
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not sure that’s much. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
He nods and looks into his lap, clearly disappointed. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”
I’m about to get out of the car when Drew’s cell phone rings. He looks at the LED screen and winces. “Jenny Townsend.”
My chest tightens.
“She’s going to want me to come by the house.”
“Will you go?”
“Of course. I have to.”
I shake my head in amazement. “How can you do it? How can you look Jenny in the eye tonight?”
Drew watches the phone until it stops ringing, then meets my eyes with the sincerity of a monk. “I’ve got a clear conscience, Penn. I loved Kate more than anyone on earth, except maybe her mother. And anyone who loved Kate is welcome in that house tonight.”
Drew is both right and wrong. He will be welcome in the Townsend home tonight; in fact, of all the visitors, he will probably be the greatest comfort to Jenny. But what if Jenny Townsend knew that her personal physician had been having sex with her teenage daughter? That he was about to abandon his family and blow Kate’s perfectly planned future to smithereens?
“I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” I say softly.
Drew catches hold of my forearm as I climb out, once more forcing me to look into his eyes. “I’m not out of my mind. It wasn’t a midlife crisis that led me to Kate. I’d been starving for love for a long time. I’ve turned down more women in this town than you can imagine, both married and single. When I hurt my knee in that car accident last summer, I was home for six weeks. Kate was there every day, watching Tim. We started talking. I couldn’t believe the things she talked about, the things she read. We e-mailed and IM-ed a lot at night, and it was like talking to a thirty-five-year-old woman. When I could walk again, I organized a medical mission trip to Honduras. Kate volunteered to come along. It was actually Ellen who suggested it. Anyway, that’s where it happened. Before we returned to the States, I knew I wanted a life with her.”
“She was seventeen, man. What kind of life could you have had with her?”
“An authentic life. She was only two weeks shy of eighteen, Penn, and she was going to Harvard in the fall. I’ve already taken the Massachusetts state medical boards. I scored in the top five percent. I’ve already put a deposit on a house in Cambridge.”
I’m speechless.
“And now none of that will ever happen,” Drew says, his face tight with anger and confusion. “Now someone has murdered her.”
“You don’t know it was murder.”
His eyes narrow. “Yes, I do. It had to be.”
I gently disengage my arm. “I’m sorry for your pain, man. I really am. But if it gets out that you were involved with Kate, you’re going to be crucified. You’d better start—”
“I don’t care about myself! It’s Tim I’m worried about. What’s the best thing I can do for him?”
I shake my head and open the door to the rain. “Pray for a miracle.”
Mia Burke is sitting on the porch of my town house on Washington Street, a bulging green backpack beside her. I park by the curb, looking for Annie’s smaller form, but then I see that the front door is open slightly, which tells me Annie is still sleeping and Mia is listening for her. Mia stands as I lock the car, and in the light of the streetlamp I see that, like Drew, she’s been crying.
“You all right?” I ask, crossing the sidewalk.
She nods and wipes her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m crying so much. Kate and I weren’t really close. It just seems like such a waste.”
Mia Burke is the physical opposite of Kate Townsend. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, she stands about five-feet-two, with the muscular frame of a born sprinter. She has large dark eyes, an upturned nose, and full lips that have probably sent a hundred adolescent boys into paroxysms of fantasy. She’s wearing jeans and a LIFEHOUSE T-shirt, and she’s holding a book in her hand: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Mia has surprisingly eclectic taste, and this has probably confused the same boys who dream about her other attributes.
“You’re right,” I murmur, thinking of Drew with very little charity. “It is a waste.”
“Did she commit suicide, Penn?”
It occurs to me that Mia’s use of my first name might seem inappropriate to some people. It’s always seemed a natural informality between us, but in light of what I now know about Drew and Kate, nothing seems innocent. “I don’t know. Was Kate the type to kill herself?”
Mia hugs herself against the chill and takes some time with the question. “No. She always kept to herself a lot, especially this year. But I don’t think she was depressed. Her boyfriend was giving her a lot of trouble, though.”
“Kate had a boyfriend?”
“Well, an ex, really. Steve Sayers.”
Steve Sayers, predictably, was the quarterback of the football team.
“I don’t really know what the deal was. They dated for almost two years, then at the end of last summer Kate seemed to forget Steve existed.”
Thanks to Drew Elliott, M.D …
“The weird thing is, she didn’t break up with Steve. She’d still go out with him, even when she obviously didn’t care about him anymore. But she stopped having sex with him, I know that. And he was going crazy from it.”
Mia’s frankness about sex doesn’t come out of the blue. We’ve had many frank conversations about what goes on beneath the surface at St. Stephen’s. If it weren’t for Mia’s candor, I would have as little idea of the reality of a modern high school as the rest of the parents, and would be of as little use on the school board.
“Did Kate tell you she stopped having sex with him?” I ask.
“No. But Steve told a couple of his friends, and it got around. He thought she might be doing stuff with someone else. Someone from another school, maybe.”
“What did you think?”
Mia bites her bottom lip. “Like I said, Kate was very private. She had this charming persona she could turn on, and most people bought into it. But that was just the mask she used to get through life. Deep down, she was somebody else.”
“Who was she?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that she was way too sophisticated for Steve. Maybe for any guy our age.”
I look hard into Mia’s eyes, but I see no hidden meaning there. “What made her so sophisticated?”
“Her time in England. After her parents got divorced, she went over to London and lived with her dad for a while. She went to an exclusive school over there for three years during junior high. In the end it didn’t work out for her to stay, but when she got back here, she was way ahead of the rest of us. She was pretty intimidating with that English accent.”
“I can’t imagine you being intimidated.”
“Oh, I was. But last year I started catching up with her. And this year I passed her in every subject. I feel guilty saying it now, but I felt pretty good about that.”
Some of Drew’s words are coming back to me. “You play tennis, don’t you?”
“I’m on the team. I’m not as good as Kate. She was a machine. She won state in singles last year, and she was on her way to doing it again this year.”
“Didn’t Kate play competitive tennis with Ellen Elliott?”
“Hell, yes. They won the state open in city league tennis.”
“What do you think about Ellen?”
Mia’s eyes flicker with interest. “Are you asking for the official line, or what I really think?”
“What you really think.”
“She’s a cast-iron bitch.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. Very cold, very manipulative. How she treats you depends totally on who your parents are.”
“How did she treat Kate?”
“Are you kidding? Like her personal protégée. Ellen was number one in Georgia when she played in high school. I think she’s reliving her youth through Kate.”
“How did Kate treat Ellen?”
Mia shrugs. “Okay, I guess. She was nice to her, but …”
“What?”
“I don’t think Kate respected her. I heard her say things behind Ellen’s back. But then everybody does that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The women Ellen trains with for her marathons talk all kinds of shit about her when she’s not around. They say she’ll stab you in the back without thinking twice.”
“So why do they hang around with her?”
“Fear. Envy. Ellen Elliott is hot, rich, and married to Dr. Perfect. She’s the social arbiter of this place, in the under-forty crowd anyway. She has the life all the rest of them want.”
“That’s what they think.”
Mia looks expectantly at me, but I don’t elaborate.
“I think I know what you mean,” she says. “I don’t know what Dr. Elliott is doing married to her. No one does. He’s so nice—not to mention hot—and she’s so … I don’t know. Maybe she fooled him, too.”
“Maybe.” Mia is too bright for me to question like this for long. “You probably need to get going, huh?”
She nods without enthusiasm. “I guess. I feel sort of weird, you know?”
“Because of Kate?”
“Yeah. But not the way you’d think. Her dying changes a lot of things for me. I’ll be making the valedictory speech now, for one thing. And I wanted to do that. I have some things I want to say to our class, and to the parents. I didn’t want to take any spotlight off of Kate by saying them in my salutatorian speech. Now I can say them, I guess. But I didn’t want it like this.”
“Well, you certainly earned it. Kate only beat you out by … what?”
“A sixteenth of a point on the cumulative.” Mia smiles wryly. “She wasn’t as smart as people think. She acted like she never studied, but she did. Big-time. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess I have some anger toward her. I’m not even sure why.”
“Try to tell me.”
Mia sighs and looks at the sidewalk. “Kate knew how to make you feel like shit when she wanted to. She would tear out your heart with a few words, then act like it was an innocent comment. She got Star Student because she outscored me by one point on the ACT, and she always made sure people knew that. But I outscored her by forty points on the SAT. You think she ever said one word about that?”
“What did you make?”
“Fifteen-forty.”
“Wow. So you two were basically rivals, not friends.”
Mia nods thoughtfully. “I’m more competitive than I should be, but for Kate, winning was an obsession. We were always the top contenders for everything. She was homecoming queen, I’m head cheerleader.” A strange look crosses Mia’s face. “I guess some people might say I had a motive for killing her, like that cheerleader-mom thing in Texas.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about you.”
An ironic laugh escapes her lips. “Oh, plenty gets said about me. But that’s another story. And don’t get me wrong about Kate. She had a tough family life. Her dad was a real asshole. When she showed her vulnerable side, it was hard not to feel for her. Especially for me. But I had to deal with the same shit, and I don’t use my intelligence to hurt people.”
Mia gazes down Washington Street, one of the most beautiful in the city, and shakes her head as though dismissing some useless thought. Mia’s father left her mother when Mia was two, and he’s hardly seen his daughter since. Economic support was the bare minimum dictated by the courts, and even that came on a sporadic basis.
“As far as Kate dying,” Mia says, “I guess I can’t really believe it yet. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s so random.”
“High school kids die in accidents like everyone else.”
“I know, but this is different.”
“Why?”
“After I called you, I got a few more calls. People are saying it wasn’t an accident at all. They’re saying somebody killed Kate. Did you know that?”
Could Drew be right? “Why are they saying that?”
“Some of the nurses at the hospital said it looked like Kate was strangled and hit on the head.”
Despite my friendship with Drew, an image of him choking Kate fills my mind, and I shudder. “You know Natchez and gossip, Mia. Anything could have happened to Kate’s body while she was floating down that creek.”
“But why was she half naked? And why from the waist down? I suppose she could have been skinny-dipping, but with who? She wasn’t with Steve—or at least he claims she wasn’t. It makes me wonder if maybe Steve was right.”
At this point Kate’s classmates probably know twice as much about her death as the police department. “Right about what?”
“About Kate having another boyfriend. Someone none of us knew about. Someone who might get mad enough or crazy enough to kill her.”
“Can you see Kate making someone that angry?”
“Oh, yeah. When Kate got on her high horse, she could piss you off beyond belief. And as far as making someone crazy—a guy, I mean—she was a very sexual person. We talked a few times about it. She really thought she might be a nymphomaniac.”
“That term isn’t even used anymore, Mia. A lot of girls first experimenting with sex probably feel that way.”
She gives me a knowing look. “I’m not talking about experimentation. I’m no saint, okay? But Kate knew about things I’d never even heard of. She was as intense as any person I ever met, and she believed in giving herself pleasure. She, uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but she showed me a couple of toys once, and it shocked me. I know she freaked Steve out with some of the things she asked him to do, and that was over a year ago.”
Sex toys? Drew’s words come back to me with fresh impact: These kids aren’t like we were, Penn. You have no idea …
“I know you want to look in on Annie,” Mia says, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry if I was too frank about that stuff.”
I step to my left and give her plenty of room to pass. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen just about everything in my day.”
She gives me a sly look that belies her age. “Have you? I figured you for a straight arrow. I asked my mom about you, but she won’t tell me anything. She obviously likes you, but she gets all cryptic when I bring you up.”
I feel myself flush. “Be careful driving. Your mind’s not going to be on the road.”
Mia takes her cell phone from her purse and holds it to her ear. It must have been set to vibrate. “She did? … No way … That’s just weird … I will. Later.” She puts the phone back in her purse and stares blankly up the street again.
“What is it?” I ask.
Mia’s eyes betray a puzzlement I’ve never seen in them before. “That was Laura Andrews. Her mom’s one of the nurses who tended to Kate. She just told Laura that Kate was raped.”
“What?”
“She said Kate had a lot of trauma—down there, you know?”
My thoughts return to Drew. If Kate was raped, I hope he never has to know it. But of course he will, like everyone else in town. It suddenly occurs to me that by hoping to protect Drew from this knowledge, I’m assuming he is innocent of the crime. That’s a dangerous assumption for any lawyer to make, but I’ve already made it. I simply cannot imagine Drew Elliott raping any woman, much less a high school girl.
“Let’s hope that’s not true,” I murmur, recalling the shattered rape victims I tried to avenge as a prosecutor in Houston.
“Yeah,” Mia echoes. “That’s too horrible even to think about.”
“So don’t. Think about driving.”
Mia forces a smile. “No worries. Do you need me tomorrow?”
“I may, if you can spare the time.” I’m thinking of Drew and his request for help.
“Just call my cell.”
She walks to her car, a blue Honda Accord, and climbs in. I watch to make sure she gets safely away, then walk up the steps into my house. As I close the door, my study phone rings. I trot to my desk and look at the caller ID: ANDREW ELLIOTT, M.D.
“Drew?” I answer.
“Can you talk?” he asks, his voice crackling with anxiety.
“Sure. What is it?”
“I’m at Kate’s house. I just got a call on my cell phone.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. But he told me to leave a gym bag with twenty thousand dollars in it on the fifty-yard line of the St. Stephen’s football field. He said if I don’t, he’ll tell the police I was screwing Kate Townsend.”
Shit. “You told me nobody knew about the affair.”
“Nobody did. I have no idea who this could be.”
My mind is whirling with memories of similar situations when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. “When does he want the money?”
“One hour from now.”
THREE (#ulink_ca8d3390-19a5-5efd-a992-3ff2742df760)
“Penn?” Drew says, breathing shallowly. “Are you there?”
My old friend’s words have paralyzed me in the study of my house. “Twenty thousand dollars cash in an hour? At nine o’clock at night? That’s crazy. That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not. I have the cash. We have a safe here in the house. Three, actually. One for documents, one for guns, one for cash and jewelry.”
I should have guessed. Drew Elliott lives in a stunning Victorian palace sited on five acres in one of the affluent subdivisions near St. Stephen’s, a mansion that contains every technological gadget known to man. “Do you think the blackmailer knows that?”
“He said he knew I had the money.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. But it sounded like a black kid.”
“A black kid? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. He asked for drugs, too.”
“Drugs?”
“Prescription drugs. Painkillers. Anything I have. He said I should consider this drop as a down payment. His words. A sign of good faith.”
“I hear something in your voice I don’t like, Drew.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but—”
“You’re not delivering that money, brother. You have two choices. Ignore the call, or phone the police and tell them everything right now.”
Drew is silent for too long. “There’s a third choice,” he says.
“Drew, listen to me. There is no upside to paying this money. Just by showing up, you’d be admitting some guilt. You could also be taking your life into your hands.”
“Because the caller could be Kate’s killer? That’s what you were thinking, right?”
He has me. “I guess so.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”
“Then you should call the cops. At this point, an act of God couldn’t keep your affair with Kate from becoming public. You have to think damage control now. It’s a hundred times better if the police learn the story from you than from someone else. Better for your family, too. Think of Tim.”
“I have until tomorrow morning to make that decision.”
“Don’t assume that.”
“Penn, the guy who called me probably murdered Kate. I want to see his face. I want to—”
“I know what you want to do. Forget it. Go home, mix yourself a stiff drink, and start thinking about what’s best for your son. That ought to be a change.”
Drew sucks in air as though I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “I know Tim needs me, okay?”
“You haven’t been acting like you do. Tim would be lost without you. And if you really think Ellen isn’t a good person, that’s twice the reason to keep yourself out of jail.”
More silence. “You’re right. Goddamn it, I just need to do something about Kate.”
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s time to suck it up and be a man. Kate’s beyond help. She’s gone. All you can do now is pick up the pieces of your own family.”
“Daddy?” comes a small voice.
Glancing toward the hall, I see my daughter poke her head around the kitchen door frame. Annie is a physical echo of her mother, a tawny-haired beauty with eyes that miss nothing. This is both a blessing and a curse, as I am continually confronted by what is essentially the ghost of my dead wife.
“Annie’s calling me, Drew. I need to go. You go home and calm down. I’ll call you in a bit and we’ll decide what you’re going to do.”
Silence.
“Drew?”
“I will.”
“How’s Jenny handling it?”
“It’s destroyed her. I had to sedate her. She ought to be asleep soon.”
“Jesus … okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
By the time I hang up, Annie is standing in front of me, her cheek pressing into my stomach. The one eye that I can see is full of sleep. She yawns, then says, “Where’s Mia?”
“Mia had to go home, Boo.”
“Aww. Mia’s fun.”
“I know. She’ll probably be back tomorrow. She said you fell asleep during the movie.”
“I guess I did. I already knew what was going to happen. Are you going to call Caitlin tonight?”
“Probably.”
“Will you do it now?”
“Let’s get you in the bed first. Then she can tell you good night.”
Annie smiles, then tugs me toward the stairs. I follow, but she stops at the base of the staircase. “Will you carry me, Daddy?”
“Nine years old? You’re pretty big to get carried these days.”
“You can do it.”
Yes, I can, I say silently, for some reason thinking of Annie’s mother. Sarah will never carry her child up the stairs again. An ache passes through my chest, like the pain from an old wound, and then I sweep Annie up into my arms and march up the steep staircase to the second-floor bedrooms. The old Victorians in Natchez have stairs seemingly designed to keep pro athletes in peak condition. I turn into Annie’s room, bend my creaking knees enough to pull back the covers, then slide her underneath them. She laughs and yanks the blanket up to her neck.
“Now call Caitlin!” she squeals.
I take my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dial Caitlin’s cell phone. She’s working a special assignment in Boston, as an investigative reporter for the Herald. I met Caitlin when her father, a newspaper magnate who owns the Natchez Examiner and ten other papers in a Southern chain, sent her down here to whip the Examiner into shape. We got close during my efforts to solve a decades-old civil rights murder and during the trial that followed. Caitlin grew to love Natchez—and me—but after the excitement of that trial faded, along with the glow of the Pulitzer she won for her stories covering it, she realized that Natchez might not be the most exciting place to spend your days, especially when you’re under thirty and hungry for challenges.
After a year of living next door to Annie and me, Caitlin began taking assignments in other cities, mostly working on investigative stories for other papers in her father’s chain. We’ve remained committed to each other, and to our plan of marrying one day. But following through with that plan would mean changes that Caitlin isn’t ready to handle yet. Annie would begin to see Caitlin more as a mother, and would expect her to be around much more consistently. Caitlin has asked me about moving to a city—after all, I lived in Houston for fifteen years—but to my surprise, I find myself reluctant to leave the town where I grew to adulthood.
Caitlin’s phone kicks me to voice mail. “This is Penn and Annie,” I say. “We’re trying to get a long-distance good-night kiss. Call us when you can.”
“Voice mail,” I tell Annie, trying to sound unconcerned. “She must be working.”
“You should hurry up and marry her,” Annie says. “Then she can be my real mom. Then she can live here.”
I can’t help but feel some resentment. When the Herald offered Caitlin a plum assignment investigating further sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Boston, she almost turned it down. The job meant at least two months away from Natchez, and though we talked about flying to see each other on weekends, we knew that probably wouldn’t work out. But the offer came from a renowned editor for whom Caitlin had worked as an intern while at Radcliffe, and I sensed that if she said no, she would eventually resent it. I’m glad she took the assignment, but our fears about visiting have proved true. The sum of our recent contact? I’ve flown to Boston once, and she flew down to Baton Rouge for a weekend with Annie and me.
“She works this late?” Annie asks.
Lately it’s become more and more difficult to reach Caitlin at night. “It’s not that late for grown-ups. Maybe she’s working undercover.”
“Yeah, she does that sometimes,” Annie says thoughtfully. “Like a spy.”
“Yep. Now, shut those eyes.”
Annie opens her eyes as wide as possible, then giggles like a two-year-old.
I poke her in the side. “You’re a pain in the you-know-what.”
More giggles. I give her a kiss, then walk into the hall and descend the long staircase. “See you in the morning!” I call.
“Not if I see you first!” she yells back.
In the kitchen, I raid the refrigerator and construct a colossal turkey po’boy. I only had a salad before the school board meeting, and I’m starving. To keep my mind off Drew and his problems I click on CNN, but there’s no escaping. CNN makes me think of Caitlin, and thoughts of Caitlin bring me back to Drew.
The essential problem that has kept Caitlin and me from marrying is our age difference. At thirty-three, she is very much in the midst of proving herself in her chosen profession, which requires her to leave Natchez often. At forty-three, I’ve already succeeded in two different careers, and the only thing I have left to prove is that I can raise my daughter well. Having endured the problems that come with a ten-year age difference, I can’t help but view Drew’s dream of a real life with Kate as absurd. Did he plan to divorce Ellen and commute by air between Natchez and Boston in order to see Tim? He couldn’t have continued practicing medicine in Natchez. The local society women would have risen as one to boycott his practice and ostracize the former darling of St. Stephen’s Prep. How would Drew have introduced Kate to fellow doctors in Boston? This is my wife. She just graduated—from high school. Of course, Drew wasn’t concerned about such mundane matters. He loved Kate, and the rest of the world could go to hell.
But now the world may have its way with him. As the CNN anchor reads a litany of global crises, I make a list of the threats Drew faces. First, statutory rape. Given the age difference between him and Kate, he could get twenty years in Parchman prison. And since Kate was his patient, he could lose his medical license. Even if he doesn’t, the mere rumor of such an affair in Natchez could kill his practice. If Kate was raped, and physical evidence links Drew to her corpse, he could be charged with capital murder for homicide during the commission of another felony. In Mississippi, conviction for capital murder brings with it the very real possibility of death by lethal injection.
If Kate was in fact murdered, the police have a tough job ahead of them. By carrying her body to the emergency room rather than leaving it where they found it, the fishermen who found Kate deprived investigators of any chance to examine her body in situ. They might have lost or destroyed critical evidence. And since Kate was found wedged in the fork of a tree during high water, the actual crime scene is probably upstream somewhere along St. Catherine’s Creek. With today’s heavy rain, the police may never find out where she actually died.
Right now, detectives are probably focusing on the “helpful” fishermen, since these Samaritans may well have raped and killed Kate before taking her to the hospital. St. Catherine’s Creek has never been noted for its fishing, and it’s quite dangerous for boats during heavy rains. After interrogating the fishermen, the police will move on to Kate’s mother, her boyfriend, and any close friends who might have information about her last hours. That could take much of the night, and will probably continue through tomorrow. If the blackmailer didn’t exist—and if Drew is right about Kate not confiding their affair to anyone—Drew might just be safe.
But the blackmailer does exist, and my experience as a prosecutor tells me it’s unlikely that Drew will escape entanglement in this case. If he had sex with Kate in the last seventy-two hours, she may have traces of his semen inside her. A phone call from the blackmailer to the police would focus their attention on Drew. Any confirming piece of evidence linking Drew to Kate in an inappropriate way would prompt police to request a DNA sample from him. That would bring disaster in three to four weeks—the time it usually takes to get the DNA results in a rush situation. And when the police start searching upstream in St. Catherine’s Creek for the murder scene, they will eventually come to the bend where the two most exclusive subdivisions in Natchez come together. One of those subdivisions—Pinehaven—is where Kate Townsend lived. The other—just across the creek and through the woods—is Sherwood Estates, where Drew Elliot’s Victorian mansion stands. In the absence of other evidence, this juxtaposition might not suggest anything, but if the blackmailer gets the rumor mill churning …
The microwave clock tells me forty minutes have passed since I last spoke to Drew. Feeling a little anxious, I pick up the kitchen phone and call his cell phone. He doesn’t answer. I wait about a minute, then try again. Nothing. I hate to call his wife, given all that I’ve learned about their marriage, but I need to know that Drew is safely drunk somewhere, and not on his way to the St. Stephen’s football field with a bag of cash.
“Hello?” says a groggy female voice.
“Ellen? It’s Penn Cage.”
“Penn? What’s going on? Is Drew with you?”
I knew it. “No, I was actually calling for him.”
“Well”—loud snuffling, rustling of cloth—“I thought I heard him pull up outside a while ago, but then he didn’t come in. Maybe he’s out in his workshop. He goes out there sometimes when he’s feeling moody.”
“Is there any way to check without you having to get up?”
“Intercom. Just a sec.” There’s a burst of static. “Drew? Drew, are you out there?”
More static. “He’s not answering. He called a while ago and told me he was leaving the Townsends’ house. Maybe he got called to the hospital on his way home. I think he’s covering tonight.”
“That’s probably it. You get back to sleep, Ellen.”
“Sleep. God … I had to take a pill to even have a chance at sleep. I was really close to Kate, you know.”
“I knew you played tennis with her.”
“That girl was gifted, Penn. I think she would have made the team at Harvard. God, wouldn’t that have been something?”
“Yes, it would. I’m sorry, Ellen.”
I hear a sound I can’t identify. “We raise these children,” she murmurs, “we pour everything into them, all our hopes and dreams, and then something like this happens. If I were Jenny Townsend, I’m not sure I could handle it. I might do something crazy. I really might.”
“Well, I hope she finds the strength to deal with it.”
“It’s good to talk to you, Penn. We don’t see you enough. You should come by for a drink. I really liked your last book. I want to talk to you about some of the characters. I think I recognized a few.”
I give Ellen an obligatory laugh and ring off. Where the hell is Drew? I’m afraid I already know the answer. I start to dial my parents’ house, but it’s too late to ask my mother to come over. Instead, I dial Mia’s cell. She answer after two rings.
“Penn?”
“Afraid so. Is there any chance you could come back for about an hour? Annie’s asleep, but I need to go out.”
“Um, I guess so. Is it important? Of course it is. You wouldn’t call if it weren’t.”
“Are you with your friends now?”
“Such as they are. Everybody’s pretty freaked out. But I’m not far away from you, actually. I can be there in five minutes.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you double your usual rate.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m on my way.”
I hang up and walk back to my bedroom, the only one on the ground floor of the house. In the top of my closet is a nine-millimeter Springfield XD-9 with a fifteen-round clip. I carried a .38-caliber revolver in Houston, but recent experience taught me the wisdom of having a large magazine. I keep the weapon close, albeit with a trigger lock to protect Annie. Unlocking the guard mechanism, I slip the pistol barrel into the pocket of my jeans and grab a waterproof windbreaker from the closet.
Waiting on the front steps for Mia, I call Drew’s cell phone again. When he fails to answer, I consider calling the police for help—but only for a moment. The risks to Drew are too great. When Mia pulls up to the curb, I give her a wave and walk to my Saab, hoping to avoid any explanations.
“Everything okay?” she calls.
I turn back to her. “Fine. Annie’s still in bed. I just need to run an errand.”
Mia nods, but I see suspicion in her eyes. I’ve never called her on such short notice before.
“What else have the kids been saying?” I ask.
“All kinds of things. But it’s mostly bullshit. You know how people are. Like you said … Natchez.”
“I should be back in less than an hour, but if I’m not, you can stay, right?”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
I move toward my car. “I really appreciate it, Mia.”
“Is that a gun in your pants?”
I look down. The butt of the Springfield is sticking up in front of my windbreaker.
Mia isn’t looking at the pistol but at me, her eyes questioning. I start to give her an explanation, but nothing would really make sense. As casually as possible, I pull the tail of the windbreaker over the gun.
“Penn, are you okay?”
“Yes. Mia, you—”
“I didn’t see anything,” she says, her face radiating assurance. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
If only that were true. “Keep a close eye on Annie.”
“I will. Bye.” She turns and hurries into the house.
I climb into my Saab and start the engine, wondering what kind of insanity I’ll find when I reach St. Stephen’s.
FOUR (#ulink_29615f2c-9019-5fc7-86d2-7766b491c318)
Buck Stadium was called simply “the bowl” when I was a student at St. Stephen’s, and the reason was plain. Back then, the stadium was only an oval hole in the ground surrounded by pine and hardwood trees. Spectators sat on its grassy sides to cheer during Bucks games, until enough money was raised to build rudimentary bleachers. Tonight three new school buildings stand on the south side of the bowl, and wide concrete steps march all the way down to the field. The bleachers are massive prefab units like those at college football stadiums, and huge banks of overhead lights can turn night into day at the flick of a switch. Fancy dressing rooms and a workout center stand on a terraced shelf halfway down the hill, and a blue rubberized track surrounds the football field. The year we fought our way to the state football championship, Drew and I practiced in a cow pasture filled with holes and played under dim “security lights” like the ones in supermarket parking lots.
Despite all the improvements, there’s still only one narrow access road to the bottom of the bowl, which is probably why the blackmailer chose the football field to pick up his payoff. He can easily detect the approach of any police vehicles, and the surrounding woods offer infinite avenues of escape, once he crosses the Cyclone fence that surrounds the track.
I cut my headlights as I climb the main driveway of the campus, then park on the south side of the elementary school to remain hidden from the eyes of anyone in the bowl. With the Springfield weighting my right front pocket, I walk quietly along the side of the building toward the bowl.
Standing in the shadows beside the building is a Honda ATV, commonly called a four-wheeler in this area. The camouflage paint scheme, Vanderbilt bumper sticker, and gun boot mounted on the handlebars mark this four-wheeler as Drew Elliot’s. Like most men in and around Natchez, Drew is an avid hunter. The only good news is that the gun boot contains a Remington deer rifle, which means Drew probably didn’t go armed to deliver his payoff to the fifty-yard line below.
Twenty yards from the elementary school, the ground drops precipitously into the bowl. Transecting that space is the asphalt road that curves down to the track. Staying in the shadows by Drew’s four-wheeler, I try his cell phone one last time.
There’s no answer, but for a moment I think I hear the chirp of a ringing cell phone. Crouching low, I scuttle to the edge of the bowl and look down. It’s like staring at a bottomless black lake. The light from the security lamps mounted on the stadium’s press box dies after only a few yards. Whatever is happening on the floor of the bowl, I can’t see it.
As I stare into the blackness, the whine of a small engine rises out of the hole. The whine seems to be coming toward me. Then a single headlight flicks on, cutting a bright swath down the length of the football field. Sitting at midfield is a small gym bag.
Where the hell is Drew?
What sounds like hoofbeats suddenly rises out of the bowl, followed by the sound of panting. I’m reaching for my Springfield when Drew’s face appears out of the dark. He pulls up short, his eyes filled with shock.
“Penn? Come on!”
He races past me to the four-wheeler. Far below, the motorcycle stops beside the gym bag.
“What are you doing here?” Drew calls over his shoulder.
“Trying to keep your ass out of trouble!” I answer, dividing my attention between the distant motorcycle and Drew.
He cranks the ATV with a rumble, kicks it into gear, and lurches up beside me. “You can help me or you can stand here with your thumb up your ass,” he says. “You’ve got three seconds to decide.”
A high-pitched revving echoes out of the bowl, and then suddenly the headlight is tearing away from us again, back in the direction from which it came. Certain that nothing will dissuade Drew from pursuit, I hike my leg over the seat and clamp my arms around his waist. He hits the throttle, and the Honda flies over the lip of the bowl, descending as though in free fall.
“This is nuts!” I yell in his ear. “You know that!”
He grabs something from his pocket and holds it over his shoulder until I take it. It looks like a small kaleidoscope.
“What’s this?”
“Night-vision scope! If he kills his headlight, keep that scope on him!”
Night vision? Why am I surprised? This is exactly the kind of useless toy that your affluent Mississippi hunter possesses. “Did you recognize the guy on the motorcycle?”
“He’s wearing a helmet with a black visor. Gloves, too, so I don’t know if he’s black or white.”
We hit the floor of the bowl with a bone-jarring impact, then zoom across the track onto the football field. A hundred yards ahead, the motorcycle slows to a near stop. He must be negotiating an opening in the Cyclone fence. Drew guns the ATV, and we hurtle up the football field at fifty miles an hour.
“What are you going to do if you catch him?”
“Ask some questions!” Drew shouts, pushing the Honda still harder. “Find out what he knows!”
The rest of Drew’s words are lost in the roar of wind past my ears as we race toward the end of the bowl.
“Look!” he shouts, pointing at the almost stationary headlight. “We’ve got him!”
The smaller engine whines like a chainsaw, and then the headlight begins moving jerkily uphill.
“Fuck!” bellows Drew.
Suddenly the entire bowl is blasted by white light, as though God ripped back the night sky to expose a hidden sun. In the blinding light I see a narrow gap cut in the Cyclone fence. Drew steers toward it.
“You can’t make it!” I scream, realizing the hole was cut for a motorcycle to pass through. “Don’t do it!”
Drew jolts across the track with abandon, then—realizing he can’t break the laws of physics—hits the brakes, throwing the Honda into a skid. The ass end of the four-wheeler spins forward, and suddenly it’s me who’s most likely to slam into the fence. But the grass is slick from rain. We spin once more, and then the front bumper of the ATV just kisses the loose wire of the Cyclone fence.
“Come on, baby,” Drew pleads, trying to restart the engine, which died during the skid.
“Give it up, man. Let him go.”
As the rattle of the motorcycle grows fainter, the steel fence post beside me sings as though struck by a hammer. Almost instantly that sound merges into a deafening boom that echoes around the bowl like cannon fire. Only then do I realize that the supersonic crack of the rifle bullet escaped me altogether. For a moment I wonder whether, despite the evidence of my eyes, Drew has drawn and fired his deer rifle at the fleeing motorcyclist. But he hasn’t.
“Somebody’s shooting at us!” I yell, clapping him on the shoulder.
“No shit!” he grunts, finally cranking the Honda to life. “Get off and hold the fence back!”
As I dismount the ATV, a second rifle shot blasts across the bowl. Drew yanks his own rifle from the boot and shoves it into my hands. “You know where the switch is? For the stadium lights?”
I nod blankly.
“Shoot back! Sooner or later, that asshole’s going to hit one of us.”
I scramble through the gap in the fence, move to the side of the opening, then lay the rifle barrel through one of the diamond-shaped holes in the fence and sight in on the staircase at the base of the press box. The switch box is mounted on the wall just above it. I see no one there, and I’m glad for it.
As Drew tries to bull the Honda through the gap in the fence, I draw a bead on the metal circuit box that contains the light switches. The Remington bucks against my shoulder three times before the blazing lights go dark.
“Get on!” Drew yells, the four-wheeler suddenly beside me in the darkness.
I shove his rifle back into the gun boot and climb onto the seat behind him, shocked by my exhilaration at having neutralized the threat from above. But the greatest threat to my safety probably wasn’t the shooter in the stadium; it’s the man whose waist I’m clinging to in the dark.
There’s no path through the trees, but this doesn’t deter Drew. He accelerates up the incline like a whiskey-crazed redneck in a mud-riding contest, dodging pines and briar thickets with inches to spare. As we crest the first hill, I feel the front wheels rise off the ground, and for a second I’m sure the Honda is about to flip backward and crush us, a manner of death all too common in Mississippi. But Drew stands erect and leans over the handlebars, restoring enough equilibrium for us to ramp over the hill and land in one piece on the other side.
To my surprise, he brakes to a stop and switches off the headlight. Now we face a darkness so deep, it makes the bowl seem hospitable by comparison. This is the darkness of the primeval forest.
“You’ll never catch him,” I say softly.
“Shhh,” says Drew, killing the motor. “Listen.”
Sure enough, somewhere below us and to our left I hear the faint protest of a small engine being pushed hard.
“He’s running the creek bed,” whispers Drew.
Drew is probably right, but that’s no great help. “He could come up out of that creek in a dozen different neighborhoods,” I point out. “We’ll never get him now.”
“Watch,” says Drew, cranking the Honda again.
I hug him tight and clench my thighs around the seat as he flicks on the headlight and plunges down the hillside. He must have hunted these woods before. There’s no other explanation for the speed with which he navigates the forest in the dark. We fly along one ridge as though pursued by the devil, then plunge down an almost perpendicular drop and splash into swiftly running water.
After struggling through the stream for a dozen yards, we climb onto a gravel-covered sandbar and race along the creek bed. All I can do at this point is hang on and pray that Drew knows where he’s going.
Twice more I’m doused by creek water, but then I hear a whoop of triumph as he sights a solitary taillight ahead. Somehow—I can only assume it’s because of superior knowledge of the terrain—Drew is closing the gap between us and the motorcycle. The note of the Honda’s engine climbs in pitch as he pushes the ATV to its limit.
“Easy!” I shout. “You’ve got him now!”
“He’s seen us! He’s speeding up. If I push him, he might wreck.”
“We might wreck!”
In thirty frantic seconds, Drew closes the gap to twenty-five yards. The taillight disappears as the motorcycle whips around a bend, but three seconds later we round it, too, and I sight the light again.
Suddenly the darkness gives way to a plain of white sand shining in the moonlight. The creek is a black snake slithering over it, and somehow the motorcyclist has reached the opposite side of that snake. Drew aims the Honda at the narrowest part of the stream. Instinct tells me this is a mistake, since shallows tend to be broad while narrows indicate deep-cut channels. But this is Drew’s home ground, not mine. As the motorcycle escapes over the sand, Drew punches the gas, and we hit the narrows at thirty miles an hour.
It’s like plowing into a guardrail. The rear end of the Honda flies over my shoulders, and the next thing I know, I’m sucking water and clawing mud. Knowing that the sinking four-wheeler could pin me to the creek bottom, I scrabble over the slime and burst up into the air.
I see no sign of Drew or the four-wheeler, only a cloud of steam rising from the water behind me. Diving back beneath the surface, I feel my way to the overturned vehicle and burn my forearm on the exhaust pipe. Then my hand closes on a bulging calf. Drew is pinned beneath the ATV.
Struggling around to the upstream side of the Honda, I plant both feet firmly on the creek bottom, then squat and grab the handlebars. Hoping the current will function like a second person, I heave upward and lunge downstream with all my strength.
The ATV rises about a foot, then stops.
I redouble my efforts, but the weight of the engine is just too much. As my back starts to give way, the main current of the creek suddenly lifts the ATV out of my hands and carries it several yards downstream. I fall and float behind it for a couple of seconds. Then I get my feet under me and turn, expecting Drew to break the surface.
He doesn’t.
“Drew!”
Nothing but the sound of water.
I know a guy who snapped both femurs in a four-wheeler accident exactly like this one. And Drew took the brunt of the impact when we hit the creek. The water’s not much more than four feet deep here, but the current is strong. If Drew was knocked unconscious, he could be thirty yards downstream already.
I take a deep breath and go to the bottom, then let the current carry me along. In less than ten seconds I collide with the ATV again. It’s being dragged sluggishly down the creek. I’m feeling my way around it when a strong hand grabs my shirt and pulls me to the surface.
Drew looks wildly at me, his eyes white with fear. “Jesus, I thought you were hurt bad!”
“I was looking for you!”
His face is half covered with blood, most of it flowing from a cut above his eye. There’s blood on his chest, too.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods, then looks off into the woods. “That bastard got away, though.”
Just as with Annie when she does something dangerous, my fear turns to fury as soon as I know Drew is all right. “What kind of juvenile bullshit was that? Goddamn it! You act like you’re still in high school. Junior high!”
His head is cocked as though he’s still listening for the motorcycle.
