Mississippi Blood

  “Are you thinking?” I ask. “Or having a seizure?”

  She starts like a sleepwalker coming awake somewhere unfamiliar. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I get that way when I’m thinking. Slack-jawed.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Dad. Last October, when he had his heart attack, that was the first time I began to truly understand that he will die someday. Probably soon. Whether he’s acquitted in this trial or not . . . he’ll be gone. Despite all his health problems, I’ve always seen him as invulnerable. Invincible.”

  Jenny taps her fist against her chin, and it’s obvious that she’s dealing with some painful emotions. At last she drops her hand and pats the kitchen counter with both palms. “During the conference at your office today, I could hear some of your discussion from the lounge.”

  This makes me sit up straight. “And?”

  “I thought I heard some mention of a videotape. Is that the tape that Viola left for Henry Sexton? The tape Daddy and Walt tried to get rid of?”

  Shit. “There was some discussion of whether it might be possible to restore that.”

  “And is it?”

  “It might be, apparently. We won’t know until tomorrow.”

  “And would that be a good thing?”

  How do I answer this? I’m not about to make Jenny lie awake all night in terror.

  “I honestly don’t know. Let’s not borrow trouble, huh? I’d just as soon give the case to the jury first thing in the morning.”

  “So you don’t think Daddy should take the stand tomorrow?”

  I think back to my visit in the jail, to the broken look in his eyes. “No. His chances are far better if he keeps his mouth shut.”

  “I agree. I really worry what Shad Johnson would do to him on cross.”

  “You’re right to. Shad can wield a question like a scalpel. I think Quentin underestimates him.”

  The swish of slippers on the floor makes us both turn. Mom stands in the kitchen door, sleepy-eyed but alert for any hint of danger.

  “Did I hear you talking about the case?”

  Whoever said all humans lose hearing ability as they age never examined my mother.

  “We were just discussing the possibility of Dad taking the stand tomorrow.”

  Very calmly, Mom reaches out and steadies herself by grasping the door frame. “Would that be the mistake I think it would, Penn? I’m asking you as a former prosecutor.”

  “Most lawyers would say yes. Most lawyers would have rested after Junius Jelks testified, or after Lincoln was destroyed. Certainly after Vivek Patel.”

  My mother nods slowly. “Your father never would listen to anyone else. Not about the big things. And Quentin’s following his wishes.”

  “Mom, I think there’s only one person in the world who could stop Dad from taking the stand tomorrow.”

  To my surprise, she laughs. In that laugh is fifty years of shared living, half a century of knowing another human being as they truly are and sticking with them anyway.

  “I’ve tried,” she says. “Oh, how I’ve tried. But it’s no use.”

  She walks between Jenny and me, then puts an arm around each of us. A shock of pain flashes through my right side, but Mom doesn’t seem to notice. This tells me she’s definitely been into the pharmaceuticals.

  “My two babies,” she says, “still with me. We’ll just have to hope for the best tomorrow.”

  A thousand memories flood my mind, but before I can voice a single one, Mom plants a kiss on each of our cheeks and glides from the room.

  Jenny looks at me and shakes her head. “All this going on, and you know the last thing Mom told me she was worried about?”

  “What?”

  “You falling for Serenity.”

  “God. She started in on me last night with that. And then she walked in on us.”

  Jenny raises her eyebrows. “In flagrante delicto, I heard?”

  “She told you?”

  “Mm-hm. Today, when we went to her house to pick up her ‘things.’”

  “Xanax?” I ask.

  “Among other goodies. Can you blame her? Living in a motel beside a federal prison for months? That’s not what she signed on for.”

  “No. But . . . it still disappoints me a little. I’m not being judgmental. I’ve just never seen a crisis she couldn’t handle sober. You know?”

  Jenny shrugs. “We all have a breaking point.” She stands and rinses her ice cream bowl in the sink. “So . . . ?”

  “So what?” I ask.

  “You and Serenity?”

  “Oh, hell. That’s temporary. We just clicked. I hadn’t touched a woman since Caitlin, and— I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Well . . . she seemed to need me as well. And she doesn’t play games, you know? She’s straightforward, and I needed that. I don’t think it’ll last beyond this week. She’s not going to move here and become Annie’s stepmother. And I’m sure as hell not moving to Atlanta.”

