Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  By the time we reach home, my mother has arrived from Pollock. We find her sitting at the kitchen table with Annie and Mia, looking more frazzled than I’ve ever seen her. She has swollen bags under her eyes that makeup can’t fully mask, and a look of bone-deep fatigue that can only be the result of severe sleep deprivation. When I hug her, she feels as though she’s lost five more pounds in the week since I’ve seen her.

  When I introduce Serenity, Mom nods courteously, but she doesn’t manage to raise a smile. This, more than anything, tells me that her dread of what might happen to Dad once he falls under the control of Sheriff Billy Byrd in the county jail is consuming her like a disease.

  Sheriff Byrd forbade Mom from being present in the ACSO building during the transfer, claiming that would constitute special treatment. Byrd told Quentin Avery he didn’t want anyone getting the idea that a physician would be treated any different than a yard man in his jail. This is likely only a hint of things to come. Annie and I have passed a few hours trying to keep Mom calm, with Annie carrying the bulk of the load, but nothing short of my father’s acquittal is going to ease her burden, and the trial is sure to last at least a week, if not longer.

  Quentin Avery and his wife, Doris, arrive in Natchez about four. Serenity and I drive down to the bluff to help get them settled in Edelweiss, which I offered to Quentin as a base of operations during the trial. Despite having three stories, the house is perfect for him, because the widow I bought it from installed an elevator a couple of years before she moved to a group care facility. It’s a primitive, wire-cage-type lift, but it will hold the weight of Quentin’s motorized wheelchair, and that’s all that matters.

  At Quentin’s request, Doris makes Serenity some coffee in the kitchen while he and I go out to the broad front gallery “to discuss strategy for tomorrow’s voir dire,” according to Quentin. Quentin rolls his wheelchair to the rail, from which you can survey fourteen miles of the Mississippi River. I sit in one of the large rocking chairs Caitlin always said she wanted up here to watch the sunsets.

  “Are we really going to discuss the voir dire?” I ask. “Or do you have something else to tell me?”

  A faint smile touches the old man’s lips. “Still quick as ever. We’ll get to the jury list. Housekeeping first. I’m officially listing you as part of your father’s defense team. Your father doesn’t want that, but your mother insists, and you know who wins that argument.”

  Oh, yeah.

  “Peggy wants to know you can check on your father at any hour of the day or night, and with Sheriff Byrd being a prick, the only way to accomplish that is for you to be one of your father’s lawyers.”

  “I get it.” I try to keep my tone neutral, but I know Quentin’s powers of perception.

  “Penn, you’re a great lawyer,” he says. “I’d give my left arm to have you sitting with me at the defense table. But your father wants you excluded. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. There’s nothing personal about it.”

  “It’s purely personal. And I don’t get it.”

  “I know. But your father’s the client, and I’m following his wishes.”

  I sigh heavily. “Is there anything else?”

  “A couple of things, actually. First, this case isn’t going to be like any I ever tried before. I’m going to take a very unconventional approach to get your father acquitted. I might even get a little crazy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure myself yet. But whatever I do, I won’t be able to explain my strategy to you. So I’m asking you to promise me now that whatever I decide, you won’t be pestering me every minute to explain my tactics.”

  “I’m not going to be your main problem, brother. Mom is going to expect me to explain every step of the trial to her. And if you keep me in the dark, then you do the same to her. And you know that’s not going to fly.”

  Quentin gives me a look of world-weary confidence. “You let me handle Peggy.”

  “You’re welcome to it.”

  “So we’re good?” Quentin asks, a note of challenge in his voice.

  “Actually, no. But what the hell can I do about it?”

  “Hell, boy, can you think of anybody you’d trust more than me to defend your father?”

  In truth, I know some genius-level criminal attorneys much closer to the primes of their careers than the legless old man sitting in the wheelchair beside me. But in a murder case involving race in Mississippi . . . those lawyers would be like novice sailors adrift in a hurricane compared to Quentin Avery.

