Mississippi Blood

  “Talkin’ to the Cat Lady, what else? Ain’t nobody else around here.”

  The driver scratched his beard and looked around the car. The only visible light was a dim glow against the curtains in the rightmost room.

  “You know who the Cat Lady is, don’t you?” asked the older man.

  “Just an old colored woman with about a hundred cats. Why? Somethin’ special about her?”

  “Not really. But a long time ago, somebody lynched her kid.”

  “Klan?”

  “Word was, it was the Knox brothers. The Double Eagles.”

  “Huh. I never heard that.”

  “Why don’t we go in there and find out what the mayor was doing here? Might just get us a fat reward. Or huntin’ rights out at Valhalla, at the least.”

  The driver grunted, still thinking. Athens Point had changed a lot since Forrest Knox was killed at Valhalla.

  “If we’re gonna do something, let’s do it,” said the older man. “I’m tired of sittin’ here.”

  The driver took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Let’s not get hasty,” he said, smoke drifting from his mouth. “I’m gonna make a phone call.”

  Deep in the well of the night, I sit up from a sound sleep with the certainty that something is terribly wrong. I listen intently but hear nothing amiss. Nevertheless, I throw off the covers, take my pistol from the bedside table, and walk out into the hall.

  My mother is lying on the floor, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

  “Mom!” I cry, dropping to my knees. “What happened?”

  She blinks her right eye repeatedly, as though trying to clear something from it. Then she speaks in a guttural voice: “I was trying to get to your room. Penn, I can’t . . . I think I’m having a stroke.”

  Adrenaline flushes through me, bringing me fully alert. “Why do you think that? You’re not slurring your speech. What’s going on?”

  “My right arm . . . numb. My foot, too. And . . . I can’t see out of my right eye. I’m sorry.”

  Jesus Christ. “When did this start? Just now?”

  “No. I was seeing flashes of light earlier, when we were watching TV with Annie.”

  Frustration balloons in my chest. “Why didn’t you say anything then?”

  “I thought it was stress. I didn’t want anybody telling me not to go to the courthouse tomorrow.”

  “Mom, I’m calling Drew.”

  “No!”

  “I’m going to pick you up and carry you into my room.”

  “Don’t. I’m too heavy. You’ll hurt your back.”

  “Here we go.” Sliding my arms beneath her, I lift the woman who brought me into the world into the air and carry her bodily to my room. There I set her on the foot of my bed, grab my cell phone from the bedside table, and dial Drew Elliott’s cell phone. I do not pray, as a rule. Like my father, I don’t believe there’s any deity out there to hear such things.

  But I am praying now.

  Monday

  Chapter 20

  At five thirty a.m., my cell phone rang at the hospital. Serenity had just received a call from the Cat Lady, during which the old woman asked for Serenity’s word that neither she nor I would ever reveal the name or location of her former daughter-in-law, if she passed it to us. Serenity instantly agreed, and thirty seconds later she had a name, a time, and a New Orleans address.

  I spent Monday morning at St. Catherine’s Hospital with my mother while Drew ran a battery of tests to confirm or rule out a stroke, including an angiogram and an MRI. Throughout this process—which was mostly hurry-up-and-wait—I received a steady stream of updates from the courthouse describing the voir dire process. The texts were authored by Rusty Duncan, a local lawyer whose friendship with me dates back to nursery school at St. Stephen’s Prep. Rusty’s a funny son of a bitch, as well as smart, and he peppered his texts with quips and sarcastic commentary about Quentin’s unusual questions for the potential jury members. The basic picture Rusty painted was of a circus in which citizens who normally tried everything short of self-mutilation to avoid jury duty were lying through their teeth to get a chance to hear the lurid details of my father’s case and ultimately decide his fate.

  About midday Drew Elliott came to me in the cafeteria with what he believed was good news. “Earlier I believed Peggy had a TIA,” he said, “a transient ischemic attack. But now, believe it or not, I’m thinking her symptoms may have resulted from a complex migraine headache. They can mimic the symptoms of stroke. Peggy has no history of migraines, but God knows she’s under unbearable stress.”

