Mississippi Blood

  This time we both laugh, knowing beneath the laughter that we were damned lucky to get out of New Orleans without getting hurt—or worse.

  “You think she’ll talk to the FBI?” Serenity asks, all seriousness again.

  “Maybe. The problem—from my point of view—is that while Dolores can almost certainly put Snake Knox on death row, she can’t do anything to help my father get acquitted for murdering Viola.”

  “I was thinking about that during the flight back.” Serenity stands and walks toward me. “Penn, all you can do is what you can do. You know? I had to learn that in the army. It’s a tough lesson. And hey, putting Snake Knox on death row is more than the FBI ever managed to do.”

  “I know. But . . .”

  She gives me a chiding look. “I want you to kiss me,” she says quietly.

  The heat in her eyes stuns me more than her words. “You do?”

  “Don’t you know that?”

  “But I thought you and Carl—”

  A faint smile spreads her lips. “Are you that blind, boy?”

  Holy shit. “I guess I am.”

  She closes the distance between us, then rises up on tiptoe and presses her mouth against mine. Gently at first, then harder. Her hands slip around my waist, her fingers digging into my back, and then her mouth opens.

  I hear an almost feline sound deep in her throat.

  My fingers slide into the damp hair at the base of her neck, and my right hand flattens against the small of her back, pulling her against me. As we kiss, I feel a flexed thigh and calf mold themselves around my left leg. In seconds she’s panting against my mouth.

  We break apart suddenly, as though prompted by the same impulse, still holding each other at the waist but looking feverishly into each other’s eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks.

  “Nothing. I just—”

  “I know.”

  “I guess it’s everything we’ve been through?”

  “Doesn’t matter what it is.”

  She laughs, a sharp sound of release. But then her eyes darken. “Oh, wow,” she breathes. “Oh shit. Do you believe this? Do you see who we are?”

  It takes me about three seconds. “My father?”

  She nods twice, then shakes her head. “And my mother. Or Viola. Same difference. Christ, you see how easily it must have happened for them? With the strain they were under back then?”

  For the first time I have some inkling of how powerfully my father must have been pulled into Viola Turner’s arms. As Serenity and I process this realization, our hands fall away from each other. Self-consciousness is anathema to spontaneous sex.

  She raises her right hand and runs it through her hair where I was holding her. “I really want you,” she says. “I mean, I want to sit on you right now.”

  I swallow hard. Maybe the only thing keeping me separated from her is my acute awareness of Mia and Annie one floor below. “But . . . ?”

  “But I feel like I’m acting out some weird Jungian script. You know?”

  “Yes.”

  Tee laughs again. “Why aren’t we welders and not writers?”

  “I’m not sure that would make much difference.”

  “You know what?” she says, her tone that of a professor analyzing an obscure Greek play. “We’re not like your father or my mother. And I’m not like Viola, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re free agents. They weren’t. If you and I want to hook up, there’s nothing stopping us. If we want to go down to the courthouse tomorrow and get fucking married, there’s nothing stopping us.”

  “You might be rushing things a little.”

  Serenity flips me off. “What I’m saying is, when you’re like our parents were—when you’re tasting the forbidden—at some level you know there’s no real future. You’re like married people having an affair. Unless you’re caught, you pretty much know the relationship is stillborn.”

  She’s right. “Even if you kid yourself about it,” I think aloud, “and fantasize about a future together, you know there really isn’t one.”

  “Exactly. But for you and me, the future is out there. It’s real. If we make love right now, then tomorrow we’ll be forced to confront the reality of it. Your daughter, my job in Atlanta. This act would have consequences. Whereas if this were 1964—”

  “We’d do it in a bubble of secrecy, and it would stay in the bubble.”

  Serenity smiles. “Exactly. We’d have no choice.”

  She walks to my dresser and lays her hands on it, breathing with conscious rhythm. There is a woman in the throes of sexual heat and emotional confusion. Despite her thin frame, Tee’s taut haunches fill out her jeans in a profoundly erotic way. The powerful curve of her thighs below the buttocks sends my blood pumping southward.