  “No,” I concede after a resentful silence.

  “Just keep the faith, Penn. No matter how crazy you think I might be. We have a deal?”

  Something keeps me from giving him my unqualified trust. “What about Judge Elder? Are you still worried he’s leaning to Shad’s side in this thing?”

  This question Quentin actually considers. “I don’t want to get into legal details, but I’ve tried to get some special considerations for Tom at the jail, considering the severity of his health problems—not to mention my worries about Billy Byrd—and Joe hasn’t been any help.”

  “You should have filed that damned change-of-venue motion.”

  Quentin looks upriver, where a string of barges is making its way down from Vicksburg. “You got any boiled peanuts? I could really use some.”

  “No boiled peanuts, Q.”

  “Damn. How ’bout you send that pretty writer out for some? Or one of them bodyguards you got?”

  I stand in exasperation and walk to the rail. “Do you want to go over the jury pool or not?”

  He waves his hand. “Nah. I just want you to go over it, so you can give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down during the voir dire. I choose by instinct, you know that. But you might know some info on locals that somehow escapes my Sherlockian skills.” The old lawyer gives me a self-mocking grin. “I’m not perfect. Not quite, anyway.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” says Doris Avery, stepping onto the gallery with Serenity in tow.

  Doris is thirty years her husband’s junior, which puts her close to my age. She’s also a lawyer, and a beautiful woman. In the afternoon light, I can’t help noticing the difference in skin tone between her and Serenity. Though lighter than Quentin, Doris is darker than Serenity, and thus solidly on the wrong end of the paper-bag-test spectrum.

  “What have you ladies been talking about inside?” Quentin asks. “The handsome menfolk out here, I trust?”

  “Delusional,” says Doris. “That’s what you are. And you’d better watch your mouth around this girl, Q. She won’t put up with your sass for five seconds.”

  Quentin grins, then winks at Serenity. “I’ll look forward to being reprimanded.”

  Doris snorts. “What have you two been talking about? The voir dire, I hope.”

  “Boiled peanuts,” Quentin says. “I got a serious jones for some right now.”

  “Well,” Doris says with infinite patience, “let me get cleaned up a little, and then we’ll take a ride and see if we can find some in this town. These two have more important things to do than listen to your bullshit.”

  Serenity and I leave them smiling on the gallery, slapping it back and forth like a couple married for fifty years.

  “She’s worried about Quentin,” Serenity says as we get into the Audi. “She said he’s been going down fast since he lost his second leg.”

  I shift the car into gear and loop around by Rosalie, where the French settled Natchez back in 1716. “He’ll make it through the trial,” I say, sounding like I’m trying to persuade myself. “This is his swan song.”

  Serenity nods, but she doesn’t look convinced.

  As I turn left into traffic on Canal Street, she lays her hand over mine where it rests on the emergency brake lever. She squeezes lightly, then lifts her hand and puts it back in her lap.

  A shiver goes through me at her touch, but upon reflection her gesture didn’t seem sexual in any way. It was mor
e an unspoken acknowledgment of something we both sense. Bad times coming. Beyond that, she might have meant to add, And I’m here with you. But who knows?

  The moment’s passed.

  Chapter 19

  By eight p.m. we’ve still heard nothing from Cleotha Booker. An hour ago, Serenity retired to her room to make some calls, which meant reaching out to friends in Detroit to have them ask their elders about any Dolores who got married in the 1960s and moved to Mississippi for a while, then returned. This kind of effort sounded absurd to me, but Serenity told me I might be surprised by the way information moved in the black community—even in a large city like Detroit. While she put out her feelers up north, I watched television with Annie and my mother. I paid no attention to the programs, and Mom didn’t, either. But sitting there served to begin the process of our coming back together as a family before the trial starts tomorrow.

