Natchez Burning (57 page)

Taking a wooden tongue depressor from a jar, he pried the back off the picture frame, then slipped the family portrait into
The Killer Angels
alongside the snapshot of Viola. All that remained on his desktop now was a Sony videotape cartridge, the tape he’d removed from Henry Sexton’s camcorder on the morning Viola died. Tom stared down at the tape but did not touch it. After some reflection, he walked to the window and looked out at the office parking lot. For the past quarter hour he’d been watching for a tall, silver conversion van called a Roadtrek. The only silver vehicle in the back lot now was a Natchez city police car. The cruiser appeared to be empty, but Tom’s heart began laboring every time he looked out at it.

Returning to his desk, he fixed his gaze on the tape, an artifact of one of the stupidest decisions he’d ever made. Rubbing his eyes hard, he turned to another framed photo on his shelf. This one showed two shirtless young men of eighteen standing in front of a snow-covered mountain. Both men wore army fatigues, both held cigarettes, and both were grinning despite the fact that dried blood covered their hands and forearms.

Tom jumped at a loud rapping on his office door. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Melba Price leaned in, her face somber.

“I just got a strange call on the main office line,” his chief nurse said softly. “A man. He gave me a private message for you, but he wouldn’t say who he was.”

Melba’s view of the videotape was blocked by the weekend bag on the desk. Closing his hand over the tape, Tom picked it up and dropped it into the bag, then zipped the bag shut. “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘I was at the Frozen Chosin.’ Then he said to tell you he was parked on the south side of the office.”

It took a few moments for Tom to orient himself. In all the years he’d practiced medicine here, he’d never had occasion to think about how the building lay in relation to the cardinal directions. Thinking about the sunlight in the late afternoons, he realized that the rear of the office faced east.

“Dr. Cage,” Melba said, stepping fully inside and closing the door. “You’re free on bail, right?”

“You know I am.”

“And there are conditions to the bail, you said.”

“That’s right.” He glanced down at the zipped bag. “And I’ve already broken at least one of them.”

Melba sighed, her eyes clouded with sorrow and anxiety. “Where are you going?”

Tom avoided her gaze. “I’m going home to lie down. I’m having some angina. Just as you told Penn I was.”

She shook her head with regret. “You mean that’s what I’m supposed to tell the police.”

Tom finally looked into her eyes. “That’s all you know, Mel. I went home to lie down, and I never came back. And you never got that phone call.”

The nurse waved her hand dismissively. “I just want to know
you
know what you’re doing. You’re not about to try anything crazy, are you?”

He gave her the most confident smile he could manage. “Have you ever thought I was crazy?”

“All the time, thank goodness.” The nurse smiled, but the worry lines remained around her eyes.

Tom went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The police car was still there. And still empty, or so it appeared.

“Who you going to meet out there?” Melba asked.

Tom let the curtain fall, then turned and picked up his bag. As he moved to the door, he reached out and squeezed his nurse’s warm hand. “A friend, Mel. A very old friend. You take care of yourself.”

She reached after him as he departed. “You call me if you need help. I mean it. I’ll do anything you need, Doc. You know that.”

Tom felt wetness in his eyes.
If only I were the man everyone seems to believe I am
.

TOM FOUND THE SILVER
conversion van exactly where Walt had told Melba it would be, on the south side of his office building. Framed in the open driver’s window was a face tanned so deeply that even in December it looked like varnished wood. Walt Garrity had spent thirty years as a Texas Ranger, and every hour in the sun showed on his face. But Walt’s eyes still smoldered with the fire that had driven him to hunt men across trackless wastes in the days when Sputnik was still on the drawing board and the only computers in America were in the Pentagon. In more recent years, the retired ranger had worked as an investigator for the Houston DA’s office, where Penn had first met him.

“
Itty-wa deska,
Private!” Walt snapped.

Tom found himself grinning.
Itty-wa deska
was phonetic Korean for “Get the
hell
over here!”

“Police car scare you?” Tom asked, walking up and slapping his hand against the van’s side.

“It didn’t reassure me.”

