Turning Angel

  The drone of an engine echoes through the trees, then a pair of headlights sweeps past us in a long arc.

  “Why are we out here?” I ask.

  “My kids are inside,” Sonny explains. “My ex-wife hears any more about this cowboy shit, she’ll be asking the judge to modify our custody agreement. Mosquitoes getting you?”

  “I’m good. Go on. You said you had something that would help Drew.”

  Sonny grins. “I know why Kate Townsend was seeing Cyrus. She was buying Lorcet from him. You know what that is?”

  “Pain pills, right? Like codeine?”

  “That’s right. She tried to buy it from Marko first, but he doesn’t keep Lorcet in stock. It’s more of an adult drug. The kids don’t use it much. Anyway, Marko goes to Cyrus and asks for some, but Cyrus won’t hand it over just like that. He’s curious by nature. He wants to know why Marko suddenly wants hydrocodone.”

  The word “hydrocodone” triggers something in my mind, but I’m too interested in what Sonny discovered to ponder it.

  “Marko tells Cyrus he’s going to use the Lorcet to buy the finest piece of ass in the city. Cyrus asks who he’s talking about. Dumb-ass Marko tells him, and that was that. Cyrus knew damn well who Kate Townsend was. Her picture’s been in the newspaper about twenty times over the past couple of years. Tennis, swimming, her scholarship to Yale.”

  “Harvard.”

  “Wherever. Cyrus told Marko that if Kate wanted Lorcet, she’d have to come to him to get it. Personally. That’s how all this started.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say softly, suddenly afraid that I do. “Drew told me Kate never used drugs.”

  “Then she was buying them for somebody else.”

  Another set of headlights appears in the distance, moving slowly this way.

  “Tell me about Kate and Cyrus.”

  Sonny watches the lights come and go. “Once a month or so, Kate would tell Marko she needed a new bottle. She was buying at the rate of a hundred a month. A hundred pills, I mean. She bought a hundred and fifty per visit, the last couple of months.”

  “Would the medical examiner have tested for hydrocodone in Kate’s body?”

  “They always do toxicology in a young girl like that, because suicide is so common. I already checked. No hydrocodone or metabolites in Kate. No drugs at all.”

  “What about the sex angle? Did Marko say Kate and Cyrus hooked up?”

  Sonny nods emphatically while drawing on his cigarette. “No, but this is even better. Once Cyrus got a look at Kate, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Marko said every time Cyrus saw him he asked about her. Who she was talking to? Who she was fucking? Who had she fucked in the past? What music did she listen to? Everything. Every last detail. The guy was obsessed.”

  “But Marko didn’t think they ever had sex?”

  “No. She just drove Cyrus nuts, the way women like to do.” Sonny gives me a conspiratorial smile. “Marko thinks Cyrus killed her, man.”

  A rush of excitement goes through me, but I try to stay calm. “Can he prove it?”

  “No. But here’s the gold, man. Here’s something you can throw right in Shad Johnson’s face.”

  I feel blood pounding in my ears. “What?”

  “You know what that crazy Cyrus was doing?”

  “How could I know, damn it?”

  Sonny laughs at my impatience. “He was tracking her cell phone. He wanted to know where she was all the time, right? Well, there are companies you can pay to digitally ping somebody’s cell phone every fifteen minutes. As long as the target person’s cell phone is on, this company can give you their GPS coordinates every quarter hour, and they’ll never know it.” Sonny cackles with glee. “It doesn’t even cost that much. These companies are all over the Internet, Penn. Paranoid spouses keep them in business.”

  I don’t even bother telling Sonny that I knew about this technology. “If I can prove that Cyrus was tracking Kate’s cell phone, especially on the day she died…”

  “It’s looking like something just might stick to the Teflon nigger this time. And get this: Marko says whenever Kate left the apartment, Cyrus would be crazy mad. He told Marko he didn’t think it was him being black that bothered her. It was that he sold drugs. Which was crazy to him, since she was there to buy drugs.”

