by Greg Iles
As I sit down with my coffee, I find a copy of the Natchez Examiner on the table. One of our guards probably left it for me. I skim the article about the gunfight and chase that ended Walt’s life, then turn to the opinion page. Instead of the expected piece by Miriam Masters, I find a long editorial by none other than Serenity Butler. Above the headline is a head shot cropped from the book jacket photo. Seeing those eyes that I now know so well, I feel a jolt of something I can’t put a name to.
Then I begin to read.
American history is punctuated by watershed moments, fulcrum points that separate one sense of ourselves (as a nation) from another. We study the classic ones in school, the American canon, mostly those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: America’s declaration of independence from England; the Gettysburg Address, and John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of the president who gave it; the Scopes trial. For some reason, these transformations of the prevailing zeitgeist tend to involve wars, crimes, or trials of some kind. All too rarely, they involve signal human achievements, like the discovery of a polio cure, or the moon landing in 1969.
Because of the proliferation of mass media, the twentieth century seems filled with such cultural dividing lines: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; Woodstock and Altamont; Nixon’s resignation; the L.A. riots; the O.J. verdict. Such historic markers might be fundamentally different from one another, but they share one trait: they unite millions of people by revealing some hidden truth about the nation. Woodstock crystallized a powerful urge toward love and peace within American youth culture. Only a few months later, Altamont and the Manson murders shattered that dream with chaotic violence.
Nations are not alone in experiencing such revelatory moments. Cities do, too. Only the scale is different. For Natchez, Mississippi, the trial of Dr. Tom Cage has become such a moment. Though it’s now the twenty-first century, Natchez has always seemed to me a city in search of its century. The trial of Tom Cage might finally place Natchez in time. During Quentin Avery’s opening statement, he promised the jury that before the trial concluded, Dr. Cage would take the stand and tell the whole truth behind the crime of which he has been accused. Mr. Avery also promised that when that happened, men in the courtroom would tremble.
Over the past four days, Judge Elder’s courtroom has been standing room only, with hundreds of would-be spectators turned away every morning. I suspect that today, likely the final day of the trial, throngs will surround the courthouse as Natchezians await Dr. Cage’s testimony and the verdict that will follow.
But why does such an air of expectation pervade the city? Is it only the lurid aspects of the case that have made Natchez ground zero for the entire state this week? I think not. I have come to believe that something far deeper is at work among the people. Natchez is a divided city, as Mississippi is a divided state and America a divided nation. And despite the protests of those who would deny this tragic truth, the root of that division is race—the unfinished business of chattel slavery.
When Tom Cage and Viola Turner reached for each other in 1968, they crossed an invisible boundary, a gulf between two races. They were not the first to do so. The children of such relationships walk the streets of Natchez every day. Their names are written in the pages of dusty Bibles kept out of sight, but kept all the same. In the silent shadows of this town, deep ties exist between black and white, and have for three hundred years. They are ties not only of friendship and love, but of blood. Rarely acknowledged, they’re like roots that spread beneath the soil, out of sight but as strong as any plant growing in the light of the sun. And in this racially fraught era of American history, it may be those roots that offer the best and only chance of bridging the gulf that divides us.
If Tom Cage takes the stand today, he will do so not only as himself, but as a symbol of the secret life of his hometown. And whatever his testimony reveals, Dr. Cage will be telling the city something about itself, perhaps something profound, certainly something necessary. Did Tom Cage kill Viola Turner? If so, did he do it out of fear, to silence her and to protect himself? Or did he do it out of love, to spare her an agonizing death? And if Dr. Cage did not kill Viola Turner, then who did? A violent splinter cell of the Ku Klux Klan? Or could it have been the tortured son born from the illicit relationship between Dr. Cage and his nurse?
Any of those answers, once made real, will become a lens through which the city will view itself, and through which it will be viewed by those outside. My hope is that the truth that emerges from this trial will inspire hope rather than bitterness.
I set down the paper and stare into my coffee, wondering how in hell Serenity managed to get an editorial into the paper from her hospital bed in Jackson. But a deeper question troubles me more. How did Serenity, an outsider, spend only a couple of days in Natchez with my family and perceive truths that I’d not seen myself? Was it precisely because she is an outsider? Whatever the case, Tee has answered the question I posed to Quentin last night at the jail: Why must Dad, after telling me nothing for months, now enter the witness box and tell the town everything?
“Penn, are you all right?”
My mother is standing in the kitchen doorway, worry etched in every line of her face.
“Have you gotten bad news?” she asks. “Has Serenity’s condition worsened?”
“I don’t think so. I . . . was just reading the paper. You should probably skip it.”
“I read it an hour ago.”
“Serenity’s editorial, too?”
Mom gives me a taut smile. “I never said she wasn’t sharp.”
“Everybody decent?” calls Joe Russell, now the leader of our security detail. “We need to leave in ten minutes.”
I hear his footsteps coming up the hall. Reaching out, I take hold of my mother’s cold hand.
