Natchez Burning

  “They did. Recognize anybody else?”

  I study the photo more closely. “Yeah … me.”

  “What?” Henry leans down over the photo.

  I point to a little towheaded boy with a flattop, talking to two other kids. “That’s me, right there. Age five. And that kid is Jackie Steele. He pitched for my Dixie Youth baseball team a few years later. Dad took me to this rally when I was a kid. I didn’t realize it was this one until now. All I really remember is that the horses were wearing robes and hoods, like the people. They reminded me of the horses in Ivanhoe.”

  “Why would he take you to that rally?”

  “I think he wanted to show me history while it was happening, even if it was terrible. Do you believe there was more to it?”

  Henry stands with his hands on his hips, looking like a man who just climbed out of a ditch after digging for twelve hours straight. “I don’t know, Penn. This is a rough group he’s talking to. But I’ll tell you this. These sons of bitches here”—he sweeps his hand to his right, taking in a row of photos on the wall that looks like a mug book of convicts culled from 1950s-vintage chain gangs—“they murdered the man who was more of a father to me than my own blood. They burned him alive. These same bastards would love to send your daddy to Parchman for killing an old woman that they did terrible things to—terrible things—and almost certainly killed last night.” He fixes me with a single-minded stare. “I mean to take them down, Penn. I mean to make them pay.” Henry’s jaw quivers from the force of his passion. “If it’s the last thing I do on earth, I’ll make them face their just punishment.”

  “I believe you, Henry. Why are you showing me all this?”

  The reporter wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. “If you stay to hear the rest, you’ll understand. I think I’ve been on my own too long. People are dying so fast … too fast. I don’t know who I can trust, or whose life I can justify putting in danger. These are some bad boys. There’s young ones involved, too. I called you because I know you’ve been in this kind of scrape before. You’ve got connections I don’t. You’ve fought the FBI before, and won. You can keep them off my back while I walk the last mile of this thing. But more than that, you’ve got a stake in this. One way or another, your father is involved in every important murder case I’ve been working these past years.”

  “What?” I break in, another chill racing along my skin.

  Henry nods soberly. “And Dr. Cage has consistently refused to let me interview him. Your daddy knows things about this time, Penn. Things he’s afraid to talk about. And I imagine some of them have to do with Viola.” Henry waves his hand around the room again, taking in the artifacts of a more troubled decade. “This is our legacy, brother. It’s not easy for me to do, but I’m asking for your help.”

  I lay my hand on his shoulder and squeeze tight. “I’m with you, bud. Tell me what you know.”

  CHAPTER 18

  SNAKE KNOX AND Sonny Thornfield stood beneath a leafless oak, dripping cold water from a brief shower they’d endured with the grim silence of old soldiers. The pin oak stood beside a gravel drive that led to the house where Glenn Morehouse was dying. Sonny wore a camouflaged nylon shoulder pack slung across his chest. Snake’s hands were empty, but he had a pistol tucked in his waistband at the small of his back. They’d driven in from the dirt road back by the levee, then parked behind the trees and walked in, so that no one would see their truck. For twenty-five minutes they’d been waiting for a signal that had not come. The porch light of the solitary house should have gone dark long ago.

  “What the hell?” Sonny whispered. “We’re gonna have dogs barking in a minute.”

  “That’s why I brought my pistol,” Snake said.

  “You fire that hogleg, they’ll hear it all the way to Frogmore.”

  Sonny wondered what a passerby would think if he saw two white men in their seventies standing under a tree after an icy rain, not even smoking cigarettes. Of course, there were no passersby out here. Even if there were, he supposed nobody would think twice about two old men standing by the road. Once you passed seventy, no one really saw you unless you put yourself in their way. This rankled Snake, especially where women were concerned, but Sonny didn’t mind. He liked anonymity.

  “You think the dumb slut forgot?” Snake asked, pointing toward the lone yellow porch light of the small ranch-style house.

  “Not Wilma. Maybe Glenn won’t take his pill or something.”

  Snake hiked up his jacket collar to dry his neck. “This is bullshit. Let’s just go in there and do it.”

