Mississippi Blood

  “Sure.” And a few tried to make good on their threats. “I’m listening.”

  “But in this case, the men we’re talking about are racists and criminals. Terrorists, really. Two or three generations of tightly knit sociopaths, committed to violence and involved in the drug trade. Anybody with any sense knows they were behind the killings that happened before your father was arrested. They killed Caitlin. These men kill their own, Penn. Do you think they would hesitate to kill you or me? Or Annie?”

  “Have you talked to Quentin about this?”

  “Sure. God forgive me, I tried to get him to walk away from your father’s case. I knew right away it meant trouble. Most of the world has moved past all this hatred. Even in Mississippi. And Quentin doesn’t have much time left, Penn. Whatever he does have, he deserves to live it out in peace.”

  “Doris, the world hasn’t moved past any of this. Bosnia? Rwanda? It’s the same atavistic horror. Tribalism. But I hear what you’re telling me.”

  “I feel for Viola Turner. She led a tragic life. But God knows her time had come. Why can’t we let the dead bury the dead this time?”

  “Look . . . I don’t know what the hell Dad and Quentin are up to. Shad Johnson was never going to let Dad plead down to no jail time, but I know this jury can be sold on reasonable doubt. At least I believed it until I heard about those tapes.”

  A flicker of fear shows in her eyes.

  “Was Quentin as shocked as I think he was to hear about that Dumpster tape?”

  “I think he was. But what shocked him most was that Sony has it.”

  “He hasn’t given you any idea what might be on it?”

  “He hasn’t even conceded that he knows anything about it.”

  As I look at her distraught features, a deeply unsettling thought awakens in me. I lay my hand on her shoulder, and she leans toward me, not away. “Doris, would Quentin intentionally lose a case in order to protect our lives? Yours? Mine? Annie’s?”

  She mulls the question for a bit. “If your father asked him to, he might.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That would be the only reason, though.” She stubs out her cigarette on the rail, then flicks the butt out onto the sidewalk and looks up into my eyes. “There’s something else that worries me. I don’t even know how to put words to it. But there’s something dark at the heart of this case. Something we don’t even begin to see . . . but they know. Quentin and Tom. I don’t know why they’re keeping it from us. How could it be worse than what we know already?”

  “Things can always be worse, Doris. There’s no use speculating about that. Just tell me this. Does Quentin have any surprise witnesses lined up?”

  “If he does, they’ll be a surprise to me, too.”

  In this moment I’m suddenly certain that Quentin has no secret plan, no masterfully subtle strategy, that he is not in truth a magician but a frightened old fool. “My God,” I breathe. “Don’t you see? Quentin’s throwing the case.”

  Though I spoke softly, Doris brings up both hands and waves them before me as though trying to calm a spooked animal. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Penn. I didn’t say that.”

  “What else could it be? And what’s the dark thing you’re worried about? You must have some idea.”

  She reaches into her pocket and brings out her cigarettes and a lighter. The flame illuminates her smooth skin for a few moments, and I fight the urge to cough. “I don’t want to speculate,” she says, smoke drifting upward from her lips. “But I guess we have to.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you think your daddy killed Viola?”

  I turn away from her and gaze off the precipice of the bluff, into the vast, dark stream that divides the continent. “I don’t know. He once told me he did, but I’m not positive that he meant it literally. If he did kill Viola, it wasn’t for the reason Shad claims—to keep her quiet. It was a mercy killing. A mercy killing gone wrong somehow.”

  “I feel just the opposite,” Doris says. “If Tom really loved Viola, I don’t believe he could have put her down like a lame horse. She was a nurse, Penn. She could have injected herself, if she really wanted to die that badly.”

  “Maybe that’s what the botched morphine injection was about. A failed attempt.”

  Doris shakes her head stubbornly. “I’ve seen the medical reports. Viola was in bad shape, but not so bad that she couldn’t have injected the deep vein in her thigh. She knew how to do that.”

  “Okay, then. What are you telling me?”