“He’s gone!” I rail. “Your money’s gone, too. And you damn near killed us to pay the bastard!”
Drew looks back at me, his eyes glinting with dark light. “I don’t care.”
“Why not?”
“Because that motherfucker killed Kate.”
I start to argue, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the strange light in his eyes. Or maybe it’s the realization that he truly risked our lives to catch the guy on the motorcycle, something the Drew Elliott I know would not normally do. He’s never been a hothead; he’s a logical and intelligent man.
“How do you know the blackmailer is the killer, Drew?”
“Because he was there when Kate died. That’s how he knows about us.”
At the sound of certainty in Drew’s voice, a new stillness settles over me. “How do you know he was there?”
Drew finally turns full on to me. His eyes are slits in the dark, his lips compressed. He looks like a man deciding whether or not to tell a priest the darkest secret of his life.
“Because I was the one who found Kate’s body.”
FIVE (#ulink_8a039230-0243-5454-8ece-82f771abe839)
Drew makes me wait until we have wrestled his four-wheeler out of the creek and stripped half the thing down before he’ll tell me anything about finding Kate. He’s one of those rare white-collar guys who actually knows how to fix things. He approaches machines with the same familiarity that he does the human body. Now he stands beside the steaming ATV, waiting for the air intake box to drain and the carburetor to dry. I’m sitting on a rotten log nearby, trying to catch my breath.
“All right, start talking,” I snap.
He walks away from me and stares up the hill that the motorcycle disappeared over. With his rifle slung over his shoulder, he looks like a marine standing guard in some lost jungle. My Springfield is gone; it must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during our charge through the woods. Drew has promised to find or replace it, but at this moment a lost pistol is not my highest priority. I want to know what he held back from me earlier tonight.
“It was this afternoon,” he says, still looking off into the dark. “Whatever led to Kate’s death started this afternoon.”
I remain silent, leaving him to fill the vacuum. I hope he doesn’t take long. It’s about fifty degrees, but with the wind hitting my wet clothes, it feels like deep winter.
“Kate was late getting her period,” Drew says softly. “Only five days, but she was usually as regular as clockwork. She was worried.”
So Drew has been sleeping with Kate for several months at least.
“I told her to buy a home pregnancy test, but she didn’t want to. The truth is, I think she sort of hoped she was pregnant.”
“Why?”
He turns to me, but his expression is indistinct in the moonlight. “Because that would have forced everything to a head. If she was pregnant, all would have been decided. She wouldn’t have got an abortion. I would have asked Ellen for a divorce, and—”
“Would Ellen have given you a divorce?”
“I think so. It would have cost me dearly, but it would have been worth it.”
“Go on.”
“I was supposed to meet Kate tonight, after Ellen went to sleep. That’s usually when we’d meet, during the week. She’d slip across the creek and come over to my workshop.”
“Jesus.”
“It was pretty safe, actually. Ellen never goes out there. She just calls on the intercom. Anyway, for some reason Kate couldn’t wait until tonight.”
“Maybe she took that pregnancy test after all.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Maybe so.”
“What did she do this afternoon?”
“She sent me a text message on my cell phone. It said, ‘I really need to see you. The creek or the cemetery.’”
“The cemetery?”
“The city cemetery was our backup place. The creek meant St. Catherine’s Creek. We met there a lot in the beginning, at the bend between Sherwood Estates and Pinehaven.”
“You used cell phones to communicate?”
“Never directly. She sent me that message from a computer—probably one at St. Stephen’s. There was no traceable link to her cell phone.”
Sherwood Estates and Pinehaven, the two most expensive subdivisions within the city limits. At the rear of each, wooded bluffs drop down to muddy, cane-covered flats that border the creek. During heavy rains, the creek rises several feet in hours and becomes a fifty-foot-wide torrent filled with logs and other debris.
“Kate would take her dog down there like she was exercising him,” Drew says. “I’d just jog down there. If we needed to talk during the day, it was a good place.”
“During the day? You’re nuts. Why not just get her a cell phone in your name, or something like that?”
Drew shakes his head. “Too dangerous. In the past couple of months, I’ve had the feeling Ellen might be having me followed. It’s very easy to eavesdrop on cell phones, and you can monitor their GPS position simply by calling a company that specializes in that. No warrant required.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“I don’t know how long Kate was waiting at the creek. I got the text message at my office. It was time-stamped one fifty-four p.m. She was almost certainly at school then. She probably left the building at three. I left my office at three-thirty. It took me ten or twelve minutes to get down to the creek, I guess. I didn’t park at home, because I was impatient. I parked at the back of an empty lot in Pinehaven and came in from the south.”
“Did anybody see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But they could have. The blackmailers, for example. They could have seen your car and followed you.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. You can’t see the back of that lot from the street.”
I motion for him to continue.
Drew’s voice drops in volume, forcing me to strain to hear him. “I saw her from forty yards away. She was lying on the creek bank with her head trailing in an eddy of water. I told myself it couldn’t be her. My mind totally rejected the visual evidence. Cognitive dissonance, I think it’s called. But at some level I knew. I sprinted up to her and looked down, and I just … she’d been wearing her tennis outfit. Her Izod shirt and sports bra had been pushed up to her neck, but she was naked from the waist down. There was fresh blood on the side of her head … petechiae around her eyes. I cradled her head and—”
Drew covers his mouth with one hand, unable to go on. A muffled sob comes from his throat. Then he speaks in a monotonic voice. “Her eyes were wide open, glassy, the pupils fixed and dilated. I was sure she was dead, but I tried to resuscitate her anyway. I gave her CPR for ten minutes, but I couldn’t get a heartbeat.”
“You didn’t call 911?”
“I’d left my cell phone in my car.”
I wonder if this is true. “Would you have called for help if you’d had it?”
“Hell, yes!”
“Was she still warm?”
Drew goes still. “Yes.”
“Okay. So you knew she was dead. What happened then?”
“I went insane. I literally came apart. Suddenly everything I’d been holding inside for months just burst out of me. I was crying, talking to myself, screaming at the sky like Captain Ahab.”
“Is this when you saw someone else there?”
“I didn’t see anybody else. But there was someone there.”
“How do you know?”
Drew clenches and unclenches his right fist. “I felt him.”
“How?”
“The way you do in horror movies. Your scalp is itching and you start to sweat. You can feel someone looking at you.”
This is a popular notion, but entirely untrue. Extensive experiments have proved this type of “intuition” false. “That was probably just paranoia.”
Drew shakes his head with absolute conviction. “I’ve hunted all my life. There was a human being close to me in those woods. But he stayed concealed. He knew how to use cover, or I’d have seen him watching me.”
I finally ask the obvious question. “If this is really how it went down, why wasn’t it you who reported Kate’s death?”
Drew looks at me as though puzzled about this himself. “It almost was. My first instinct was to cradle her like a baby and carry her up to my car. I was going to take her home to her mother and confess everything.”
As reckless as this sounds, I sense that he’s telling the truth. As a prosecutor, I heard many confessions in which murderers expressed this urge, and some even followed through with it.
“Did you actually pick her up?”
“No. It was at this point that I sensed the other person. I felt an urge to run, but I didn’t. Only a coward would run, I told myself. I had to face the situation. But as I sat there staring at her blank eyes—eyes I’d looked into the night before as we made love, eyes so alive you can’t imagine them—I started to see the situation from outside myself. What would I accomplish by confessing the affair? Kate was beyond help. If I confessed, I’d lose my medical license and probably go to jail. I might even be suspected of killing her. At that moment I honestly didn’t give a shit about myself. But what would it do to my family? My parents? What would happen to Tim? I wouldn’t be there to raise him. But worse, what would he think about me? He’d grow up believing I was a total shit, and maybe even a killer.”
“So you left the scene?”
Drew nods. “I pulled Kate clear of the water, but I left her in the open so that she’d be easily found. I was going to make an anonymous call.”
“Did you?”
A silent shake of the head.
“Why not?”
He bends down and examines the Honda’s carburetor. “I’d been there for a while. I’m no detective, but I’ve read enough to know that you leave trace evidence everywhere you go. It was raining pretty hard. I figured the rain would wipe away any evidence that I was there by morning.”
“That and more,” I say softly, wondering more and more about Drew’s actions. “It also washed away any evidence of the real killer. And it damn near washed Kate down to the Mississippi River.”
He says nothing.
“You don’t come out looking too heroic in this, buddy. A cop would be reading you your rights about now.”
Drew looks at me with a direct gaze. “Probably so. But Kate wouldn’t have wanted me to destroy Tim’s image of me for the sake of her postmortem dignity.”
“Her mother might have. You said the blackmailer sounded like a black kid. What would a black kid be doing down at St. Catherine’s Creek? I don’t remember ever seeing any down there.”
“When was the last time you were down there?”
“When we were kids, I guess.”
“That was thirty years ago, Penn. A couple of apartment complexes you think of as white have gone black in the past ten years. A lot of the kids play down there. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever.”
“Do you think some random black kid would have recognized you?”
“Why not? I have a lot of black patients.”
“But earlier you said that whoever was watching you was probably the killer.”
“I think so, yeah.”
“You think Kate was murdered by some random black kid?”
“Why not? Some crazy teenager?”
“We’re talking about capital murder, Drew. Murder during the commission of a rape.”
“Happens all the time, doesn’t it?”
“It does in Houston or New Orleans. But Natchez is a universe away from there. Houston had two hundred and thirty-four homicides last year. I think Natchez had two. The year before that, nobody got murdered here.”
“Yeah, but in the last twenty years, we’ve had some seriously twisted crimes.”
He’s right. Not even Natchez has gone untouched by the scourges of the modern era—stranger-murder and sexual homicide.
“Only now I’m thinking it wasn’t one kid,” he says. “We just got shot at while we chased the guy on the motorcycle. That means two people, at least. Maybe there were more. Maybe Kate was waiting for me at the creek, and it was just the wrong time to be down there. Maybe a crew of horny teenagers was down there messing around and they saw her. Maybe they decided they wanted her, whether she wanted them or not. Like that ‘wilding’ thing in Central Park, remember?”
I don’t answer. As a prosecutor, I found that whenever a crime victim’s relative suggested minority-assailant murder cases as parallels, I needed to look more closely at that person. What I’ve learned in the past five minutes has fundamentally altered my perception of Kate’s death and Drew’s relationship to it. When the school secretary interrupted the board meeting tonight, Drew already had a good idea of what she was about to say. When Theresa Cook choked out that our beloved homecoming queen was dead, Drew felt no surprise. Only hours before, he had been pounding on her chest and kissing her dead lips, trying to breathe life back into her body. I’ve never thought of Drew as duplicitous, but I guess we’re all capable of anything in the interest of self-preservation.
“What happens now?” he asks.
“You tell the police about your involvement with Kate. If you don’t, you’re at the mercy of whoever was on that motorcycle. And his buddy with the rifle.”
“What happens if I do tell the cops?”
“At the very least, you can count on a statutory rape charge from Jenny Townsend.”
Drew shakes his head. “Jenny wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you crazy? Of course she would.”
He steps closer to me, close enough for me to see his eyes clearly. “Jenny knew about us, Penn. About Kate and me.”
I blink in disbelief. “And she was okay with it?”
“She knew I loved Kate. And she knew I was going to leave Ellen.”
Every time I think I have my mind around the reality of this case, Drew moves the boundaries. “Drew, we’re through the looking glass here. If you have any more earthshaking revelations, I’d just as soon hear them all now.”
“That’s the only one I can think of right now.”
My mind is spinning with new permutations of motive and consequence. “A minute ago you said you were thinking of carrying Kate up to her mother and confessing everything. Now you tell me she already knew about you. Which is it?”
“‘Confess’ was the wrong word. I meant tell Jenny how Kate died, that I’d found her. I felt it was my fault. I still do. I guess I said ‘confess’ because if I’d done that, everything would have become public.”
I mull over this explanation. “Given what’s happened, Jenny might change her mind about your relationship with Kate.”
“We were fine tonight. That house was full of grieving people, but Jenny and I were the only two who truly knew what was lost when Kate died.”
“Jenny doesn’t know you were at the crime scene, does she?”
“No. But I’m probably going to tell her.”
“I wouldn’t rush into that. Even if she remains your biggest fan, if your affair with Kate becomes public, Jenny may feel she has no choice but to demand your head on a platter. If it were known that she sanctioned your relationship, she’d be crucified right along with you.”
“Jenny’s never been too concerned about the opinions of others.”
“This is a little different than … Oh, hell, the point’s moot anyway. If your affair becomes public, the police or the sheriff’s department will probably charge you with murder. Spurred on by the district attorney, of course.”
“Shad Johnson,” Drew says softly.
Even the name makes my gut ache. Shadrach Johnson is a black lawyer who was born in Natchez but raised in Chicago. Five years ago, he returned to Natchez to run for mayor, an election he lost by one percent of the vote. A year later he won the post of district attorney, taking the office from a white man who had never distinguished himself in the position. The mayoral race Johnson lost happened to be going on during my investigation of the unsolved civil rights murder, and during the stress of that case, Shad revealed his true colors to me. The man has one interest—his own political career—and he doesn’t care who he steps on, black or white, to advance it.
“Shad would charge you in a heartbeat,” I murmur. “He has wet dreams about getting a case like this.”
“Anything for headlines,” Drew agrees.
I’m starting to think Drew may have been right not to call in the cavalry when he discovered Kate’s body. My chivalrous side is revolted by his callousness, but the modern world is not a chivalrous place. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished.
“What will the blackmailers do now?” Drew asks.
“You gave them the whole twenty thousand?”
“Yeah. I thought about stacking some bills over a newspaper, but the geometry of the stadium wasn’t right for that. I knew he’d have too much time to check the bag before I could get him.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t just take your rifle down there and shoot the guy when he showed up.”
Drew looks uncomfortable. “I figured whoever it was would be watching me, looking for a gun, so I didn’t take it down with me. I figured I could sprint back up to the four-wheeler before he got to the bag. I’d scanned the whole stadium with the night-vision scope before I went down, and I knew nobody was close to the fifty-yard line.”
“Actually, you did make it in time to shoot him,” I observe. “Only I showed up.”
Drew nods, but I can’t read his emotions. “So, what will our motorcyclist do now? Will he try to milk me or will he turn me in?”
“No way to know. But he knows one thing for sure after tonight. Blackmailing you is risky business. He probably didn’t realize you were such a psycho.”
“I think he’ll keep playing me for a while. If he turns me in, he won’t get another penny out of me. No more drugs either.”
“You gave him drugs?”
Drew shrugs. “Just some samples. Nothing big. You know, that guy on the hill couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”
“He may not have been trying to hit us. Only to slow us down.”
Drew snorts at the idea of such half measures.
“Can we get out of here yet?” I ask.
He leans over the ATV where the big padded seat usually sits and checks the rectangular box that holds the air filter. Then he snaps the seat back on, pulls out the choke, and turns the ignition key. The engine turns over a few times, dies. He tinkers with something, then turns the key a second time. This time the motor sputters resentfully to life. He nurses the throttle with a lover’s touch, and soon the motor is roaring with power.
“Ready,” he says with a satisfied smile.
The trip back to St. Stephen’s is much more agreeable than the roller-coaster ride out here. If it weren’t for the wind chilling my wet clothes, I might enjoy it. Several times we startle deer, which freeze in our headlight with wide yellow eyes, then explode into chaotic motion like panicked soldiers. All the way, we watch the ground for my Springfield, but we don’t find it.
Drew brings us out of the woods on the high rim of the stadium, then drives swiftly around to the elementary school. I worried that there might be a police car waiting, but my car is still parked by itself in the shadows. A police patrol would probably be drawn to the glaring stadium lights before rifle fire. It’s not uncommon to hear rifle shots on this end of town after dark, as poachers spotlight deer out of season.
“Did you drive all the way here on your four-wheeler?” I ask, getting off the ATV.
“No, my pickup is parked behind the main building.”
“Do you need help loading this thing?”
“Nah, I’ve got some ramps.”
I reach for the door to my Saab, then turn back to Drew. “When was the last time you had sex with Kate?”
“Last night.”
“Did you wear a condom?”
He shakes his head. “She’s on the pill.”
“She got pregnant while she was on the pill?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” he says. “That’s what I kept telling her. She always took it on time, so the chance of pregnancy was really nil.”
Unless she got pregnant on purpose, I think, but I only nod and open my door.
“What is it?” Drew asks.
“By tomorrow, a sample of your semen is going to be on its way to a DNA lab somewhere. New Orleans is my guess. And if the cops get any reason to test your blood against that sample, you’re going to look guilty of murder. There’s only one way to prevent that perception, Drew.”
“Tell the police I was having an affair with her?”
I nod again. “Right now. Don’t wait five minutes.”
He cuts the Honda’s engine. “If I do that, the first thing they’ll do is ask me for a DNA sample.”
“It’s still better than the alternative. You tell them first, they see you as trying to help. You don’t … you’re guilty as hell.”
Drew ponders this. “If I were going to tell them, who would I call? The sheriff or the chief of police? Not Shad Johnson, right?”
Like many communities, Natchez has suffered from a long-running rivalry between city and county law enforcement. And Kate’s body was found right at the border of the city limits, which could cause serious jurisdictional problems.
“Whoever you tell, it’s going to get to Shad eventually. You might as well tell him first. The only way to play this kind of thing is get out ahead of it and stay there. If you volunteer the information, people can get angry, but they can’t paint you as a liar. Think of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Tell it now, Drew, before anyone beats you to the punch.”
“Everything? Even that I found Kate’s body?”
“I didn’t hear that question, brother.”
He looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“We have a saying in the legal profession. Every client tells his story once.”
“Meaning?”
“The first and only time you tell your story is on the witness stand. That way—until that day—you have time to adjust the truth to emerging facts.”
Disgust wrinkles his face.
“A cynical view, I admit,” I tell him, “but experience is a hard teacher. If I hear you tell me one story tonight, I can’t put you on the stand and let you tell a different one later.”
“But I’m innocent,” he says. “I told you that.”
Drew’s handsome face is a study in the complexity of human emotion. “Yes, you did. But you’re not acting like a man with nothing to hide.”
SIX (#ulink_093f5a48-b6ac-57af-8378-01a65d005c32)
Mia Burke’s eyes go wide when I walk into the living room of my town house.
“God, what happened to you?” she asks.
“I got a little wet.”
She rises from her chair and drops The Sheltering Sky onto an ottoman. “You’re bleeding!”
“Am I?”
“Yeah.”
She walks into the hall and motions for me to follow her to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, I see abrasions all over my neck and arms, and one long scrape on my left arm. The burn on my right forearm is red and throbbing.
“Shit,” she says softly. “Yuck.”
“What?”
“Your back is worse than your front. It looks like you’ve got a bad cut under your shirt.”
“Great.”
“You’d better let me look.”
I feel a little awkward in the bathroom with Mia. Two days ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now … “Just pull it up and see if I need stitches.”
She laughs at my cautiousness, then slowly lifts my shirt, which is stuck to my back. “It’s a slash, really. It doesn’t look too deep, but it’s dirty. Are you about to get in the shower?”
“Yes.”
“If I rub some soap into it, you can rinse it out in the shower. That should take care of it.”
She slips around me and turns on the hot water tap, then rubs soap into a blue washcloth until she has a thick lather. “Are you going to cry?” she asks, holding up the cloth and stepping behind me again.
“Let’s find out.”
The soap stings like sulfuric acid, but Mia has shamed me into silence.
“Are you crying?” she asks, scrubbing like a hospital nurse. I can feel her pulling apart the skin to clean inside the cut.
“Thinking about it. What’s Lifehouse?” I ask, remembering her T-shirt.
“A band, old man. You’d like them. I’ll make you a disk.” The humor disappears from her voice. “Did whatever you went to do work out all right?”
“Not as well as I hoped. But at least nobody got killed.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Right.”
At last she removes the burning cloth from my back. “I’m going to leave the soap in there. If you want it to stop hurting, go take your shower.”
“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”
She laughs, her eyes flickering with humor despite the day’s events. “Can you? Do you need me tomorrow?”
“After school, if you can make it.”
“Okay. See you then.”
She starts down the hall, but I call after her, “Have you heard anything else about Kate’s death?”
Mia walks back to the bathroom door. “Steve Sayers and his dad are down at the sheriff’s office right now, answering questions.”
“Steve was Kate’s boyfriend?”
“Figure of speech only.”
“Do you know where he was this afternoon?”
“He told John Ellis he drove down to his dad’s hunting camp near Woodville after school, to clean the place before turkey season.”
Woodville is a small logging town thirty miles south of Natchez. “Alone?”
“That’s what Steve told John. There may have been somebody down at the camp when Steve got there. I hope so, for Steve’s sake.”
“This time of year, I doubt it. So … Steve Sayers may not have an alibi.”
Mia bites her lower lip and looks down the hall toward the front door. She’s wearing small sapphire studs in her ears; I’ve never noticed them before. Suddenly she looks back at me, her dark eyes intense. “You don’t really think Steve could have killed Kate, do you?”
“I don’t know him. His parents either. What kind of boy is he?”
“He’s okay. Kind of red, I guess. He’s no brain surgeon. His dad’s a game warden. What can I say? He’s a jock of average intelligence.”
“Violent?”
Mia shrugs. “He’s been in a couple of fights, but then most of the guys I know have. The jocks, anyway.”
“Has the sheriff’s department talked to anybody else that you know about?”
“No. The police talked to Mrs. Townsend not long ago. That’s what I heard, anyway. They asked for the names of Kate’s closest friends.”
“Do you know whose names she gave them?”
“No. The truth is, Kate didn’t have any close friends. Not for the past year or so. I mean, we all thought of her as a friend, but nobody was really in her business, you know? Half the time, no one even knew where she was.”
The police are going to find this fact very interesting. “Did you ever ask her where she was? Or try to figure out where she might be?”
“Not really. Steve did, of course. Like I told you, he always insisted she had some secret boyfriend, one she was ashamed for us to know about. But no one ever saw her with another guy.”
I’m tempted to ask Mia if she ever saw Kate alone with Drew; she and her classmates might have seen them together and not thought twice about it. But there’s no point in alerting her to the true nature of that relationship. “Was Kate tight with any of the black kids at St. Stephen’s?”
Mia looks curiously at me. “Why?”
I’m not going to tell her about the blackmail call or Drew’s assessment of the possible caller. “It might be important.”
“Don’t tell me they’re going to try to railroad a black guy for this.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, from what I’ve read, that used to happen all the time around here in the old days. You know how it was. That’s why you took that civil rights case, right?”
“Yes and no. The truth is, I’m worried about ‘them’ rail-roading a white guy for Kate’s murder. What about my question?”
“Well, we only have four black guys in our class. We’re a pretty small class, so everybody knows everybody. But Kate didn’t have any special thing with any of the black guys. You talking about sex?”
“Not necessarily. Any special relationship.”
“I’ll ask around, but tonight my answer is no.”
“Okay.” I pull the towel tight across the cut on my back. “Thanks for staying tonight. I’m going to hit the shower now.”
She smiles and gives me a little wave. “Bye.”
“Hey, did Caitlin call while I was gone?”
“No. No calls.” Her eyes probe mine for a hidden reaction to this news.
“Thanks.”
Her gaze lingers a moment longer, and then she walks down the hall to the front door. “Tell Annie I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
The front door slams.
I’m almost asleep when the telephone rings beside my bed. I’m too tired and sore to roll over and look at the caller ID. I took three Advil after my shower, knowing that without them I’d hardly be able to move in the morning. The answering machine can get this one for me.
“Penn?” Caitlin says after the beep, her voice sounding clipped and very Northern after Mia’s soft drawl. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your earlier calls. I was at a party for a reporter who’s leaving the Herald, and the band was so loud I couldn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re sleeping now. Look, I got a call from one of our reporters at the Examiner. She said a St. Stephen’s girl named Kate Townsend was murdered today. Raped and strangled, she said, or at least that’s what it looks like. No autopsy until tomorrow morning. Have you heard about that? I think I played tennis with this girl at Duncan Park. She was really sharp, going to Harvard, she said. Well … I guess I won’t talk to you until tomorrow. I hope we can see each other soon. I know this sucks. I’m really getting a lot done, though. I may crack this thing soon. I hope the new book’s going well. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you. Bye.”
I was near to picking up the receiver when Caitlin signed off. I’m not sure why I didn’t. But I can’t help wondering why a Natchez reporter was able to get through to Caitlin when I wasn’t. And half of her message was about Kate’s murder, almost as if she were calling me to get details for a story. It’s not that I don’t want to share things with her. But I want her to be here to share actual experiences with me, not call for reports when things sound interesting.
A wave of relief goes through me when the phone rings again. I roll over onto one elbow and answer.
“Hey, babe,” I murmur. “Sorry. I was half sleep before.”
“Penn?” says a male voice.
“Yeah, Drew. What is it?”
“I was surfing the Web, and I found a site maintained by the Mississippi Supreme Court. They’ve got the whole criminal code posted there. And from what I can tell, statutory rape only applies to girls under sixteen, not eighteen.”
I blink in the darkness. “Are you sure? I remember the statute pretty well. Of course I learned it before moving to Texas for fifteen years. The legislature could have changed it.”
“Here’s the applicable language. ‘The crime of statutory rape is committed when any person seventeen years of age or older has sexual intercourse with a child who: one, is at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age.’ There are qualifications, but they all deal with even younger victims and the age difference between victim and perpetrator. It also says, ‘Neither the victim’s consent nor the victim’s lack of chastity is a defense to the charge of statutory rape.’”
“They must have changed the statute,” I say in disbelief. But even as relief courses through me, a sense of foreboding rises in my mind. “Drew … I think I read somewhere that some states were moving in this direction because there were so many suits being brought by parents who hated their daughters’ boyfriends. You’ve got two seventeen-year-olds having consensual sex. The guy turns eighteen and bam, the girl’s parents try to lock him up for statutory rape.”
“So, I’m in the clear?”
“Under that statute,” I say uneasily. “But somehow I don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.” What is it? I wonder, searching my memory for the source of my anxiety. “There’s definitely a sexual harassment issue here, but of course that’s a civil matter. It’s criminal charges we’re worried about, felonies in particular.” Suddenly, a voice is sounding in my head, the voice of my old boss, the district attorney of Houston: lascivious touching or handling of a minor … contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and then the big one, sexual—“Drew, are you still at your computer?”
“Yes.”
“Look up sexual battery.”
I stare up at the dark ceiling, listening to the clicking of keys and praying that my instinct is wrong. “What does it say?”
“Just a minute. Okay … uh …”
“Read it aloud.”
“Here … ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with (A) another person without his or her consent.’ I’m okay there.”
“Keep reading.”
“‘(B) a mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless person. (C) A child at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age, if the person is thirty-six or more months older than the child.’ Thank God.”
Drew sounds so relieved that I’m tempted to let him hang up and get a good night’s sleep. But I’m almost certain that bad news is coming. “Keep reading.”
“Okay. There’s a second paragraph. ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of …’”
His voice falters. “Drew?”
“Eighteen,” he whispers. “It says eighteen here.”
“Keep reading.”
“Oh, God. Oh, no.”
“Please read it for me.”
“‘… if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of eighteen years if the person is in a position of trust or authority over the child including without limitation the child’s teacher, counselor, physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, minister …’”
Drew’s voice sounds like that of a man being sedated before an operation, a monotone fading into nothingness. “You can stop, Drew.”
He continues as though he can’t hear me over the print screaming from his computer monitor. “‘… priest, physical therapist, chiropractor, legal guardian, parent, stepparent, aunt, uncle, scout leader or coach.’”
“Drew, listen to me. Are you listening?”
Out of a deep well of silence comes a single sob.
“Drew, it’s all right. I know you’re feeling terrible guilt right now. Seeing it written down like that, you may feel for the first time that you’re guilty of a crime.”
“She’s dead,” he says in a shattered voice. “And if I hadn’t crossed this line with her, she’d be alive right now.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not God. Listen to me, buddy. I love you. I love you, and I respect you. You’re just human, like the rest of us.”
“Wait a minute,” he says wetly. “I’m looking for the penalty.”
“Don’t. Leave that for tomorrow.”
“I need to see it.”
No, you don’t, I say silently. It’s going to be thirty years—
“Jesus Christ. It’s thirty years.”
“That’s not going to happen, Drew. I promise you that.”
“Oh my God,” he says with fresh dread.
“What? What is it?”
“For a second offense, it’s forty years. Timmy would be—”
“Turn off that computer! That’s not the real world, Drew.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hell, yes. I was a prosecutor for fifteen years. That’s why you wanted my advice about all this, remember? And my advice is to go to sleep and let me do the worrying for you. That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Twenty bucks doesn’t pay for much worrying.”
I don’t reply for some time. Then I say, “You saved my life. And you risked your own to do it. If you hadn’t, my daughter would never have been born. That buys you a lot of worrying.”
“You never asked for this.”
“No, but I can handle it. You’ve got to stay in control for me, though.”
“You’re not leaving town or anything tomorrow, are you?”
“No way. Now, what are you going to do about the blackmail issue? Are you going to come clean with the cops?”
“After what we just learned? I don’t know.”
“You’re a smart guy, Drew. Let’s talk about probability.”
“Okay.”
“How often did you see Kate? I don’t mean platonically. How often were you alone with her, intimate with her?”
“Every day. Or night, rather.”
Unbelievable. “For how long?”
“For the last seven months, I guess. Ever since the mission trip to Honduras. After that, we couldn’t stand to be apart.”
“Get out ahead of this thing, Drew. It’s your only chance.”
“I hear you.”
I let the silence do its work for a while. “Do you?”
“It’s Tim that’s holding me back. I don’t want him to have to know about this if he doesn’t have to. I don’t want him to have to go through the grief he’ll get at school because of it. I don’t even want Ellen to have to deal with it, now that Kate’s dead. There’s just no reason anymore.”
“Yes, there is. This thing is beyond your control now. No matter what you do, it’s eventually going to come out.”
“I’m not so sure. If Kate said she didn’t tell anybody, she didn’t.”
“Then who’s blackmailing you?”
“Kate’s killers.”
I grunt noncommittally. “I’m not so sure.”
“I know. But I am.” He breathes steadily into the phone. “Thanks for tonight, Penn. I mean it.”
“Night, buddy.”
The open line hisses in my ear.
I hang up.
SEVEN (#ulink_a2b590f3-c9af-5035-aa85-204879875e92)
Drew’s blackmailers lost no time making him pay for his indecisiveness. At 11:10 the next morning, I was helping my mother paint some bookshelves in her garage when my cell phone rang. The screen showed Drew as the caller. I walked out of the garage under the pretext of getting better cell reception, then answered by saying, “Are you as sore as I am?”
“You were right,” he said. “I’m fucked.”
A current of anxiety shot through me, but experience kept my voice calm. “What’s happened?”
“I just got off the phone with Shad Johnson. He got an anonymous call this morning.”
“Let me guess. The caller said you were having an affair with Kate Townsend and that you might have killed her.”
“Yep.”
“Did he give any details?”
“Johnson didn’t say so.”
“What did Shad ask you during the call? Did he ask straight out if the accusation was true?”
“No. He basically said, ‘Doc, I hate to have to call you about this, but I got this call with an accusation, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t ask you about it.’ He was pretty friendly, actually.”
“Shad Johnson is not your friend.”
“I understand that. I was just giving you his tone. He said he wanted to give me a chance to deny it as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t become any kind of thing.”
“‘Thing’? That was his word?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s already a thing, Drew. You can bet your ass on that. Did you flat-out deny that you were seeing Kate?”
“No.”
I sighed with relief.
“I acted stunned,” he said, “which I was. I told him I was too shocked even to respond to such an outrageous accusation, that Kate was a close friend of our family, and that we’d been shattered by her death. Shad said he understood. He said he’d like to talk to me about it at his office. He said I might have information about Kate that could help them piece together a better picture of her than they have now.”
“What did you say to that?”
“What could I say? I told him I wanted to do everything I could to assist the investigation.”
“Okay. When is this meeting?”
“Lunch today. Fifty minutes from now.”
Shit. “Was it a short call? Long? What?”
“Short.”
“That’s because Shad got what he wanted. He thinks he’s going to question you on his territory.”
“He’s not?”
“Not unless you’re a complete moron—which, after last night, I’m starting to believe.”
“Penn—”
“Damn it, why didn’t you volunteer the information last night like I told you to?”
“You know why! I didn’t want Tim and Ellen to have to deal with it if they didn’t have to.”
“Well, now they have to.”
“What do I do, Penn?”
“You really need a lawyer now.”
“I told you that last night.”
“And I told you I wasn’t your guy. Not for this.”
“The meeting’s in fifty minutes!”
I bowed my head in resignation. The odds of finding a Natchez lawyer qualified to take that meeting were low, and the odds of adequately briefing one in time were nil. “Where are you now?”
“At my office. Seeing patients.”
“You’re off at twelve?”
“Yeah.”
“You just had an emergency.”
Drew was silent for a moment. “I’m skipping the meeting?”
“I’m going in your place.”
“Is that the best thing?”
“We need to get some idea of what Shad is thinking. I’d also like to know what the autopsy turned up. Shad probably has the pathologist’s report in hand by now.”
“I don’t want to think about that. This is Kate we’re talking about.”
You’d better get used to it. “Sorry. Now … we have a tricky little problem to deal with. Think before you answer me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“The first thing Shad is going to ask me is where you were when Kate was murdered. He won’t be obvious about it, but he’ll ask. And I happen to know you were at the murder scene. Where did you go after you left the creek?”
“Home.”
I was silent long enough for Drew to realize that if he was lying, he had better come clean then or stick with his story. “Was Ellen there?”
“No. She was at her sister’s place.”
“What about Tim?”
“The maid had taken him to his music lesson.”
“So nobody can verify that you were home?”
“I answered some e-mails soon after I got there. Couldn’t we use those?”
“Maybe. But depending on how narrow a window they’ve established as time of death, the e-mails probably won’t put you in the safety zone.”
“Tim got home around five, and Ellen about six.”
“Okay. It’s also possible that someone saw your car parked in that vacant lot in Pinehaven. For that reason, and for others I can’t predict now, I may decide I need to tell Shad the truth. Everything. Today. The affair, the blackmail, everything.”
Drew said nothing.
“In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think coming clean may still be the best option we have. Even lying by omission digs a hole they can bury you in later.”
A woman on Drew’s end of the line called out a blood pressure reading. Drew lowered his voice. “You’re my lawyer, Penn. I trust your instincts. Say whatever you think you need to. I’m innocent—of murder, anyway—and I’m not going to hide anything except to protect my son.”
What could I say to that? “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over. Keep your cell phone wired to your hip, and don’t answer any calls until you hear from me. Don’t talk to anybody.”
“I won’t.”
I hung up and turned back to the garage. My mother was watching me with a quizzical look on her face. In that moment I realized just how far my life had already slid off its accustomed track. After dropping Annie at school this morning, I drove down to the football field and searched it for my lost pistol. Failing to find it, I went up to the high school and told Coach Wade Anders to keep an eye out for it. Anders is the athletic director of St. Stephen’s, and he promised to have his assistants search the bowl again before any kids were allowed into it. He also asked if I knew anything about the switch box for the stadium lights being shot up. I told him I didn’t, but that I’d send someone to install a new box as soon as possible. He looked at me in silence for a little while, then nodded as though we shared a special understanding. Like everybody, Anders was building up capital where he could.
The lost gun problem didn’t end there. The land that Drew and I chased the blackmailer over is owned by a group of investors who use it as a hunting camp. I called the doctor who heads the group to tell him I might have lost a pistol on their land, and to ask his members to keep an eye out for it. When he asked what I was doing on their land, I made up a story about a troublesome armadillo rooting up the St. Stephen’s football field—an armadillo I chased onto their land in my single-minded quest to kill it. Remarkably, he laughed as though he understood completely.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I need to go take care of something.”
“Is everything all right?” she asked, her eyes making it clear that she knew better.
“Yes.”
“It’s not Annie, is it?”
“No, no.”
“Are you and Caitlin all right?”
“We’re fine, Mom. This is just some legal business.”
She went back to painting the shelves with long, smooth strokes of her brush. At sixty-eight, she works with the strength and flexibility of someone twenty years her junior. Being raised in the country does that for some people.
When I arrived at the house this morning, Mom held up the newspaper and asked me about Kate’s death. Thankfully, Caitlin’s staff had reported only the known facts, which left my mother as curious as the rest of the town. And like most of the town, Mom believes Drew Elliott hung the moon. She often says that Drew is the only “young” doctor who practices medicine with the conscientiousness of my father. What would she say if she knew that he was sleeping with Kate Townsend until the day she died?
“Be careful,” Mom called as I walked to my car.
“I will,” I called, thinking that was good advice to follow when dealing with Shadrach Johnson.
The district attorney’s office is on the third floor of the waterworks building in Lawyer’s Alley, across from the massive city courthouse. In a town filled with architecturally significant buildings, the waterworks is nothing special, a three-story concrete block with one glass-brick corner enclosing the staircase. I park under the courthouse oaks and cross the street, waving at one of my parents’ neighbors as she walks into the DMV office.
There’s no receptionist behind the door on the ground floor, just a staircase. As I climb the stairs, my errand weighs heavy below my heart. I’ve got to tell Shad Johnson the truth as I know it—up to a point, anyway. Drew had sex with Kate the night before she died, so I have to assume that the state pathologist has already recovered his semen from her body. And while no judge would order Drew to take a DNA test based solely on an anonymous telephone call, Shad may already have more proof connecting Drew to Kate.
Last night, Drew told me he’d been intimate with Kate for the past seven months. How many seventeen-year-old girls could sleep with a forty-year-old man that long without telling a single friend about it? If Kate told her mother about the affair, why not her best friend? And with Kate dead at the hands of a killer, how long will it take Jenny Townsend—however much she may like Drew—to tell the police what she knows? Shad may already have proof of the affair; he may have called this meeting simply to see if Drew will lie about it, using the lesser crime of sexual battery as a litmus test for deception before questioning Drew about the murder. I did the same thing many times as a prosecutor.
When I reach the third floor, a heavy female secretary with dyed-orange hair and a flower-print dress gives me a quizzical look from behind a glass partition. Five years ago Shad had a male factotum who dressed like Malcolm X, but he vanished shortly after Shad’s mayoral defeat. This woman was obviously expecting Drew, who is known on sight by most Natchezians. I’m pretty well-known myself, but in a small town no one ever quite attains the celebrity of the best doctors. My father is testament to that fact. He can’t walk twenty yards in Wal-Mart without being stopped by adoring or inquisitive patients.
“I’m Mr. Johnson’s noon appointment,” I tell the secretary.
“No, you’re not.”
“You expecting Dr. Drew Elliot?”
She looks confused. “That’s right.”
“I’m his attorney.”
Her lips form a perfect O, just like they do in cartoons. “You’re Penn Cage.”
“I am. I’m Dr. Elliott’s attorney.”
The expression of surprise morphs into an uncertain glare. “I know about you.”
“Your boss and I once went a few rounds over a civil rights murder.”
She picks up the phone and begins speaking in a hushed tone.
