Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “Are you calling to ruin my lunch?” Quentin growls in my ear. “I hope not, ’cause I ain’t got much time to eat before the afternoon session.”

  It’s a shock to finally have Quentin on the phone, but I recover quickly. “Quentin, I’ve got my mother and sister here, and we’re more than a little concerned about your courtroom tactics thus far.”

  Rusty pokes his head through the door and makes a horrified face.

  “Or your lack of them, rather,” I clarify.

  “What are you talking about?” Quentin asks as he noisily chews what sounds like a salad.

  I hit the speakerphone button so that everyone can hear. “The fact that you haven’t made a single objection or cross-examined a single witness.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Everything’s going according to plan.”

  As I shake my head in disbelief, Rusty twirls his hand in a circle around his ear. “And what plan is that?”

  Quentin barks a short laugh, then continues chewing. “You’re an old prosecutor. What plan does it look like?”

  “It looks to me like the Mahatma Gandhi plan. Nonviolent resistance. Turn the other cheek until you’re lying dead in the gutter.”

  This earns a belly laugh from the old lawyer. “That shows what you know, big shot. I’ll tell you what my plan is—the Leonardo da Vinci plan. I’m the master, and you’re watching me paint my Mona Lisa. Come back for the afternoon session, if you can, but don’t worry if you can’t. And tell Peggy not to worry.”

  “It’s too late for that, Quentin,” Mom says in a serrated voice.

  “Hello, Peg,” Quentin says in a softer tone. “Don’t worry about Tom and me. We know what we’re doing.”

  “If that’s true, I wish you’d let the rest of us in on it.”

  “I wish I could, darling. But you’ll see soon enough. Have faith.”

  When Mom’s hand touches her cheek, I realize she’s very close to breaking down.

  In the resulting vacuum, Quentin says, “Penn, tell your buddy Rusty to come back for the afternoon session. He can consider it free remedial education.”

  Rusty’s face goes red as the old man cackles, and I know then that Quentin’s about to hang up.

  “Quentin, wait!” I say, but I’m too late. We’re all staring at a dead phone.

  “Out of his effing mind,” Rusty says. “Certifiable.”

  I meet Miriam’s deep gray eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It comes down to how much faith you have in your father’s judgment.”

  “Temporarily impaired,” Mom says in a soft voice. “Tom’s not thinking straight. I’ve got to talk to him.”

  “You won’t get to him before they start up again,” Rusty says, looking at his watch. “Not for more than a couple of minutes, anyway. Can you convince him to fire Quentin in two minutes?”

  Mom looks at Annie, then smiles wretchedly and wipes a strand of hair from her eyes. “I doubt it.”

  “Who takes Quentin’s place if Dad does fire him?” I ask. “Who walks in there with the score twelve–zip and tries to pull out the game?”

  “You do,” the four answer in unison.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mia says from the kitchen doorway.

  As my friends and family look into my eyes with emotions ranging from hope to desperation, I think about Quentin and my father. Dad always taught me that fear is contagious, and disastrous to decision making. Three days ago, Quentin told me I probably wouldn’t understand his strategy in this case, and he made me promise not to run to him every five minutes for an explanation of his tactics. Does what happened this morning constitute genius or incipient dementia? I don’t have enough information to answer that question. In the last analysis, with Quentin Avery pulling the strings, I’m willing to bet on the former—at least for a little bit longer.

  “No,” I tell them. “Quentin and Dad have information we don’t. We can’t even guess what that might be. And even if Dad were willing to fire Quentin right now, there’s not enough time for me to prepare for the afternoon session. Tomorrow would be the earliest I could start.”

  “Your dad could be toast by tonight,” Rusty says with brutal frankness. “He’s halfway to Parchman already.”

  I spear my old friend with a glare for saying this in front of Annie and my mother, but he only shrugs. The truth is the truth, say his eyes. What’s the use in sugarcoating it?

  “Let’s give Quentin the afternoon. If he goes any farther off the rails, Judge Elder will have to shut the thing down anyway.”