  “Mom will be relieved to hear it.”

  “Oh, I know. She was practically pushing me into Mia’s arms as an alternative.”

  For the first time in a long while, Jenny laughs.

  “I’ll tell you something, though,” I say seriously. “When Mom walked in on us doing it, she looked like she’d seen death itself.”

  Jenny stares back at me, her eyes troubled. “The ghost of Christmas past, maybe?”

  “I imagine so. I hate that I hurt her in any way.”

  “You get to live your own life, Penn. But deep down, I think you want Ward and June Cleaver back. I probably do, too.”

  I look at my watch. “Enough of this. Let’s get to bed.”

  After Jenny and I part, I speed-dial Doris Avery on my way back to the basement.

  “Hello, Penn,” she says in a sleepy voice, but then I hear her exhale what is almost certainly cigarette smoke. “Do you need Quentin?”

  “I do.”

  “He’s right here.”

  “Last call,” Quentin says. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  “Speak for yourself. Doris just rubbed my neck, and I’m nearly out. You hear anything more from Kaiser?”

  “The FBI supercomputers are churning away. I feel like I’m being forced to lie still while termites devour the walls of our house.”

  “Let me save you some oxygen. Don’t ask me about Tom testifying tomorrow. It’s not my decision, and it never has been. If Joe Elder tells us to proceed, Tom’s going into that witness box.”

  “Did you press him about the Dumpster tape?”

  Quentin’s labored breathing comes over the connection for a while. Then at last he says, “I didn’t get anywhere.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I’m sorry, Penn. Keep the faith. I’ll see you in court.”

  “Wait! I’m worried about Dad staying in the jail tonight. After getting the news about Walt, you know? What if he gets angina?”

  “They’ll get him his medicine. Stop worrying. I’ve done what I can to be sure Tom’s all right in there, and we can’t get him out tonight anyway.”

  “What do you mean? What have you done?”

  “All I can, like I said. But Christ, Penn. Have you ever considered that Tom dying in his sleep in that jail might be better than what’s waiting for him after this trial?”

  “What? Hell, no! Have you?”

  “Not until tonight, I confess. But if Tom did kill Viola, and it wasn’t euthanasia—if they had some conversation beforehand—an argument, let’s say, and the world sees that on tape—then Tom’s going to wish he’d died tonight.”

  Chapter 61

  Alois Engel stood on the wet sand west of Rodney and watched a pushboat driving a string of barges up the dark river. Only the moon cast a faint wash of light over the water, and every couple of minutes a blue-rimmed black cloud would scud across its face.

  A couple of yards away, his father crouched on
the sand, peering out over the water. Snake had asked for silence, but Alois could not contain his frustration any longer.

  “Why the hell did they use beanbag rounds?” he muttered. “I thought you said those VK guys were supposed to be stone killers.”

  Snake raised a hand and signaled for Alois to shut up.

  “We won’t get within a mile of that little girl now. And she was our only damn leverage!”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Snake muttered. “Let me think. It’s that old nigger woman we gotta find, and Penn Cage is the only one I figure knows where the FBI’s taken her.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” Alois said, “but I’ve got to speak my piece. We need to cut loose of those VK bastards. Those no-’count pussies ain’t done us a bit of good. They’re scared of the damn FBI! That’s why they used that toy ammo.”

  “The FBI came down hard on them over the past week,” Snake said. “Damned hard. Lars don’t want to make the top of the most-wanted list on our account. But his boys killed that driver when it went sideways—or as good as, anyway—and he lost two more of his own men.”

  “Men, my ass,” Alois grumbled. “That driver got himself shot by a rickety old gomer from Texas. I say to hell with those bikers. We don’t need ’em. Didn’t you tell me Uncle Frank always said, ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself’?”

  Snake took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it with a Zippo. “Shut up, boy. You never knew Frank.”

  “That’s not my fault, is it?”

  Snake grunted and blew out a long plume of smoke. “I guess it ain’t.”

  “Well?” Alois pressed. “Did Frank say that or not?”

