Mississippi Blood

  “A stirring speech, Colonel. I have to admit, you’ve convinced me. Tom Cage acted heroically on the night of the twenty-fifth. But let me ask you this: Have you heard of cases where men who acted heroically in war committed crimes later in life?”

  The colonel’s face clouds with unpleasant recollection. “Ah—”

  “Objection,” says Quentin.

  “On what grounds?” asks Judge Elder.

  I can see from the colonel’s face that Shad struck vital tissue with his thrust. Dad’s going to take a hit here; Quentin senses it, too. Colonel Eklund remembers something, and he isn’t about to lie on the stand. But Quentin himself already argued that Eklund qualifies as an expert on military matters, and by Quentin’s own strategy, trying to suppress any part of the truth—even an unpleasant part—would be a mistake.

  “Withdrawn,” Quentin says softly.

  “Colonel?” Shad prompts, smelling blood.

  “I knew a sergeant in Vietnam who killed his wife after he got out of the service. Killed his wife and then himself. He suffered from battle fatigue. Or PTSD, they call it now.”

  “Is that the only such case you remember?”

  Colonel Eklund hesitates, then says, “No. A guy I served with went to jail for robbing a bank in Illinois.”

  “After he’d won an award for bravery?”

  “The Bronze Star.”

  “Any other cases?”

  “I don’t think so. You hear things, you know. But those are the only instances in my personal experience.”

  Shad nods as though he and the colonel share some difficult knowledge about life. “I personally know that one veteran of the Mogadishu raid dramatized in Black Hawk Down was convicted of child molestation. They left his character out of the movie because of that.”

  “Move to strike,” says Quentin.

  “So ordered,” says the judge. “You’ve made your point, Mr. Johnson, and the jury will disregard that last statement.”

  Shad lifts one hand in acknowledgment. “War changes men, doesn’t it, Colonel?”

  “Yes and no,” Colonel Eklund says after reflection. “Depends on how much action they see, and where they see it. Tempo is the thing. In the Pacific, you could endure a year’s worth of hell in five days of combat. Two days could break a man. In Vietnam, you had lighter contact, but it never let up. Two or three hundred days of exposure in the field, to land mines and trench foot and booby traps and sniper fire. It’s like a Chinese water torture.”

  “Did you return to combat in Korea after receiving your wounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever serve with Private Cage again?”

  “No.”

  “So, you have no idea what kind of operational tempo he experienced in the months that he remained in the Korean theater?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Is your opinion of him based entirely on his actions on the night of November twenty-fifth, 1950?”

  “And four months of operations leading up to that night,” Eklund clarifies. “We saw a fair amount of action prior to that.”

  “But nothing comparable to that night?”

  “Naktong was pretty hairy, but not like after the Chinese came in. That’s true.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. Most enlightening.”

  Colonel Eklund nods warily, not quite trusting Shad’s solicitous tone.

  “And thank you for the information about Love Company—the ‘colored boys,’ as you called them. I thought the army had been desegregated by that time.”

  The colonel shifts on his seat as though to get the blood flowing in order to stand. “On paper it had been. But there were still all-black units in the early months of the war. The army doesn’t like change.”

  “Nor does society at large, Colonel. Thank you. No further questions.”

  “Shad just earned his paycheck,” Rusty says in my ear.

  Judge Elder looks at Quentin and raises his eyebrows. “Redirect?”

  “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

  “You’re free to go, Colonel,” Judge Elder says.

  Colonel Eklund looks up at the judge and nods with obvious respect for the office. Then, with a last look around the courtroom, he rises, steps out of the witness box, and walks to the center aisle. As he passes the defense table, he stops and looks my father full in the face. Then he straightens up, raises a wrinkled right hand, and snaps out a salute that would make a West Point officer proud. This act, a superior officer initiating a salute to a man of lower rank, is a courtesy reserved for winners of the Medal of Honor.

  A flush of surprise and humility comes into my father’s cheeks. With a grating screech, he pushes his chair away from the table, comes slowly to his feet, and raises two rigid fingers to his brow with a faint echo of military precision. I feel my mother squeeze my right arm with her shaking hand.

  As with the spitting incident, no one seems sure how to react. Shad stifles an objection as Colonel Eklund gives Dad an encouraging smile, then marches down the aisle. As he passes through the crowd, Walt Garrity stands and snaps out a salute. Colonel Eklund returns it, then marches on, to the big doors at the back of the room.

  “I wish the jury had to vote right now,” Rusty whispers in my left ear. “Twelve to zero for acquittal, I guarantee.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” I whisper back. “Pundits thought Bush père was untouchable after winning the Gulf War in ’91, and Clinton beat him.”

  “A year later.”

  Rusty is probably exaggerating the colonel’s impact, but one thing is sure: if anything can erase the memory of Major Powers spitting on Dad’s chest, Colonel Eklund’s salute comes closest.

  For a moment I wonder if Quentin stage-managed that whole scene, but then I dismiss the idea. Neither my father nor Colonel Eklund would taint the memory of their service by trying to sway a jury in that way. Not even with the stakes as high as they are.