  During a commercial break, Annie muted the volume to raise the question of whether she’ll be allowed to go to court. I’m open to the idea, but Mom is dead set against it. She told Annie she doesn’t want her hearing any of the “scandalous lies” that will doubtless be told about her grandfather. Annie reluctantly accepted this—for the time being—but I know the real reason for my mother’s resistance. She doesn’t want Annie hearing the truth about her grandfather.

  About eight thirty, I decide to walk the three blocks down to the courthouse and get a look at the field of battle. Tim walks with me through the darkness, and he’s perceptive enough not to talk beyond the first twenty steps. The scent of flowers is on the air: azaleas, Confederate jasmine, and my favorite—sweet olive—but the sweetness only serves to remind me how transitory all happiness tends to be.

  The Natchez courthouse stands two blocks from the bluff, directly opposite the sheriff’s department and jail. On one side of State Street, set on a small hill, the classic Greek Revival building rises above the majestic oak trees that surround it. On the other side of the street squats a brick Stalinist version of a medieval pile, with slit windows on the jail floors piled atop one another to compete with the white columns and airy cupola facing them. The architect probably copied those windows from a castle in a book. My father is behind one of those slits, but I can’t tell which. If I stand here long enough he might look out, for like me, he doesn’t usually go to sleep until long past midnight.

  Tim has given me about thirty yards of space, which is more than he usually does. Tonight I’m thankful for the separation. As I stare at the ugly, sodium-lit building, it suddenly strikes me that Dad hasn’t excluded me from this case to hurt me. Rather, he has cut himself off from us all, like a father in the Middle Ages infected with plague, crawling off into the forest to die before infecting his family. The only person he’s willing to talk to is an ailing peer: Quentin Avery.

  Turning to face the courthouse, I reflect on the fact that I have tried more than a thousand criminal cases in my life—many of them murder cases—but tomorrow I will be only a spectator. I will carry Quentin’s water during the voir dire, but once the real action starts, I’ll be relegated to the gallery. Many lawyers would probably be content with this; Quentin’s courtroom skills are legendary. But that is cold comfort tonight. To my knowledge, he has no investigators, no co-counsel, not even assistants working for him (other than his wife). How in God’s name does he plan to break down the nearly impervious forensic case built up by Shadrach Johnson and Sheriff Byrd over the past three months? I suppose I’ll find out at the same time as everyone else in the courtroom. I can only pray that the old fox lives up to his legend one last time.

  “Mr. Mayor?” calls a soft voice.

  I squint and see the courthouse janitor—an old black man, naturally—walking down the concrete steps.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” he asks.

  “Actually, I was thinking about going in and taking a look at the courtroom. But I guess it’s too late for that.”

  “I’m afraid so. I just locked up, and the sheriff took my key. Normally I could take you in, but this trial’s different. The FBI was down here with dogs all evening, sniffing all over the building.”

  I’m actually relieved to hear this. “It’s all right. I’m fine out here.”

  “You could probably call Sheriff Byrd to let you in,” he suggests.

  “I’d rather not do that.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t figure.”

  So even the janitors know there’s bad blood between Billy Byrd and my family.

  “If you really want to get in, there is a way. But you’ve got to climb up onto the roof from the fire escape. It’s pretty dangerous.”

  “No, no. I was about to head home. Haven’t we met before?”

  The janitor smiles without making eye contact. “You’ve said hello to me a couple times. I’m Noel Shelton.”

  The name sounds familiar. “I knew a man with your last name,” I think aloud. “He helped me find some files a few years ago. Important files. They helped me on a civil rights case.”

  White teeth show in the darkness. “That was my brother, Leon. The Del Payton case, right?”

  “That’s right! Does Leon still work here?”

  “No, sir. Leon done passed. Three years ago, now.”

  Though it’s night, the shadow of mortality falls over us. “I’m sorry. He was a good man.”

  “Yes, sir. And . . . I know it’s none of my business, but please tell Dr. Cage to hold his head high tomorrow.”