  “So, now that we’ve analyzed ourselves,” I say. “What do we do?”

  Tee straightens up and looks back at me, clearly undecided. “You tell me.”

  “Dad, are you finished yet?”

  My daughter’s voice, right on cue . . . “I guess I am,” I say softly. “Right?”

  Serenity puckers her lips in thought, but after a few seconds, she nods. “We have some thinking to do. And thinking usually stops this kind of foolishness.”

  I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m sure you have somebody in Atlanta. Right?”

  She sighs. “I’m not a nun, Mr. Mayor.”

  “Okay. I haven’t been with anyone since my fiancée was killed.”

  Tee looks back at me in silence for several seconds. “Not even the cheerleader?”

  “No joke. It’s only been three months.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I can’t blame Serenity for her suspicion. After all, I’m up here kissing her. “I’m going to head back down.”

  “Hey, I said I was sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I just don’t want Annie running up here and feeling weird.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” She raises her hand in a wave of regret. “It sucks doing the right thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Almost always.”

  Snake Knox rolled over in the dark of his room at the sod farm in Sulphur. His burner phone was vibrating. He shook himself awake and checked the text, which read: Call this number: 601-304-0095.

  Snake felt under his pillow for his pistol, slid it to within easy reach. Then he dialed the number.

  “You answered quick, Grandpa,” said Toons Teufel. “You nervous?”

  “Did they get the bitch?”

  “No.” Toons hawked and spat. “They were too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody got her out.”

  Snake rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Who did?”

  “Don’t know. Only person my guys saw was a woman. Young. Black. Armed.”

  “A black woman made fools out of your boys? I shoulda sent Wilma.”

  “Fuck you, Knox. I’m just lettin’ you know. Had to be FBI, a black chick who knew how to use a gun like that? She played it like an undercover.”

  Snake thought about this. “Penn Cage is tight with some FBI. If he got what I think he got from this Cat Lady, he might have brought the Bureau in.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what you wanted with that woman. She lived in a goddamn palace, I heard. Rode out Katrina like Marie Antoinette. But they didn’t even have time to empty the mansion. Somebody called in a home invasion across the street, and the NOPD showed up for once.”

  “No idea where she is now?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thanks for nothin’, Toons. Jesus.”

  Snake clicked off, but he didn’t lie down again. He lit a cigarette and sat smoking in the dark, his mind spinning outward like a hawk flying over dark trees, till the oak and hickory and pecan that covered the hills gave way to cypress and black water. He saw boats in the dark, arrowing through the night, lanterns in their bows. And he saw taut skin that looked golden in the flickering light. He closed hi
s eyes, and the vision grew clearer. With it came sounds: laughter and screams and grunts in the humid dark. And then he heard it, the strangest claim he’d ever heard a human being make: I’m a nigger, too . . . I’m a nigger, too!

  Snake wondered if the throat that screamed those words still really drew breath on the earth. If so, the woman who owned it had more power over him than almost anyone alive.

  And she had vanished.

  I went to bed two hours after my shower, but sleep has proved impossible to find. Tonight’s events, both in New Orleans and in my bedroom, have left me a twitching bundle of tension and hyper-arousal. I told Serenity the truth when I said I hadn’t been with a woman since Caitlin died. If I’m honest with myself, I haven’t felt pulled toward anyone with enough intensity to take that step.

  But I am no ascetic.

  Serenity was right about one thing. During the past weeks, I’ve sometimes lain in bed so tight with sexual tension that my mind runs through every past experience and every possible one as well. And living in close proximity with Mia Burke has pushed me there more than once, at least in my mind. I’d like to deny it, but even two years ago, when we worked together to save Drew Elliott, Mia let me know in no uncertain terms that she was a sexual being and was open to a relationship with me. I was sane enough then not to test her, and I still am—even with her sleeping down the hall every night. But in the sanctuary of my mind I have been with her many times, and nothing has made me more conscious of this fact than the arrival of Serenity, who has utterly changed the sexual dynamic in this house.

  Tee was right about the Jungian thing, too.

