by Greg Iles
“This woman is eighty years old, she’s got third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body, and a broken hip.”
“Tom, for a DNR we need it on paper.”
“She also has carcinoma of the lung,” Dad says softly. “No one knows that but me. There’s nothing on paper, but she’s discussed it with me on several occasions. No extraordinary measures. Do not resuscitate. Turn off those alarms.”
The whole apparatus of technology stands poised on the edge of action, and my father has ordered it to stand down.
“Tom, are you sure?” asks Carelli.
“I take full responsibility. Turn off those goddamned alarms.”
One by one the alarms go off. Dad looks at me, his eyes weary. “Go on out, Penn. Check on Annie and your mother. You don’t want to see this.”
“Not until she’s gone.”
He nods slowly. “All right.” He turns to the assembled staff. “Thanks for the effort, everybody. We’d like to be alone with her.”
I squeeze Ruby’s good hand, kiss her forehead, and wait for the end. Looking at this ravaged shell of a woman, I find it hard to believe that she was the towering figure who saved me from that German shepherd. But she was. She is. As the last nurse files out, the drumbeat of rotor blades descends over the hospital, announcing the helicopter that will return to Jackson without its scheduled passenger.
Ruby Flowers is leaving Natchez by another route.
Our family has gathered in the small chapel provided by the hospital for patients and their families. It’s a small, dim room, with electric candles, two pews, an altar, and some “new” Bibles full of undistinguished prose. I’m not a believer myself, but in time of death you can do a lot worse than the King James Bible for comfort.
My mother is praying quietly at the altar. Dad sits beside me in the front pew, with Annie on his lap. This is the first time we have been together in anything like a church since Sarah’s funeral. My older sister was with us for that, but she’s been teaching in Ireland ever since. Today was a good day to be there and not here.
I have never seen my father this angry. Not even during the malpractice trial. He is by nature a gentle and even-tempered man, and his medical experience has taught him to be calmer as situations deteriorate. But right this minute he has blood in his eye, and I understand the feeling. If I knew with certainty that Ray Presley set that fire, or that Leo Marston had ordered it, I would shoot them both without a second thought.
Mom rises to her feet, then walks over and takes Annie from Dad. “We’d better check into a motel,” she says. “And we need to think about getting some clothes. I’m sure everything is ruined.”
“The insurance will cover most of it,” Dad replies. “The police are waiting to talk to me in the ER.”
Mom looks at him and shakes her head. “The things I cared about in that house, no insurance can replace.”
“I know that, Peggy.”
“Mom, I’m sorry,” I say uselessly. “I know this happened because of me.”
She reaches out with her free hand and squeezes my arm. “Let’s just get checked in somewhere. We need to take care of this little girl.”
Dad follows her to the door, then shuts it and comes back to me. “We’re going to need some protection, son. Real protection. Off-duty cops aren’t up to this. Who do we call?”
“I know some people in Houston. Serious people. An international security company. I’ll call the CEO right now.”
“I want them here tonight. I don’t care what it costs.”
“They’ll be here. And I’m paying.”
He sighs and looks at the altar. “Who do you think set that fire?”
“First guess? Ray Presley. I called his trailer while the house was burning. He wasn’t home. Could he have managed it after that poisoning attempt? After his heart attack or whatever?”
Dad nods. “Physically, he could do it. He’s a lot more able than I am. What about Marston?”
“Leo Marston knows everything that goes on in this town. He wouldn’t dirty his hands with the actual deed, but he’d order someone to do it.”
“I hate to think Ray would go that far. Kidnapping Annie . . . my God. What do you want to do?”
“Let’s get settled somewhere first, get the security in place. Then we’ll talk about it.”
He opens the chapel door and nearly walks over Livy, who’s standing in the hall. She backs up so that we can exit, and as we do I see my mother and Annie waiting at the end of the hall, by the wide ER doors.
“Tell me what I can do,” Livy says. “Your mother said you’re going to a motel.”
