Natchez Burning (105 page)

When Henry reached the side entrance, the man standing post outside scarcely even registered one more woman walking out after the night shift—especially one who ignored him like she owned the place.

It took Henry quite some time to make his way around to the front parking lot, where his mother had left her old Impala. With a prayer of thanks on his lips, he unlocked the door, then very carefully slid behind the wheel and waited for his heart to stop pounding. Once it did, he opened the pill bottle she’d given him and crunched an OxyContin between his back teeth. The bitterness surprised him, but he swallowed the fragments gratefully.

Two men who looked like FBI agents stood talking in the light of the hospital’s porte cochere entrance. Henry shut his eyes for a few seconds, wondering if they were real. When he opened them, the men were gone.

Wiping tears of confusion from his eyes, he craned his neck over the front seat and looked down at the floor. His mother’s 12-gauge Winchester pump shotgun lay there, just as he’d requested. His father had bought the gun in 1957, the last year they’d made that model, and it was one of the few of his possessions that Henry’s mother hadn’t given to the Goodwill or burned in the backyard. Encouraged to have come so far, Henry slid her key into the ignition, started the Impala, then put it in gear and drove slowly out the of hospital lot. Barring unforeseen complications, he would arrive at his destination before the pain became too intense to bear. After that …

What would be, would be.

CONSCIOUSNESS RETURNED AS
a hammer pounding the base of my skull and lights flashing in the stinking dark. I’m lying on the metal floor of a van, Caitlin beside me, still unconscious. Duct tape binds our hands and ankles, and Chief Logan’s cop lies senseless at our feet, near the van’s rear doors. Two minutes ago I pried off one shoe with the other and searched for his carotid pulse with my toe, but I felt nothing.

I didn’t recognize either of the men waiting for me outside the
Examiner
building—didn’t even see them until one clubbed me with the butt of his pistol. They were trying to force me to ask Caitlin via text to come outside when she obligingly ran out on her own. I half wish she’d gone back inside when I told her to—but if she had, I’d be dead.

I can’t see our abductors clearly; a dense wire partition divides the cab of the van from its cargo area. I remember two thugs: one older with long hair, one younger with a crew cut. Flexing my wrists and ankles as hard as I can, I quickly learn this duct tape doesn’t give. As silver steel girders continue flashing through the long horizontal windows above me, I realize we’re crossing the Mississippi River Bridge, heading into Louisiana. For a few moments I consider waking Caitlin, but Royal’s men will do that soon enough, and the prospect of being delivered to the psychos who forced one female employee to kill another is something I’d like to spare her for as long as possible.

Brody Royal
. How smoothly that old man played me. The consummate deal maker, he told me exactly what I wanted to hear, buying just enough time to arrange a permanent solution to the threat picture I’d painted for him. I briefly wonder whether Royal might have some subtler plan than killing us in mind, but the pragmatist in me knows the truth. If Brody has his way, after tonight, no one will ever see Penn Cage or Caitlin Masters again—alive or dead. We’ll disappear into the same void that Pooky Wilson and Jimmy Revels did.

Despite my intent to leave her unconscious, after a couple of miles, Caitlin’s eyelids flutter, then pop open. As full comprehension dawns, she glances at me, then closes them tight again, expressing tears from their corners.

Very softly, I lean close and whisper, “Do you have your phone?”

She opens her eyes and shakes her head, then mouths,
You?

“They took it.”

“Gun?”

“Same.”

I watch her absorb what this means for our chances of survival. Looking toward her feet, she whispers, “Is that the cop who was guarding the parking lot?”

I nod.

“Is he dead?”

“I think so. I kicked off one shoe and touched his throat. I couldn’t feel a pulse. And I felt something wet.”

She looks back at me, her face bereft.

“I’m sorry, Cait. I should never have pushed Royal that hard.”

She looks at the dark roof of the van. “I’m the one who went after Katy and made the tape.”

We stare into each other’s eyes, painfully, yet thankfully, aware that we share responsibility for our fate. As I try to think of some way to comfort her, her lips part, and her face brightens with hope.

“They can’t kill us, right? I mean—you’re the mayor, for God’s sake. I’m the publisher of the newspaper. Royal can’t imagine he could get away with that. The outcry would be
huge
. The investigation would never stop.”