  She and I have been walking in the footsteps of our parents, and every bit as blindly as other human beings repeating the mistakes of their pasts. When I think of how self-righteously I’ve condemned my father, and of how quickly I reached for Serenity . . . when I’m not under a fraction of the stress he must have been in 1968. Of course, my father was married at the time, and I’m not. But despite Caitlin’s death, I have felt married right up until tonight. And yet . . .

  Did I think of Caitlin even once as I pulled Serenity against me? No.

  Lying in the cool darkness with only the hum of the air conditioner for company, I try in vain to erase the faces and figures materializing behind my eyes. Maybe the only answer is to embrace the visions and relieve myself. As I slip my hand beneath the covers, I wonder if Serenity is lying awake in similar torment in the guest room down the hall. She was shaking with desire when she stood over my dresser. Did she find sleep more easily than I? Or is she too touching herself at this moment?

  As I follow that thread in my mind, a shaft of light cuts through the dark and falls across my bed. Turning, I see a shadow pass quickly across the light—then my door closes. I tense for a couple of seconds, but something tells me I need not be afraid.

  The floorboards creak once, then again. A soft curse floats through the dark. Then a dark hand splays itself against my white sheets, and two dark knees depress the mattress. I can’t see a face, but the unfamiliar scent tells me it must be Serenity.

  Rising up on one elbow, I try in vain to make out her features in the darkness. I reach for the lamp on the bedside table, but she says, “No.”

  Then she pulls my hand to one breast and flattens my palm over it.

  “Tee,” I whisper. “What about—”

  “Don’t talk,” she says in a low, insistent voice. “I mean it.”

  After a few seconds without breathing, I begin kneading her breast. A purring sound escapes her throat. Then she presses me onto my back and hikes one knee over my hips, reaching between us, searching.

  “Jesus,” I gasp.

  “I warned you,” she says, settling her weight upon me. “If you say one more word, I’ll stop.”

  Tuesday

  Chapter 22

  At 6:14 Tuesday morning, my mother checked herself out of St. Catherine’s Hospital against her physician’s advice. The fact that her physician was her husband’s partner gave Drew Elliott no special power to hold her; all Drew could do was call to give me a heads-up. Forty minutes after one of Mom’s friends drove her to my house, she was being helped to bathe and dress by Annie and Jenny. Nothing on God’s earth, she said, was going to stop her from sitting in the first row in the courtroom during her husband’s trial. If the Lord wants me that badly, she said, he’ll have to take me from the courthouse, not the hospital.

  Once Mom was ready, we ate a light breakfast, then Tim Weathers talked us through the departure procedure he expects us to follow every morning of the trial. The armored Yukon is too wide to fit the narrow driveway beside my house, so we are to gather at the front door, then at Tim’s command move swiftly down the steps and into the safety of the big SUV, shielded by the bodies and weapons of the operators from Vulcan Asset Management.

  I stand at the door with Annie and Mia, who are highly irritated about being forbidden to attend the trial proceedings, while Tim and his guys do a recon outside. Jenny has accompanied Mom to the upstairs restroom for a final pretrial stop. Serenity is upstairs, too, doing what she can to make Dolores feel at home. When Mom appears at the top of the stairs, Jenny is not beside her, so Annie races up the steps to help her down.

  Left alone with Mia, I suddenly register that she’s wearing sunglasses inside, which is unusual for her. Before I can ask if she thinks Annie is doing all right, she says softly, “So, are you a southern gentleman now?”

  “What?”

  “I noticed a new vibe at the breakfast table this morning.”

  “What kind of vibe?”

  Mia lowers her chin and looks at me over the sunglasses. “Between you and our houseguest?”

  The blood rushes to my cheeks as I finally grasp her meaning.

  “Do you think Annie noticed?” I whisper, looking quickly at the staircase. Annie and Mom are halfway down already.

  “I don’t think sex is on her radar quite yet. But if you keep it up, she’ll sense the connection.”

  Mia pushes the glasses back up on the bridge of her pert little nose, covering her eyes once more. As Mom’s feet reach the ground floor, I find I’m still looking at Mia. “What did you mean by southern—”

  “Tim’s coming back up,” Mia says, and sure enough, the front door opens behind her as if at her command. “Time to go, everybody!”

