Turning Angel

  “I know the routine.”

  “Word is, these raves have been going on for a couple of months now. Different location every time. And I’m hearing our boy Marko is behind them.”

  “Great.”

  “Yeah. You know, most of the X in Mississippi gets brought up from the Gulf Coast. The Asian gangs down there control the trade. And Marko’s been down to Gulfport and Biloxi a couple of times that I know about. I wanted you to know we’re going to be stepping up surveillance on him.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I just want to try to minimize the damage to St. Stephen’s if we have to take Marko down. You know, once you get X into a community, you usually get LSD, too. It tends to be cooked and sold by the same crews. One of my sources said some kids may have been doing acid last night at the lake party. And check this, Marko bought out a roadside fireworks stand and put on a psychedelic show at the end of the night. Sailed out on a party barge and let off five grand worth of rockets.”

  “Sorry I missed it. But where does a poor exchange student get the money to do that?”

  “That’s no mystery, bubba. It’s proving it that’s the bitch.”

  “Hey, do you know where Marko was yesterday between three and five-thirty?”

  Sonny Cross laughs darkly. “Already thought of that, my man. Checked it out, too. Marko was with Coach Anders from three until nearly six.”

  “At the school?”

  “No, at Anders’s house. Wade has just about wangled the kid a football scholarship at Delta State. Just what the world needs, right? One more soccer-style kicker. Anyway, I called Wade, and he told me he worked the phone for the kid about an hour. Marko was right there with him, doing homework. Then Wade tried to help Marko with his chemistry.” Cross laughs again. “The blind leading the blind. Anyway, no luck there.”

  “Thanks, Sonny. I really appreciate the information.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re the only one. You ask me, some of those people on the board have their heads most of the way up their asses.”

  “To be honest with you, I’m resigning from the board tomorrow. But I’ll do all I can to help with the Marko situation.”

  Silence. “Can you tell me why you’re resigning?”

  “It’s the Drew Elliott thing.”

  “Huh. I don’t see why you’d have to resign because of that. But you know more about it than I do. I hate to see you go, man.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “You ask me, Drew Elliott is a stand-up guy. Like the old-time docs. He actually gives a shit how you’re doing.”

  “I think you’re right. Look, I hate to go, but—”

  “One last thing, Penn. That Townsend girl wasn’t the all-American, lily-white virgin some people are making her out to be.”

  Suddenly my haste is gone. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve done a lot of surveillance in this town. And I’ve seen Kate Townsend in some places good girls just don’t go, if you get my drift.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “She hung with some pretty bad company sometimes. And she’s no stranger to drugs.”

  “Weed? Or worse?”

  “Worse, I think.”

  “This might be really important, Sonny. Important to Drew. Where exactly have you seen Kate?”

  “Brightside Manor.”

  This is the last thing I expected to hear. The Brightside Manor Apartments are a dilapidated group of buildings on the north side of town, the closest thing to a slum inside the city limits. Its occupants are poor and black, and the complex is named frequently in the newspaper as the site of crimes from domestic abuse to shootings. “What the hell was Kate Townsend doing there?”

  “I’m not sure. But I’ve spotted her there several times over the last few months. I’ve even got videotape of her going in and out. About once a month, now that I think about it.”

  “You think she was buying drugs?”

  “Maybe. I wasn’t going to bust her to find out, being who she was. But the thing is, girls like Kate Townsend get their drugs from friends, not dealers. And looking like she did, Kate wouldn’t have to buy drugs at all, you know?”

  “I’m listening, Sonny.”

  “Well, Brightside Manor is where Cyrus White lives.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The top drug dealer in the city of Natchez. And its Cyrus’s building that I’ve seen Kate go in and out of.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s why I say she wasn’t buying weed. If Kate Townsend was visiting Cyrus White to get drugs, she was there for some heavy shit. Powder cocaine, or maybe even heroin.”

  Every new sentence out of Cross’s mouth freaks me out more. “Do we have heroin in Natchez?”

  “Brother, every town has every drug. You just have to know where to look.”

