Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  My iPhone pings. Nadine’s reply reads: I have a laptop here.

  I feel confident that her laptop will be an older model with at least one full-size USB port. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes, I type.

  Come in the back door, she answers. Late breakfast crowd still here. Hostile to u and ur staff. I’ll bring ur coffee to the back.

  Understood. I add a thumbs-up emoji and a coffee cup. Juvenile, maybe, but effective. This is what American communication has come to: adults sending each other cartoons.

  Nadine’s office at Constant Reader is between the customer area and the back, where she stores inventory and café supplies. But when I slip through the back door off Barton Alley, I find a silver MacBook sitting on a large Formica-topped table, surrounded by stacked and flapped copies of A Land More Kind Than Home, by Wiley Cash. The North Carolina author must be coming to autograph books in the next day or two.

  As I sit at the laptop, a door opens and shuts to my right, and Nadine appears with a steaming mug of coffee. She’s wearing black capri pants and a tight-fitting navy top.

  “You have a power outage at the paper or something?” she asks. “Why do you need my computer?”

  I take the flash drive out of my pocket and hold it up. “Somebody left this taped to my steering wheel. In my locked SUV. I didn’t want to go back into the office to open it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Jet stopped by to see me this morning. She represented Max at his arraignment. I didn’t want people questioning me about her reasons.”

  “I already heard. It’s all over town. What are her reasons, by the way?”

  “Family.” I sigh. “Let’s just leave it at that for now. I still can’t get my head around it, to be honest.”

  Nadine watches me for a while before commenting. “Max’s murder trial is going to be the biggest circus this state has seen in years. It’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Mississippi style.”

  I shake my head, shoving that image out of my mind. “Let’s see what the flash-drive fairy left in my ride.” I slide the drive into the USB socket, then take a careful sip from my coffee mug. “Oh, I needed that.”

  “I’ve got to get back up front,” Nadine says. “Big crowd this morning.”

  “They’re pissed about our story on Buck?”

  “They’d tar and feather you if they could get away with it.”

  “I don’t know who would stop them.”

  She gives me a quick smile. “That’s why I told you to come back here. See you in a minute.”

  This courtesy is typical of Nadine. She’d give her eyeteeth to see what’s on the flash drive, but she’s going to let me check it first.

  The Lexar appears to contain only a single file: a JPEG image. With my fingertip poised over the track pad, I freeze, suddenly certain that I’m about to open a digital photo of Jet leaning against the balcony rail of the Aurora Hotel, her dress hiked over her waist. Or worse, sitting astride me on the steamer chaise on my back patio. Anybody standing in the woods could have shot such a picture with a cell phone, though they would have had to zoom the hell out of it. With a smartphone, they could’ve shot video of the whole act. If I wait any longer to check, Nadine will reappear. Better to find out now.

  I tap the track pad and wait the fraction of a second it takes the image to coalesce on Nadine’s screen. I’m not sure at first what I’m looking at. It appears to be a night shot, a low-resolution image like those I’ve seen taken by wild game cameras. Hunters and curious landowners fasten these motion-triggered cameras to trees to keep track of nocturnal game movements on their property. Old friends from high school have shown me shots of huge bucks as well as coyotes and even a black bear captured on the devices.

  Enlarging the image a little, I see two adult men facing each other across three feet of empty space. They’re not centered in the frame, but stand to the right. With a couple of clicks, I zoom the image more, then move it laterally to center the faces.

  A chill goes through me. The man on the left is Buck Ferris. Even in the pixelated low-res image, I see his ponytail hanging down his chest. The other man is shorter than Buck and more heavily built. Zooming the picture another 20 percent, I get only marginal improvement. I’m at the limits of the camera and the viewing program. Staring intently at the second man’s features, and the way his head sits on his shoulders, I recognize the face of one of the men with the Poker Club guys at the groundbreaking ceremony. He was standing just outside the Prime Shot tent, drinking a beer from a bottle. It’s Dave Cowart, the contractor Jet got sent to jail for a year. Cowart works for Beau Holland, the man who tried to assault me on the roof of the Aurora Hotel last night.

  “Thank you, whoever you are,” I murmur, wondering who could have broken into my vehicle and taped the drive to my steering wheel. I search the background of the image for landmarks but see none. Only darkness.

  Then I go still. The image has a time and date stamp in its bottom left corner. Because I’ve always seen these on game camera photos, I didn’t think anything about it. But on this photo, it means everything. This photo was shot two nights ago, at 1:17 a.m.

  Buck was murdered two nights ago.

  “Don’t tell me,” Nadine says, backing through the door with a box of books. “Some local hottie left you nude selfies.”

  “Take a look,” I say, leaning back to give her room. “A lot better than selfies.”

  She leans forward and studies the screen for fifteen seconds.

  “That’s Buck,” she says softly. “I see his ponytail!”

  “Yep.”

  “Who’s the other man?”

  “Dave Cowart. The contractor Jet sent to jail for rigging bids. He works for Beau Holland. And that time stamp says this was shot on the night Buck was killed.”

  Nadine turns slowly to me, her eyes flickering with excitement. “What are you going to do?”