My statement about the civil rights murder is true. The irony of that case is that I, the white lawyer, was crusading to solve the twenty-year-old murder of a black man, while Shad, the black politician, was trying to bury the case to keep from upsetting the white voters he needed to win the mayor’s office.
The secretary hangs up and buzzes me through the door. “End of the hall,” she says curtly.
As soon as I enter the blandly painted corridor, a door at the far end opens and a black man a few inches shorter than I peers out, an expression of annoyance on his face. “Son of a bitch,” he says without a trace of Southern accent. “I was having a good day until now.”
“Hello, Shad.”
The district attorney shakes his head, then walks back into his office, squaring his shoulders for combat as he goes. I follow him inside and wait to be invited to sit.
As usual, Shadrach Johnson is dressed to the nines in a bespoke suit and Italian shoes. His hair has a little more gray in it than the last time we locked horns, but his eyes still flash with quick intelligence. My first impression of him was of a brash personal injury lawyer, and nothing in the intervening years has changed that. Shad’s jutting jaw greets the world with a perpetual challenge, his eyes project arrogance and mistrust, and his shoulders stay flexed under the weight of an invisible yet enormous chip.
“Your buddy’s not playing this right, Cage,” he says, taking a seat behind an enormous desk that looks like an antique. “An innocent man doesn’t send his lawyer to speak for him in a situation like this. Have a seat.”
Go for it, I tell myself. Turn on the gravitas and recite the lines you rehearsed on the way over: This is a very serious matter, Shad. Dr. Elliott was indeed seeing the dead girl, but he did not kill her. You and I have to set aside our personal history and help the police to find a dangerous killer. Dr. Elliott wants to assist the investigation in every way, but he also wants to keep this unfortunate matter from escalating into something that could ruin reputations and break up families unnecessarily.
I was prepared to say those things, but now that I’m actually facing Shad Johnson, something stops me. It all seemed so clear in the car: pay the short-term price for a long-term gain. But this office, as modest as it is, gives me the old feeling I had when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. Irrevocable decisions are made in this room, decisions about who will be punished and who will not. Who will spend decades in prison? Who will die at the hands of the state? For any prosecutor, Drew Elliott would be a juicy target, but for a man like Shad Johnson—a man who dreams of being governor and more—Drew is a prize elephant.
There’s no doubt that Drew would look better to a future jury if he told the truth now. But what other consequences might result? Natchez is a small town, and when small-town cops are handed a likely suspect, they don’t look too hard for another. Truth be told, city cops aren’t much different. And confessing to the affair with Kate would immediately open Drew to a sexual battery charge that Shad could use to jail him, should he choose to. No, better to keep my cards close to the vest.
“That’s a lot nicer desk than the one the last D.A. had,” I observe, stalling for time as I take the chair opposite Shad.
The district attorney can’t help but brag; it’s his nature. “I got it out of storage from the old Natchez Museum,” he says, rubbing the finely grained wood. “It came from the attic of one of the antebellum homes. Longwood, I think. Ironic, isn’t it? Me working at a cotton planter’s desk? I had it appraised. It’s worth sixty grand.”
I give Shad a level gaze. “I hope you’re not one of those people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Shad’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing here, Penn? Where’s Dr. Elliott?”
“He had an emergency at his office. He had to stay and handle it.”
“Bullshit. Your client’s scared. His dick’s got him tangled up in a capital murder case, and he’s terrified.”
Shad must have more than the anonymous call in his pocket. “How do you figure that?”
“Did Elliott tell you about the call I got this morning?”
“He said you mentioned an anonymous caller who told you some story about him being intimate with Kate Townsend.”
“That’s right. And the good doctor did not deny it.”
“Did he confirm it?”
“That’s what this meeting was for. For him to confirm or deny. Now he’s sent you in his place. The big-time mouthpiece. I didn’t think you practiced anymore.”
“I wasn’t practicing when I took the Del Payton case either.”
Shad looks like he just bit into something sour. My punishing Del Payton’s murderers after Shad had resisted reopening the case cost him just enough support in the black community to take the mayoral election away from him. But that’s old news. I’ve got to get a handle on his present intentions before I paint myself into a corner.
“Shad, let’s—”
“Stop,” he says, jabbing a forefinger at me. “You’re here because you want something.”
He’s right. “I would like to know what was discovered during Kate’s autopsy.”
Shad studies me for several moments. “And you think I’m just going to give that to you?”
“If you continue to pursue my client, I’ll get it one way or another. Why don’t we try to foster a spirit of cooperation here?”
“You haven’t done any cooperating with me so far.” He lifts a sheaf of fax paper off his desk and flips to the last page. “But I’m feeling generous. What do you want to know?”
“Time of death?”
Shad shakes his head. “We’ll pass on that for now.”
“Cause?”
“Strangulation. There was also head trauma that might have killed the girl if she hadn’t been strangled first.”
“Interesting. There are rumors going around town about rape. Nurses at the hospital did some talking. Was the girl raped or not?”
“The pathologist says she was.”
“Genital trauma?”
Shad nods slowly.
“Did they recover semen from her?”
“Affirmative. Both holes.”
His crudeness is meant to shock, but I saw too much rape and murder in Houston for this to bother me. “So, the killer had some time with her.”
Shad shakes his head, a strange smile on his face. “Not necessarily. The pathologist already ran serology on the semen samples. They came from two different men.”
A glimmer of hope sparks in my soul. “Multiple assailants?”
“You could read it that way.”
“What other way is there? You have a different scenario in mind?”
“After the call I got this morning, you can’t blame me for speculating a little.”
“I’m listening.”
Shad leans over his desk and steeples his fingers. “Let’s say Dr. Elliott was having an affair with this high school girl. In his mind, it’s true love. Then he finds out his prom queen’s been sharing the poonanny with somebody else when he’s not around. Her old boyfriend, say. The doc finds out, and he flips out. Maybe Kate is cruel about how she tells him—you know some women. So, your client starts choking her, trying to make her shut up. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s shut her up for good.”
“By that scenario, the girl wasn’t raped at all.”
Shad waves his hand as though at a minor annoyance. “Rape is a subjective finding in a dead girl. She’s not accusing anybody. So she had some genital trauma. Rough consensual sex can cause that. Hell, I’ve had women get mad if I didn’t traumatize them down there.”
“You’re reaching, Shad.”
He settles back in his chair. “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you something else for free. The St. Stephen’s homecoming queen was pregnant.”
Shit. “How far along?”
“A little over four weeks. And that—according to the laws of the great state of Mississippi—makes this a double homicide, Counselor.” Shad arches his eyebrows in mock concern. “The community’s going to be very upset by that idea, the murder of an unborn baby. You know, I can see some people speculating that Dr. Elliott was just playing with this poor girl—getting a little on the side—and when she turned up pregnant, he saw his nice little life crashing down around him. He saw thirty years in Parchman for having sex with a juvenile patient, so he killed her.”
I suddenly see a glimpse of the future. This case is going to trial, and Drew Elliott will be the defendant, whether he deserves to be or not. Thank God I didn’t march in here spouting his secrets. “The public shouldn’t be able to make that kind of speculation,” I say evenly, “because they shouldn’t associate my client’s name with this case in any way.”
Shad smiles and shakes his head. “We’ve got a simple situation here, Counselor. Somebody is making telephone calls saying your client was screwing the dead girl. I can’t control that caller’s actions. So you’ve got to assume that Dr. Elliot’s name is going to be in the street soon. The best thing Drew can do for himself is provide us a DNA sample and clear his name as quickly as possible. If his DNA doesn’t match what the pathologist swabbed out of the girl, nobody can ever say a word against him.”
Check and mate. If I’m going to come clean about the affair before the trial, now is the time. But the truth as I know it will only lend credence to Shad’s first scenario—murder committed in a jealous rage.
“You asked about time of death,” Shad reminds me. “If you’ll tell me where Dr. Elliott was during the hours surrounding it, I’ll give you the time of death.”
“No deal. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”
Shad’s eyes glint with a predator’s love of the hunt.
“What about the fishermen who found the girl’s body?” I ask, trying to take Shad’s mind off Drew’s alibi. “Have you ruled them out?”
“They’re down at the hospital providing DNA samples as we speak. They couldn’t wait to do it.”
Damn. “And Kate Townsend’s boyfriend?”
“Steve Sayers? Same deal.” Shad taps the cherry desktop with manicured fingernails. “The boy’s alibi is a little weak, but he couldn’t wait to get over to the hospital and give blood. He offered to whack off in a cup right here in my office. Says he hasn’t had sex with the victim in months. Seems Miss Townsend just up and stopped putting out, no explanation. And before that, she was as hot as they come, according to the Sayers boy. Kinky, he said.” Shad gives me a cagey look. “You think she got religion?”
I keep my face impassive.
Shad smiles and leans back in his chair. “The bottom line is this: I need DNA from everybody who might have known the Townsend girl in the biblical sense. And any reasonable man would have to include your client on that list. Now, everybody but your client is chomping at the bit to give me said sample. Your client, on the other hand, has sent his celebrity mouthpiece down here to talk for him. So I’ll ask you straight out, is Dr. Elliott going to provide a DNA sample to the state in the interest of expediting this investigation? Or is he not?”
I choose my words with great care. “No judge would order my client to give a blood sample on the basis of an anonymous call alone.”
Shad concedes this with a slight inclination of his head. “That may be true. But in the interest of protecting the community, what innocent man would object to it?”
“In a perfect world, I’d agree. But if it got out that you asked Drew Elliott to give a DNA sample in connection with this murder—and it would get out, if he complied—the rumor alone could destroy him. It’s practically a child molestation charge. The stigma would never go away.”
“You can’t keep his name out of this mess, Cage. Our mystery caller didn’t telephone just me this morning.”
I cover my mouth and swallow hard. “Who else?”
“Sheriff Byrd and the chief of police. Our caller’s a persistent fellow. He seems to believe strongly in his cause.”
“Did you trace the source of the calls from phone records?”
“They originated from a pay phone on the north side of down-town.”
“The black section?”
Shad inclines his head again.
This fits what Drew told me about the blackmailer’s voice. “Did the police fingerprint the phone?”
“They’re working that angle, but no matches yet.” Shad suddenly gives me a look of honest puzzlement. “The thing is, Penn, accusing Dr. Elliott of this affair seems so out of left field, it’s hard to imagine anyone making it up. You know? If it’s not true, who would even think of it?”
“Somebody who hates Drew Elliott.”
Shad turns up his palms. “From what I gather, the good doctor hasn’t got an enemy in the world. Everybody talks about him like he’s a saint.”
“There’s a reason for that. He’s a genuinely good man.”
Another beatific smile. “Then he’s got nothing to worry about. The way I see it, providing a DNA sample is about the only way Dr. Elliott is going to be able to preserve his sterling reputation.”
“There’s no way I’m letting Drew go down to the St. Catherine’s Hospital lab for a DNA test. The man’s on staff there, for God’s sake. Word would shoot through that building in less than an hour. By nightfall, everybody in town would know about it.”
Shad leans back and speaks in a cold voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll be forced to consider other alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. One thing, it’s the first week of the month. That means the grand jury’s in session. Probably will be for two more days. They might be real interested in hearing about this situation. About the anonymous call, and about the strange coincidences, like how Dr. Elliott lives up-stream on that creek where the girl’s body was found. They might just decide they want a DNA sample from the doctor on their own.”
Jesus. “That’s unethical, Shad. You’d be perverting the purpose of the grand jury. It doesn’t exist to investigate crimes. And for your information, at least a thousand people live upstream on that creek, maybe more.”
Shad’s eyes brim with confidence. “Just a thought, Counselor. But emotions are running high in this town. People want a brutal killer like this caught and punished. That’s my sole interest here. And I’m not going to let the fact that your client is white and rich stop me from getting to the bottom of this poor girl’s death. That kind of miscarriage of justice stopped the day I took over this office.”
Like a chess player experiencing a flash of insight, I suddenly see a dozen moves down the board. And what I see sends a rush of adrenaline through my veins. This conversation isn’t about murder at all—it’s about politics. I should have realized that before I walked in the door.
The mayoral election Shad lost five years ago was the most hotly contested in Natchez history. He lost to Riley Warren, a two-term white incumbent with a flamboyant style and a love for backroom business schemes that earned him the nickname Wiley. While some of those schemes benefited the city, others weighed it down with suffocating debt, and by the end of his term—last summer—even Wiley’s supporters suspected that he’d enriched himself more than the city he was elected to serve. Shad might have defeated Warren then, but he was only halfway into his first term as district attorney. It wouldn’t have looked good for him to resign after the promises he’d made to rectify “racial inequalities” in Natchez’s criminal courts.
Despite dwindling support, Wiley Warren ran for mayor a third time. His enemies polled local worthies in search of an opposition candidate—myself included. Like most who were asked, I declined to enter the fray. Ultimately, Warren’s enemies ran a rather dim bulb named Doug Jones against their nemesis, and despite Jones’s utter lack of distinction or vision, he handily defeated Warren in the primary. The only black candidate to step forward was a funeral director with a checkered past, a man with enemies of his own in the black community. Black turnout was low on election day, and Doug Jones won by a 58 to 42 percent margin. The newly Honorable Mayor Jones took office and promptly became the invisible man. If he took no bold new initiatives for the city, neither did he make any tragic mistakes. He managed this by doing almost nothing at all. But shortly after Christmas he finally did do something: he held a press conference and announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and would resign his office within ninety days.
That was two months ago.
If Mayor Jones pulls the trigger within the next four weeks, as promised, then the chief executive office of the city will be up for grabs. Local election rules dictate that once the mayor’s office is vacated, a special election must be held within forty-five days. Sitting here in this office, I realize just how important that fact is to Shad Johnson. If Shad were to convict a rich white doctor of capital murder, he could pronounce his election promises to the black community fulfilled and enter the mayoral race with a united front behind him—something that didn’t happen five years ago.
The seemingly boundless confidence in Shad’s eyes triggers another revelation: he doesn’t even have to convict Drew. Even if Shad loses, he wins politically in the black community, just for making the effort. He can always blame a courtroom loss on the white man’s secret manipulation of the system.
I look Shad hard in the eyes but speak softly. “You’re going to run for mayor again.”
He blinks like a reptile basking in the sun. “No comment, Counselor.”
“You think putting Drew Elliott in Parchman is your ticket to a unified black electoral base.”
Shad attempts to dispose of my theory with a wave of his hand. “Our business here is to rule out Dr. Elliott as a murder suspect—if we can—so that my officers can get on with the investigation of this heinous crime.”
Spoken as though for reporters. My new understanding of the political situation has sent my mind racing down a dozen different paths, but I’m not here to figure out the future of Natchez. I’m here to protect Drew Elliott.
“All right,” I say in a tone of surrender. “What about this? Dr. Elliott has a laboratory in his office. Send over a couple of police officers right now, during his lunch hour. His lab tech can draw the blood you need—do a buccal swab, whatever—and the cops can attest that it’s his. The chain of custody remains intact, and so does Dr. Elliott’s reputation.”
Shad nods. “I can live with that.”
I look at my watch. “I’d better call him.”
“I thought he had an emergency.”
“He’s probably handled it by now.” I get up and offer Shad my hand.
He takes it, but he squeezes gently rather than shakes, then withdraws his hand. “I hope your boy comes up clean, Penn. If he doesn’t …”
“He will.”
Shad looks surprised by my statement. But I was talking about Kate’s murder, nothing else.
I’m almost to the door when he says, “Penn, about the mayoral situation.”
I turn and regard him steadily. “Yes?”
“I heard some local power brokers asked you to run against Wiley Warren last year.”
“That’s right. I wasn’t interested.”
“Not interested in running against Warren? Or not interested in being mayor?”
“Both. Neither.”
Shad studies me with unguarded curiosity. “The town’s in a lot different place than it was a year ago.”
“You’re right, I’m sad to say.”
It kills him to ask the next question. “Are you still not interested?”
I turn up my palms, then smile easily. “No more than you. Have a good day, Shad.”
Outside the D.A.’s office, I stand in the sun and stare across the street at the courthouse. Somewhere inside, a simple white man named Doug Jones is wrestling with his fear of death and deciding when to resign the office of mayor. I’m surprised he’s waited two months, given the gravity of his diagnosis. I watched an uncle die of lung cancer, and I’ve forgotten neither my horror nor his pain. But while Mayor Jones struggles with his mortality, Shad Johnson watches from across the street like a hungry vulture waiting to draw life from death. My new appreciation of Shad’s deeper motive has clarified Drew’s situation.
If Shad can get sufficient evidence, he will rush Drew to trial in record time, hoping to convict him—or at least garner a week’s worth of headlines—before Mayor Jones resigns. But Drew’s legal jeopardy is not the sole reason for my interest in Shad’s political intentions. For the past six months, despite my decision not to seek the office of mayor a year ago, I have been pondering the idea of entering the special election.
My reasons are simple. One month into Doug Jones’s administration, the International Paper Company—the largest employer in the county—announced that it would close its Natchez mill after fifty years of continuous operation. The shock to the community still hasn’t passed. Closure came swiftly, and about a month ago the severance pay of former employees began to peter out. So did their heath insurance benefits. And IP was merely the last in a short but devastatingly complete line of local manufacturing companies to shut down. Triton Battery. Armstrong Tire and Rubber. Johns-Manville. That leaves tourism the only industry pumping outside dollars into Natchez. And tourism is a seasonal business.
In a single year, Natchez has been transformed from a fairly healthy city into a community on the edge. We’ve lost more than five hundred families in the wake of the IP closure, and more are leaving every week. In 1850, Natchez boasted more millionaires than every city in America except New York and Philadelphia, the money flowing in as cotton flowed out by the hundreds of thousands of bales. But as the soil was slowly depleted, cotton farming moved north to the Delta, and Natchez entered a period of decline. Then in 1948, oil was discovered practically beneath the streets. By 1960, the year I was born, the city was flush with millionaires again, and Natchez became a truly magical place in which to grow up. But in 1986, the price of oil crashed, and the Reagan administration sacrificed domestic oil producers in his battle to win the Cold War. The number of local oil companies dwindled from sixty to seven, and by the time the price of oil began to climb again, there wasn’t enough industry left to exploit what remained of our depleted reserves. Without visionary leadership, Natchez will soon shrink to a quaint hamlet of ten or twelve thousand people—mostly retirees, service workers, and people on welfare—and the thriving city of twenty-five thousand that I grew up in will be only a memory.
When I first heard about Doug Jones’s terrible diagnosis, I sensed the hand of fate offering this city a final opportunity for salvation. And to my surprise, I felt a powerful surge of civic responsibility swelling in my heart. Shad Johnson will tell voters he felt a similar call to public service, but I know him too well to believe that. Five years ago, he left his Chicago law firm to return to Natchez and run one of the most cynical campaigns I’ve ever witnessed on either a local or national level. I’m proud that my efforts in the courtroom helped snatch victory from his grasp, but it was black voters who ultimately did that. Enough of them saw through Shad’s theatrical skills to tip the balance against him. They closed their eyes, gritted their teeth, and voted for what they hoped was a harmless white man. But as Shad himself said earlier, Natchez was a different city a year ago. Now we are in crisis. And a man who does nothing during a crisis is as bad as a man who causes one.
As I stare at the great white courthouse, my cell phone rings. I climb into my Saab and answer.
“Are you out of the meeting?” Drew asks in a tense voice. “Did you see the autopsy report?”
No questions about his future, only about what happened to Kate. Is that because he loved her so dearly? Or because he has something to fear? “She was strangled, Drew.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says quietly. “From the petechiae around her eyes. Was she pregnant?”
“Yes. Four weeks along.”
A sharp intake of breath. “That’s why she was so desperate to see me. Jesus, what about—”
“Stop talking, Drew. We can go into details later. Right now we have a problem. The district attorney wants a sample of your DNA.”
Silence.
“The pathologist found semen inside Kate’s body.” There’s no point in telling Drew that the pathologist found the semen of two different men, and in two different locations. “Of course, I expected that, given what you told me about the previous night.”
“I’m listening.”
“Shad wants to prove you murdered Kate. He wants to prove it badly.”
“Does he really think I’m capable of that?”
“All men are capable of that, Drew. We can talk about Shad’s motives later. Right now, under these circumstances, giving him the sample is the best thing you can do. It’ll buy us three or four weeks while the lab does the test. And time is what we need more than anything right now.”
“Why?”
“Because the police may have caught the real murderer long before the test is completed, or even begun. And by that point, it won’t matter nearly so much that you were having sex with Kate Townsend. In fact, if Shad gets a confession from someone else, I might be able to persuade him to cancel the test altogether. You’d probably have to make a massive contribution to his next political campaign”—which will be sooner than anyone suspects—“but I think you could live with that.”
“Okay, fine. But what about the autopsy? What else did the report show?”
“Later. Shad wanted you to waltz into the St. Catherine’s Hospital lab and give the blood sample, but I worked out a compromise.”
“Which is?”
“Can you trust your lab technician?”
“Susan? Sure. She’s been with me nine years.”
“Good. Because in the next hour, a couple of cops are going to show up at your office and watch Susan draw some blood from your arm.”
“Okay.”
“And, Drew?”
“Yes?”
“From now on, don’t answer any questions from anybody without talking to me first. Nothing. You got that?”
“Okay.”
“You’d better get things straight with Susan.”
“I will. Are you going to be here when they draw the blood?”
“Is your office empty during lunch?”
“Like a cemetery.”
“All right. I’ll come by and make sure they don’t hassle you for pubic hairs or anything like that.”
“Thanks.”
As I hang up and start my car, a tall, big-bellied white man wearing a brown uniform and a gray cowboy hat swaggers by my car and turns into the doorway of the district attorney’s office. He is Billy Byrd, the sheriff of Adams County. As Sheriff Byrd pulls open the D.A.’s door, he glances back at me and gives me a superior smile, as though he already knows exactly what transpired in the office upstairs a few minutes ago. And of course he does.
Welcome to Mississippi politics.
EIGHT (#ulink_f31b182e-80ed-5f4a-a2ca-46da1a34e32b)
Shad’s emissaries arrive at Drew’s medical lab before I do. But they’re not cops, as I expected; they’re sheriff’s deputies. I can tell by the big yellow star on the door of the white cruiser parked outside. This tells me that in the investigation of Drew Elliott, the district attorney has chosen to align himself with the fat man in the cowboy hat who walked by my car a few minutes ago, rather than with the chief of police, who by any standard of common sense should be handling this matter.
Drew practices in a suite of offices maintained by Natchez Doctors’ Hospital, which is located behind the cluster of primary care clinics that feed patients to the main facility. The front door of Drew’s office is unlocked. I enter to find his waiting room dark. There’s light in the corridor beyond it, but the door to the hall is locked. After I bang loudly, a young woman’s face appears behind the receptionist’s window. She waves, then buzzes me into the corridor.
Drew’s lab is right across the hall, a brightly lit rectangle containing centrifuges, microscopes, and expensive blood chemistry machines. Against the far wall, a blue phlebotomist’s chair stands beside a white refrigerator. Drew himself is reclining in the chair, one shirtsleeve rolled up past his elbow.
I step in and find two deputies standing with their backs to the wall opposite Drew. They look uncomfortable. I recognize one of them. Tom Jackson was the top detective at the police department until the sheriff hired him away, which wasn’t hard to do. The county pays cops about five thousand a year more than the city does. Jackson is as tall as Drew, and his handlebar mustache gives him the look of a cowboy in a Frederic Remington painting. He gives me a friendly nod, but his partner—a short, black-haired man with pasty skin—doesn’t even acknowledge me.
“Tom,” says Drew, “this is Penn Cage, a buddy of mine.”
“I know Penn,” Jackson says in a deep voice.
Both deputies must know why I’m here, but Drew seems to want to preserve the illusion of a friendly get-together. He nods past me, and I turn to see the white-uniformed woman who let me in. She’s in her midthirties, with short brown hair and a heart-shaped face distinguished by intelligent brown eyes.
“Penn, this is Susan Salter, my med tech.”
“Nice to meet you, Susan.”
She manages a slight nod; she looks the least comfortable of us all.
“Well,” says Drew, “let’s get this over with.”
Susan takes a long white box from a cabinet and looks at the deputies. “You said four tubes?”
“That’s what our evidence technician told us,” says Tom Jackson. “I guess they want to make sure they don’t have to ask for more blood later.”
Susan removes four vacuum tubes with purple stoppers from the box and lays them flat on one arm of the chair. Then she straps a Velcro tourniquet around Drew’s left biceps and slaps his antecubital vein three times. A vein like a rigid blue pipe stands up at the place where Drew’s arm muscles insert at the inner elbow. Susan pushes the stopper end of one of the tubes into a Vacutainer syringe, then with a single deft motion pricks the needle into Drew’s vein and presses the stopper of the tube down onto the rear of the needle with her thumb.
A fountain of dark blood begins filling the tube, sucked inward by the vacuum inside it. The short deputy looks away.
“I need to use the restroom,” he mumbles.
“Down the hall to your right,” says Drew.
The deputy disappears. As Susan replaces the full tube with an empty one, I realize her hands are shaking. She’s playing out a scene she couldn’t possibly have imagined an hour ago. How much has Drew told her? I wonder.
“Tom?” I say, taking advantage of the other deputy’s absence. “What do you figure the time of death was?”
Jackson looks warily at me. “You don’t know?”
“The D.A. wouldn’t tell me.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “People are acting mighty squirrelly about this case. I’d like to help you out, though.”
“Will you?”
“Well … we know the girl didn’t leave the school until three. The fishermen say they found her about six-twenty.”
“What did the body temperature tell you?”
Jackson glances uncomfortably at the door. “I don’t know about all that. I heard they’re not sure how long she was in the water.”
“Best guess?”
The short deputy walks through the door, looks at Jackson, and smiles. It seems a strange thing to do, but it shuts Jackson up.
When the four tubes lie full of blood on a table and the tourniquet has been removed from Drew’s arm, Tom steps forward with a plastic evidence bag and holds it open. Susan drops the tubes inside. Drew shakes his head, looking more than anything like an innocent man doing his best to humor overzealous cops.
“That it, guys?”
Jackson nods. “That’s it, Doc. Sorry to bother you with this.”
“How long do you think it will take to get the DNA results?” I ask.
“Usually takes a month, at least,” Tom replies. “They’ll probably rush this, considering the situation. But two and a half weeks is the fastest I’ve ever seen. Out of New Orleans, anyway.”
This is exactly what I expected.
Drew stands and offers Tom his hand, and Jackson gives it a strong shake. In all likelihood, Tom is a patient of Drew’s. But when Drew offers his hand to the shorter deputy, the man turns without a word and leaves the lab. Tom shrugs sheepishly, then follows his partner out.
Drew looks at Susan. “I guess I screwed up your lunch hour.”
She forces a smile. “That’s okay. I’m not hungry.”
Drew gives me a pointed glance, and I realize he needs to speak further with Susan in private.
“I’ll give you a call later,” I tell him, starting for the door.
“Wait,” he says. “Have you had lunch yet? I’m starving.”
“I was about to get something.”
“Why don’t we eat together? We ought to talk about a couple of things.”
I don’t want to risk talking about this situation in public. “Tell you what, I’ll grab some food and come back here. We can eat in your office.”
Drew looks dismayed, but then he seems to get it. “Okay. See you in a few minutes. No hamburgers.”
I leave the office and go out to my car, my mind on Susan and her ability to keep quiet. I feel like Thai food, but the only Thai restaurant is downtown, and it would take too long to get there and back to Drew’s office. The only options on this side of town are fast food and Ruby Tuesday’s. I pull into the drive-through lane at Taco Bell and order a couple of zesty chicken bowls, some tacos, and two Mountain Dews, which the restaurant delivers in record time. Then I pull back onto the bypass and get into the turning lane for Jefferson Davis Boulevard, the street that leads to Drew’s office.
While I wait for the light to change, the blare of a police siren pierces my ears. Several vehicles behind me pull onto the grassy median, and then a police car with blue lights flashing screeches to a stop behind me. With nowhere else to go, I shoot across two oncoming lanes of traffic and pull my right wheels onto the curb of Jeff Davis Boulevard. The squad car roars past me.
This kind of thing is pretty unusual in Natchez at midday. Maybe that’s what triggers my intuition, but in any case I hit the accelerator and take off in pursuit of the squad car.
The blue lights swerve into a parking lot on the right side of Jeff Davis Boulevard. Sure enough, it’s Drew’s office. What the hell could have happened so fast? I wonder, skidding into the lot behind the police car.
And then I see.
A muscular man in a blue cap is brandishing a wooden baseball bat at Drew, who stands in a half crouch with his hands held out from his body. Susan Salter is screaming at the man to put down the bat.
Two uniformed cops leap from the squad car. As one draws a can of pepper spray from his belt, I see two other men lying on the ground not far from the man with the bat. One rolls over onto his back, clutching his bloodied face in pain.
“Drop that bat!” yells one of the cops, who’s holding a deadly steel baton called an asp.
The man with the bat jerks his head toward the cop, and at that moment I realize something alarming: the blue cap he’s wearing is a St. Stephen’s Bucks baseball cap, which almost certainly makes him not a man at all, but a boy. From the rear, his size and muscularity gave him the appearance of an adult. But when I read the letters on the back of his jersey—SAYERS—everything clicks. The boy with the bat is Steve Sayers, Kate Townsend’s ex-boyfriend.
“Why are you pointing that at me?” Sayers screams at the cop, his eyes blazing with anger or fear and maybe both. “He’s the one! Look what he did!”
Steve points to the men on the ground, and I recognize one of them as a St. Stephen’s senior. What the hell is going on? As the cop yells again for Sayers to drop the bat, Steve swings the Louisville Slugger in a great roundhouse arc. Drew ducks beneath the whistling wood, and Steve keeps spinning. As the bat comes around a second time, Drew springs forward and snatches it from Steve’s hands.
“Get back, Steve!” he shouts. “I don’t want to fight you!”
But Sayers is beyond rational thought. He lunges for Drew’s throat, his eyes filled with rage. With a lightning motion, Drew thrusts the fat end of the bat into Steve’s midsection. There’s an explosive grunt, and Steve folds over the bat and drops to his knees, sucking for air. In the same moment, a cloud of pepper spray envelops Steve and Drew. Steve screams, and Drew begins clawing at his eyes with his free hand.
“That’s enough!” I yell at the cop. “That’s Dr. Drew Elliott! I’m his attorney. There’s no more danger!”
“Drop the bat, Doctor!” the cop yells at Drew again.
“Drop it, Drew!” I shout.
But Steve Sayers isn’t done. Somehow he gets to his feet and charges Drew like a blind bull. Drew must be blind himself, because he takes the brunt of the charge in his belly. From reflex he pops Steve across the upper back with the bat, and this time the boy drops to the cement and stays there. Drew tosses the bat away and holds up his hands in surrender.
The cop with the pepper spray takes a pair of handcuffs from his belt, rushes up to Drew, and cuffs his hands behind his back.
“I was defending myself!” Drew protests, tears streaming down his face. “Penn, these kids attacked me. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t listen!”
“He’s telling the truth!” shouts Drew’s med tech, stepping forward.
The other cop has cuffed Steve Sayers and is now checking the other boys on the ground.
“What happened here, ma’am?” asks the first cop.
Susan Salter swallows and tries to collect herself. “Dr. Elliott and I were just standing here talking, and these kids drove up and started cursing. They picked the fight. I have no idea why. It was crazy! Dr. Elliott did everything he could to avoid it.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Susan Salter. I’m Dr. Elliott’s medical technologist.”
The cop turns to me. “You’re Dr. Elliott’s lawyer?”
“Yes, I am, Officer. Penn Cage. As you saw, my client was clearly defending himself. But as serious as this looks, it’s still misdemeanor assault, and I very much doubt that my client will press charges. He knows these boys, and I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding. Isn’t that right, Drew?”
Drew looks in my direction with tears streaming down his face. “Uh … that’s right, Officer. We were just horsing around, and it got out of hand.”
“Bullshit!” yells one of the boys on the ground. “That bastard tried to kill us! He broke my fucking nose!”
The cop points at Steve Sayers. “In that kid’s hands, a baseball bat is a deadly weapon. It looked like aggravated assault to me.”
The cop is right. Steve Sayers is at least six-foot-one, and he has the hyperinflated musculature I associate with the use of anabolic steroids. All three boys do, come to think of it, which makes me think of Marko Bakic and his little drug business at St. Stephen’s.
“Aggravated assault is a felony, Officer,” I say evenly. “Steve’s a good kid. There’s no reason to put a felony arrest on his record.”
“Everybody wait right here,” says the cop, who looks young enough to be a rookie. He’s not going to make decisions involving prominent citizens without some advice from a superior. As he goes back to his squad car to use the radio, I turn to one of the seniors on the ground. “What the hell were you guys doing?”
“Kiss my ass!” he barks. “That bastard needs his ass kicked. Fucking cradle-robber. Pervert.”
Then it hits me: They know about Drew and Kate.
I’d like to question Drew, but the second cop is standing too close to him. I try to catch Drew’s eye, but the pepper spray has rendered those organs useless for the time being.
When the young cop returns from his car, he walks right past me, informs Drew that he’s under arrest for aggravated assault, then begins reading him his Miranda rights. The other cop takes his cue and does the same to Steve Sayers.
“What are you guys doing?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster. “Dr. Elliott was clearly defending himself. You heard what he said during the fight.”
“Judge’ll decide that,” says the young cop. “Step back, sir.”
“The most you can arrest him for is simple assault.”
“I’m just doing what the chief told me to do.”
“The chief of police told you to do this?”
“That’s right. You got a problem, take it up with him.”
“I’ll do that,” I reply, but what I’m thinking is, Son of a bitch! This situation is becoming more political by the minute. The police chief should have ordered the patrolman to let Drew go, or at most to arrest him for simple assault, then release him on a recognizance bond. An arrest for aggravated assault can only mean one thing: the chief wants Drew and Steve in his custody. And the only reason I can see for that is the long-running turf war between the police department and the sheriff’s office. In the arena of that conflict, the police chief has been handed a gift from the gods. He can now hold Sheriff Byrd’s two main murder suspects in his jail for at least one night.
The boys cuss and spit at Drew as the cops haul them to their feet. One’s face is a mass of blood below the nose; the other’s left eye is already swelling shut. For a man defending himself against three assailants, Drew did a lot of damage.
A second squad car pulls into the lot. As the police herd their charges into the cars, I promise Drew I’ll meet him at the station. Then I pull Susan Salter into the courtyard of Drew’s office building. She’s hyperventilating now, and her tears are flowing nonstop.
“I don’t understand!” she says in a stunned voice. “This morning everything was fine, and now … everything’s upside down! It doesn’t make any sense. How could they think Dr. Elliott could do anything against the law?”
Is she talking about the fight? I wonder. Or about Kate’s murder? I take hold of Susan’s thin wrists and speak in a reassuring voice. “Listen to me, Susan. I don’t know how much Drew told you about his situation, but I do know this: he trusted you with his life. He told me you’d worked for him nine years, and that he had absolute confidence in you. What you just saw will be the talk of the town by tonight. If you add to that talk, it can only hurt Drew. Do you understand?”
She sucks her upper lip into her mouth as though thinking hard, then nods and wipes her nose. “Don’t worry about me saying anything. I hate gossip. That’s why I quit the hospital. All they do over there is cheat on their spouses and gossip about it afterward. I think they like the talking better than the cheating.”
“Will you tell me what you saw in the parking lot?”
She nods helpfully. “It happened just like I said. We were standing there talking about recombinant DNA, and this big pickup truck screeched to a stop beside us.” She points at a jacked-up orange pickup parked thirty yards away. “There were three guys inside. They looked like high school kids, but big, you know? I think Dr. Elliott knew them, because he waved and spoke to the driver. But then a guy jumped out of the backseat and started screaming at Dr. Elliott.”
“What did he scream?”
“Curse words, mostly.”
“Try to remember exactly.”
Susan has a primitive Baptist’s reluctance to utter profanity. “‘You motherfucker,’ I think he said first. “You sick mother-fucker. It was you. It was you all along.’”
Oh wow. This is only a preview of the community reaction to Drew’s secret private life. “Did Drew say anything back?”
“No. He looked too shocked to speak.”
“Go on.”
“‘You need your ass kicked,’ I think the boy said next, and then he jumped at Dr. Elliott like he was going to hit him. Dr. Elliott called him by name then. He told Steve to calm down and get back in the truck. But the kid just threw up his fists and kept jumping forward like he was going to hit Dr. Elliott. I was kind of freaked out, but not really scared at that point. It was so weird. But then the other two guys jumped out of the truck.”
“Is that when the bat came into it?”
“No. That only happened after Drew knocked the other two guys down.”
“Who threw the first punch?”
“The first kid. Steve.”
“Did Drew fight back?”
“Not at first. He kept trying to calm Steve down. But after Steve hit him five or six times, Dr. Elliott shoved him backward. Steve fell down, and I think that really embarrassed him. He screamed for the other guys to help, and at that point the other two guys jumped Dr. Elliott.”
“What happened then?”
Susan shakes her head as though in wonder. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it happened so fast. It was like Dr. Elliott knew how to fight and they didn’t. They were really mad, and they were screaming and throwing punches everywhere, but it looked sort of like my husband wrestling with my ten-year-old son. The second it got serious, it was like, over.”
“How did the baseball bat come into it?”
“Steve went down first, but while Dr. Elliott was handling the other two, Steve grabbed the bat from the truck.” Susan shakes her head as if reliving the fight. “It was scary. I’ve never seen Dr. Elliott like that. I saw him once at the hospital picnic. He played softball with his shirt off, and he was like, ripped, you know?”
“I know. I grew up with him.”
“But he wasn’t that competitive, not like the other guys. He was just out there for fun. But today … Dr. Elliott did everything he could to stop that fight, but once he knew it was going to happen, he just switched on. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I can understand Susan’s awe. Steve Sayers and his buddies have been pumping iron seriously for two or three years. But their steroid-plumped muscles are no match for the speed and strength that genetics bestowed upon Drew Elliott at birth. And their teenage anger couldn’t begin to compare with the deadly resolve of a man who sensed he was fighting for his life.
“But in your mind, it was the other guys’ fault?” I ask.
“Oh, totally. Absolutely. They wanted a piece of Dr. Elliott, and they pushed him until they got it. Dear Lord.”
“All right, Susan. Will you be okay if I go on to the station now?”
She nods uncertainly. “I think so. Thanks for staying with me.”
“Glad to do it. And you’re not going to talk to anybody about this? Other than the police?”
“No, I understand.” She looks suddenly upset again. “Mr. Cage, is Drew going to be all right?”
The look in Susan Salter’s eyes tells me she’s more than half in love with her boss, but I don’t even want to go there. I nod at her as though any other outcome would be impossible. “You take care, okay?”
“I will.”
As I hurry back to my Saab, one thought fills my head: How did Steve Sayers find out that Drew was involved with Kate? But once in the car, another, more frightening thought takes its place: Who else knows about it?