  Snake straightened up and rubbed his forehead with his palm as he watched the pushboat pass. Alois felt the ground beneath him vibrating from the torque of those big engines.

  “Frank said a lot of things. And he did some big-time shit, back in his prime. But in the end, he drank himself into a stupor, walked under a load of batteries, and let a nigger woman kill him like a damn hog.”

  Alois felt his throat knot up with a boy’s anger. He’d always been told that Frank Knox was the toughest and smartest damn soldier ever to come out of Louisiana, which was saying something. Frank was the alpha dog in any group of men who ever got close to him.

  “Where were you when he died?” Alois asked, voice quavering with anger and fear.

  At last his father turned to him, and what Alois saw in those eyes was something utterly removed from anything he’d seen in them before. Snake’s eyes reminded him of a demonstration he’d seen in his junior college lab. A reckless professor had used a vacuum pump to put cyclohexane into a state where it flirted with the triple point: simultaneously boiling and freezing, cycling through the solid, liquid, and gaseous states. Snake’s eyes told his son that a similar reaction was occurring behind them now. Rage and guilt were bleeding into one another, threatening to explode, and Alois knew that the resulting detonation, when it came, would kill anyone close to it.

  “I had just got to Dr. Cage’s office. I’d been holding Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis at the machine shop when Sonny called me. I hauled ass back to town quick as I could, but I was too late. Dr. almighty Cage had told Sonny and Glenn to stay in the waiting room,” Snake said in a guttural voice. “Said there wasn’t room for them in his surgery room.”

  Alois nodded, knowing he’d found the proper lever with which to trigger his father. “And now you know why.”

  The corner of Snake’s mouth twitched, something Alois had never seen it do before. “Doc come out and told us Frank had expired in spite of his best efforts. Expired. Like a fucking magazine subscription.”

  “So what are we going do about it? I don’t see the point of waiting for no fucking jury.”

  Snake looked back out over the dark water.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Alois said.

  Snake smoked his cigarette in self-absorbed silence. After a while, he said, “Tom Cage is beyond being threatened, or blackmailed. I’ve seen it before. He’s shaking hands with Death. That’s what a guy in my unit used to say.”

  Helpless fury was building in Alois’s chest. “So what are you saying, Pop? Huh? Do nothing?”

  Snake tossed the glowing butt into the fast-flowing current and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna take care of the doc before he does something against all reason.”

  Alois’s arteries expanded with excitement. “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ve already done it,” Snake said, turning back to the sandy road that led to the house. “Wilma ought to have that venison about ready now. Let’s get back inside. I gotta figure a way to trace that woman from Athens Point. I spent twenty minutes fuckin’ her in the swamp, and I doubt she’s forgot a second of it. She can put my white ass in Angola.”

  “To hell with that,” Alois said, desperate to know what his father had planned. “What have you got going?”

  As Snake passed Alois, he let his eyes fall on those of his son. “That trial’s over,” he said. “Tom Cage will never see the light of morning.”

  Not long after midnight, Deputy Larry McQuarters opened the cellblock door and strode between the cells to check the prisoners. Several were still awake, and a couple begged him to bring treats or let them borrow his cell phone. Larry ignored them. He’d come to check on Dr. Cage, who was a special friend of one of Larry’s favorite people. On Quentin’s advice, Larry had varied the intervals between his checks, but even so, he hadn’t discovered anything that troubled him about Dr. Cage’s treatment. Everybody knew Sheriff Byrd didn’t care for Tom Cage, but more than a few deputies didn’t care much for Sheriff Byrd, either—

  Larry stood before Dr. Cage’s cell with his mouth open.

  The cell door was closed, but the cell was empty.

  “Where Dr. Cage at?” Larry called. “Hey! Where Dr. Cage gone?”

  “He said he needed some medicine,” answered a drug dealer from a bunk in the adjacent cell. “His chest was hurtin’ him.”

  Alarms rang in Larry’s big head. “Who come got him?”

  “Dunwoody.”

  Dunwoody? Sheriff Byrd’s pet rat . . .