  Despite his optimism, Drew insisted on additional tests, and also on keeping Mom in the hospital overnight. When Mom told him she planned to be in court tomorrow for the beginning of the trial proper, Drew absolutely forbade it.

  “Peggy, I could be wrong about the migraine,” he said. “And if there was a clot—and we missed it or it was reabsorbed—then there could be another one coming down the pike. And statistically, the next one would be bigger and more damaging.”

  “I don’t care,” Mom said flatly. “And if the big one is coming, what’s the difference if I’m lying in bed or sitting in court downtown?”

  “Your odds of survival. That’s the difference, Peggy.”

  Even this made little impression on my mother, of course. I almost wept with relief later, when my sister arrived after her drive up from the Baton Rouge airport. Jenny was jet-lagged from her London flight, but she agreed to stay with Mom while Serenity and I flew to New Orleans to interview someone I described as “an important witness who might be able to help get Dad acquitted.”

  After an exhaustive discussion of the risks, Tim Weathers and one of his men drove us to a grass airstrip south of Natchez, where Danny McDavitt’s Cessna 182 awaited us. Tim had bought into the notion that Serenity and I flying secretly to New Orleans while our security team remained on station in Natchez might provide the best possible cover for our trip.

  I’d gotten to know Danny McDavitt through Carl Sims, and the pilot has proved invaluable to me more than once. It was Danny who dropped Carl and me into the swamp beside the Bone Tree during our attempt to rescue Caitlin. While he helped Serenity get aboard, I got another call from Rusty, who was leaving the courthouse.

  “They finished the voir dire,” he said, panting as befitted his bulk.

  “And?”

  “For a while I was worried it would go into tomorrow.”

  “What was the delay?”

  “Well, like I texted you, we had a reversal of the usual dynamic. We’ve got thirty-five thousand people in Adams County, and every damn one apparently wants to serve on this jury. They think it’s going to be the biggest show of the decade.”

  “Great.”

  “Judge Elder took more time than usual to cull out the ‘habitual drunkards’ and ‘low gamblers.’ Shad burned a couple of peremptories to cut out preachers. He doesn’t want anybody especially forgiving of human frailty on that panel. And he tried his best to cut older black women. He got right up against the Batson rule. He knows those black ladies love your daddy.”

  “Yeah, but do they still love him after this Viola-Lincoln thing?”

  “Come on, man. Outside kids ain’t no big thing to them.”

  “I’m not so sure, Rusty.”

  “I couldn’t tell who Quentin’s ideal juror was. And he didn’t ask my advice a single time. At one point he muttered something about Mississippi needing a set of peremptory challenges for white men with big silver belt buckles. I think I saw Judge Elder smile at that, but he coughed to cover it, so I’m not positive.”

  This prompts a favorable grunt from me.

  “Anyway, after they narrowed it down, Quentin started checking family relations. He told the crowd he once tried a murder case in which the opposing lawyer—who was from out of state—hadn’t realized until the trial was over that four of the jury members were cousins. He got a big laugh. He’s a natural with juries, Penn. A real performer.”

&
nbsp; “No doubt. So, how’d it wind up?”

  “They settled on seven blacks and five whites, with one alternate from each race. Four of the blacks are women, and three whites.”

  Seven women and five men. “What do you think, Rusty?”

  “Hard to know with this case. I don’t know what else might come out that we haven’t heard yet. Has your daddy got any other big secrets that could break in the next week?”

  “Who the hell knows? Not me.”

  “I hear you. You gonna be in court tomorrow?”

  “Barring unforeseen emergencies—which have been the rule up till now.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  That was eighty minutes ago.

