by Greg Iles
At last Ruff runs out of questions and tells me I’m free to go. As I rise to leave, I hear a commotion in the front of the house. Angry voices, all male, the volume steadily increasing. I hear what sounds like a scuffle, and then a red-faced deputy charges into the sunroom. My fists tighten involuntarily. It’s the black-haired deputy who stole the fingerprints from Drew’s private bathroom while Drew gave his blood for the DNA test. Deputy Burns, I remember, or so Chief Logan guessed after I described the guy.
“You better straighten out those boys at the door!” Burns yells at Detective Ruff. “Or they’ll wind up in the county jail!”
Ruff squares his shoulders at the shorter man. “What the hell are you talking about, Burnsie?”
“Sheriff Byrd is commandeering this crime scene. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Ruff glances at me, at his men, then back at the deputy. “You been smoking something from your evidence room, Burnsie? Didn’t you notice this house is in the middle of Natchez? That makes it our jurisdiction.”
Before Deputy Burns can reply, two more deputies appear behind him. This makes it a fair fight: three county officers versus three from the city. The paramedics are staring in amazement and anticipation. They’ve already declared the Wilsons dead, and are only waiting for the police photographer to complete her work.
Emboldened by the appearance of his comrades, Deputy Burns continues. “Sheriff Byrd’s the chief law enforcement officer of Adams County. The city’s part of the county. That makes everything his jurisdiction. He can take over any crime scene he deems necessary for public safety, and he already told me that these murders will be investigated by the sheriff’s department. End of story.”
John Ruff draws himself to his full height and puts his hands on his hips. “Burnsie, if you or your buddies touch anything in this room, you’re gonna find yourself in a world of shit. You’ve already contaminated the crime scene by tromping three men through it without any need. Now get your ass outside and wait for the sheriff and the chief to work this mess out.”
Unbelievably, Deputy Burns lays his right hand on the butt of the automatic in his gun belt. “If you want me to arrest you, I will,” he says in a bellicose tone, nodding as though to convince himself.
The paramedics blanch.
John Ruff is clearly outraged, but he’s also reluctant to escalate this argument into an armed confrontation. After fifteen years working with seasoned professional cops in Houston, I have no patience for this kind of crap. I step in front of Ruff and address the deputy in a strong voice.
“Look over there,” I say, pointing at the Wilsons’ bloody corpses. “Do you see those people?”
“You stay out of this, Cage,” he snarls.
“Look at them!” I shout. “They were murdered less than ten minutes ago. Are you investigating the crime? No. You’re standing here obstructing the investigation, bowing up for a fight like some junior high redneck. There’s an enemy in this town, Deputy Burns, but it’s not the police department. You and Ruff are after the same thing—or you should be—and your boss’s small-town political bullshit shouldn’t have a thing to do with this crime.”
The deputy’s chin is quivering, but whether from shock or anger, I can’t tell.
“You’re not looking at them!” I yell, unable to control my frustration. “How many murders have you seen like that in your career, Burns? One? None? You think a single person in this town gives a damn about Billy Byrd’s feud with Chief Logan? You leave that crap back at the station and do your work!”
The deputy’s gun is out of its holster now. He’s not pointing it at me, but it’s plain that he’d like to. “I’m puttin’ your ass under arrest!” he yells, spittle flying from his mouth. “Goddamn big-city lawyer!”
I hold out both hands. “Go ahead, Deputy. Arrest me. Arrest me, and in thirty days I will have your ass.”
“Penn?” Ruff says, gripping my shoulder from behind. “Take it easy, now. Seeing these bodies got you upset. But don’t be stupid.”
I know Ruff is right, but under the gaze of the Wilsons’ dead eyes, I cannot rein in my anger. “You think these bodies upset me?” I take a step toward Deputy Burns. “I was an assistant district attorney in Houston for fifteen years. I’ve seen more murder victims than you will in your whole career. I’ve sent twelve men and women to death row. You want to arrest me? Clap ’em on. You just be ready to take the heat for it.”
The deputy’s face has gone from scarlet to gray, but he still gets out his handcuffs. He’s trying to fit one around my wrist when Sheriff Billy Byrd swaggers into the room.
“Whoa there, Tommy boy,” he says in the voice of a poor man’s John Wayne.
“Sheriff Byrd?” sputters Burns. “This crazy sumbitch—”
“I heard him,” says the sheriff. “You just leave him be for now.” Byrd glances at Detective Ruff. “Did you get a statement from Mr. Cage, John?”
The detective nods warily.
“Okay.” Byrd shifts his gaze to me. “You’re free to go.”
I start to ask him about the jurisdictional dispute, but then I remember the flash drive concealed in my shoe. With a last look at Paul and Janet Wilson, I exit the house through the door no one answered when I arrived and walk down the sidewalk to my Saab.
Closing myself into the little space, I start the engine, but I don’t pull into the street. My hands are cold and shaking, and my chest feels full of something besides air. “What’s happening?” I ask aloud. “I mean what the fuck?”
