Mississippi Blood

“With the security guys on cots down there?” Annie asks. “No way.”

  “That old master bedroom is plenty big enough for Annie and me,” Mia says, covering her displeasure so that Annie won’t pick up on it. “Where will you put Serenity? The upstairs guest room at the end of the hall? By your room?”

  “Gram needs that one,” Annie says. “It’s closest to the hall bathroom.”

  “Serenity can take the small room on the other side,” I decide. “Hell, she’d probably be happy with the basement. She lived in a tent in Iraq.”

  Annie laughs. “We need to put sheets on that bed upstairs. I’ll do it.” She slaps Mia on the arm and runs into the hall.

  “Right behind you,” calls Mia, who continues to stand at the counter, watching me, as the drumbeat of Annie’s feet on the stairs resounds in the hallway.

  “What is it?” I ask, a little uncomfortably. “You need your own room?”

  “No. I’m such an ass. I can’t believe I was staring at Serenity like that. Because of the skin color thing.”

  “It’s okay. Seriously. I was staring, too.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “About that? No.”

  Mia’s eyes narrow. “Bullshit. I can tell you’re lying. What did she say?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said you have a thing for me.”

  “She—did not.” Mia blushes deeply again.

  “She implied it.”

  An angry sigh escapes her mouth. “Well, she’s definitely not a genius. That’s a relief.” Mia walks to the kitchen door, then looks back at me. “By the way, I’m not buying that whole ‘paper bag test’ suffering shtick. Any woman as hot as she is didn’t suffer too much exclusion in high school or college.”

  I think about this. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just making an observation.”

  “Would you have guessed a woman as pretty as she is would have joined the army? As a private?”

  “No. That stumps me, I’ll admit. That’s why I’m going to read her book.”

  “I’ll be interested to hear your conclusion.” I raise my hand in farewell.

  Mia gives me a fake smile, then disappears into the hall.

  Chapter 13

  In the dark sprawl between Vidalia and Ferriday, Louisiana, two men wearing black leather chaps and jackets staggered out of the Steel Tiger bar and headed into the oyster-shell parking lot. Stump Seyfarth had been drinking enough that he listed to starboard as he scanned the lot for his hog.

  “Where’s our bikes?” he bellowed indignantly. “Didn’t we park right there by the sign?”

  “Goddamn, son,” said a laughing Jimmy Gunn, still reasonably sober. “You must have your beer goggles on.” Jimmy shielded his eyes against the lone streetlight, then bent his knees and peered into the mostly empty lot. “Motherfucker!” he shouted. “I’m gonna kill somebody.”

  “What is it?” Stump cried. “Whassa matter?”

  “Somebody tipped our bikes over!”

  Jimmy ran clumsily to where the Harleys lay in the gravel and dirt, looking like chromed black rhinos felled by a game hunter’s rifle.

  “They scratched my Road King to hell and gone!” he shouted, his ears pounding with rage. “Looks like they beat in the tank with a wrench or something. I’m gonna waste the fuckers that done this, I swear.”

  Stump finally caught up. He stood panting over the wrecked bikes, his hands on his big hips. “How you gonna find ’em?”

  “Had to be local thugs,” Jimmy reasoned. “Unless Cage and his friends did it. Nobody else would have the balls.”

  “Could have been some Bandidos or Vinlanders passin’ through, huh? Saw we were inside, so they kicked over our rides and split?”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “FBI, maybe?”

  Jimmy considered the possibility, then dismissed it. “Naaah. This ain’t their style.” He bent over and took hold of his handlebars. “Help me pick this bastard up. Jesus Christ.”

  He waited for Stump to get his hands beneath the seat, then heaved upward with all his strength. The two men grunted and strained until their lungs and bladders were near to bursting. They’d just about cleared the sixty-degree point when someone with a deep bass voice shouted, “Look out!” from the darkness behind them.

  Stump lost his grip, backpedaled, then fell on his butt with a grunt and a curse. His hand shot into his leather jacket, but before he could grab the gun in the holster he wore against his ribs, a hand caught the collar of his jacket and snatched him to his feet. Another dug inside the jacket and yanked out his pistol.