  The sky has been clear for our southward flight, and on final approach to New Orleans Danny gives us a good look at the state of the city six months after Katrina. As mayor of Natchez, I know the statistics well, but they pale in comparison to what we can see on the ground. Bed frames and masonry piled in the streets. Overturned boats lying in yards. A telephone pole sticking up through a wrecked house. An upside-down school bus. A pack of dogs loping along the Seventeenth Street Canal.

  As Serenity drives our rental car into the city, negotiating a depressing number of uprooted trees, I tell her some of the stats I know. More than half the homes in the city are still without electricity. Three hundred thousand people have yet to return. Eighty-three thousand families are living in asbestos-filled FEMA trailers. Serenity nods through my recitation. Then, when I pause, she says, “Were you down here during the storm?”

  “No. It hit Natchez, too. I was trying to hold things together up there.”

  Another nod. “I came down and worked a boat with a rescue crew.”

  Of course she did. I should have guessed by now.

  “I have some cousins here,” she explains. “Distant. We spent two days pulling people off roofs and out of trees. Then I helped with some recovery work. The bodies, you know. Man, in some ways this place was worse than Iraq. Way worse.”

  “What was your takeaway?”

  A bitter laugh escapes her mouth. “Politicians don’t give a shit about the South. Except at election time. If Katrina would have hit the East Coast, most of this shit would never have happened the way it did.”

  By the time we reach the Garden District, the light is fading. Here on the high ground the houses have power, and as the lights come up, it’s easy to tell myself that the storm had never happened. But then the wind changes, and I catch the funk of rotting wood and black mold.

  To my surprise, Dolores St. Denis lives in a mansion only two blocks from St. Charles Avenue, on Dufossat Street. Set behind ivy-covered brick walls, the cream-colored three-story château is fronted with pine trees, and heavy wrought iron spans the spaces between all the columns.

  We use an intercom to announce ourselves, and Mrs. St. Denis herself buzzes us inside. When the huge cypress door opens, I find myself looking at a remarkably striking woman in her midsixties. As expected, her features are almost entirely Caucasian—far more so than Serenity’s—but there’s a subtle darkness to her skin that no one who knew her background would mistake for a suntan. When she speaks to introduce herself, her diction is not only perfect but refined, and I know with certainty that this woman could “pass” for white in any environment she chose.

  “I’ve gone by Dee for decades now,” she says, leading us deeper into the house, which is furnished with a mixture of antiques and modern pieces. “But you may call me Dolores. I rather like hearing it again, actually.”

  “What does your husband do?”

  “Maurice was an executive for an insurance company. He passed away three years ago. I’m alone now.”

  She seats herself in a burgundy velvet chair, then motions for Serenity and me to sit on a low-slung sofa that looks like a Roche Bobois.

  “Mr. Cage, I agreed to see you because of your father. When I was in a very dark place, he tried to help me. He really tried. But I was beyond help at that time.”

  “I appreciate that. It’s my father who’s in serious trouble now. Anything you can tell us might help him considerably. I know that your—your time in Mississippi was very difficult. And I’m sorry to have to ask you about it.”

  Dolores St. Denis folds her hands in her lap, then looks up at me with startling intensity. “Mr. Cage, I know you were once a lawyer. Do you have any experience with violent crime?”

  “A great deal, ma’am. I was an assistant district attorney in Houston for eight years. I worked the most violent cases that came through our office. Gang murders, serial killers, everything.”

  “Sexual assault? Gang rapes?”

  “That, too, I’m sorry to say. Group assaults on both women and men.”

  She sighs and shakes her head, and I notice that her hair is very straight and fine. “Then you have some idea of what I was trying to deal with back then.”

  I nod. “We’re here because I believe some of the men who killed your husband may have been the ones who ordered the murder of my fiancée.”

  She blinks in surprise, as if she’s only just put together my deepest personal connection to the case. “I see. Well . . . what would you like to know?”

  “I’ve been wondering whether the woman who suffered the horrific assault Mrs. Booker described might remember a lot more detail than she confided to her mother-in-law.”

