Natchez Burning (42 page)

But later that night, lying in bed, the nagging thought had returned that she must remember
something
. As a young girl, Katy Royal had made love to Pooky Wilson many times, and she must have been as heartbroken by his disappearance as Henry had been by the realization that Swan Norris would never be his. How much had Katy known at the time? Surely some trace of the intense pain she’d felt as a young girl must remain in her cerebral cortex.

As the volume of the den television rose to compensate for his mother’s increasing deafness, Henry realized that with Viola and Morehouse dead, Katy Royal’s importance as a potential witness against her father had dramatically increased. Next time he got access to her, he decided, he would confide to Katy his love for Swan, and the heartache he’d suffered at losing her. Maybe that would summon an echo from the white space that supposedly lay in Katy Royal’s traumatized memory banks.

Without warning, Henry suddenly saw a vision of Glenn Morehouse fighting for his life in his sickbed, struggling against friends who saw him as a traitor.
He knew he was going to die,
Henry thought.
He knew talking to me would cost him his life, and he still did it.
Henry closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for the murderer who’d chosen him as confessor. When his cell phone rang, it took a few seconds to register that it was his, not Sherry’s. He didn’t recognize the number, and he almost decided not to answer. But in the end, he did.

“Henry Sexton,” he said, holding his breath.

First he heard only staticky silence. Then a voice he placed as belonging to a rural man of African-American descent began to speak. He hardly met men who talked this way anymore.

“Yassir. I heard you lookin’ fuh dat tree wha all dem boys died at
.
”

Henry’s belly clenched. Unlike so many would-be tipsters before, this caller was the real thing. “Where did you hear that?”

“Man I know told me tha might be some money in it, if a body could show you that awful place
.
”

“That’s right.”

“How much you payin’, suh?”

Henry’s personal finances were modest, and always stretched to the limit. He was willing to pay up to five hundred dollars, but he didn’t want to pay more than he had to. “How much do you want?”

“A thousand dollah
.
Cash money
.
”

Henry felt a cold sweat break out on his face.
A thousand dollars?
Most black folks he knew around Ferriday would do a hard month’s work for that sum.

“That’s a lot of money. How can I be sure you know what you claim to know?”

“I guess you can’t. But I knows everything they is to know ’bout that ol’ swamp, and that be my price. I’s liable to need some luck just to live to spend it.”

Henry couldn’t argue with this logic. He was trying to think of a way to bargain with the man when it struck him that Penn Cage would probably be glad to subsidize the discovery of the Bone Tree. And Penn wouldn’t hesitate to pay that sum. “All right,” Henry said in a voice just above a whisper. “One thousand dollars, cash. But not a dollar more.”

“Aiite, den. When you wants to go?”

“When can you take me?”

“Not till Wendsy, mebbe T’ursy. I call you back in a day or two
.
”

“That’s fine. Could I ask what you do for a living?”

Low, rich laughter came down the line.
“I helps people find game when it be’s scarce. Mebbe take a little out o’ season, sometimes, you know
.
”

A poacher,
Henry thought. A poacher might well know the secret paths of the Lusahatcha Swamp. “Will you tell me your name?”

“
Toby,
” said the poacher.

“Toby what?” Henry asked, grabbing a pencil and flipping over the photo of Tom and the men in the fishing boat.

“Toby Rambin. But don’t axe around about me. I don’t exist, hear? I call you back in a couple days. You jus’ get that cash ready.”

The connection went dead.

As Henry scrawled on the paper, he thanked God that Sherry hadn’t heard this conversation. He looked down at the phone shaking in his hand.

“Who was that?” Sherry asked from the doorway.

“Nobody, babe. Just another dead-end lead.”

WALKING UP MY
front steps for the second time in fifteen minutes, I pause before the door to gather myself. I was unable to catch up to Lincoln after he disappeared over the hill on Washington Street. I cruised the parking lots of the hotels on the bluff—the casino lots, too—but I saw no white pickup with Illinois plates. On my way back, I called Don Logan, the chief of police, and asked him to have his patrolmen keep an eye out for Lincoln’s truck. Not a legitimate use of power, exactly, but the office of mayor comes with some perks.

