Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “But you did ask your mother for the money?”

  “Yes, sir. She flew into a rage. She said she wouldn’t waste one dollar trying to help Junius Jelks. They’d found her cancer by then, and she was pretty depressed. I think she blamed Daddy for most of the bad that had happened to us. She was screaming that he’d ruined my legal career.”

  “Did you not blame Junius Jelks for that?”

  “Not like she did.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I felt like there was something wrong inside of Mama. She had some kind of hate for Daddy that I didn’t understand. I thought it was her hate that had cursed us, somehow.”

  “How did Jelks react when you told him you couldn’t get money for an attorney?”

  “He went crazy. He was facing fifteen years of hard time.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me I was useless. A waste of good air. Then he said that didn’t surprise him, ’cause I wasn’t no son of his anyway.”

  “How did you react to that?”

  “I thought he was kidding. But then something happened to his face, and I knew he wasn’t. It was like the mask came off. The last one. He’d worn masks all his life, conning people. He was a master of disguise, never showing who he really was. But that day I saw the real Junius Jelks. And there was nothing in his eyes but anger, fear, and hatred.”

  “Did you ask him who your real father was?”

  Lincoln nods.

  Judge Elder says, “Please give a verbal response.”

  Lincoln looks up at the judge. “Is it all right to use profanity?”

  “You can repeat what he told you.”

  “He told me that Mama had been raped by a bunch of Ku Klux Klansmen back in Mississippi. He said one of those cracker bastards was my father.”

  “Oh, Lord,” cries an older black woman from behind me, and a dozen other people join her.

  “Junius said he’d lied to me all those years because Mama wanted him to, but he was done with her now, and me, too. He didn’t want me thinking he was my daddy anymore. He said it made him sick to look at me. Every time he looked at me, he saw some dirty-ass klukker. Said he always had.”

  Murmurs of sympathy and condemnation rise in volume behind me.

  “Did you believe what he’d told you?” Shad asks.

  “Not at first.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . because I don’t look white. Or even half white.”

  “Did you ask your mother about the Klan story?”

  “Yes. She denied it. She told me that the rape had happened, but that none of those men were my father. She said my father was a man she’d met when she first got to Chicago.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I wanted to believe her. I asked if he was white or black. She said black. She said he’d been a married man, but he was dead by then, so there was no use telling me his name.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I believed her about the Klan part. But I didn’t believe my real father was dead, whoever he was. I sensed she was lying to me. To protect me, maybe, but lying all the same.”

  “How did you sense it?”

  “I can always tell when people are lying. It’s something I learned working cons with Junius Jelks. Don’t ever try lying to a grifter. They always know. That ability helped me a lot in court.”

  “But, Mr. Turner, you’ve already told us that your mother had been successfully lying to you throughout your life, and you didn’t know it. Now you say you always know when someone is lying? How do you account for that?”

  Lincoln’s eyelids slide halfway down over his eyes as he ponders this. After about twenty seconds, he blinks and looks around like a man awaking from a trance. “I’ll tell you. When a woman who never lies tells her first lie . . . nobody questions it. Nobody catches on, because they can’t even imagine that person trying to deceive them. It’s the Big Lie. But inside a family, see? And that’s why I never caught on. My mama never lied. So the one thing she did lie about, I never picked up on—even though she had lied about it every day of my life.”

  Shad nods soberly. “Now, to clarify, Lincoln, this conversation with your mother about the Ku Klux Klan rape took place how long ago?”

  “Seven months ago. About four months before she died.”

  “And your mother had already been diagnosed with lung cancer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did you react to all she’d said?”

  “I started pulling away from her. Pushing her away, I guess.”

  “Even though she was terminally ill?”

  “Yes. I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d been lying to me since I was a child. My whole life had been a lie.”

  “What was your next clue to your true paternity?”

  “As Mama got sicker, I had to start taking over some of her affairs. That’s when I discovered a box hidden in her apartment, filled with old records, souvenirs, and memorabilia. James Turner’s war medal was in there, the real James Turner. There were a couple of letters, too, and some photocopies of checks from the 1970s.”

  “Were the letters signed?”

  “No.”

  “What name was on the checks?”

  “Thomas Cage, M.D.”

  At least a dozen people behind me mutter “Mm-mm-mm” under their breath.

  “Let the record show that these checks were stipulated into evidence on Monday,” Shad says. “Now, were there any other clues in the box?”

  “There was a Polaroid snapshot of Mama with a man.”

  “What man?”

  “That man right there. Dr. Tom Cage.”

  “What did it show?”

  “They were standing in a room with a sheet wrapped around them.”

  “Were they clothed beneath the sheet?”

  “They didn’t appear to be, no.”

  “Judge, we’d like to enter this photograph into evidence and let the jury examine it.”

  If Quentin is ever going to object, now is the time. But he doesn’t. Even as Joe Elder looks expectantly at him, Quentin simply watches Shad carry the old Polaroid snapshot over to the jury and give it to the woman seated at bottom left in the box. Her eyes narrow, then widen, and then her whole face goes red. I can’t bear to turn and look at my mother’s face. Ahead of me, my father simply stares straight ahead, at the judge’s bench. My mother might as well be a mannequin posed beside me, for all the life she shows.

