Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

“I don’t know for sure. I do know that one is a ruthless killer. The other may be a corrupt cop.”

  Caitlin slowly shakes her head, her eyes burning with desire to strike back at anyone who would threaten us. Her fierce resolve gives me more inspiration than Henry’s noble but slow-burning commitment. Caitlin stirred to action is an unstoppable force. Two months ago, she was compelled to listen to a woman being raped in a room next to the one in which she herself was being held captive. Since then, she has become a tireless crusader for victims of sexual violence, raising money and awareness on a national scale.

  “There’s one more thing,” I say softly. “I’m breaking my word to Henry to tell you, but this bears on Lincoln’s paternity.”

  “I understand.”

  “Viola Turner was gang-raped by the Double Eagle group just before she left Natchez. On two different occasions. Henry thinks one of those rapists is Lincoln’s biological father. I just thought you should know. For Dad’s sake.”

  Caitlin opens her mouth but says nothing. Her chin is quivering like Annie’s did an hour ago, and her eyes blaze with a hatred I can scarcely imagine. “Anything else?” she asks hoarsely.

  I shake my head. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

  She drops her towel to the floor and walks stark naked into my bedroom to get dressed. Paradoxically, I’m reminded of nothing so much as a soldier girding herself for war.

  CHAPTER 30

  DRIVING TO MY parents’ house, I call Henry Sexton to let him know Kirk Boisseau will be diving the Jericho Hole at dawn. The reporter sounds beside himself with excitement. He’s already informed the FBI of Glenn Morehouse’s death and relayed the Double Eagle’s confirmation of the murder of Bureau informant Jerry Dugan in 1965. As a result, at least one Bureau agent has promised to look into the Morehouse case immediately, and Henry believes he meant what he said. Before he lets me go, Henry apologizes for calling my father’s honor into question, and I tell him I’ve never developed the habit of shooting the messenger. By the time we hang up, I’m nearing my parents’ house, so I call ahead.

  “Dr. Cage,” says the confident baritone that’s greeted every late-night caller for the past forty-three years.

  “It’s me.”

  “The garage door’s open. Come in that way. I’m in the study.”

  “Is Mom all right?”

  “More or less. You know your mother.”

  Yes. Her picture is in the dictionary under “steel magnolia.” “I’ll see you in a minute.”

  I park behind his old 740 and quickly make my way through the dark garage. This house has never grown familiar to me—the house I grew up in was burned to the ground by Ray Presley in 1998. Once I gain the hall, I spy a faint glow beneath Dad’s study door. Walking softly, so as not to wake my mother, I find him sitting at his study desk, smoking a Partagas and poring over a thick book, his trifocals gleaming in the light of the reading lamp.

  “Dad?” I say softly.

  He looks up and smiles. “Come in, son. I tried to sleep earlier, but it was no use.” Closing the book on a brass marker, he sets it aside. “I’ve been reading Shelby Foote.”

  Naturally. My father’s future hangs by a thread, and he’s reading Civil War history.

  “Did you know he died this past June?” he asks, as though we have nothing more urgent to discuss. “Heart attack, secondary to a pulmonary embolism.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I take a seat in the more comfortable of the two chairs that face his desk. Behind him, his shelves are filled with rare books sent by dozens of friends and dealers who felt compelled to offer some tangible expression of solace after his library burned. Only now do I realize that Dad is wearing a multicolored robe that my sister and I gave him for Christmas thirty years ago.

  He’s not going to change his mind, I realize. He’s really going to make my mother watch him walk to a sheriff’s cruiser in handcuffs.

  “Dad, Billy Byrd is going to arrest you tomorrow morning.”

  His smile fades but doesn’t quite disappear. “He’ll enjoy that.”

  “What’s the deal there? Shad says Sheriff Byrd has some kind of personal grudge against you.”

  “Oh … well, I treated Billy’s wife for years. She had a long history of suspicious bruises and lacerations, plus one fracture. Need I continue?”

  “Sheriff Byrd is a wifebeater?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “And he knows you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “The wife told him?”