“For now. We need to get Annie settled. She—”
Suddenly the ER doors swing open, and Caitlin Masters runs up the corridor with a camera swinging around her neck and her black hair flying behind her.
“I just came from your house,” she says. “Penn, I’m so sorry.”
“Caitlin—”
“I need to talk you and your father. Right now.”
“What is it?”
She looks at Livy. “Could you excuse us for a moment, Mrs. Sutter?”
Livy bristles and looks at me, expecting me to tell Caitlin she can stay.
“Why don’t we go in the chapel?” I suggest. “We’ll just be a minute, Livy.”
Livy starts to say something to Caitlin but doesn’t. Instead she bites her bottom lip and watches us walk into the chapel.
Caitlin’s energy is like a flame inside the little room. She can’t remain still, and her eyes simmer with anger. “Someone kidnapped Annie?” she asks. “Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And they brought her back? With a warning note?”
“Yes.”
“The same person who set the fire?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Okay . . . okay.” She nods furiously, then paces out a tight circle. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Caitlin, what’s going on? Why are you so worked up?”
“I’ll print the story.”
“The story. About the fire?”
She blinks in confusion. “The fire? Hell, no. The slander. Marston being behind the Payton murder. You say it, I’ll print it. In type big enough to give him a coronary over breakfast.”
I simply stare at her.
“Maybe that’s the answer,” Dad says. “Last night we thought it was.”
“Last night you had a house,” I remind him. “What changed your mind?”
Caitlin stops pacing and looks me dead in the eye. “Annie, for one thing.”
“This girl is good people,” Dad says, squeezing her shoulder.
“For another, my instincts have started humming. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. Maybe because this happened two days after we went to see Stone, and Stone says Marston was behind Payton’s death. Maybe because John Portman threatened you, and we know he worked the Payton case in sixty-eight. And we know Marston and J. Edgar Hoover were friends. Maybe it’s because I get a funny vibe from Marston’s daughter. All I know is that I’m not sitting still while these bastards go after people I care about. They want to play hardball? They’re going to get the game of their goddamn lives.”
My father looks like he wants to kiss her.
“What time is your deadline?” I ask.
“Just call me after you guys get settled somewhere. I’ll come to you.”
“I don’t know what to say. Just . . . thank you.”
When we leave the chapel, Caitlin walks past Livy without a word. She hugs my mother by the ER doors, kisses Annie, then slips through the doors and disappears.
Livy keeps pace with Dad and me as we walk down the hall and join my mother and Annie.
“Where do you think we should go, Tom?” Mom asks.
“The Prentiss Motel is right up on the highway. Let’s stay there tonight. We’ll worry about the long term tomorrow.”
As Dad opens the ER doors, Mom follows him through with Annie on her
hip, leaving Livy and me alone on this side. The awkwardness between us is palpable. Two hours ago we were in each other’s arms. Now . . .
“What can I do?” she asks. “I’ll help with Annie, go out for food. Whatever you need.”
“I think it better just be family tonight,” I say gently. “Thanks for offering, though. Thanks for today too.”
Her eyes cloud with frustration and confusion. “Penn, for God’s sake . . . what’s happening here?”
“Maybe you should ask your father.”
CHAPTER 27
When the Examiner hit the driveways at four this morning, it polarized the town. Caitlin’s words entered the public consciousness like electrodes dipped into water, ionizing opinion to positive or negative with no neutral between, the opinions predictable in most cases by the simple indicator of skin color. The process took about three hours: from the time the insomniacs, farmers, and shift workers walked outside to read the front page by street lamp until the last Washington Street matrons toddled downstairs to read what the maid had laid out beside their morning coffee. By seven a.m. telephones were ringing all over town, and by eight every conversation from the sewer ditches and oil fields to the paper mill and the hospitals was centered on two men: Leo Marston and Penn Cage.
