Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

In a daze, Henry began trudging ahead of Sleepy toward Brody Royal’s lake house, which lay some eighty yards away.

  “Hurry up,” said the guard. “You old fucks.” He prodded Henry with the pistol. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? You bust out of an asylum or something?”

  Henry stopped and turned, which forced Sleepy and the guard to stop as well. “I’m going as fast as I can,” he said. “They’ve got me on strong medicine.”

  Sleepy, hands jammed in his coat pockets, turned to face the guard. “Can’t you see the man’s hurt? What’s your problem?”

  “You’re my problem, asshole.”

  As the guard reached out to prod Henry forward, Sleepy’s right hand rose from his pocket in a fluid motion, and a bright blade flicked in the moonlight. Before the guard could jerk back, Sleepy had buried his knife in the man’s neck with one hand and swatted his gun away with the other.

  The guard staggered, both hands gripping the wound in his throat. Henry watched black blood pump through the man’s hands. As the guard fell backward, Sleepy quickly closed the distance between them and pressed a boot onto his chest.

  Henry tried to recover his composure, but something kept causing breaks in his train of thought. “See if he has a phone!”

  The guard had stopped moving. His eyes were open, but they looked sightless to Henry. Sleepy knelt over him, rummaged through his clothes, then stood. “Nothing but a walkie-talkie and some keys.”

  Henry tried to think clearly. “Do you think we should call inside? Tell Brody we know who he’s got in there? Tell him the FBI is coming?”

  Sleepy considered this suggestion, then shook his head. “We can either drive back to town and call the cops, or go in there and do what we can. But we ain’t calling and letting them know we’re out here. Mr. Royal don’t react like other men would. You radio that we’re out here, he’ll kill your friends and us, too.”

  Henry nodded slowly. “If the guard has a house key … we could call 911 from inside the house as soon as we get in.”

  Sleepy nodded. “I guess we could. Especially if they’re still in the basement.”

  The guard suddenly groaned in pain, startling Henry so badly that he almost fell over.

  “Wait here,” Henry said. “Let me get my gun.”

  He turned and trudged back to his mother’s Impala. The altercation with the guard had apparently spurred his metabolism. Or maybe it was just the exercise, loosening unused muscles. He was moving much faster than before.

  Back at the car, he paused, his mind a frazzle of conflicting impulses. Sleepy Johnston represented the Holy Grail he’d sought for years: a witness who could put Brody Royal on death row. Taking Sleepy into Royal’s house was like finding the grail and then carrying it into Hell. Yet something had driven Sleepy to this place, as surely as it had Henry. What was it? A private quest for justice? Foolish, perhaps, but maybe that compulsion had put them both in a position to save Penn and Caitlin. To prevent more murders like Albert’s, and Sherry’s, instead of avenging them. Gritting his teeth against imminent pain, Henry opened the back door of the car, bent at the waist, and lifted the shotgun from the backseat floor. Then he staggered back to where Sleepy awaited him.

  “Glad to see that scattergun,” Johnston said. “You’re not in much of a state for target shooting.”

  “That’s why I brought this. What you want to do?”

  “Our buddy on the ground said the mayor and his lady are in the basement. There are two more guards in the house.” Sleepy held up the walkie-talkie. “Been listening to this. From what I can tell, I think he told the truth.”

  Henry looked at the man on the ground. “I thought he was dead.”

  “He is now. Let’s go.”

  Henry took two deep breaths and shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to be sure of his balance.

  Sleepy reached out and gripped his left arm. “You sure you’re ready for this, Henry? You’re hurt pretty bad already.”

  “I’m going. You can stay out here if you want, or go for help. But if I don’t come back … swear to me you’ll tell the FBI what happened to Albert that night. And who did it.”

  Sleepy shook his head. “Take it easy, brother. I was just askin’ for your sake. I got Albert on my mind, myself. Pooky, too. Have had for too many years now.”

  Henry saw his own grief reflected in the black man’s face. “Yeah. It’s Swan I see, though. That bastard in there killed Swan’s daddy.”

  Sleepy’s teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Swan Norris,” he said, as though hearing a song he’d forgotten years ago. “Lord, that man in there owes for a lot of people. For a long time, too. He’s got a big account to pay.”

