Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  Henry glanced anxiously at his watch. “Please give me the bodies, Glenn. Without the bodies, Jimmy and Luther stay a kidnapping on the books.”

  The old man shook his head. “Not today. You ain’t proved I can trust you yet. And I don’t want to read all this in the Beacon on Thursday. You prove I can trust you, I’ll tell you some things that’ll scorch your eardrums.”

  Henry’s frustration finally boiled over. “I won’t print a damned thing you’ve told me! I swear it.”

  Morehouse glanced at the wall clock. “Wilma’s gonna come up the driveway any minute. If she does, we’re both dead.”

  Henry stood up and looked down at the old man. “No, you’re dead. Where did you dump those boys? I’ve heard the Jericho Hole, by Lake St. John, and I’ve heard the Bone Tree. Which was it? Or was it someplace else?”

  “I don’t know where they are, Henry. I never did. The Bone Tree ain’t even a real thing. Don’t do this, man. Wilma would sell me out to Snake in a minute.” Every passing second was pushing Morehouse deeper into panic. “I’m beggin’ you,” he pleaded. “Get out now.”

  The cell phone in the old man’s hand pinged. He peered at the LCD and his face went blotchy with panic. “Wilma’s down at the end of the road! Her dog got loose while she was gone, and she’s trying to get him into her truck. She’ll be here any minute!”

  Henry wanted to push the old man to the wall, but if he did, he’d never get another interview with him. “I’ll go. But only if you’ll call me later.”

  “It’s too late!” Morehouse wailed. “You can’t get out without her seeing you now!”

  Henry thought about the topography outside the house. “Are you sure there’s no other way out? I came in a four-wheel drive.”

  Relief washed over the old man’s face. “Drive right through the ditch at this end of the road, then head for the tree line. Park behind the trees until you see Wilma come in. Then you can work your way east toward the river. There’s a dirt track over that way that’ll get you to the levee road. But you gotta go now.”

  Henry stuffed his Moleskine in his pocket and trotted to the door. “If you don’t call me before midnight, I’m coming back here.”

  “I will, if I can. Otherwise tomorrow. Go!”

  Henry opened the door and glanced up the gravel road. Seeing no vehicles, he ran to his Explorer. Ten seconds later he was nose-down in a ravine, fighting mud and gravity. With a lurch the Explorer slammed to a stop. For thirty awful seconds, his worn tires spun and whined in vain, and Henry sweated like he was being chased by a demon, not a leather-faced old woman. As his heart thundered in his chest, he realized that what he’d heard during the past hour had altered his life forever, as it would soon alter the world. He hadn’t even begun to process all that Morehouse had told him. Henry was no conspiracy theorist; he was the opposite, in fact. But the look in Morehouse’s eyes when he’d asked about Snake Knox and Martin Luther King had sunk into the marrow of Henry’s bones. With a squawk and a stink of burning rubber, the tires finally caught and carried Henry over the lip of the ditch. After one last glance at his rearview mirror, he gunned his motor and made for the tree line across the empty field.

  CHAPTER 13

  FORTY MILES DOWN the Mississippi River, Billy Knox waited in the study of the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, which his father stubbornly insisted on calling by its original name: Fort Knox. The massive compound straddled the boundary between Lusahatcha County, Mississippi, and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, both of which lay on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Though much of Valhalla was surrounded and protected by impassable swampland for part of the year, a fourteen-foot-high fence kept trespassers out and valuable game species in. Trophy heads of African antelope, Canadian moose, and whitetail deer jutted from every wall in the lodge, while grizzly bears and alligators guarded the corners with lifelike menace. Behind Billy’s chair, a seven-hundred-pound hog with a spear in its back prepared for a charge. The Teddy Roosevelt décor pegged Billy’s cheese meter, but he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to take any of it down. His cousin Forrest liked the lodge exactly the way it was—the way his father Frank had liked it—and Billy didn’t fancy the consequences of desecrating the memory of Frank Knox.

