Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  In my mind I hear Dr. Kirby telling me that people in Bienville have died over the years without their deaths ever being recognized as homicide. “You’ve known that all these years?”

  Max smiles again, then raises his chin and scratches his neck. “Didn’t I just tell you I know everything that goes on in this town? Why do you think the investigation never turned up anything suspicious? The police blamed that accident on the rain and the dark, and that was the end of it. I don’t think Duncan even questioned the accident report.”

  “Who caused that wreck, Max? Local Klansmen?”

  “Not local, no.” He hesitates, then seems to decide I can’t do anything about it after so many years. “It was that bunch from down in Ferriday. The ones behind the murders in Natchez. The Double Eagles.”

  The name rings a distant bell in my mind. I faintly recall a series of stories by a Louisiana reporter who died chasing the truth about cold cases in his parish. “How do you know it was them?”

  Max shrugs as if this kind of specificity is unimportant. “Don’t worry about it. I’m telling you this to illustrate a life principle. If you do what your daddy did—get a bug up your ass and start publishing things that’ll hurt me or my partners—there’s nothing anybody can do to save you. The Poker Club’s a goddamn institution. And institutions protect themselves. Your life’s in your own hands, boy. Don’t throw it away. That’s what I’m here to tell you.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Max.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He waves off my insult like he knows I have no choice but to work for him. “After you think about what I’ve said, you’ll come to the right conclusion. You’re smarter than your daddy was.”

  “You think?”

  “You tell me. Duncan’s been a drunk for fifty years. Got a fine son like you and treats you like you don’t exist. If he’d just eased up a little back in the sixties, practiced a little live and let live, his wife and baby would’ve been fine. Course, you and Adam never would have been born. But there’s no point speculating about that kind of thing. It’s the butterfly and the hurricane, right?”

  “I actually spend a lot of time doing that.”

  Max grins. “Clearly. Like what if Jet would’ve married you instead of Paul? That’s over with, Marshall. That water ran downstream twenty years ago. You can’t bring it back. Water don’t flow uphill. You need to bury your daddy and get your ass back to Washington, where you fit in.”

  “It’s time for you to go, Max.”

  He sniffs, then walks toward me from the window. “Do we have a deal?”

  It physically pains me to promise this man anything. “I’ll try to find Sally’s cache for you. But I think you’re lying about your wife. I think you killed Sally. I think she knew something about you. Something terrible. And you couldn’t risk her turning on you after all these years. You couldn’t risk people finding out what you really are. Or maybe you just couldn’t stand Sally knowing whatever it is.”

  Another change has come over him, like a storm cloud passing over a tree. The darkness in his eyes masks his thoughts from me. “All you need to think about,” he says in a dangerous voice, “is my son’s face when I show him the video of Jet grinding on your cock. Everything else is academic.”

  “We’re done, Max.”

  “For now. Just remember this: if Paul kills you . . . you deserved it.”

  “Bullshit. I paid him back for saving my life. I compromised myself to do it.”

  Max isn’t buying it. “Keep telling yourself that. You’re only breathing air right now because of him.”

  With that he turns his back on me and walks to the front door. I trail him to make sure he doesn’t veer down the hall to where Nadine is hiding. He doesn’t, but as he touches the doorknob, he sings out, “Na-dine! Is that you?” Then he laughs and walks through the door, slamming it behind him.

  Hurrying to the back window, I watch him round the house and stroll across my backyard like he’s thinking of buying it. Shame and fear boil through me, but above all, rage. What he told me about my father’s first family is something I never even considered. But when I think of Jack Kirby’s earlier warnings, it seems obvious. Max’s story of their murder typifies almost everything I hate about the South. A few uneducated assholes wrecked a man’s life for trying to help those less fortunate than himself. They murdered his wife and child and never paid for it—were never even accused of the crime. The community I was born into tacitly allowed that murder as a punishment for bucking the system. Just as it will allow the murder of Buck Ferris as punishment for threatening the paper mill and the new interstate—

  “Motherfucker,” I mutter as Max vanishes into the trees.

  Remembering Nadine, I trot down the hall and call loudly, “It’s Marshall! He’s gone! All clear! Nadine?”

  After about ten seconds, I hear a click through the wall. Five seconds after that, Nadine’s voice comes through the bedroom door.

  “Marshall? Say something only you would know.”

  “You kissed me at the industrial park.”

  The door opens, revealing Nadine standing with her mother’s gun in her right hand. “I hated that,” she says, her eyes wet with tears of anger. “Hiding like that.”

  “I’m sorry. Did you hear any of our conversation?”

  “Stuck back here? Hell, no. I’d rather have come out and jammed this gun into his balls and demanded the truth.”

  “Max would have enjoyed that. He’d have given you chapter and verse on your mother’s sexual preferences.”

  “And I’d have blown his balls off.” There is steel in Nadine’s voice. “I need more vodka,” she says, starting down the hall. “Am I crazy, or did I hear somebody sing part of the Chuck Berry song?”

  “That was Max on his way out. He knew you were back here. He saw you arrive.”

  “Was he following me?”