  “Drugs she wasn’t taking,” I murmur, my mind on Drew’s words in his car on the night he told me he was involved with Kate: Ellen’s addicted to hydrocodone…. You can’t imagine Ellen popping Lorcet Plus like M&Ms? “Goddamn it,” I whisper.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Penn. If it’s something I need to know, tell me.”

  “It’s not,” I assure him, wondering if Drew could really have sunk that low. “Give me the rest of it, Sonny.”

  “You’ve got most of it. Except that Marko’s scared shitless.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Cyrus doesn’t need him anymore. Now that Cyrus has the contacts at the colleges, Marko’s just one more middleman he doesn’t want to pay.”

  “That’s good,” I reason, thinking like a prosecutor. “Maybe Marko will testify against Cyrus to save his ass.”

  Sonny grins. “He’s considering that as we speak.”

  As we stand in the silent darkness, I realize it’s not silent at all. The high-pitched drone of crickets is almost a scream, and a spring breeze rattles the millions of oak leaves surrounding us. Across the road, a car engine starts, and a pair of headlights clicks on.

  “Slut,” Sonny mutters.

  “Who? Kate?”

  “No. My neighbor’s got a teenage daughter over there, about fifteen. There’s a different boy over there every week. I’ve even seen a couple of black boys pick her up. One jig from the Catholic school showed up at my front door saying he was looking for a girl named Karen—that’s this girl. I said, ‘The only black girl on this road lives about three miles down that way.’ ” Sonny laughs. “He didn’t know what the hell to say.”

  The screech of a screen-door spring silences the crickets, and the yellow rectangle appears again on Sonny’s porch. Then a little boy’s voice calls into the night.

  “Are you coming back in, Daddy?”

  Sonny turns back to the house and yells, “Just a couple of minutes, Kevin.”

  Across the street, the car pulls slowly into the road. It’s a Lexus sedan, an older model but still expensive for Beau Pré Road. As I watch, the window on our side slides down, and the car slows as though its driver wants to ask for directions. He’s probably reluctant to pull into Sonny’s driveway without an invitation, so I start toward the road.

  As I walk, I see a glint of metal in the open window. In one paralyzed moment adrenaline floods my body. I’ve been shot at before, and despite the darkness, I know what I’m looking at. “Get down, Sonny!” I scream, diving to the ground.

  Night vanishes in a starburst of white light and thunder, the explosions coming too quickly to count. Automatic weapon. As the seconds dilate, I whip my head toward Sonny, who for some reason is still on his feet, standing in full view of the gunman.

  He’s returning fire at the Lexus. Orange flame leaps from his pistol, but the reports are lost in the roar of the machine gun. I look back at the Lexus, and for one instant a screaming Asian face is revealed by a perfect circle of light. Two holes appear magically in the door below the face. Then another fusillade of bullets erupts from the rear window. An explosive grunt sounds behind me.

  Sonny’s hit!

  As the spinning tires scream, I roll back toward Sonny Cross. He’s lying on his back, his eyes wide, his mouth gasping for air. His right arm jabs his gun toward me.

  “Take it!”

  I do. But by the time I come to my knees with the pistol raised, the Lexus is fishtailing up the road. I empty Sonny’s clip at the fleeing car, then drop the gun and fall to my knees beside him. The blood on his white knit shirt tells me he’s been hit at least three times in the
torso. His chest rises and falls erratically, and the wheezes coming from his throat and chest tell me death isn’t far away.

  “My kids,” he says in a guttural voice. “Check on…my boys.”

  “You first, Sonny.” I pull my cell phone from my pocket, but as I dial 911, the front door of the house bangs open again.

  “Daddy? Daddy, where are you?”

  Panic in the voice. “Daddy’s still out here!” I shout. “He’s fine! He’s coming in just a minute. Go back inside, boys!”

  “911 dispatcher,” says a woman’s voice in my ear.

  “This is Penn Cage. I’ve got an officer down at two seventy-one Beau Pré Road. Multiple gunshot wounds. I need an ambulance, stat. Now, connect me to the sheriff’s department.”

  Up on Sonny’s porch, two small silhouettes stand wavering in the yellow rectangle.

  “Sheriff’s department,” says another woman.