  “Declare a mistrial?” Miriam asks.

  “Elder won’t do that,” Rusty argues. “He knows nobody’s going to reprimand him for letting Quentin Avery run his own show.”

  “I’m not so sure. But the point’s moot anyway. You barely have time to finish eating and get back.”

  “Jesus,” groans Rusty.

  “You guys go play your roles. Annie and I will be here. And try to get closer to the bar, if you can, so I can hear better.”

  Rusty rolls his eyes, but in the end he gobbles down the remains of a sandwich and walks into the hall. As the women file past Rusty toward the front door, he looks back with a pragmatic tilt of his head.

  “Start warming up that pitching arm, Counselor. Avery’s coming off the mound.”

  “Get out of here.”

  Thirty seconds after Rusty’s Town Car pulls away from the curb, followed by the Yukon, two black sedans glide into the space. Four FBI agents get out, and there’s absolutely nothing casual about their movements. I nearly jump out of my skin when John Kaiser touches my shoulder from behind.

  “Let’s go in the den,” he says, his eyes troubled.

  “What is it?” I ask once we’re clear of the hall.

  “Dolores St. Denis has agreed to enter protective custody.”

  “What’s the status of Cleotha Booker?”

  “She’s unlikely to regain consciousness.”

  His answer covers me like a shadow. “Is there any chance it was a real fall?”

  “About one percent.”

  “No,” I breathe, pushing my fingers back through my hair.

  As we stare at each other, the door opens and the four agents move swiftly up the staircase.

  “You need to go?” I ask.

  “They’ll wait for me. This is a bad situation, Penn.”

  “You think that’s news to me?”

  I know Kaiser’s grinding his teeth, because his jaw is flexing, hard. “Who is Serenity Butler?” he asks.

  “A friend. A writer.”

  “Why is she taking care of Mrs. St. Denis?”

  What can I say? “They’re both women? They’re both black? She got elected because Dolores trusts her.”

  “You brought Mrs. St. Denis up here in an airplane?”

  “It seemed like the safest method.”

  Kaiser shakes his head. “This was right on the borderline, man. You really pushed it. You should have called me yesterday, before you ever went to see her.”

  “You and I have different objectives, John.”

  “There were gunshots reported within one block of that woman’s house last night. Also a false report of a home invasion.”

  I say nothing to this.

  “Penn, you don’t have the legal authority to do anything like that. Do you understand? If this were anyone but me standing here, you’d be in federal custody.”

  “And if I hadn’t done what I have,” I say in a low voice, “you wouldn’t be about to interview a witness that the Bureau should have found forty years ago. One who can put Snake Knox in line for a lethal injection.”

  Kaiser holds up his hands, but before he can speak I say, “And she was living right in New Orleans—your home base.”

  He grinds his teeth again. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, you’re welcome.”

  Chapter 27

  Serenity has vacated the house. When I asked where she was going, all she said was, “I n
eed some motherfucking air.” When I called after her to ask whether she would take one of Tim’s guys along, she pretended not to hear me. To some extent, I was glad for the break. I didn’t want to spend the afternoon hearing Serenity tell me how culpable we are in the attack on Cleotha Booker and the suicidal ordeal of her daughter-in-law.

  I already know.

  Settled in the den with Annie, who seems to be contentedly watching television with the volume low (Mia has gone upstairs to take a shower), I am thankful for the “distraction” of my father’s trial.

  Shad Johnson’s first witness after lunch is neither Cora Revels nor Lincoln Turner, but my father’s personal nurse for the past fifteen years, Melba Price. This choice surprises me. Melba will project a symbolic power from the stand, because she is the modern version of Viola. She loves and respects my father, and she will help him if she can. Moreover, she is beloved in the town, much as Viola was in her day. No matter what the facts may seem to say, Melba’s belief in my father’s innocence, if she expresses such faith, will carry a lot of weight with the African-American women on the jury. So why does Shad take the risk of putting her on the stand?

