Turning Angel

  Drew covers his mouth with one hand, unable to go on. A muffled sob comes from his throat. Then he speaks in a monotonic voice. “Her eyes were wide open, glassy, the pupils fixed and dilated. I was sure she was dead, but I tried to resuscitate her anyway. I gave her CPR for ten minutes, but I couldn’t get a heartbeat.”

  “You didn’t call 911?”

  “I’d left my cell phone in my car.”

  I wonder if this is true. “Would you have called for help if you’d had it?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  “Was she still warm?”

  Drew goes still. “Yes.”

  “Okay. So you knew she was dead. What happened then?”

  “I went insane. I literally came apart. Suddenly everything I’d been holding inside for months just burst out of me. I was crying, talking to myself, screaming at the sky like Captain Ahab.”

  “Is this when you saw someone else there?”

  “I didn’t see anybody else. But there was someone there.”

  “How do you know?”

  Drew clenches and unclenches his right fist. “I felt him.”

  “How?”

  “The way you do in horror movies. Your scalp is itching and you start to sweat. You can feel someone looking at you.”

  This is a popular notion, but entirely untrue. Extensive experiments have proved this type of “intuition” false. “That was probably just paranoia.”

  Drew shakes his head with absolute conviction. “I’ve hunted all my life. There was a human being close to me in those woods. But he stayed concealed. He knew how to use cover, or I’d have seen him watching me.”

  I finally ask the obvious question. “If this is really how it went down, why wasn’t it you who reported Kate’s death?”

  Drew looks at me as though puzzled about this himself. “It almost was. My first instinct was to cradle her like a baby and carry her up to my car. I was going to take her home to her mother and confess everything.”

  As reckless as this sounds, I sense that he’s telling the truth. As a prosecutor, I heard many confessions in which murderers expressed this urge, and some even followed through with it.

  “Did you actually pick her up?”

  “No. It was at this point that I sensed the other person. I felt an urge to run, but I didn’t. Only a coward would run, I told myself. I had to face the situation. But as I sat there staring at her blank eyes—eyes I’d looked into the night before as we made love, eyes so alive you can’t imagine them—I started to see the situation from outside myself. What would I accomplish by confessing the affair? Kate was beyond help. If I confessed, I’d lose my medical license and probably go to jail. I might even be suspected of killing her. At that moment I honestly didn’t give a shit about myself. But what would it do to my family? My parents? What would happen to Tim? I wouldn’t be there to raise him. But worse, what would he think about me? He’d grow up believing I was a total shit, and maybe even a killer.”

  “So you left the scene?”

  Drew nods. “I pulled Kate clear of the water, but I left her in the open so that she’d be easily found. I was going to make an anonymous call.”

  “Did you?”

  A silent shake of the head.

  “Why not?”

  He bends down and examines the Honda’s carburetor. “I’d been there for a while. I’m no detective, but I’ve read enough to know that you leave trace evidence everywhere you go. It was raining pretty hard. I figured the rain would wipe away any evidence that I was there by morning.”

  “That and more,” I say softly, wondering more and more about Drew’s actions. “It also washed away any evidence of the real killer. And it damn near washed Kate down to the Mississippi River.”

  He says nothing.

  “You don’t come out looking too heroic in this, buddy. A cop would be reading you your rights about now.”

  Drew looks at me with a direct gaze. “Probably so. But Kate wouldn’t have wanted me to destroy Tim’s image of me for the sake of her postmortem dignity.”

  “Her mother might have. You said the blackmailer sounded like a black kid. What would a black kid be doing down at St. Catherine’s Creek? I don’t remember ever seeing any down there.”

  “When was the last time you were down there?”

  “When we were kids, I guess.”

  “That was thirty years ago, Penn. A couple of apartment complexes you think of as white have gone black in the past ten years. A lot of the kids play down there. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever.”

  “Do you think some random black kid would have recognized you?”

  “Why not? I have a lot of black patients.”

  “But earlier you said that whoever was watching you was probably the killer.”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “You think Kate was murdered by some random black kid?”

  “Why not? Some crazy teenager?”

  “We’re talking about capital murder, Drew. Murder during the commission of a rape.”

  “Happens all the time, doesn’t it?”

  “It does in Houston or New Orleans. But Natchez is a universe away from there. Houston had two hundred and thirty-four homicides last year. I think Natchez had two. The year before that, nobody got murdered here.”

  “Yeah, but in the last twenty years, we’ve had some seriously twisted crimes.”

  He’s right. Not even Natchez has gone untouched by the scourges of the modern era—stranger-murder and sexual homicide.

  “Only now I’m thinking it wasn’t one kid,” he says. “We just got shot at while we chased the guy on the motorcycle. That means two people, at least. Maybe there were more. Maybe Kate was waiting for me at the creek, and it was just the wrong time to be down there. Maybe a crew of horny teenagers was down there messing around and they saw her. Maybe they decided they wanted her, whether she wanted them or not. Like that ‘wilding’ thing in Central Park, remember?”