  Billy liked to think of himself as a redneck renaissance man. From humble beginnings, he’d raised himself to a plane where he was able to contemplate spending $250,000 to hire Jimmy Buffett to perform at his upcoming forty-fourth birthday party. Not many men could do that. The fact that he’d broken a multitude of laws to attain his present position was of no consequence. The lesson of history was that every great fortune was built upon a great crime, and great men from medieval popes to modern philanthropists had succeeded by taking this maxim to heart, just as Billy had done.

  The drug trade had been Billy’s primary engine of success, but over the past five years he’d expanded into real estate, oil, timber, and hunting equipment. He also produced a reality hunting show for television, one carried on five separate cable channels. Top NASCAR drivers, NFL players, and country music stars had appeared on the show with him, hunting everything from alligators and razorbacks to the prize bucks that roamed the wooded hills of Valhalla. More than a few admirers had observed that Billy fit right in with that elite: with his dirty blond hair and ice-blue eyes, he looked like the lead singer of a 1970s southern rock band. He exuded a daredevil aura, much as his father once had, and society women found his charm irresistible.

  At bottom, Billy thought of himself as a modern-day buccaneer, using his wiles to circumvent onerous, puritanical laws passed to keep red-blooded Americans from enjoying themselves. An avid reader of the maritime novels of Patrick O’Brian, he’d bought a thirty-five-foot sloop and christened her Aubrey to fulfill his most cherished fantasy. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, however, the Aubrey now lay on her side in a pine barren north of Biloxi, wrecked beyond salvage. But today that was the least of Billy’s problems. For he shared more than his blond locks with Captain Jack Aubrey. Like Jack, whose Radical father caused him no end of problems by intemperate behavior in Parliament and in private life, Billy Knox had been cursed with a father who bowed to no authority but his own.

  When Snake Knox finally walked into the study and sat across from his son’s desk, he wore a look of sullen resentment. That look had been his default expression ever since Billy ascended to the alpha position (at least nominally) in the Knox organization. Billy preferred to focus on Sonny Thornfield, who sat to Snake’s right and maintained an expression of sober deference, despite being more than thirty years older than Billy.

  “We gonna discuss this?” Snake muttered. “Or we just gonna sit here and waste the fuckin’ day?”

  Billy sighed with forbearance. At times like this, he wondered why he and Forrest bothered with geriatric crew leaders. Managing them often felt like riding herd on a bunch of old women, except old women didn’t generally kill people who backtalked them. On the other hand, old men made excellent managers for the front businesses required to keep a successful drug empire running. As a rule, the suspicion of cops and DAs operated inversely with the age of the men they encountered. The unprecedented expansion of the meth trade was starting to change this built-in biological bias, but on balance, geriatric family members beat the hell out of any punks Billy could hire on the open market. Besides, the trust factor alone was worth whatever hassle working with family brought with it. The loyalty of his father’s old Klan crew could not be questioned. Yet paradoxically, it was the fanatical loyalty of the Double Eagles that had created Billy’s current dilemma.

  “Tell me again why you think the only solution is to kill poor old Glenn Morehouse,” he said.

  “Glenn swore an oath,” Snake snapped. “Same as we all did, he knew the penalty, and that’s what he’s got to pay.”

  Billy smiled enough to show his white teeth. “I hear you, Pop.” Pride meant a lot to these old men, so he tried to tread carefully around their feelings when he could. On the other hand,
he couldn’t let antiquated notions of honor put his livelihood at risk. “Tell me more about this woman who told you Morehouse is talking.”

  “Sandy’s a neighbor of Glenn’s sister,” Sonny said. “She lives at the head of the gravel road that runs over to Wilma’s place. She’s Duke Williams’s widow. Reliable.”

  “And Wilma wasn’t at the house,” Snake repeated. “Glenn sent her on an errand so he could meet Sexton without her there.”

  “That’s pure supposition,” Billy observed.

  “Huh?”

  “For all you know, Henry was staking out that road on his own hook, and when he saw the sister leave, he ambushed poor old Glenn.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Sonny admitted.

  “Bullshit,” Snake hissed. “Henry’s never spoke a word to Glenn in his life before today, far as I know. And he’s had a thousand chances. I’ll lay you a hundred to one Glenn called him. And if Glenn spills what he knows, you can kiss all this good-bye.” Snake waved his arms around to take in their opulent surroundings. “Jimmy Buffett won’t be out on the deck playing ‘Margaritaville’ while you rub some LSU cheerleader’s ass. You’ll be sweatin’ in your bunk under a big buck nigger in Angola.”

