Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  Flora turns to me, stricken with grief.

  “Does this happen often?” I whisper.

  The maid shakes her head and crosses herself. “You go on. We’ll be all right.”

  I lean over the bed and look down at Pithy’s half-closed eyes. “What do you see, Pithy?”

  The old woman squints like a sailor staring into a storm, then collapses as though drained of all energy.

  Flora takes my hand and pulls me away from the bed. “I’ll take care of her, Penn.”

  “I think Drew should examine her.”

  “She’ll be all right. This, too, shall pass.”

  Honoring Flora’s request, I back slowly out of the room. When I reach the door, the maid turns from the bed and looks at me. “Don’t pay her no mind. I think when you asked about her son, it upset her. That’s all it was. Miss Pithy’s strong, but she never got over her husband being killed like that, while she was with child. That’s why she never remarried.”

  “Thank you, Flora.”

  “Go take care of your daddy. The Lord has more work for him to do yet.”

  Slipping the straight razor into my inside coat pocket, I descend the grand staircase and walk out into the filtered light of the setting sun. As I take out my cell phone to call Drew’s office about the cortisone, an adamantine certainty settles in my heart. I was right to come here. Though Pithy Nolan didn’t know one fact about how Viola died, she’s convinced me that Brody Royal and the Double Eagles murdered the dying nurse. Whatever else my father may be guilty of, he’s held his silence only to protect our family from those men. The only mysteries are how to prove this, and how to do it without getting killed.

  CHAPTER 43

  DARKNESS FELL FAST over Ferriday, sweeping across the delta as the sun fled westward, covering the empty fields and farm roads with shadow, then darkness. The ragged parade of dilapidated businesses along Highway 84 turned into a twinkling line of lights, like a convoy of ships sailing between the islands of Ferriday and Vidalia. That string of lights stretched all the way across the twin bridges linking Vidalia to Natchez on its high bluff, but the proud old city was a world away from Henry Sexton, who sat before his computer in the offices of the Beacon, on the dark northern edge of Ferriday.

  All afternoon he’d been moving boxes of files into his Explorer, preparing to transport them to his girlfriend’s house, which was much closer to Natchez. If he was going to be working for Caitlin Masters (his publisher had graciously given him permission a few hours earlier), then he needed his files closer than twelve miles away. He didn’t trust Masters enough to store his files in her building—not yet anyway—but he was excited, and nervous, too. Filing stories for a media group with more than twenty newspapers was a foreign concept to him after all his years at the Beacon. But Penn was right: the murders of Viola Turner and Glenn Morehouse would require that, as would the bones coming up out of the Jericho Hole.

  Henry hadn’t yet told Caitlin that he’d decided to work for her. She’d called his cell phone four times in the past two hours, but his pride demanded that he leave her in suspense a bit longer. Maybe tomorrow morning, he thought. What could it hurt? Besides, he had a few more leads he wanted to run down before he was working on Caitlin Masters’s dime.

  He’d been working to set up a meeting with Toby Rambin, the poacher in Lusahatcha County who claimed to know the location of the Bone Tree. Henry had held back that information from Penn both last night and today. (You couldn’t give a man everything you had right off, even if you did like him.) He’d also made another phone call to Katy Royal Regan, after confirming that her husband was at the Royal Insurance office. This time the courtesy that Katy had shown during Henry’s previous visit was nowhere in evidence. His call had plainly terrified her, and she screamed that he should never contact her again. Her last words still echoed in Henry’s ears: Pooky’s dead! I’m not! What do you expect me to DO? However upset the woman was, her words certainly seemed to confirm that she remembered something about Pooky Wilson.

  This tantalizing development had brought Henry more anxiety than satisfaction. Until that call, he’d pretty much convinced himself that the smartest thing to do was run a front-page story on Thursday that would cover his theories about all the murders he’d been working, even if he couldn’t cite all his sources. Once he did that—if he wrote it right—the Double Eagles would stand to gain nothing by hurting him or his loved ones, and the FBI couldn’t accuse him of holding back evidence. Better still, printing a comprehensive story in the Beacon would assuage his guilt about moving over to the Examiner to cover the more recent developments. Mr. Fraser would have the pleasure and pride of publishing the story that would cap Henry’s years of investigation, and Henry felt he owed the man that. But the idea that Katy Royal might remember enough about the events surrounding Albert’s and Pooky’s deaths in 1964 to convict her father and the Double Eagles made Henry reluctant to jump the gun.