  I don’t answer. As a prosecutor, I found that whenever a crime victim’s relative suggested minority-assailant murder cases as parallels, I needed to look more closely at that person. What I’ve learned in the past five minutes has fundamentally altered my perception of Kate’s death and Drew’s relationship to it. When the school secretary interrupted the board meeting tonight, Drew already had a good idea of what she was about to say. When Theresa Cook choked out that our beloved homecoming queen was dead, Drew felt no surprise. Only hours before, he had been pounding on her chest and kissing her dead lips, trying to breathe life back into her body. I’ve never thought of Drew as duplicitous, but I guess we’re all capable of anything in the interest of self-preservation.

  “What happens now?” he asks.

  “You tell the police about your involvement with Kate. If you don’t, you’re at the mercy of whoever was on that motorcycle. And his buddy with the rifle.”

  “What happens if I do tell the cops?”

  “At the very least, you can count on a statutory rape charge from Jenny Townsend.”

  Drew shakes his head. “Jenny wouldn’t do that.”

  “Are you crazy? Of course she would.”

  He steps closer to me, close enough for me to see his eyes clearly. “Jenny knew about us, Penn. About Kate and me.”

  I blink in disbelief. “And she was okay with it?”

  “She knew I loved Kate. And she knew I was going to leave Ellen.”

  Every time I think I have my mind around the reality of this case, Drew moves the boundaries. “Drew, we’re through the looking glass here. If you have any more earthshaking revelations, I’d just as soon hear them all now.”

  “That’s the only one I can think of right now.”

  My mind is spinning with new permutations of motive and consequence. “A minute ago you said you were thinking of carrying Kate up to her mother and confessing everything. Now you tell me she already knew about you. Which is it?”

  “ ‘Confess’ was the wrong word. I meant tell Jenny how Kate died,
that I’d found her. I felt it was my fault. I still do. I guess I said ‘confess’ because if I’d done that, everything would have become public.”

  I mull over this explanation. “Given what’s happened, Jenny might change her mind about your relationship with Kate.”

  “We were fine tonight. That house was full of grieving people, but Jenny and I were the only two who truly knew what was lost when Kate died.”

  “Jenny doesn’t know you were at the crime scene, does she?”

  “No. But I’m probably going to tell her.”

  “I wouldn’t rush into that. Even if she remains your biggest fan, if your affair with Kate becomes public, Jenny may feel she has no choice but to demand your head on a platter. If it were known that she sanctioned your relationship, she’d be crucified right along with you.”

  “Jenny’s never been too concerned about the opinions of others.”

  “This is a little different than…Oh, hell, the point’s moot anyway. If your affair becomes public, the police or the sheriff’s department will probably charge you with murder. Spurred on by the district attorney, of course.”

  “Shad Johnson,” Drew says softly.

  Even the name makes my gut ache. Shadrach Johnson is a black lawyer who was born in Natchez but raised in Chicago. Five years ago, he returned to Natchez to run for mayor, an election he lost by 1 percent of the vote. A year later he won the post of district attorney, taking the office from a white man who had never distinguished himself in the position. The mayoral race Johnson lost happened to be going on during my investigation of the unsolved civil rights murder, and during the stress of that case, Shad revealed his true colors to me. The man has one interest—his own political career—and he doesn’t care who he steps on, black or white, to advance it.

  “Shad would charge you in a heartbeat,” I murmur. “He has wet dreams about getting a case like this.”

  “Anything for headlines,” Drew agrees.

  I’m starting to think Drew may have been right not to call in the cavalry when he discovered Kate’s body. My chivalrous side is revolted by his callousness, but the modern world is not a chivalrous place. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished.

  “What will the blackmailers do now?” Drew asks.

  “You gave them the whole twenty thousand?”

  “Yeah. I thought about stacking some bills over a newspaper, but the geometry of the stadium wasn’t right for that. I knew he’d have too much time to check the bag before I could get him.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just take your rifle down there and shoot the guy when he showed up.”

  Drew looks uncomfortable. “I figured whoever it was would be watching me, looking for a gun, so I didn’t take it down with me. I figured I could sprint back up to the four-wheeler before he got to the bag. I’d scanned the whole stadium with the night-vision scope before I went down, and I knew nobody was close to the fifty-yard line.”

  “Actually, you did make it in time to shoot him,” I observe. “Only I showed up.”

  Drew nods, but I can’t read his emotions. “So, what will our motorcyclist do now? Will he try to milk me or will he turn me in?”

  “No way to know. But he knows one thing for sure after tonight. Blackmailing you is risky business. He probably didn’t realize you were such a psycho.”

  “I think he’ll keep playing me for a while. If he turns me in, he won’t get another penny out of me. No more drugs either.”

  “You gave him drugs?”

  Drew shrugs. “Just some samples. Nothing big. You know, that guy on the hill couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”

  “He may not have been trying to hit us. Only to slow us down.”

  Drew snorts at the idea of such half measures.

  “Can we get out of here yet?” I ask.