  “Copy it onto your hard drive first, if that’s okay.”

  She nods. “After that?”

  “Make about ten more copies, then give one to the police.”

  “They won’t do a damn thing with it.”

  “Probably not. But I have to give it to them.” With a couple of clicks I save the image to Nadine’s desktop.

  “Are you going to print it in the paper?” she asks. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Oh, I think you can count on that.”

  “Who the hell shot that picture?”

  “I think it was captured on an automatic game camera. A trail camera. Someone must have put some up to cover the mill site. I didn’t see any last night, but then I didn’t see much but dirt and bricks.”

  “So there could be pictures of you from last night? Of us?”

  A ripple of fear goes through my chest. “There could be.”

  Almost of its own accord, my right forefinger moves toward the image, then hovers, moving up and down. Something’s coming to me . . .

  “Marshall?” Nadine says. “What are you doing?”

  “This is why there were no guards out there the night Buck was killed. They replaced the human guards with automated trail cameras. Somebody saw Buck on a picture like this, taken on a game camera. And they knew they could go out there and kill him.”

  “In real time, you mean?”

  “I’m pretty sure some of those cameras can send images to your cell phone. The newer, more expensive ones.”

  “Are you saying someone lured him out there?”

  “Removing the security guards would have given Buck a false sense of security. When he didn’t see any guards, he felt secure enough to trespass and dig again. But they still had live surveillance. The early trail cameras, you had to go out and physically remove the SD card and then view the pictures at home. But the new ones have SIM cards. If that’s what happened, the killer could have been sitting in a bar, gotten a JPEG over his phone, and had plenty of time to drive out there and kill him.”

  “So . . . there might be pictu
res of the murder?”

  “If I’m right, there could be. These cameras are triggered by motion. Maybe heat as well, I don’t know. It all depends on whether Buck was killed within view of one of those cameras.”

  “How many pictures would the camera have shot?”

  “As few as one, but maybe dozens. I don’t know enough about them. I’ll have to do some research. The question is, who broke into the Flex and left it for me? I was thinking it must be the person who cracked your safe. But . . . it can’t be. This person is trying to help me.”

  Nadine bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “Maybe the whole town’s not against you.”

  “I wish my secret ally would come out of the closet.”

  “How do you know it’s a he?”

  “I don’t. I suppose I just associate game cameras with men.”

  As we stand hypnotized by the image, my iPhone rings. Taking it from my pocket, I see the caller is my mother. She doesn’t usually call at this time of day.

  “What’s up, Mom? Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know, Marshall.”

  My stomach does a slow roll. Mom doesn’t get excited over trivial problems. “Tell me.”

  “Dr. Kirby called a few minutes ago. He did some tests on your father last Friday, and he’s gotten some of the results back. Liver tests, mostly. He wants to talk to us about them. He asked if you could be here when he comes by this afternoon.”

  Jack Kirby has been my father’s physician for more than fifty years, so house calls are not unusual. But asking that I be present for one is.

  “What time’s he coming over?”

  “Four thirty.”

  “I’ll be there, Mom.”

  “Thank you. I hate to interrupt your work. I know how much you have to do to hold everything together down there.”

  “It’s no problem, Mom. Really.”

  “I saw the story about Buck Ferris,” she says. “People are bound to be upset about that.”

  “No bricks through the front window yet.”

  “I’m glad to hear it!”

  Normally, she would have tacked a chuckle on to that statement. But not today. She’s deeply concerned about Dr. Kirby’s visit.

  “Are you where Dad can hear you?” I ask.

  “No, I’m in the kitchen.”

  “What are you most worried about?”

  “His liver and his heart. The Parkinson’s symptoms are worsening, but apart from the hallucinations and the panic that follows, I can handle them. But he’s still drinking. Jack told Duncan six months ago that his liver couldn’t keep taking it. Plus, his heart’s been on the verge of congestive failure for a while.”

  “All right. We’ll see what Dr. Kirby says.”

  “I’ll see you this afternoon, son.”

  When I hang up, I notice Nadine watching me with empathy.

  “I feel like I’m looking at myself two years ago,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad news?”

  “Don’t know yet. Doctor’s coming by this afternoon. Wants me there.”

  She gives me a “Hang tough, it’ll be okay” smile, but mercifully, she doesn’t say anything more about it. She knows all too well what this kind of visit can mean.

  “Do you want anything from the café?” she asks.

  “No, thanks. I’d better duck out before anybody sees me. Did you talk to your friend about staying with her tonight?”

  “Who said it’s a her?”

  This stops me. “It’s a guy?”

  “Yeah. Is that a problem?”

  I shrug, fighting the urge to ask who it is. “No, it’s fine. It’s none of my business. I just assumed—”

  “One kiss and we’re exclusive?” Nadine looks indignant for a couple of seconds, then gives me her gamine smile. “You’re better off not assuming anything with me.”

  I pull the flash drive out of the computer and slip it into my pocket, then take out my wallet.

  “Coffee’s on the house, moron. Call it rent for last night.”

  “Thanks.” I walk to the back door and push it open.

  “Hey,” Nadine calls.

  “Yeah?” I ask, turning.