  “Mr. Avery?” prompts Judge Elder. “You may call your next witness.”

  “Your Honor, I’d like to recall Cora Revels, the victim’s sister, to the stand.”

  Shad Johnson looks as surprised as I am by this move, but when I turn, I realize that our reaction is nothing compared to that of Viola’s sister.

  Cora Revels looks terrified.

  Chapter 50

  Snake Knox was looking out over a field of kudzu in Rodney, Mississippi, when his burner phone rang for the first time that morning. He had no idea who the caller might be, and he was surprised when Toons Teufel identified himself in the exultant voice of a man happy to be delivering news.

  “What the hell do you want?” Snake asked warily.

  “We got back to surveilling your old Klan buddies, and just in time, too. Because one of them just flew the coop.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Will Devine and his family disappeared sometime between last night and sunrise. Cleaned their place out.”

  Snake processed this news in silence. As his mind worked, he noticed the way the kudzu vines threw runners into the open air, searching for purchase like starving serpents, climbing and eventually strangling even the tallest trees.

  “You there, Grandpa?”

  “What do you mean, ‘cleaned the place out’?”

  “Clothes, money, files, family albums . . . they left the place a wreck. We talked to the neighbors, but nobody heard nothing.”

  “Devine has kids. Grown kids.”

  “They’re gone too, baby. It’s a clean sweep.”

  Snake felt the ground shift beneath his feet. “Then I don’t guess you got back on the job in time, did you?”

  “Hey,” Toons said, his voice hard. “You still want those shooters today or not?”

  “Everything stays the same. Eleven a.m. at the ruins.”

  Snake ended the call and ran back toward the house. Alois was walking down the concrete porch step, and the second he looked up he read the anger and worry in Snake’s face.

  “What is it?
” he asked.

  “Get the boat key,” Snake ordered.

  “What’s happened?”

  “The FBI flipped Will Devine.”

  Alois blanched. “Motherfucker. Where we going? Are we bailing?”

  “Hell, no,” Snake barked, slapping his son’s shoulder as he passed him. “We’re going to Natchez.”

  Alois let out a rebel yell and ran toward the International Harvester pickup that held the key to the boat.

  Snake watched his son for a few seconds, thinking about how in the end, everything came down to blood. There was your family, and then there was the rest of the world. Snake would have given a lot to have Frank at his side for what was coming, but Alois would have to do. He would be enough.

  Alois was blood.

  Chapter 51

  When Cora Revels took the stand two days ago, she looked like a grieving church matron reluctantly testifying about her family scandal in the hope of getting justice for her sister. Today she’s equally well dressed, but her eyes are those of a frightened woman with something to hide.

  When Quentin speaks, his words are courteous, but his tone isn’t as solicitous as it was the last time he questioned the victim’s sister. “Ms. Revels, I’m sorry to bring you back up here. I only have a few questions for you.”

  “All right.”

  “Did your sister leave an estate behind when she died?”

  “Estate? All we had was Mama’s house, and that weren’t no estate. It doesn’t even have central air.”

  Muffled laughter comes from the rows of lawyers.

  “I don’t mean the house only, Ms. Revels. I mean whatever property your sister might have had left in her name when she died, after the medical bills were paid. It could be a checking account, a savings bond, stocks or bonds.”

  “Oh. Yes, Vee did have a little bit of money put back.”

  “Approximately how much did she have?”

  “Objection,” Shad says, later than I would have expected him to. “I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning.”

  Quentin looks at Judge Elder without the slightest hint that he might back away from this. “We will all see the relevance very soon, Your Honor, I assure you.”

  “Overruled,” Elder declares.

  “Exception.”

  “Noted.”

  “May I approach the bench, Your Honor?” Quentin asks.

  Judge Elder nods.

  Shad practically scrambles out of his seat to reach the bench at the same time Quentin does. After Judge Elder covers his mike, an indistinct hum of discussion follows, lasting about thirty seconds. Then Shad returns to his seat with a grim look, and Quentin wheels himself back over to the podium.

  “Now that that’s settled,” he says, “would the witness answer the question?”

  Cora is looking at someone in the spectators’ seats, I realize. Someone to my left. She was focused on the same spot throughout the sidebar. It’s Lincoln. He’s sitting one row behind the prosecution table. Cora is searching for guidance, and so clumsily that Quentin turns and stares at Lincoln himself, so that the jury will see what’s happening. Under this scrutiny, Lincoln cannot risk coaching her with the slightest signal. He sits with his jaw clenched tight, staring straight ahead.

  “Ms. Revels?” Quentin repeats.

  “Um . . . Vee had about seventy-two thousand dollars in an account up in Chicago.”

  Quite a few spectators gasp at this figure, and I sense that most of them are black.

  “Seventy-two thousand dollars,” Quentin echoes. “And the house?”

  “The house was mine.”

  “Was it always yours?”

  “No, that was Mama’s house. But she deeded it over to me after I got hurt at work.”