  Jimmy Gunn made the mistake of trying to hold the Harley erect by himself, which probably gave him a hernia before he let the eight hundred pounds of metal drop to the shell gravel. The ground shuddered from the impact. Jimmy, too, reached for a weapon—a butterfly knife in his boot—but before he could get it, someone caught him in a headlock from behind. Jimmy tried to twist, but the man behind him was too strong. He was black, though. Jimmy could tell by the smell. Not bad—just different.

  “What the fuck?” gasped Stump, trying in vain to free himself from the giant who had grabbed him from behind.

  Jimmy gaped in disbelief at the size of the forearm locked around Stump’s neck. The big head whose chin pinned the crown of Stump’s head was deep black, and the whites of its eyes shone with a bluish light. When the giant spoke, his voice was so deep and resonant that Jimmy felt the air in his own chest move.

  “Ya’ll the ones messed up my li’l sister?” asked the giant.

  Jimmy felt his face get hot. “What?”

  “Don’t play, now. Ya’ll’s crew messed up my sister. She worked over in Natchez, at the newspaper.”

  Stump’s eyes went wide. Jimmy prayed his friend wasn’t so drunk that he’d be unable to lie. Stump wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box when sober, and for the last hour he’d been laughing about the colored girl that Snake Knox’s bitch had splashed with acid.

  Stump croaked, “We din’t have shit to do with that. We just heard about it on the radio.”

  “Doc say she might not live,” said the giant.

  The huge spade had the kind of face Jimmy could imagine smiling from ear to ear, his eyes twinkling with delight, his big belly shaking with joy. But he wasn’t smiling now. “Aw, come on now,” Jimmy said, watching Stump’s eyes. “That’s bullshit. I mean, we didn’t have nothing to do with it, but I know acid in the face don’t kill nobody.”

  “You’re wrong there,” said a voice in Jimmy’s ear. “That kind of acid eats down to the bone. Messes up your heart.”

  Panic flared in Stump’s eyes. Jimmy didn’t sense even a millimeter of room for negotiation in the men who had bushwhacked them. Surely these guys didn’t mean to kill them, though? Niggers preferred drive-bys, lots of noise and attention. Even in prison, they always used shanks. And Jimmy had yet to see a weapon.

  “Listen, bro,” said Stump, and Jimmy cringed. “We ain’t the guys you want. We didn’t have nothing to do with that business. Some oilfield boys were talking about it in the bar earlier, but we don’t know shit.”

  “You’re lying,” said the voice in Jimmy’s ear.

  “That’s God’s truth, I swear!” Stump cried.

  “It don’t matter,” said the giant. “You part of the same poison. And I’m tired. You’ll do.”

  Just then Jimmy realized that the giant was wearing gloves. Leather work gloves. Where the hell did he find gloves to fit those monster hands? he wondered.

  Then Jimmy saw the hand at the collar of Stump’s jacket move up and close around the top of his skull like a five-point vise.

  “Oh Jesus,” Stump groaned. “Aaaggghhh . . . don’t do that!”

  “Ain’t done nothing yet, mister. You’ll know when I do.”

  Panic tore around inside Jimmy’s chest like a crazed rat.

  “They got security ca
meras here, man! If you hurt us, the law gonna get you for sure!”

  “No cameras,” said the voice in his ear. “We already checked.”

  “Please,” begged Jimmy. “Let us go. You can have the bikes. I got nothing against brothers, myself. I had a bunch of black friends in Angola.”

  “What that VK on your jacket stand for?” asked the voice in Jimmy’s ear. “Viking something? That’s what the FBI man told us.”

  “Varangian Kindred. ‘Varangian’ means Vikings, though, yeah.”

  “That a prison gang?”

  “No, no. A motorcycle club. One percent.”

  The giant reflected on this for some time. “They told me in college that the Vikings settled America before Columbus ever got here. Hundreds of years before.”

  Jimmy felt a flicker of hope. “That’s right, man! What college did you go to? You play ball? You must have, big as you are.”

  “You reckon them Vikings ever got to Africa?”