  I don’t want to get into the issue of Jet. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”

  “Did you ask about his alibi? Who told Sally that he slept with my mother?”

  “Tallulah Williams, he claimed. The family maid.”

  Nadine stops in the kitchen and turns back to me. “I’ve met Tallulah. I can see her knowing about an affair. I’m not sure I can see her telling Sally something that would hurt her, though.”

  “I may go talk to her about it. Tomorrow.”

  “Did Max tell you anything else?”

  “Let’s get that drink first.”

  She goes to the freezer for the Crater Lake, then drinks straight from the neck of the bottle. As I mix myself a gin and tonic, I tell her that Max admitted responsibility for the break-ins at her store and home. Then I give her a quick explanation of Sally’s data cache. Finally I tell her what Max said about the murder of my father’s wife and daughter.

  “These guys,” Nadine says, practically grinding her teeth in fury. “Their time is so over. They need to be erased.”

  “I thought you were a bleeding-heart liberal.”

  She looks up sharply. “Boy, have you got me wrong. I’m for social justice, sure. But I’m for moral justice above all. And those Poker Club bastards belong in jail or in the ground.”

  She takes another swig of vodka. “Have you told me everything?”

  Everything except the blackmail video of me having sex with Jet Matheson—

  “Did Max talk shit about my mother?”

  “No,” I lie. “But he did have an affair with her.”

  She shakes her head and takes another slug from the frosted bottle.

  “Take it easy, now. What do you want to do? Besides get drunk. Are you hungry? I really can fix us something.”

  A mocking laugh escapes her lips. “No, thanks. My friend’s expecting me.”

  “Well. Let me walk you out to your car. Just to be sure Max isn’t out there waiting for you. He could have doubled back.”

  “Okay.”

  Pistols in hand, we walk out into the dark and make our way over to Nadine’s Acur
a, which she parked behind some hedges at the side of my house. She gives me a pained smile, then unlocks the car and gets behind the wheel.

  “Drive fast to the gate,” I advise her. “And keep your pistol in your hand while you’re waiting for it to open.”

  She nods once, looking impatient to leave.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She looks down at the steering wheel. “Look . . . I found something back in the bathroom. I thought Max might see them if he went through the house, which I assumed would be bad.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She sticks her arm through the window, her closed fist turned down. “Open your hand.”

  I open my hand beneath hers.

  When she opens her fist, two sapphire earrings drop into my palm. A rush of recognition floods through me, and color rises into my cheeks.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Nadine says.

  Then she shifts the car into gear and drives away over the grass.

  Chapter 28

  After Nadine’s abrupt departure, I sit at the kitchen table with my pistol at my left hand, drinking gin and staring at the Watchman website on my laptop. Ben Tate has been drafting a couple of stories based on the information I sent him earlier, but I’m not sure how far we’re going to be able to go in print. Byron Ellis still hasn’t returned my latest call, and without the coroner backing up my assertions about human bones and blood being found at the mill site, we can’t publish. If Quinn Ferris’s experts come through, we could, but apparently they’ve gotten wind of the controversy down here and have raised chain-of-evidence questions. But these concerns seem secondary now.

  The realization that Max can betray Jet and me to Paul whenever he chooses has fundamentally altered my perception of reality. Max could be right: if Paul is confronted with a video of Jet making love to me, he might well flip out and kill me. After all, I do owe him my life. How big a leap would it be for him to decide he has the right to call in his marker? Before Jet left earlier, she instructed me not to call her. But I have no choice now. After pressing the speed-dial button for her number, I sit and stare at my burner phone without much hope of an answer.

  After four rings, she hisses, “I said not to call.”

  “Max showed up after you left.”

  “What?”

  “While Nadine was still here. She hid. Max knows about us, Jet. He took pictures.”

  “Pictures of what? Us hugging on the patio?”

  “Yes, but he was out there yesterday, too. He must have been following you. He filmed us on the steamer chair.”

  This time I hear only staticky silence.

  “Jet?”

  “He didn’t really . . .”

  “I haven’t seen the video, but I saw a still shot of us hugging. And he knew details from the patio yesterday. I believe him.”

  “We’re dead,” she says flatly.

  “No. But we have to start thinking about coming clean with Paul, before Max does.”

  “Marshall . . . we can’t tell Paul now. He just lost his mother.”

  “Hearing it from Max would be worse. Did you ever really think there was a way for us to be together without confronting Paul?”

  “Of course not. But there’s a world of difference between hearing that your wife wants to leave you and watching her screw your best friend in living color.”

  “You and Max agree on that. I don’t really think there’s much difference.”

  “With Paul there would be. If he sees me strip-walking across that lawn . . . then riding you? He’ll snap.”

  “You’re not giving him enough credit.”

  “Oh, you don’t know. You don’t live with him. I tell you things, and you just don’t hear me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “His head injuries, for one thing. Remember those? Blast-induced TBIs?”

  “Of course.”

  “How many IEDs did he survive?”

  I have to think about this. “Uhh . . . two direct ones that I know about. He suffered shock impacts from, what, three more?”