  Billy took a deep breath and tried to rein in his temper. Opening his desk drawer, he took out a tin of Copenhagen and stuffed a pinch under his bottom lip. The two old men watched as he let the glass-infused snuff abrade his lip and release calming nicotine into his blood. “And you’re so sure that you’re willing to kill your childhood buddy without giving him a chance to tell his side?”

  “Oh, I’ll give him a chance,” Snake said. “Just before I slice his cods off.”

  “Why would Glenn betray you guys after all these years? He did some killing himself, didn’t he?”

  “Damn straight,” said Snake. “Worse than that.”

  Billy knew Snake’s taste for sadism all too well; he didn’t want any details.

  “Glenn drowned an FBI informant in acid,” Sonny said. “Out at the Triton plant.”

  Billy shook his head in amazement. “And you really think he would admit that to a reporter?”

  Snake cut his eyes at Sonny, and Billy saw some meaning pass between the two older men. Then Snake said, “When a man starts feeling death’s cold breath on the back of his neck, that sets him thinking. The sins he’s been carryin’ suddenly seem to weigh twice as much as before.”

  “You speaking from experience?” Billy asked skeptically.

  “Kiss my ass, boy. It takes some intestinal fortitude to walk tall all the way to the grave. And Glenn was always short in that department. If Frank was there to give orders, Glenn would beat his way through a brick wall with nothing but his fists. But leave him alone, you was liable to find him huddled in the corner crying about the dark. He’s like a big baby.”

  “Sonny?” Billy prompted.

  Sonny cocked his head and spoke softly. “I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. That Henry might have ambushed Glenn. How would Henry know to go to Glenn on his own? We didn’t exactly advertise our membership.”

  “Damned straight,” Snake said. “There it is.”

  Billy laughed, though he knew his father would hate him for it. “Bullshit. How many times did I see you show that JFK coin of yours around when I was a kid? The one with the bullet holes in it. How many gold pieces got flashed around at family gatherings like Super Bowl rings?”

  Snake averted his eyes, but Billy went on mercilessly. “Twenty men in your damn outfit. How many kids did they have? How many wives and ex-wives? You think they didn’t know any names of other members? A guy like Henry Sexton—a guy who grew up around here—I’ll bet he could get every Eagle’s name inside of six months, and maybe quicker. I’ll bet he’s had most of your names for years.”

  “No way,” Sonny insisted, his chin quivering. “If he did, he’d already have printed ’em in that rag of his.”

  Billy shook his head. “Not necessarily. I’ve done my own checking into Henry Sexton. He’s playing a long game.”

  Sonny leaned closer.

  Billy spat dip juice into an empty shot glass. “Henry’s in constant contact with the FBI. Field agents call him for regular updates on the stories he’s working. And the stories he’s working are your old glory cases. Albert Norris, Joe Louis Lewis, Jimmy and Luther. Now, that’s not the end of the world—not so far—but we don’t want the Bureau digging any deeper than they already have. Not while you’re on my payroll. And not when the attorney general’s putting eighty-year-old men away for murders that happened when I was in diapers.”

  “Preacher Killen was a dumbass,” Snake grumbled. “That’s why Frank never brought him into the Eagles. Ernest Avants wasn’t much better. We got to shut Glenn up ASAP, Bill. And he’s not the only one. That goddamn reporter—”

  Billy held up his hand to silence Snake. “Don’t even go there, Pop.”

  Sonny said, “How do you know about Henry Sexton’s contacts with the FBI?”

  Billy smiled. “That’s my business, Uncle Son. But take it as gospel.”

  Billy wasn’t related to Sonny by blood, but Sonny appreciated the term of affection.

  “As I was about to say,” Snake muttered with a glare at Sonny, “it ain’t only Glenn we need to take care of. It’s time to shut down Henry Sexton, too.”

  Billy looked sharply at his father, but Snake pushed on regardless. “We shoulda done it five years back, before he printed half the shit he has already. And you know it, William.”