  He leans over the ATV where the big padded seat usually sits and checks the rectangular box that holds the air filter. Then he snaps the seat back on, pulls out the choke, and turns the ignition key. The engine turns over a few times, dies. He tinkers with something, then turns the key a second time. This time the motor sputters resentfully to life. He nurses the throttle with a lover’s touch, and soon the motor is roaring with power.

  “Ready,” he says with a satisfied smile.

  The trip back to St. Stephen’s is much more agreeable than the roller-coaster ride out here. If it weren’t for the wind chilling my wet clothes, I might enjoy it. Several times we startle deer, which freeze in our headlight with wide yellow eyes, then explode into chaotic motion like panicked soldiers. All the way, we watch the ground for my Springfield, but we don’t find it.

  Drew brings us out of the woods on the high rim of the stadium, then drives swiftly around to the elementary school. I worried that there might be a police car waiting, but my car is still parked by itself in the shadows. A police patrol would probably be drawn to the glaring stadium lights before rifle fire. It’s not uncommon to hear rifle shots on this end of town after dark, as poachers spotlight deer out of season.

  “Did you drive all the way here on your four-wheeler?” I ask, getting off the ATV.

  “No, my pickup is parked behind the main building.”

  “Do you need help loading this thing?”

  “Nah, I’ve got some ramps.”

  I reach for the door to my Saab, then turn back to Drew. “When was the last time you had sex with Kate?”

  “Last night.”

  “Did you wear a condom?”

  He shakes his head. “She’s on the pill.”

  “She got pregnant while she was on the pill?”

  “It’s highly unlikely,” he says. “That’s what I kept telling her. She always took it on time, so the chance of pregnancy was really nil.”

  Unless she got pregnant on purpose, I think, but I only nod and open my door.

  “What is it?” Drew asks.

  “By tomorrow, a sample of your semen is going to be on its way to a DNA lab somewhere. New Orleans is my guess. And if the cops get any reason to test your blood against that sample, you’re going to look guilty of murder. There’s only one way to prevent that perception, Drew.”

  “Tell the police I was having an affair with her?”

  I nod again. “Right now. Don’t wait five minutes.”

  He cuts the Honda’s engine. “If I do that, the first thing they’ll do is ask me for a DNA sample.”

  “It’s still better than the alternative. You tell them first, they see you as trying to help. You don’t…you’re guilty as hell.”

  Drew ponders this. “If I were going to tell them, who would I call? The sheriff or the chief of police? Not Shad Johnson, right?”

  Like many communities, Natchez has suffered from a long-running rivalry between city and county law enforcement. And Kate’s body was found right at the border of the city limits, which could cause serious jurisdictional problems.

  “Whoever you tell, it’s going to get to Shad eventually. You might as well tell him first. The only way to play this kind of thing is get out ahead of it and stay there. If you volunteer the information, people can get angry, but they can’t paint you as a liar. Think of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Tell it now, Drew, before anyone beats you to the punch.”

  “Everything? Even that I found Kate’s body?”

  “I didn’t hear that question, brother.”

  He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

  “We have a saying in the legal profession. Every client tells his story once.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The first and only time you tell your story is on the witness stand. That way—until that day—you have time to adjust the truth to emerging facts.”

  Disgust wrinkles his face.

  “A cynical view, I admit,” I tell him, “but experience is a hard teacher. If I hear you tell me one story tonight, I can’t put you on the stand and let you tell a different one later.”

  “But I’m innocent,” he says. “I told you that.”
/>
  Drew’s handsome face is a study in the complexity of human emotion. “Yes, you did. But you’re not acting like a man with nothing to hide.”

  Chapter

  6

  Mia Burke’s eyes go wide when I walk into the living room of my town house.

  “God, what happened to you?” she asks.

  “I got a little wet.”

  She rises from her chair and drops The Sheltering Sky onto an ottoman. “You’re bleeding!”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah.”

  She walks into the hall and motions for me to follow her to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, I see abrasions all over my neck and arms, and one long scrape on my left arm. The burn on my right forearm is red and throbbing.

  “Shit,” she says softly. “Yuck.”

  “What?”

  “Your back is worse than your front. It looks like you’ve got a bad cut under your shirt.”

  “Great.”

  “You’d better let me look.”

  I feel a little awkward in the bathroom with Mia. Two days ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now…“Just pull it up and see if I need stitches.”

  She laughs at my cautiousness, then slowly lifts my shirt, which is stuck to my back. “It’s a slash, really. It doesn’t look too deep, but it’s dirty. Are you about to get in the shower?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I rub some soap into it, you can rinse it out in the shower. That should take care of it.”

  She slips around me and turns on the hot water tap, then rubs soap into a blue washcloth until she has a thick lather. “Are you going to cry?” she asks, holding up the cloth and stepping behind me again.

  “Let’s find out.”

  The soap stings like sulfuric acid, but Mia has shamed me into silence.

  “Are you crying?” she asks, scrubbing like a hospital nurse. I can feel her pulling apart the skin to clean inside the cut.

  “Thinking about it. What’s Lifehouse?” I ask, remembering her T-shirt.

  “A band, old man. You’d like them. I’ll make you a disk.” The humor disappears from her voice. “Did whatever you went to do work out all right?”