I feel a little odd hesitating before my own front door, but on the other hand, I feel like I’m bringing home a kilo of heroin that must be hidden from a drug addict. Caitlin would give almost anything to possess the information Henry confided in me tonight. Armed with that, she would begin a newspaper crusade that would blast open those cold cases, eventually solve the murders, and probably win her a second Pulitzer Prize. But that honor is reserved for Henry Sexton, who worked the cases when nobody else gave a damn, and who’s now living under the threat of harm to himself and his family. When Caitlin demands to know what I’m doing to help my father—as she will when she learns that he’s in danger—I will have to edit myself very carefully.

She’s been working south of town all day, but she may already have heard about Dad’s trouble. On the other hand, if she had heard something, she probably would have texted me. I’m only thankful that neither she nor Annie noticed Lincoln Turner’s truck rumbling outside the house.

Taking out my key, I let myself into the foyer and bolt the door behind me. The laughter of my eleven-year-old daughter rings down the hallway from the kitchen. “Annie?” I call. “I’m home!”

The laughter stops, and a rush of feet heralds the appearance of my dead wife’s avatar in the hallway. I probably shouldn’t think of Annie that way, but anyone who knew her mother shares this perception. My tall, willowy daughter is almost the reincarnation of Sarah. Sometimes I wonder if this impression is a trick my mind plays on me, but then I’ll see an old photograph and realize the resemblance is growing stronger with each passing year.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asks, stopping in mid-stride and staring at me with the preternatural perception that also descended from her mother. “You look scared.”

“No, I just missed you today.”

She comes forward and wraps her arms around me, in a single gesture draining away half the anxiety that Lincoln Turner caused in me. “Come in the kitchen,” she says. “Caitlin and I are cooking pasta primavera.”

“You mean
you’re
cooking it.” I know from experience that my fiancée never cooks anything more complicated than a Lean Cuisine.

“Caitlin’s helping,” Annie says with a wink.

She pulls me down the hall and into the kitchen, where Caitlin is standing over a pot with a frown knotting her brow.

“This is why I don’t cook,” Caitlin snaps. “I can’t even boil effing
water
.”

Annie snickers and checks the pasta pot. “Those noodles have definitely been in there too long. Let’s get them out.”

Caitlin wisely stands aside for Annie to rescue the noodles, and I’m glad to see the twinkle of a smile in Caitlin’s eyes, though her lips are tight with frustration. Caitlin still has two or three inches on Annie, but it won’t be long before my daughter catches up to her. Despite both being tall beauties, they could not be more different in type. Caitlin has pale skin and jet-black hair, with startling green eyes that shy away from nothing. Her build is angular and almost masculine from some perspectives, but she’s curved where it counts. Annie is dark blond with light blue eyes that radiate kindness, not calculation, and her skin glows with the bloom of youth.

“See?” Annie says, carefully dumping the noodles into a colander in the sink, while boiling water steams around her head.

“I’d already have third-degree burns,” Caitlin says. She once tried to make her mother’s lasagna, but that effort is best forgotten. That’s the level of domestic bliss you get with a newspaper publisher.

“You know what Ruby used to say.” I laugh, hugging Caitlin to my waist. “If you ain’t burnt yourself, you ain’t cookin’.”

Ruby was the black maid who raised me, and very much a second mother to me. Annie laughs at my remark, and Caitlin pinches my behind while Annie deals with the noodles.

I was thirty-eight when I met Caitlin, and I’d been a widower less than a year. She was ten years my junior and out to win a Pulitzer before she turned thirty. Her chosen venue was the
Natchez Examiner,
one of twenty-odd newspapers owned at that time by her father, a North Carolina businessman who cares more about profits than changing the world. During the Delano Payton case, Caitlin and I formed an unlikely partnership that brought us closer than either had expected, and we quickly fell in love.