My only contributions to Caitlin’s story were the actual accusations against Marston, slander per se if I ever heard it. Of course, my slanderous charges became libel per se—meaning that the libeled party would not have to prove damages—the moment Caitlin printed and distributed them. My phrases, preserved for the ages, ran as follows:
There is no doubt that Delano Payton was murdered on May 14, 1968. It is just as certain that former State Attorney General Leo Marston, known locally as “Judge” Marston because of his stint on the state supreme court, was the man behind the conspiracy that resulted in Payton’s murder. Under Mississippi law, that makes Marston as guilty of murder as the man who planted the bomb. Murder by explosive device is a capital crime in this state, and there is no statute of limitations. I urge the local district attorney to reopen the Payton case. If he does, he will quickly find enough proof to send Leo Marston to death row at Parchman.
Asked by “the publisher” to describe the evidence on which I based my accusations, I stated:
I am in contact with certain members of the Justice Department who have long known of Marston’s involvement in the crime. Conscientious citizens and law enforcement officers have also come forward with previously unknown facts about the Payton murder. I believe we would already have seen a prosecution of Judge Marston but for the fact that John Portman, the present director of the FBI and a former federal judge, was involved in the original Payton investigation in 1968. Some former FBI agents believe the Bureau itself may have been involved in a cover-up of certain facts of Payton’s death, but this will be difficult to prove without the original FBI file on the Payton case, which is sealed until the year 2007, ostensibly for reasons of national security.
I was purposefully vague about Marston’s possible motives for the crime, but on Caitlin’s advice I hinted that Marston, heretofore considered a moderate on race, might secretly have been working in concert with members of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to prevent black workers from rising into “white jobs.”
Because of my reference to John Portman, the wire services picked up the story before noon, and just before one Caitlin received a call from CNN in Atlanta. There were already two network stringers in town to cover the “black-white” mayoral election, and they spent the morning outside my family’s motel rooms, pleading for comment on the story.
But the morning paper had far more tragic consequences. Caitlin had written a separate piece about the fire and kidnaping. In it she vividly described the rescues of Ruby Flowers and Officer Ervin, and also Ruby’s death in the ER. She quoted several citizens on Ruby’s character, in particular the pastor of the Mandamus Baptist Church, of which Ruby had been a devoted member. She also quoted the fire chief, who pronounced the fire arson, based on the discovery of an incendiary device in the collapsed attic of our house. Caitlin concluded by saying that the arson and kidnaping were clearly attempts to stop my investigation into the Delano Payton murder. It was yellow journalism at its finest, and the consequences were immediate.
At a little after one, a seventy-four-year-old white man named Billy Earl Whitestone walked down his sidewalk to get his mail from the box. He got both barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun instead, fired from a red Monte Carlo driven by two unidentified black youths. The gunmen stopped long enough to drop a copy of the Examiner on Mr. Whitestone’s shattered skull, but even if they hadn’t, the shooting would have been recognized as a reprisal for Ruby’s death. In his younger days Billy Earl Whitestone had achieved national notoriety as a Grand Wizard of the White Knights of the Imperial Ku Klux Klan. He had also enjoyed a brief renaissance of fame during the 1980s when, Wallace-like, he marched at the head of some black civil rights parades, but apparently this belated conversion had not sufficiently impressed certain members of the African-American community. At least not the two young men in the Monte Carlo.
A drive-by shooting in Natchez is the equivalent of a race riot in Los Angeles. Within the hour Mayor Warren went on the local country radio station to appeal for calm and to condemn the “reckless and irresponsible charges” made against “one of the city’s finest citizens” by former Natchezian Penn Cage. He also blasted the “Yankee editor” of the local newspaper. Shad Johnson also took to the airwaves—the black AM station—to urge restraint in the face of “the deteriorating racial situation.” Unlike Wiley Warren, Shad urged the city authorities to look into the charges printed in the morning paper and, if they were found to be substantive, to reopen the investigation into Del Payton’s murder. Despite his wish that the Payton murder remain a non-issue, Shad could not in the aftermath of the fire and shooting afford to be seen as anything but a champion of the black community, his core of electoral support.