  I’m inside the Yukon and halfway to the courthouse before I understand what she meant by her “southern gentleman” comment. I first heard that saying back in high school. They probably started saying it in these parts about 1805, and apparently they’re still saying it two hundred years later.

  You ain’t a southern gentleman till you’ve dipped your pen in ink.

  For a twenty-year-old, Mia Burke sure knows how to stick the knife in. I guess she has learned some things up at Harvard.

  Judge Joe Elder’s courtroom isn’t large by urban standards, but it’s spacious for Mississippi. The walls are cream, the curtains and chairs blue, the wood stained oak and pine. Once the judge enters and takes his throne, he will sit high above everyone except the spectators in the balcony. The witness stand isn’t really a stand at all, but an enclosed box raised a single step above the floor. The people in the second row of the jury box sit higher than the witnesses. A large balcony hangs over the gallery, with a staircase in the left rear of the courtroom leading up to it. Portraits of past circuit judges adorn the walls between high windows streaming spring sunshine, and all but one of those judges are white. Above the judge’s bench hangs the state seal, but the most iconic—and ironic—artifact in the courtroom is the Mississippi state flag, which, despite hanging in the court of an African-American judge, still bears the Confederate battle flag in its upper left quadrant.

  I tried nearly a thousand criminal cases during my legal career, and I spent countless hours doing just what I’m doing now: waiting for a judge. At most of those trials, I was sitting at the prosecution table, representing the State of Texas. Today I’m sitting in Mis
sissippi, and I am only a spectator. Today the man who sits in my customary place is one of my mortal enemies: Shadrach Johnson.

  The district attorney of Adams County waits at the prosecution table like an actor in his prime waiting backstage at a Broadway theater. In five minutes, Shad will deliver his opening statement in the most important trial of his life—up to now, anyway. Unusually, he sits alone at the table. His assistant DA, a young male lawyer in his midthirties, sits in one of the chairs behind his table, backed against the bar.

  Twenty feet to Shad’s left, Quentin Avery sits behind the defense table in his motorized wheelchair, a crocheted comforter tastefully covering his legless lap, a gray Armani jacket on his shoulders. To Quentin’s right—directly in the sight line of the jury—sits my father, as close to ramrod straight as he can manage with his arthritis and his osteoporotic spine. After three months in jail, Dad has lost twenty pounds. He’d already lost a good bit after the October heart attack; now his suit hangs off him the way suits do on fading men who don’t want to waste their children’s money on new clothes.

  Doris Avery sits in one of two chairs placed several feet behind the defense table, her back against the bar. Most spectators probably assume she is a secretary rather than an attorney in her own right. And though I’m nominally part of the defense team, I’m sitting in the first row of the gallery behind the bar, between my mother and Rusty Duncan. My sister, Jenny, is sitting at Mom’s other shoulder. A helpful circuit clerk saved us seats immediately behind the defense table, which provides good optics in terms of supporting Dad but also limits our view of him to the back of his head.

  Three months of sensational pretrial publicity have ensured that the opening of the trial proper is a standing-room-only event. With Caitlin’s sister running the Natchez Examiner, local newspaper coverage has been evenhanded, but the Jackson and Baton Rouge papers have had a field day with the lurid aspects of the case, and even the national media have run stories on the “landmark” trial. TV cameras are generally forbidden in Mississippi courtrooms, but I’ve heard that Judge Elder has been flooded with requests to make an exception to that rule. All it takes is a whiff of 1960s-flavored racism to bring the network hounds running. Thankfully, Joe Elder has so far denied all such requests, and instead allowed a half dozen pool reporters to make digital audio recordings of each day’s proceedings for accuracy, so long as they do not broadcast them. I’ve worried constantly that the judge would cave under pressure to allow the cameras in, but I suspect that Judge Elder knows Shad Johnson well enough to know he would play to the cameras every chance he got, and as for Quentin Avery: any lawyer nicknamed “Preacher” would be bound to find a way to use TV cameras to his advantage.