  “Four more. He gets terrible headaches, Marshall. He’s distracted, irritable, depressed. At Kevin’s baseball games, he gets violently angry. That’s the main reason I don’t go. I’m worried he’ll charge onto the field and assault a referee.”

  I have probably tried to minimize Paul’s problems in my mind.

  “Could Max have shown the video to him already?” she asks.

  “He could have, but I don’t think he has. Sally apparently created some sort of data cache before she died. A bunch of files that could destroy Max and the Poker Club. Information about the Azure Dragon deal. Has Max told you that?”

  “No. Did he say he told me?”

  “No. But he’s convinced that his partners will kill him over this stuff, and he wants me to find it for him. He’s using the video to motivate me.”

  Jet goes silent as she processes this. “Do you think those passwords I found on the necklace could open this cache, or whatever it is?”

  “I do. Max said it was mostly digital files. But something just occurred to me. Why would Sally gather a bunch of damning evidence if she wasn’t going to use it? Why go to the trouble if she was just going to kill herself? Or give it to someone else who wouldn’t use it?”

  “Maybe it was like my Bitcoin plan,” Jet suggests. “She considered using it, but in the end she went another way. Or Max killed her before she could.”

  “For some reason, I don’t think that’s it. He’s really scared.”

  “Marshall, it’s time to stop screwing around. It’s time to set my plan in motion.”

  “Your Seychelles plan?”

  “Yes. We leak to the Poker Club that Max cut them out of a bribe from the Chinese, then use the overseas bank account to back up the story.”

  “But Max didn’t,” I reply.

  “He can’t prove that. And if Tommy Russo, Wyatt Cash, and Beau Holland know about Sally’s cache, then they’re already going crazy right now. Even Buckman and Donnelly won’t tolerate a threat like that. If they find out Max cheated them while they’re in that state of mind, he’s dead.”

  The temptation to cross this line is strong. “I understand why you want to do it. But it feels like putting our heads in the tiger’s mouth. We’d be better off finding Sally’s cache and using that to keep Max quiet.”

  “We don’t have time. If we don’t stop Max now, he’ll destroy us. You don’t know him like I do. Maybe you did once, but not now. Max can’t abide not being in control. He’s had me on a choke chain for years.” Her voice is cracking. “We have to get that video,” she says with sudden intensity. “Did Max shoot it on his cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to get that phone. Not only for the video, but also because those passwords Sally left might open it.”

  She hasn’t heard a word I’ve said. “Try to calm down, Jet. Think rationally. And about Max’s phone . . . if you try to get that close to him, he’ll know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t have to try to get close. I’m his lawyer. I’ll grab the damn thing and run. If I can’t get away with it, I’ll destroy it.”

  “Jet—where are you? Are you home now?”

  “Home? Home is with you. Isn’t it?”

  I close my eyes, feeling something close to shame. “Yes.”

  “I’m at my house. Kevin’s here, and I need to get off. If you somehow find Sally’s cache, don’t give it to Max. Put it somewhere safe. That’s our salvation.”

  “And what do I tell Max when he calls?”

  “Leave Max to me.”

  Two minutes after I hang up, I decide that spending the night at my parents’ house might be a good idea. This isolated farmhouse has served me well as a trysting place, but in the present circumstance—with Paul decompensating from grief over his mother’s death and obsessed with his wife’s possible infidelity—my solitude has b
ecome a liability. Max’s sudden appearance showed me how useless my security gate is if someone means to do me harm, and sleeping where I’m expected to just seems stupid. Whoever killed Buck surely knows by now that I’m the person pushing hardest for a murder investigation. If they were willing to kill Buck, then surely they would kill me to keep themselves safe. Worst of all, it could be anybody. Someone I’ve known since I was a kid. So as not to worry my mother, I call and tell her my air-conditioning has gone out. When I ask if I can sleep in my old room for a night, she sounds overjoyed.

  My pistol feels heavy, and it’s a pain in the ass keeping it in my hand while I pack a weekend bag. But I recall Max’s jeans riding up, revealing his ankle holster. I’d be a fool to go anywhere without a weapon at the ready. Dr. Kirby told me as much. Keep your head on a swivel, he told me.

  Good medical advice.

  Once again I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, where I waited for Dr. Kirby earlier today. Mom is making sure Dad is settled in his bed. The kitchen smells of burned coffee, because she still keeps a carafe half-full all day. I think my mother has subsisted mostly on coffee since I was a little boy.

  “Marshall?” she murmurs, padding into the kitchen in her housecoat. “Can I fix you some food? I have some étouffée in the fridge. Made it myself.”

  “Where do you find time to cook from scratch?”

  She rinses her coffee cup, the ancient one with blythe hand-painted on it, then refills it from the carafe. “Marty Denis brought us a mess of peeled tails today, so I just had to make some for your father. All I see at the store now is those Chinese crawfish, and I don’t even consider them real.”

  Marty Denis runs a local bank that competes with Claude Buckman’s regional giant, Bienville Southern. He’s got Cajun heritage, but he spends most of his time on the country club golf course, not in his home state. “I guess Marty’s were seined out of some ditch in St. Martin Parish?”