Three hours after Whitestone’s death, I was invited to the police station to discuss the statements I’d made in the newspaper, particularly my reference to “local law enforcement officers.” The police chief conducted the interview, and he seemed to labor under the misapprehension that I was subject to arrest if I didn’t answer his questions. I calmly and courteously enumerated my rights under the Constitution, then explained that I had first contacted the district attorney about my suspicions and found him apathetic. I refused to answer any questions, and suggested that the chief talk to Austin Mackey instead. As I departed, he told me he considered the death of Billy Earl Whitestone my responsibility, and I didn’t argue. He was mostly right.
I left my bodyguard outside during this interview. He and his three associates from Argus Security had arrived from Houston just after midnight, flying into Baton Rouge via Argus’s Gulfstream V and driving up to Natchez in four separate rental cars. They checked into the Prentiss Motel, and by two a.m. my family was being protected by some of the finest bodyguards in the world. The total cost of this protection was staggering, but my memory of Annie’s quivering chin was enough to make me ashamed for even thinking of money.
Three of the four guards were former FBI agents, and fit exactly the mental image I’d had before they arrived. Lean and tight-lipped. Late forties. Economical movements. Nine-hundred-dollar business suits specially tailored to conceal the bulges of various firearms. The fact that they were former FBI agents concerned me a little, but their boss had assured me that none of his men had worked under John Portman. The fourth Argus man was about thirty-five and blond, with the lean, confident look of a professional mountain guide. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and hiking boots. Daniel Kelly was a veteran of the army’s Delta Force, and like the others, was billed at eight hundred dollars per day.
After hearing the details of our situation, the senior member of the detail suggested the following plan. One operative should remain with my mother and Annie at all times, another with my fat
her, and one with me. The fourth would sleep at the hotel for six hours, then relieve one of the other men, beginning a continuous rotation. I agreed, and chose Daniel Kelly as my guard.
After my interview at the police station, Kelly and I stopped by the offices of the Examiner, where we found Caitlin doing her best to handle a barrage of phone calls from other newspapers. She stopped working long enough to tell me that her father had called from Richmond and demanded to know what the hell she thought she was up to, then ordered her aboard the first Virginia-bound aircraft leaving Mississippi. Caitlin told him he had better get ready to mount a libel defense, because she was sticking by her story, and if he fired her, he should prepare to read further installments of the Payton story in the Washington Post. I didn’t envy Mr. Masters. Caitlin had been preparing for this day for a long time.
Thirty minutes before the courthouse closed, Leo Marston filed suit against myself and the Natchez Examiner for a grand total of five million dollars, his complaint drafted in record time by his junior law partner, Blake Sims. Actually, they filed two separate suits—one for slander and one for libel—neatly severing my fate from that of the Examiner, which, as part of a media group, will have a battery of attorneys on retainer, many of them First Amendment specialists. A deputy served me with the papers just as our family was leaving the motel for dinner at the Shoney’s Restaurant across the street.
I invited the Argus men to eat with us, but they took their jobs too seriously for that. Two stood in the front parking lot near their cars, like businessmen shooting the breeze after an early dinner, while Daniel Kelly covered the rear entrance. I hadn’t felt that safe in a long time. The Argus men made quite an impression on Annie too. She’d spent most of her waking hours since the fire on my mother’s lap, but during dinner she began to loosen up, using the Shoney’s crayons to play each of us in games of tic-tac-toe.
Ruby’s death hung over the adults like a pall, but we tried to focus on the good times we’d had with her, which were countless, as they spanned thirty-five years. My father had stopped by Ruby’s house earlier to give her husband, Mose—a retired pulpwood cutter—a substantial check and a gallon of Wild Turkey. They talked for half an hour, shared some whisky, and Dad left the house wondering how long the old man would survive without Ruby around to take care of him.