NINE (#ulink_d80e0d1a-2408-5de1-8f48-2d251bd7b682)
Natchez police headquarters is a one-story building sandwiched between a Pizza Hut and an abandoned strip mall on the north side of town. The PD used to be downtown, but that more stately building was razed to make room for a modern juvenile justice center. By the time I arrive at the station, both Drew and Steve Sayers have been processed and taken to detention cells in the rear of the building. The other two high school boys were booked on simple assault and now await their parents in holding cells; a six-hundred-dollar bond will free them.
I demand a meeting with the chief of police, and almost immediately I’m escorted to his office. Chief Don Logan sits waiting for me behind his desk. He’s a thin man in his forties who looks more like an engineer than a policeman. His spartan office reflects his reputation as a managerial type. Chief Logan has family photos on his desk, and more computer manuals than law enforcement texts on his bookshelves. He’s known for being careful about procedure, so it’s all the more surprising that he’s made the political move of arresting Drew.
“Hello, Chief Logan,” I say equably.
He regards me coolly over a steaming cup of coffee. “In my seven years as chief,” he says, “I’ve never seen anything like the furor over this situation. I understand the emotional side, of course. A pretty young girl, so much potential. A prominent physician suddenly associated with her murder. But people are losing their perspective over this thing. There’s a mob mentality developing out there. Nobody seems to want to let matters take their normal course. To let the system work.”
“Including the district attorney?” I prompt.
Chief Logan raises one eyebrow, but he doesn’t take the bait. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve charged your client with aggravated assault.”
“You read my mind, Chief.”
“I’m going to lay my cards on the table, Penn. We have a troubled history with the sheriff’s department. You know all about it, I’m sure. The city of Natchez is under the jurisdiction of the police department, but technically, the sheriff has jurisdiction over the entire county, which includes the city. In general, we have a working agreement whereby we work crimes inside the city limits and the sheriff takes the county.”
“But?”
Logan takes a sip of coffee. “But Billy Byrd is a political animal. And when a high-profile case comes along, the sheriff believes it’s his God-given right to storm in and take over the investigation. Billy ran roughshod over the last police chief, and he’s tried to do the same to me on occasion. He’s actually had his deputies try to arrest one of my officers at a couple of crime scenes. They almost came to blows. I’ve requested several legal opinions from the attorney general’s office in Jackson, but nothing they send us is ever definitive enough.”
“I understand your problem. I dealt with some of the same issues in Houston.”
Chief Logan nods as though encouraged. “I’m glad you do. Because today I’m drawing the line. Kate Townsend’s body was discovered just within the boundary of the city, which alone makes it our case. But she almost certainly died farther upstream in that creek, which removes any doubt whatever about jurisdiction.”
Sheriff Byrd won’t see it that way. “You’re preaching to the choir, Chief. Tell me about the assault charge.”
“Since that’s a felony charge, Dr. Elliott and the Sayers boy will have to spend the night in this building. I’ll have a chance to talk to them without any interference from Sheriff Byrd. Now, as Dr. Elliott’s lawyer, you can stop me if you want to. But know this: my sole interest is in solving Kate Townsend’s murder. I’m not rail-roading anybody to judgment in order to grab some headlines, here or anywhere else.”
This is good news indeed.
“If Dr. Elliott’s guilty,” Logan goes on, “then he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But if he’s not, the man deserves some protection.” The chief shakes his head. “Drew’s reputation will be blown to hell by suppertime tonight, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing against him but some anonymous phone calls and a fistfight.”
“Which he didn’t start,” I point out.
The chief waves his hand as though shooing away a fly. “The judge will throw out the assault charge tomorrow morning. The bottom line is, I think Dr. Elliot’s safer in my jail than anywhere else in this town tonight.”
I sit back in my chair and study the chief. He’s the first rational man I’ve spoken to in some time. “I hear you loud and clear.”
“I don’t have isolation cells here,” he says, “but I do have some eight-man units that are empty. I’ve put Drew in one and the Sayers boy in the other. They’ll be safe and relatively comfortable until tomorrow.”
I try to suppress a smile at the thought of Shad Johnson learning about this development. “Have you spoken to the D.A. about this assault arrest?”
Chief Logan looks out his solitary window and gives a long-suffering sigh. “I try very hard to get along with the district attorney. But I have a feeling Mr. Johnson isn’t going to like this one bit.” He looks back at me, his dark eyes hard with conviction. “You know what? Tough titty. This ain’t right, and I ain’t going along with it. There’s not a damn thing Mr. Johnson can do about this arrest before tomorrow, unless he wants to call a judge and have Dr. Elliott released on the strength of the D.A.’s word. And given Mr. Johnson’s main political support base, I don’t think he’ll want to do that.”
I stand and shake hands with Logan. “I’m quite satisfied that procedure has been followed, Chief. Do you have any problem with me speaking to my client before I go?”
“I’ll have him brought to the visitors’ room.”
On my way out, I stop and turn back. “Do you know Kate’s time of death yet?”
Logan watches me in silence for a few moments. Then he says, “From the body temperature—which they did take when the fishermen got her to the ER—the M.E. figures she died between three and five-thirty p.m.”
“That’s pretty exact.”
Logan nods. “They know she left the school alive at two fifty-five, and she hadn’t cooled much by seven-thirty, when they took the temp. The M.E. says he feels pretty confident about that window.”
“Does he have any idea how long she was in the water?”
“It’s hard to say, given how quickly everything happened. If he did know that, we might be able to figure out how far upstream she died. But that creek moves very fast in flood. She wouldn’t have to be in it long to be swept miles downstream. And remember, Kate was found at six-twenty. No matter what the M.E. says, a maximum of only three hours and twenty minutes could have passed after death, even if someone strangled her the minute she walked out of St. Stephen’s. I don’t think the body temperature is going to tell us what we want to know, Penn.”
“Okay. So as of now, suspects need alibis from three p.m. to five-thirty.”
“Yep.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
He smiles. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
Five minutes later, Drew is escorted into the tiny visitors’ cubicle and seated behind a glass partition with a metal screen in it. He looks pale and drawn, and his eyes have the dull sheen I associate with lifers in the Walls unit at Huntsville, Texas, where I used to spend quite a bit of time. Has thirty minutes in a cell done this to one of the toughest friends I ever had?
“When am I getting out, Penn?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
I expect anger, but Drew hardly reacts. Maybe his listlessness is a symptom of grief. Maybe the attack by the St. Stephen’s teenagers has punctured his illusions about his relationship with Kate—or maybe his image of himself as a good man.
“Chief Logan’s done you a big favor,” I explain. “He’s isolated you from Sheriff Byrd, who would love to use you to grab some headlines. He’s also put you at more of a remove from Shad Johnson, who wants to use you as a stepping-stone to higher office. Both men would like to interrogate you at their leisure, but I doubt either one will be bothering you in here.”
“You never gave me the details of Kate’s autopsy,” Drew says, his eyes boring into mine.
“I gave you the main points. The rest is medical jargon.”
His eyes don’t waver. “Don’t bullshit me. Don’t try to spare me.”
I focus on some dried pink bubblegum on the glass between us. “The pathologist thinks she was raped.”
“Based on?”
“Genital trauma.”
Drew looks confused by this. “Go on.”
“They found semen from two different men inside her body.”
He closes his eyes like a man fighting bone-deep pain. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I wanted you sane when the deputies came to collect your blood.”
He shakes his head as though I’ve betrayed him.
“Drew, I have to ask you this. Is there any chance that Kate was having consensual sex with someone else besides you?”
A slow blink. Then an odd smile. “You still don’t get it, do you? Kate loved me. She loved me absolutely. If you’d told me earlier that they found two different semen samples inside her, I could have told you right away that she’d been raped.”
“Well … I wish there were some way to prove absolute love. Because I think the D.A. is going to paint you as a jealous older man who went crazy when he found out his teenage mistress was sharing her natural bounty with someone else.”
Drew’s mouth wrinkles with disgust. “I don’t care what he does.”
“You’d better start. You’d better give the whole situation some serious thought tonight. Try to conjure up some idea of who might have wanted to rape or kill Kate. Because the fact that she was pregnant means that you could be charged with double homicide.”
Drew’s blue eyes are impenetrable to me. After a time, he says, “What happens tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I’ll have the assault charge against you dismissed. You don’t want to charge Steve Sayers for attacking you.”
“No.”
“All right—”
“Fuck!” Drew exclaims, his face suddenly flushed. “What about Tim? He’s going to see the newspaper. Kids are going to tell him his dad’s in jail!”
I wish there was something I could do to ease Drew’s mind about his son, but there’s not. “Tim’s going to have a bad time throughout this thing,” I say evenly. “You have to accept that. I’ll get you out as early as I can tomorrow, and you can talk to him yourself.”
Drew shakes his head, his eyes flicking back and forth in helpless rage.
“Something else you’d better get used to,” I add. “Steve Sayers and his buddies are a pretty typical example of how the people in this community are going to feel about you for a while.”
Drew’s eyes fix upon me. “All I care about is Tim. You get me out so I can help him understand this. After that, I’ll find out who killed Kate.”
There’s an undertone in Drew’s voice that sends a tingle along my forearms. It’s the emotionless timbre of the man who put down three muscle-bound jocks without breaking a sweat. He said, “After that, I’ll find out who killed Kate,” the same way he might say, “After dinner, I’ll take out the garbage.”
I nod and stand in the little cubicle. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Drew leaves the visiting room without a word.
By the time I pick up Annie from school, I’ve taken several cell calls, and my phone is still ringing. Most of the calls have been from school parents, pumping me for information about Drew and Kate. But a few were more serious, and more disturbing.
One was from Holden Smith, the president of the St. Stephen’s school board. Holden had heard a distorted version of the afternoon’s fight from Steve Sayers’s father, and he was livid at Drew. About the only fact he had right was that Steve and Drew were being held in jail on felony assault charges. I did my best to explain that Drew wasn’t at fault, but Holden didn’t buy my argument.
“That’s not even the point,” he said. “We’ve got a member of the school board brawling with three of our students! That’s simply unacceptable. Drew should know better than to let something like that happen.”
“I told you he tried to stop it, Holden. The fight couldn’t have been avoided.”
“Okay, okay, but look what the fight was about. Everybody in town knows Drew was having sex with Kate Townsend, and that he might even have killed her. Do you—”
“Nobody knows that!” I snapped. “That’s pure speculation!”
“So what! Do you realize what that kind of rumor will do to St. Stephen’s? To our public image? Do you know what kind of lawsuits we’re going to get over this?”
“What are you telling me, Holden?”
A brief silence. “We want Drew off the board.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Everybody!”
“You want him to resign?”
“If he doesn’t, we’ll vote him off tonight in a special session. We have no choice.”
“That’s bullshit. The board could give Drew its qualified support, based on his years of dedication to the school. Did that thought enter anyone’s head?”
“Don’t even pretend that’s an option,” Holden said in a dismissive voice. “You know how this town works. And that brings up another issue. What about you, Penn? Are you Drew’s lawyer now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, if you are, you’re not going to be able to remain on the board, either.”
Holden was right about that. As a board member, I’ll be named in any civil suit arising out of the present situation. I can’t remain on the board and also defend Drew in a civil or criminal proceeding. Of course, resigning would cut off my flow of inside information, but I wasn’t about to align myself with gutless Holden Smith.
“Drew and I will both resign,” I said with disgust. “You’ll have our letters in the morning.”
“We’d prefer to have Drew’s tonight.”
I hung up on him.
While I drove along in a funk, Caitlin called me from Boston. Apparently, a reporter for the Natchez Examiner had called her and delivered a summation of the rumors spreading across town. Caitlin was stunned that I was being mentioned as Drew Elliot’s lawyer. She knows Drew, but only superficially, and she has no special reason to believe he’s innocent of the crimes being attributed to him.
“Exactly when were you going to tell me you were representing Drew?” she asked. “Or were you going to tell me at all?”
“I’m not sure I’m going to represent him.”
“I thought you didn’t practice anymore.”
“Drew is a lifelong friend, and he needs help. Right now, I’m acting primarily as a friend.” This wasn’t strictly true, but I’ve been deceiving myself as well as Caitlin about that. “When I see how this develops, I’ll make a decision about the legal side of things.”
“Penn, why didn’t you tell me about all this last night?”
Caitlin sounded hurt, but she hasn’t been very communicative to me about her recent situation either. “I couldn’t get you on the phone last night. You were at your party.”
“You could have called me this morning.”
“Yes, but you already had reporters working the story. You may even end up working it yourself.”
“We’ve been in that situation before, and we handled it fine.”
“But not without tension.”
A little laugh. “Tension’s okay. We can live with tension. It’s deception we can’t live with.”
“I agree.”
More silence. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just agreed with you.”
“You had a tone.”
“No tone. Look, things are breaking fast on this. I’ll call you tonight and give you a better idea of where I stand, okay?”
Her sigh told me she was far from happy with this arrangement. “Did Drew kill her, Penn? I’m asking as your lover, not a journalist.”
“You know I can’t answer that. Even if I knew the answer.”
“But he was involved with her?”
“You won’t report my answer?”
“No.”
“Yes. He was in love with her. But I don’t think he killed her.”
“Classic midlife crisis?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Drew says he and Ellen have been living a charade for ten years. He was starved for affection, and he finally found exactly what he was missing. And now here we are.”
“What about the two semen samples—”
“No more,” I cut in. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“I love you,” Caitlin said after an awkward silence.
“You too.”
When Annie gets into the car, I set my phone on silent. I also keep quiet about the fact that I’ve spoken to Caitlin. Annie would want to call her back immediately, and I don’t want to deal with that right now. Annie says she needs to go to Walgreen’s for some school supplies, so we make a run to the drugstore, one of my few sources in town for iced green tea. By the time we get home, my phone shows eight missed calls. While I scroll through the list, an incoming call pops up. It’s from Sonny Cross, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Sonny has two young boys at St. Stephen’s, and through me, he’s spoken to the board a few times about Marko Bakic, our Croatian exchange student. Sonny suspects that Marko has gotten involved in the local drug trade, but so far he’s been unable to prove it.
“Sonny,” I say. “What’s up?”
“I’m calling to give you a heads-up,” Cross says in his laid-back, urban-cowboy voice.
“Marko Bakic again?”
“Among other things. Last night there was a big party out at Lake St. John. A rave. There was a lot of X there, and a lot of St. Stephen’s kids, too.”
Lake St. John is a horseshoe lake about thirty miles up the Mississippi River, on the Louisiana side. It’s thronged with Natchez natives in the summer, but this time of year, most of the lake houses are deserted.
“Was it only St. Stephen’s kids?”
“No, thank God. The Catholic school and the Baptist boys were well represented.”
“Did you bust the party?”
“No. We didn’t find out about it until it was over. Whoever organized it did just what they do in the cities. The kids get word over their cell phones to go to such and such a place. When they get there, they find a sheet of paper taped to a pole with a coded message, a rhyme only the kids will understand. After they get led around to four or five different spots, they know where the rave is, and they know whether they’re being followed or not.”
“I know the routine.”
“Word is, these raves have been going on for a couple of months now. Different location every time. And I’m hearing our boy Marko is behind them.”
“Great.”
“Yeah. You know, most of the X in Mississippi gets brought up from the Gulf Coast. The Asian gangs down there control the trade. And Marko’s been down to Gulfport and Biloxi a couple of times that I know about. I wanted you to know we’re going to be stepping up surveillance on him.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I just want to try to minimize the damage to St. Stephen’s if we have to take Marko down. You know, once you get X into a community, you usually get LSD, too. It tends to be cooked and sold by the same crews. One of my sources said some kids may have been doing acid last night at the lake party. And check this, Marko bought out a roadside fireworks stand and put on a psychedelic show at the end of the night. Sailed out on a party barge and let off five grand worth of rockets.”
“Sorry I missed it. But where does a poor exchange student get the money to do that?”
“That’s no mystery, bubba. It’s proving it that’s the bitch.”
“Hey, do you know where Marko was yesterday between three and five-thirty?”
Sonny Cross laughs darkly. “Already thought of that, my man. Checked it out, too. Marko was with Coach Anders from three until nearly six.”
“At the school?”
“No, at Anders’s house. Wade has just about wangled the kid a football scholarship at Delta State. Just what the world needs, right? One more soccer-style kicker. Anyway, I called Wade, and he told me he worked the phone for the kid about an hour. Marko was right there with him, doing homework. Then Wade tried to help Marko with his chemistry.” Cross laughs again. “The blind leading the blind. Anyway, no luck there.”
“Thanks, Sonny. I really appreciate the information.”
“Sometimes I think you’re the only one. You ask me, some of those people on the board have their heads most of the way up their asses.”
“To be honest with you, I’m resigning from the board tomorrow. But I’ll do all I can to help with the Marko situation.”
Silence. “Can you tell me why you’re resigning?”
“It’s the Drew Elliott thing.”
“Huh. I don’t see why you’d have to resign because of that. But you know more about it than I do. I hate to see you go, man.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”
“You ask me, Drew Elliott is a stand-up guy. Like the old-time docs. He actually gives a shit how you’re doing.”
“I think you’re right. Look, I hate to go, but—”
“One last thing, Penn. That Townsend girl wasn’t the all-American, lily-white virgin some people are making her out to be.”
Suddenly my haste is gone. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve done a lot of surveillance in this town. And I’ve seen Kate Townsend in some places good girls just don’t go, if you get my drift.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“She hung with some pretty bad company sometimes. And she’s no stranger to drugs.”
“Weed? Or worse?”
“Worse, I think.”
“This might be really important, Sonny. Important to Drew. Where exactly have you seen Kate?”
“Brightside Manor.”
This is the last thing I expected to hear. The Brightside Manor Apartments are a dilapidated group of buildings on the north side of town, the closest thing to a slum inside the city limits. Its occupants are poor and black, and the complex is named frequently in the newspaper as the site of crimes from domestic abuse to shootings. “What the hell was Kate Townsend doing there?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ve spotted her there several times over the last few months. I’ve even got videotape of her going in and out. About once a month, now that I think about it.”
“You think she was buying drugs?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t going to bust her to find out, being who she was. But the thing is, girls like Kate Townsend get their drugs from friends, not dealers. And looking like she did, Kate wouldn’t have to buy drugs at all, you know?”
“I’m listening, Sonny.”
“Well, Brightside Manor is where Cyrus White lives.”
“Who’s that?”
“The top drug dealer in the city of Natchez. And it’s Cyrus’s building that I’ve seen Kate go in and out of.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why I say she wasn’t buying weed. If Kate Townsend was visiting Cyrus White to get drugs, she was there for some heavy shit. Powder cocaine, or maybe even heroin.”
Every new sentence out of Cross’s mouth freaks me out more. “Do we have heroin in Natchez?”
“Brother, every town has every drug. You just have to know where to look.”
“Wonderful. Do you know anything else about Kate?”
“No. But I’ve got a theory, if you want to wrap your mind around something scary.”
“I’m listening.”
“She’s wasn’t going there to buy anything. She was there to see Cyrus.”
“You mean …”
“That’s what I mean. Cyrus has a real taste for white girls. A well-documented taste.”
Kate Townsend doing a drug dealer? “That sounds too crazy, Sonny.”
“Cyrus ain’t your average drug dealer. In past years, most Natchez dealers were punks barely out of their teens. Cyrus is thirty-four and smart as a whip. By the time I heard he was in business, all his competition had been wiped out. Ruthlessly. But I couldn’t pin a thing on him.”
Cyrus is thirty-four … Drew is forty. Did Kate have a thing for older men in general?
“Cyrus is a veteran of Desert Storm, if you can believe it,” Sonny continues. “He was in the air force. I’ve been trying to bust him for over a year, but nothing sticks. He’s the Teflon nigger.”
Sonny’s use of the N-word is completely unself-conscious. He belongs to that group of Southerners who modify their vocabulary by the company they’re in. Around whites he knows—and probably suspects he’s busting—Sonny says “nigger” without even a shading of caution. Around strangers, he’s as politically correct as the next guy. But there’s no question how he really sees the most frequent targets of his profession. There’s also no question that his prejudice is part of what makes African-Americans his primary targets, rather than the Kate Townsends of the world. But that prejudice isn’t unique to redneck sheriff’s detectives in Mississippi. It thrives in the blood of the American judicial system, all the way up to Washington.
“Does Sheriff Byrd know about Kate’s connection to Cyrus?” I ask.
The narcotics agent doesn’t answer for some time. Then he says, “It’s not that I don’t trust the sheriff, Penn. I just don’t like him messing around in my cases until it’s time to move on something. He can be a disruptive influence.”
“I hear you, Sonny. I appreciate you telling me all this. Anything else you get on Kate, please let me know.”
“Will do. And I’ll do anything I can to help out Dr. Elliott.”
I hang up, my mind spinning with the new information. How well did Drew really know Kate? Did he see her as an all-American, lily-white virgin, as Sonny described her? Or did he know about her shadow side? If not, that hidden part of her life might hold the key to the second semen sample found in her corpse, and thus the key to freeing Drew.
It’s that question that occupies me as I sit at my dining room table with Annie in the fading light of dusk. Annie is doing her homework, and now and then she throws a question at me, more out of boredom than from needing help. I’m supposedly working on my new novel, but what I’m really doing is trying to tease out the secret threads of Drew’s and Kate’s lives. My new awareness of Cyrus White has completely changed my perspective on Drew’s situation.
One thing that keeps coming back to me is Drew’s assertion that the blackmailer who called him that first night and told him to leave the money on the football field “sounded like a black kid.” I doubt that a thirty-four-year-old war veteran would sound like a kid, but sometimes people’s voices surprise you. Heavyweight champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson sounds like a five-year-old boy when he speaks. But the more likely answer is that a big-time drug dealer like Cyrus White probably has dozens of kids working for him. And that’s who he’d get to make a call like that.
It wasn’t just money they wanted, I recall with sudden clarity. The blackmailers wanted drugs from Drew, as well. But does that point toward Cyrus White? Why would a drug dealer ask for drugs? As I ponder this question, my front doorbell chimes. I’m not expecting anyone, but given all that’s happened today, there’s no telling who it might be.
When I open the door, I find the last person I would have expected. Jenny Townsend, Kate’s mother. Jenny is tall and clear-eyed like Kate, and she’s holding a worn Jimmy Choo shoe box in front of her.
“Hello, Penn,” she says in a controlled voice.
“Jenny,” I say awkwardly. “Will you come in?”
She takes a deep breath and seems to gather herself before answering. “No, thank you. I saw Annie through the window. I know you’re busy.”
“It’s all right. Really.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think I could take it. I used to help Kate with her homework just like that, after her father left.”
What does one say at these moments? There’s nothing appropriate, so I remain silent. Jenny actually looks grateful that I’m not forcing her to make small talk.
“I’ve heard a lot of rumors today,” she says with obvious difficulty. “Some were pretty terrible. One was that you’re representing Drew Elliott.”
So, that’s what this visit is about. “Drew is an old friend, Jenny. You know that. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through, but I feel obligated to try to help Drew through this.”
“Oh, you misunderstood me,” she says. “I didn’t mean that you representing Drew was terrible. In fact, I was glad to hear that. That’s why I brought you this.” She gestures with the box but doesn’t quite offer it to me.
“What is that?”
“Kate’s things. Her private things. I haven’t looked at all of them. I’m not sure I could bear it, and it wasn’t meant for my eyes anyway.” Jenny brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, then flinches at some inner pain. “Katie kept this hidden in the attic. There’s a diary, some souvenirs, and some computer disks. I think that’s where she kept her pictures of Drew. I think some of them are probably … intimate pictures.”
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Greg Iles
The second thriller in the New York Times No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a man who must face the dark heart of the Deep South – and question everything he believes in…One dead girl. And a town full of secrets…Rape and murder aren’t new to the Deep South, but when the body of a popular high school girl is found dumped in the local river, the whole town of Natchez, Mississippi, is shocked.Penn Cage no longer practises law, but when his best friend Drew is accused of the murder and asks for help, Penn must face the hardest questions of his life:Can he defend Drew against the town, the police and overwhelming evidence?Or could it be true that his friend is a brutal killer who has deceived Penn and everyone else?
GREG ILES
Turning Angel
Copyright (#ulink_e25260bf-31c3-5f10-a24b-aa5854fa87bb)
Harper
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Greg Iles 2005
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Greg Iles asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007546541
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007546657
Version 2018-07-30
Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature’s power.
Camille Paglia
Table of Contents
Cover (#u2f95e884-2927-5a06-81db-eb0907cf2904)
Title Page (#ud2f0ed0e-9e58-59ba-8222-3adf971c1c1e)
Copyright (#ufbda9eba-ee86-5c30-8c17-726e3dd50868)
Epigraph (#ud2652a49-e068-5539-ad03-0c376e4105a8)
Prologue (#u83751917-9ab2-5ddc-969c-99c684ae2665)
Chapter One (#u565c52aa-82e9-5c34-9611-4b23c5ed5ec5)
Chapter Two (#u9ea1ffc3-caac-523f-9237-47005aeb2b81)
Chapter Three (#ucc94b7ad-4882-54d5-88a8-e846e30ce01a)
Chapter Four (#u4c45b088-dac2-5479-bb2e-e4dd7a5326bb)
Chapter Five (#u2a30202e-a1c0-5fd9-bb04-ef0e16fa7f72)
Chapter Six (#u6f5b5477-6c23-51d7-b67b-1d5a821a349a)
Chapter Seven (#u6651bfa1-04a9-5d22-96e0-84c08b0f9ba9)
Chapter Eight (#u00a56d98-c25f-5df9-81f1-6f7145e0939b)
Chapter Nine (#ue860ca68-7d92-56a3-89e3-55abdb9ad08b)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Greg Iles (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_38b4b297-ed37-5f95-98f9-dd9c75f429dc)
The rain kept falling, swelling the creek until it lifted the girl into its muddy flood. She swept down through the town, unseen by anyone as she passed the grassy mounds where three hundred years ago Indians worshipped the sun. She bobbed in the current beneath the Highway 61 bridge, naked and unbloodied, not yet gray, limp as a sleeping child. She rolled with the creek, which wound through the woods toward the paper mill and crashed into the Mississippi River in a maelstrom of brown waves. The girl made this journey alone and unknowing, but soon she would whip the town into another kind of maelstrom, one that would make the river seem placid by comparison.
She never meant to cause trouble. She was a quiet girl, brilliant and full of life. When she laughed, others laughed with her. When she cried, she hid her tears. She was blessed with many gifts and took none for granted. At seventeen, she had already brought honor to the town. No one would have predicted this end.
But then no one really knew her.
Only me.
ONE (#ulink_323a4282-acdb-5e05-aaef-d6889b082583)
Some stories must wait to be told.
Any writer worth his salt knows this. Sometimes you wait for events to percolate in your subconscious until a deeper truth emerges; other times you’re simply waiting for the principals to die. Sometimes it’s both.
This story is like that.
A man walks the straight and narrow all his life; he follows the rules, stays within the lines; then one day he makes a misstep. He crosses a line and sets in motion a chain of events that will take from him everything he has and damn him forever in the eyes of those he loves.
We all sense that invisible line of demarcation, like an unspoken challenge hanging in the air. And there is some wild thing in our natures that makes us want to cross it, that compels us with the silent insistence of evolutionary imperative to risk all for a glinting shadow. Most of us suppress that urge. Fear stops us more often than wisdom, as in most things. But some of us take that step. And in the taking, we start down a path from which it is difficult and sometimes impossible to return.
Dr. Andrew Elliott is such a man.
I have known Drew since he was three years old, long before he was a Rhodes scholar, before he went to medical school, before he returned to our hometown of twenty thousand souls to practice internal medicine. And our bond runs deeper than that of most childhood friends. When I was fourteen, eleven-year-old Drew Elliott saved my life and almost lost his own in the process. We remained close friends until he graduated from medical school, and then for a long time—fifteen years, I guess—I saw him hardly at all. Much of that time I spent convicting murderers as an assistant district attorney in Houston, Texas. The rest I spent writing novels based on extraordinary cases from my career, which gave me a second life and time to spend with my family.
Drew and I renewed our friendship five years ago, after my wife died and I returned to Natchez with my young daughter to try to piece my life back together. The early weeks of my return were swallowed by a whirlwind of a murder case, but as the notoriety faded, Drew was the first old friend to seek me out and make an effort to bring me into the community. He put me on the school board of our alma mater, got me into the country club, talked me into sponsoring a hot air balloon and a Metropolitan opera singer during Natchez’s annual festivals. He worked hard at bringing this widower back to life, and with much help from Caitlin Masters, my lover for the past few years, he succeeded.
All that seems a distant memory now.
Yesterday Drew Elliott was a respected pillar of the community, revered by many, held up as a role model by all; today he is scorned by those who venerated him, and his life hangs in the balance. Drew was our golden boy, a paragon of everything small-town America holds to be noble, and by unwritten law the town will crucify him with a hatred equal to their betrayed love.
How did Drew transform himself from hero into monster? He reached out for love, and in the reaching pulled a whole town down on top of him. Last night his legend was intact. He was sitting beside me at a table in the boardroom of St. Stephen’s Preparatory School, still handsome at forty, dark-haired, and athletic—he played football for Vanderbilt—a little gray at the temples but radiating the commanding presence of a doctor in his prime. I see this moment as clearly as any in my life, because it’s the instant before revelation, that frozen moment in which the old world sits balanced on the edge of destruction, like a china cup teetering on the edge of a table. In a moment it will shatter into irrecoverable fragments, but for an instant it remains intact, and salvation seems possible.
The boardroom windows are dark, and the silver rain that’s fallen all day is blowing horizontally now, slapping the windows with an icy rattle. We’ve crowded eleven people around the Brazilian rosewood table—six men, five women—and the air is close in the room. Drew’s clear eyes are intent on Holden Smith, the overdressed president of the St. Stephen’s school board, as we discuss the purchase of new computers for the junior high school. Like Holden and several other board members, Drew and I graduated from St. Stephen’s roughly two decades ago, and our children attend it today. We’re part of a wave of alumni who stepped in during the city’s recent economic decline to try to rebuild the school that gave us our remarkable educations. Unlike most Mississippi private schools, which sprang up in response to forced integration in 1968, St. Stephen’s was founded as a parochial school in 1946. It did not admit its first African-American student until 1982, but the willingness was there years before that. High tuition and anxiety about being the only black child in an all-white school probably held off that landmark event for a few years. Now twenty-one black kids attend the secular St. Stephen’s, and there would be more but for the cost. Not many black families in Natchez can afford to pay five thousand dollars a year per child for education when the public school is free. Few white families can either, when you get down to it, and fewer as the years pass. Therein lies the board’s eternal challenge: funding.
At this moment Holden Smith is evangelizing for Apple computers, though the rest of the school’s network runs comfortably on cheaper IBM clones. If he ever pauses for breath, I plan to tell Holden that while I use an Apple Powerbook myself, we have to be practical on matters of cost. But before I can, the school’s secretary opens the door and raises her hand in a limp sort of wave. Her face is so pale that I fear she might be having a heart attack.
Holden gives her an annoyed look. “What do you need, Theresa? We’ve got another half hour, at least.”
Like most employees of St. Stephen’s, Theresa Cook is also a school parent. “I just heard something terrible,” she says, her voice cracking. “Kate Townsend is in the emergency room at St. Catherine’s Hospital. They said … she’s dead. Drowned. Kate Townsend. Can that be right?”
Holden Smith’s thin lips twist in a grimace of a smile as he tries to convince himself that this is some sort of sick prank. Kate Townsend is the star of the senior class: valedictorian, state champion in both tennis and swimming, full scholarship to Harvard next fall. She’s literally a poster child for St. Stephen’s. We even used her in a TV commercial for the school.
“No,” Holden says finally. “No way. I saw Kate on the tennis court at two this afternoon.”
I look at my watch. It’s nearly eight now.
Holden opens his mouth again but no sound emerges. As I glance at the faces around the table, I realize that a strange yet familiar numbness has gripped us all, the numbness that comes when you hear that a neighbor’s child has been shot in a predawn hunting accident, or died in a car crash on homecoming night. It occurs to me that it’s early April, and though the first breath of spring has touched the air, it’s still too cold to swim, even in Mississippi. If a high school senior drowned today, a freak accident seems the only explanation. An indoor pool, maybe? Only I can’t think of anyone who owns one.
“Exactly what did you hear and when, Theresa?” Holden asks. As if details might mitigate the horror of what is upon us.
“Ann Geter called my house from the hospital.” Ann Geter is an ER nurse at St. Catherine’s Hospital, and another St. Stephen’s parent. Because the school has only five hundred students, everyone literally knows everyone else. “My husband told Ann I was still up here for the meeting. She called and told me that some fishermen found Kate wedged in the fork of a tree near where St. Catherine’s Creek washes into the Mississippi River. They thought she might be alive, so they put her in their boat and carried her to the hospital. She was naked from the waist down, Ann said.”
Theresa says “nekkid,” but her word has the intended effect. Shock blanks the faces around the table as everyone begins to absorb the idea that this may not be a conventional accident. “Kate was bruised up pretty bad, Ann said. Like she’d been hit with something.”
“Jesus Lord,” whispers Clara Jenkins, from my left. “This can’t be true. It must be somebody else.”
Theresa’s bottom lip begins to quiver. The secretary has always been close to the older students, especially the girls. “Ann said Kate had a tattoo on her thigh. I didn’t know about that, but I guess her mama did. Jenny Townsend identified her body just a couple of minutes ago.”
Down the table a woman sobs, and a shiver of empathy goes through me, like liquid nitrogen in my blood. Even though my daughter is only nine, I’ve nearly lost her twice, and I’ve had my share of nightmares about what Jenny Townsend just endured.
“God in heaven.” Holden Smith gets to his feet, looking braced for physical combat. “I’d better get over to the hospital. Is Jenny still over there?”
“I imagine so,” Theresa murmurs. “I just can’t believe it. Anybody in the world you could have said, and I’d have believed it before Kate.”
“Goddamn it,” snaps Bill Sims, a local geologist. “It’s just not fair.”
“I know,” Theresa agrees, as if fairness has anything to do with who is taken young and who survives to ninety-five. But then I realize she has a point. The Townsends lost a child to leukemia several years ago, before I moved back to town. I heard that was what broke up their marriage.
Holden takes a cell phone from his coat pocket and dials a number. He’s probably calling his wife. The other board members sit quietly, their thoughts on their own children, no doubt. How many of them have silently thanked God for the good fortune of not being Jenny Townsend tonight?
A cell phone chirps under the table. Drew Elliott lifts his and says, “Dr. Elliott.” He listens for a while, all eyes on him. Then he tenses like a man absorbing news of a family tragedy. “That’s right,” he says. “I’m the family doctor, but this is a coroner’s case now. I’ll come down and speak to the family. Their home? All right. Thanks.”
Drew hangs up and looks at the ring of expectant faces, his own white with shock. “It’s not a mistake. Kate’s dead. She was dead before she reached the ER. Jenny Townsend is on her way home.” Drew glances at me. “Your father’s driving her, Penn. Tom was seeing a patient when they brought Kate in. Some family and friends are going over there. The father’s in England, of course, but he’s being notified.”
Kate’s father, a British citizen, has lived in England for the past five years.
A woman sobs at the end of the table.
“I’m adjourning this meeting,” Holden says, gathering up the promotional literature from Apple Computer. “This can wait until next month’s meeting.”
As he walks toward the door, Jan Chancellor, the school’s headmistress, calls after him, “Just a minute, Holden. This is a terrible tragedy, but one thing can’t wait until next month.”
Holden doesn’t bother to hide his annoyance as he turns back. “What’s that, Jan?”
“The Marko Bakic incident.”
“Oh, hell,” says Bill Sims. “What’s that kid done now?”
Marko Bakic is a Croatian exchange student who has been nothing but trouble since he arrived last September. How he made it into the exchange program is beyond any of us. Marko’s records show that he scored off the charts on an IQ test, but all his intelligence seems to be used only in support of his anarchic aspirations. The charitable view is that this unfortunate child of the Balkan wars has brought confusion and disruption to St. Stephen’s, sadly besmirching an exchange program that’s only won us glory in the past. The harsher view is that Marko Bakic uses the mask of prankster to hide more sinister activities like selling ecstasy to the student body and anabolic steroids to the football team. The board has already sought my advice as a former prosecutor on how to deal with the drug issue; I told them that unless we catch Marko red-handed or someone volunteers firsthand information about illegal activities, there’s nothing we can do. Bill Sims suggested a random drug-testing program, but this idea was tabled when the board realized that positive tests would probably become public, sabotaging our public relations effort and delighting the board of Immaculate Heart, the Catholic school across town. The local law enforcement organs have set their sights on Marko, as well, but they, too, have come up empty-handed. If Marko Bakic is dealing drugs, no one is talking about it. Not on the record, anyway.
“Marko got into a scuffle with Ben Ritchie in the hall yesterday,” Jan says carefully. “He called Ben’s girlfriend a slut.”
“Not smart,” Bill Sims murmurs.
Marko Bakic is six-foot-two and lean as a sapling; Ben Ritchie is five-foot-six and built like a cast-iron stove, just like his father, who played football with Drew and me more than twenty years ago.
Jan says, “Ben shoved Marko into the wall and told him to apologize. Marko told Ben to kiss his ass.”
“So what happened?” asks Sims, his eyes shining. This is a lot more interesting than routine school board business.
Clearly put off by the juvenile relish in Bill’s face, Jan says, “Ben put Marko in a choke hold and mashed his head against the floor until he apologized. Ben embarrassed Marko in front of a lot of people.”
“Sounds like our Croatian hippie got what he deserved.”
“Be that as it may,” Jan says icily, “after Ben let Marko up, Marko told Ben he was going to kill him. Two other students heard it.”
“Macho bullshit,” says Sims. “Bakic trying to save face.”
“Was it?” asks Jan. “When Ben asked Marko how he was going to do that, Marko said he had a gun in his car.”
Sims sighs heavily. “Did he? Have a gun, I mean.”
“No one knows. I didn’t hear about this until after school. Frankly, I think the students were too afraid to tell me about it.”
“Afraid of what you’d do?”
“No. Afraid of Marko. Several students say he does carry a gun sometimes. But no one would admit to seeing it on school property.”
“Did you talk to the Wilsons?” Holden Smith asks from the doorway.
Bill Sims snorts in contempt. “What for?”
The Wilsons are the family that agreed to feed and house Marko for two semesters. Jack Wilson is a retired academic, and Marko seems to have him completely snowed.
Jan Chancellor watches Holden expectantly. She’s a good headmistress, although she dislikes direct confrontations, which can’t be avoided in a job like hers. Her face looks pale beneath her sleek, black bob, and her nerves seem stretched to the breaking point. They must be, to bring her to this point of insistence.
“I move that we enter executive session,” she says, meaning that no minutes will be taken from this point forward.
“Second,” I agree.
Jan gives me a quick look of gratitude. “As you all know, this is merely the latest in a long line of disruptive incidents. There’s a clear pattern here, and I’m worried that something irreparable is going to happen. If it does—and if it can be demonstrated that we were aware of this pattern—then St. Stephen’s and every member of the board will be exposed to massive lawsuits.”
Holden sighs wearily from the door. “Jan, this was a serious incident, no doubt. And sorting it out is going to be a pain in the ass. But Kate Townsend’s death is going to be a major shock to every student and family at this school. I can call a special meeting later in the week to deal with Marko, but Kate is the priority right now.”