  “What did you do with what you’d found in the box?” Shad asks.

  “I confronted my mother with it.”

  “How did she react?”

  “She finally told me the truth. The real truth.”

  “Which was?”

  “She said my father was Dr. Tom Cage, from Natchez, Mississippi. She’d known it from the beginning. She’d been protecting him all those years. That was why she’d lied to me, and to Jelks.”

  “Did she say anything else about Dr. Cage during that conversation?”

  “She told me that a lot of the money that put me through school had come from him.”

  “This is very important, Lincoln. Did she say whether or not Dr. Cage knew he was your father?”

  Lincoln’s brown face darkens with blood. “Of course he knew!”

  “Did your mother tell you that?”

  “Yes. That’s why he sent the money all those years. Mama said Dr. Cage had kept us going during the times that Daddy was spending every dime she made. And she begged me not to do anything to disrupt his family life.”

  “He’s lying,” Mom whispers in my ear.

  “About what?”

  “Tom never knew he had a son by that woman.”

  Shad says, “How did that make you feel?”

  “Sick,” Lincoln replies. “That man had ruined our lives, and Mama still worshipped him. She said most other men would have left her high and dry with her baby, but Dr.
Cage had always provided for us. I couldn’t make her see different.”

  “Can you prove Dad didn’t know about the child?” I whisper to Mom.

  “How can I prove a negative?”

  “You can’t. And the jury will see him sending that money for so long as proof.”

  Mom’s voice grows louder in my ear. “Tom could have been sending that simply out of guilt over the affair! Or because she was raped and had to leave town. It doesn’t mean he knew.”

  She sounds so certain that a question occurs to me. “Mom . . . did you know Dad was sending that money?”

  My mother gives me a glare that could freeze vodka, and I face forward again.

  Shad has moved closer to Lincoln, and now he really does his best to imitate Dr. Phil. “How did that make you feel, Lincoln?”

  Again Quentin should be objecting—feelings have little to do with facts—yet again he remains silent.

  “I hated her,” Lincoln says bitterly. “I never wanted to see her again. That’s what I thought then, anyway.”

  “Did you tell your mother that?”

  He nods, and tears run down his face. “I told her I was glad she was dying.”

  Lincoln Turner may be tailoring the truth to fit his goals, but on this point I believe he is telling the truth.

  “How did you feel about Dr. Cage at that time?”

  “I wanted to kill him.”

  If I were about to cross-examine Lincoln, I would begin by creating the impression that by pushing hard for a murder charge against Dad in the beginning, he was attempting to use the legal system to carry out this desire for revenge. But will Quentin do the same?

  “What did you actually do?” Shad asks.

  “I broke off all contact with my mother.”

  “Even though she was dying?”

  “Yes. I told you, I’ve got some anger issues. Back then, I blamed her for everything bad that had ever happened to me.” Lincoln’s dark eyes move from the district attorney to the defense table, where my father sits beside Quentin. “And him, of course. Dr. Cage.”

  “Did you have any idea how your mother’s illness was progressing?”

  “After she came back to Mississippi to die, my auntie—Cora Revels—would call and tell me how she was doing.”

  “Did you tell Cora that you knew Dr. Cage was your father?”

  “I did after she told me it was Dr. Cage taking care of Mama down here.”

  “Did you ever come visit your mother again, Lincoln?”

  “No, sir. But I got to feeling worse and worse about the things I’d said to her. After a while, I wanted to tell her I’d forgiven her before she passed—even if it wasn’t quite true. I knew it would make her passing easier. Personally, I think it was telling all those lies for so long that gave her the cancer. It poisoned her.”

  “Did you get to tell your mother you’d forgiven her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “One night, Auntie Cora called and told me she thought Mama didn’t have much time. She didn’t tell me about the assisted-suicide pact, but she told me she was pretty sure Mama wouldn’t last more than twenty-four hours.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I jumped into my truck and drove straight through from Chicago to Natchez.”

  “Where were you when your mother died?”

  “Thirty minutes north of Natchez.”

  Shad bows his head and lets this terrible irony sink in. After a few seconds, he says, “Why didn’t you call your mother during that long drive?”

  “I was getting updates from Cora, telling me to hurry, you know? Then suddenly she stopped calling me. I called Cora a few times, but I kept getting her voice mail.”

  “But you didn’t call Cora’s house and talk to your mother?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “Part of me was afraid he would be there. Dr. Cage. Another part wanted him to be there when I got there.”

  “Is that the only reason you didn’t call your mother?”

  “No, sir. You don’t say the kind of things I needed to say to her over the telephone. Not to your mama. You need to hold somebody’s hand to say that.”

  Several women in the jury nod, both black and white.

  “Do you wish now that you had called her that night?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “What would you have said?”