  “Wonderful. Do you know anything else about Kate?”

  “No. But I’ve got a theory, if you want to wrap your mind around something scary.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’s wasn’t going there to buy anything. She was there to see Cyrus.”

  “You mean…”

  “That’s what I mean. Cyrus has a real taste for white girls. A well-documented taste.”

  Kate Townsend doing a drug dealer? “That sounds too crazy, Sonny.”

  “Cyrus ain’t your average drug dealer. In past years, most Natchez dealers were punks barely out of their teens. Cyrus is thirty-four and smart as a whip. By the time I heard he was in business, all his competition had been wiped out. Ruthlessly. But I couldn’t pin a thing on him.”

  Cyrus is thirty-four…Drew is forty. Did Kate have a thing for older men in general?

  “Cyrus is a veteran of Desert Storm, if you can believe it,” Sonny continues. “He was in the air force. I’ve been trying to bust him for over a year, but nothing sticks. He’s the Teflon nigger.”

  Sonny’s use of the N-word is completely unself-conscious. He belongs to that group of Southerners who modify their vocabulary by the company they’re in. Around whites he knows—and probably suspects he’s busting—Sonny says “nigger” without even a shading of caution. Around strangers, he’s as politically correct as the next guy. But there’s no question how he really sees the most frequent targets of his profession. There’s also no question that his prejudice is part of what makes African-Americans his primary targets, rather than the Kate Townsends of the world. But that prejudice isn’t unique to redneck sheriff’s detectives in Mississippi. It thrives in the blood of the American judicial system, all the way up to Washington.

  “Does Sheriff Byrd know about Kate’s connection to Cyrus?” I ask.

  The narcotics agent doesn’t answer for some time. Then he says, “It’s not that I don’t trust the sheriff, Penn. I just don’t like him messing around in my cases until it’s time to move on something. He can be a disruptive influence.”

  “I hear you, Sonny. I appreciate you telling me all this. Anything else you get on Kate, please let me know.”

  “Will do. And I’ll do anything I can to help out Dr. Elliott.”

  I hang up, my mind spinning with the new information. How well did Drew really know Kate? Did he see her as an all-American, lily-white virgin, as Sonny described her? Or did he know about her shadow side? If not, that hidden part of her life might hold the key to the second semen sample found in her corpse, and thus the key to freeing Drew.

  It’s that question that occupies me as I sit at my dining room table with Annie in the fading light of dusk. Annie is doing her homework, and now and then she throws a question at me, more out of boredom than from needing help. I’m supposedly working on my new novel, but what I’m really doing is trying to tease out the secret threads of Drew’s and Kate’s lives. My new awareness of Cyrus White has completely changed my perspective on Drew’s situation.

  One thing that keeps coming back to me is Drew’s assertion that the blackmailer who called him that first night and
told him to leave the money on the football field “sounded like a black kid.” I doubt that a thirty-four-year-old war veteran would sound like a kid, but sometimes people’s voices surprise you. Heavyweight champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson sounds like a five-year-old boy when he speaks. But the more likely answer is that a big-time drug dealer like Cyrus White probably has dozens of kids working for him. And that’s who he’d get to make a call like that.

  It wasn’t just money they wanted, I recall with sudden clarity. The blackmailers wanted drugs from Drew, as well. But does that point toward Cyrus White? Why would a drug dealer ask for drugs? As I ponder this question, my front doorbell chimes. I’m not expecting anyone, but given all that’s happened today, there’s no telling who it might be.

  When I open the door, I find the last person I would have expected. Jenny Townsend, Kate’s mother. Jenny is tall and clear-eyed like Kate, and she’s holding a worn Jimmy Choo shoe box in front of her.

  “Hello, Penn,” she says in a controlled voice.

  “Jenny,” I say awkwardly. “Will you come in?”

  She takes a deep breath and seems to gather herself before answering. “No, thank you. I saw Annie through the window. I know you’re busy.”

  “It’s all right. Really.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t think I could take it. I used to help Kate with her homework just like that, after her father left.”