  Doris takes a long drag on her cigarette, like a diver taking a deep breath before plunging off a cliff. “When I was nineteen years old, I got involved with a married man. One of my college professors. I was crazy in love. He made me promises, and I believed them. Maybe he meant them when he said the words . . . I don’t know. But anyway, one night I told a girlfriend about him. Lord, her eyes lit up like I’d told her the secret of eternal youth. I knew right then that I’d made a mistake. She was going to tell somebody the first chance she got. But I’d been drinking too much, and so had she. When I first told her, I may have halfway hoped she would tell. But later that night, I panicked. I realized how terrible the consequences would be for his family if she told anyone. For me, too. If my father and mother ever learned what I’d done, it would break their hearts. They’d never let me come home. Well . . . my friend had passed out by that time. She was lying on the floor, so drunk she couldn’t have woken up if the fire alarm went off.”

  Doris is clearly reliving the moment as though she were there. “And?”

  “For a few minutes . . . Penn, I thought about holding a pillow over her face until she stopped breathing.”

  A chill rushes over my skin. “What?”

  She nods slowly, almost defiantly. “Smothering the life out of her.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I swear to God. In those few moments, I couldn’t bear the idea that the world would know what I’d done. My mother and father . . . my lover’s wife and children.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Fear. That’s all. And maybe my upbringing. But that pillow was in my hands, boy. You hear me?”

  I shake my head in denial, but Doris reaches out and squeezes my arm hard enough to hurt. “Listen to me. Any human being is capable of killing to keep their darkest secret from coming to light. Don’t lie to yourself about that.”

  “So, you believe Dad could be guilty.”

  “Of course. But Quentin’s job isn’t to find out whether or not Tom’s guilty. It’s to make sure he doesn’t go to jail. The rest is up to God.”

  “You mean the jury.”

  Doris shrugs like that’s the same thing.

  A car drives slowly past on Broadway, headlights slicing through the mist gathering on the bluff. Tourists frequently cruise this street to look at Edelweiss, the Parsonage, and Rosalie, but when I glance down to my left, I see Tim writing down the license number.

  “I kind of wish you hadn’t told me that story,” I murmur.

  Doris releases my upper arm and pats it. “Don’t say that. Lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do when you’re at war.”

  “Spoken like a true soldier,” I say with a hint of mockery in my voice.

  “Look at me,” she says, stepping in front of me. “I’m forty-one years old. Quentin is thirty-two years older than I am—eight years older than my father. But that’s who I sleep with, every night. And each day, sickness takes something else away from him.” Her eyes blaze with the anger of a woman on the edge of despair. “You think I’m not in a war right now? You ain’t payin’ attention.”

  When I draw back from the intensity of her bitterness, Doris shocks me with a laugh, full-throated and filled with pleasure. “You know what I’d like more than anything right now?”

  “To go home to Jefferson County?”

  “Nope. To get in your car and drive to some club where they don’t care what color we are and dance all night. Dance till the sun comes up.
”

  “Are you serious?”

  Her eyes are glowing, but the weight of her sadness is still plain in the slope of her shoulders. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve danced like that?”

  “A great dancer I’m not, Doris.”

  “Oh, baby. You’ve still got both your legs, and you ain’t a bad-lookin’ man.”

  Her words make me feel like Quentin could be listening from the third-floor window.

  “Quentin’s sound asleep,” she says, reading my mind. “Today wore him out. But he doesn’t have to eavesdrop to know my mind. Quentin can read thoughts, Penn. Don’t think he can’t.”

  “You really believe that?”

  All humor leaves her face. “You watch him with that jury. With hostile witnesses.”

  “Are you really that confident? A lot of people believe Quentin’s losing it. My mother, for one. Several attorneys, as well. They say he’s not the man he used to be.”

  Doris reaches out and pokes my stomach with her finger. “Are you the man you used to be? Could you please me the way you could have twenty years ago?”

  “I’m not talking about the body.”