“Can you stand one more day of trial?”
Her smile gets a little tighter. “I can stand anything, darling.”
It takes us forty minutes to travel the few blocks from my front door to the courtroom. After yesterday’s gun battle, the streets have become nearly impassable, from both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Uniformed cops are conspicuous on the sidewalks, and I’m certain that John Kaiser has plainclothes FBI agents moving through the crowds. During our crawl to the courthouse, I receive a text from Kaiser informing me that the FBI forensic team in Washington has succeeded in restoring “Tape S-15”—the tape Viola made for Henry—to a “readable” condition. The only remaining obstacle to using it in the trial is authorization, which will be granted or denied after a conference between the FBI director, the U.S. attorney general, the director of Homeland Security, and (Kaiser suspects) the White House. If such use is authorized, a digitally encrypted video file will be transmitted to the FBI field office in Jackson—where Kaiser is waiting—and a hard copy will be driven to Natchez or flown here via helicopter.
While I try to hide my growing anxiety from my mother, Kaiser sends a more encouraging message. “Tape S-16”—the one discovered in the St. Catherine’s Hospital Dumpster—is apparently giving the Bureau’s digital wizards more trouble. However, they are still working on it. My heart tells me that Kaiser hopes his colleagues fail in their task, but I was a trial lawyer for too many years to put much faith in miracles.
When we arrive at the courthouse, which appears to be under siege, I learn from the circuit clerk that court has been delayed for an hour by agents of the BATF, who want to make a final sweep of the courtroom prior to allowing people inside. When I announce my intention to take my mother to City Hall to wait out the delay, the clerk offers to bring us to his private office in the courthouse, where Quentin is preparing for the morning’s proceedings.
Quentin and Doris greet my mother warmly, but when Doris tries to take her into another room “to get some coffee,” Mom demands to know what to expect once court is in session. In a somber voice, Quentin tells us that Judge Elder has decided the trial should move forward regardless of the FBI’s
efforts to restore the videotapes. Before I can feel relief at the prospect that Quentin might be able to rest his case before the Dumpster tape is restored, he adds that Dad will be taking the stand as his first and only witness of the day.
I expect Mom to faint or stroke out at this news, but she hardly reacts at all, other than to go to the window and look out at the mass of people hoping to be admitted to the courthouse today.
“Look at this,” says Doris, turning up the sound on a small TV in the corner of the office.
I naively assumed that only the attorneys would be aware of the side drama of the videotapes, but Shad Johnson has taken advantage of the delay to address the reporters gathered at the foot of the courthouse steps. The first thing I hear when the sound comes up is Shad opining that the “St. Catherine’s Hospital Dumpster tape” might break the case wide open.
“That won’t endear Shadrach to Judge Elder,” I mutter.
“He doesn’t care,” Quentin says. “He’s decided that the potential upside of this is worth any sanction Joe might impose on him.”
Shad looks positively ebullient on camera, and if he knew for sure that Quentin is about to call my father to the stand, he might pop open some Dom Perignon on the courthouse lawn.
By the time the BATF gives the all clear and everyone reaches their assigned places in the courtroom, the spectators in the gallery have somehow intuited that Dad means to take the stand. After all, didn’t Quentin Avery promise that he would?
Dad certainly looks ready for his turn in the spotlight. He’s wearing a charcoal suit, and thanks to my mother’s relentless insistence, his white hair and beard have been carefully trimmed. He looks about as distinguished as it’s possible to look after three months in jail, yet the signs of his failing health can’t be missed.
His skin is as pale as that of an Arctic researcher after long months of night, and a fine sprinkling of dandruff already powders the shoulders of his jacket, as though he’s just come in from a snowfall. Hollow cheeks make his weight loss obvious, while crooked fingers and pitted, spooned nails reveal the extent of his psoriatic arthritis. If he were wearing shorts, the edema in his legs would betray the severity of his heart failure, but thankfully his legs are covered. Even his wise eyes appear dull today, their luster gone, and when he finally enters the witness box to be sworn in, the powerful baritone that always reassured his patients is barely a whisper.
The circuit clerk holds an old Bible beneath his hand, then says without the slightest drama, “Do you, Thomas Jefferson Cage, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under penalty of law, so help you God?”
“I so swear.”
A religious oath is rarely used in American courts nowadays, but this is Mississippi. We have the highest per-capita number of churches and the lowest literacy rate (as Caitlin never tired of reminding me), and such traditions die hard. My father long ago abandoned the simplistic religious beliefs of his childhood, and after forty years of practicing medicine has found no real comfort in any of the world’s faiths. Yet today he gave the prudent answer when the Bible was held beneath his hand.
Was that, I wonder uncomfortably, his first lie?
As Quentin rolls slowly forward, I hear no electrical whir, and I realize with a shock that he’s in a manual wheelchair, not his motorized one. Did he have an electrical problem? I wonder, surprised that I didn’t notice the change back in the clerk’s office. But then instinct tells me that Quentin must be making a subtle play to elicit sympathy or respect from the jury. When the legless old lawyer’s still-powerful shoulders grip those big wheels and turn them, you can’t help but feel you’re in the presence of a man of great fortitude.