  After a few moments, Dolores nods. “I didn’t tell her everything, of course. I couldn’t. It would have broken her. I didn’t want her suffering as I was. I didn’t have any peace after that night. Not one night of peace, for the dreams.”

  I don’t want to hear worse than I heard in Mrs. Booker’s house, but this is what we came for. “What did you dream, Dolores?”

  “They . . . they did terrible things to Sam that night. They mutilated him. In my dreams, early on, he came to me without his eyes, and his privates gone. He still does sometimes, even today. Oh, dear Lord. Why would men do that?”

  “Some of the Double Eagles are sociopaths. Sadists, more than racists. They used war and the violence of the civil rights struggle to cover their natural predilections.”

  She considers this for a while. “That makes complete sense to me.”

  “How many men were there altogether, Dolores?”

  She shudders and closes her eyes. “Six.”

  I want to ask her to look at some photographs of the Double Eagles, but instinct tells me not to—not yet, anyway.

  “Are you here because you want me to testify against those men?”

  “We’re here first because we want to know if you even have information that could positively identify any of the men who killed your husband.”

  She nods slowly, warily.

  “Is that a yes?” Serenity asks.

  Dolores doesn’t reply.

  Something tells me to get off the couch, kneel before her, and promise not to divulge anything she might tell us. But I remain where I am. Serenity cuts her eyes at me, and what I read there is: Don’t say anything. She’s coming to it in her own way. Then Dolores begins to speak in a soft, hoarse voice.

  “As for identification . . . one of the men had a stutter. He was a big man, very big, and he was drunk. He had trouble getting an erection when he tried to take his turn, and he almost killed me by beating me, all the while yelling it was my fault.”

  I nod encouragement, but my mind is racing.

  “That triggered something,” she guesses. “Didn’t it?”

  “Your description fits Glenn Morehouse, the Double Eagle who first broke their code of silence and talked to Henry Sexton. The FBI thinks he was murdered by his old comrades. His sister may have helped to kill him.”

  Dolores shakes her head in amazement.

  “What else do you remember?”

  “There was a blond man who howled scripture during the assault. I saw the hair underneath his hood. He quoted scripture even while he raped me. It terrified me that he blasphemed li
ke that while he was . . . doing what he was doing. But it almost seemed he was doing it to mock someone.”

  “If that was who I think it was,” I tell her, “his father was a lay preacher, and a completely evil man.”

  “What other details do you remember?” Serenity asks.

  “The blond man had scars on his stomach. On his lower abdomen. They looked serious. Like something you’d get in a war.”

  “Most of the Double Eagles were combat veterans,” I temporize, trying to mask my excitement. “Can you describe the scars?”

  “I don’t . . . they were darker than the other skin. Raised. They didn’t look like bullet holes. They looked like . . . like little pieces of hot metal, maybe?”

  “Shrapnel,” said Serenity, touching the scar in front of her left ear.

  “That’s it.”

  “What else?” I ask softly as my pulse races.

  “One of them was just a boy. A teenager, but barely. He was quiet through most of it, and I thought he was just going to watch. But then the leader told him to take his turn. He was darker than the rest, far darker than me. Two of the men were dark-skinned for white men, but this one especially. I noticed because the ones watching were holding up lanterns beside me, all throughout.”

  “I’ll bet anything that the young one was Forrest Knox. And the older dark one was his father, Frank.”

  Dolores’s face remains impassive.

  “Did you read any of the stories about the Double Eagles in the Times-Picayune?” I ask. “Last December? Forrest Knox was a ranking officer in the state police.”

  “I can’t bear to read about crime and violence.”

  Serenity and I share a look. This woman is very fragile, and pushing her too hard might well silence her forever. Looking down, I see her hands quivering.

  “That dark young man you remember was Forrest Knox. He was killed in December.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How did he die?”

  I glance at Serenity, who raises her eyebrows, giving me the choice.

  “Violently, Dolores. He murdered my fiancée. And he died with a spear through his throat.”