This is the logic of a woman raised with privilege. If they’ve killed a cop to get us, and they know we know that, how can they possibly let us go? But I see no profit in pointing this out to Caitlin, who’s desperately searching for any hope of life.

“Royal’s a businessman,” she says, biting her bottom lip. “You said that back in my office. He’s doing this to make sure you hold up your end of the deal. He knows if he doesn’t, we could destroy him as soon as your father is safe. That’s only logical, right?”

“Yes,” I say.

“If he believes we’ll protect him, why take the risk of killing us?”

“He wants that witness dead. Pooky’s friend. ‘Huggy Bear.’ That’s what Brody wants from us. His real name.”

Her eyes narrow. “We don’t have it.”

“That’s right. And if he figures that out … we’re dead.”

Her eyes widen, then close. “We screwed ourselves,” she whispers. “By keeping what we knew about Royal secret, we made this happen.”

“We have one chance. Walker Dennis knows Royal is dirty, and it bothered him to keep what he knew from Kaiser. After what happened to Henry, he may tell Kaiser about it tonight. Just pray these bastards didn’t switch off our cell phones. Kaiser can track the pings.”

Caitlin puts on a brave face, but we both know the likelihood of this sort of luck is almost nil. With a glance up at the wire mesh, she says, “Tell me you left the Katy Royal tape in your car, at least?”

I shake my head. “It was in my coat pocket. They got it.”

With this, we fall silent. Further conversation seems pointless. Even the argument we had in her office, while shattering at the time, now seems trivial. If we could embrace, the essential redundancy of all words would be manifest. But we can’t. All we can do is look into each other’s eyes like condemned prisoners riding a cart to the guillotine.

“Will you kiss me?” she asks. “Before we get where we’re going?”

Glancing up at the wire screen, I scoot carefully across the metal floor, trying to bring our bodies into contact. As I do, something jabs my behind. I try to raise my butt over it, but the hard object keeps jabbing me. Lowering myself again, I rock softly from side to side, trying to tell what’s beneath me. When I finally understand, my heart begins to pound.

“What is it?” Caitlin hisses. “What’s the matter?”

“Pithy’s straight razor is in my back pocket. They missed it when they patted me down. It’s lying along the bottom seam of my jeans.”

Her eyes widen. “Can you get it out?”

“Not with my hands taped in front. But you can.”

She nods quickly.

As quietly as possible, I flex my body until I’ve turned my back to her. Twenty seconds later, I feel her fingers fishing in my pocket. Almost before I’m aware of it, the razor is gone.

Her lips touch the shell of my ear. “I think I should try to cut the tape on your wrists. You’ve got the best chance of fighting them. You can free mine after you cut your feet loose.”

“
Get some while you can, bro!
” shouts one of the men up front, laughing wildly. “We’re almost there!”

Tilting back my head, I see a dark oval staring down through the mesh screen. It’s Crew Cut. “If you get turned right,” he says, “maybe she can unzip you. I’d give it a go, man, considering the circumstances.”

“Why don’t you blow your partner while he drives?” Caitlin snaps. “We could use some privacy.”

I guess she figured sarcasm might make him lose interest, but instead of facing forward again, Crew Cut starts telling her what she can expect when we get where we’re going. The gist is that a quick bullet would be infinitely better than what awaits us, but we won’t be lucky enough to get one.

“You’re pretty damn hot, girl,” says the shadow face. “But you’re about to get a
whole lot
hotter,
where you’re going.”

As he sniggers, the invisible driver busts out laughing. Crew Cut is still talking when his partner hits the brakes, makes a right turn, then cruises slowly for a couple of hundred yards. “Showtime, boys and girls,” he says, cackling softly through the mesh.

When the engine dies, I press my forehead against Caitlin’s. “Listen to me. That razor—”

“
Turn over!
” she hisses.
“Hurry! Let me cut your hands loose!”

“There’s no time. Listen, Caitlin, that razor is useless against guns.”

“What?” Her eyes are frantic. “You want me to leave it here?”

“No. Hide it if you can.”

The sound of slamming doors reverberates through a closed space.