Quentin elects to begin his questioning from his customary spot by the lectern, but I have no doubt he will have rolled a half mile or more before he finishes this afternoon.
When he clears his throat, the whispers of the standing-room-only crowd behind me fall silent. Just before he speaks, Quentin glances my way, and I give the smallest shake of my head, letting him know I’ve heard nothing more from Kaiser about the Dumpster tape.
“Dr. Cage,” he says, “did you treat Viola Turner during the last weeks of her life?”
“I did.”
“Were you her only doctor?”
“I was.”
“What was her chief illness?”
“Metastatic carcinoma of the lung.”
Quentin pauses for this to sink in; even for a lay audience, “metastatic” carries the awful weight of mortality. “And what was the prognosis?”
“Terminal.”
“So you were not trying to cure her?”
“No. I was providing palliative care. Trying to ease her suffering as much as possible.”
“Until her death?”
“Yes.”
“Did Mrs. Turner clearly understand this?”
“Yes. She’d been a nurse all her life. She knew her prognosis as well as any doctor would.”
“I see. Did she come to your office for treatment?”
“No. I generally saw her at her sister’s residence, where the front room had been converted to a sickroom.”
“I see. How often did you make house calls on Mrs. Turner?”
“Almost every day.”
“That’s uncommon these days, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I did that because Viola had once been my employee, and also because we had once had an intimate relationship.”
A collective intake of breath from the crowd charges the atmosphere in the courtroom.
“An extramarital affair?” Quentin asks, as though asking for clarification of some dull point of cost accounting.
“That’s correct,” Dad replies, just as clinically.
“I see. Dr. Cage, it has been said in the courtroom that you had a pact of sorts with Mrs. Turner, that you would help her to commit suicide before the pain from her cancer became too bad. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
A hundred people shift on their chairs at the same moment.
“Could you elaborate on that?”
“Yes. The issue wasn’t just pain for Viola. It was personal dignity. Viola Turner was a proud woman, and as a nurse she had watched countless patients die over the years. There were certain indignities to which she did not want to subject herself—or others.” Dad pauses, inwardly reflecting. “Viola also had religious qualms about committing suicide. She was a devout Catholic. She didn’t simply want me to provide a lethal dose of drugs. She wanted me to perform the injection.”
My pulse has begun to race. I can’t believe Quentin is letting Dad wrap a rope around his own neck.
“And were you willing to do that?” Quentin asks.
“I thought I was. I didn’t want to do it. But because of our personal history, and a feeling that I had let Viola down badly back when she worked for me, I felt I owed it to her.”
Quentin nods thoughtfully. “So . . . when you entered Cora Revels’s house in the early hours of December twelfth, you intended to accede to Viola Turner’s wishes and inject a lethal dose of a drug into her body?”
“Yes.”
The crowd reacts with sharply cut-off breaths.
“Had Mrs. Turner requested a particular drug?” Quentin asks.
“She asked for morphine sulfate, a narcotic pain reliever.”
“Dr. Cage, did you in fact administer the fatal dose of morphine that Viola Turner had requested?”
“No. I did not.”
Stunned silence envelops the courtroom.
“Why not?”
Dad takes his time with this. “For several reasons. One, when I arrived, Viola and I had a conversation. During that talk, she told me several things that disturbed me. One was about a videotape she had made for a reporter, Henry Sexton. She wanted Sexton to have the tape after her death, to assist him with his investigations into the crimes of the Double Eagle group, who had murdered her brother. But the most important revelation was that I was the f
ather of Viola’s grown son, Lincoln Turner.”
“You did not know that information prior to that night?”
“I did not.”
“But Mrs. Turner’s sister testified that you’d known this for many years.”
“She lied about that.”
Turning to my left, I realize that while Lincoln is in court today, Cora Revels is not. Not unless she’s sitting back in the more anonymous rows.
“But Dr. Cage,” Quentin continues, “the district attorney has established that you sent Mrs. Turner money every month from 1968 until she moved back to Natchez to die. What man would do that if he had not fathered an illegitimate child by that woman?”
“I would. And I did.”
“But why? Why did you do that?”
“Because I loved her.”
The truth embodied in these words—and in my father’s voice—is absolute. No one can doubt it. I don’t want to look at my mother, but I can’t help myself. Dad’s answer must have struck her like an arrow through the heart, yet she shows no more emotion than an effigy filled with sand.
“When and why did you first begin sending money to Viola?” Quentin asks.
“A few weeks after she left Natchez, a letter from Viola arrived at my clinic. It wasn’t addressed to me, but to the other female employees. I copied down the return address. It was a P.O. box in Chicago. I knew Viola probably needed money to make a new start, so I sent her a check. She didn’t cash it right away, but about a month later she did. That told me she needed the funds, so I just kept sending the checks. And she kept cashing them.”