  “Maybe it’s time we collected.”

  Sleepy nodded, then turned and started toward the great dark house beside the lake.

  Holding his shotgun like a balancing pole, Henry followed in his wake. When they neared the front porch, Henry covered the approaches to the house while Johnston opened the front door with the guard’s key. Holding a finger to his lips, Sleepy stepped over the threshold, into a dark foyer. Henry followed, trying not to stumble.

  No alarm sounded.

  There was a lighted keypad on the wall, but the LED read DISARMED. Henry saw no other light, except the flicker of a television far down a hallway to their right. Gripping his shotgun like a lifeline, he started forward, but Sleepy caught his arm and held him back. The black man reached down to a credenza in the foyer and lifted an envelope from a pile of mail. Then he took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and set the envelope alight.

  Henry watched in bewilderment. Was Sleepy Johnston crazy, or was it that Henry’s addled brain couldn’t keep up? Johnston scanned the ceiling, then walked over to a smoke alarm and held the burning envelope directly beneath it. At last Henry understood. Even with the security system disarmed, the fire alarm should sound and summon the fire department.

  He waited for an earsplitting Klaxon, but again none came. Sleepy stretched up higher, until the flame actually touched the smoke alarm.

  Still nothing.

  Henry went back to the keypad on the wall and punched the fire alarm and police buttons. When nothing happened, he pressed several buttons, trying to arm the system, but the readout didn’t change.

  “Don’t make sense,” Sleepy whispered. “Something ain’t right.”

  Why would Brody Royal disable his own alarm system? Henry wondered. Especially when he’s holding people prisoner downstairs? He shuffled quietly into the first darkened room off the hall, watching the light of the television flicker at the end of the long corridor.

  A guest room. There. A telephone sat on the bedside table. A landline. Laying his shotgun on the bed, Henry dialed 911 with shaking hands, then lifted the receiver to his ear and waited. He heard neither a ring nor an answer.

  “Hello?” he said, wondering if the drugs were playing tricks on him.

  “Hey, Lee!” called a male voice from the direction of the TV’s glow. “What the hell you doing inside? Mr. Royal said not to leave your post unless we relieved you.”

  Still confused by the silent telephone, Henry set down the receiver and considered trying to fake a response. Before he could try, Sleepy raised his finger to his lips, then pointed at the shotgun. Tensing for the shock of pain, Henry bent at the waist and picked up his father’s old Winchester.

  CHAPTER 93

  I COME AWAKE with my head pounding like a kettledrum, but a baritone counterpoint of voices penetrates the pain. My captors must be close. Keeping my eyes closed, I try to glean what I can of my surroundings. I’m lying on my side, on a cold concrete floor. The voices belong to Brody Royal and Randall Regan, and they’re coming from beyond my head, not my feet. Before I can make sense of their words, Caitlin’s higher-pitched voice asks a question. As the old man answers, a stunning realization hits me: my hands have been freed. The sticky residue of duct tape remains on my wrists, but the tape itself is gone. After a moment, I carefully open one ey
e and realize why. My left leg has been manacled to a ring bolt set in a cinder-block wall.

  My chain appears to have about five feet of play in it. The slightest leg movement will make it rattle. As slowly as I can, I arch my neck back, searching for Caitlin. There. Fifteen feet away, she stands trussed to a steel pole like a witch condemned to burn at the stake. Her right cheek looks pink and swollen, as from a blow, and her eyes are bereft of hope.

  Beyond my line of sight, Brody says something to Randall Regan in a low voice, but I hear nothing of the men from the van. With any luck, they’re gone. Hoping to further assess our situation before Royal or Regan realizes I’m awake, I tilt my head a little farther back, taking great care to keep my eyes barely open.

  Brody Royal’s firing range appears to be a long tunnel cut deep into the earth. Five shooting lanes wide and forty yards long, it’s lined with cinder-block walls, floored with cement, and fitted with ceiling-mounted sprinkler heads every few yards. Steel support poles rise from the concrete floor to the basement ceiling, and it’s one of these to which Caitlin has been tied. Harsh fluorescent light floods the vast space, giving it the look of a chamber Reinhard Heydrich designed to torture Czech resistance fighters.