“City cop,” Tom said. “Probably here as a patient.”

Walt shrugged. “Will that nurse I talked to be any problem?”

“No. Mel’s good people.”

“Get in, then. There’s a full-size door on the other side. Good for crips like you.”

Tom scanned the parking lot, wondering if Sheriff Byrd had anyone watching his office. This side of his office bordered an apartment complex, and he saw no one between the buildings. Cars were passing on the boulevard to the east, but too fast for their drivers to notice anything back here. He walked around the Roadtrek and found the door Walt had described. Tom had to stoop to get through it. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he found himself in a spotlessly clean RV, small but laid out with supreme efficiency.

“We’ll stow your bag later,” Walt said. “Sit behind me till we get out of here.”

Garrity was sitting in a captain’s chair, but another seat lay directly behind him. Tom collapsed onto cushy leather and felt the van lurch as Walt put it in gear. A police radio turned down low chattered in the background.

“I’ve run down a lot of bail jumpers in my time,” Walt said. “This is the first time I ever helped one skip.”

“Thanks for getting here so fast.”

“Hell, I’m just glad for the chance to make up for last time.”

Two months earlier, the old Ranger had tried to help Penn with some dangerous business, and he’d failed in a way that left Walt thinking that age had finally robbed him of the ability to do what he’d done so well for so long.

“Glad to accommodate you,” Tom said. “Get this kimchee cab moving.”

He expected a belly laugh, but instead, Walt rotated his captain’s chair and looked intently at him. “You know they can try you in absentia if you skip bail, right?”

Tom’s stomach rolled. “I didn’t know that.”

Walt nodded. “I only mention it because they indicted you so fast. The DA obviously has a burr up his ass about you.”

“We’ll be done with our work long before this ever gets to trial. Hopefully before they even know I’m gone. Let’s go.”

Walt slapped him on the knee, and Tom winced as the Ranger turned back toward the steering wheel. Fifteen seconds later, Walt drove past the empty police car, turned onto Jefferson Davis Boulevard, and joined the traffic moving toward Highway 61.

“Did you bring the things I asked for?” Tom asked.

“That and a lot more. We could track a whole terror cell with this van, and wipe ’em out anytime you say.”

Tom nodded with relief. “Good.”

“You gonna tell me who we’re after?”

“All in good time,
compadre
. Let’s get the hell out of town.”

WAITING IN MY
office for my confrontation with Shad Johnson, I plugged the USB flash drive into my computer and opened the JPEG that has hung over the DA like a sword of Damocles for the past seven weeks. The fresh sight of it still engenders disbelief. I can’t quite get my mind around the fact that a calculating manipulator like Shad would put himself in a situation that could destroy his career overnight. On the other hand, he certainly wouldn’t be the first.

In the photo, a blood-soaked pit bull hangs by its neck from a rope tied to a tree limb while three men look on. The dog appears to be jerking its hindquarters away from something in the hand of one of the men. It’s an electric cattle prod, and the man holding it is Darius Jones, an All-Pro wide receiver. Standing to the left of Darius is Shadrach Johnson, his face shining with something like rapture. Few things in life have shocked me more than seeing Shad in this context, but it only proves the lesson I’ve learned time and again: none of us truly knows anybody. How Shad could possibly try to use my father’s plight to get revenge on me is unfathomable, given the existence of this image. I recall former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards’s campaign boast that the only thing that could keep him from retaking the governor’s office was “being found with a dead woman or a live boy.” But Governor Edwards hadn’t seen this picture. In this day and age, being seen torturing a dog is political suicide.

As the screen trips over to my screen saver, my mind turns to Quentin Avery. Among trial lawyers, Quentin is known as “Preacher” for his awe-inspiring ability to sway juries. But even in dry history books, his name figures prominently in some chapters. During the 1960s and ’70s, Quentin argued four cases before the United States Supreme Court—one a landmark civil rights case—and won them all. He became a hero to many, and his name was mentioned in the same sentences as Thurgood Marshall and James Nabrit. But by the mid-1980s, the young firebrand had turned his mind to lucre rather than to justice, taking on high-profile (and very profitable) drug cases. In the 1990s he moved on to personal injury cases, two of which made him genuinely wealthy. Throughout those years, Quentin did enough pro bono work that the people who mattered maintained their respect for him, but the image of a black knight on a shining steed had been forever tarnished, and his name was never again spoken with the same reverence as those of the men with whom he’d rubbed shoulders during the most dangerous years of the movement.