One thing I know for sure: the murders of Paul and Janet Wilson will stun this town in a way that the attack on Cyrus White’s safe house never could, and possibly even more deeply than the murder of Kate Townsend. The reason is simple. When drug dealers get killed—black or white—the public perception is that the victims simply got what was coming to them. When a young girl is raped and murdered—black or white—our knowledge of the primitive laws of attraction and male sexual dominance informs our response. But when middle-aged white people minding their own business are murdered in their home in the safest part of town, the fundamental order of Southern life is thrown out of balance. And the repercussions of such a severe anomaly are inevitably dire. By noon tomorrow, the full resources of law enforcement will be mobilized to a degree only surpassed by the response to a kidnapping or to the murder of a cop. A multiagency task force will almost certainly be formed. The DEA and FBI will be part of it. But as I sit in my idling car on Espero Drive, images of Paul and Janet’s butchered bodies running through my mind, one question comes to me: What are all those agencies going to do? Because despite having been embroiled in this mess from the start, I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
Chapter
24
“Dad, it’s Penn. You awake?”
“You know me,” my father says in his deep voice. “I’m dictating and smoking a cigar.”
Dad was doing exactly the same thing thirty years ago, while I tried to stay awake to watch the late movie, back in the dark ages before HBO. Eternally behind with his hospital charts, he would dictate late into the night and then reward himself with three hours of reading on the Civil War or the history of the Crusades.
“I heard the ER’s been pretty busy tonight,” he says with understated curiosity.
“Yeah.”
“What do you need, son?”
“A gun.”
“What kind?”
Not a moment’s hesitation. My father has collected guns for most of his life. The bulk of his collection consists of Civil War muskets, with a few pieces dating back to the Revolutionary War. But he also has a nice collection of modern pistols.
“I need an automatic with a big magazine.”
“I’ve got a nice Browning you can use. You on your way over?”
“Yep.”
“You in a hurry?”
“I need to get some sleep.”
“I’ll meet you outside.”
Five years ago, my parents’ h
ouse—my childhood home—was burned to the ground by a man trying to stop me from working on a thirty-year-old race murder. Five years, yet I still find myself turning into our old neighborhood, as though the house I grew up in is still standing. It’s not. My father had the wreckage cleared but built a new house elsewhere. Now our old lot holds only flowers and a small granite monument to Ruby Flowers, the black maid who raised me and my older sister. Ruby died as a result of the fire that took the house, and part of me died with her. The new house is south of town, where most new construction in Natchez goes up.
True to his word, Dad is standing in his carport when I arrive. In the glow of my headlights, I see the Browning automatic hanging from his right hand. I leave my engine running and walk up to him. Seventy-two years old, half crippled by diabetes, arthritis, and coronary artery disease, he still manages to practice medicine more hours per week than most internists fresh out of medical school.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the gun.
“Is Annie in danger?” he asks.
This is no idle question. The man who burned our house five years ago also targeted my daughter for kidnapping and death. “Not yet. But I try to learn from past mistakes.”
Dad nods. “By the time most people realize they’re in danger, it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“I may give Daniel Kelly a call.”
“Sounds like a good idea. I thought he was working in Afghanistan.”
Daniel Kelly is a former Delta Force operator who worked with me during the Del Payton case. Now an operative for a prestigious corporate security firm based in Houston, Kelly has truly frightening skills, but more important, he knows and loves my family.
Dad probes my eyes with a gaze that has searched out illness and deception for more than forty years. “What happened tonight? You look shell-shocked.”
“Somebody tried to kill a drug dealer. Three black guys got killed—teenagers, probably.”
Dad shakes his head. “That’s not all of it, is it?”
“Paul and Janet Wilson were just murdered in their home.”
Now it’s my father who looks shell-shocked. “Professor Wilson?”
“And his wife. Cut to pieces.”
“Who the hell would do that?”
“I’m not sure yet. I think the killer was after an exchange student who lives with them.”
“Why? Is this a drug thing, too?”
“I think so.”
“Are you involved in that case?”
“In a way. I’m afraid it might be connected to Drew’s case.”
“How?”
“This is you and me, right?”
Dad gives me a look that makes me embarrassed to have asked the question.
“Ellen Elliott was addicted to Lorcet,” I tell him. “Drew had the DEA on his back for keeping her supplied, so his girlfriend started getting it for Ellen to make life easier on Drew. She got it from this black dealer.”
Dad closes his eyes. “Damn it. I suspected something like that.”
“What?”
“Drew called me once and asked if I’d write Ellen a scrip for fifty Lorcet.”
“Did you?”
“Sure. But I knew if he was asking me to do it, he was already at the limit himself.”
“Do a lot of local people abuse that drug?”
“Patients ask for it by name every day. I take it myself for arthritis. Couldn’t get by without it. But it’s addictive as hell. You don’t hear about it much. Oxycontin gets all the headlines, but Lorcet is an opium derivative, too, and it makes you feel pretty good.”
I look down at the Browning and familiarize myself with the safety mechanisms.