  It’s the adrenaline, I realize. One weakness of Shad’s forensic case is that no empty adrenaline ampoule was found at the death scene, unlike the morphine vial with Dad’s fingerprint on it. Leo Watts, the pharmacist, proved that Dad had written adrenaline prescriptions for himself in the past, but not anywhere near the date of Viola’s murder. Shad must be confident that Melba will prove that Dad had ready access to the drug, and in the time frame of Viola’s murder.

  As Rusty’s texts start to trickle in, they verify my instinct. Judge Elder grants Shad permission to treat Melba as a hostile witness, and soon the DA is leading her like a child. To Rusty’s horror, and mine, Melba gets no protection from Quentin, who ought to be objecting to some questions, if only to break up Shad’s rhythm. Rusty’s furious texts come through as the modern-day equivalent of a Morse code SOS, but I can easily imagine the damage Melba is doing, even as she tries her best to save the man that she’s served and respected for so long.

  Through Melba, Shad establishes that my father keeps a supply of adrenaline at his office to resuscitate coding patients, even though they don’t have a true crash cart there. Melba also reveals that the record keeping at the office is not detailed enough to know for sure whether any adrenaline might be missing. Dad’s clinic is not like a hospital with strict accounting and supply procedures—except with narcotics—and adrenaline, while potentially dangerous, is not a narcotic. In a bid to bypass the marital privilege, Shad asks Melba (rather than my mother) whether she has personal knowledge of Dad keeping adrenaline at his residence, but she evades this trap with a simple “I don’t know.” But when asked directly whether Dad regularly kept adrenaline in his “black bag,” the kit he used during house calls, Melba concedes that he did. What else could she say? Any competent physician would stock adrenaline in the bag he carried with him to handle potential emergencies, and she makes this point before Shad can shut her down.

  Having established this critical fact, Shad shifts gears and begins questioning Melba about Dad’s health, particularly his psoriatic arthritis and how it has affected his hand function. In this matter Melba is fairly truthful, if more general than Shad would like, but in the end she admits that for the past year Dad has been getting Drew Elliott to perform all prostate exams required in the office, because he can no longer use his fingers effectively enough to do them himself. She probably knows that if she is evasive about this, Shad could simply call Drew to the stand. Also, like me, Melba knows that Shad has spent the past three months trolling among Dad’s patients for whatever negative information he can find, and she wouldn’t want to open the door to putting any of them on the stand.

  About the time I expect Shad to release Melba, he begins probing potentially more vulnerable spots. Melba admits that she knew Dad was treating Viola during the last weeks of her life, but denies knowing that any sort of assisted-suicide pact existed between them. She claims she didn’t know that Dad and Viola had been lovers in the past and says it wouldn’t have mattered to her if she had.

  At 1:32 p.m. Rusty sends two text messages saying that Shad has decided to gamble that Melba might be shocked or shamed into saying something incriminating about Dad.

  Shad ques: Did Dr. Cage ever behave improperly towards u in sexual way? Pls remember u r under oath. Answer: No. Never. Shad looks smug, like Melba’s lying, but female jury members glaring at him.

  Ques: Do you believe Dr. Cage ever helped any patient to die? Ans: I don’t know about anything like that. But I think a lot of doctors around here have done it. In some cases, it’s the only decent thing.

  Melba’s courageous assertion gives me a guarded feeling of hope. By bringing Melba Price onto the stand, Shad has given Quentin a golden opportunity to allow a highly credible witness to say wonderful things about Dad. And Melba is clearly ready and willing to do all she can for him, which might be a lot. If she speaks with the full force of her character, she could look those women on the jury in the eye and convince at least one of them that her employer would kill himself before he would harm a patient under his care.

  But the next message that comes through sends me into shock.

  1:34 p.m. Shad looked worried when he tendered Melba, but he shouldn’t have. Leonardo’s reply? No questions, Your Honor.

  “Oh my God,” I murmur. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it, Daddy?” Annie asks from in front of the television. “Did Mr. Quentin do more bad stuff?”