  As I expected, long metal tracks line the ceiling, receding into the distance, where targets with human figures printed on them hang against a wall of bullet-pocked railroad ties. Three targets show Muslim terrorists with red crescents painted on their checked keffiyehs. Two more show the famous “running nigger” from the 1960s: a cartoonish silhouette of a black man with an Afro haircut, running in profile, with red target dots printed on his kneecaps, his buttocks, his chest, his mouth, and his temple.

  Halfway to the far wall sit the two boxes brought by the professional guards, as though awaiting disposal. A few feet away from me sits an odd collection of equipment, so carefully laid out that it must have been brought here for us: a large chrome fire extinguisher; a thick roll of Visqueen; a red plastic bucket; and, strangest of all, what looks like some sort of man-portable welding system, with two gas cylinders on a frame, connected to a woven hose and a pipe. Beside this antique-looking apparatus I see the legs of Royal and Regan, who seem to be staring at Caitlin.

  As I try to divine the purpose of the equipment, Regan takes a couple of steps toward me and kicks me savagely in the ribs. Air explodes from my throat as something cracks in my side.

  “He’s awake now.”

  “Then let’s find out where we stand and get this done,” Brody says. “Suit up, Randall.”

  Regan hands Brody his pistol, then walks to the eerily familiar contraption on the floor. Slipping his arm through one khaki strap, he shoulders the horizontal cylinders like a backpack, then settles the thing squarely on his frame. It actually looks like some sort of antique scuba rig, but instinct tells me its purpose is to end life, not to preserve it.

  “Recognize that?” Royal asks, as I finally guess what Regan is wearing. “It’s a Flammenwerfer 41. Kraut flamethrower. Excellent unit, like most German-engineered gear. Shoots a mixture of oil and tar. The combination comes out a lot like napalm.”

  To my amazement, Brody seems to have patched his neck wound with duct tape, though I remember him saying something about superglue. “As a point of interest,” he goes on, “this is the very weapon we used on Albert Norris. It’s a bit heavy for me now, so I’m going to let Randall do the preliminary work.”

  Henry Sexton’s description of Norris’s awful death comes back to me in a rush, triggering a cold sweat from head to toe. Caitlin’s eyes beseech mine, searching for a sign of hope, but I can’t summon any.

  Royal turns a valve on the back of the unit, then taps one of the cylinders twice and says, “Light up the jet pipe, Randall.”

  When Regan pulls a trigger on a striker unit, the basement fills with a sound that starts my bowels roiling. It’s a hiss blended with a soft roar, the sound of liquid fire waiting to be unleashed. At the end of the firing pipe in Regan’s hand, a deep blue jet with an orange core glows like the key to hell.

  “Hydrogen pilot flame,” says Royal, taking a pack of Camel cigarettes from his pocket and shaking one loose. As if replaying an old routine, Regan holds up the jet pipe and Brody leans down over the hissing flame with the Camel in his mouth. He draws on the cigarette once, puffing blue smoke, then straightens up and takes a long drag.

  “Best damned cigarette lighter in the world. Ask any Wehrmacht veteran. Singe off your eyebrows, though, if you’re not careful.”

  “Let’s do it,” Regan says.

  “Wait,” says Brody, picking up the paper bag from in the gun room and dumping our cell phones into the red bucket. Then he removes the microcassette from the recorder we used to make my copy. “A little demonstration.” After dropping the crumpled bag into the bucket, he carries it downrange and sets it atop the two banker’s boxes.

  An involuntary whimper comes from Caitlin’s throat.

  Regan laughs.

  “Aim low,” Brody tells him, taking care to stay near the wall as he walks back to us. “I switched off the fire alarms. You don’t want to burn the goddamn house down.”

  Bracing the pipe against his hip, Regan pulls the trigger.

  A blast of flame reaches downrange like the hand of Lucifer. In less than three seconds, the ravenous fire devours the bucket and its contents like a campfire eating a paper cup, and the smell of burnt plastic joins that of gasoline and tar. When the flame vanishes, what remains is a red puddle on the burning boxes. Half the oxygen seems to have been sucked from the tunnel.