  “Deputy Sonny Cross has been shot at his home. Multiple gunshots. Repeat, Deputy Sonny Cross. Get some paramedics out here. He’s critical. The shooter’s fleeing the scene on Beau Pré Road, headed toward Highway 61. It’s a black Lexus with at least three people inside. An older-model Lexus. You need to set up roadblocks immediately. The shooter is Asian, repeat, Asian ethnicity. Call Sheriff Byrd at home. Tell him Penn Cage reported it.”

  “Hold on, Mr. Cage,” says the dispatcher.

  “I can’t. Two seventy-one, Beau Pré Road.”

  One of Sonny’s children has left the porch and ventured about half the distance to his father. “Daddy?” he calls tentatively.

  Even in his distress, Sonny manages to shake his head. “Don’t let them see me like this. Don’t—” A gout of blood erupts from his throat.

  I jump up and run to the boy, snatching him into my arms and trotting back to the porch, where his brother waits. When I set him down, I try to reassure them both, but the faces in the glow of the porch light already know the worst. I drop to my knees and grasp a thin wrist tightly in each hand. “Are either of you hurt?”

  “No, sir,” says the oldest, who looks like he might be eleven. “Should I get my gun?”

  “Where’s my dad?” asks the other, who’s eight at the most. Tears are running down his face.

  “Your daddy’s hurt, boys. But he’s going to be all right. The ambulance is on the way. I want you to go inside and call your mom. Tell her she needs to come right over here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” says the older, who I now remember is called Sonny, Junior.

  The younger boy doesn’t want to go, but Junior grabs his wrists and pulls him inside. I race back to the end of the driveway. For the first time, I notice a light lying on the ground beside Sonny. It’s not a flashlight. It’s a spotlight mounted beneath the barrel of his pistol. He must have flicked it on before he opened fire on the Lexus. That was the circle of light that showed me the gunman’s face. It may also have been what guided the shooter’s bullets to Sonny’s chest.

  “Penn?” Sonny chokes, his hand grabbing at the air. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here, buddy.” I use the gun light to illuminate my face. “You hang on.”

  His desperate eyes lock onto mine. “My boys?”

  “They’re not hurt. They’re both fine, and they know you’re fine.”

  Somehow Sonny laughs, a wry sound that turns into a terrible coughing fit. “Not…fine,” he rasps. “Not gonna make it this time around.”

  “Bullshit.” I take his hand and squeeze tight.

  “Asian,” he whispers. “Shooter was Asian.”

  “I saw him.”

  “I’m cold, man. Just like the damn movies. Just like…”

  “The ambulance is on the way, Sonny. Hang tight.”

  “Too far. Know…response time. Tell ’em save the gas.” With a sudden surge of strength, Sonny Cross raises his other hand, rolls into me, and grips my biceps like a claw. His eyes are straining out of their sockets, like the eyes of a dying martyr exhorting his torturers to have faith. “It’s yours now, Penn. Cyrus…Marko…you gotta finish it. Do what you have to do…hear me?”

  “I can’t do what you did today.”

  He falls back on the ground, his eyes half shut now, but his grip still strong. “Chris Vogel,” he croaks. “Mike Pinella…Kate. How many others? Family, man…all family.”

  “I hear you, Sonny.”

  His next words ride a deep exhalation of the kind I’ve heard too often before. “Tell Janie I’m sorry, man. Tell her…I never meant—”

  This time the silence is absolute. Not even the crickets disturb the transit of Sonny Cross’s troubled soul as it departs for wherever it is bound.

  A high-pitched sob sounds behind me. I turn and see the two boys standing six feet away. They look at me, then run to their father and collapse with their heads on his chest. Then the crickets resume, and the high note of a siren wails Sonny Cross’s benediction.

  Chapter

  22

  By the time I reach the city jail, I’ve told the story of Sonny Cross’s death three times: first to sheriff’s deputies, then to sheriff’s detectives, and finally to Sheriff Byrd himself. Part of me wanted to hold back what Sonny told me about Kate visiting Cyrus, but I couldn’t in good conscience do that. All I could do was withhold my near certainty that Kate was buying those bottles of Lorcet for Ellen Elliott.