Looking back on that time, it seems hard to believe we’ve let seven years pass without getting married. The fact is, when you’re both working full-time and enjoying the benefits of marriage without the burdens, it’s easy to let time slip by without looking too closely at things. During those years we suffered one or two periods of cool distance, when Caitlin took extended assignments in Boston and even farther afield, but those were exceptions. Yet no matter how close we grew during the years prior to our engagement, Caitlin kept one last wall between herself and my daughter—probably to protect them both from heartbreak, should things not work out in the end. But ever since we made the decision to get married, Caitlin and Annie have become inseparable. Annie has insisted on helping with the wedding preparations, from the shower and the flowers to choosing the band for the reception. I’ve done little, of course; my most important contribution has miraculously remained secret. But after the events of today, I’m not sure it can remain so.

I must not be doing a very good job of concealing my worries, because before Annie can serve the pasta, Caitlin pulls me into the hallway.

“Where are ya’ll going?” Annie asks, obviously annoyed.

“We need to talk upstairs for a few minutes,” Caitlin explains. “Grown-up stuff.”

“And when exactly do I become a grown-up? Every grown-up I meet tells me how grown-up I am already.”

“When you’re thirteen!” Caitlin calls from the foot of the stairs.

“
Twelve!
” Annie retorts.

“How about twenty-one?” I shout.

“How about
now
? This sucks!”

“We’ll hurry!” Caitlin promises.

“Ya’ll better!”

UPSTAIRS, CAITLIN CROSSES HER
legs Indian-style on my bed and fixes her luminous eyes upon me with the disturbing concentration I’ve come to know like a third person in our relationship.

“What’s the deal?” she asks.

“What deal? You haven’t told me anything about
your
day.”

“FEMA trailers suck, end of story. What’s eating you?”

Knowing it would be useless to try to withhold the main story, I give a heavy sigh and prop my ass on the top of my dresser. “Dad’s in trouble.”

Caitlin draws back her head to brace for bad news. “Not another heart attack.”

“No.”

“Thank God. What, then?”

“Legal trouble.”

“Malpractice?”

“I wish.”

She brushes a strand of black hair from her eyes. “Penn, you’re scaring me. What is it?”

I summarize the day’s action with the precision of a legal brief, and Caitlin doesn’t interrupt. This is the upside of living with a brilliant woman. She may not be much of a cook, but she can digest information in a fraction of the time it takes most people. I begin with Shad’s call to my office this morning and edit myself on the fly. I tell her there’s a video recording of Viola’s death, and that Henry Sexton made it, but not that he kept a copy for himself. I explain that Viola died brutally and that a botched mercy killing seems possible, but Shad Johnson is contemplating murder charges against Dad. After quickly outlining the crime scene evidence, I tell her that, according to Henry, the Double Eagle group had a standing hit order on Viola if she ever returned to Natchez, probably because Viola knew things that could send surviving Double Eagles to prison—things related to the kidnapping and murder of her brother, a local civil rights activist. I also explain that the murder charge is being driven by Viola’s son, who only appeared in Natchez this morning. Caitlin pays particularly close attention here, but I distract her by moving quickly past the subject.

I sketch Henry’s theory about Double Eagle involvement in the local meth trade but elide Henry’s belief that my father had suspicious ties to Brody Royal or individual Double Eagles. I also leave out the murder of Glenn Morehouse, the fact that Morehouse was one of Henry’s sources, and everything about the murders of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, and Dr. Leland Robb. (No Brody Royal avenging his daughter’s “honor,” no “Huggy Bear” who could put Brody Royal in jail, and most of all, no plot to assassinate RFK. Those items are the heroin that Caitlin could not bear to resist.) Most damning (should Caitlin discover the truth), I say nothing about Henry and me working together to nail the Eagles, or Kirk Boisseau covertly diving the Jericho Hole tomorrow. I’ve become adept at the self-editing process over the past few years with Caitlin, and the only reactions I see are an occasional raised eyebrow and some added color in her cheeks.

As soon as I finish my summary, though, she says, “You’re not telling me everything about Henry Sexton. Not by a damn sight.”

“I promised him I’d keep some things confidential. Henry’s pretty sensitive about the work he’s done on those old cases.”

She smiles with more than a hint of envy. “Rightfully so. He’s done good work, and he doesn’t want me to steal it.”