  Larry turned and ran for the door, which required considerable effort since he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. His first stop, once he got through the cellblock door, was the monitor station, where one of several computer screens would display whatever was going on in the infirmary, one floor below.

  The monitor that ought to be showing the infirmary was black.

  Dead? Larry thought.

  Monitors frequently malfunctioned in the jail, due to a lack of funds and qualified maintenance techs, but something in Larry’s belly told him this was no accident.

  He bolted for the stairs, wrenched himself sideways to fit through the door, then pounded down to the second floor, where he crashed through the door and veered left, toward the little infirmary room. With every step he saw Dr. Cage lying motionless on the infirmary floor, his lips and fingernails blue. Or worse, hanging from a belt like so many inmates Larry had seen in his life.

  When he pushed open the infirmary door, Larry saw Dr. Cage sitting in the blood-drawing chair, his open hand held out before him. Deputy Gilbert Dunwoody was passing him one of the little white cups they used to dispense pills.

  Three strides carried Larry across the room.

  Dr. Cage didn’t even look his way, so lethargic did he seem, but Dunwoody backpedaled immediately, like a man with a guilty conscience. Larry closed his hand around Dunwoody’s wrist, which he could easily break.

  “What you got in that cup, Woody?”

  “Nothing!” cried Dunwoody. “Lemme go!”

  Larry looked back over his shoulder. Dr. Cage appeared only marginally alert. “Did you axe for medicine, Doc?”

  “I was having chest pain. I need a nitro pill.”

  “Well . . . let’s see what kind of pill Dunwoody got in his cup here. Come over here, Doc.”

>   As Tom Cage leaned forward, Dunwoody dropped the little cup from his pinned hand, then stomped on the cup and the floor around it with his boot.

  “Dr. Cage already took his pill!” Dunwoody said. “Let’s see you prove different.”

  Larry closed his hand tighter around Dunwoody’s wrist and looked hard at the floor. He saw a fine white powder around the crushed cup.

  “Ahghh! You lemme go, goddamn it! You’re gonna have to explain this to the sheriff!”

  “Fuck the sheriff,” Larry growled. “I’m gonna go down to one of them TV trucks and tell ’em you just tried to kill Dr. Cage. How ’bout that?”

  Dunwoody’s eyes went wide.

  Larry squeezed tighter, tight enough for Dunwoody to know how badly he could hurt him if he wanted to. Then Larry released the bony wrist.

  Dunwoody cried out in relief, then scrambled for the door. After it banged shut, Larry turned to Dr. Cage, who was looking dazedly at him.

  “What you think that powder is, Doc? Some kind of poison, you reckon?”

  Tom Cage followed Larry’s pointing finger with his eyes, then shrugged as though the matter didn’t interest him.

  “You want me to call Quentin? Or the FBI maybe?”

  Dr. Cage shook his head.

  “It’s okay, Doc,” Larry said gently. “I’ll get you some more medicine. The right kind this time. And I’ll sit by your cell till morning.”

  Friday

  Chapter 62

  I awaken this morning with a sense that Walt Garrity is alive and Serenity Butler sleeping peacefully two floors above me. Three seconds later, reality collapses upon me with crushing finality.

  Walt is dead.

  Serenity lies suffering in a hospital a hundred miles away.

  Annie and Mia are hiding in FBI custody at Pollock FCI.

  I remember this cruel trick of the brain from when my wife died, and from Caitlin’s death, too, of course. I suppose it’s akin to phantom-limb pain. Unable to accept such profound loss, the mind tries vainly to reset itself each night, in the hope that it can reset reality as well.

  But nothing can.

  I shower quickly, then hurry down to the kitchen to make some breakfast and try to think of a way to bolster my mother for today’s ordeal. My primary anxiety is whether the FBI has been able to restore the two erased videotapes, or will in time for them to be entered as evidence in the trial. But under that anxiety, like incipient panic bubbling beneath a surface of manageable fear, is the prospect that my father might, against all logic and advice, take the stand to testify in his own defense. A less cynical man than I might hope that his father wants to testify because he knows he has nothing to fear from whatever information those tapes contain. But I know better. You don’t blast a videotape with a high-intensity magnetic field because you have nothing to fear from it.