  “It’s always something,” he muttered. “Damn.”

  He stared at his old Compaq computer with dread. Moving boxes of files was easy compared to trying to copy all the data on his hard drive. But he needed it. He had never used a notebook computer, and now he was going to pay the price for being behind the times.

  “Dang,” he muttered, realizing he’d left the external hard drive he’d bought at Walmart in the front seat of his Explorer.

  He sighed, then got up and walked past the front desk to the door.

  “Did you get finished?” Lou Ann Whittington asked from the desk.

  “Not even close. I’ve still got to copy my hard drive.”

  Lou Ann was only ten years older than Henry, but she smiled like a proud mother. “Well, don’t sound like that. You’re moving up to the big time.”

  Henry grinned. “I don’t know about that. I feel pretty guilty about it, actually.”

  “Don’t, hon. It’s the story that matters. Getting it out to the most people. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m going to leave in a couple of minutes. I’ve got to get home and make supper for Sam. You be sure and call for a deputy before you go. It’s pitch-black out there now, and the last cruiser passed about five minutes ago.”

  Henry’s smile vanished. Walker Dennis had kept one or another of his patrol cars sitting outside the Beacon office for most of the day. Henry figured he was doing this as a favor to Penn Cage, or maybe because he didn’t want the embarrassment of Henry being injured on his watch. But there was also the possibility that Dennis was creating a false sense of security in order to set him up. Henry didn’t really believe this, but he also knew that he’d been naïve in the past. That was why he’d agreed to let Lou Ann lend him her pepper spray, which was now attached to his key ring.

  “I will,” he promised. “Tell Sam I hope his gallbladder surgery goes well.”

  Lou Ann smiled again. “I will. You knock ’em dead over in Natchez.”

  Henry thanked her and went out to his Explorer. The air was cooler than it had been before sundown, but it still wasn’t truly cold. He walked around to the far side of his vehicle to retrieve the new hard drive from his passenger seat. He was putting his key into the lock when he noticed that the Explorer’s rear window had been smashed. As his eyes narrowed, he heard a scratch of gravel on asphalt, then a rush of feet.

  Whirling, he saw something fly at his head. He threw up his hands out of instinct, and felt his left forearm break to the musical ring of metal. Baseball bat, he thought, as pain blasted through his body.

  “Grab his arms!” someone shouted. “Get him in the truck!”

  Adrenaline surged through Henry, turning his heart into a runaway engine. He saw three vague shapes in the darkness, two grasping at him, the third holding high a shining blue bat. Pale faces lunged toward him, eyes blazing with hatred.

  They’re just kids, he realized. What the hell?

  Powerful hands closed on his broken arm. He brought up his key ring with the other, mashed his thumb
on the canister of pepper spray, and waved his arm wildly. The boys began to scream and curse, and then the bat crashed down on his right wrist. He heard his keys hit the cement. He could hardly see through the pain arcing through his head.

  “My eyes!” yelled a boy. “I can’t see!”

  “Get him in the goddamned truck!”

  Groping along the edge of his Explorer, Henry tried to move toward the Beacon building, but the bat glanced against his skull, knocking him nearly senseless. Blood ran into his eyes. He wanted to scream, Why are you doing this? But he barely had the breath to stay on his feet.

  The powerful hands grabbed his arm again, and searing agony almost brought him to his knees. Only the blood in his eyes distracted him from the pain. As they dragged him away from his SUV, Henry kicked out as hard as he could with his right leg. He connected with something. A man screamed, and one pair of hands fell away.

  “My knee!” shouted a voice. “Oh, goddamn—”

  Henry kicked again but this time only felt air.

  “By God, that’s enough,” someone grunted.