  “You can’t separate the two! Mind and body are like flame and candle. But as for Quentin’s competence . . . his body may be falling apart, but his mind’s still a straight razor. That’s the tragedy. He’s like that physicist with Lou Gehrig’s disease. But don’t lie awake tonight thinking he couldn’t handle this job if he wanted to. Compared to Shadrach Johnson, Quentin’s got X-ray vision.”

  “Superman, huh?”

  “I’d never say that to his face, though.” She laughs softly, but underneath the laughter I hear her strangling tears.

  Glancing down to where Tim waits in the shadows of Washington Street, I realize time is passing quickly. Serenity must be back at my house by now . . .

  “I should probably get going, Doris.”

  “Wait.” She takes another drag, then turns her face and blows out the smoke. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, it’s scared me so deep.”

  Fresh fear makes my face feel cold. “Doris, for God’s sake—”

  “Remember when I said Quentin and Tom are like two wounded old lions who’ve crawled into a thicket together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m afraid they’ve made a bargain with each other.”

  “What kind of bargain?”

  “Like the one Tom made with Viola.”

  Horror prickles the hair on my neck. “Doris—”

  Her eyes go wide with confessional urgency. “I’m afraid Quentin has agreed to throw the trial if Tom will pay him back by helping Quentin pass without any pain.”

  At first I don’t grasp what she’s suggesting. But then I get it. On its face, the idea seems crazy . . . and yet a strange sense of déjà vu has started a thrumming in my chest. “Doris . . . that’s impossible. If Dad were convicted of killing Viola, he’d never be free to fulfill his half of the bargain.”

  She counters this argument with eerie certainty. “Tom could make it happen, if he wanted to. He knows a lot of people. Doctors, druggists . . . nurses. People who’d do anything he asked.”

  “Do you really think Quentin’s that depressed?”

  “Oh, yes.” At last the tears come, wet streaks glinting in the streetlight’s spill. “I try, Penn. I do everything I can to keep his spirits up. But Quentin’s sin is pride. He’d be the first to tell you that. The problem is simple: He can’t do what he used to do. You know what I’m talking about. Survival means more than that to most men, I guess. But Quentin’s an all-or-nothing kind of man. And he can’t abide pity. He won’t.”

  I take Doris in my arms and pull her tight against me. “Stop thinking about it. Just shut your mind off.”

  “I wish I had a shot of morphine myself. Enough to knock me out for twenty-four hours. Just to catch my breath.”

  “What if I take you dancing instead?”

  She laughs, but then her bosom begins to heave and shudder against my chest. All I can do is hold her tight. After a while, she draws back her head and fixes me with her liquid brown eyes, now shot with blood. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens in court tomorrow.”

  “I guess we will.”

  She walks with me to the head of the near staircase, then lets her hand trail down my arm as we separate. When I’m halfway down to the sidewalk, she says, “You told Quentin earlier you’d give him half a day to turn things around. What will you do if he keeps going the way he has so far?”

  “Whatever it takes to have him removed from the case. Help me help him, Doris. Any way you can think of. Can I count on you?”

  After several seconds of what must be agony, she nods three times. Then she turns and walks to the tall doors that lead back to the bed where Quentin Avery sleeps.

  Chapter 35

  Walking back up Washington Street, I pass between the courthouse and the sheriff’s department once again. I hope Dad has found a way to sleep in his cell three floors above Billy Byrd’s office. He’s never slept much, and with his joint pain he needs a lot of medication to find any rest. Medications and dosages have become a source of squabbling between Quentin and the sheriff, and I’m betting Dad is sitting up there pondering dimensions of this case that remain unknown to me.

  The specter that Doris raised—that Quentin might allow Dad to be convicted in exchange for a painless death—has stuck with me. I’m tempted to go in and ask to see my father, if only to confront him about that. But even if she’s right, he would never confess it. The real question is why he would want to be convicted in the first place.

  The lesser of two evils, answers a voice in my head.

  “Did you say something?” Tim asks from behind me.