“Mayor?” Rose says over my intercom. “I haven’t been able to reach Mr. Avery, but I have his wife on the phone.”

“Thank you, Rose. I’ll pick up.”

Though in his seventies, Quentin is married to an attorney in her early forties, a woman very protective of her husband. When Quentin and I worked a case together two years ago, it took Doris Avery some time to warm up to me. I like to think that she and I ended up in a state of mutual respect, but from what Dad told me about Quentin’s health, Doris has probably been under immense strain in recent months.

“Doris, this is Penn.”

“Hello,” says the weary alto voice I remember.

“Thank you for taking my call. I know things have been difficult for Quentin lately, and I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency.”

“
Emergency
is a relative term. I know why you’re calling. A friend from Natchez told me Tom was arrested this morning, and why.”

“Does Quentin know?”

“No. He’s a sick man, Penn. Very sick. I will tell him after he wakes up, but only because he’ll be angry if he finds out later that I kept it from him.”

“Are you guys in D.C.?”

“No, Jefferson County. Your father has actually been treating Quentin, despite his heart attack.”

Yet another fact Dad has kept from me, and possibly from my mother as well.

“Tom has been a godsend,” Doris continues. “But I have to tell you this: Quentin can’t handle a murder trial. Not a case he’d be as personally invested in as this one. If they lost, and your father went to jail, it would kill Quentin. He can certainly give you advice, but
please
don’t ask him to handle the trial.”

“I hope there won’t be a trial, Doris. But Dad’s already been indicted. It happened only a couple of hours after his initial appearance, and I think Shad’s going to try to have his bail revoked.”

“Hmm. That sounds fishy.”

“It is. Joe Elder is the judge, at least for now. And unless I’m mistaken, Joe clerked for Quentin back in the day. I’m hoping Quentin can help me get the charges reduced, if not dismissed altogether.”

“I hope that’s possible. You’re right about Joe Elder working for Quentin. I’ve met him several times socially. He’s a fair man. I have your phone numbers, Penn. We’ll get back to you after Quentin’s awake and up to speed.”

“Thank you, Doris. I mean it.”

“I know.”

And then she’s gone.

A cold emptiness settles in my chest as Doris’s voice echoes in my mind:
Quentin can’t handle a murder trial
.

I run through a mental short list of the most gifted defense attorneys I faced during my courtroom career, and even jot down a couple of names. But in the last analysis, not one measures up to Quentin Avery. And yet … all that talent and experience is contained in a body that is falling apart. The parallels with my father are downright eerie.

“It’s after five,” Rose says over the intercom. “Do you need me for anything else?”

“Go home, Rose. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Should I lock the door?”

“No, I’ll be right behind you, and I’ve got files to carry. Tomorrow is my meeting with the selectmen about the Forks of the Road proposal, right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The political controversy that surrounds this racially charged project would be enough to sink me under normal circumstances, but right now it seems only a peripheral annoyance. That said, I’ll have to spend at least an hour tonight prepping for tomorrow’s meeting. I’m gathering up the relevant files when the door to my office opens. I jerk my head up, half expecting to see the angry face of Lincoln Turner, but instead I find the kind eyes of Jewel Washington watching me.

“Jewel! What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to sneak up on you. I was waiting for Rose to leave.”

“What’s going on?”

She crosses to my desk and hands me a manila envelope. “I’m going to be asking the supervisors for a budget increase for my department at the next meeting. I need an assistant. I wanted you to be aware in case there’s anything you can do to help me.”

“Well … I’d like to help, but you know I have no vote on that board.”

“I know that.” Jewel looks over her shoulder as though someone might walk in at any moment. “But your opinion carries a lot of weight.”