  “My friend’s gay.”

  For a couple of seconds I don’t know what to say. When I do speak, I sound like an idiot. “Uh . . . okay. I just wanted to make sure, you know . . . you had somewhere safe.”

  She nods once, still smiling.

  And then I’m out the door.

  Chapter 24

  I’m sitting quietly in the kitchen of the house where I grew up, waiting for Dr. Kirby. My mother’s in the den with my father, who might sense an ominous portent in the coincidence of my visit with that of his physician. The house smells different than it did when I was a boy. The sweet scent of Maker’s Mark is familiar, but the tang of rubbing alcohol is new, as is the odor of liniment and the melted wax Dad uses to soothe his arthritis. But below these smells lives a sour stink of fermented urine that no disinfectant will quite eradicate, no matter how many times Mom scrubs the furniture and floors. Dad keeps blue plastic urinals beside his chair and bed now, so that he won’t have to make the risky journey to the bathroom every hour, which I certainly understand and will probably do myself someday. But the cumulative result of all this alters the house so fundamentally that it doesn’t feel like the same one I ran hell-for-leather through with my big brother when he was still with us.

  The hours since I left Nadine’s this morning have been full. Just after midday, Byron Ellis called to let me know that the locum tenens pathologist had declared Buck’s murder to be death by misadventure—an accident. Most likely a fall, precipitated by digging above a cave mouth. Worse, Sheriff Joe Iverson claims to have found the very brick that Buck’s head impacted when he fell, a brick that Iverson’s deputies supposedly discovered near the river at Lafitte’s Den. This brick supposedly lay directly under the drop from the sandstone shelf above the cave. This scenario is preposterous, of course, and most townspeople will realize that. Few will believe that Buck cracked his skull wide open in a fall, then crawled into the Mississippi River to drown himself.

  But no one will protest.

  The coroner also informed me that he’d found bone fragments in the soil samples I brought him from the mill site—specifically from the dirt scraped from the wall of the trench beside the factory pier. Better still, he’d detected blood on one of the brick fragments from the other area where Buck had been digging. This discovery left Byron Ellis with a dilemma: Should he make these further findings public and try to weather the political fury that will result? Or keep his head down and let the locum tenens pathologist push the party line?

  “The county supervisors are already talking about trying to unseat me,” he told me on the phone. “That’s not easy, because I was elected by the people. But if the past is any guide, they’ll find a way. That damn Arthur Pine can twist the law inside out to screw anybody who bucks them.”

  I assured Byron that I understood the danger and admired him for what he’d been willing to do so far.

  “Whole town’s up in arms at me already,” he said. “That’s what I hear. If I go on record about the bone and the blood, and the state comes in here and stops construction, folks’ll run me out of town on a rail. Not just white folks, either.”

  “I’m not going to pressure you, Byron.”

  “Let me get back to you later,” he said. “I’m talking to my lawyer, and also those activists I told you about. They’re about ready to challenge that Poker Club. But they don’t want to risk stopping the mill from coming in here. Too many of my people will get jobs behind that.”

  “I understand. Let’s talk later today, or tonight.”

  I haven’t heard from the coroner since, but I have hope that he’ll come through. After talking to Byron, I decided to delay handing over the flash drive to law enforcement until after I publish the image it contained. Given the influence of the Poker Club over the police and sherif
f’s departments, showing them the photo of Buck Ferris and Dave Cowart together on the murder night would only invite pressure not to run it in the paper. They can’t legally stop me, of course. But if the Poker Club murdered Buck, they might be willing to go to extremes to prevent my pointing a finger at one of their minions.

  “Marshall?” says my mother, leaning through the kitchen door. “Jack Kirby just texted me. He’ll be here in five minutes.”

  “Thanks, Mom. You need any help in there?”

  She gives me a resolute smile. “No, thanks. You greet Dr. Kirby. He usually comes to the side door.”

  Blythe McEwan is ten years younger than her husband. She has stood staunchly beside him through fifty years of alcoholism, fifty years of unrelieved grief, and now the long degeneration of his body. What reprieve can she be hoping for today? “Will do, Mom.”

  She nods and goes back to my father.

  I push all thoughts of Buck Ferris and Sally Matheson out of my mind. If Dr. Kirby has bad news, Dad will not take it well, and if the past is any guide, he might get combative. I’m not the right person to soothe him in that instance; in fact, I usually have the opposite effect. But Mom wants me here, so I will remain, to be of whatever use I can. To an outsider, my attitude toward my father and his plight might seem cold, even cruel. But that attitude would be based upon ignorance.

  How deep is the rift between my father and me?

  He never met my son. Not once. Adam was born in 2006, two months after one of the most embarrassing experiences our family ever endured. In April of that year, I won the Pulitzer Prize for my book on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the award ceremony was scheduled for May. My parents only flew up because the committee had specifically invited Dad. He and I were the first father and son to have won the prize for journalistic work—his for Editorial Writing forty years earlier, mine for Letters (General Nonfiction). James and Franz Wright had won for poetry in 1972 and 2004, respectively, but the story of an award-winning multimedia journalist raised by a newspaper legend had caught the interest of the media worldwide.