  Jimmy couldn’t think. Stump had shut his eyes, and Jimmy knew his old buddy was praying silently for mercy.

  “If they didn’t,” said the hot breath in his ear, “I’d say they were lucky. What you think?”

  Jimmy nodded, believing it.

  “So . . . my sister,” said the giant, giving Stump’s head a squeeze, like a man checking a melon. “Time to pay. Make your peace with God.”

  “Hold on!” Jimmy shouted. “You want us to give a message to somebody?”

  “You are the message,” said the voice at his ear.

  “Wait!” Stump shrieked.

  But the big hands had begun their work, as slow and sure as if the giant were trying to twist free a bolt that had rusted to a metal plate.

  “Oh, Lord,” Jimmy moaned, as infantile shame flooded through him. “I shit myself.”

  “Don’t worry,” the giant said gently, his jaw muscles clenching with effort. “All be over in a minute.”

  Saturday

  Chapter 14

  Saturday morning brought bad news. Keisha’s condition had worsened, and Drew Elliott was considering having her flown to University Medical Center in Jackson. At the hospital, John Kaiser informed me that two damaged Harley-Davidson motorcycles had been found in the parking lot of a dive bar on the Louisiana side of the river, their license plates removed. Kaiser pointed out the strangeness of someone stealing the license plates but not the bikes themselves, and of no one claiming two motorcycles. Then he asked me if I knew the whereabouts of Keisha Harvin’s brothers last night. Thankfully, I did not.

  At the prompting of Serenity Butler, I negotiated a limited period of freedom from my security team, then drove Tee across the river, through Vidalia, then Ferriday, and on to Clayton, where the church that hosted Henry Sexton’s funeral stands. There we met with Reverend John Baldwin and his son, who is also a preacher. Serenity introduced herself, then spent an hour patiently questioning the two pastors about their lives in Clayton. The elder Reverend Baldwin is in his nineties, and he told Tee about serving in the navy during World War Two, then returning home to help found the Deacons for Defense. Baldwin’s son served in Vietnam and still suffers from PTSD as well as an autoimmune disease he believes to be linked to Agent Orange. Like most people, the Baldwins were surprised to learn that Serenity had served in a war, but that common thread quickly established a bond of trust between them.

  As we left their church sanctuary, Tee gave the preachers a card with her cell phone number and told them she’d welcome a call at any hour of the day or night—especially one regarding information that might help in the quest for justice for Keisha Harvin, or in the larger battle against the Double Eagles. Then she hugged both men and led me out to the Audi, which was parked near Henry’s grave.

  “Where next?” I asked.

  “We’ve touched base on the black side. Let’s see if we can stir whitey up a little bit.”

  “What?”

  Tee grinned. “Which of the Double Eagles do you most want to talk to you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. None of them will talk. And with you there, they might get crazy. A couple have already pulled guns on me.”

  “We’ll see, then. Give me a name.”

  Against my better judgment, I said, “Will Devine. He’s one of the original members. He might know something about Viola’s death.”

  “Will Devine it is.” Serenity slapped the roof of the S4. “Let’s move.”

  Will Devine lives on the western edge of Vidalia, not more than a couple of blocks from the houses of Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield. During the drive over from Clayton, I give Serenity a briefing on my history with the Devine family and what I hope to learn from him or his sons.

  “So Devine probably took part in the murder of Sonny Thornfield,” she says. “Inside the Concordia Parish jail?”

  “If he didn’t take part, he saw it happen.”

  “And Snake Knox was in there at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, damn. Let’s get this redneck talking.”

  “I don’t think you appreciate the reality of this situation. The two times I’ve been there, Devine met me at the door with a double-barreled shotgun.”

  She laughs. “Maybe you need lessons in sweet-talking, Mr. Mayor. Your history as a prosecutor obviously didn’t give you the proper skills for this kind of work.”

  “Okay. We’ll see how you do. Devine weighs about two seventy, and he’s ugly as an albino sea lion.”

  “Then attention from a sister like me ought to be even more welcome.”