  Lincoln Turner swallows hard and looks toward the ceiling. “Hold on just a little longer, Mama. I’m coming home.”

  Three women in the jury box take handkerchiefs from their purses and wipe their eyes. The rest are looking daggers at my father. The men don’t look too happy with him, either.

  “Wouldn’t have done no good, though,” Lincoln says in despair. “He’d given her the morphine by then, and Cora was passed out at the neighbor’s house.”

  Shad bows his head again, as though gathering himself after being wrung out emotionally. “Let’s clarify something. Junius Jelks, your mother’s husband and widower, never knew who your real father was. Is that correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All right. Now . . . what did you find when you arrived at Cora Revels’s house in the wee hours of December twelfth?”

  “By then, Auntie had come back home, and I told her to call 911. The paramedics were there.”

  “Did your aunt mention Dr. Cage to you?”

  “Not at first. But within an hour, she told me about the assisted-suicide pact.”

  “Yesterday Cora Revels testified that, at that point, she believed that what had taken place was an assisted suicide.”

  “She told me the same thing.”

  “But you didn’t believe her?”

  “The scene looked chaotic to me. It didn’t look like the scene of an assisted suicide.”

  “Do you have enough experience to make that judgment?”

  “I’m no expert. But it didn’t look as though Mama had died peacefully. I didn’t know the Mississippi law on assisted suicide, but I knew that if Dr. Cage had given her the injection himself, he was guilty of murder.”

  “I see.” Shad starts to walk back to his table, but then he turns back to the witness. “Tell me this, Lincoln. Did you hope that Dr. Cage had given her the injection? That he was guilty of murder?”

  “At that time? Yes, sir. I did.”

  The silence that follows this statement is absolute.

  “And now?”

  “Now . . . I just want to know the truth.”

  “Thank you.” Shad gives Lincoln a sympathetic smile, then walks to his chair and sits down. He doesn’t look at Quentin when he says, “Your witness.”

  Judge Elder is looking at his watch and probably thinking of his stomach when the click and whir of Quentin’s chair announces that he will indeed cross-examine Lincoln Turner.

  Quentin’s chair rolls up to the lawyer’s podium, then past it, and stops about ten feet from Lincoln, who stares back with sullen defiance.

  “Hello, Mr. Turner,” Quentin says in his warm baritone.

  Lincoln nods warily. He is facing a man whose cases he probably studied in law school.

  “That’s a mighty sad story you just told.”

  Lincoln offers no comment.

  “Judge,” Shad complains, “is there a question on the horizon?”

  Joe Elder gives Shad a dark look. “Mr. Johnson, Mr. Avery just allowed you to conduct a fireside chat with your witness. Be patient.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Quentin hasn’t broken eye contact with Lincoln since rolling up to the witness box. But now he looks down, touches his joystick, and makes a quarter turn toward the jury. “Before we get into any of the substantive issues you raised, Mr. Turner, I want to get my chronology straight. I find that it sometimes helps me—and also jury members—to work backwards from the present rather than forward from a past event. All right?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Quentin give
s a tight smile. “You stated that you did not see your mother from the time you had the confrontation over Tom Cage until she lay dead in her sister’s home. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never got to tell your mother you’d forgiven her, because you didn’t arrive from Chicago in time. You were still thirty minutes outside of town when she died.”

  I can see the lawyer in Lincoln trying to figure out where Quentin is going with these questions, but Quentin’s casual tone gives no clue to what he considers important.

  “That’s right,” Lincoln says.

  “All right. Now, you stated that you wanted to kill Tom Cage after you learned he was your father.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you only learned that fact three months before your mother died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still want to kill Dr. Cage?”

  Lincoln looks like he’d prefer to kill Quentin Avery right now, but the blaze of anger in his eyes slowly subsides. “No, I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want nothing from him.”

  Quentin draws back his head in surprise. “You want him to go to jail, don’t you?”

  “If the jury believes he should.”

  Quentin smiles at this. “Come now, Mr. Turner. Don’t you believe that Tom Cage murdered your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t you prompt the DA to begin the investigation into her death?”

  “Any son would have done the same.”

  Quentin nods agreeably. “But you never wanted anything from Dr. Cage, you said?”

  “You mean money? Or something like that?”

  “I mean anything.”

  Lincoln looks down into his lap, as though genuinely lost in thought. Then he looks up and says, “I wanted his acknowledgment. When Mama told me he was my father, what I really wanted was to hear that he wasn’t ashamed of me. That I meant something to him. But that ain’t nothing but a little boy’s dream.” Lincoln gives me a baleful glare. “Tom Cage had his white son over there, the mayor. What would he want with me? The truth is, he wished I’d never been born—and he still does.”

  A pall of ill will toward the Cage family falls over the court. I can feel it like a sudden drop in temperature, like the shadow of storm clouds passing overhead.

  Quentin regards Lincoln for several seconds in silence. Then, after glancing up at Judge Elder, he rotates his chair and whirs back toward the defense table. Just before reaching it, he rotates to face Lincoln again.