  The bat clanged into Henry skull again, just above his left ear. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. Then it crashed into his jaw. If I fall, I’m dead, he thought dimly. Yet he was too dazed to defend himself any longer.

  “Hold him still!” said another voice.

  Two boys grabbed his arms and held him up against the Explorer while the third drove the end of the bat into his solar plexus, again and again. The air in Henry’s lungs burst from his throat in agonizing jets.

  “You’re gonna kill him! We’re s’posed to take him for questioning first!”

  “Screw that! This nigger lover’s said all he ever needs to say. We got his shit. This ends right here.”

  Through a curtain of blood, Henry saw the flash of steel at his waist. He tried to beg for mercy, but his throat had locked shut.

  A bright blade plunged into his belly.

  Henry felt it slice sideways, severing vital tissue, and fire filled his torso. He sucked in one gasp of air, then the knife flashed to his throat.

  “Last words, Mr. Henry? Before I shut your mouth for good?”

  The boy with the knife looked about twenty, with a bland face and cruel eyes. The knife danced before Henry’s face, its blade black with blood. His blood—

  “Speak up, Mr. Henry! You ain’t run out of words, have you? That can’t be!”

  “Get off him!” screamed a woman’s voice. A familiar voice. It was Lou Ann, the Beacon’s receptionist. “Leave him alone!”

  The boy pinning Henry’s right arm laughed with amazement.

  “Run, Lou Ann!” Henry coughed. “Get back inside!”

  The cold blade lodged against his jugular vein, and Lou Ann Whittington yelled again. “Don’t make me shoot you boys! I swear to God I’ll do it!”

  The boy holding the knife looked left.

  Henry followed his eyes. Lou Ann stood by the hood of the Explorer, all five feet four of her, her purse in one hand and a nickel-plated .38 revolver in the other.

  “This ain’t none of your business, lady,” one boy said in a voice devoid of fear.

  Lou Ann aimed her pistol over his head, and a crack of flame rent the darkness. “You let Mr. Sexton go!”

  “Stay out of this, you old bitch!” shouted one of the others.

  Through ringing ears Henry heard the receptionist’s shaky voice echo off the wall of the building. “Let him go right now, trash! Or I’ll kill you.”

  “Cut his fucking throat, Charley,” said the boy on Henry’s left, moving toward Lou Ann.

  She fired again. This time the bullet dug a divot out of the cinder-block wall behind the boys.

  Henry tried to twist free, but all he managed to do was collapse on the pavement. All three boys were moving toward Lou Ann now.

  “Run!” Henry tried to yell, but only a whisper emerged.

  As the first boy reached Lou Ann, she shot him point-blank in the stomach.

  He fell to his knees and looked down at his bloody shirt.

  “Shit!” screamed one of the others, stopping in his tracks and holding up both hands.

  The wounded boy fell facedown on the cement.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” Lou Ann said in a shaky voice.

  After a second’s hesitation, the other two grabbed their fallen comrade and dragged him around the corner of building. Henry heard car doors slamming. Then Lou Ann Whittington’s tear-stained face appeared above his. Her mouth was moving, but all he heard was squealing tires.

  “Henry?” She slapped his face. “Can you hear me?”

  He coughed and spat blood. “Thank you, Lou. That was …” He couldn’t remember what he’d meant to say. Then he caught it, like a soap bubble flying on the wind: “… a brave thing.”

  “Don’t you die on me, Henry Sexton!”

  “I’m not … just resting my eyes.”

  “Henry!” Lou Ann was fumbling with her cell phone. “This is Lou Ann Whittington over at the Beacon! Mr. Sexton just got stabbed! He’s beat half to death. We need an ambulance over here right away. The law, too. Hurry!”

  A dark veil was descending over Lou Ann’s face. Henry heard other voices but couldn’t make sense of them. People were gasping and barking around him, but he couldn’t make out their faces, or even their bodies. He thought of Katy Royal, who was probably sitting in a room with her husband somewhere, scared to death that he’d find out she’d once loved a black boy, or that she’d been in an asylum, or God knew what else—

  “Stay awake, Henry!” Lou Ann slapped his face again. “Oh, God, roll over. Can you turn your head? Your mouth’s full of blood.”