  I park in Will Devine’s driveway, just behind the pickup that was parked near Viola’s sister’s house on the night Viola was murdered. As we walk to the front door of the small 1950s ranch house, Serenity points a finger and cocked thumb at the truck and says, “There’s the Darlington Academy sticker.”

  Just before we reach the screen door, the wooden door behind it flies open and Devine barks, “Ya’ll get away from here! I done told you twice now. I’ll shoot. I will!”

  The voice seems too high-pitched to come from such a big man. Devine sounds panicked, and I can see that Serenity instantly picked up on this.

  “Mr. Devine,” she says in an official voice, “I’m Corporal S. T. Butler. I’m here concerning your affiliation with the terrorist organization known as the Double Eagle group.”

  Through the fine wire screen, I see Devine blinking in confusion. “What are you, some kind of cop?”

  “If you refuse to cooperate, Mr. Devine, you will wish that I was a cop. This is a terrorism investigation. Is that clear?”

  “No. What the hell you want with me? I ain’t done nuthin’.”

  “If that’s true, then you’ll have no problem putting down that firearm and stepping out here for a word.”

  As on my previous visits, I hear a female voice murmuring behind Devine’s bovine silhouette. Squinting, I can just make out the shoulder and hair of a dark-haired woman behind him. His wife, surely, Nita Devine.

  “If this is a terrorism investigation,” he says, repeating his wife’s words, “what the hell is the mayor of Natchez doing with you?”

  “That’s privileged information, Mr. Devine. Now, please step outside. Without the firearm.”

  Devine uses the shotgun barrel to knock the latch up and then shove open the door, and steps outside, pushing Serenity backward with the muzzle of the gun.

  “I’ve about had it with you smart-ass colored,” he growls. “This is my property, and I know my rights. You can’t do shit to me ’less you got a warrant. And I ain’t seen one yet.”

  “Mayor Cage,” Tee says, standing her ground and turning to me, “call Special Agent Kaiser and tell him to send a polygraph team to this address.”

  “Hey, now,” Devine begins, “what the—”

  Faster than I can process the motion, Tee pivots toward Devine while doing something with her hands that results in the fat man gaping at her in astonishment and pain. Somehow she twisted the shotgun out of his hands b
efore he could fire it. After a second’s hesitation, she inverts the weapon and drives the butt up toward Devine’s chin for a butt stroke, but at the last instant she stops. Devine throws up his hands about two seconds too late to stop the blow that would have broken his jaw, if it didn’t kill him.

  “Do you see me, mister?” Serenity asks. “Do you see what’s in my eyes?”

  He nods, cringing from the gun butt.

  “You ought to be ashamed, pointing this gun at strangers who knock on your door. I ought to beat you with this thing. You deserve it.”

  “Call the sheriff, Nita!” Devine yells.

  “Yeah, do that,” I tell him. “Walker Dennis and I are old friends. We’ve been working this case together from the start.”

  Nita Devine hesitates. She must know I’m telling the truth.

  “Who the hell are you?” Will asks Serenity. “Are you a goddamn cop or what?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m not, Mr. Devine. I’m not a naïve girl trying to make the world a perfect place. I’m a soldier. I’ve seen the same shit your buddies saw decades ago, but you missed out on. That’s right, I know your record. You fell between the wars. Got lucky, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t. You hear me, Mr. Devine? You feel me?”

  “We don’t want no trouble, now.”

  “Well, you’ve got it. I’ve read every word Henry Sexton ever wrote about the Double Eagles. And I am honing in on you bastards. On you in particular. And that truck with the Darlington Academy sticker on it.”

  Devine cuts his eyes at the truck.

  “And don’t bother trying to take it off, ’cause we’ve already got two dozen pictures. My message to you is this, sir. Pretty soon, I’m gonna have all the evidence I need. And then the dominoes will start falling. And as Mayor Cage can tell you, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be the first to fall. Because everybody else gets crushed.”

  The fat man’s jaw juts out in defiance. “I ain’t no rat.”

  “Snake Knox wouldn’t give up one day of freedom to protect you, Will,” I tell him. “And he murdered your buddy Silas Groom to get himself off the FBI’s wanted list. A Double Eagle, just like you. Or maybe you killed Groom, for Snake.”