“Will you call that meeting?” Jan presses. “Because this problem’s not going to go away.”
“I will. Now I’m going to see Jenny Townsend. Theresa, will you lock up when everyone’s gone?”
The secretary nods, glad for being given something to do. While the remainder of the board members continue to express disbelief, my cell phone rings. The caller ID shows my home as the origin of the call, which makes me unsure whether to answer. My daughter, Annie, is quite capable of pestering me to death with the phone when the mood strikes her. But with Kate’s death fresh in my mind, I step into the secretary’s office and answer.
“Annie?”
“No,” says an older female voice. “It’s Mia.”
Mia Burke is my daughter’s babysitter, a classmate of Kate Townsend’s.
“I’m sorry to interrupt the board meeting, but I’m kind of freaked out.”
“It’s all right, Mia. What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure. But three people have called and told me something happened to Kate Townsend. They’re saying she drowned.”
I hesitate before confirming the rumor, but if the truth hasn’t already spread across town, it will in a matter of minutes. Our secretary learning the truth from an ER nurse was part of the first wave of rumor, one of many that will sweep across town tonight, turning back upon themselves and swelling until the facts are lost in a tide of hyperbole. “You heard right, Mia. Kate was found dead in St. Catherine’s Creek.”
“Oh God.”
“I know it’s upsetting, and I’m sure you want to be with your friends right now, but I need you to stay with Annie until I get there. I’ll be home in ten minutes.”
“Oh, I’d never leave Annie alone. I mean, I don’t even know what I should do. If Kate’s dead, I can’t really help her. And everyone is going to be acting so retarded about it. Take whatever time you need. I’d rather stay here with Annie than drive right now.”
I silently thank Jan Chancellor for recommending one of the few levelheaded girls in the school to me as a babysitter. “Thanks, Mia. How’s Annie doing?”
“She fell asleep watching a documentary about bird migration on the Discovery Channel.”
“Good.”
“Hey,” Mia says in an awkward voice. “Thanks for telling me the truth about Kate.”
“Thanks for not flipping out and leaving the house. I’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up and look through the door at the boardroom. Drew Elliott is talking on his cell phone at the table, but the rest of the board members are filing out the main door. As I watch them go, an image from our promotional TV commercial featuring Kate rises into my mind. She’s walking onto the tennis court in classic whites, and her cool blue eyes burn right through the camera. She’s tall, probably five-ten, with Nordic blond hair that hangs halfway to her waist. More striking than beautiful, Kate looked like a college student rather than a high school kid, and that’s why we chose her for the promo spot. She was the perfect recruiting symbol for a college-prep school.
As I reach for the office doorknob, I freeze. Drew is staring at the table with tears pouring down his face. I hesitate, giving him time to collect himself. What does it take to make an M.D. cry? My father has watched his patients die for forty years, and now they’re dropping like cornstalks to a scythe. I know he grieves, but I can’t remember him crying. The one exception was my wife, but that’s another story. Maybe Drew thinks he’s alone here, that I slipped out with all the others. Since he shows no sign of stopping, I walk out and lay my hand on his thickly muscled shoulder.
“You okay, man?”
He doesn’t reply, but I feel him shudder.
“Drew? Hey.”
He dries his eyes with a swipe of his sleeve, then stands. “Guess we’d better let Theresa lock up.”
“Yeah. I’ll walk out with you.”
Side by side, we walk through the front atrium of St. Stephen’s, just as we did thousands of times when we attended this school in the sixties and seventies. A large trophy cabinet stands against the wall to my left. Inside it, behind a wooden Louisville Slugger with thirteen names signed on it in Magic Marker, hangs a large photograph of Drew Elliott during the defining moment of this institution. Just fourteen years old, he is standing at the plate under the lights of Smith-Wills Stadium in Jackson, hitting what would be the winning home run of the 1977 AAAA state baseball championship. No matter how remarkable our academic accomplishments—and they were many—it was this prize that put our tiny “single A” school on the map. In Mississippi, as in the rest of the South, sport overshadows everything else.
“Long time ago,” he says. “Eternity.”
I’m standing on second base in the photo, waiting to sprint for the tying run. “Not so long.”
He gives me a lost look, and then we pass through the entrance and pause under the overhang, prepping for a quick dash through the rain to our cars.
“Kate babysat for you guys, didn’t she?” I comment, trying to get him to focus on the mundane.
“Yeah. The past two summers. Not anymore, though. She graduates—was supposed to graduate—in six weeks. She was too busy for babysitting.”
“She seemed like a great kid.”
Drew nods. “She was. Even these days, when so many students are overachievers, she stood out from the crowd.”
I could point out that it’s often the best and brightest who are taken while the rest of us are left to carry on, but Drew knows that. He’s watched more people die than I ever will.
His Volvo is parked about thirty yards away, behind my Saab. I pat him on the back as I did in high school, then assume a tight end’s stance. “Run for it?”
Instead of playing along with me, he looks me full in the face and speaks in a voice I haven’t heard from him in years. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The emotion in his eyes is palpable. “Of course.”
“Let’s get in one of the cars.”
“Sure.”
He presses a button on his key chain, and his Volvo’s lights blink. As if triggered by a silent starter pistol, we race through the chilly rain and scramble onto the leather seats of the S80. He slams his door and cranks the engine, then shakes his head with a strange violence.
“I can’t fucking believe it, Penn. It’s literally beyond belief. Did you know her? Did you know Kate at all?”
“We spoke a few times. She asked about my books. But we never got beyond the surface. Mia talked about her a lot.”
His eyes search out mine in the shadows. “You and I haven’t got beneath the surface much either these past five years. It’s more my fault than yours, I know. I keep a lot inside.”
“We all do,” I say awkwardly, wondering where this is going.
“Who really knows anybody, right? Twelve years of school together, best friends when we were kids. You know a lot about me, but on the other hand you know nothing. The front, like everybody else.”
“I hope I see past that, Drew.”
“I don’t mean to insult you. If anyone sees beneath the surface, it’s you. That’s why I’m talking to you now.”
“Well, I’m here. Let’s talk.”
He nods as if confirming a private judgment. “I want to hire you.”
“Hire me?”
“As a lawyer.”
This is the last thing I expected to hear. “You know I don’t practice anymore.”
“You took the Payton case, that old civil rights bombing.”
“That was different. And that was five years ago.”
Drew stares at me in the glow of the dashboard lights. “This is different, too.”
It always is to the client. “I’m sure it is. The thing is, I’m not really a lawyer anymore. I’m a writer. If you need a lawyer, I can recommend several good ones. Is it malpractice?”
Drew blinks in astonishment. “Malpractice? You think I’d waste your time with bullshit like that?”
“Drew … I don’t know what this is about. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”
“I want to, but—Penn, what if you were sick? You had HIV, say. And you came to me and said, ‘Drew, please help me. As a friend. I want you to treat me and not tell a soul.’ And what if I said, ‘Penn, I’d like to, but that’s not my specialty. You need to go to a specialist.’”
“Drew, come on—”
“Hear me out. If you said, ‘Drew, as a friend, please do me this favor. Please help me.’ You know what? I wouldn’t think twice. I’d do whatever you wanted. Treat you without records, whatever.”
He would. I can’t deny it. But there’s more than this beneath his words. Drew has left much unsaid. The truth is that without Drew Elliott, I wouldn’t be alive today. When I was fourteen years old, Drew and I hiked away from the Buffalo River in Arkansas and got lost in the Ozark Mountains. Near dark, I fell into a gorge and broke my femur. Drew was only eleven, but he crawled down into that gorge, splinted my leg with a tree limb, then built a makeshift litter and started dragging me through the night. Before he was done, he dragged me four miles through the mountains, breaking his wrist in the process and twice almost breaking his neck. Just after dawn, he managed to get me to a cluster of tents where someone had a CB radio. But has he mentioned any of that? No. It’s my job to remember.
“Why do you want to hire me, Drew?”
“To consult. With the protection of confidentiality.”
“Shit. You don’t have to hire me for that.”
He pulls his wallet from his pants and takes out a twenty-dollar bill, which he pushes at me. “I know that. But if you were questioned on the stand later—as a friend—you’d have to lie to protect me. If you’re my lawyer, our discourse will be shielded by attorney-client privilege.” He’s still pushing the bill at me. “Take it, Penn.”
“This is crazy—”
“Please, man.”
I wad up the note and shove it into my pocket. “Okay, damn it. What’s going on?”
He sags back in his seat and rubs his temples like a man getting a migraine. “I knew Kate a lot better than anyone knows.”
Kate Townsend again? The sense of dislocation I felt in the boardroom was nothing compared to what I feel now. Again I see Drew sitting at the table, weeping as though for a family member. Even as I ask the next question, I pray that I’m wrong.
“Are you telling me you were intimate with the girl?”
Drew doesn’t blink. “I was in love with her.”
TWO (#ulink_d37a51d0-90c1-566b-811c-3d64c07a1c42)
My heart is pounding the way it does on the all-too-rare occasions when I run for exercise. I’m sitting in front of the St. Stephen’s Preparatory School with one of the most distinguished alumni who ever attended it, and he’s telling me he was screwing a high school student. A student who is now dead. This man is my lifelong friend, yet the first words that pass my lips are not those of a friend but of a lawyer. “Tell me she was eighteen, Drew.”
“Her birthday was in two weeks.”
I suck in my breath and close my eyes. “It might as well have been two years. That’s statutory rape in Mississippi. Especially with the age difference between you. It’s what, twenty years?”
“Almost twenty-three.”
I shake my head in disbelief.
He takes my arm and pulls it toward him, forcing me to look into his eyes. “I’m not crazy, Penn. I know you think I’ve lost my mind, but I loved that girl like no one I’ve known in my life.”
I look away, focusing on the playground of the middle school, where water has pooled on the merry-go-round. What to say? This isn’t a case of some horny assistant coach who got too chummy with a cheerleader in the locker room. This is an educated and successful man in the grip of a full-blown delusion.
“Drew, I prosecuted a lot of child molesters in Houston. I remember one who had regularly molested an eleven-year-old girl. Can you guess what his defense was?”
“What?”
“They were in love.”
He snorts with disdain. “You know this isn’t like that.”
“Do I? Jesus Christ, man.”
“Penn … until you’re in a situation like this, you simply can’t understand it. I was the first to condemn that coach who got involved with that senior over at the public school. I couldn’t fathom it then. But now … I see it from the inside.”
“Drew, you’ve thrown your life away. Do you realize that? You could go to jail for twenty years. I can’t even …” My voice fails, because it suddenly strikes me that I may not have heard the worst of what will be revealed in this car tonight. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
The blood drains from his face. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What did you expect me to ask?”
“Not that. And there’s something pretty damned cold in your tone.”
“If you don’t like my tone, wait till you hear the district attorney. You and Kate Townsend? Holy shit.”
“I didn’t kill her, Penn.”
I take another deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, of course not. Do you think she committed suicide?”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because we were planning to leave together. Kate was excited about it. Not depressed at all.”
“You were planning to run away together?”
“Not run away. But to be together, yes.”
“She was a kid, Drew.”
“In some ways. Not many. Kate had a different kind of upbringing. She went through a lot, and she learned a lot from it. She was very mature for her age, both psychologically and emotionally. And that’s saying something these days. These kids aren’t like we were, Penn. You have no idea. By fifteen they’ve gone through things you and I didn’t experience until our twenties. Some of them are jaded by eighteen.”
“That doesn’t mean they understand what they’re doing. But I’ll be sure and run that argument past the jury.”
Drew’s eyes flicker. “Are you saying you’ll represent me?”
“I was joking. Who else knows about this relationship?”
“No one.”
“Don’t be stupid. Someone always knows.”
He sets his jaw and shakes his head with confidence. “You didn’t know Kate. Nobody knows about us.”
The naïveté of human beings is truly breathtaking. “Whatever you say.”
Drew puts his big hands on the wheel and squeezes it like a man doing isometric exercises. In the small space of the car, his size is intimidating. I’m six-foot-one, two hundred pounds; Drew has two inches and twenty pounds of muscle on me, and he hasn’t let himself slip much from the days he played tight end for Vanderbilt. It’s not hard to imagine Kate Townsend being attracted to him.
“It comes down to this,” Drew says in a steady voice. “The police are going to start probing Kate’s life. And if they probe deeply enough, they might find something that connects me to her.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A diary? Pictures?”
“You took pictures?” Why am I asking? Of course they did. Everyone does now. “Did you videotape yourselves too?”
“Kate did. But she destroyed the tape.”
I’m not sure I believe this, but right now that’s not the point. “What about Ellen?” I ask, meaning his wife.
His eyes don’t waver. “Our marriage has been dead for ten years.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I did. You and the rest of the town. Ellen and I mount a major theatrical production every day, all for the sake of Tim.”
Tim is Drew’s nine-year-old son, already something of a golden boy himself in the elementary school. Annie has a serious crush on him, though she would never admit it. “What about Tim, then? Were you going to leave him behind?”
“Of course not. But I had to make the break from Ellen first. I’ll die if I stay in that marriage.”
They always sound like this before the divorce. Any rationalization to get out of the marriage.
“I don’t want to say anything negative about Ellen,” Drew says softly. “But the situation has been difficult for a long time. Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone. She has been for six years.”
Ellen Elliott is a lawyer who turned to real estate in her midthirties, a dynamo who focuses on the upscale antebellum mansions in town. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she seems to have pulled off the rare trick of breaking into the inner cliques of Natchez society, something outsiders almost never accomplish. I’ve never known Ellen well, but the idea of her as a drug addict is hard to swallow. My mental snapshot is a sleek and well-tended blonde who runs marathons for fun.
“That’s kind of hard for me to believe, Drew.”
“You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M&Ms? That’s the reality, man. I’ve tried for years to help her. Taken her to addiction specialists, paid for rehab four times in the last three years. Nothing has worked.”
“Is she clinically depressed?”
“I don’t think so. You’ve seen her. She’s wide open all the time. But there’s something dark underneath that energy. Everything she does is in pursuit of money or social status. Two years ago she slept with a guy from Jackson during a tennis tournament. I literally can’t believe she’s the woman I married.”
“Was she different when you married her? About the money and status, I mean?”
“I guess the seeds of that were there, but back then it just looked like healthy ambition. I should have seen it in her mother, though.”
I can’t help wanting to defend Ellen. “We all start turning into our parents, Drew. I’m sure you have been, too.”
He nods. “Guilty as charged. But I try to stay self-aware, you know? I try to be the best person I can be.”
And that led you to a seventeen-year-old girl? I have more questions, but the truth is, I don’t want to know the gory details of Drew’s personal life. I’ve heard too many drunk friends pour out the stories of how their lives fell short of their dreams, and it’s always a maudlin monologue. The odd thing is that by almost anyone’s estimation, Drew Elliott has led a dream life. But as my mother always said: You never know what’s cooking in someone else’s pot. And one thing is sure: whatever happens as a result of Kate Townsend’s death, Drew Elliot’s touchdown run through life has come to an end.
“I need to get home to Annie, Drew. Mia needs to leave.”
He nods with understanding. “So, what about it? Will you help me?”
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m not sure that’s much. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
He nods and looks into his lap, clearly disappointed. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”
I’m about to get out of the car when Drew’s cell phone rings. He looks at the LED screen and winces. “Jenny Townsend.”
My chest tightens.
“She’s going to want me to come by the house.”
“Will you go?”
“Of course. I have to.”
I shake my head in amazement. “How can you do it? How can you look Jenny in the eye tonight?”
Drew watches the phone until it stops ringing, then meets my eyes with the sincerity of a monk. “I’ve got a clear conscience, Penn. I loved Kate more than anyone on earth, except maybe her mother. And anyone who loved Kate is welcome in that house tonight.”
Drew is both right and wrong. He will be welcome in the Townsend home tonight; in fact, of all the visitors, he will probably be the greatest comfort to Jenny. But what if Jenny Townsend knew that her personal physician had been having sex with her teenage daughter? That he was about to abandon his family and blow Kate’s perfectly planned future to smithereens?
“I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” I say softly.
Drew catches hold of my forearm as I climb out, once more forcing me to look into his eyes. “I’m not out of my mind. It wasn’t a midlife crisis that led me to Kate. I’d been starving for love for a long time. I’ve turned down more women in this town than you can imagine, both married and single. When I hurt my knee in that car accident last summer, I was home for six weeks. Kate was there every day, watching Tim. We started talking. I couldn’t believe the things she talked about, the things she read. We e-mailed and IM-ed a lot at night, and it was like talking to a thirty-five-year-old woman. When I could walk again, I organized a medical mission trip to Honduras. Kate volunteered to come along. It was actually Ellen who suggested it. Anyway, that’s where it happened. Before we returned to the States, I knew I wanted a life with her.”
“She was seventeen, man. What kind of life could you have had with her?”
“An authentic life. She was only two weeks shy of eighteen, Penn, and she was going to Harvard in the fall. I’ve already taken the Massachusetts state medical boards. I scored in the top five percent. I’ve already put a deposit on a house in Cambridge.”
I’m speechless.
“And now none of that will ever happen,” Drew says, his face tight with anger and confusion. “Now someone has murdered her.”
“You don’t know it was murder.”
His eyes narrow. “Yes, I do. It had to be.”
I gently disengage my arm. “I’m sorry for your pain, man. I really am. But if it gets out that you were involved with Kate, you’re going to be crucified. You’d better start—”
“I don’t care about myself! It’s Tim I’m worried about. What’s the best thing I can do for him?”
I shake my head and open the door to the rain. “Pray for a miracle.”
Mia Burke is sitting on the porch of my town house on Washington Street, a bulging green backpack beside her. I park by the curb, looking for Annie’s smaller form, but then I see that the front door is open slightly, which tells me Annie is still sleeping and Mia is listening for her. Mia stands as I lock the car, and in the light of the streetlamp I see that, like Drew, she’s been crying.
“You all right?” I ask, crossing the sidewalk.
She nods and wipes her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m crying so much. Kate and I weren’t really close. It just seems like such a waste.”
Mia Burke is the physical opposite of Kate Townsend. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, she stands about five-feet-two, with the muscular frame of a born sprinter. She has large dark eyes, an upturned nose, and full lips that have probably sent a hundred adolescent boys into paroxysms of fantasy. She’s wearing jeans and a LIFEHOUSE T-shirt, and she’s holding a book in her hand: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Mia has surprisingly eclectic taste, and this has probably confused the same boys who dream about her other attributes.
“You’re right,” I murmur, thinking of Drew with very little charity. “It is a waste.”
“Did she commit suicide, Penn?”
It occurs to me that Mia’s use of my first name might seem inappropriate to some people. It’s always seemed a natural informality between us, but in light of what I now know about Drew and Kate, nothing seems innocent. “I don’t know. Was Kate the type to kill herself?”
Mia hugs herself against the chill and takes some time with the question. “No. She always kept to herself a lot, especially this year. But I don’t think she was depressed. Her boyfriend was giving her a lot of trouble, though.”
“Kate had a boyfriend?”
“Well, an ex, really. Steve Sayers.”
Steve Sayers, predictably, was the quarterback of the football team.
“I don’t really know what the deal was. They dated for almost two years, then at the end of last summer Kate seemed to forget Steve existed.”
Thanks to Drew Elliott, M.D …
“The weird thing is, she didn’t break up with Steve. She’d still go out with him, even when she obviously didn’t care about him anymore. But she stopped having sex with him, I know that. And he was going crazy from it.”
Mia’s frankness about sex doesn’t come out of the blue. We’ve had many frank conversations about what goes on beneath the surface at St. Stephen’s. If it weren’t for Mia’s candor, I would have as little idea of the reality of a modern high school as the rest of the parents, and would be of as little use on the school board.
“Did Kate tell you she stopped having sex with him?” I ask.
“No. But Steve told a couple of his friends, and it got around. He thought she might be doing stuff with someone else. Someone from another school, maybe.”
“What did you think?”
Mia bites her bottom lip. “Like I said, Kate was very private. She had this charming persona she could turn on, and most people bought into it. But that was just the mask she used to get through life. Deep down, she was somebody else.”
“Who was she?”
“I’m not sure. All I know is that she was way too sophisticated for Steve. Maybe for any guy our age.”
I look hard into Mia’s eyes, but I see no hidden meaning there. “What made her so sophisticated?”
“Her time in England. After her parents got divorced, she went over to London and lived with her dad for a while. She went to an exclusive school over there for three years during junior high. In the end it didn’t work out for her to stay, but when she got back here, she was way ahead of the rest of us. She was pretty intimidating with that English accent.”
“I can’t imagine you being intimidated.”
“Oh, I was. But last year I started catching up with her. And this year I passed her in every subject. I feel guilty saying it now, but I felt pretty good about that.”
Some of Drew’s words are coming back to me. “You play tennis, don’t you?”
“I’m on the team. I’m not as good as Kate. She was a machine. She won state in singles last year, and she was on her way to doing it again this year.”
“Didn’t Kate play competitive tennis with Ellen Elliott?”
“Hell, yes. They won the state open in city league tennis.”
“What do you think about Ellen?”
Mia’s eyes flicker with interest. “Are you asking for the official line, or what I really think?”
“What you really think.”
“She’s a cast-iron bitch.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. Very cold, very manipulative. How she treats you depends totally on who your parents are.”
“How did she treat Kate?”
“Are you kidding? Like her personal protégée. Ellen was number one in Georgia when she played in high school. I think she’s reliving her youth through Kate.”
“How did Kate treat Ellen?”
Mia shrugs. “Okay, I guess. She was nice to her, but …”
“What?”
“I don’t think Kate respected her. I heard her say things behind Ellen’s back. But then everybody does that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The women Ellen trains with for her marathons talk all kinds of shit about her when she’s not around. They say she’ll stab you in the back without thinking twice.”
“So why do they hang around with her?”
“Fear. Envy. Ellen Elliott is hot, rich, and married to Dr. Perfect. She’s the social arbiter of this place, in the under-forty crowd anyway. She has the life all the rest of them want.”
“That’s what they think.”
Mia looks expectantly at me, but I don’t elaborate.
“I think I know what you mean,” she says. “I don’t know what Dr. Elliott is doing married to her. No one does. He’s so nice—not to mention hot—and she’s so … I don’t know. Maybe she fooled him, too.”
“Maybe.” Mia is too bright for me to question like this for long. “You probably need to get going, huh?”
She nods without enthusiasm. “I guess. I feel sort of weird, you know?”
“Because of Kate?”
“Yeah. But not the way you’d think. Her dying changes a lot of things for me. I’ll be making the valedictory speech now, for one thing. And I wanted to do that. I have some things I want to say to our class, and to the parents. I didn’t want to take any spotlight off of Kate by saying them in my salutatorian speech. Now I can say them, I guess. But I didn’t want it like this.”
“Well, you certainly earned it. Kate only beat you out by … what?”
“A sixteenth of a point on the cumulative.” Mia smiles wryly. “She wasn’t as smart as people think. She acted like she never studied, but she did. Big-time. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess I have some anger toward her. I’m not even sure why.”
“Try to tell me.”
Mia sighs and looks at the sidewalk. “Kate knew how to make you feel like shit when she wanted to. She would tear out your heart with a few words, then act like it was an innocent comment. She got Star Student because she outscored me by one point on the ACT, and she always made sure people knew that. But I outscored her by forty points on the SAT. You think she ever said one word about that?”
“What did you make?”
“Fifteen-forty.”
“Wow. So you two were basically rivals, not friends.”
Mia nods thoughtfully. “I’m more competitive than I should be, but for Kate, winning was an obsession. We were always the top contenders for everything. She was homecoming queen, I’m head cheerleader.” A strange look crosses Mia’s face. “I guess some people might say I had a motive for killing her, like that cheerleader-mom thing in Texas.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about you.”
An ironic laugh escapes her lips. “Oh, plenty gets said about me. But that’s another story. And don’t get me wrong about Kate. She had a tough family life. Her dad was a real asshole. When she showed her vulnerable side, it was hard not to feel for her. Especially for me. But I had to deal with the same shit, and I don’t use my intelligence to hurt people.”
Mia gazes down Washington Street, one of the most beautiful in the city, and shakes her head as though dismissing some useless thought. Mia’s father left her mother when Mia was two, and he’s hardly seen his daughter since. Economic support was the bare minimum dictated by the courts, and even that came on a sporadic basis.
“As far as Kate dying,” Mia says, “I guess I can’t really believe it yet. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s so random.”
“High school kids die in accidents like everyone else.”
“I know, but this is different.”
“Why?”
“After I called you, I got a few more calls. People are saying it wasn’t an accident at all. They’re saying somebody killed Kate. Did you know that?”
Could Drew be right? “Why are they saying that?”
“Some of the nurses at the hospital said it looked like Kate was strangled and hit on the head.”
Despite my friendship with Drew, an image of him choking Kate fills my mind, and I shudder. “You know Natchez and gossip, Mia. Anything could have happened to Kate’s body while she was floating down that creek.”
“But why was she half naked? And why from the waist down? I suppose she could have been skinny-dipping, but with who? She wasn’t with Steve—or at least he claims she wasn’t. It makes me wonder if maybe Steve was right.”
At this point Kate’s classmates probably know twice as much about her death as the police department. “Right about what?”
“About Kate having another boyfriend. Someone none of us knew about. Someone who might get mad enough or crazy enough to kill her.”
“Can you see Kate making someone that angry?”
“Oh, yeah. When Kate got on her high horse, she could piss you off beyond belief. And as far as making someone crazy—a guy, I mean—she was a very sexual person. We talked a few times about it. She really thought she might be a nymphomaniac.”
“That term isn’t even used anymore, Mia. A lot of girls first experimenting with sex probably feel that way.”
She gives me a knowing look. “I’m not talking about experimentation. I’m no saint, okay? But Kate knew about things I’d never even heard of. She was as intense as any person I ever met, and she believed in giving herself pleasure. She, uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but she showed me a couple of toys once, and it shocked me. I know she freaked Steve out with some of the things she asked him to do, and that was over a year ago.”
Sex toys? Drew’s words come back to me with fresh impact: These kids aren’t like we were, Penn. You have no idea …
“I know you want to look in on Annie,” Mia says, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll get out of your hair. Sorry if I was too frank about that stuff.”
I step to my left and give her plenty of room to pass. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen just about everything in my day.”
She gives me a sly look that belies her age. “Have you? I figured you for a straight arrow. I asked my mom about you, but she won’t tell me anything. She obviously likes you, but she gets all cryptic when I bring you up.”
I feel myself flush. “Be careful driving. Your mind’s not going to be on the road.”
Mia takes her cell phone from her purse and holds it to her ear. It must have been set to vibrate. “She did? … No way … That’s just weird … I will. Later.” She puts the phone back in her purse and stares blankly up the street again.
“What is it?” I ask.
Mia’s eyes betray a puzzlement I’ve never seen in them before. “That was Laura Andrews. Her mom’s one of the nurses who tended to Kate. She just told Laura that Kate was raped.”
“What?”
“She said Kate had a lot of trauma—down there, you know?”
My thoughts return to Drew. If Kate was raped, I hope he never has to know it. But of course he will, like everyone else in town. It suddenly occurs to me that by hoping to protect Drew from this knowledge, I’m assuming he is innocent of the crime. That’s a dangerous assumption for any lawyer to make, but I’ve already made it. I simply cannot imagine Drew Elliott raping any woman, much less a high school girl.
“Let’s hope that’s not true,” I murmur, recalling the shattered rape victims I tried to avenge as a prosecutor in Houston.
“Yeah,” Mia echoes. “That’s too horrible even to think about.”
“So don’t. Think about driving.”
Mia forces a smile. “No worries. Do you need me tomorrow?”
“I may, if you can spare the time.” I’m thinking of Drew and his request for help.
“Just call my cell.”
She walks to her car, a blue Honda Accord, and climbs in. I watch to make sure she gets safely away, then walk up the steps into my house. As I close the door, my study phone rings. I trot to my desk and look at the caller ID: ANDREW ELLIOTT, M.D.
“Drew?” I answer.
“Can you talk?” he asks, his voice crackling with anxiety.
“Sure. What is it?”
“I’m at Kate’s house. I just got a call on my cell phone.”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. But he told me to leave a gym bag with twenty thousand dollars in it on the fifty-yard line of the St. Stephen’s football field. He said if I don’t, he’ll tell the police I was screwing Kate Townsend.”
Shit. “You told me nobody knew about the affair.”
“Nobody did. I have no idea who this could be.”
My mind is whirling with memories of similar situations when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. “When does he want the money?”
“One hour from now.”
THREE (#ulink_ca8d3390-19a5-5efd-a992-3ff2742df760)
“Penn?” Drew says, breathing shallowly. “Are you there?”
My old friend’s words have paralyzed me in the study of my house. “Twenty thousand dollars cash in an hour? At nine o’clock at night? That’s crazy. That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not. I have the cash. We have a safe here in the house. Three, actually. One for documents, one for guns, one for cash and jewelry.”
I should have guessed. Drew Elliott lives in a stunning Victorian palace sited on five acres in one of the affluent subdivisions near St. Stephen’s, a mansion that contains every technological gadget known to man. “Do you think the blackmailer knows that?”
“He said he knew I had the money.”
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“No. But it sounded like a black kid.”
“A black kid? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. He asked for drugs, too.”
“Drugs?”
“Prescription drugs. Painkillers. Anything I have. He said I should consider this drop as a down payment. His words. A sign of good faith.”
“I hear something in your voice I don’t like, Drew.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but—”
“You’re not delivering that money, brother. You have two choices. Ignore the call, or phone the police and tell them everything right now.”
Drew is silent for too long. “There’s a third choice,” he says.
“Drew, listen to me. There is no upside to paying this money. Just by showing up, you’d be admitting some guilt. You could also be taking your life into your hands.”
“Because the caller could be Kate’s killer? That’s what you were thinking, right?”
He has me. “I guess so.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”
“Then you should call the cops. At this point, an act of God couldn’t keep your affair with Kate from becoming public. You have to think damage control now. It’s a hundred times better if the police learn the story from you than from someone else. Better for your family, too. Think of Tim.”
“I have until tomorrow morning to make that decision.”
“Don’t assume that.”
“Penn, the guy who called me probably murdered Kate. I want to see his face. I want to—”
“I know what you want to do. Forget it. Go home, mix yourself a stiff drink, and start thinking about what’s best for your son. That ought to be a change.”
Drew sucks in air as though I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “I know Tim needs me, okay?”
“You haven’t been acting like you do. Tim would be lost without you. And if you really think Ellen isn’t a good person, that’s twice the reason to keep yourself out of jail.”
More silence. “You’re right. Goddamn it, I just need to do something about Kate.”
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s time to suck it up and be a man. Kate’s beyond help. She’s gone. All you can do now is pick up the pieces of your own family.”
“Daddy?” comes a small voice.
Glancing toward the hall, I see my daughter poke her head around the kitchen door frame. Annie is a physical echo of her mother, a tawny-haired beauty with eyes that miss nothing. This is both a blessing and a curse, as I am continually confronted by what is essentially the ghost of my dead wife.
“Annie’s calling me, Drew. I need to go. You go home and calm down. I’ll call you in a bit and we’ll decide what you’re going to do.”
Silence.
“Drew?”
“I will.”
“How’s Jenny handling it?”
“It’s destroyed her. I had to sedate her. She ought to be asleep soon.”
“Jesus … okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
By the time I hang up, Annie is standing in front of me, her cheek pressing into my stomach. The one eye that I can see is full of sleep. She yawns, then says, “Where’s Mia?”
“Mia had to go home, Boo.”
“Aww. Mia’s fun.”
“I know. She’ll probably be back tomorrow. She said you fell asleep during the movie.”
“I guess I did. I already knew what was going to happen. Are you going to call Caitlin tonight?”
“Probably.”
“Will you do it now?”
“Let’s get you in the bed first. Then she can tell you good night.”
Annie smiles, then tugs me toward the stairs. I follow, but she stops at the base of the staircase. “Will you carry me, Daddy?”
“Nine years old? You’re pretty big to get carried these days.”
“You can do it.”
Yes, I can, I say silently, for some reason thinking of Annie’s mother. Sarah will never carry her child up the stairs again. An ache passes through my chest, like the pain from an old wound, and then I sweep Annie up into my arms and march up the steep staircase to the second-floor bedrooms. The old Victorians in Natchez have stairs seemingly designed to keep pro athletes in peak condition. I turn into Annie’s room, bend my creaking knees enough to pull back the covers, then slide her underneath them. She laughs and yanks the blanket up to her neck.
“Now call Caitlin!” she squeals.
I take my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dial Caitlin’s cell phone. She’s working a special assignment in Boston, as an investigative reporter for the Herald. I met Caitlin when her father, a newspaper magnate who owns the Natchez Examiner and ten other papers in a Southern chain, sent her down here to whip the Examiner into shape. We got close during my efforts to solve a decades-old civil rights murder and during the trial that followed. Caitlin grew to love Natchez—and me—but after the excitement of that trial faded, along with the glow of the Pulitzer she won for her stories covering it, she realized that Natchez might not be the most exciting place to spend your days, especially when you’re under thirty and hungry for challenges.
After a year of living next door to Annie and me, Caitlin began taking assignments in other cities, mostly working on investigative stories for other papers in her father’s chain. We’ve remained committed to each other, and to our plan of marrying one day. But following through with that plan would mean changes that Caitlin isn’t ready to handle yet. Annie would begin to see Caitlin more as a mother, and would expect her to be around much more consistently. Caitlin has asked me about moving to a city—after all, I lived in Houston for fifteen years—but to my surprise, I find myself reluctant to leave the town where I grew to adulthood.
Caitlin’s phone kicks me to voice mail. “This is Penn and Annie,” I say. “We’re trying to get a long-distance good-night kiss. Call us when you can.”
“Voice mail,” I tell Annie, trying to sound unconcerned. “She must be working.”
“You should hurry up and marry her,” Annie says. “Then she can be my real mom. Then she can live here.”
I can’t help but feel some resentment. When the Herald offered Caitlin a plum assignment investigating further sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Boston, she almost turned it down. The job meant at least two months away from Natchez, and though we talked about flying to see each other on weekends, we knew that probably wouldn’t work out. But the offer came from a renowned editor for whom Caitlin had worked as an intern while at Radcliffe, and I sensed that if she said no, she would eventually resent it. I’m glad she took the assignment, but our fears about visiting have proved true. The sum of our recent contact? I’ve flown to Boston once, and she flew down to Baton Rouge for a weekend with Annie and me.
“She works this late?” Annie asks.
Lately it’s become more and more difficult to reach Caitlin at night. “It’s not that late for grown-ups. Maybe she’s working undercover.”
“Yeah, she does that sometimes,” Annie says thoughtfully. “Like a spy.”
“Yep. Now, shut those eyes.”
Annie opens her eyes as wide as possible, then giggles like a two-year-old.
I poke her in the side. “You’re a pain in the you-know-what.”
More giggles. I give her a kiss, then walk into the hall and descend the long staircase. “See you in the morning!” I call.
“Not if I see you first!” she yells back.
In the kitchen, I raid the refrigerator and construct a colossal turkey po’boy. I only had a salad before the school board meeting, and I’m starving. To keep my mind off Drew and his problems I click on CNN, but there’s no escaping. CNN makes me think of Caitlin, and thoughts of Caitlin bring me back to Drew.
The essential problem that has kept Caitlin and me from marrying is our age difference. At thirty-three, she is very much in the midst of proving herself in her chosen profession, which requires her to leave Natchez often. At forty-three, I’ve already succeeded in two different careers, and the only thing I have left to prove is that I can raise my daughter well. Having endured the problems that come with a ten-year age difference, I can’t help but view Drew’s dream of a real life with Kate as absurd. Did he plan to divorce Ellen and commute by air between Natchez and Boston in order to see Tim? He couldn’t have continued practicing medicine in Natchez. The local society women would have risen as one to boycott his practice and ostracize the former darling of St. Stephen’s Prep. How would Drew have introduced Kate to fellow doctors in Boston? This is my wife. She just graduated—from high school. Of course, Drew wasn’t concerned about such mundane matters. He loved Kate, and the rest of the world could go to hell.
But now the world may have its way with him. As the CNN anchor reads a litany of global crises, I make a list of the threats Drew faces. First, statutory rape. Given the age difference between him and Kate, he could get twenty years in Parchman prison. And since Kate was his patient, he could lose his medical license. Even if he doesn’t, the mere rumor of such an affair in Natchez could kill his practice. If Kate was raped, and physical evidence links Drew to her corpse, he could be charged with capital murder for homicide during the commission of another felony. In Mississippi, conviction for capital murder brings with it the very real possibility of death by lethal injection.
If Kate was in fact murdered, the police have a tough job ahead of them. By carrying her body to the emergency room rather than leaving it where they found it, the fishermen who found Kate deprived investigators of any chance to examine her body in situ. They might have lost or destroyed critical evidence. And since Kate was found wedged in the fork of a tree during high water, the actual crime scene is probably upstream somewhere along St. Catherine’s Creek. With today’s heavy rain, the police may never find out where she actually died.
Right now, detectives are probably focusing on the “helpful” fishermen, since these Samaritans may well have raped and killed Kate before taking her to the hospital. St. Catherine’s Creek has never been noted for its fishing, and it’s quite dangerous for boats during heavy rains. After interrogating the fishermen, the police will move on to Kate’s mother, her boyfriend, and any close friends who might have information about her last hours. That could take much of the night, and will probably continue through tomorrow. If the blackmailer didn’t exist—and if Drew is right about Kate not confiding their affair to anyone—Drew might just be safe.
But the blackmailer does exist, and my experience as a prosecutor tells me it’s unlikely that Drew will escape entanglement in this case. If he had sex with Kate in the last seventy-two hours, she may have traces of his semen inside her. A phone call from the blackmailer to the police would focus their attention on Drew. Any confirming piece of evidence linking Drew to Kate in an inappropriate way would prompt police to request a DNA sample from him. That would bring disaster in three to four weeks—the time it usually takes to get the DNA results in a rush situation. And when the police start searching upstream in St. Catherine’s Creek for the murder scene, they will eventually come to the bend where the two most exclusive subdivisions in Natchez come together. One of those subdivisions—Pinehaven—is where Kate Townsend lived. The other—just across the creek and through the woods—is Sherwood Estates, where Drew Elliot’s Victorian mansion stands. In the absence of other evidence, this juxtaposition might not suggest anything, but if the blackmailer gets the rumor mill churning …
The microwave clock tells me forty minutes have passed since I last spoke to Drew. Feeling a little anxious, I pick up the kitchen phone and call his cell phone. He doesn’t answer. I wait about a minute, then try again. Nothing. I hate to call his wife, given all that I’ve learned about their marriage, but I need to know that Drew is safely drunk somewhere, and not on his way to the St. Stephen’s football field with a bag of cash.
“Hello?” says a groggy female voice.
“Ellen? It’s Penn Cage.”
“Penn? What’s going on? Is Drew with you?”
I knew it. “No, I was actually calling for him.”