  He screamed as she rolled him, but at least the hot fluid drained from his throat, and he got one good breath. He spat out some more blood, and then she let him down onto his back again.

  “Don’t let them get you like this,” she said, sobbing. “Not after all you’ve done.”

  To Henry’s amazement, Lou Ann looked skyward and began to pray, appealing directly to Jesus in a voice that sounded as though it would break any moment. He wanted to give her a message for Sherry, but no words would come. His stomach and sides were wet. His balls, too. They must have hit an artery, he thought. Or I pissed myself …

  “My files!” he cried suddenly, trying to rise from the asphalt. “Did they get my files?”

  “Whoa, big fella,” Lou Ann said, gently pressing him back to the ground. “You’ve got a lot of stories to write yet. The ambulance is nearly here.”

  “Keys,” Henry whispered. “Ya’ll need my keys.”

  Tears poured from Lou Ann’s eyes, and her chin quivered like a child’s. She cradled his head in her hands. Henry wanted to tell her not to worry, but all he could do was gasp for air.

  The wail of a siren rode to him on the night air. The wail rose in pitch, then became a horn, a solo saxophone, bobbing on the current of Ray Charles’s piano, the last show Ray had played at Haney’s Big House. Out of that divine music swelled the earthy yet ethereal voice of Swan Norris, singing alone in a blue spotlight, her timbre dark and true as Billie Holiday’s, giving voice to ineffable suffering: “… blood on the leaves,” she sang. “… blood at the root.”

  “Hear that siren, Henry?” Lou Ann asked, palpable relief in her voice. “They’re almost here. It’s not your time yet.” She wiped his brow with the tail of her blouse.

  As a wind of reverent applause swelled around Swan, Henry’s mind flickered, then winked out.

  CHAPTER 44

  ANNIE AND I are doing our “homework” together in the den. She’s working on a paper about Benjamin Franklin, while I pretend to work on the proposal for the restoration of the Forks of the Road slave market site. Jewel’s smuggled preliminary autopsy report sits beside me, and the lines I’m writing in my notebook have more to do with criminology than history. Even so, having this shared time with my daughter is one benefit of being mayor that I never anticipated. In my previous jobs—writi
ng novels and preparing capital murder prosecutions—I had to be alone while I worked, but being mayor doesn’t require nearly so much concentration. In fact, the job has been done by men with less intellectual power than my daughter has at age eleven.

  The despair I felt outside Shad’s office dissipated further after my visit to Pithy Nolan, but I still haven’t figured out how to free my father from Shad Johnson’s net of vengeance. The Double Eagle group’s sole vulnerability seems to be their involvement in the meth trade. To exploit that, I’d need the power I once wielded as a prosecutor: the authority to subpoena witnesses, make arrests, and offer plea bargains. As Henry pointed out last night, I don’t have that. Brody Royal’s vulnerability—if he has one—remains unknown. All I know at this point is that Royal has far more to lose than the Eagles (at least in terms of wealth and reputation), and he won’t hesitate to violently defend those assets. I feel certain that, through the Eagles, Brody has already threatened our family, and I’ve been pondering ways to protect us—thus freeing my father to reveal what he knows about them. But again, I’ll require official help to accomplish this.

  More disturbing, I still haven’t heard from Quentin Avery, Dad’s best hope for a first-rate legal defense. With Shad moving so aggressively on the legal front, and bail revocation possible at any moment, we should already be planning Dad’s defense. My father himself is no help in this regard, of course. And though I still have no proof of physical intimacy between them, instinct tells me that I cannot trust him where Viola is concerned. Before I can ponder the significance of this, Annie looks up from her work and snaps her fingers with a loud pop.

  “I need a break,” she says from the sofa. “How about some Blue Bell?”

  “I don’t need ice cream,” I tell her, rubbing my thickening middle. Once December arrives, I find myself running less and less.

  “Caitlin doesn’t care about your tummy.”

  If only that were true … As I set aside my files on the Forks of the Road project, our home phone rings beside me. I pick up the cordless and check its LCD, which reads: CONCORDIA PARI.