  “No.” Taking out my phone, I check for text messages, hoping for word from Serenity. But there’s nothing. “Let’s get home, man. You want to run it?”

  Tim grins. “Oh, yeah! Let’s do it.”

  He breaks past me, then spins and starts backpedaling, waiting for me to come after him. Filling my lungs with cool night air, I dart forward and pass him, sprinting like I once did on these same streets when I was a much younger man. Tim’s footsteps pound up behind me, and I know he could easily pass me, but for a few seconds I enjoy the illusion that I’m winning, that I’m actually outrunning the darkness that has followed me for as long as I can now remember.

  After letting myself into the house, I walk through to the den and find Mia lying on the sofa with a hardcover book propped on her stomach. I say hello, and she answers, but ten seconds later she’s back to studying the pages like Champollion over the Rosetta Stone.

  “What you reading?” I ask, walking closer.

  She holds the book higher for me to see. The jacket is from an old first edition I bought in England, The Eagle Has Landed, by Jack Higgins.

  “That’s not your kind of thing. You couldn’t find something more your style in my office? Or have you read everything in there already?”

  “I actually like this. Was Doris okay?”

  “She’s worried about Quentin’s health. I think they’re both depressed.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Mia says without looking up.

  Sensing that she wants me to leave her alone, I start to walk into the kitchen, but then I go back to the sofa. “Is Annie asleep?”

  “No, she’s up in your mom’s room. Peggy and I talked while Annie was taking a bath, but I wanted Annie to get some alone time with her.”

  Before I can thank Mia, my cell phone rings.

  “It’s Jenny, calling me from upstairs,” I say, looking at the LCD. “Probably wants to talk about the trial.”

  Mia clucks her tongue critically. “High maintenance, man.”

  I could go upstairs to talk to Jenny, but I’d rather not. She will have a dozen points to make, most of which are irrelevant to the core issues of the trial, and mostly she’ll want reassurance. I call her back and do my best to sound attentive, but plead th
at I need to do some legal research downstairs. While my sister chatters on, I walk a slow circuit around the main floor, keeping a good distance from Mia. But as I extricate myself from the conversation, I pass back into the den and steal a glance at the running heads on the two exposed pages of the book in her hands. The left-hand one reads: Serenity Butler. The right-hand one: The Paper Bag Test.

  “Oh, boy,” I say, trying not to laugh as I hang up. “Why didn’t you want me to know you’re reading that?”

  Mia slams the book shut and drops it on the floor, her cheeks pink. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess because I was catty this morning. I’m embarrassed now. It’s a damn good book.”

  She sits up and gives me an abashed smile, but it fades quickly.

  “Mia, do you regret taking this semester off? Maybe it isn’t what you thought it would be.”

  “Nothing ever is, in my experience.” She looks up with eyes much older than her years, but it’s clear she’s not complaining or looking for sympathy. “But I don’t regret it. Annie needed me. She still needs me. And whatever this is, it’s sure as hell not boring.”

  “Nope. It’s like living in the eye of a storm. With people getting hurt all around us.”

  Mia nods. “To that point, Serenity’s still not back. You think she’s okay?”

  I give it a few moments’ thought. “Serenity can handle herself in most situations. Maybe she’s with Carl.”

  Mia laughs, but it sounds forced. “He was sure into her, anyway.”

  With that she scoops up the book and slips her feet into a pair of sandals that she’d slid under the sofa.

  “I’m going up,” she says, bouncing to her feet. “See you tomorrow.”

  I raise a hand to wave, but she’s already turned away, and she doesn’t look back as she passes through the door. The quick beat of feet on wood tells me her young legs swallow the long staircase without effort, and then I’m alone in the silence.

  I’ve been lying in bed about five minutes when a soft knock sounds at my door. I hate to admit it to myself, but I’m hoping it’s Serenity. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have texted me that she was okay, even if she’s lying in bed with Carl somewhere. With all that’s been happening, surely she knows I’d be worried.