“Hide it for what? When do I use it?”

I don’t want to answer, but her mind has not yet allowed her to face the final extremity. “It’s for you now,” I tell her. “Not them. Do you understand?”

In some terrible fraction of time, confusion becomes comprehension, and her head begins shaking as though from a nerve tremor.

“
No,
” she whispers, but it’s only a token denial. At last she has glimpsed what the end might be, what she might have to do to find a humane death.

Before I can speak again, our guards jerk open the doors and heave the dead cop out of the van. Then they slash the tape binding our ankles, drag us out by the feet—past the prone policeman—and stand us up beside a brick wall.

We seem to be in a closed residential garage. A blue Range Rover is parked beside the van. Prodding us with pistols, they force us through a door and into a spacious pantry, which leads to a kitchen gleaming with stainless steel and granite. Caitlin and I share quick glances, but I can tell she’s never been to this house, either. Just past the kitchen is a door that opens onto a staircase.

“What’s down there?” I ask, stopping at the head of the stairs with a pistol jammed into my back.

“A basement,” says the older guard behind me. “What’s it to you?”

As an assistant DA in Houston, I visited dozens of murder scenes and saw hundreds more on police videotape. The majority involved journeys like this one: a walk into a basement, an industrial freezer, or a rented storeroom where screams could not be heard, smells would not be noticed, and cleanup could be carried out in peace. This terrible knowledge compels me to repeatedly warn both Caitlin and my daughter:
If a man ever tries to get you into a vehicle, run, even if he has a gun. The odds are, he won’t hit you. Even if he does, he probably won’t hit a vital organ. But if he ever gets control of you … if he ever takes you to some isolated place … you’re dead. Or worse—

“Don’t even think about it,” says the man behind me, sensing rebellion. “I’ll shoot you in the spine. Start walking. You first, then her.”

We descend the stairs single file, me leading the way. The steps end at yet another door.

“Open it,” says the man behind me.

Few homes in this part of the country have basements. I have no idea what I might find beyond this door. When I open it, I see an oak-floored room furnished like a British gentlemen’s club. Glass-fronted display cases line three walls, within which hang an astonishing assortment of military weapons. At the center of the room, Brody Royal and Randall Regan sit on a leather sofa, watching us expectantly.

“Well, well,” Brody says with a sly smile. “We have company.”

BRODY ROYAL IS
still wearing the suit pants he had on at the hospital, but he’s stripped down to his shirtsleeves. Randall Regan has a notebook computer on his lap and a cigarette in his mouth. The bruise marking his throat looks even darker, and he stares at me with barely contained rage.

Turning to one of the guards, Brody says, “Give Randall their phones, then wait upstairs. Let me know immediately if you hear from Chalmers.”

“Yes, sir.” Crew Cut hands Regan a paper sack. Then the pair move back to the staircase. As the door slams, I look past Royal and Regan. Unlike the other walls, which are lined with glass-fronted gun cabinets, the far wall has six recesses like library carrels set in it. Suddenly, I realize what I’m looking at: an indoor firing range—a wealthy sportsman’s toy. I’ve seen less lavish versions in several homes. Five of the “doors” are actually shooting stations. Only the portal on the far right is a true door. Beyond those shooting stations will be long lanes with human silhouette targets hanging from automated tracks.

Looking back at the luxurious seating area, I catch Brody appraising Caitlin’s lithe body while Regan extracts the SIM card from my cell phone and slips it into a USB device connected to his computer. With the smoldering cigarette dangling from his lower lip, he taps the keys with surprising speed and dexterity. I’ve always thought of Randall Regan as a killer, but I suppose he learned some other skills during decades of running an insurance company.

“I apologize for the circumstances of your transport, Ms. Masters,” Brody says in a congenial voice. “I hope you can forgive the—
abruptness
of the journey. Randall, cut her wrists loose.”

Regan obviously doesn’t agree with this gesture, but he sets aside his laptop long enough to get up and cut the duct tape binding Caitlin’s wrists. From the expression on her face, I sense that Caitlin is thinking about the dead cop. I only pray she doesn’t say anything. If Brody wants to pretend he’s civilized, I’m perfectly willing to let him do it all night.