  This takes me by surprise. “You know about his case?”

  “Shoot, everybody ’round here know.”

  “What do you think about it, Noel?”

  The custodian shrugs, his gaze focused over my shoulder, on the sheriff’s department. “I can’t speak for nobody else. But I know this: when Leon was sick, he like to broke the family with doctor bills. Lab bills, X-ray bills, surgeon bills, anesthesia bills, the home health. After he died, we had people calling ten times a day, and collectors coming from the hospital in Jackson. It was terrible. Me and my two sisters paid and paid, but we couldn’t begin to cover it all.”

  It’s an old American story. “I’m sorry, Noel.”

  “You got nothing to be sorry about. The onliest bill I knew I wanted to pay was your daddy’s, ’cause he took such good care of Leon at the end. But we paid the pushiest people first, you know? Had to. We went to see Dr. Cage at his office, to ask for some time, ’cause of the load and all. You know what he said?”

  I suspect I know the answer, but I shake my head.

  “Doc took his bill and studied on it for a minute. Then he folded it up and dropped it in the trash can. He said, ‘Your brother was a fine man, Mr. Shelton. Ya’ll git on home now. Don’t worry ’bout that bill no more.’”

  My throat tightens, preventing me from replying.

  At last the janitor’s eyes find mine, and they are filled with unspoken feeling. “I ain’t exactly clear on what they think your daddy done, Mr. Mayor. And I’m just a custodian, like my brother. But if you need somebody to stand up in that courthouse and tell the truth about Dr. Cage, I’d be proud to do it. Ain’t no better man in my book. My sister, too.”

  I want to say, “Thank you, Noel,” but all I manage to do is shake his callused hand and turn back up the dark street, my eyes stinging with tears of confusion.

  “Hey, Penn,” Tim calls, closing the distance to me with a graceful economy of motion that belies the speed involved. “You’ve got an audience over there.”

  Following Tim’s hand, I look across the street and see a brown-shirted figure with his arms folded standing before the glass doors of the sheriff’s department. Billy Byrd. Over his big belly and burly forearms, the gold star gleams on the sheriff’s chest. His satisfied grin reaches toward me like a slapping hand. Then he calls, “I see you’re out mixin’ with the quality, as usual. Looks like you forgot your mop, though. We can get you one from inside.”

  A deputy standing behind him laughs.

  “There’s no
upside to me going over there,” I say softly. “Right?”

  “Absolutely none,” Tim agrees.

  “You wanna come in and say hello to your daddy?” Byrd taunts me. “He’s a sad sight, Mayor. But I’m doin’ all I can to keep him comfortable, yes, sir. Lots of special attention.”

  “How about we go kick their asses?” I suggest.

  Something like harsh laughter sounds in Tim’s muscular chest. “I’d like five minutes with that bastard in a locked room. That grin would be on his asshole, not his face.” Tim takes hold of my arm and leads me up State Street. “But it’ll have to be another time. Unless you do want to check on your father?”

  “Byrd wouldn’t let us in now.”

  “Hey!” Sheriff Byrd calls after us. “Why don’t you two lovebirds get a room? We don’t like a lot of PDA between men around here.”

  Their laughter echoes after us between the buildings, sounding exactly like that of the boys I used to play against in the cow pasture football fields of the “Christian schools” in the 1970s.

  “Another time,” Tim repeats, like mantra. “Another time.”

  About a mile outside Athens Point, Mississippi, two men sat smoking in a pickup truck near a crooked old shack at the edge of the woods. The driver was in his midforties, his passenger twenty years older.

  “Tell me again what Kenny told you,” said the driver.

  “He was passin’ by here going to check a well, and he saw the car parked here. It was an Audi S4. The one with the big engine.”

  The driver nodded. “That’s the car, all right. The mayor drives it. Cage. I’ve seen him in it up on the bluff in Natchez. At the balloon races. What the hell would he be doin’ here?”