  “Wait,” Sonny said nervously. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call Billy first? I’m pretty sure he didn’t want us to go ahead until he okayed it.”

  “Wrong. What he said was, make sure you were convinced Glenn was ratting us out. Shit. Him and Forrest’ll never get past that Martin Luther King thing. Frank always said a man’s biggest enemy is his mouth.” Snake spat. “Well, boss man? Are you convinced?”

  Snake’s eyes were menacing in the dark.

  “Yeah, I believe it,” Sonny said nervously. After all, Wilma Deen had told them she’d walked in on the tail end of a call that she was almost sure had been to Henry Sexton. But still … “What about Forrest? You think he’s cool with this?”

  Snake snorted. “I don’t give a shit. All Forrest is thinking about is moving up in the state police and whatever power play he’s got going with Brody in New Orleans. I don’t plan to move down to that hellhole, even though God did the world a favor and washed all the welfare trash out of there. I’m staying right here, and I ain’t lettin’ Morehouse or Henry Sexton send me to Angola to live out my days. Brody Royal’s okay with this, and that’s all I need to know.”

  Sonny didn’t want to think about Snake trying to exploit tensions between the two most powerful men in their universe.

  “Billy’s mama ruined him,” Snake muttered. “Thinks he’s the goddamn king of everything now. One of these days I’m gonna tear that boy a new one.”

  I’ll lay odds you won’t, Sonny thought, but what he said was “I got some Skoal. Want a pinch?”

  “No.”

  Sonny was fishing for his tin when Snake tensed beside him.

  “The light’s gone,” Snake said. “Let’s move.”

  Sonny followed him silently across the road, as silently as you could move over packed gravel anyway. When they reached the front porch, Sonny pulled back the screen door with a slow screech and tapped lightly against the wood.

  Someone turned the knob and drew the door inward. The repellent odors of a sickroom wafted out of the darkness. As Sonny drew back, a pale, hollow-eyed face appeared in the crack of the door, hovering like an apparition. Wilma Deen, Glenn Morehouse’s sister.

  “How many of you?” she asked, her wrinkled face pinched with suspicion.

  “Just me and Snake.”

  She opened the door wider and drew her flannel housecoat tight.

  “Glenn sleepin’?” asked Snake.

  “He’s woozy, but he ain’t down yet. Which is odd, because I doubled his usual dose.”

  “Well, I need to talk to him anyway. Let’s go. I’m soaked to the skin already, and I don’t fancy bein’ here longer than we got to be.”

  The three of them gathered inside the tiny foyer. Wilma had the indurated skin of a lifelong chain smoker, and her eyes held a weariness that made Sonny tired.

  “Has he talked to Henry Sexton any more since that last phone call?” Snake asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve hardly left him. I went to the bathroom earlier, but he was dozing. What ya’ll gonna do? You ain’t gonna hurt him, are you?”

  “Not like we oughta,” Snake said. “Not like what the oath says.”

  Wilma gave him a mistrustful look. “Well, we’ve got a problem, anyway.”

  “What problem?”

  “Glenn’s got a gun in there.”

  “What?” Snake whispered. “In the bed with him?”

  She no
dded. “His old .45. First time I’ve seen it out of the closet. He’s been acting paranoid for a few days. The doctor calls it ‘hypervigilance.’ He says people get that way sometimes when the end is close.”

  “It’s closer than he thinks,” Snake muttered. “But we didn’t come for no shoot-out. Besides, it wouldn’t look right.” He looked hard at Wilma. “You got to go in there and get that gun, Willy.”

  She reddened at this childhood nickname. “How’m I s’posed to do that?”

  “Hell … you’re his sister. You’ll figure something out.”

  “Wait a second,” Sonny said. “Even if we get that gun, if Glenn’s all paranoid, he could fight us. That won’t look right, either.”

  “He can’t fight you,” Wilma assured them.

  “Shows what you know,” Snake said. “I saw Glenn break a Jap sergeant’s neck while he had two bullets in his back.”