  What does one say at these moments? There’s nothing appropriate, so I remain silent. Jenny actually looks grateful that I’m not forcing her to make small talk.

  “I’ve heard a lot of rumors today,” she says with obvious difficulty. “Some were pretty terrible. One was that you’re representing Drew Elliott.”

  So, that’s what this visit is about. “Drew is an old friend, Jenny. You know that. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve gone through, but I feel obligated to try to help Drew through this.”

  “Oh, you misunderstood me,” she says. “I didn’t mean that you representing Drew was terrible. In fact, I was glad to hear that. That’s why I brought you this.” She gestures with the box but doesn’t quite offer it to me.

  “What is that?”

  “Kate’s things. Her private things. I haven’t looked at all of them. I’m not sure I could bear it, and it wasn’t meant for my eyes anyway.” Jenny brushes a strand of hair out of her eyes, then flinches at some inner pain. “Katie kept this hidden in the attic. There’s a diary, some souvenirs, and some computer disks. I think that’s where she kept her pictures of Drew. I think some of them are probably…intimate pictures.”

  “I see,” I say softly.

  “Penn, I don’t know what happened to my daughter yesterday. The police tell me she was raped and murdered. I don’t know anything for certain right now, but I do know—or at least I believe—that Drew could not have hurt my Katie.”

  A flood of relief washes through me. “I’m so glad to hear that, Jenny. I believe the same thing.”

  “That’s why I’m leaving this box with you.”

  I nod but say nothing.

  She looks down at my welcome mat and speaks with a new tension in her voice. “The police and the sheriff’s department have gotten more aggressive with their questioning. They want to search my house from top to bottom for clues to Kate’s ‘recent lifestyle.’ I don’t want them to see what’s in this box.” Jenny looks up, her chin quivering. “Those men have no right to invade my daughter’s privacy. This is a difficult thing for me to do, Penn. If it turns out that Drew did harm Kate, perhaps without even meaning to, this box contains the only physical evidence of their relationship.”

  “Maybe you should keep it, then.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t. And there’s no one else. I have no close family here, and even if I did, I wouldn’t trust them with it. I’m not even sure I trust myself with it. That’s why I’m not putting it in a safe-deposit box. I’m trusting you because of who you are and who your father is. Your father was my doctor when I was young. Tom Cage has more integrity than any man I’ve ever known, and I don’t think the apple fell far from the tree. I respect what you did in solving that old civil rights murder, for not giving a damn what people around here thought about it.” I start to interject, but she motions for me to be quiet and pushes on. “I don’t know what’s going to happen about Katie in the next few weeks, but if somewhere along the way you come to believe that Drew hurt my baby, I expect you to make sure that the right people see what’s in this box.”

  I nod slowly, not quite believing that this is happening.

  Jenny holds out the box. “I want you to give me your word as a gentleman, Penn. I know that word is sort of outdated, but I still believe it applies in some cases.”

  “You have my word, Jenny.”

  Even as I accept the box and cradle it under my right arm, I wonder what I’m doing. How can I defend Drew in court if I’ve vowed to make sure he is punished if he turns out to be guilty? Maybe that’s why I’m taking the box. Maybe it’s my way out of defending Drew at trial.

  “Daddy?” Annie calls from the living room. “Who is it?”

  “I’m going to run on,” Jenny says.

  “I don’t know what to say, Jenny.”

  She turns away, walks to the top step, then looks back. “The district attorney told me Kate was pregnant. It must have been Drew’s baby.”

  I nod slowly.

  “Do you think he would have married her, Penn? Tell me the truth.”

  “Jenny, that’s the one thing in this whole mess that I’m absolutely sure of. He’d have married her tomorrow if he could.”

  She tilts back her head and blinks away tears, then gives me a shattered smile and hurries into the night.