Dad grips my wrist in his hand. “You’re shaking, Penn.”
“That crime scene was pretty bad.”
“What can I do to help?”
This is no idle offer. At nineteen my father was part of the infamous retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. He also had occasion to use violence a couple of times in civilian life after that. But I would never put him in harm’s way now, despite his willingness to put himself there. “Nothing right now, but I appreciate the offer.”
“You know my number.”
As I start to go, an idea hits me. “Do you have a pistol with one of those lights on it? Sonny Cross had one, and it looked pretty useful.”
“A laser sight?”
“No, it was more like a powerful flashlight.”
“A tactical light,” Dad says. “Sure, I’ve got one I can mount on that Browning. Be right back.”
He disappears into the house, then returns with a small black object. “Look here. You flip this catch, then slide the light onto these grooves cut into the gun stock. When you let go of the catches, it’s locked on.” He demonstrates the move for me twice. “To flick on the light, just push up this lever with your trigger finger.”
I test the light by shining it toward Dad’s backyard fence. An armadillo rooting in the yard freezes, then scuttles away.
“Take him out,” Dad says. “Those bastards tear this yard to pieces.”
“I’ll leave him to you. I’d better get moving. I’ve got a babysitter keeping Annie.”
Dad frowns. “Caitlin’s still out of town?”
“Yeah.”
He shakes his head but says nothing. He doesn’t have to.
“I’ll see you, Dad.”
“Remember,” he calls, “there’s more where that came from.”
The gun or Caitlin? I wonder. But of course he meant both.
By the time I reach Washington Street, my hands have steadied a bit. I park in front of my house and look over at the town house to the right of mine—Caitlin’s house when she’s in town, which is less and less of late. Some nights when she’s gone, I look that way with an infantile wish that I’ll see lights on inside, signifying a surprise return, but that’s never happened. And tonight I don’t even feel the wish. It’s just an empty house.
I walk up the three steps to my familiar blue door, unlock it, and walk inside. For a brief moment I’m suffused with terror, an irrational fear that I’ll find Annie and Mia slashed and bleeding on the floor. But of course they’re not. Mia is asleep on the couch in my study, balled up beneath the comforter from my bed. Her cell phone sits on the back of the couch beside a paperback copy of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Annie is undoubtedly asleep in her room upstairs.
I don’t know whether to wake Mia or to let her sleep through the night. I don’t even know what to do about myself. I’m exhausted, but I don’t think I could sleep without a strong sedative. I should have asked Dad for something. Maybe a Lorcet.
Sensory overload, says a voice in my head. I told Deputy Burns the truth about my past in Houston, but that was a long time ago. Another life ago. The grotesque scenes I saw tonight hit me with the same impact they would a layman, or perhaps even harder. I think human beings can endure only so much carnage and waste; beyond a certain limit, one either breaks down or becomes utterly desensitized. That break point differs from person to person, but I sense that I’m close to mine. I’ve seen dozens of murder victims in person, and hundreds in crime scene photographs. I’ve watched nine of the twelve men and women I sent to death row be executed. I watched my wife die a horrific death from cancer. And I watched the maid who practically raised me die from third-degree burns despite my best efforts to save her. Spread among those dead are the people I’ve watched suffer but live to tell about it. If this tally continues to grow, I’m not sure which side of the equation I’ll tip over on—breakdown or numbness.
“Hey,” says Mia, blinking and smiling up from the sofa. “What time is it?”
“Around midnight,” I reply, setting my father’s Browning on top of a glass-fronted bookcase behind me.
Mia squints at me. “Are you okay? You don’t look good.”
“I’m not sure.”
She rises from the couch and walks past me to the hall. “Stay there. I’ll make some tea.”
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I obey, grateful to be told what to do. When Mia returns with the tea, I’m still standing in the spot where she left me, staring at the rows of hardcover books on my shelves.
“Come sit,” she says, setting two china cups on the coffee table before the sofa.
“Sarah chose those cups,” I say softly.
Mia watches me closely. “Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen pictures of her in the photo albums. Annie showed them to me.”
I nod distantly.
“I think Annie still misses her a lot.” Mia sucks her lips between her teeth as if reluctant to continue. “Do you?”
“Sometimes.”
“I thought you’d have a family picture out. With the three of you, you know?”
“I used to. I think it started to bother Caitlin after a while. She never said anything, but I took it down when I repainted and then pretended to forget to put it back up.”
Mia nestles herself into the corner of the sofa and tucks her legs beneath her. “I think the tea’s ready to drink.”
I walk to the coffee table and drain half my cup in one swallow. The tea is almost scalding, but I welcome the pain.
“Can you tell me what happened tonight?” Mia asks.
“You don’t already know?”
“Nobody called me with anything new. Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me?”
“I guess. It’ll be all over town by tomorrow. I just…I’m really wiped out.”
“Thirty words or less?”
“Somebody tried to kill a black drug dealer. He got three of the dealer’s friends instead. And the Wilsons are dead.”