“Well”—loud snuffling, rustling of cloth—“I thought I heard him pull up outside a while ago, but then he didn’t come in. Maybe he’s out in his workshop. He goes out there sometimes when he’s feeling moody.”
“Is there any way to check without you having to get up?”
“Intercom. Just a sec.” There’s a burst of static. “Drew? Drew, are you out there?”
More static. “He’s not answering. He called a while ago and told me he was leaving the Townsends’ house. Maybe he got called to the hospital on his way home. I think he’s covering tonight.”
“That’s probably it. You get back to sleep, Ellen.”
“Sleep. God … I had to take a pill to even have a chance at sleep. I was really close to Kate, you know.”
“I knew you played tennis with her.”
“That girl was gifted, Penn. I think she would have made the team at Harvard. God, wouldn’t that have been something?”
“Yes, it would. I’m sorry, Ellen.”
I hear a sound I can’t identify. “We raise these children,” she murmurs, “we pour everything into them, all our hopes and dreams, and then something like this happens. If I were Jenny Townsend, I’m not sure I could handle it. I might do something crazy. I really might.”
“Well, I hope she finds the strength to deal with it.”
“It’s good to talk to you, Penn. We don’t see you enough. You should come by for a drink. I really liked your last book. I want to talk to you about some of the characters. I think I recognized a few.”
I give Ellen an obligatory laugh and ring off. Where the hell is Drew? I’m afraid I already know the answer. I start to dial my parents’ house, but it’s too late to ask my mother to come over. Instead, I dial Mia’s cell. She answer after two rings.
“Penn?”
“Afraid so. Is there any chance you could come back for about an hour? Annie’s asleep, but I need to go out.”
“Um, I guess so. Is it important? Of course it is. You wouldn’t call if it weren’t.”
“Are you with your friends now?”
“Such as they are. Everybody’s pretty freaked out. But I’m not far away from you, actually. I can be there in five minutes.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you double your usual rate.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m on my way.”
I hang up and walk back to my bedroom, the only one on the ground floor of the house. In the top of my closet is a nine-millimeter Springfield XD-9 with a fifteen-round clip. I carried a .38-caliber revolver in Houston, but recent experience taught me the wisdom of having a large magazine. I keep the weapon close, albeit with a trigger lock to protect Annie. Unlocking the guard mechanism, I slip the pistol barrel into the pocket of my jeans and grab a waterproof windbreaker from the closet.
Waiting on the front steps for Mia, I call Drew’s cell phone again. When he fails to answer, I consider calling the police for help—but only for a moment. The risks to Drew are too great. When Mia pulls up to the curb, I give her a wave and walk to my Saab, hoping to avoid any explanations.
“Everything okay?” she calls.
I turn back to her. “Fine. Annie’s still in bed. I just need to run an errand.”
Mia nods, but I see suspicion in her eyes. I’ve never called her on such short notice before.
“What else have the kids been saying?” I ask.
“All kinds of things. But it’s mostly bullshit. You know how people are. Like you said … Natchez.”
“I should be back in less than an hour, but if I’m not, you can stay, right?”
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
I move toward my car. “I really appreciate it, Mia.”
“Is that a gun in your pants?”
I look down. The butt of the Springfield is sticking up in front of my windbreaker.
Mia isn’t looking at the pistol but at me, her eyes questioning. I start to give her an explanation, but nothing would really make sense. As casually as possible, I pull the tail of the windbreaker over the gun.
“Penn, are you okay?”
“Yes. Mia, you—”
“I didn’t see anything,” she says, her face radiating assurance. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
If only that were true. “Keep a close eye on Annie.”
“I will. Bye.” She turns and hurries into the house.
I climb into my Saab and start the engine, wondering what kind of insanity I’ll find when I reach St. Stephen’s.
FOUR (#ulink_29615f2c-9019-5fc7-86d2-7766b491c318)
Buck Stadium was called simply “the bowl” when I was a student at St. Stephen’s, and the reason was plain. Back then, the stadium was only an oval hole in the ground surrounded by pine and hardwood trees. Spectators sat on its grassy sides to cheer during Bucks games, until enough money was raised to build rudimentary bleachers. Tonight three new school buildings stand on the south side of the bowl, and wide concrete steps march all the way down to the field. The bleachers are massive prefab units like those at college football stadiums, and huge banks of overhead lights can turn night into day at the flick of a switch. Fancy dressing rooms and a workout center stand on a terraced shelf halfway down the hill, and a blue rubberized track surrounds the football field. The year we fought our way to the state football championship, Drew and I practiced in a cow pasture filled with holes and played under dim “security lights” like the ones in supermarket parking lots.
Despite all the improvements, there’s still only one narrow access road to the bottom of the bowl, which is probably why the blackmailer chose the football field to pick up his payoff. He can easily detect the approach of any police vehicles, and the surrounding woods offer infinite avenues of escape, once he crosses the Cyclone fence that surrounds the track.
I cut my headlights as I climb the main driveway of the campus, then park on the south side of the elementary school to remain hidden from the eyes of anyone in the bowl. With the Springfield weighting my right front pocket, I walk quietly along the side of the building toward the bowl.
Standing in the shadows beside the building is a Honda ATV, commonly called a four-wheeler in this area. The camouflage paint scheme, Vanderbilt bumper sticker, and gun boot mounted on the handlebars mark this four-wheeler as Drew Elliot’s. Like most men in and around Natchez, Drew is an avid hunter. The only good news is that the gun boot contains a Remington deer rifle, which means Drew probably didn’t go armed to deliver his payoff to the fifty-yard line below.
Twenty yards from the elementary school, the ground drops precipitously into the bowl. Transecting that space is the asphalt road that curves down to the track. Staying in the shadows by Drew’s four-wheeler, I try his cell phone one last time.
There’s no answer, but for a moment I think I hear the chirp of a ringing cell phone. Crouching low, I scuttle to the edge of the bowl and look down. It’s like staring at a bottomless black lake. The light from the security lamps mounted on the stadium’s press box dies after only a few yards. Whatever is happening on the floor of the bowl, I can’t see it.
As I stare into the blackness, the whine of a small engine rises out of the hole. The whine seems to be coming toward me. Then a single headlight flicks on, cutting a bright swath down the length of the football field. Sitting at midfield is a small gym bag.
Where the hell is Drew?
What sounds like hoofbeats suddenly rises out of the bowl, followed by the sound of panting. I’m reaching for my Springfield when Drew’s face appears out of the dark. He pulls up short, his eyes filled with shock.
“Penn? Come on!”
He races past me to the four-wheeler. Far below, the motorcycle stops beside the gym bag.
“What are you doing here?” Drew calls over his shoulder.
“Trying to keep your ass out of trouble!” I answer, dividing my attention between the distant motorcycle and Drew.
He cranks the ATV with a rumble, kicks it into gear, and lurches up beside me. “You can help me or you can stand here with your thumb up your ass,” he says. “You’ve got three seconds to decide.”
A high-pitched revving echoes out of the bowl, and then suddenly the headlight is tearing away from us again, back in the direction from which it came. Certain that nothing will dissuade Drew from pursuit, I hike my leg over the seat and clamp my arms around his waist. He hits the throttle, and the Honda flies over the lip of the bowl, descending as though in free fall.
“This is nuts!” I yell in his ear. “You know that!”
He grabs something from his pocket and holds it over his shoulder until I take it. It looks like a small kaleidoscope.
“What’s this?”
“Night-vision scope! If he kills his headlight, keep that scope on him!”
Night vision? Why am I surprised? This is exactly the kind of useless toy that your affluent Mississippi hunter possesses. “Did you recognize the guy on the motorcycle?”
“He’s wearing a helmet with a black visor. Gloves, too, so I don’t know if he’s black or white.”
We hit the floor of the bowl with a bone-jarring impact, then zoom across the track onto the football field. A hundred yards ahead, the motorcycle slows to a near stop. He must be negotiating an opening in the Cyclone fence. Drew guns the ATV, and we hurtle up the football field at fifty miles an hour.
“What are you going to do if you catch him?”
“Ask some questions!” Drew shouts, pushing the Honda still harder. “Find out what he knows!”
The rest of Drew’s words are lost in the roar of wind past my ears as we race toward the end of the bowl.
“Look!” he shouts, pointing at the almost stationary headlight. “We’ve got him!”
The smaller engine whines like a chainsaw, and then the headlight begins moving jerkily uphill.
“Fuck!” bellows Drew.
Suddenly the entire bowl is blasted by white light, as though God ripped back the night sky to expose a hidden sun. In the blinding light I see a narrow gap cut in the Cyclone fence. Drew steers toward it.
“You can’t make it!” I scream, realizing the hole was cut for a motorcycle to pass through. “Don’t do it!”
Drew jolts across the track with abandon, then—realizing he can’t break the laws of physics—hits the brakes, throwing the Honda into a skid. The ass end of the four-wheeler spins forward, and suddenly it’s me who’s most likely to slam into the fence. But the grass is slick from rain. We spin once more, and then the front bumper of the ATV just kisses the loose wire of the Cyclone fence.
“Come on, baby,” Drew pleads, trying to restart the engine, which died during the skid.
“Give it up, man. Let him go.”
As the rattle of the motorcycle grows fainter, the steel fence post beside me sings as though struck by a hammer. Almost instantly that sound merges into a deafening boom that echoes around the bowl like cannon fire. Only then do I realize that the supersonic crack of the rifle bullet escaped me altogether. For a moment I wonder whether, despite the evidence of my eyes, Drew has drawn and fired his deer rifle at the fleeing motorcyclist. But he hasn’t.
“Somebody’s shooting at us!” I yell, clapping him on the shoulder.
“No shit!” he grunts, finally cranking the Honda to life. “Get off and hold the fence back!”
As I dismount the ATV, a second rifle shot blasts across the bowl. Drew yanks his own rifle from the boot and shoves it into my hands. “You know where the switch is? For the stadium lights?”
I nod blankly.
“Shoot back! Sooner or later, that asshole’s going to hit one of us.”
I scramble through the gap in the fence, move to the side of the opening, then lay the rifle barrel through one of the diamond-shaped holes in the fence and sight in on the staircase at the base of the press box. The switch box is mounted on the wall just above it. I see no one there, and I’m glad for it.
As Drew tries to bull the Honda through the gap in the fence, I draw a bead on the metal circuit box that contains the light switches. The Remington bucks against my shoulder three times before the blazing lights go dark.
“Get on!” Drew yells, the four-wheeler suddenly beside me in the darkness.
I shove his rifle back into the gun boot and climb onto the seat behind him, shocked by my exhilaration at having neutralized the threat from above. But the greatest threat to my safety probably wasn’t the shooter in the stadium; it’s the man whose waist I’m clinging to in the dark.
There’s no path through the trees, but this doesn’t deter Drew. He accelerates up the incline like a whiskey-crazed redneck in a mud-riding contest, dodging pines and briar thickets with inches to spare. As we crest the first hill, I feel the front wheels rise off the ground, and for a second I’m sure the Honda is about to flip backward and crush us, a manner of death all too common in Mississippi. But Drew stands erect and leans over the handlebars, restoring enough equilibrium for us to ramp over the hill and land in one piece on the other side.
To my surprise, he brakes to a stop and switches off the headlight. Now we face a darkness so deep, it makes the bowl seem hospitable by comparison. This is the darkness of the primeval forest.
“You’ll never catch him,” I say softly.
“Shhh,” says Drew, killing the motor. “Listen.”
Sure enough, somewhere below us and to our left I hear the faint protest of a small engine being pushed hard.
“He’s running the creek bed,” whispers Drew.
Drew is probably right, but that’s no great help. “He could come up out of that creek in a dozen different neighborhoods,” I point out. “We’ll never get him now.”
“Watch,” says Drew, cranking the Honda again.
I hug him tight and clench my thighs around the seat as he flicks on the headlight and plunges down the hillside. He must have hunted these woods before. There’s no other explanation for the speed with which he navigates the forest in the dark. We fly along one ridge as though pursued by the devil, then plunge down an almost perpendicular drop and splash into swiftly running water.
After struggling through the stream for a dozen yards, we climb onto a gravel-covered sandbar and race along the creek bed. All I can do at this point is hang on and pray that Drew knows where he’s going.
Twice more I’m doused by creek water, but then I hear a whoop of triumph as he sights a solitary taillight ahead. Somehow—I can only assume it’s because of superior knowledge of the terrain—Drew is closing the gap between us and the motorcycle. The note of the Honda’s engine climbs in pitch as he pushes the ATV to its limit.
“Easy!” I shout. “You’ve got him now!”
“He’s seen us! He’s speeding up. If I push him, he might wreck.”
“We might wreck!”
In thirty frantic seconds, Drew closes the gap to twenty-five yards. The taillight disappears as the motorcycle whips around a bend, but three seconds later we round it, too, and I sight the light again.
Suddenly the darkness gives way to a plain of white sand shining in the moonlight. The creek is a black snake slithering over it, and somehow the motorcyclist has reached the opposite side of that snake. Drew aims the Honda at the narrowest part of the stream. Instinct tells me this is a mistake, since shallows tend to be broad while narrows indicate deep-cut channels. But this is Drew’s home ground, not mine. As the motorcycle escapes over the sand, Drew punches the gas, and we hit the narrows at thirty miles an hour.
It’s like plowing into a guardrail. The rear end of the Honda flies over my shoulders, and the next thing I know, I’m sucking water and clawing mud. Knowing that the sinking four-wheeler could pin me to the creek bottom, I scrabble over the slime and burst up into the air.
I see no sign of Drew or the four-wheeler, only a cloud of steam rising from the water behind me. Diving back beneath the surface, I feel my way to the overturned vehicle and burn my forearm on the exhaust pipe. Then my hand closes on a bulging calf. Drew is pinned beneath the ATV.
Struggling around to the upstream side of the Honda, I plant both feet firmly on the creek bottom, then squat and grab the handlebars. Hoping the current will function like a second person, I heave upward and lunge downstream with all my strength.
The ATV rises about a foot, then stops.
I redouble my efforts, but the weight of the engine is just too much. As my back starts to give way, the main current of the creek suddenly lifts the ATV out of my hands and carries it several yards downstream. I fall and float behind it for a couple of seconds. Then I get my feet under me and turn, expecting Drew to break the surface.
He doesn’t.
“Drew!”
Nothing but the sound of water.
I know a guy who snapped both femurs in a four-wheeler accident exactly like this one. And Drew took the brunt of the impact when we hit the creek. The water’s not much more than four feet deep here, but the current is strong. If Drew was knocked unconscious, he could be thirty yards downstream already.
I take a deep breath and go to the bottom, then let the current carry me along. In less than ten seconds I collide with the ATV again. It’s being dragged sluggishly down the creek. I’m feeling my way around it when a strong hand grabs my shirt and pulls me to the surface.
Drew looks wildly at me, his eyes white with fear. “Jesus, I thought you were hurt bad!”
“I was looking for you!”
His face is half covered with blood, most of it flowing from a cut above his eye. There’s blood on his chest, too.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods, then looks off into the woods. “That bastard got away, though.”
Just as with Annie when she does something dangerous, my fear turns to fury as soon as I know Drew is all right. “What kind of juvenile bullshit was that? Goddamn it! You act like you’re still in high school. Junior high!”
His head is cocked as though he’s still listening for the motorcycle.
“He’s gone!” I rail. “Your money’s gone, too. And you damn near killed us to pay the bastard!”
Drew looks back at me, his eyes glinting with dark light. “I don’t care.”
“Why not?”
“Because that motherfucker killed Kate.”
I start to argue, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the strange light in his eyes. Or maybe it’s the realization that he truly risked our lives to catch the guy on the motorcycle, something the Drew Elliott I know would not normally do. He’s never been a hothead; he’s a logical and intelligent man.
“How do you know the blackmailer is the killer, Drew?”
“Because he was there when Kate died. That’s how he knows about us.”
At the sound of certainty in Drew’s voice, a new stillness settles over me. “How do you know he was there?”
Drew finally turns full on to me. His eyes are slits in the dark, his lips compressed. He looks like a man deciding whether or not to tell a priest the darkest secret of his life.
“Because I was the one who found Kate’s body.”
FIVE (#ulink_8a039230-0243-5454-8ece-82f771abe839)
Drew makes me wait until we have wrestled his four-wheeler out of the creek and stripped half the thing down before he’ll tell me anything about finding Kate. He’s one of those rare white-collar guys who actually knows how to fix things. He approaches machines with the same familiarity that he does the human body. Now he stands beside the steaming ATV, waiting for the air intake box to drain and the carburetor to dry. I’m sitting on a rotten log nearby, trying to catch my breath.
“All right, start talking,” I snap.
He walks away from me and stares up the hill that the motorcycle disappeared over. With his rifle slung over his shoulder, he looks like a marine standing guard in some lost jungle. My Springfield is gone; it must have fallen out of my pocket at some point during our charge through the woods. Drew has promised to find or replace it, but at this moment a lost pistol is not my highest priority. I want to know what he held back from me earlier tonight.
“It was this afternoon,” he says, still looking off into the dark. “Whatever led to Kate’s death started this afternoon.”
I remain silent, leaving him to fill the vacuum. I hope he doesn’t take long. It’s about fifty degrees, but with the wind hitting my wet clothes, it feels like deep winter.
“Kate was late getting her period,” Drew says softly. “Only five days, but she was usually as regular as clockwork. She was worried.”
So Drew has been sleeping with Kate for several months at least.
“I told her to buy a home pregnancy test, but she didn’t want to. The truth is, I think she sort of hoped she was pregnant.”
“Why?”
He turns to me, but his expression is indistinct in the moonlight. “Because that would have forced everything to a head. If she was pregnant, all would have been decided. She wouldn’t have got an abortion. I would have asked Ellen for a divorce, and—”
“Would Ellen have given you a divorce?”
“I think so. It would have cost me dearly, but it would have been worth it.”
“Go on.”
“I was supposed to meet Kate tonight, after Ellen went to sleep. That’s usually when we’d meet, during the week. She’d slip across the creek and come over to my workshop.”
“Jesus.”
“It was pretty safe, actually. Ellen never goes out there. She just calls on the intercom. Anyway, for some reason Kate couldn’t wait until tonight.”
“Maybe she took that pregnancy test after all.”
He nods thoughtfully. “Maybe so.”
“What did she do this afternoon?”
“She sent me a text message on my cell phone. It said, ‘I really need to see you. The creek or the cemetery.’”
“The cemetery?”
“The city cemetery was our backup place. The creek meant St. Catherine’s Creek. We met there a lot in the beginning, at the bend between Sherwood Estates and Pinehaven.”
“You used cell phones to communicate?”
“Never directly. She sent me that message from a computer—probably one at St. Stephen’s. There was no traceable link to her cell phone.”
Sherwood Estates and Pinehaven, the two most expensive subdivisions within the city limits. At the rear of each, wooded bluffs drop down to muddy, cane-covered flats that border the creek. During heavy rains, the creek rises several feet in hours and becomes a fifty-foot-wide torrent filled with logs and other debris.
“Kate would take her dog down there like she was exercising him,” Drew says. “I’d just jog down there. If we needed to talk during the day, it was a good place.”
“During the day? You’re nuts. Why not just get her a cell phone in your name, or something like that?”
Drew shakes his head. “Too dangerous. In the past couple of months, I’ve had the feeling Ellen might be having me followed. It’s very easy to eavesdrop on cell phones, and you can monitor their GPS position simply by calling a company that specializes in that. No warrant required.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“I don’t know how long Kate was waiting at the creek. I got the text message at my office. It was time-stamped one fifty-four p.m. She was almost certainly at school then. She probably left the building at three. I left my office at three-thirty. It took me ten or twelve minutes to get down to the creek, I guess. I didn’t park at home, because I was impatient. I parked at the back of an empty lot in Pinehaven and came in from the south.”
“Did anybody see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But they could have. The blackmailers, for example. They could have seen your car and followed you.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. You can’t see the back of that lot from the street.”
I motion for him to continue.
Drew’s voice drops in volume, forcing me to strain to hear him. “I saw her from forty yards away. She was lying on the creek bank with her head trailing in an eddy of water. I told myself it couldn’t be her. My mind totally rejected the visual evidence. Cognitive dissonance, I think it’s called. But at some level I knew. I sprinted up to her and looked down, and I just … she’d been wearing her tennis outfit. Her Izod shirt and sports bra had been pushed up to her neck, but she was naked from the waist down. There was fresh blood on the side of her head … petechiae around her eyes. I cradled her head and—”
Drew covers his mouth with one hand, unable to go on. A muffled sob comes from his throat. Then he speaks in a monotonic voice. “Her eyes were wide open, glassy, the pupils fixed and dilated. I was sure she was dead, but I tried to resuscitate her anyway. I gave her CPR for ten minutes, but I couldn’t get a heartbeat.”
“You didn’t call 911?”
“I’d left my cell phone in my car.”
I wonder if this is true. “Would you have called for help if you’d had it?”
“Hell, yes!”
“Was she still warm?”
Drew goes still. “Yes.”
“Okay. So you knew she was dead. What happened then?”
“I went insane. I literally came apart. Suddenly everything I’d been holding inside for months just burst out of me. I was crying, talking to myself, screaming at the sky like Captain Ahab.”
“Is this when you saw someone else there?”
“I didn’t see anybody else. But there was someone there.”
“How do you know?”
Drew clenches and unclenches his right fist. “I felt him.”
“How?”
“The way you do in horror movies. Your scalp is itching and you start to sweat. You can feel someone looking at you.”
This is a popular notion, but entirely untrue. Extensive experiments have proved this type of “intuition” false. “That was probably just paranoia.”
Drew shakes his head with absolute conviction. “I’ve hunted all my life. There was a human being close to me in those woods. But he stayed concealed. He knew how to use cover, or I’d have seen him watching me.”
I finally ask the obvious question. “If this is really how it went down, why wasn’t it you who reported Kate’s death?”
Drew looks at me as though puzzled about this himself. “It almost was. My first instinct was to cradle her like a baby and carry her up to my car. I was going to take her home to her mother and confess everything.”
As reckless as this sounds, I sense that he’s telling the truth. As a prosecutor, I heard many confessions in which murderers expressed this urge, and some even followed through with it.
“Did you actually pick her up?”
“No. It was at this point that I sensed the other person. I felt an urge to run, but I didn’t. Only a coward would run, I told myself. I had to face the situation. But as I sat there staring at her blank eyes—eyes I’d looked into the night before as we made love, eyes so alive you can’t imagine them—I started to see the situation from outside myself. What would I accomplish by confessing the affair? Kate was beyond help. If I confessed, I’d lose my medical license and probably go to jail. I might even be suspected of killing her. At that moment I honestly didn’t give a shit about myself. But what would it do to my family? My parents? What would happen to Tim? I wouldn’t be there to raise him. But worse, what would he think about me? He’d grow up believing I was a total shit, and maybe even a killer.”
“So you left the scene?”
Drew nods. “I pulled Kate clear of the water, but I left her in the open so that she’d be easily found. I was going to make an anonymous call.”
“Did you?”
A silent shake of the head.
“Why not?”
He bends down and examines the Honda’s carburetor. “I’d been there for a while. I’m no detective, but I’ve read enough to know that you leave trace evidence everywhere you go. It was raining pretty hard. I figured the rain would wipe away any evidence that I was there by morning.”
“That and more,” I say softly, wondering more and more about Drew’s actions. “It also washed away any evidence of the real killer. And it damn near washed Kate down to the Mississippi River.”
He says nothing.
“You don’t come out looking too heroic in this, buddy. A cop would be reading you your rights about now.”
Drew looks at me with a direct gaze. “Probably so. But Kate wouldn’t have wanted me to destroy Tim’s image of me for the sake of her postmortem dignity.”
“Her mother might have. You said the blackmailer sounded like a black kid. What would a black kid be doing down at St. Catherine’s Creek? I don’t remember ever seeing any down there.”
“When was the last time you were down there?”
“When we were kids, I guess.”
“That was thirty years ago, Penn. A couple of apartment complexes you think of as white have gone black in the past ten years. A lot of the kids play down there. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever.”
“Do you think some random black kid would have recognized you?”
“Why not? I have a lot of black patients.”
“But earlier you said that whoever was watching you was probably the killer.”
“I think so, yeah.”
“You think Kate was murdered by some random black kid?”
“Why not? Some crazy teenager?”
“We’re talking about capital murder, Drew. Murder during the commission of a rape.”
“Happens all the time, doesn’t it?”
“It does in Houston or New Orleans. But Natchez is a universe away from there. Houston had two hundred and thirty-four homicides last year. I think Natchez had two. The year before that, nobody got murdered here.”
“Yeah, but in the last twenty years, we’ve had some seriously twisted crimes.”
He’s right. Not even Natchez has gone untouched by the scourges of the modern era—stranger-murder and sexual homicide.
“Only now I’m thinking it wasn’t one kid,” he says. “We just got shot at while we chased the guy on the motorcycle. That means two people, at least. Maybe there were more. Maybe Kate was waiting for me at the creek, and it was just the wrong time to be down there. Maybe a crew of horny teenagers was down there messing around and they saw her. Maybe they decided they wanted her, whether she wanted them or not. Like that ‘wilding’ thing in Central Park, remember?”
I don’t answer. As a prosecutor, I found that whenever a crime victim’s relative suggested minority-assailant murder cases as parallels, I needed to look more closely at that person. What I’ve learned in the past five minutes has fundamentally altered my perception of Kate’s death and Drew’s relationship to it. When the school secretary interrupted the board meeting tonight, Drew already had a good idea of what she was about to say. When Theresa Cook choked out that our beloved homecoming queen was dead, Drew felt no surprise. Only hours before, he had been pounding on her chest and kissing her dead lips, trying to breathe life back into her body. I’ve never thought of Drew as duplicitous, but I guess we’re all capable of anything in the interest of self-preservation.
“What happens now?” he asks.
“You tell the police about your involvement with Kate. If you don’t, you’re at the mercy of whoever was on that motorcycle. And his buddy with the rifle.”
“What happens if I do tell the cops?”
“At the very least, you can count on a statutory rape charge from Jenny Townsend.”
Drew shakes his head. “Jenny wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you crazy? Of course she would.”
He steps closer to me, close enough for me to see his eyes clearly. “Jenny knew about us, Penn. About Kate and me.”
I blink in disbelief. “And she was okay with it?”
“She knew I loved Kate. And she knew I was going to leave Ellen.”
Every time I think I have my mind around the reality of this case, Drew moves the boundaries. “Drew, we’re through the looking glass here. If you have any more earthshaking revelations, I’d just as soon hear them all now.”
“That’s the only one I can think of right now.”
My mind is spinning with new permutations of motive and consequence. “A minute ago you said you were thinking of carrying Kate up to her mother and confessing everything. Now you tell me she already knew about you. Which is it?”
“‘Confess’ was the wrong word. I meant tell Jenny how Kate died, that I’d found her. I felt it was my fault. I still do. I guess I said ‘confess’ because if I’d done that, everything would have become public.”
I mull over this explanation. “Given what’s happened, Jenny might change her mind about your relationship with Kate.”
“We were fine tonight. That house was full of grieving people, but Jenny and I were the only two who truly knew what was lost when Kate died.”
“Jenny doesn’t know you were at the crime scene, does she?”
“No. But I’m probably going to tell her.”
“I wouldn’t rush into that. Even if she remains your biggest fan, if your affair with Kate becomes public, Jenny may feel she has no choice but to demand your head on a platter. If it were known that she sanctioned your relationship, she’d be crucified right along with you.”
“Jenny’s never been too concerned about the opinions of others.”
“This is a little different than … Oh, hell, the point’s moot anyway. If your affair becomes public, the police or the sheriff’s department will probably charge you with murder. Spurred on by the district attorney, of course.”
“Shad Johnson,” Drew says softly.
Even the name makes my gut ache. Shadrach Johnson is a black lawyer who was born in Natchez but raised in Chicago. Five years ago, he returned to Natchez to run for mayor, an election he lost by one percent of the vote. A year later he won the post of district attorney, taking the office from a white man who had never distinguished himself in the position. The mayoral race Johnson lost happened to be going on during my investigation of the unsolved civil rights murder, and during the stress of that case, Shad revealed his true colors to me. The man has one interest—his own political career—and he doesn’t care who he steps on, black or white, to advance it.
“Shad would charge you in a heartbeat,” I murmur. “He has wet dreams about getting a case like this.”
“Anything for headlines,” Drew agrees.
I’m starting to think Drew may have been right not to call in the cavalry when he discovered Kate’s body. My chivalrous side is revolted by his callousness, but the modern world is not a chivalrous place. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished.
“What will the blackmailers do now?” Drew asks.
“You gave them the whole twenty thousand?”
“Yeah. I thought about stacking some bills over a newspaper, but the geometry of the stadium wasn’t right for that. I knew he’d have too much time to check the bag before I could get him.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t just take your rifle down there and shoot the guy when he showed up.”
Drew looks uncomfortable. “I figured whoever it was would be watching me, looking for a gun, so I didn’t take it down with me. I figured I could sprint back up to the four-wheeler before he got to the bag. I’d scanned the whole stadium with the night-vision scope before I went down, and I knew nobody was close to the fifty-yard line.”
“Actually, you did make it in time to shoot him,” I observe. “Only I showed up.”
Drew nods, but I can’t read his emotions. “So, what will our motorcyclist do now? Will he try to milk me or will he turn me in?”
“No way to know. But he knows one thing for sure after tonight. Blackmailing you is risky business. He probably didn’t realize you were such a psycho.”
“I think he’ll keep playing me for a while. If he turns me in, he won’t get another penny out of me. No more drugs either.”
“You gave him drugs?”
Drew shrugs. “Just some samples. Nothing big. You know, that guy on the hill couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”
“He may not have been trying to hit us. Only to slow us down.”
Drew snorts at the idea of such half measures.
“Can we get out of here yet?” I ask.
He leans over the ATV where the big padded seat usually sits and checks the rectangular box that holds the air filter. Then he snaps the seat back on, pulls out the choke, and turns the ignition key. The engine turns over a few times, dies. He tinkers with something, then turns the key a second time. This time the motor sputters resentfully to life. He nurses the throttle with a lover’s touch, and soon the motor is roaring with power.
“Ready,” he says with a satisfied smile.
The trip back to St. Stephen’s is much more agreeable than the roller-coaster ride out here. If it weren’t for the wind chilling my wet clothes, I might enjoy it. Several times we startle deer, which freeze in our headlight with wide yellow eyes, then explode into chaotic motion like panicked soldiers. All the way, we watch the ground for my Springfield, but we don’t find it.
Drew brings us out of the woods on the high rim of the stadium, then drives swiftly around to the elementary school. I worried that there might be a police car waiting, but my car is still parked by itself in the shadows. A police patrol would probably be drawn to the glaring stadium lights before rifle fire. It’s not uncommon to hear rifle shots on this end of town after dark, as poachers spotlight deer out of season.
“Did you drive all the way here on your four-wheeler?” I ask, getting off the ATV.
“No, my pickup is parked behind the main building.”
“Do you need help loading this thing?”
“Nah, I’ve got some ramps.”
I reach for the door to my Saab, then turn back to Drew. “When was the last time you had sex with Kate?”
“Last night.”
“Did you wear a condom?”
He shakes his head. “She’s on the pill.”
“She got pregnant while she was on the pill?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” he says. “That’s what I kept telling her. She always took it on time, so the chance of pregnancy was really nil.”
Unless she got pregnant on purpose, I think, but I only nod and open my door.
“What is it?” Drew asks.
“By tomorrow, a sample of your semen is going to be on its way to a DNA lab somewhere. New Orleans is my guess. And if the cops get any reason to test your blood against that sample, you’re going to look guilty of murder. There’s only one way to prevent that perception, Drew.”
“Tell the police I was having an affair with her?”
I nod again. “Right now. Don’t wait five minutes.”
He cuts the Honda’s engine. “If I do that, the first thing they’ll do is ask me for a DNA sample.”
“It’s still better than the alternative. You tell them first, they see you as trying to help. You don’t … you’re guilty as hell.”
Drew ponders this. “If I were going to tell them, who would I call? The sheriff or the chief of police? Not Shad Johnson, right?”
Like many communities, Natchez has suffered from a long-running rivalry between city and county law enforcement. And Kate’s body was found right at the border of the city limits, which could cause serious jurisdictional problems.
“Whoever you tell, it’s going to get to Shad eventually. You might as well tell him first. The only way to play this kind of thing is get out ahead of it and stay there. If you volunteer the information, people can get angry, but they can’t paint you as a liar. Think of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Tell it now, Drew, before anyone beats you to the punch.”
“Everything? Even that I found Kate’s body?”
“I didn’t hear that question, brother.”
He looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“We have a saying in the legal profession. Every client tells his story once.”
“Meaning?”
“The first and only time you tell your story is on the witness stand. That way—until that day—you have time to adjust the truth to emerging facts.”
Disgust wrinkles his face.
“A cynical view, I admit,” I tell him, “but experience is a hard teacher. If I hear you tell me one story tonight, I can’t put you on the stand and let you tell a different one later.”
“But I’m innocent,” he says. “I told you that.”
Drew’s handsome face is a study in the complexity of human emotion. “Yes, you did. But you’re not acting like a man with nothing to hide.”
SIX (#ulink_093f5a48-b6ac-57af-8378-01a65d005c32)
Mia Burke’s eyes go wide when I walk into the living room of my town house.
“God, what happened to you?” she asks.
“I got a little wet.”
She rises from her chair and drops The Sheltering Sky onto an ottoman. “You’re bleeding!”
“Am I?”
“Yeah.”
She walks into the hall and motions for me to follow her to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, I see abrasions all over my neck and arms, and one long scrape on my left arm. The burn on my right forearm is red and throbbing.
“Shit,” she says softly. “Yuck.”
“What?”
“Your back is worse than your front. It looks like you’ve got a bad cut under your shirt.”
“Great.”
“You’d better let me look.”
I feel a little awkward in the bathroom with Mia. Two days ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now … “Just pull it up and see if I need stitches.”
She laughs at my cautiousness, then slowly lifts my shirt, which is stuck to my back. “It’s a slash, really. It doesn’t look too deep, but it’s dirty. Are you about to get in the shower?”
“Yes.”
“If I rub some soap into it, you can rinse it out in the shower. That should take care of it.”
She slips around me and turns on the hot water tap, then rubs soap into a blue washcloth until she has a thick lather. “Are you going to cry?” she asks, holding up the cloth and stepping behind me again.
“Let’s find out.”
The soap stings like sulfuric acid, but Mia has shamed me into silence.
“Are you crying?” she asks, scrubbing like a hospital nurse. I can feel her pulling apart the skin to clean inside the cut.
“Thinking about it. What’s Lifehouse?” I ask, remembering her T-shirt.
“A band, old man. You’d like them. I’ll make you a disk.” The humor disappears from her voice. “Did whatever you went to do work out all right?”
“Not as well as I hoped. But at least nobody got killed.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Right.”
At last she removes the burning cloth from my back. “I’m going to leave the soap in there. If you want it to stop hurting, go take your shower.”
“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”
She laughs, her eyes flickering with humor despite the day’s events. “Can you? Do you need me tomorrow?”
“After school, if you can make it.”
“Okay. See you then.”
She starts down the hall, but I call after her, “Have you heard anything else about Kate’s death?”
Mia walks back to the bathroom door. “Steve Sayers and his dad are down at the sheriff’s office right now, answering questions.”
“Steve was Kate’s boyfriend?”
“Figure of speech only.”
“Do you know where he was this afternoon?”
“He told John Ellis he drove down to his dad’s hunting camp near Woodville after school, to clean the place before turkey season.”
Woodville is a small logging town thirty miles south of Natchez. “Alone?”
“That’s what Steve told John. There may have been somebody down at the camp when Steve got there. I hope so, for Steve’s sake.”
“This time of year, I doubt it. So … Steve Sayers may not have an alibi.”
Mia bites her lower lip and looks down the hall toward the front door. She’s wearing small sapphire studs in her ears; I’ve never noticed them before. Suddenly she looks back at me, her dark eyes intense. “You don’t really think Steve could have killed Kate, do you?”
“I don’t know him. His parents either. What kind of boy is he?”
“He’s okay. Kind of red, I guess. He’s no brain surgeon. His dad’s a game warden. What can I say? He’s a jock of average intelligence.”
“Violent?”
Mia shrugs. “He’s been in a couple of fights, but then most of the guys I know have. The jocks, anyway.”
“Has the sheriff’s department talked to anybody else that you know about?”
“No. The police talked to Mrs. Townsend not long ago. That’s what I heard, anyway. They asked for the names of Kate’s closest friends.”
“Do you know whose names she gave them?”
“No. The truth is, Kate didn’t have any close friends. Not for the past year or so. I mean, we all thought of her as a friend, but nobody was really in her business, you know? Half the time, no one even knew where she was.”
The police are going to find this fact very interesting. “Did you ever ask her where she was? Or try to figure out where she might be?”
“Not really. Steve did, of course. Like I told you, he always insisted she had some secret boyfriend, one she was ashamed for us to know about. But no one ever saw her with another guy.”
I’m tempted to ask Mia if she ever saw Kate alone with Drew; she and her classmates might have seen them together and not thought twice about it. But there’s no point in alerting her to the true nature of that relationship. “Was Kate tight with any of the black kids at St. Stephen’s?”
Mia looks curiously at me. “Why?”
I’m not going to tell her about the blackmail call or Drew’s assessment of the possible caller. “It might be important.”
“Don’t tell me they’re going to try to railroad a black guy for this.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, from what I’ve read, that used to happen all the time around here in the old days. You know how it was. That’s why you took that civil rights case, right?”
“Yes and no. The truth is, I’m worried about ‘them’ rail-roading a white guy for Kate’s murder. What about my question?”
“Well, we only have four black guys in our class. We’re a pretty small class, so everybody knows everybody. But Kate didn’t have any special thing with any of the black guys. You talking about sex?”
“Not necessarily. Any special relationship.”
“I’ll ask around, but tonight my answer is no.”
“Okay.” I pull the towel tight across the cut on my back. “Thanks for staying tonight. I’m going to hit the shower now.”
She smiles and gives me a little wave. “Bye.”
“Hey, did Caitlin call while I was gone?”
“No. No calls.” Her eyes probe mine for a hidden reaction to this news.
“Thanks.”
Her gaze lingers a moment longer, and then she walks down the hall to the front door. “Tell Annie I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
The front door slams.
I’m almost asleep when the telephone rings beside my bed. I’m too tired and sore to roll over and look at the caller ID. I took three Advil after my shower, knowing that without them I’d hardly be able to move in the morning. The answering machine can get this one for me.
“Penn?” Caitlin says after the beep, her voice sounding clipped and very Northern after Mia’s soft drawl. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your earlier calls. I was at a party for a reporter who’s leaving the Herald, and the band was so loud I couldn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re sleeping now. Look, I got a call from one of our reporters at the Examiner. She said a St. Stephen’s girl named Kate Townsend was murdered today. Raped and strangled, she said, or at least that’s what it looks like. No autopsy until tomorrow morning. Have you heard about that? I think I played tennis with this girl at Duncan Park. She was really sharp, going to Harvard, she said. Well … I guess I won’t talk to you until tomorrow. I hope we can see each other soon. I know this sucks. I’m really getting a lot done, though. I may crack this thing soon. I hope the new book’s going well. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you. Bye.”