  Wilma shook her head as though exhausted. “He ain’t what he was no more. There ain’t much left now.”

  Sonny felt weak with grief and regret.

  “What am I supposed to do when you’re finished?” Wilma asked.

  “Swallow a coupla Glenn’s sleeping pills,” Snake advised. “Then go in your room and go to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, call his doctor and give the news. Glenn was feeling poorly when you put him to bed, and he was dead when you woke up. That’s all you know.”

  Wilma’s eyes had gone wide. “You want me to stay in the house all night with his body?”

  Snake shrugged. “It ain’t as bad as you think. I spent all night in a foxhole with two dead buddies, and one was in pieces. Remember, Billy’s gonna take good care of you for this.”

  Wilma’s thin lips communicated skepticism. “What about the funeral?”

  “Pay that out of your own money,” Sonny advised. “Billy will take care of you on the back end, plus some.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Snake said, giving her a brittle smile. “You always was a good old girl, Willy.”

  “I wasn’t always old,” she murmured. “Ya’ll are asking too damn much, you know that?”

  “I know,” Sonny said, earning a glare from Snake.

  She folded her age-spotted arms in front of her and gave them a disgusted look. “But I guess there’s no other way. Just swear you’ll leave me in peace when it’s done. And keep that damned Forrest off my back.”

  “Don’t worry about Forrest,” Snake said. “He’s gonna make sure you get a nice piece of change out of this.”

  “Bullshit. Nothing’s changed since high school, Snake. Five minutes after you screwed me, you’re were kickin’ me out of the car. Forrest fooled around with my grandniece a few years back, and he’s no different than you.”

  Snake stared back at her without remorse. “All right, well … you’d better go get his gun.”

  Wilma shook her head, then turned and walked down the hall toward the bedroom that held what was left of her brother.

  CHAPTER 19

  HENRY SEXTON AND I sit facing each other in the tight U created by the worktables that line three walls of his “war room.” I feel like I’ve been transported to the hotel room of some obsessed FBI agent in Mississippi circa 1964.

  “I’ve been working these cases on and off for twenty years,” Henry says. “Hard for the last ten. Have you read many of my articles?”

  “Most of them, I think.”

  “Do you feel you have a working knowledge of the facts?”

  “I’m a former criminal prosecutor, Henry. Just tell me what you haven’t put in the paper.”

  He nods with relief. “I’ve connected the Double Eagle group to at least a dozen murders between 1964 and 1972, but five cases mean more to me than the others.”

  “Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson are the top two. Right?”

  “They were until this afternoon. Those killings happened in 1964, and I’ve known what happened and why for damn near twenty years. I couldn’t print a lot of it, but everything I’ve learned since has borne out my theory. Proving it all is another matter, of course. Still, I’m a lot closer than I was two weeks ago.”

  “And the other three deaths? Is one Dr. Robb? The guy in the picture with my dad, by the airplane?”

  “Yes. Five years after Albert died, Robb was murdered because he knew who’d killed Albert and Pooky. Forget everything you ever heard about that midair collision. It’s bullshit.”

  “Well, you’ve got me curious, I’ll say that. What about the last two cases? Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis?”

  Henry smiled sadly. “Am I that obvious? Well … you know Revels and Davis were kidnapped in 1968 and never found. I’ve always been certain they were murdered, and they were. But I thought I understood the dynamic of that crime as well. This afternoon I found out that I was wrong—so wrong that my mind is still blown by the scope of it.”

  Something in Henry’s voice quickens my interest. “Can we skip right to that case?”

  “No. We need to start in sixty-four.”

  “Which case was my dad most involved in?”

  “All of them. All these murders are connected, Penn. First, because the Double Eagles carried them out. Second, because a far more powerful man than any Eagle gave the kill orders in almost every case.”

  I start to interrupt him to ask who, but he waves his hand and says, “I’ll give you the name in sixty seconds. Third, your father is connected to all five of those critical homicides in some way.”

  “I’ve never seen Dad’s name in any of your articles.”

