Natchez Burning

  “Your Honor, the defendant’s military record has no bearing on—”

  “Hush,” says Judge Noyes, using what could only loosely be described as local courtroom argot.

  Shad is quite right in his argument, but as every attorney knows, it’s the judge’s courtroom, whether that judge ever passed a bar exam or not.

  “Your Honor,” Shad says in a rigidly controlled voice, “I ask that bond be set at an amount commensurate with the seriousness of the crime, and one sufficient to assuage the community’s choler.”

  Confusion distorts the judge’s smooth face. “Color? Just what color community are you talking about assuaging here?”

  “Cho-ler,” Shad says, trying to clarify his intent. “Displeasure.”

  Judge Noyes looks like he’d like to throw his gavel at the district attorney. “What amount would you recommend, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Two million dollars.”

  The judge grimaces like a constipated bulldog. At length he gives a sigh of resignation and says, “All right.”

  A deputy against the wall, probably the one who cuffed Dad at the house, nods with satisfaction.

  Two hundred grand in cash, I note silently.

  “Bond is set at fifty thousand dollars,” says Judge Noyes.

  A choked sob of relief breaks from my mother’s throat. Shad stands openmouthed in a theatrical display of shock. Judge Noyes has sent a very loud message with this ruling. He clearly believes something is amiss in this case, and he’s willing to take political heat for his faith in my father.

  Before Shad can protest, a new voice comes from the back of the room, taking us all by surprise: “All right. All right, I see how it is.”

  The voice is soft but resonant—far deeper than any other man’s in the room—and my chest tightens at the familiar sound. Turning in my chair, I see Lincoln Turner standing at the back of the small room. His suit hangs loosely on his large frame, as though he’s recently lost weight. My first wild thought is that the Justice Court door has no metal detector. Men whose mothers have been murdered have been known to execute the alleged killer in the presence of a dozen deputies. A millisecond after this thought rises in my mind, I stand and interpose myself between Lincoln and my father.

  “Who is that man?” Judge Noyes asks irritably.

  “Your Honor,” Shad says, obviously discomfited by Lincoln’s appearance, “this is Mr. Lincoln Turner, the victim’s son.”

  Noyes’s eyes narrow. “I see.” He directs his next comments to the back of the room, which is less than twenty feet from his desk. “Sir, you have my deepest sympathy, but I must ask you to refrain from interrupting this proceeding.”

  “This is a public hearing,” Lincoln growls. “And I ain’t what you’re used to up in here. I ain’t some field nigger, Judge, or the son of one. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Public it may be,” Noyes says, squinting. “But as a lawyer, you surely understand contempt of court.”

  Despite his warning tone, Noyes is clearly uncertain about how to handle this unexpected confrontation.

  Shad moves toward Lincoln, motioning for him to calm down, but Turner raises a big hand to stop him. “Get out of my face, Johnson! I’ve come to say one thing, and then I’ll go. If the sheriff hauled me up in here on a murder charge, I’d be lucky to get a million-dollar bail. But I guess white doctors get a free pass. Man, you people don’t even try to hide this shit. It’s right out here for everybody to see. Ain’t nothing changed down here in a hundred years!”

  Judge Noyes bangs his gavel. “That’s it. Mr. Turner, you are now in contempt of—”

  “I hold you in contempt!” Turner shouts, but by then the DA has gotten to him and started pushing the larger man toward the door.

  “I’ll take care of this, Judge!” Shad calls, making a pleading motion with his right hand.

  “You’d better!” Noyes shouts back. “Or he’s going straight to jail!”

  When the door closes, all of us stand like stunned witnesses to a bar fight. My father and mother look shell-shocked, but Noyes and his staff are scarcely less rattled. “Wilbur,” Noyes says to his deputy, “are you tits on a boar hog or what?”

  The deputy reddens and looks at the carpet.

  “I’ll be damned if that’s ever happened in here,” Noyes mutters. “I think I’d better put that fellow in jail for one night, just on principle. Hell, as a matter of public safety.”