I was near to picking up the receiver when Caitlin signed off. I’m not sure why I didn’t. But I can’t help wondering why a Natchez reporter was able to get through to Caitlin when I wasn’t. And half of her message was about Kate’s murder, almost as if she were calling me to get details for a story. It’s not that I don’t want to share things with her. But I want her to be here to share actual experiences with me, not call for reports when things sound interesting.
A wave of relief goes through me when the phone rings again. I roll over onto one elbow and answer.
“Hey, babe,” I murmur. “Sorry. I was half sleep before.”
“Penn?” says a male voice.
“Yeah, Drew. What is it?”
“I was surfing the Web, and I found a site maintained by the Mississippi Supreme Court. They’ve got the whole criminal code posted there. And from what I can tell, statutory rape only applies to girls under sixteen, not eighteen.”
I blink in the darkness. “Are you sure? I remember the statute pretty well. Of course I learned it before moving to Texas for fifteen years. The legislature could have changed it.”
“Here’s the applicable language. ‘The crime of statutory rape is committed when any person seventeen years of age or older has sexual intercourse with a child who: one, is at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age.’ There are qualifications, but they all deal with even younger victims and the age difference between victim and perpetrator. It also says, ‘Neither the victim’s consent nor the victim’s lack of chastity is a defense to the charge of statutory rape.’”
“They must have changed the statute,” I say in disbelief. But even as relief courses through me, a sense of foreboding rises in my mind. “Drew … I think I read somewhere that some states were moving in this direction because there were so many suits being brought by parents who hated their daughters’ boyfriends. You’ve got two seventeen-year-olds having consensual sex. The guy turns eighteen and bam, the girl’s parents try to lock him up for statutory rape.”
“So, I’m in the clear?”
“Under that statute,” I say uneasily. “But somehow I don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.” What is it? I wonder, searching my memory for the source of my anxiety. “There’s definitely a sexual harassment issue here, but of course that’s a civil matter. It’s criminal charges we’re worried about, felonies in particular.” Suddenly, a voice is sounding in my head, the voice of my old boss, the district attorney of Houston: lascivious touching or handling of a minor … contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and then the big one, sexual—“Drew, are you still at your computer?”
“Yes.”
“Look up sexual battery.”
I stare up at the dark ceiling, listening to the clicking of keys and praying that my instinct is wrong. “What does it say?”
“Just a minute. Okay … uh …”
“Read it aloud.”
“Here … ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with (A) another person without his or her consent.’ I’m okay there.”
“Keep reading.”
“‘(B) a mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless person. (C) A child at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age, if the person is thirty-six or more months older than the child.’ Thank God.”
Drew sounds so relieved that I’m tempted to let him hang up and get a good night’s sleep. But I’m almost certain that bad news is coming. “Keep reading.”
“Okay. There’s a second paragraph. ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of …’”
His voice falters. “Drew?”
“Eighteen,” he whispers. “It says eighteen here.”
“Keep reading.”
“Oh, God. Oh, no.”
“Please read it for me.”
“‘… if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of eighteen years if the person is in a position of trust or authority over the child including without limitation the child’s teacher, counselor, physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, minister …’”
Drew’s voice sounds like that of a man being sedated before an operation, a monotone fading into nothingness. “You can stop, Drew.”
He continues as though he can’t hear me over the print screaming from his computer monitor. “‘… priest, physical therapist, chiropractor, legal guardian, parent, stepparent, aunt, uncle, scout leader or coach.’”
“Drew, listen to me. Are you listening?”
Out of a deep well of silence comes a single sob.
“Drew, it’s all right. I know you’re feeling terrible guilt right now. Seeing it written down like that, you may feel for the first time that you’re guilty of a crime.”
“She’s dead,” he says in a shattered voice. “And if I hadn’t crossed this line with her, she’d be alive right now.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not God. Listen to me, buddy. I love you. I love you, and I respect you. You’re just human, like the rest of us.”
“Wait a minute,” he says wetly. “I’m looking for the penalty.”
“Don’t. Leave that for tomorrow.”
“I need to see it.”
No, you don’t, I say silently. It’s going to be thirty years—
“Jesus Christ. It’s thirty years.”
“That’s not going to happen, Drew. I promise you that.”
“Oh my God,” he says with fresh dread.
“What? What is it?”
“For a second offense, it’s forty years. Timmy would be—”
“Turn off that computer! That’s not the real world, Drew.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hell, yes. I was a prosecutor for fifteen years. That’s why you wanted my advice about all this, remember? And my advice is to go to sleep and let me do the worrying for you. That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Twenty bucks doesn’t pay for much worrying.”
I don’t reply for some time. Then I say, “You saved my life. And you risked your own to do it. If you hadn’t, my daughter would never have been born. That buys you a lot of worrying.”
“You never asked for this.”
“No, but I can handle it. You’ve got to stay in control for me, though.”
“You’re not leaving town or anything tomorrow, are you?”
“No way. Now, what are you going to do about the blackmail issue? Are you going to come clean with the cops?”
“After what we just learned? I don’t know.”
“You’re a smart guy, Drew. Let’s talk about probability.”
“Okay.”
“How often did you see Kate? I don’t mean platonically. How often were you alone with her, intimate with her?”
“Every day. Or night, rather.”
Unbelievable. “For how long?”
“For the last seven months, I guess. Ever since the mission trip to Honduras. After that, we couldn’t stand to be apart.”
“Get out ahead of this thing, Drew. It’s your only chance.”
“I hear you.”
I let the silence do its work for a while. “Do you?”
“It’s Tim that’s holding me back. I don’t want him to have to know about this if he doesn’t have to. I don’t want him to have to go through the grief he’ll get at school because of it. I don’t even want Ellen to have to deal with it, now that Kate’s dead. There’s just no reason anymore.”
“Yes, there is. This thing is beyond your control now. No matter what you do, it’s eventually going to come out.”
“I’m not so sure. If Kate said she didn’t tell anybody, she didn’t.”
“Then who’s blackmailing you?”
“Kate’s killers.”
I grunt noncommittally. “I’m not so sure.”
“I know. But I am.” He breathes steadily into the phone. “Thanks for tonight, Penn. I mean it.”
“Night, buddy.”
The open line hisses in my ear.
I hang up.
SEVEN (#ulink_a2b590f3-c9af-5035-aa85-204879875e92)
Drew’s blackmailers lost no time making him pay for his indecisiveness. At 11:10 the next morning, I was helping my mother paint some bookshelves in her garage when my cell phone rang. The screen showed Drew as the caller. I walked out of the garage under the pretext of getting better cell reception, then answered by saying, “Are you as sore as I am?”
“You were right,” he said. “I’m fucked.”
A current of anxiety shot through me, but experience kept my voice calm. “What’s happened?”
“I just got off the phone with Shad Johnson. He got an anonymous call this morning.”
“Let me guess. The caller said you were having an affair with Kate Townsend and that you might have killed her.”
“Yep.”
“Did he give any details?”
“Johnson didn’t say so.”
“What did Shad ask you during the call? Did he ask straight out if the accusation was true?”
“No. He basically said, ‘Doc, I hate to have to call you about this, but I got this call with an accusation, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t ask you about it.’ He was pretty friendly, actually.”
“Shad Johnson is not your friend.”
“I understand that. I was just giving you his tone. He said he wanted to give me a chance to deny it as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t become any kind of thing.”
“‘Thing’? That was his word?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s already a thing, Drew. You can bet your ass on that. Did you flat-out deny that you were seeing Kate?”
“No.”
I sighed with relief.
“I acted stunned,” he said, “which I was. I told him I was too shocked even to respond to such an outrageous accusation, that Kate was a close friend of our family, and that we’d been shattered by her death. Shad said he understood. He said he’d like to talk to me about it at his office. He said I might have information about Kate that could help them piece together a better picture of her than they have now.”
“What did you say to that?”
“What could I say? I told him I wanted to do everything I could to assist the investigation.”
“Okay. When is this meeting?”
“Lunch today. Fifty minutes from now.”
Shit. “Was it a short call? Long? What?”
“Short.”
“That’s because Shad got what he wanted. He thinks he’s going to question you on his territory.”
“He’s not?”
“Not unless you’re a complete moron—which, after last night, I’m starting to believe.”
“Penn—”
“Damn it, why didn’t you volunteer the information last night like I told you to?”
“You know why! I didn’t want Tim and Ellen to have to deal with it if they didn’t have to.”
“Well, now they have to.”
“What do I do, Penn?”
“You really need a lawyer now.”
“I told you that last night.”
“And I told you I wasn’t your guy. Not for this.”
“The meeting’s in fifty minutes!”
I bowed my head in resignation. The odds of finding a Natchez lawyer qualified to take that meeting were low, and the odds of adequately briefing one in time were nil. “Where are you now?”
“At my office. Seeing patients.”
“You’re off at twelve?”
“Yeah.”
“You just had an emergency.”
Drew was silent for a moment. “I’m skipping the meeting?”
“I’m going in your place.”
“Is that the best thing?”
“We need to get some idea of what Shad is thinking. I’d also like to know what the autopsy turned up. Shad probably has the pathologist’s report in hand by now.”
“I don’t want to think about that. This is Kate we’re talking about.”
You’d better get used to it. “Sorry. Now … we have a tricky little problem to deal with. Think before you answer me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“The first thing Shad is going to ask me is where you were when Kate was murdered. He won’t be obvious about it, but he’ll ask. And I happen to know you were at the murder scene. Where did you go after you left the creek?”
“Home.”
I was silent long enough for Drew to realize that if he was lying, he had better come clean then or stick with his story. “Was Ellen there?”
“No. She was at her sister’s place.”
“What about Tim?”
“The maid had taken him to his music lesson.”
“So nobody can verify that you were home?”
“I answered some e-mails soon after I got there. Couldn’t we use those?”
“Maybe. But depending on how narrow a window they’ve established as time of death, the e-mails probably won’t put you in the safety zone.”
“Tim got home around five, and Ellen about six.”
“Okay. It’s also possible that someone saw your car parked in that vacant lot in Pinehaven. For that reason, and for others I can’t predict now, I may decide I need to tell Shad the truth. Everything. Today. The affair, the blackmail, everything.”
Drew said nothing.
“In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think coming clean may still be the best option we have. Even lying by omission digs a hole they can bury you in later.”
A woman on Drew’s end of the line called out a blood pressure reading. Drew lowered his voice. “You’re my lawyer, Penn. I trust your instincts. Say whatever you think you need to. I’m innocent—of murder, anyway—and I’m not going to hide anything except to protect my son.”
What could I say to that? “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over. Keep your cell phone wired to your hip, and don’t answer any calls until you hear from me. Don’t talk to anybody.”
“I won’t.”
I hung up and turned back to the garage. My mother was watching me with a quizzical look on her face. In that moment I realized just how far my life had already slid off its accustomed track. After dropping Annie at school this morning, I drove down to the football field and searched it for my lost pistol. Failing to find it, I went up to the high school and told Coach Wade Anders to keep an eye out for it. Anders is the athletic director of St. Stephen’s, and he promised to have his assistants search the bowl again before any kids were allowed into it. He also asked if I knew anything about the switch box for the stadium lights being shot up. I told him I didn’t, but that I’d send someone to install a new box as soon as possible. He looked at me in silence for a little while, then nodded as though we shared a special understanding. Like everybody, Anders was building up capital where he could.
The lost gun problem didn’t end there. The land that Drew and I chased the blackmailer over is owned by a group of investors who use it as a hunting camp. I called the doctor who heads the group to tell him I might have lost a pistol on their land, and to ask his members to keep an eye out for it. When he asked what I was doing on their land, I made up a story about a troublesome armadillo rooting up the St. Stephen’s football field—an armadillo I chased onto their land in my single-minded quest to kill it. Remarkably, he laughed as though he understood completely.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I need to go take care of something.”
“Is everything all right?” she asked, her eyes making it clear that she knew better.
“Yes.”
“It’s not Annie, is it?”
“No, no.”
“Are you and Caitlin all right?”
“We’re fine, Mom. This is just some legal business.”
She went back to painting the shelves with long, smooth strokes of her brush. At sixty-eight, she works with the strength and flexibility of someone twenty years her junior. Being raised in the country does that for some people.
When I arrived at the house this morning, Mom held up the newspaper and asked me about Kate’s death. Thankfully, Caitlin’s staff had reported only the known facts, which left my mother as curious as the rest of the town. And like most of the town, Mom believes Drew Elliott hung the moon. She often says that Drew is the only “young” doctor who practices medicine with the conscientiousness of my father. What would she say if she knew that he was sleeping with Kate Townsend until the day she died?
“Be careful,” Mom called as I walked to my car.
“I will,” I called, thinking that was good advice to follow when dealing with Shadrach Johnson.
The district attorney’s office is on the third floor of the waterworks building in Lawyer’s Alley, across from the massive city courthouse. In a town filled with architecturally significant buildings, the waterworks is nothing special, a three-story concrete block with one glass-brick corner enclosing the staircase. I park under the courthouse oaks and cross the street, waving at one of my parents’ neighbors as she walks into the DMV office.
There’s no receptionist behind the door on the ground floor, just a staircase. As I climb the stairs, my errand weighs heavy below my heart. I’ve got to tell Shad Johnson the truth as I know it—up to a point, anyway. Drew had sex with Kate the night before she died, so I have to assume that the state pathologist has already recovered his semen from her body. And while no judge would order Drew to take a DNA test based solely on an anonymous telephone call, Shad may already have more proof connecting Drew to Kate.
Last night, Drew told me he’d been intimate with Kate for the past seven months. How many seventeen-year-old girls could sleep with a forty-year-old man that long without telling a single friend about it? If Kate told her mother about the affair, why not her best friend? And with Kate dead at the hands of a killer, how long will it take Jenny Townsend—however much she may like Drew—to tell the police what she knows? Shad may already have proof of the affair; he may have called this meeting simply to see if Drew will lie about it, using the lesser crime of sexual battery as a litmus test for deception before questioning Drew about the murder. I did the same thing many times as a prosecutor.
When I reach the third floor, a heavy female secretary with dyed-orange hair and a flower-print dress gives me a quizzical look from behind a glass partition. Five years ago Shad had a male factotum who dressed like Malcolm X, but he vanished shortly after Shad’s mayoral defeat. This woman was obviously expecting Drew, who is known on sight by most Natchezians. I’m pretty well-known myself, but in a small town no one ever quite attains the celebrity of the best doctors. My father is testament to that fact. He can’t walk twenty yards in Wal-Mart without being stopped by adoring or inquisitive patients.
“I’m Mr. Johnson’s noon appointment,” I tell the secretary.
“No, you’re not.”
“You expecting Dr. Drew Elliot?”
She looks confused. “That’s right.”
“I’m his attorney.”
Her lips form a perfect O, just like they do in cartoons. “You’re Penn Cage.”
“I am. I’m Dr. Elliott’s attorney.”
The expression of surprise morphs into an uncertain glare. “I know about you.”
“Your boss and I once went a few rounds over a civil rights murder.”
She picks up the phone and begins speaking in a hushed tone.
My statement about the civil rights murder is true. The irony of that case is that I, the white lawyer, was crusading to solve the twenty-year-old murder of a black man, while Shad, the black politician, was trying to bury the case to keep from upsetting the white voters he needed to win the mayor’s office.
The secretary hangs up and buzzes me through the door. “End of the hall,” she says curtly.
As soon as I enter the blandly painted corridor, a door at the far end opens and a black man a few inches shorter than I peers out, an expression of annoyance on his face. “Son of a bitch,” he says without a trace of Southern accent. “I was having a good day until now.”
“Hello, Shad.”
The district attorney shakes his head, then walks back into his office, squaring his shoulders for combat as he goes. I follow him inside and wait to be invited to sit.
As usual, Shadrach Johnson is dressed to the nines in a bespoke suit and Italian shoes. His hair has a little more gray in it than the last time we locked horns, but his eyes still flash with quick intelligence. My first impression of him was of a brash personal injury lawyer, and nothing in the intervening years has changed that. Shad’s jutting jaw greets the world with a perpetual challenge, his eyes project arrogance and mistrust, and his shoulders stay flexed under the weight of an invisible yet enormous chip.
“Your buddy’s not playing this right, Cage,” he says, taking a seat behind an enormous desk that looks like an antique. “An innocent man doesn’t send his lawyer to speak for him in a situation like this. Have a seat.”
Go for it, I tell myself. Turn on the gravitas and recite the lines you rehearsed on the way over: This is a very serious matter, Shad. Dr. Elliott was indeed seeing the dead girl, but he did not kill her. You and I have to set aside our personal history and help the police to find a dangerous killer. Dr. Elliott wants to assist the investigation in every way, but he also wants to keep this unfortunate matter from escalating into something that could ruin reputations and break up families unnecessarily.
I was prepared to say those things, but now that I’m actually facing Shad Johnson, something stops me. It all seemed so clear in the car: pay the short-term price for a long-term gain. But this office, as modest as it is, gives me the old feeling I had when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. Irrevocable decisions are made in this room, decisions about who will be punished and who will not. Who will spend decades in prison? Who will die at the hands of the state? For any prosecutor, Drew Elliott would be a juicy target, but for a man like Shad Johnson—a man who dreams of being governor and more—Drew is a prize elephant.
There’s no doubt that Drew would look better to a future jury if he told the truth now. But what other consequences might result? Natchez is a small town, and when small-town cops are handed a likely suspect, they don’t look too hard for another. Truth be told, city cops aren’t much different. And confessing to the affair with Kate would immediately open Drew to a sexual battery charge that Shad could use to jail him, should he choose to. No, better to keep my cards close to the vest.
“That’s a lot nicer desk than the one the last D.A. had,” I observe, stalling for time as I take the chair opposite Shad.
The district attorney can’t help but brag; it’s his nature. “I got it out of storage from the old Natchez Museum,” he says, rubbing the finely grained wood. “It came from the attic of one of the antebellum homes. Longwood, I think. Ironic, isn’t it? Me working at a cotton planter’s desk? I had it appraised. It’s worth sixty grand.”
I give Shad a level gaze. “I hope you’re not one of those people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Shad’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing here, Penn? Where’s Dr. Elliott?”
“He had an emergency at his office. He had to stay and handle it.”
“Bullshit. Your client’s scared. His dick’s got him tangled up in a capital murder case, and he’s terrified.”
Shad must have more than the anonymous call in his pocket. “How do you figure that?”
“Did Elliott tell you about the call I got this morning?”
“He said you mentioned an anonymous caller who told you some story about him being intimate with Kate Townsend.”
“That’s right. And the good doctor did not deny it.”
“Did he confirm it?”
“That’s what this meeting was for. For him to confirm or deny. Now he’s sent you in his place. The big-time mouthpiece. I didn’t think you practiced anymore.”
“I wasn’t practicing when I took the Del Payton case either.”
Shad looks like he just bit into something sour. My punishing Del Payton’s murderers after Shad had resisted reopening the case cost him just enough support in the black community to take the mayoral election away from him. But that’s old news. I’ve got to get a handle on his present intentions before I paint myself into a corner.
“Shad, let’s—”
“Stop,” he says, jabbing a forefinger at me. “You’re here because you want something.”
He’s right. “I would like to know what was discovered during Kate’s autopsy.”
Shad studies me for several moments. “And you think I’m just going to give that to you?”
“If you continue to pursue my client, I’ll get it one way or another. Why don’t we try to foster a spirit of cooperation here?”
“You haven’t done any cooperating with me so far.” He lifts a sheaf of fax paper off his desk and flips to the last page. “But I’m feeling generous. What do you want to know?”
“Time of death?”
Shad shakes his head. “We’ll pass on that for now.”
“Cause?”
“Strangulation. There was also head trauma that might have killed the girl if she hadn’t been strangled first.”
“Interesting. There are rumors going around town about rape. Nurses at the hospital did some talking. Was the girl raped or not?”
“The pathologist says she was.”
“Genital trauma?”
Shad nods slowly.
“Did they recover semen from her?”
“Affirmative. Both holes.”
His crudeness is meant to shock, but I saw too much rape and murder in Houston for this to bother me. “So, the killer had some time with her.”
Shad shakes his head, a strange smile on his face. “Not necessarily. The pathologist already ran serology on the semen samples. They came from two different men.”
A glimmer of hope sparks in my soul. “Multiple assailants?”
“You could read it that way.”
“What other way is there? You have a different scenario in mind?”
“After the call I got this morning, you can’t blame me for speculating a little.”
“I’m listening.”
Shad leans over his desk and steeples his fingers. “Let’s say Dr. Elliott was having an affair with this high school girl. In his mind, it’s true love. Then he finds out his prom queen’s been sharing the poonanny with somebody else when he’s not around. Her old boyfriend, say. The doc finds out, and he flips out. Maybe Kate is cruel about how she tells him—you know some women. So, your client starts choking her, trying to make her shut up. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s shut her up for good.”
“By that scenario, the girl wasn’t raped at all.”
Shad waves his hand as though at a minor annoyance. “Rape is a subjective finding in a dead girl. She’s not accusing anybody. So she had some genital trauma. Rough consensual sex can cause that. Hell, I’ve had women get mad if I didn’t traumatize them down there.”
“You’re reaching, Shad.”
He settles back in his chair. “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you something else for free. The St. Stephen’s homecoming queen was pregnant.”
Shit. “How far along?”
“A little over four weeks. And that—according to the laws of the great state of Mississippi—makes this a double homicide, Counselor.” Shad arches his eyebrows in mock concern. “The community’s going to be very upset by that idea, the murder of an unborn baby. You know, I can see some people speculating that Dr. Elliott was just playing with this poor girl—getting a little on the side—and when she turned up pregnant, he saw his nice little life crashing down around him. He saw thirty years in Parchman for having sex with a juvenile patient, so he killed her.”
I suddenly see a glimpse of the future. This case is going to trial, and Drew Elliott will be the defendant, whether he deserves to be or not. Thank God I didn’t march in here spouting his secrets. “The public shouldn’t be able to make that kind of speculation,” I say evenly, “because they shouldn’t associate my client’s name with this case in any way.”
Shad smiles and shakes his head. “We’ve got a simple situation here, Counselor. Somebody is making telephone calls saying your client was screwing the dead girl. I can’t control that caller’s actions. So you’ve got to assume that Dr. Elliot’s name is going to be in the street soon. The best thing Drew can do for himself is provide us a DNA sample and clear his name as quickly as possible. If his DNA doesn’t match what the pathologist swabbed out of the girl, nobody can ever say a word against him.”
Check and mate. If I’m going to come clean about the affair before the trial, now is the time. But the truth as I know it will only lend credence to Shad’s first scenario—murder committed in a jealous rage.
“You asked about time of death,” Shad reminds me. “If you’ll tell me where Dr. Elliott was during the hours surrounding it, I’ll give you the time of death.”
“No deal. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”
Shad’s eyes glint with a predator’s love of the hunt.
“What about the fishermen who found the girl’s body?” I ask, trying to take Shad’s mind off Drew’s alibi. “Have you ruled them out?”
“They’re down at the hospital providing DNA samples as we speak. They couldn’t wait to do it.”
Damn. “And Kate Townsend’s boyfriend?”
“Steve Sayers? Same deal.” Shad taps the cherry desktop with manicured fingernails. “The boy’s alibi is a little weak, but he couldn’t wait to get over to the hospital and give blood. He offered to whack off in a cup right here in my office. Says he hasn’t had sex with the victim in months. Seems Miss Townsend just up and stopped putting out, no explanation. And before that, she was as hot as they come, according to the Sayers boy. Kinky, he said.” Shad gives me a cagey look. “You think she got religion?”
I keep my face impassive.
Shad smiles and leans back in his chair. “The bottom line is this: I need DNA from everybody who might have known the Townsend girl in the biblical sense. And any reasonable man would have to include your client on that list. Now, everybody but your client is chomping at the bit to give me said sample. Your client, on the other hand, has sent his celebrity mouthpiece down here to talk for him. So I’ll ask you straight out, is Dr. Elliott going to provide a DNA sample to the state in the interest of expediting this investigation? Or is he not?”
I choose my words with great care. “No judge would order my client to give a blood sample on the basis of an anonymous call alone.”
Shad concedes this with a slight inclination of his head. “That may be true. But in the interest of protecting the community, what innocent man would object to it?”
“In a perfect world, I’d agree. But if it got out that you asked Drew Elliott to give a DNA sample in connection with this murder—and it would get out, if he complied—the rumor alone could destroy him. It’s practically a child molestation charge. The stigma would never go away.”
“You can’t keep his name out of this mess, Cage. Our mystery caller didn’t telephone just me this morning.”
I cover my mouth and swallow hard. “Who else?”
“Sheriff Byrd and the chief of police. Our caller’s a persistent fellow. He seems to believe strongly in his cause.”
“Did you trace the source of the calls from phone records?”
“They originated from a pay phone on the north side of down-town.”
“The black section?”
Shad inclines his head again.
This fits what Drew told me about the blackmailer’s voice. “Did the police fingerprint the phone?”
“They’re working that angle, but no matches yet.” Shad suddenly gives me a look of honest puzzlement. “The thing is, Penn, accusing Dr. Elliott of this affair seems so out of left field, it’s hard to imagine anyone making it up. You know? If it’s not true, who would even think of it?”
“Somebody who hates Drew Elliott.”
Shad turns up his palms. “From what I gather, the good doctor hasn’t got an enemy in the world. Everybody talks about him like he’s a saint.”
“There’s a reason for that. He’s a genuinely good man.”
Another beatific smile. “Then he’s got nothing to worry about. The way I see it, providing a DNA sample is about the only way Dr. Elliott is going to be able to preserve his sterling reputation.”
“There’s no way I’m letting Drew go down to the St. Catherine’s Hospital lab for a DNA test. The man’s on staff there, for God’s sake. Word would shoot through that building in less than an hour. By nightfall, everybody in town would know about it.”
Shad leans back and speaks in a cold voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll be forced to consider other alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. One thing, it’s the first week of the month. That means the grand jury’s in session. Probably will be for two more days. They might be real interested in hearing about this situation. About the anonymous call, and about the strange coincidences, like how Dr. Elliott lives up-stream on that creek where the girl’s body was found. They might just decide they want a DNA sample from the doctor on their own.”
Jesus. “That’s unethical, Shad. You’d be perverting the purpose of the grand jury. It doesn’t exist to investigate crimes. And for your information, at least a thousand people live upstream on that creek, maybe more.”
Shad’s eyes brim with confidence. “Just a thought, Counselor. But emotions are running high in this town. People want a brutal killer like this caught and punished. That’s my sole interest here. And I’m not going to let the fact that your client is white and rich stop me from getting to the bottom of this poor girl’s death. That kind of miscarriage of justice stopped the day I took over this office.”
Like a chess player experiencing a flash of insight, I suddenly see a dozen moves down the board. And what I see sends a rush of adrenaline through my veins. This conversation isn’t about murder at all—it’s about politics. I should have realized that before I walked in the door.
The mayoral election Shad lost five years ago was the most hotly contested in Natchez history. He lost to Riley Warren, a two-term white incumbent with a flamboyant style and a love for backroom business schemes that earned him the nickname Wiley. While some of those schemes benefited the city, others weighed it down with suffocating debt, and by the end of his term—last summer—even Wiley’s supporters suspected that he’d enriched himself more than the city he was elected to serve. Shad might have defeated Warren then, but he was only halfway into his first term as district attorney. It wouldn’t have looked good for him to resign after the promises he’d made to rectify “racial inequalities” in Natchez’s criminal courts.
Despite dwindling support, Wiley Warren ran for mayor a third time. His enemies polled local worthies in search of an opposition candidate—myself included. Like most who were asked, I declined to enter the fray. Ultimately, Warren’s enemies ran a rather dim bulb named Doug Jones against their nemesis, and despite Jones’s utter lack of distinction or vision, he handily defeated Warren in the primary. The only black candidate to step forward was a funeral director with a checkered past, a man with enemies of his own in the black community. Black turnout was low on election day, and Doug Jones won by a 58 to 42 percent margin. The newly Honorable Mayor Jones took office and promptly became the invisible man. If he took no bold new initiatives for the city, neither did he make any tragic mistakes. He managed this by doing almost nothing at all. But shortly after Christmas he finally did do something: he held a press conference and announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and would resign his office within ninety days.
That was two months ago.
If Mayor Jones pulls the trigger within the next four weeks, as promised, then the chief executive office of the city will be up for grabs. Local election rules dictate that once the mayor’s office is vacated, a special election must be held within forty-five days. Sitting here in this office, I realize just how important that fact is to Shad Johnson. If Shad were to convict a rich white doctor of capital murder, he could pronounce his election promises to the black community fulfilled and enter the mayoral race with a united front behind him—something that didn’t happen five years ago.
The seemingly boundless confidence in Shad’s eyes triggers another revelation: he doesn’t even have to convict Drew. Even if Shad loses, he wins politically in the black community, just for making the effort. He can always blame a courtroom loss on the white man’s secret manipulation of the system.
I look Shad hard in the eyes but speak softly. “You’re going to run for mayor again.”
He blinks like a reptile basking in the sun. “No comment, Counselor.”
“You think putting Drew Elliott in Parchman is your ticket to a unified black electoral base.”
Shad attempts to dispose of my theory with a wave of his hand. “Our business here is to rule out Dr. Elliott as a murder suspect—if we can—so that my officers can get on with the investigation of this heinous crime.”
Spoken as though for reporters. My new understanding of the political situation has sent my mind racing down a dozen different paths, but I’m not here to figure out the future of Natchez. I’m here to protect Drew Elliott.
“All right,” I say in a tone of surrender. “What about this? Dr. Elliott has a laboratory in his office. Send over a couple of police officers right now, during his lunch hour. His lab tech can draw the blood you need—do a buccal swab, whatever—and the cops can attest that it’s his. The chain of custody remains intact, and so does Dr. Elliott’s reputation.”
Shad nods. “I can live with that.”
I look at my watch. “I’d better call him.”
“I thought he had an emergency.”
“He’s probably handled it by now.” I get up and offer Shad my hand.
He takes it, but he squeezes gently rather than shakes, then withdraws his hand. “I hope your boy comes up clean, Penn. If he doesn’t …”
“He will.”
Shad looks surprised by my statement. But I was talking about Kate’s murder, nothing else.
I’m almost to the door when he says, “Penn, about the mayoral situation.”
I turn and regard him steadily. “Yes?”
“I heard some local power brokers asked you to run against Wiley Warren last year.”
“That’s right. I wasn’t interested.”
“Not interested in running against Warren? Or not interested in being mayor?”
“Both. Neither.”
Shad studies me with unguarded curiosity. “The town’s in a lot different place than it was a year ago.”
“You’re right, I’m sad to say.”
It kills him to ask the next question. “Are you still not interested?”
I turn up my palms, then smile easily. “No more than you. Have a good day, Shad.”
Outside the D.A.’s office, I stand in the sun and stare across the street at the courthouse. Somewhere inside, a simple white man named Doug Jones is wrestling with his fear of death and deciding when to resign the office of mayor. I’m surprised he’s waited two months, given the gravity of his diagnosis. I watched an uncle die of lung cancer, and I’ve forgotten neither my horror nor his pain. But while Mayor Jones struggles with his mortality, Shad Johnson watches from across the street like a hungry vulture waiting to draw life from death. My new appreciation of Shad’s deeper motive has clarified Drew’s situation.
If Shad can get sufficient evidence, he will rush Drew to trial in record time, hoping to convict him—or at least garner a week’s worth of headlines—before Mayor Jones resigns. But Drew’s legal jeopardy is not the sole reason for my interest in Shad’s political intentions. For the past six months, despite my decision not to seek the office of mayor a year ago, I have been pondering the idea of entering the special election.
My reasons are simple. One month into Doug Jones’s administration, the International Paper Company—the largest employer in the county—announced that it would close its Natchez mill after fifty years of continuous operation. The shock to the community still hasn’t passed. Closure came swiftly, and about a month ago the severance pay of former employees began to peter out. So did their heath insurance benefits. And IP was merely the last in a short but devastatingly complete line of local manufacturing companies to shut down. Triton Battery. Armstrong Tire and Rubber. Johns-Manville. That leaves tourism the only industry pumping outside dollars into Natchez. And tourism is a seasonal business.
In a single year, Natchez has been transformed from a fairly healthy city into a community on the edge. We’ve lost more than five hundred families in the wake of the IP closure, and more are leaving every week. In 1850, Natchez boasted more millionaires than every city in America except New York and Philadelphia, the money flowing in as cotton flowed out by the hundreds of thousands of bales. But as the soil was slowly depleted, cotton farming moved north to the Delta, and Natchez entered a period of decline. Then in 1948, oil was discovered practically beneath the streets. By 1960, the year I was born, the city was flush with millionaires again, and Natchez became a truly magical place in which to grow up. But in 1986, the price of oil crashed, and the Reagan administration sacrificed domestic oil producers in his battle to win the Cold War. The number of local oil companies dwindled from sixty to seven, and by the time the price of oil began to climb again, there wasn’t enough industry left to exploit what remained of our depleted reserves. Without visionary leadership, Natchez will soon shrink to a quaint hamlet of ten or twelve thousand people—mostly retirees, service workers, and people on welfare—and the thriving city of twenty-five thousand that I grew up in will be only a memory.
When I first heard about Doug Jones’s terrible diagnosis, I sensed the hand of fate offering this city a final opportunity for salvation. And to my surprise, I felt a powerful surge of civic responsibility swelling in my heart. Shad Johnson will tell voters he felt a similar call to public service, but I know him too well to believe that. Five years ago, he left his Chicago law firm to return to Natchez and run one of the most cynical campaigns I’ve ever witnessed on either a local or national level. I’m proud that my efforts in the courtroom helped snatch victory from his grasp, but it was black voters who ultimately did that. Enough of them saw through Shad’s theatrical skills to tip the balance against him. They closed their eyes, gritted their teeth, and voted for what they hoped was a harmless white man. But as Shad himself said earlier, Natchez was a different city a year ago. Now we are in crisis. And a man who does nothing during a crisis is as bad as a man who causes one.
As I stare at the great white courthouse, my cell phone rings. I climb into my Saab and answer.
“Are you out of the meeting?” Drew asks in a tense voice. “Did you see the autopsy report?”
No questions about his future, only about what happened to Kate. Is that because he loved her so dearly? Or because he has something to fear? “She was strangled, Drew.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says quietly. “From the petechiae around her eyes. Was she pregnant?”
“Yes. Four weeks along.”
A sharp intake of breath. “That’s why she was so desperate to see me. Jesus, what about—”
“Stop talking, Drew. We can go into details later. Right now we have a problem. The district attorney wants a sample of your DNA.”
Silence.
“The pathologist found semen inside Kate’s body.” There’s no point in telling Drew that the pathologist found the semen of two different men, and in two different locations. “Of course, I expected that, given what you told me about the previous night.”
“I’m listening.”
“Shad wants to prove you murdered Kate. He wants to prove it badly.”
“Does he really think I’m capable of that?”
“All men are capable of that, Drew. We can talk about Shad’s motives later. Right now, under these circumstances, giving him the sample is the best thing you can do. It’ll buy us three or four weeks while the lab does the test. And time is what we need more than anything right now.”
“Why?”
“Because the police may have caught the real murderer long before the test is completed, or even begun. And by that point, it won’t matter nearly so much that you were having sex with Kate Townsend. In fact, if Shad gets a confession from someone else, I might be able to persuade him to cancel the test altogether. You’d probably have to make a massive contribution to his next political campaign”—which will be sooner than anyone suspects—“but I think you could live with that.”
“Okay, fine. But what about the autopsy? What else did the report show?”
“Later. Shad wanted you to waltz into the St. Catherine’s Hospital lab and give the blood sample, but I worked out a compromise.”
“Which is?”
“Can you trust your lab technician?”
“Susan? Sure. She’s been with me nine years.”
“Good. Because in the next hour, a couple of cops are going to show up at your office and watch Susan draw some blood from your arm.”
“Okay.”
“And, Drew?”
“Yes?”
“From now on, don’t answer any questions from anybody without talking to me first. Nothing. You got that?”
“Okay.”
“You’d better get things straight with Susan.”
“I will. Are you going to be here when they draw the blood?”
“Is your office empty during lunch?”
“Like a cemetery.”
“All right. I’ll come by and make sure they don’t hassle you for pubic hairs or anything like that.”
“Thanks.”
As I hang up and start my car, a tall, big-bellied white man wearing a brown uniform and a gray cowboy hat swaggers by my car and turns into the doorway of the district attorney’s office. He is Billy Byrd, the sheriff of Adams County. As Sheriff Byrd pulls open the D.A.’s door, he glances back at me and gives me a superior smile, as though he already knows exactly what transpired in the office upstairs a few minutes ago. And of course he does.
Welcome to Mississippi politics.
EIGHT (#ulink_f31b182e-80ed-5f4a-a2ca-46da1a34e32b)
Shad’s emissaries arrive at Drew’s medical lab before I do. But they’re not cops, as I expected; they’re sheriff’s deputies. I can tell by the big yellow star on the door of the white cruiser parked outside. This tells me that in the investigation of Drew Elliott, the district attorney has chosen to align himself with the fat man in the cowboy hat who walked by my car a few minutes ago, rather than with the chief of police, who by any standard of common sense should be handling this matter.
Drew practices in a suite of offices maintained by Natchez Doctors’ Hospital, which is located behind the cluster of primary care clinics that feed patients to the main facility. The front door of Drew’s office is unlocked. I enter to find his waiting room dark. There’s light in the corridor beyond it, but the door to the hall is locked. After I bang loudly, a young woman’s face appears behind the receptionist’s window. She waves, then buzzes me into the corridor.
Drew’s lab is right across the hall, a brightly lit rectangle containing centrifuges, microscopes, and expensive blood chemistry machines. Against the far wall, a blue phlebotomist’s chair stands beside a white refrigerator. Drew himself is reclining in the chair, one shirtsleeve rolled up past his elbow.
I step in and find two deputies standing with their backs to the wall opposite Drew. They look uncomfortable. I recognize one of them. Tom Jackson was the top detective at the police department until the sheriff hired him away, which wasn’t hard to do. The county pays cops about five thousand a year more than the city does. Jackson is as tall as Drew, and his handlebar mustache gives him the look of a cowboy in a Frederic Remington painting. He gives me a friendly nod, but his partner—a short, black-haired man with pasty skin—doesn’t even acknowledge me.
“Tom,” says Drew, “this is Penn Cage, a buddy of mine.”
“I know Penn,” Jackson says in a deep voice.
Both deputies must know why I’m here, but Drew seems to want to preserve the illusion of a friendly get-together. He nods past me, and I turn to see the white-uniformed woman who let me in. She’s in her midthirties, with short brown hair and a heart-shaped face distinguished by intelligent brown eyes.
“Penn, this is Susan Salter, my med tech.”
“Nice to meet you, Susan.”