  “I leave a lot out of my articles, just as your fiancée does, I’m sure. Forget whatever you’ve read. I’m going to tell you what I think really happened in those cases.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Albert Norris was murdered because Pooky Wilson—one of his employees—was having sex with the daughter of one of the most powerful white men in this parish. When that man found out what his daughter was doing, he decided to have Pooky killed. He enlisted the Double Eagles to do that. Albert tried to protect the boy, and he died for it.”

  “Is this powerful white man still alive?”

  “Yes. His name is Brody Royal.”

  The name takes my breath away. Almost no one else Henry could have mentioned would have surprised me more. “As in Royal Oil? The Royal Cotton Bank? Royal Insurance?”

  “The same.”

  “Jesus, Henry. Royal’s one of the richest men in the state.”

  “He’s also a sadist and a killer. In 1964, he had the Klan and the Eagles comb this parish for Pooky Wilson, but they couldn’t find him. Royal knew that Pooky worked for Albert Norris, so he and Frank Knox went to Albert’s store and threatened him. Albert refused to give Pooky up. Later that night, they came back and burned him out, probably with a flamethrower.”

  I’ve long known the details of this crime, but I can scarcely get my mind around the idea of Brody Royal being involved. But if his daughter was having sex with a black boy in 1964, anything is possible. “I didn’t hear my father’s name in there.”

  “You’re about to. It took Albert four days to die. He was treated by Dr. Leland Robb, the man in the snapshot with your father. Norris was only really clearheaded for the first day. He told the FBI—and also his best friend—that he’d recognized his attackers, but he refused to name them. Dr. Robb confirmed this to the press, and he stuck to his story for years.”

  “I remember that.”

  “The day after the firebombing, Pooky Wilson vanished. I now know that he tried to reach the Brookhaven train station to flee north, but he was captured by Brookhaven Klansmen. They delivered him to four Natchez Klansmen who less than one month later would become Double Eagles. At that point Pooky was taken out into the woods—possibly the Lusahatcha Swamp—and either crucified or flayed alive.”

  “Aw, man. Don’t tell me that.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to. Even though most of the FBI’s attention was on Neshoba County, searching for the missing civil rights
workers, the Bureau started working the Norris case. But on August fourth, the Neshoba bodies were discovered in that dam. All the FBI’s focus shifted north. Five days later, Frank Knox formed the Double Eagle group on a sandbar south of the Triton Battery plant. Within a year, the fledgling Eagles had murdered several people, among them an FBI Klan informant named Jerry Dugan—something no one ever confirmed was murder until today. Your father was the company doctor for Triton, and he signed Dugan’s death certificate.”

  “That sounds like pure chance. Nothing you’ve said ties Dad to the Norris case.”

  “Just wait. Let’s jump ahead five years. On November first, 1969, Leland Robb climbed into the airplane you saw in that photo to travel to Arkansas for a fishing trip. At least that was the story put out afterward. With him were a charter pilot and two young ladies of what used to be called easy moral disposition.”

  “Hookers?”

  “No. Sorority girls who liked to party. Sisters from Tennessee. Twenty-one and twenty-seven. Dr. Robb was forty-two and married. He could fly, but he liked to drink on his fishing trips, so he hired a local charter pilot. According to the sole witness, shortly after takeoff in heavy fog, Dr. Robb’s plane unexpectedly returned to land and collided with a second plane that was attempting to take off from the same strip. Everyone on board Robb’s plane perished. But the pilot of the other plane, a crop duster, walked away without injury. Do you know who that pilot was?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “No idea.”

  “Snake Knox, Frank’s brother.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He’d taken over leadership of the Double Eagles on the day of his brother’s death.”

  While I ponder this, Henry says, “Do you know where Frank Knox died?”

  “No.”

  “In the surgery room of your father’s office.”

  “What?”

  “Industrial accident. A pallet of batteries fell on him in the spring of sixty-eight. But that’s part of the Revels-Davis case. Let’s stick to the crash for now.”

  Henry’s revelations have left me speechless. This is the kind of thing you can never put into a novel, because it stretches credibility too far. Yet history is filled with such unbelievable coincidences. “Who was the sole witness to the crash?”