  Billy laid his palms on the desk with restraint. “Are you going senile or what? The Beacon is a pissant weekly that people forget as soon as they wrap the garbage in it. But if you kill Henry Sexton, the goddamn lid will blow off this place. Penn Cage’s girlfriend will fill up the Natchez Examiner with Double Eagle stories. Then we’ll get Jerry Mitchell down from the Clarion-Ledger. That bastard got the Medgar Evers case reopened, and he’ll jump on your asses with both feet if you give him an excuse. We’ve got too much to hide for that!”

  When Snake opened his mouth to argue, Billy rotated his chair and looked at the huge razorback mounted on a polished stand of swamp ash standing behind him. The kids in the family called it “Hogzilla.” His cousin Forrest had killed that hog; the spear he’d used still jutted from the monster’s back like the sword of a matador. The taxidermist had done a superb job: the hog’s eyes blazed, and its tusks gleamed like the deadly weapons they were. Billy often wondered at the courage it must have required to take on such an animal with only a spear and a horse. Seven hundred pounds of pissed-off razorback—

  “Hey!” Snake barked. “You gonna just sit there with your back to us, like Elvis?”

  After a deep breath, Billy turned, carefully spat tobacco juice into the shot glass, then looked up at his father with startling coldness. “Before we dispense with your insane proposition, I want to know something.” He jabbed a finger at his father. “And I want a straight answer.”

  Snake regarded his son with some emotion between suspicion and malice, but Sonny nodded like a faithful lieutenant.

  “When I heard Viola Turner died this morning, I thought of you first. So I made a couple of phone calls. And Sheriff Billy Byrd told me that Dr. Cage is going to be charged with that murder.”

  Snake nodded, a little smugly, Billy thought. “That’s what we heard, too.”

  “I know you guys went out to see Viola a couple weeks back. A friendly reminder, you said, that she needed to stay quiet until the end.”

  “That’s right,” Sonny confirmed. “That’s all we done, Bill.”

  Snake glared at his comrade.

  Billy let the silence drag, but his father gave up nothing. “Be that as it may,” Billy went on, “I’m asking you two, here and now, did you kill that woman?”

  Snake almost came up out of his chair. “You just said they’re charging Dr. Cage for murder! You think they’d do that for the hell of it?”

  “They might do it for some reason
of their own,” Billy said calmly. “That black DA hates Penn Cage. And Billy Byrd’s got no love for the doc. But you didn’t answer my question, Pop. Did you two have anything to do with that old woman’s death?”

  Sonny started to speak, but Snake shushed him with a hiss.

  “Talk to me, Uncle Sonny,” Billy commanded. “Don’t pay Daddy no mind. This is too important.”

  “We’d been watching her some,” Sonny admitted. “And we might have done it, Bill. She talked to Henry a couple of times, you know. But he didn’t print anything about it, and you’d told me you had a way of knowing ahead of time if Henry was going to print anything too bad. So we laid off.”

  Snake got to his feet, reached into his shirt, lifted a leather cord from around his neck, and dropped his JFK half dollar onto Billy’s desk. Billy saw the two familiar holes in the coin that had fascinated him since childhood. For Billy, the sharp, circular rim of that bullet hole in JFK’s pristine profile always evoked the horror of the Zapruder film.

  “I’d have damn sure killed Viola,” Snake said, “if Dr. Cage hadn’t done it first. And I wouldn’t have asked your permission, neither. That’s Eagle business, and it’s got nothing to do with you.”

  Billy shook his head wearily, wondering why his father hadn’t mellowed with age, like most older men he knew.

  “That bitch made a promise,” Snake said, as if reciting holy writ. “She knew the penalty if she broke it, and she came back to Natchez anyway. She called down her own punishment, same as Glenn. They took the choice out of our hands.”

  Billy leaned forward and flipped up the half dollar with a fingernail. “You’re damned lucky Dr. Cage did you that favor,” he said softly. “If he did.”

  “He did,” Sonny said. “I swear it, Billy.”

  “Good. Because if you two killed that old woman without clearing it first, Forrest would drop the hammer on you.” Billy looked pointedly at his father. “It don’t mean a thing to Forrest that you’re blood, either. You know that.”