  I step toward the bench and speak quietly. “Judge, with respect, this might be one of those times where the less that’s done to exacerbate matters, the sooner grief can run its course.”

  Noyes clearly thinks my suggestion presumptuous, but after he glances at my father, who also nods, the air seems to go out of him.

  “Where’s the district attorney?” he asks, glaring at the deputy.

  As Wilbur moves toward the door, Shad reenters the courtroom, smoothing his lapels. “Judge, I apologize for that outburst. I advised Mr. Turner not to come to court, and he chose to ignore my counsel. The man is distraught over his mother’s death, and as you know, in murder cases emotions can run very high.”

  “That’s no excuse, Counselor.”

  “No, Your Honor. Now, as to the matter of bond—”

  Judge Noyes holds up his right hand. “Before you start gabbling about special treatment, I’m going to set stringent conditions on this bond. Dr. Cage is not to leave the state. He’s to continue practicing medicine, unless prevented by illness. He’s not to contact any member of the victim’s family. He may not consume alcohol or drugs, other than prescription drugs, and he cannot handle firearms.” Noyes looks from Shad to my father. “Is that clear, Dr. Cage?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “All right, then. I hope the powers that be get this mess straightened out before it goes any further.” Noyes looks at me. “Are you prepared to post bond?”

  My mother’s voice comes from behind me, quavering with emotion. “We’re prepared to write a check immediately, Judge.”

  “Good.” He looks at the deputy. “Dr. Cage is not to be handcuffed again. And make sure that fellow outside doesn’t bother him on his way to his car. You hear me, Wilbur? If that man assaults anybody, use your weapon.”

  Wilbur’s face goes pale. “Yessir.”

  “Next case.”

  Shad says, “But Judge, the state—”

  “Next case, goddamn it!”

  OUT ON THE SIDEWALK, the sun has banished the cold morning wind and is now heating the concrete to a temperature more suited to spring than December. Thankfully, I’ve seen no sign of Lincoln Turner or his white pickup. Mom, Dad, and I stand before the Justice Court building with tangible awkwardness. Though we are linked by blood and by a palpable sense of relief, the reason for our being here has not been discussed by more than two of us at a time.

  “Thank you, Penn,” Mom says softly.

  “I didn’t do anything. Judge Noyes is obviously a fan of Dad’s.”

  “But it was important for you to be here. Families have to stick together in times like this. Everyone needs to see that.”

  I’m anxious to discuss the logistics of getting Dad to a clinic to be swabbed for a DNA paternity test, but my mother has not left his side. Asking her to give us some time alone would not be taken well just now.

  “I never knew you were taken prisoner in Korea,” I say to Dad.

  He shrugs as though this is nothing of consequence, his eyes seeming to contemplate something far away. “It was Walt and me. We escaped after a few days. We were lucky. Few did. I don’t know how Charlie Noyes knows about it. Another vet must have told him. The upside is, I doubt the Adams County jail could be worse than North Korea in late November.”

  “Did Caitlin send that photographer?” Mom asks.

  “What photographer?” I ask.

  “The one at the back. He slipped in while Shad was talking to the judge. He took some notes, and then he shot pictures during that man’s outburst.”

  I try to
conceal my alarm. “I didn’t see any flash.”

  “He wasn’t using one.”

  A pro. I can see the headline now: DID WHITE DOCTOR MURDER BLACK NURSE IN MISSISSIPPI? That kind of story sells a lot of newspapers, even in the twenty-first century. “Shad must have invited a reporter down from Jackson.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” Mom says. “Let’s get home, Tom. I have your medicine in my purse.”

  “I need to get to the office,” he protests. “You heard the judge. I have to keep working.”

  “You can mind the judge later. Right now you’re minding me. We just endured enough excitement for the next ten years. And I want the neighbors to see you coming right back home where you belong.”

  “All right,” Dad says, a note of surrender in his voice. “Jack Kilgard sure stood up for me, didn’t he?”