  “Where did you work?”

  “At the tire plant. I fell and hurt my back, and since then I can’t do no work. All I got is my disability check. Mama gave me the house so I’d always have somewhere to stay.”

  “Did she give Viola anything at that time?”

  “No. She knew Vee could take care of herself. Vee always knew how to do that.”

  For the first time, I hear resentment in Cora’s voice when she speaks of her sister. I can’t remember whether she or Viola was the younger sister, but I think it was Viola.

  “Back to the seventy-two thousand dollars,” Quentin says with the persistence of a dripping faucet. “What happened to that money?”

  Again Cora looks at Lincoln, but she finds no help there. He’s pretending to look out one of the tall courtroom windows. “It was divided up according to the will,” she says. “Viola’s will.”

  “I see. And how was it divided?”

  “Objection!” Shad says. “We’re far afield from the death of Viola Turner, Judge.”

  “Are we?” Quentin asks, looking straight at Shad. “Judge, my client has been charged with murder. He is entitled to explore the possibility that someone else committed the crime.”

  In that sentence, the entire dynamic of the courtroom changes. It’s as though Quentin has suddenly taken a croaker sack from his briefcase and released a rattlesnake under the chairs.

  “Holy fuck,” whispers Rusty. “This is where Quentin was headed all along.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “I’ll allow it,” Judge Elder says. “But we’d better see how this fits pretty quickly, Mr. Avery.”

  “Understood, Your Honor. So, how was the money divided, Ms. Revels?”

  “Just like the will said. I got thirty thousand, six hundred dollars, Lincoln got the same, and the rest went to Junius Jelks.”

  “Viola’s husband?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And where does Mr. Jelks reside now?”

  “In prison, in Illinois.”

  “That’s right,” Quentin muses, as though he had forgotten. “Tell me, who drew up your sister’s will?”

  “Mr. Alvin Dupuis. A Chicago attorney who had grown up in Natchez.”

  I once met Alvin Dupuis, when he was in town for a reunion of some kind. He was old then, and a black police detective told me that Dupuis had worked in the gray margins of the legal profession for many decades.

  “When was this?” asks Quentin.

  “A long time back,” Cora answers. “Soon after Lincoln got out of law school, I think it was, him and Vee went down to Mr. Dupuis’s office and drew up the will. But he be dead now. Mr. Dupuis, I mean.”

  “I see. Ms. Revels, when the will was probated, did anyone contest it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did anyone come forward with any other will that they claimed was your sister’s? Or did anyone claim that the will you’re talking about was invalid?”

  Again Cora glances at Lincoln, who by now is looking everywhere but at his aunt.

  “Well,” Cora says uncomfortably, “one lady did try to say that Viola had promised to give some money to that reporter, Mr. Sexton. But she didn’t have no proof, so the judge threw her out.”

  “I see. Who was this woman you’re referring to?”

  “I don’t remember her name. She was Mr. Sexton’s mama, I believe.”

  “I see. How much did Mrs. Sexton claim that your sister had promised to give her son?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  More expressions of shock from the gallery.

  “That’s more than sixty percent of your sister’s total estate. Why would she give that kind of money to Mr. Sexton?”

  “She wouldn’t!” Cora blurts. Then she leans back as though embarrassed by her passion.

  “What did Mrs. Sexton claim was the reason?”

  “She said Viola had promised Mr. Henry that money to help finish some movie he was making.”

  “What was this movie about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Quentin’s skepticism is obvious to everyone in the room. “And Viola never spoke to you about willing Mr. Sexton some money?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Not
even a small amount?”

  “No.”

  “Did Viola ever tell you that she was going to change the will that Mr. Dupuis had made long ago, and write a new one prior to her death?”

  “No, sir. She never done that.”

  “Never wrote a new will? Or never spoke about it?”

  “Neither one!”

  Quentin rolls his chair a little closer to the witness stand. “You seem upset, Miss Cora.”

  “’Cause you trying to pull some kind of lawyer trick on me! Take my rightful inheritance.”

  “I’m not trying to do any such thing, I assure you.”

  “That’s all the money I got in the world!”

  “Objection!” Shad breaks in. “Counsel is badgering the witness, and for no reason I can understand.”

  “Mr. Avery?” Judge Elder asks.

  “No further questions, Your Honor. I tender the witness.”

  Shad seems to be of two minds about questioning Cora Revels. But after about twenty seconds, he rises and walks close to the witness box.

  “Ms. Revels, your sister’s will was probated in Cook County, Illinois, was it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You filed that will with the clerk of court there?”

  “My nephew did.”

  “I see. And no one brought forward any other will to challenge the one that was probated, did they?”

  “No, sir. That’s right.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Judge Elder gives Quentin a curious glance. “Redirect, Mr. Avery?”

  “None, Your Honor.”

  “The witness may step down.”

  In all my years as a lawyer, I’ve rarely seen a witness more eager to leave the stand than Cora Revels. As she hurries back to her seat by Lincoln, Rusty whispers, “What you wanna bet the love child is up next?”