  “No. Billy came in for a physical, and I told him that if his wife showed up in my office with another suspicious injury, I’d swear out a warrant against him with the chief of police.”

  I sit back and try to process this. “Well, given that history, don’t you think you’d do well to stay out of the county jail?”

  Dad lays his hand on the volume of Foote and sighs. “I’ve treated most of those deputies down there, or their parents. I think that will probably balance the sheriff’s ill will. Billy finally divorced that wife, by the way, to her everlasting good fortune.”

  “Dad, from what I know, the physical evidence at the death scene is against you. The facts as I know them are against you. That doesn’t bode well for your legal prospects.”

  He puts the Partagas between his teeth, and a blue nimbus of smoke floats out of his mouth as he speaks. “Old Shelby said something interesting about facts: ‘People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.’”

  How do you respond to a guy who talks like this? He should write a book: Zen and the Art of Evading Questions, by Tom Cage.

  “You said you spoke to Henry Sexton,” he reminds me. “What did he tell you?”

  I want to probe Dad about the extent of his relations with Viola, but I can’t quite bring myself to open with such an invasion of his privacy. “Do you remember a man named Glenn Morehouse?”

  “I think so. Big fellow? Hypertensive.”

  “That’s him. He was murdered tonight, for talking to Henry Sexton.”

  Dad’s eyes widen slightly behind his glasses. “I see. I imagine Morehouse knew a lot about … Henry’s special areas of interest.”

  “That’s an understatement.” I can’t temporize any longer. “Dad, forgive me, but earlier you told me you’d take a DNA test regarding Lincoln Turner’s paternity. I have to go one step further. Could you conceivably be Lincoln’s father? Is there any chance of that?”

  He takes the cigar from his mouth and sets it in his ashtray. “No,” he says, his voice and eyes steady.

  Thank God, I say silently, trying not to show my relief. “Well, Lincoln seems to believe you are. He was parked outside my house tonight when I got home.”

  Real alarm comes into Dad’s face. “Did he threaten you?”

  “Only with exposure of the truth, which he said would destroy you.”

  After a few moments, Dad waves his hand. “Don’t pay any attention to that.”

  “Could Viola have told him he’s your son?”

  Dad sighs. “If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d have said no. But after what I saw these past weeks … it’s possible. Viola was depressed, even desperate. And considering the alternative story …”

  So Dad knows about Viola’s rape. “All right, then. We need to get the DNA test out of the way as soon as possible, so both Shad and Lincoln can start seeing this thing more objectively.”

  “Is Lincoln Turner all Henry spoke to you about?”

  “No. He told me a lot, but we both need to get some sleep soon. Based on what Henry told me, there are three questions I’d like to ask you.”

  He sits back and laces his fingers across his belly. “Go ahead.”

  “Did Dr. Leland Robb tell you who killed Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson before he died in that plane crash? Have you known for all these years and kept quiet about it?”

  Dad shifts forward and sits
straighter in the chair. “What’s the second question?”

  “You can’t answer that one first?”

  “I’d prefer to hear all three before I answer.”

  This is like questioning a guilty client. “All right. Glenn Morehouse told Henry that Viola would have been killed in 1968 if it hadn’t been for you and Ray Presley.”

  This time he remains motionless, but something subtle changes in his eyes.

  “I assume I know why you saved her,” I go on. “But how did you do it? When she was on the wrong side of the Double Eagles and …”

  “And what?”

  “That’s my third question.” I lean forward and slide the picture of Dad on the fishing boat with Brody Royal, Claude Devereux, and Ray Presley across his desk. “I think she was a threat to Brody Royal as well.”

  “My God,” he breathes, leaning over the photo. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Henry. Tell me about Brody Royal, Dad. According to Henry, he was behind the deaths of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, Jimmy Revels, Luther Davis, and Dr. Robb. This morning I’d have said this guy was a typical Louisiana businessman, only richer. An upper-echelon Rotary type. Now I hear he’s a sociopath who plotted with Carlos Marcello to assassinate Robert Kennedy.”