  “What’s he talking about?” I ask.

  A warm smile lights my mother’s face. “When the deputy handcuffed your father and started walking out to the car, Jack blocked Sheriff Byrd’s way and gave him a piece of his mind.”

  A transplanted Yankee, Jack Kilgard is a retired naval engineer who worked for fifteen years at the Triton Battery plant. He probably knew all the Double Eagles personally.

  “All six foot five of him,” Dad says. “Jack cussed up a blue streak, and I don’t think I’ve heard him cuss in the forty years I’ve known him.”

  Mom shakes her head. “He told Billy Byrd he’d be out of office as soon as the next election came around.”

  Dad laughs. “He kept calling the jail the ‘pokey.’ I honestly think he scared Billy.”

  “Come on, Tom,” Mom says, knowing that all this bravado counts for nothing in the sausage grinder of the legal system. “We won a battle, not the war. Let’s get home.”

  As they walk away, Dad glances back at me, and I signal that he should call me as soon as he gets a chance.

  He nods and continues on.

  As I watch my mother’s Camry pull away, one thing comes clear. By asking that my father be held without bail, Shad Johnson has obliterated any residual illusion that he means to cut me a break in this case. He is, as Caitlin predicted, going after my father with everything in his arsenal. What I don’t understand is why, when he knows I can end his legal career by e-mailing one photograph to the bar association.

  “Penn?” says a voice from behind me.

  I turn and find Shad looking up at me, a faint cloud of condensation coming from his mouth with each breath.

  “I guess my bond request took you by surprise in there.”

  “You could say that.”

  He turns up his palms like a man dealing with events beyond his control. “I had to do it. This is the most racially charged case I’ve handled since taking office.”

  “That’s why you want my father to sit in a cell for nine months? What the hell, Shad? You know there’s zero risk of him trying to flee.”

  “I don’t know that. But I did know Judge Noyes would deny my request. That’s why I made it. I didn’t think he would burn my ass like that while doing it, but that’s not your problem. Penn … there are angles to this case you don’t know about yet. Once you do, I think you’ll understand why I have to pursue this without concern for my own career.”

  I turn away for a moment, trying to hold my anger in check. “You never do anything without considering your career. Nobody does, but you’re worse than most. You invited a photographer down here for this appearance, didn’t you?”

  “Hell, no! Lincoln must have invited him to witness that little floor show. You think I wanted to be spanked like that in front of a reporter?”

  “No.” As I think about this, the truth driving Shad’s strategy hits me in a revelatory flash. “In fact, you wouldn’t have come to Justice Court if you had a choice.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks, but he knows.

  “The grand jury’s in session. You could have gone straight there for an indictment, even without an arrest. Then you could have got an arraignment in circuit court. But you didn’t, because this is Judge Elder’s month.”

  Shad’s blank look is almost comical.

  Normally, he would want Judge Joe Elder to be assigned my father’s case. Elder is a fine judge, and impartial, so far as I know. But he is African-American, and Shad would much prefer him to the other circuit judge, sixty-three-year-old Eunice Franklin, a white female who is known to admire my father. But last month, Joe Elder announced that he planned to resign and move to Memphis, where his physician brother can treat him for his worsening liver disease. If Shad had gone to the grand jury today, Dad’s murder case would have been tried by an unknown replacement for Elder, six months down the road. Given local demographics, that replacement judge is likely to be black, but that doesn’t mean he or she won’t be a fan of my father.

  “What’s your game?” I ask. “You trying to find out who Joe Elder’s replacement will be?”

  Anger fairly sparks from Shad’s eyes.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I decide. “Judge Elder has been at the Mayo Clinic for the past week. You’re hoping to dodge Judge Franklin and get someone assigned that you can play like a fiddle.”

  “That sounds downright paranoid, Mayor.”

  I lean toward him and speak low. “Shad, I never thought in a million years that I’d use that photograph against you. I never thought you’d force me to. But you’re going after my father. That’s like going after my child. Do you hear me? I will not spare you.”