  “So much for your evidence,” Brody says.

  Acrid black petroleum smoke is gathering beneath the ceiling like a fog, but he appears unconcerned. “Don’t worry, this place has OSHA-grade air handlers and a world-class sprinkler system.”

  “There are two more copies of that tape,” I tell him, wondering why I didn’t go this route before. “They’re with lawyer friends of mine, and they’ll be given to the FBI upon my death.”

  Royal probes me with his gambler’s eyes. “The tapes don’t actually worry me much, Mayor. My daughter was delusional all her life. Katy was a known alcoholic and drug addict, and she had a suicidal dose of narcotics in her system when that recording was made. It’s the witness I care about. He’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

  Holding the cigarette at shoulder height—the height of Caitlin’s face—Brody steps closer to her. While her eyes track the glowing orange flame, Royal takes Pithy’s straight razor from his back pocket and turns it in the air until it catches the light.

  “I do remember this,” he murmurs. “Quite well, actually. I bought it off a madam who’d worked in Storyville as a girl. It’s a terror weapon, really, made for teaching whores lessons, not for killing. The blade is too fragile.” He cocks his head at Caitlin. “You actually remind me of Pithy Nolan in some ways. She thought she knew it all, too. How strange that this gift circled all the way back to me after all this time … and nearly killed me. I believe I’ll pay Pithy a visit next week. Get reacquainted.”

  As I try to hide my fear for Pithy, he says, “Ladies’ choice, Ms. Masters. The flame or the knife?”

  She gazes back at him without fear. “What are you hoping to find out? I don’t know the name.”

  Royal touches the duct tape ringing his neck. “I’m sorry I can’t take your word for that.”

  After another contemplative drag off the Camel, he reaches out and cups his left hand behind Caitlin’s head. Then he draws the blade of the straight razor from the corner of her eye to the crease at the edge of her mouth.

  I scream, but when he pulls away the blade, I see no blood. He was just teasing her …

  As Caitlin and I sag with relief, Royal stabs the tip of the cigarette into her left cheek, pressing it deep into the skin. The pole clangs as she yanks her head away, banging her skull against the steel.

  An angry red welt like a bullet wound has risen in the center of her once-perfect cheek. I kick my m
anacled leg away from the pillar, hoping to break a weak link, but it’s pointless. Caitlin is moaning now. Tears pour from her eyes. Stooping, I seize the chain with both hands and yank it as hard as I can. In seconds, my palms are lacerated and bleeding.

  “All is vanity,” murmurs Royal, stepping behind her. “Amazing what the prospect of a permanent scar will do to motivate a woman.”

  Now Caitlin’s trembling from head to toe. The old man draws on the cigarette, and its tip glows bright again. My chain clinks and rattles as I try to break free from the wall, but it’s no use.

  Royal beckons his son-in-law forward, and Regan obeys, brandishing the flamethrower. “Do you know what German infantrymen nicknamed the Flammenwerfer?” Brody muses. “Skinstealer.”

  This nickname has its intended effect. Brody may not see it, but the threat of imminent agony and disfigurement has unsettled the deepest part of Caitlin’s being. Outwardly, though, she somehow remains composed.

  “Now … about that witness.”

  Caitlin closes her eyes and turns her head away from her tormentor.

  “The tip of that cigarette was about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit,” Brody says. “The Flammenwerfer burns at twenty-five hundred. The pain you feel now is like a paper cut compared to it.” He pulls a strand of black hair from her eyes. “Can you imagine? I honestly can’t.”

  As I struggle maniacally to free myself, Brody stares at me as he might a troublesome dog. “Save yourself the pain, Cage. That chain is tempered steel.”

  Still I struggle, shredding my palms on the chain. Only one thing is going to stop this torture—a name. But whose? I don’t even have enough raw data to make up a credible candidate for “Huggy Bear.” What was the name from her phone? Rambin …?

  “I don’t know the witness’s name,” Caitlin says in an exhausted voice, “but he’s out there. And he will tell his story. It will probably be our deaths that finally push him to go to the FBI. He’ll tell them what he knows”—Caitlin looks Royal full in the face—“and that will be the end of you.”