  I also gave up the information Sonny tortured out of Marko, and that seemed to go a long way toward convincing Sheriff Byrd that Kate’s death might be more complex than a matter of a jealous older man. The fact that Cyrus had been tracking Kate’s GPS location through her cell phone was particularly convincing. Once Byrd and I were alone, I told him exactly how Sonny had extracted this information, and that this made it unusable in court. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that Marko Bakic was in for a long night.

  Sheriff Byrd ordered roadblocks set up on all routes leaving the city, but his dragnet didn’t catch the black Lexus. Either the killers slipped out of town before the roadblocks were set up, or they were still hiding somewhere in the city, waiting for things to cool down. An army of deputies raided Cyrus’s known safe houses and rousted all their drug snitches, but nothing has produced results. Like the Asian killers he probably summoned here, Cyrus White has vanished.

  Piled on the shock of watching Sonny die, the ordeal of being grilled for two hours exhausted me, and I was tempted to go home to bed. But I had to know one thing before I could sleep. Was I right about Kate’s errands to Cyrus?

  Tonight the bench on the other side of the glass in the visiting cubicle is empty. Drew finally walks in and sits down, no guard visible behind him. His eyes have the empty look of a man in a fugue state.

  “Sonny Cross is dead,” I tell him.

  Drew tilts his head to the left as if to say, “What does that have to do with me?”

  “He told me some things before he died. Like why Kate was visiting Cyrus White.”

  Now he’s interested.

  “Kate was buying Lorcet from him, Drew. A hundred pills at a time.”

  Drew’s eyes close.

  “Lorcet is hydrocodone, right? The drug Ellen is addicted to?”

  He nods slowly, then hangs his head.

  “Don’t make me drag it out of you, Drew. I need to know.”

  He opens his eyes and lays his forearms on the little window ledge. “I didn’t know she was getting it from Cyrus. I had no idea.”

  I’m stunned by the amount of anger that erupts from within me. “What did you know, man? Why was Kate buying the drugs at all?”

  Drew’s right cheek twitches as though in response to an electric shock. “I told you how bad Ellen’s addiction was. Four times through rehab, and still she couldn’t kick it. I’d prescribed the absolute limit to keep her out of withdrawal. The DEA was watching me all the time. A lot of doctors are hooked on Lorcet, so they monitor those prescriptions closely. Anyway, Ellen finally stole one of my pads and forged some prescriptions. She got away with it a
couple of times, but then she got caught. If Win Simmons at Rite-Aid hadn’t called me instead of the police, she’d have been in deep trouble.”

  “How did Kate come into it?”

  “We were deeply involved by that time. She saw how upset I was the night of the prescription incident, so I told her what had happened. I was in pretty bad shape myself. I couldn’t concentrate at work. I was afraid to leave the house for fear of what Ellen might do. She refused to go back into rehab. She was drinking heavily to mask the withdrawal, and that made her violent. Then, in the middle of this nightmare, Kate showed up one night with a bottle of Lorcet Plus. One hundred ten-milligram pills in a pharmacist’s bottle.” Drew shakes his head as though in awe. “It was like salvation. I asked where she got them, and she just said, ‘From a friend. Don’t worry about it.’ Of course I was worried, but Kate wouldn’t tell me any more. She said it was no big deal to get Lorcet, half the town was popping them. She needed five hundred dollars to cover the cost, but she said she could get whatever I needed, whenever I needed it, no risk at all. I know how terrible this sounds, but…it made life bearable at last. I had the DEA off my back, and Kate was happy that I could relax and pay attention to her.”

  “Yeah, it was perfect,” I say bitterly. “Except that Kate was risking her freedom every time she made a pickup for you. Jesus, Drew. Do you realize how sleazy this is?”

  He bows his head again.

  “I can understand you falling in love with Kate, okay? She was a beautiful girl, full of promise, a lot like you when you were eighteen. And I understand the temptation to consummate those feelings. It takes serious effort for me not to just sit and stare at Mia sometimes. But this is different. You risked that girl’s future to make life a little easier on yourself. That’s low, man. That sucks.”

  “I know it.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  He turns up his palms. “What can I say? Do you think words really matter at this point?”