  “Don’t act like I’m the one in the wrong here,” he snaps, pulling back and looking up the street. “Your father is refusing to assist the coroner with a legal obligation, and you’re trying to blackmail the district attorney. Any objective listener would brand you the bad guy here.”

  I know Shad too well to let this bother me.

  “Penn,” he continues gravely, “have you considered the possibility that your father might actually be guilty?”

  Of course I have. “Of murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  The ping of my cell phone alerts me to a call. My first instinct is to ignore it until I’m clear of Shad, but then I remember that Kirk Boisseau is diving the Jericho Hole this morning. While Shad watches, I dig out my phone and check the screen. Sure enough, it reads KIRK B.

  “Hey, buddy,” I answer. “I’m in a meeting. What’s the situation?”

  “I found what you wanted.”

  My heart quickens, but I keep my face impassive. “What would that be?”

  “Bones.”

  “The ones I mentioned?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  Shad looks impatient. “That was fast,” I say casually. “What makes you think so?”

  “There was a car sitting on them. Some were handcuffed to a steering column. If they hadn’t been, they’d have washed out into the river back in the flood of seventy-three.”

  My heart stutters, and I turn away from the DA in hopes of concealing my excitement. “Where are you now?”

  “On Highway 84. We had to tear ass out of there. The landowner was riding a four-wheeler around the hole when I came out of the water the last time, and that hole ain’t exactly a lake. It’s more like a big pond.”

  Shad points at his wristwatch, a platinum Rolex.

  “Thank you, Rose,” I say with all sincerity. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

  Again I give Shad my full attention. “You and I need to arrange a DNA test,” I remind him. “Immediately. I want this paternity bullshit settled before rumors hit the street.”

  “Okay by me,” he says. “But the usual procedure isn’t going to cut it. Lincoln Turner doesn’t trust any local lab to send the right swab to New Orleans or Jackson. He doesn’t even trust the cops down here. We’re going to have to get an out-of-town lab to send a tech.”

  “Christ, Shad. Well … get on it. The sooner Turner knows the truth, the sooner sanity might prevail. Have you spoken to him about his
possible parentage? And by that, I mean the gang rape.”

  The district attorney looks up and down Wall Street again. The stately old thoroughfare is empty, but pedestrians are moving along Main Street to his left. “Penn, you’ve been laboring under some misconceptions for a long time. It’s not really my place to enlighten you—especially not out here—but maybe we need to clear the air. Why don’t you come to my office a little later?”

  “I’ll stop by when I finish with some business. I need to get an old photo album out of my safe.”

  The DA shakes his head the way he might at a charity case. “Don’t do anything without talking to me first. I’m telling you that for your sake.”

  As he strides off down Wall Street, I call Kirk back and promise to meet him in twenty minutes, in the parking lot of a music store owned by a friend of mine. Then I call Caitlin. I asked that she not come to the initial appearance this morning, so that no one present would feel they were playing to the media. She only agreed on the condition that I call her as soon as court adjourned.

  “Did the judge grant bail?” she asks by way of greeting.

  “Fifty grand. Dad’s out.”

  “How much did Shad ask for?”

  “He asked that bail be denied.”

  “I told you! The gloves are off. Shad thinks this is his golden chance to get back at you. You’ve got to go nuclear. You should have done it last night.”

  “I pretty much did. But he chose to ignore the threat.” A tick of worry is biting at me. “I’m concerned that he’s got the photo covered somehow.”

  “How?” she asks, incredulous. “How could he possibly protect himself from that picture? He could go to jail over that, right?”

  “Probably not. But he’d definitely be disbarred.”

  “Are you sure the image is safe?”

  “I’ve got the flash drive in my pocket now. But Shad would be crazy to proceed this way unless he’s figured a way to cover his ass.”

  “Maybe he thinks he has equally damaging material on you. Or on Tom. Is that possible?”