  I sigh so heavily that I feel dizzy, the way I do when I stand up too suddenly.

  “Daddy?” Annie jumps to her feet.

  “I’m okay, Boo.”

  My phone pings again as I pull her against my side.

  2:07 p.m. Shad just recalled Cora Revels.

  A few seconds pass, then Rusty types: Fuck this shit. My fingers about 2 fall off. I’m just going to open the line & take my chances.

  “Annie, we’re going to have to turn off the TV,” I say in a taut voice.

  “Why?” she asks, but before I can answer, her eyes widen with prescient knowledge. “Mr. Rusty’s calling from court!”

  I nod, and she clicks off the TV with the remote.

  “Can I listen?” she asks. “I won’t make a sound, I promise.”

  “You can’t, baby. This is grown-up stuff, as grown-up as it gets. I need my earpiece from my desk in the basement. It might be in—”

  “I know where it is!”

  Annie races into the hall, and I hear her feet banging down the narrow steps to my office. In less than a minute she’s back carrying my wired earpiece.

  “All right,” I concede, thankfully plugging in the jack. “You can stay in here with me, but don’t even breathe loud, okay?”

  She grins. “Okay.”

  Chapter 28

  When the cell phone rings in my hand, I press the button to answer, then press mute on the microphone on my earpiece cord so that nothing can be transmitted from our end. Then I lie back on the sofa and close my eyes, my ear tuned to the distant human voices reverberating through a thick mist of low frequency.

  “When Lincoln was born,” says an elderly female voice I’ve never heard before, “Vee told me that his father was a black man she’d met when she first got to Chicago, when she was homesick something terrible. She said she’d gone with him just once, and got pregnant. I didn’t really believe her. Viola had never been easy like that, and Lincoln was born only eight and a half months after she got to Chicago. He was a big baby, too. Wasn’t no preemie.”

  Shad Johnson’s more educated voice cuts through the hiss of the phone. “Who did you think the father was?”

  “Somebody from Natchez. Had to be.”

  “Did you have someone in mind?”

  “I had several,” Cora says in a snippy voice.

  “More than one?” Shad asks with feigned amazement, and I know then that Cora
Revels has been coached, and closely. “I thought you said your sister was not a woman of easy morals.”

  “She weren’t.”

  “I don’t understand, Miss Cora.”

  “You will. About two weeks before Viola left for Chicago, she was raped by some Ku Klux Klansmen. Several at one time.”

  A sudden roar comes through the phone.

  “Did you witness that attack?”

  “No, sir. Nobody did but them dirty men.”

  Objection! shouts a voice in my head. Hearsay! My heart is pounding so hard I feel loopy, but Quentin’s voice is not to be heard.

  “Did Viola tell you what happened to her?” Shad presses.

  This time when Quentin fails to object, I know Rusty is right: Quentin Avery, the legal legend, has lost it. He’s got to go. I only hope that Dad’s fate isn’t sealed before the end of Cora’s testimony.

  “Not at first,” says Cora. “First a rumor went around town. I think them men was bragging about what they done. Anyway, I asked Vee about it, and she finally broke down and told me it was true. I know now they done it to her to get our brother, Jimmy, to come out of hiding, where they could take him and kill him. Jimmy was hiding down in Freewoods, but when he heard what happened to Viola, he come looking for them that done it.”

  As Cora Revels’s voice breaks, I wonder why Shad has led her to reveal this long-buried event. Surely by doing so he risks the jury realizing how deep the hatred must have been between Viola and the Double Eagles, even to the day she died.

  “So you believed Viola’s child was a result of this rape?” Shad continues.

  Leading the witness! I want to scream, but Quentin says nothing.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long did you believe that?”

  “Twenty-eight years.”

  There’s a pause during which I suspect Shad is making a show of calculating Lincoln’s age by the elapsed time. “So, from 1968 until 1996 you believed that Lincoln had been fathered by Klan rapists?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about your suspicion?”