  In the silence on my front steps, I feel tears coming to my own eyes. How did we bring ourselves to this pass? Jenny Townsend in her solitary grief; Drew sitting alone in jail; Kate Townsend lying dead on a slab somewhere in Jackson, an ugly Y-incision stitched into her torso; an empty chair at Harvard that will now be filled by some luckier kid who will never know what tragedy brought him or her there. Did all this result from Drew’s forbidden love of Kate? Or do I trace it back to Drew’s wife and the hydrocodone addiction that Drew says killed their marriage? Or—

  “Daddy?” Annie calls from the door. “Can’t you hear the phone?”

  “No, Boo,” I say softly. “I’m coming.”

  I walk to the kitchen and pick up the telephone. “This is Penn.”

  “Penn? Walter Hunt.”

  It takes me a moment to switch gears. Walter Hunt is an accountant who lives in Sherwood Estates, and a neighbor of Drew’s. He has two kids in St. Stephen’s.

  “What can I do for you, Walter?”

  “Nothing for me, but I thought you’d like to know—Ellen Elliott is piling up furniture and all kinds of stuff in her front yard. Looks like Drew’s stuff to me—golf clubs and skis—guns, too. To tell you the truth, it looks like she’s building a bonfire.”

  Jesus Christ. “Thanks, Walter. I’m on my way. Where’s Tim?”

  “Timmy’s over here with us. My wife went over and slipped in their back door.”

  “Don’t let anybody call the police. I’ll be there in no time.”

  “Hurry, Penn. Ellen’s so toasted, she can barely walk.”

  Chapter

  10

  I’m sitting on my front steps with Annie, waiting impatiently for Mia Burke to arrive. Annie is playing Scooby-Doo on her Game Boy Advance. I’m trying to focus on the perfume of a white narcissus, which blooms liberally on Washington Street this time of year, but at this moment it’s hard to enjoy anything. My mind won’t leave the Jimmy Choo shoe box I just hid atop the armoire in my upstairs guest room, the box that contains the secret history of Kate Townsend’s life with Drew. I shudder to think what would be happening now if the police had discovered that box during a search of Jenny Townsend’s house. The only thing keeping me from going through Kate’s persona
l things right now is my fear that Ellen Elliott may do something to hurt Drew as badly as she can out of revenge.

  After failing to reach Ellen by phone, I called Mia, who agreed to watch Annie until I get back. Before she hung up, Mia told me she had something to tell me about “the Kate situation,” but she refused to say more on her cell phone. Since Mia is plugged into the high school information grid, she may know things that I or the police couldn’t discover in a year of asking questions.

  Annie looks up from the glow of her Game Boy and fixes me in a serious gaze. “Daddy, everybody keeps asking me why I wasn’t in the pageant this year. Why can’t I tell them?”

  I take a deep breath and sigh. The Confederate Pageant has been the center of white social life in Natchez for the past seventy years. Replete with hoop skirts, sabers, and rebel uniforms, this celebration of pre–Civil War life in the Deep South is one of the most politically incorrect spectacles in the United States. Yet it remains an institution that most of the affluent children in town participate in—as velvet-clad toddlers dancing around a Maypole, clean-cut high schoolers waltzing with flattered tourists, or intoxicated college kids trekking home three times a week during March to don Confederate regalia and march to the strains of “Dixie” as members of the “Confederate Court.” Being asked to take part in the pageant is a mark of social distinction—based largely on one’s mother’s or grandmothers’ service to one of the powerful “Garden Clubs”—and certain roles confer star status on those offered them.

  Annie has already played starring roles in the pageant, and this year she was offered a spot in “The Big Maypole,” one of the vignettes with roles for fourth-graders. This made my mother happy, but I was ambivalent about it. Mom believes Annie will be damaged more by not participating in the pageant with her friends than by acting in a racially questionable production whose subtleties she can’t even understand. “After all,” she asked, “what harm did it do you? You were in the pageant from the age of four to twenty, and you’re as liberal as they come.” I laughed, but Annie proved her wrong. A nine-year-old with black friends can easily grasp the issues, and when I explained them to Annie, she asked me to decline the role for her, which I did. I also asked her not to make a big deal of it at school, since so many kids in her class would be taking part.