  Dad looks up, obviously startled.

  “In this photo you seem to be deep-sea fishing with Royal and two other world-class bastards.” Mindful of my mother, I prevent myself from raising my voice. “What’s the deal?”

  He leans back and regards me with what looks like regret. “Penn … why are you digging into all this?”

  I want to lean across the desk and shake him by his shirt. Instead, I take a deep breath and force my voice lower. “The moment I saw Henry’s video, I knew you didn’t kill Viola. But since you wouldn’t tell me who did kill her, I set out to find the answer myself. I now believe the Double Eagles killed her, either for their own reasons or to protect Brody Royal. After what Henry told me today, I think that no matter what happens with your case, I’m going to have to help him solve those cases he’s been working. In fact, tomorrow morning, I’m having a friend dive the Jericho Hole to search for bodies.”

  I pause to let Dad absorb what I’m saying. “The past is coming up to the surface, one way or another. I’ve come here to give you a chance to warn me if we’re likely to find something that implicates you in any way.”

  He looks around his study as if searching for something. “Penn,” he says finally, “this isn’t like the Del Payton case. As important as that was, it was basically a case of greed. The race angle was only incidental.”

  I feel my face flush with frustration. “You’re avoiding my question. This picture isn’t all Henry has, you know. I saw FBI surveillance records that document Marcello’s hoods driving up from New Orleans to visit your office in the 1970s. Can you explain that?”

  To my surprise, he shrugs as though he has nothing to hide. “I probably did treat some of Ray’s friends from New Orleans. God knows I treated enough Ku Klux Klansmen among the workers at Armstrong and Triton and IP. But there’s nothing evil in that. Assholes need doctors, too.”

  “But why would mobsters drive the three hours from New Orleans to see you? In at least one case, a visit was after hours, and Ray Presley showed up at your office at the same time.”

  Dad looks confused for a few moments, but then he seems to recover his composure. “I remember that! Some of Ray’s old cronies tried to bribe me to write fraudulent prescriptions for amphetamines. That was the big-demand drug back then. I said no, and that was that. Honestly, I didn’t see it as any different from Natchez lawyers asking me to pad my bills to fatten up their personal injury lawsuits. Human beings are avaricious, Penn. You know that.”

  He’s responded to all my questions with calm assurance, yet amid all the words I sense a different kind of concealment. “Dad … so far as I know, in all my life, you only refused to open up to me about one thing—Korea. But today I discovered there’s a whole other chapter you kept back. This afternoon you lamented not doing more to help during the civil rights struggle, but it sounds like you were neck-deep in it. Henry says he’s been trying to interview you about that era for years, yet you’ve constantly put him off. Why?”

  He focuses in the middle distance for a few silent seconds. Then he looks at me and answers in a low, earnest voice. “I never told you about the war because you can’t tell anyone about war, any more than you can tell a virgin what it means to go through labor. But make no mistake: what happened here during the 1960s was a war, too. A civil war.” He thumps Shelby Foote’s thick history. “Maybe the true end of this one. And as in any war, there were casualties. Viola was one of them.”

  “Viola was gang-raped in 1968. I’m thinking you already know that.”

  His jaw tightens and flexes. If there’s such a thing as an offended silence, that’s what I’m listening to now. “I’m not going to discuss that,” he says. “Viola’s gone, and she’s finally out of pain. That’s all that matters now.”

  I lean forward, my eyes accusing. “Is it? A lot more people who survived that era need peace just as badly as she, and preferably while they’re still alive. Many of the men who committed those crimes are still walking around. They’re still hurting people. Do you think men who gang-raped Viola twice deserve to live out their days in peace?”

  Dad looks up sharply, his face pale. Then he closes his eyes, and his head sags forward. I start to go on, but he raises a hand to stop me. “Don’t say any more. I’ll answer your three questions. Then I want you to drop all this.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  He sighs heavily. “Leland Robb was a good man. He was a good physician, too, and he died badly. Aircraft fires are always terrible. They called me to identify his body. I had to use X-rays.”