She manages a slight nod; she looks the least comfortable of us all.
“Well,” says Drew, “let’s get this over with.”
Susan takes a long white box from a cabinet and looks at the deputies. “You said four tubes?”
“That’s what our evidence technician told us,” says Tom Jackson. “I guess they want to make sure they don’t have to ask for more blood later.”
Susan removes four vacuum tubes with purple stoppers from the box and lays them flat on one arm of the chair. Then she straps a Velcro tourniquet around Drew’s left biceps and slaps his antecubital vein three times. A vein like a rigid blue pipe stands up at the place where Drew’s arm muscles insert at the inner elbow. Susan pushes the stopper end of one of the tubes into a Vacutainer syringe, then with a single deft motion pricks the needle into Drew’s vein and presses the stopper of the tube down onto the rear of the needle with her thumb.
A fountain of dark blood begins filling the tube, sucked inward by the vacuum inside it. The short deputy looks away.
“I need to use the restroom,” he mumbles.
“Down the hall to your right,” says Drew.
The deputy disappears. As Susan replaces the full tube with an empty one, I realize her hands are shaking. She’s playing out a scene she couldn’t possibly have imagined an hour ago. How much has Drew told her? I wonder.
“Tom?” I say, taking advantage of the other deputy’s absence. “What do you figure the time of death was?”
Jackson looks warily at me. “You don’t know?”
“The D.A. wouldn’t tell me.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “People are acting mighty squirrelly about this case. I’d like to help you out, though.”
“Will you?”
“Well … we know the girl didn’t leave the school until three. The fishermen say they found her about six-twenty.”
“What did the body temperature tell you?”
Jackson glances uncomfortably at the door. “I don’t know about all that. I heard they’re not sure how long she was in the water.”
“Best guess?”
The short deputy walks through the door, looks at Jackson, and smiles. It seems a strange thing to do, but it shuts Jackson up.
When the four tubes lie full of blood on a table and the tourniquet has been removed from Drew’s arm, Tom steps forward with a plastic evidence bag and holds it open. Susan drops the tubes inside. Drew shakes his head, looking more than anything like an innocent man doing his best to humor overzealous cops.
“That it, guys?”
Jackson nods. “That’s it, Doc. Sorry to bother you with this.”
“How long do you think it will take to get the DNA results?” I ask.
“Usually takes a month, at least,” Tom replies. “They’ll probably rush this, considering the situation. But two and a half weeks is the fastest I’ve ever seen. Out of New Orleans, anyway.”
This is exactly what I expected.
Drew stands and offers Tom his hand, and Jackson gives it a strong shake. In all likelihood, Tom is a patient of Drew’s. But when Drew offers his hand to the shorter deputy, the man turns without a word and leaves the lab. Tom shrugs sheepishly, then follows his partner out.
Drew looks at Susan. “I guess I screwed up your lunch hour.”
She forces a smile. “That’s okay. I’m not hungry.”
Drew gives me a pointed glance, and I realize he needs to speak further with Susan in private.
“I’ll give you a call later,” I tell him, starting for the door.
“Wait,” he says. “Have you had lunch yet? I’m starving.”
“I was about to get something.”
“Why don’t we eat together? We ought to talk about a couple of things.”
I don’t want to risk talking about this situation in public. “Tell you what, I’ll grab some food and come back here. We can eat in your office.”
Drew looks dismayed, but then he seems to get it. “Okay. See you in a few minutes. No hamburgers.”
I leave the office and go out to my car, my mind on Susan and her ability to keep quiet. I feel like Thai food, but the only Thai restaurant is downtown, and it would take too long to get there and back to Drew’s office. The only options on this side of town are fast food and Ruby Tuesday’s. I pull into the drive-through lane at Taco Bell and order a couple of zesty chicken bowls, some tacos, and two Mountain Dews, which the restaurant delivers in record time. Then I pull back onto the bypass and get into the turning lane for Jefferson Davis Boulevard, the street that leads to Drew’s office.
While I wait for the light to change, the blare of a police siren pierces my ears. Several vehicles behind me pull onto the grassy median, and then a police car with blue lights flashing screeches to a stop behind me. With nowhere else to go, I shoot across two oncoming lanes of traffic and pull my right wheels onto the curb of Jeff Davis Boulevard. The squad car roars past me.
This kind of thing is pretty unusual in Natchez at midday. Maybe that’s what triggers my intuition, but in any case I hit the accelerator and take off in pursuit of the squad car.
The blue lights swerve into a parking lot on the right side of Jeff Davis Boulevard. Sure enough, it’s Drew’s office. What the hell could have happened so fast? I wonder, skidding into the lot behind the police car.
And then I see.
A muscular man in a blue cap is brandishing a wooden baseball bat at Drew, who stands in a half crouch with his hands held out from his body. Susan Salter is screaming at the man to put down the bat.
Two uniformed cops leap from the squad car. As one draws a can of pepper spray from his belt, I see two other men lying on the ground not far from the man with the bat. One rolls over onto his back, clutching his bloodied face in pain.
“Drop that bat!” yells one of the cops, who’s holding a deadly steel baton called an asp.
The man with the bat jerks his head toward the cop, and at that moment I realize something alarming: the blue cap he’s wearing is a St. Stephen’s Bucks baseball cap, which almost certainly makes him not a man at all, but a boy. From the rear, his size and muscularity gave him the appearance of an adult. But when I read the letters on the back of his jersey—SAYERS—everything clicks. The boy with the bat is Steve Sayers, Kate Townsend’s ex-boyfriend.
“Why are you pointing that at me?” Sayers screams at the cop, his eyes blazing with anger or fear and maybe both. “He’s the one! Look what he did!”
Steve points to the men on the ground, and I recognize one of them as a St. Stephen’s senior. What the hell is going on? As the cop yells again for Sayers to drop the bat, Steve swings the Louisville Slugger in a great roundhouse arc. Drew ducks beneath the whistling wood, and Steve keeps spinning. As the bat comes around a second time, Drew springs forward and snatches it from Steve’s hands.
“Get back, Steve!” he shouts. “I don’t want to fight you!”
But Sayers is beyond rational thought. He lunges for Drew’s throat, his eyes filled with rage. With a lightning motion, Drew thrusts the fat end of the bat into Steve’s midsection. There’s an explosive grunt, and Steve folds over the bat and drops to his knees, sucking for air. In the same moment, a cloud of pepper spray envelops Steve and Drew. Steve screams, and Drew begins clawing at his eyes with his free hand.
“That’s enough!” I yell at the cop. “That’s Dr. Drew Elliott! I’m his attorney. There’s no more danger!”
“Drop the bat, Doctor!” the cop yells at Drew again.
“Drop it, Drew!” I shout.
But Steve Sayers isn’t done. Somehow he gets to his feet and charges Drew like a blind bull. Drew must be blind himself, because he takes the brunt of the charge in his belly. From reflex he pops Steve across the upper back with the bat, and this time the boy drops to the cement and stays there. Drew tosses the bat away and holds up his hands in surrender.
The cop with the pepper spray takes a pair of handcuffs from his belt, rushes up to Drew, and cuffs his hands behind his back.
“I was defending myself!” Drew protests, tears streaming down his face. “Penn, these kids attacked me. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t listen!”
“He’s telling the truth!” shouts Drew’s med tech, stepping forward.
The other cop has cuffed Steve Sayers and is now checking the other boys on the ground.
“What happened here, ma’am?” asks the first cop.
Susan Salter swallows and tries to collect herself. “Dr. Elliott and I were just standing here talking, and these kids drove up and started cursing. They picked the fight. I have no idea why. It was crazy! Dr. Elliott did everything he could to avoid it.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Susan Salter. I’m Dr. Elliott’s medical technologist.”
The cop turns to me. “You’re Dr. Elliott’s lawyer?”
“Yes, I am, Officer. Penn Cage. As you saw, my client was clearly defending himself. But as serious as this looks, it’s still misdemeanor assault, and I very much doubt that my client will press charges. He knows these boys, and I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding. Isn’t that right, Drew?”
Drew looks in my direction with tears streaming down his face. “Uh … that’s right, Officer. We were just horsing around, and it got out of hand.”
“Bullshit!” yells one of the boys on the ground. “That bastard tried to kill us! He broke my fucking nose!”
The cop points at Steve Sayers. “In that kid’s hands, a baseball bat is a deadly weapon. It looked like aggravated assault to me.”
The cop is right. Steve Sayers is at least six-foot-one, and he has the hyperinflated musculature I associate with the use of anabolic steroids. All three boys do, come to think of it, which makes me think of Marko Bakic and his little drug business at St. Stephen’s.
“Aggravated assault is a felony, Officer,” I say evenly. “Steve’s a good kid. There’s no reason to put a felony arrest on his record.”
“Everybody wait right here,” says the cop, who looks young enough to be a rookie. He’s not going to make decisions involving prominent citizens without some advice from a superior. As he goes back to his squad car to use the radio, I turn to one of the seniors on the ground. “What the hell were you guys doing?”
“Kiss my ass!” he barks. “That bastard needs his ass kicked. Fucking cradle-robber. Pervert.”
Then it hits me: They know about Drew and Kate.
I’d like to question Drew, but the second cop is standing too close to him. I try to catch Drew’s eye, but the pepper spray has rendered those organs useless for the time being.
When the young cop returns from his car, he walks right past me, informs Drew that he’s under arrest for aggravated assault, then begins reading him his Miranda rights. The other cop takes his cue and does the same to Steve Sayers.
“What are you guys doing?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster. “Dr. Elliott was clearly defending himself. You heard what he said during the fight.”
“Judge’ll decide that,” says the young cop. “Step back, sir.”
“The most you can arrest him for is simple assault.”
“I’m just doing what the chief told me to do.”
“The chief of police told you to do this?”
“That’s right. You got a problem, take it up with him.”
“I’ll do that,” I reply, but what I’m thinking is, Son of a bitch! This situation is becoming more political by the minute. The police chief should have ordered the patrolman to let Drew go, or at most to arrest him for simple assault, then release him on a recognizance bond. An arrest for aggravated assault can only mean one thing: the chief wants Drew and Steve in his custody. And the only reason I can see for that is the long-running turf war between the police department and the sheriff’s office. In the arena of that conflict, the police chief has been handed a gift from the gods. He can now hold Sheriff Byrd’s two main murder suspects in his jail for at least one night.
The boys cuss and spit at Drew as the cops haul them to their feet. One’s face is a mass of blood below the nose; the other’s left eye is already swelling shut. For a man defending himself against three assailants, Drew did a lot of damage.
A second squad car pulls into the lot. As the police herd their charges into the cars, I promise Drew I’ll meet him at the station. Then I pull Susan Salter into the courtyard of Drew’s office building. She’s hyperventilating now, and her tears are flowing nonstop.
“I don’t understand!” she says in a stunned voice. “This morning everything was fine, and now … everything’s upside down! It doesn’t make any sense. How could they think Dr. Elliott could do anything against the law?”
Is she talking about the fight? I wonder. Or about Kate’s murder? I take hold of Susan’s thin wrists and speak in a reassuring voice. “Listen to me, Susan. I don’t know how much Drew told you about his situation, but I do know this: he trusted you with his life. He told me you’d worked for him nine years, and that he had absolute confidence in you. What you just saw will be the talk of the town by tonight. If you add to that talk, it can only hurt Drew. Do you understand?”
She sucks her upper lip into her mouth as though thinking hard, then nods and wipes her nose. “Don’t worry about me saying anything. I hate gossip. That’s why I quit the hospital. All they do over there is cheat on their spouses and gossip about it afterward. I think they like the talking better than the cheating.”
“Will you tell me what you saw in the parking lot?”
She nods helpfully. “It happened just like I said. We were standing there talking about recombinant DNA, and this big pickup truck screeched to a stop beside us.” She points at a jacked-up orange pickup parked thirty yards away. “There were three guys inside. They looked like high school kids, but big, you know? I think Dr. Elliott knew them, because he waved and spoke to the driver. But then a guy jumped out of the backseat and started screaming at Dr. Elliott.”
“What did he scream?”
“Curse words, mostly.”
“Try to remember exactly.”
Susan has a primitive Baptist’s reluctance to utter profanity. “‘You motherfucker,’ I think he said first. “You sick mother-fucker. It was you. It was you all along.’”
Oh wow. This is only a preview of the community reaction to Drew’s secret private life. “Did Drew say anything back?”
“No. He looked too shocked to speak.”
“Go on.”
“‘You need your ass kicked,’ I think the boy said next, and then he jumped at Dr. Elliott like he was going to hit him. Dr. Elliott called him by name then. He told Steve to calm down and get back in the truck. But the kid just threw up his fists and kept jumping forward like he was going to hit Dr. Elliott. I was kind of freaked out, but not really scared at that point. It was so weird. But then the other two guys jumped out of the truck.”
“Is that when the bat came into it?”
“No. That only happened after Drew knocked the other two guys down.”
“Who threw the first punch?”
“The first kid. Steve.”
“Did Drew fight back?”
“Not at first. He kept trying to calm Steve down. But after Steve hit him five or six times, Dr. Elliott shoved him backward. Steve fell down, and I think that really embarrassed him. He screamed for the other guys to help, and at that point the other two guys jumped Dr. Elliott.”
“What happened then?”
Susan shakes her head as though in wonder. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it happened so fast. It was like Dr. Elliott knew how to fight and they didn’t. They were really mad, and they were screaming and throwing punches everywhere, but it looked sort of like my husband wrestling with my ten-year-old son. The second it got serious, it was like, over.”
“How did the baseball bat come into it?”
“Steve went down first, but while Dr. Elliott was handling the other two, Steve grabbed the bat from the truck.” Susan shakes her head as if reliving the fight. “It was scary. I’ve never seen Dr. Elliott like that. I saw him once at the hospital picnic. He played softball with his shirt off, and he was like, ripped, you know?”
“I know. I grew up with him.”
“But he wasn’t that competitive, not like the other guys. He was just out there for fun. But today … Dr. Elliott did everything he could to stop that fight, but once he knew it was going to happen, he just switched on. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I can understand Susan’s awe. Steve Sayers and his buddies have been pumping iron seriously for two or three years. But their steroid-plumped muscles are no match for the speed and strength that genetics bestowed upon Drew Elliott at birth. And their teenage anger couldn’t begin to compare with the deadly resolve of a man who sensed he was fighting for his life.
“But in your mind, it was the other guys’ fault?” I ask.
“Oh, totally. Absolutely. They wanted a piece of Dr. Elliott, and they pushed him until they got it. Dear Lord.”
“All right, Susan. Will you be okay if I go on to the station now?”
She nods uncertainly. “I think so. Thanks for staying with me.”
“Glad to do it. And you’re not going to talk to anybody about this? Other than the police?”
“No, I understand.” She looks suddenly upset again. “Mr. Cage, is Drew going to be all right?”
The look in Susan Salter’s eyes tells me she’s more than half in love with her boss, but I don’t even want to go there. I nod at her as though any other outcome would be impossible. “You take care, okay?”
“I will.”
As I hurry back to my Saab, one thought fills my head: How did Steve Sayers find out that Drew was involved with Kate? But once in the car, another, more frightening thought takes its place: Who else knows about it?
NINE (#ulink_d80e0d1a-2408-5de1-8f48-2d251bd7b682)
Natchez police headquarters is a one-story building sandwiched between a Pizza Hut and an abandoned strip mall on the north side of town. The PD used to be downtown, but that more stately building was razed to make room for a modern juvenile justice center. By the time I arrive at the station, both Drew and Steve Sayers have been processed and taken to detention cells in the rear of the building. The other two high school boys were booked on simple assault and now await their parents in holding cells; a six-hundred-dollar bond will free them.
I demand a meeting with the chief of police, and almost immediately I’m escorted to his office. Chief Don Logan sits waiting for me behind his desk. He’s a thin man in his forties who looks more like an engineer than a policeman. His spartan office reflects his reputation as a managerial type. Chief Logan has family photos on his desk, and more computer manuals than law enforcement texts on his bookshelves. He’s known for being careful about procedure, so it’s all the more surprising that he’s made the political move of arresting Drew.
“Hello, Chief Logan,” I say equably.
He regards me coolly over a steaming cup of coffee. “In my seven years as chief,” he says, “I’ve never seen anything like the furor over this situation. I understand the emotional side, of course. A pretty young girl, so much potential. A prominent physician suddenly associated with her murder. But people are losing their perspective over this thing. There’s a mob mentality developing out there. Nobody seems to want to let matters take their normal course. To let the system work.”
“Including the district attorney?” I prompt.
Chief Logan raises one eyebrow, but he doesn’t take the bait. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve charged your client with aggravated assault.”
“You read my mind, Chief.”
“I’m going to lay my cards on the table, Penn. We have a troubled history with the sheriff’s department. You know all about it, I’m sure. The city of Natchez is under the jurisdiction of the police department, but technically, the sheriff has jurisdiction over the entire county, which includes the city. In general, we have a working agreement whereby we work crimes inside the city limits and the sheriff takes the county.”
“But?”
Logan takes a sip of coffee. “But Billy Byrd is a political animal. And when a high-profile case comes along, the sheriff believes it’s his God-given right to storm in and take over the investigation. Billy ran roughshod over the last police chief, and he’s tried to do the same to me on occasion. He’s actually had his deputies try to arrest one of my officers at a couple of crime scenes. They almost came to blows. I’ve requested several legal opinions from the attorney general’s office in Jackson, but nothing they send us is ever definitive enough.”
“I understand your problem. I dealt with some of the same issues in Houston.”
Chief Logan nods as though encouraged. “I’m glad you do. Because today I’m drawing the line. Kate Townsend’s body was discovered just within the boundary of the city, which alone makes it our case. But she almost certainly died farther upstream in that creek, which removes any doubt whatever about jurisdiction.”
Sheriff Byrd won’t see it that way. “You’re preaching to the choir, Chief. Tell me about the assault charge.”
“Since that’s a felony charge, Dr. Elliott and the Sayers boy will have to spend the night in this building. I’ll have a chance to talk to them without any interference from Sheriff Byrd. Now, as Dr. Elliott’s lawyer, you can stop me if you want to. But know this: my sole interest is in solving Kate Townsend’s murder. I’m not rail-roading anybody to judgment in order to grab some headlines, here or anywhere else.”
This is good news indeed.
“If Dr. Elliott’s guilty,” Logan goes on, “then he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But if he’s not, the man deserves some protection.” The chief shakes his head. “Drew’s reputation will be blown to hell by suppertime tonight, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing against him but some anonymous phone calls and a fistfight.”
“Which he didn’t start,” I point out.
The chief waves his hand as though shooing away a fly. “The judge will throw out the assault charge tomorrow morning. The bottom line is, I think Dr. Elliot’s safer in my jail than anywhere else in this town tonight.”
I sit back in my chair and study the chief. He’s the first rational man I’ve spoken to in some time. “I hear you loud and clear.”
“I don’t have isolation cells here,” he says, “but I do have some eight-man units that are empty. I’ve put Drew in one and the Sayers boy in the other. They’ll be safe and relatively comfortable until tomorrow.”
I try to suppress a smile at the thought of Shad Johnson learning about this development. “Have you spoken to the D.A. about this assault arrest?”
Chief Logan looks out his solitary window and gives a long-suffering sigh. “I try very hard to get along with the district attorney. But I have a feeling Mr. Johnson isn’t going to like this one bit.” He looks back at me, his dark eyes hard with conviction. “You know what? Tough titty. This ain’t right, and I ain’t going along with it. There’s not a damn thing Mr. Johnson can do about this arrest before tomorrow, unless he wants to call a judge and have Dr. Elliott released on the strength of the D.A.’s word. And given Mr. Johnson’s main political support base, I don’t think he’ll want to do that.”
I stand and shake hands with Logan. “I’m quite satisfied that procedure has been followed, Chief. Do you have any problem with me speaking to my client before I go?”
“I’ll have him brought to the visitors’ room.”
On my way out, I stop and turn back. “Do you know Kate’s time of death yet?”
Logan watches me in silence for a few moments. Then he says, “From the body temperature—which they did take when the fishermen got her to the ER—the M.E. figures she died between three and five-thirty p.m.”
“That’s pretty exact.”
Logan nods. “They know she left the school alive at two fifty-five, and she hadn’t cooled much by seven-thirty, when they took the temp. The M.E. says he feels pretty confident about that window.”
“Does he have any idea how long she was in the water?”
“It’s hard to say, given how quickly everything happened. If he did know that, we might be able to figure out how far upstream she died. But that creek moves very fast in flood. She wouldn’t have to be in it long to be swept miles downstream. And remember, Kate was found at six-twenty. No matter what the M.E. says, a maximum of only three hours and twenty minutes could have passed after death, even if someone strangled her the minute she walked out of St. Stephen’s. I don’t think the body temperature is going to tell us what we want to know, Penn.”
“Okay. So as of now, suspects need alibis from three p.m. to five-thirty.”
“Yep.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
He smiles. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
Five minutes later, Drew is escorted into the tiny visitors’ cubicle and seated behind a glass partition with a metal screen in it. He looks pale and drawn, and his eyes have the dull sheen I associate with lifers in the Walls unit at Huntsville, Texas, where I used to spend quite a bit of time. Has thirty minutes in a cell done this to one of the toughest friends I ever had?
“When am I getting out, Penn?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
I expect anger, but Drew hardly reacts. Maybe his listlessness is a symptom of grief. Maybe the attack by the St. Stephen’s teenagers has punctured his illusions about his relationship with Kate—or maybe his image of himself as a good man.
“Chief Logan’s done you a big favor,” I explain. “He’s isolated you from Sheriff Byrd, who would love to use you to grab some headlines. He’s also put you at more of a remove from Shad Johnson, who wants to use you as a stepping-stone to higher office. Both men would like to interrogate you at their leisure, but I doubt either one will be bothering you in here.”
“You never gave me the details of Kate’s autopsy,” Drew says, his eyes boring into mine.
“I gave you the main points. The rest is medical jargon.”
His eyes don’t waver. “Don’t bullshit me. Don’t try to spare me.”
I focus on some dried pink bubblegum on the glass between us. “The pathologist thinks she was raped.”
“Based on?”
“Genital trauma.”
Drew looks confused by this. “Go on.”
“They found semen from two different men inside her body.”
He closes his eyes like a man fighting bone-deep pain. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I wanted you sane when the deputies came to collect your blood.”
He shakes his head as though I’ve betrayed him.
“Drew, I have to ask you this. Is there any chance that Kate was having consensual sex with someone else besides you?”
A slow blink. Then an odd smile. “You still don’t get it, do you? Kate loved me. She loved me absolutely. If you’d told me earlier that they found two different semen samples inside her, I could have told you right away that she’d been raped.”
“Well … I wish there were some way to prove absolute love. Because I think the D.A. is going to paint you as a jealous older man who went crazy when he found out his teenage mistress was sharing her natural bounty with someone else.”
Drew’s mouth wrinkles with disgust. “I don’t care what he does.”
“You’d better start. You’d better give the whole situation some serious thought tonight. Try to conjure up some idea of who might have wanted to rape or kill Kate. Because the fact that she was pregnant means that you could be charged with double homicide.”
Drew’s blue eyes are impenetrable to me. After a time, he says, “What happens tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I’ll have the assault charge against you dismissed. You don’t want to charge Steve Sayers for attacking you.”
“No.”
“All right—”
“Fuck!” Drew exclaims, his face suddenly flushed. “What about Tim? He’s going to see the newspaper. Kids are going to tell him his dad’s in jail!”
I wish there was something I could do to ease Drew’s mind about his son, but there’s not. “Tim’s going to have a bad time throughout this thing,” I say evenly. “You have to accept that. I’ll get you out as early as I can tomorrow, and you can talk to him yourself.”
Drew shakes his head, his eyes flicking back and forth in helpless rage.
“Something else you’d better get used to,” I add. “Steve Sayers and his buddies are a pretty typical example of how the people in this community are going to feel about you for a while.”
Drew’s eyes fix upon me. “All I care about is Tim. You get me out so I can help him understand this. After that, I’ll find out who killed Kate.”
There’s an undertone in Drew’s voice that sends a tingle along my forearms. It’s the emotionless timbre of the man who put down three muscle-bound jocks without breaking a sweat. He said, “After that, I’ll find out who killed Kate,” the same way he might say, “After dinner, I’ll take out the garbage.”
I nod and stand in the little cubicle. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Drew leaves the visiting room without a word.
By the time I pick up Annie from school, I’ve taken several cell calls, and my phone is still ringing. Most of the calls have been from school parents, pumping me for information about Drew and Kate. But a few were more serious, and more disturbing.
One was from Holden Smith, the president of the St. Stephen’s school board. Holden had heard a distorted version of the afternoon’s fight from Steve Sayers’s father, and he was livid at Drew. About the only fact he had right was that Steve and Drew were being held in jail on felony assault charges. I did my best to explain that Drew wasn’t at fault, but Holden didn’t buy my argument.
“That’s not even the point,” he said. “We’ve got a member of the school board brawling with three of our students! That’s simply unacceptable. Drew should know better than to let something like that happen.”
“I told you he tried to stop it, Holden. The fight couldn’t have been avoided.”
“Okay, okay, but look what the fight was about. Everybody in town knows Drew was having sex with Kate Townsend, and that he might even have killed her. Do you—”
“Nobody knows that!” I snapped. “That’s pure speculation!”
“So what! Do you realize what that kind of rumor will do to St. Stephen’s? To our public image? Do you know what kind of lawsuits we’re going to get over this?”
“What are you telling me, Holden?”
A brief silence. “We want Drew off the board.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Everybody!”
“You want him to resign?”
“If he doesn’t, we’ll vote him off tonight in a special session. We have no choice.”
“That’s bullshit. The board could give Drew its qualified support, based on his years of dedication to the school. Did that thought enter anyone’s head?”
“Don’t even pretend that’s an option,” Holden said in a dismissive voice. “You know how this town works. And that brings up another issue. What about you, Penn? Are you Drew’s lawyer now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, if you are, you’re not going to be able to remain on the board, either.”
Holden was right about that. As a board member, I’ll be named in any civil suit arising out of the present situation. I can’t remain on the board and also defend Drew in a civil or criminal proceeding. Of course, resigning would cut off my flow of inside information, but I wasn’t about to align myself with gutless Holden Smith.
“Drew and I will both resign,” I said with disgust. “You’ll have our letters in the morning.”
“We’d prefer to have Drew’s tonight.”
I hung up on him.
While I drove along in a funk, Caitlin called me from Boston. Apparently, a reporter for the Natchez Examiner had called her and delivered a summation of the rumors spreading across town. Caitlin was stunned that I was being mentioned as Drew Elliot’s lawyer. She knows Drew, but only superficially, and she has no special reason to believe he’s innocent of the crimes being attributed to him.
“Exactly when were you going to tell me you were representing Drew?” she asked. “Or were you going to tell me at all?”
“I’m not sure I’m going to represent him.”
“I thought you didn’t practice anymore.”
“Drew is a lifelong friend, and he needs help. Right now, I’m acting primarily as a friend.” This wasn’t strictly true, but I’ve been deceiving myself as well as Caitlin about that. “When I see how this develops, I’ll make a decision about the legal side of things.”
“Penn, why didn’t you tell me about all this last night?”
Caitlin sounded hurt, but she hasn’t been very communicative to me about her recent situation either. “I couldn’t get you on the phone last night. You were at your party.”
“You could have called me this morning.”
“Yes, but you already had reporters working the story. You may even end up working it yourself.”
“We’ve been in that situation before, and we handled it fine.”
“But not without tension.”
A little laugh. “Tension’s okay. We can live with tension. It’s deception we can’t live with.”
“I agree.”
More silence. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just agreed with you.”
“You had a tone.”
“No tone. Look, things are breaking fast on this. I’ll call you tonight and give you a better idea of where I stand, okay?”
Her sigh told me she was far from happy with this arrangement. “Did Drew kill her, Penn? I’m asking as your lover, not a journalist.”
“You know I can’t answer that. Even if I knew the answer.”
“But he was involved with her?”
“You won’t report my answer?”
“No.”
“Yes. He was in love with her. But I don’t think he killed her.”
“Classic midlife crisis?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Drew says he and Ellen have been living a charade for ten years. He was starved for affection, and he finally found exactly what he was missing. And now here we are.”
“What about the two semen samples—”
“No more,” I cut in. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“I love you,” Caitlin said after an awkward silence.
“You too.”
When Annie gets into the car, I set my phone on silent. I also keep quiet about the fact that I’ve spoken to Caitlin. Annie would want to call her back immediately, and I don’t want to deal with that right now. Annie says she needs to go to Walgreen’s for some school supplies, so we make a run to the drugstore, one of my few sources in town for iced green tea. By the time we get home, my phone shows eight missed calls. While I scroll through the list, an incoming call pops up. It’s from Sonny Cross, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Sonny has two young boys at St. Stephen’s, and through me, he’s spoken to the board a few times about Marko Bakic, our Croatian exchange student. Sonny suspects that Marko has gotten involved in the local drug trade, but so far he’s been unable to prove it.
“Sonny,” I say. “What’s up?”
“I’m calling to give you a heads-up,” Cross says in his laid-back, urban-cowboy voice.
“Marko Bakic again?”
“Among other things. Last night there was a big party out at Lake St. John. A rave. There was a lot of X there, and a lot of St. Stephen’s kids, too.”
Lake St. John is a horseshoe lake about thirty miles up the Mississippi River, on the Louisiana side. It’s thronged with Natchez natives in the summer, but this time of year, most of the lake houses are deserted.
“Was it only St. Stephen’s kids?”
“No, thank God. The Catholic school and the Baptist boys were well represented.”
“Did you bust the party?”
“No. We didn’t find out about it until it was over. Whoever organized it did just what they do in the cities. The kids get word over their cell phones to go to such and such a place. When they get there, they find a sheet of paper taped to a pole with a coded message, a rhyme only the kids will understand. After they get led around to four or five different spots, they know where the rave is, and they know whether they’re being followed or not.”
“I know the routine.”
“Word is, these raves have been going on for a couple of months now. Different location every time. And I’m hearing our boy Marko is behind them.”
“Great.”
“Yeah. You know, most of the X in Mississippi gets brought up from the Gulf Coast. The Asian gangs down there control the trade. And Marko’s been down to Gulfport and Biloxi a couple of times that I know about. I wanted you to know we’re going to be stepping up surveillance on him.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I just want to try to minimize the damage to St. Stephen’s if we have to take Marko down. You know, once you get X into a community, you usually get LSD, too. It tends to be cooked and sold by the same crews. One of my sources said some kids may have been doing acid last night at the lake party. And check this, Marko bought out a roadside fireworks stand and put on a psychedelic show at the end of the night. Sailed out on a party barge and let off five grand worth of rockets.”
“Sorry I missed it. But where does a poor exchange student get the money to do that?”
“That’s no mystery, bubba. It’s proving it that’s the bitch.”
“Hey, do you know where Marko was yesterday between three and five-thirty?”
Sonny Cross laughs darkly. “Already thought of that, my man. Checked it out, too. Marko was with Coach Anders from three until nearly six.”
“At the school?”
“No, at Anders’s house. Wade has just about wangled the kid a football scholarship at Delta State. Just what the world needs, right? One more soccer-style kicker. Anyway, I called Wade, and he told me he worked the phone for the kid about an hour. Marko was right there with him, doing homework. Then Wade tried to help Marko with his chemistry.” Cross laughs again. “The blind leading the blind. Anyway, no luck there.”
“Thanks, Sonny. I really appreciate the information.”
“Sometimes I think you’re the only one. You ask me, some of those people on the board have their heads most of the way up their asses.”
“To be honest with you, I’m resigning from the board tomorrow. But I’ll do all I can to help with the Marko situation.”
Silence. “Can you tell me why you’re resigning?”
“It’s the Drew Elliott thing.”
“Huh. I don’t see why you’d have to resign because of that. But you know more about it than I do. I hate to see you go, man.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”
“You ask me, Drew Elliott is a stand-up guy. Like the old-time docs. He actually gives a shit how you’re doing.”
“I think you’re right. Look, I hate to go, but—”
“One last thing, Penn. That Townsend girl wasn’t the all-American, lily-white virgin some people are making her out to be.”
Suddenly my haste is gone. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve done a lot of surveillance in this town. And I’ve seen Kate Townsend in some places good girls just don’t go, if you get my drift.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“She hung with some pretty bad company sometimes. And she’s no stranger to drugs.”
“Weed? Or worse?”
“Worse, I think.”
“This might be really important, Sonny. Important to Drew. Where exactly have you seen Kate?”
“Brightside Manor.”
This is the last thing I expected to hear. The Brightside Manor Apartments are a dilapidated group of buildings on the north side of town, the closest thing to a slum inside the city limits. Its occupants are poor and black, and the complex is named frequently in the newspaper as the site of crimes from domestic abuse to shootings. “What the hell was Kate Townsend doing there?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ve spotted her there several times over the last few months. I’ve even got videotape of her going in and out. About once a month, now that I think about it.”
“You think she was buying drugs?”
“Maybe. I wasn’t going to bust her to find out, being who she was. But the thing is, girls like Kate Townsend get their drugs from friends, not dealers. And looking like she did, Kate wouldn’t have to buy drugs at all, you know?”
“I’m listening, Sonny.”
“Well, Brightside Manor is where Cyrus White lives.”
“Who’s that?”
“The top drug dealer in the city of Natchez. And it’s Cyrus’s building that I’ve seen Kate go in and out of.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why I say she wasn’t buying weed. If Kate Townsend was visiting Cyrus White to get drugs, she was there for some heavy shit. Powder cocaine, or maybe even heroin.”
Every new sentence out of Cross’s mouth freaks me out more. “Do we have heroin in Natchez?”
“Brother, every town has every drug. You just have to know where to look.”
“Wonderful. Do you know anything else about Kate?”
“No. But I’ve got a theory, if you want to wrap your mind around something scary.”
“I’m listening.”
“She’s wasn’t going there to buy anything. She was there to see Cyrus.”
“You mean …”
“That’s what I mean. Cyrus has a real taste for white girls. A well-documented taste.”
Kate Townsend doing a drug dealer? “That sounds too crazy, Sonny.”
“Cyrus ain’t your average drug dealer. In past years, most Natchez dealers were punks barely out of their teens. Cyrus is thirty-four and smart as a whip. By the time I heard he was in business, all his competition had been wiped out. Ruthlessly. But I couldn’t pin a thing on him.”
Cyrus is thirty-four … Drew is forty. Did Kate have a thing for older men in general?
“Cyrus is a veteran of Desert Storm, if you can believe it,” Sonny continues. “He was in the air force. I’ve been trying to bust him for over a year, but nothing sticks. He’s the Teflon nigger.”
Sonny’s use of the N-word is completely unself-conscious. He belongs to that group of Southerners who modify their vocabulary by the company they’re in. Around whites he knows—and probably suspects he’s busting—Sonny says “nigger” without even a shading of caution. Around strangers, he’s as politically correct as the next guy. But there’s no question how he really sees the most frequent targets of his profession. There’s also no question that his prejudice is part of what makes African-Americans his primary targets, rather than the Kate Townsends of the world. But that prejudice isn’t unique to redneck sheriff’s detectives in Mississippi. It thrives in the blood of the American judicial system, all the way up to Washington.
“Does Sheriff Byrd know about Kate’s connection to Cyrus?” I ask.
The narcotics agent doesn’t answer for some time. Then he says, “It’s not that I don’t trust the sheriff, Penn. I just don’t like him messing around in my cases until it’s time to move on something. He can be a disruptive influence.”
“I hear you, Sonny. I appreciate you telling me all this. Anything else you get on Kate, please let me know.”
“Will do. And I’ll do anything I can to help out Dr. Elliott.”
I hang up, my mind spinning with the new information. How well did Drew really know Kate? Did he see her as an all-American, lily-white virgin, as Sonny described her? Or did he know about her shadow side? If not, that hidden part of her life might hold the key to the second semen sample found in her corpse, and thus the key to freeing Drew.
It’s that question that occupies me as I sit at my dining room table with Annie in the fading light of dusk. Annie is doing her homework, and now and then she throws a question at me, more out of boredom than from needing help. I’m supposedly working on my new novel, but what I’m really doing is trying to tease out the secret threads of Drew’s and Kate’s lives. My new awareness of Cyrus White has completely changed my perspective on Drew’s situation.
One thing that keeps coming back to me is Drew’s assertion that the blackmailer who called him that first night and told him to leave the money on the football field “sounded like a black kid.” I doubt that a thirty-four-year-old war veteran would sound like a kid, but sometimes people’s voices surprise you. Heavyweight champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson sounds like a five-year-old boy when he speaks. But the more likely answer is that a big-time drug dealer like Cyrus White probably has dozens of kids working for him. And that’s who he’d get to make a call like that.
It wasn’t just money they wanted, I recall with sudden clarity. The blackmailers wanted drugs from Drew, as well. But does that point toward Cyrus White? Why would a drug dealer ask for drugs? As I ponder this question, my front doorbell chimes. I’m not expecting anyone, but given all that’s happened today, there’s no telling who it might be.
When I open the door, I find the last person I would have expected. Jenny Townsend, Kate’s mother. Jenny is tall and clear-eyed like Kate, and she’s holding a worn Jimmy Choo shoe box in front of her.
“Hello, Penn,” she says in a controlled voice.
“Jenny,” I say awkwardly. “Will you come in?”
She takes a deep breath and seems to gather herself before answering. “No, thank you. I saw Annie through the window. I know you’re busy.”
“It’s all right. Really.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think I could take it. I used to help Kate with her homework just like that, after her father left.”
What does one say at these moments? There’s nothing appropriate, so I remain silent. Jenny actually looks grateful that I’m not forcing her to make small talk.
“I’ve heard a lot of rumors today,” she says with obvious difficulty. “Some were pretty terrible. One was that you’re representing Drew Elliott.”
So, that’s what this visit is about. “Drew is an old friend, Jenny. You know that. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through, but I feel obligated to try to help Drew through this.”
“Oh, you misunderstood me,” she says. “I didn’t mean that you representing Drew was terrible. In fact, I was glad to hear that. That’s why I brought you this.” She gestures with the box but doesn’t quite offer it to me.
“What is that?”
“Kate’s things. Her private things. I haven’t looked at all of them. I’m not sure I could bear it, and it wasn’t meant for my eyes anyway.” Jenny brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, then flinches at some inner pain. “Katie kept this hidden in the attic. There’s a diary, some souvenirs, and some computer disks. I think that’s where she kept her pictures of Drew. I think some of them are probably … intimate pictures.”
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Greg Iles
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The second thriller in the New York Times No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a man who must face the dark heart of the Deep South – and question everything he believes in…One dead girl. And a town full of secrets…Rape and murder aren’t new to the Deep South, but when the body of a popular high school girl is found dumped in the local river, the whole town of Natchez, Mississippi, is shocked.Penn Cage no longer practises law, but when his best friend Drew is accused of the murder and asks for help, Penn must face the hardest questions of his life:Can he defend Drew against the town, the police and overwhelming evidence?Or could it be true that his friend is a brutal killer who has deceived Penn and everyone else?