  “I don’t think Henry knows that.”

  “A month before that crash, Leland came to see me. He was upset and needed to get something off his chest. He mentioned Frank Knox being at Albert Norris’s store on the afternoon Norris died, but Frank had been dead over a year by this time. Leland wanted to tell me about another man who’d been there, but I stopped him. Something in his manner told me how explosive that information was.” Dad shakes his head and picks up his cigar. “I wish now that I’d responded differently, but at the time … Leland was truly terrified. I urged him to confide in someone who could actually do something about what he knew—the FBI, or a moderate politician—but he didn’t. After he died, I wondered whether there might have been some sort of foul play involved, but the FAA didn’t find anything suspicious about the crash. What could I do?”

  The tone in my father’s voice is both alien and familiar; it’s the voice of witnesses who stood by while someone else was being robbed, beaten, or killed. “You could have told the FBI about Frank Knox threatening Albert Norris. You could have told them that the man who collided with Dr. Robb’s plane had probably murdered Norris along with his brother!”

  Dad’s unblinking gaze silences me. “If I’d done that,” he says softly, “you and I might not be sitting here now. Your mother might be a widow. You don’t know what those men were capable of. It’s not very honorable, I know, but that’s the choice I made.”

  I want to argue, but who am I to question my father about decisions made during a time I lived through as a little boy under his protection?

  Before I can remind him of my other questions, he says, “As for saving Viola … all I did was send a request through Ray Presley to Brody Royal and Claude Devereux.”

  “You knew that they had ties to the Double Eagles?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. But as for your question, I simply told them I was sure that Viola had no intention of speaking to the authorities. I think Royal or Devereux or someone up the line believed me, and they knew I understood that if she talked, Viola wouldn’t be the only one to pay a price. In any case, they let her live. That’s
all I can tell you about that.”

  “And this photo? With Royal and the others?”

  Dad slides the image back toward me, but his eyes remain on it. “Leland took that picture. It was 1966. I don’t know how Henry Sexton got hold of it. Lee used to fly us to gun shows back in the sixties. That one was in Biloxi. You know I hate the water, but Lee had committed us to go deep-sea fishing with Royal and Devereux, who were down there on business. Dixie Mafia business, probably. Anyway, we’d run into Ray Presley at the show, so he joined us. The whole cruise only lasted five or six hours. I hadn’t known Royal at all before that. But afterward …” Dad is looking at me but seems not to see me.

  “What?”

  “Another man came along on that trip. A tall, lanky fellow— ex-military. At first the cruise was fun and games. We caught a few mackerel, and drank enough beer to pretend we were extras in To Have and Have Not. That’s when Lee shot this picture. But Royal and the lanky fellow were serious drinkers. And the more they drank, the more they talked. The more they talked, the more frightened I got. Lee, too.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “Paramilitary operations, mostly. The military guy turned out to be ex-army, but on the CIA payroll. He’d worked down at a camp training Cuban expatriates for the Bay of Pigs. He knew Frank and Snake Knox from there, and I gathered that he already knew Ray, too. They talked about Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, even Eastern Europe. Coups d’état, past and present. When this guy went to the head, Brody told us he was some kind of CIA trigger man. Royal was tied in with all this somehow, politically. He was a big anticommunist, I guess. He seemed to be a link between Marcello and the CIA, anyway. I thought about all this a few minutes ago, when you said something about Royal being involved in a plot to kill Robert Kennedy.”

  “Did Royal talk about Kennedy on that trip?”

  Dad sighs, then answers in a reluctant voice. “Not Bobby. But Jack … yes. When the CIA guy and Royal were the drunkest—when we were finally headed back to the marina—they started talking about Dallas. That’s all the CIA guy called it: Dallas. But it was the way he said it that chilled me. Like he’d been there. He was furious at whoever had planned the operation, and kept saying how unprofessional it was. Now and then he’d cuss up a storm in French. When I tried to move away from them, Devereux cornered me in the bow and started trying to involve me in a personal injury lawsuit he had going.”