Natchez Burning

  Touching my fingertip to Viola’s face, I realize that one question must be answered before all others: How far did Dad go with you?

  Walking to my desk, I lift the phone and dial my parents’ house again. I’d rather speak to Dad in person, and away from my mother, but the only way I could pull that off would be to take Annie with me to distract Mom, and Mom would instantly see through my ploy.

  “Penn?” says my mother, her voice surprisingly alert. “Has something happened? Did Henry die?”

  “No.” I’d expected the reassuring “Dr. Cage” that usually greets night callers. “I was hoping to talk to Dad, remember?”

  A shuffling sound comes through the phone. “He’s still asleep.”

  This surprises me. Despite the emotional toll that today’s events must have taken on him, my father is a night owl, and always has been. Almost nothing can force him to sleep during what most people consider reasonable hours. Maybe being arrested and handcuffed in his own yard pushed even Dad past his limit. “I really need to talk to him, Mom.”

  “You don’t want me to wake him, up, do you? Not after today.”

  Yes, I do. And then I want you to go into the other room and watch television while we talk. “I guess not. But I must speak to him before nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you think that attack on Henry Sexton had anything to do with your father? Henry’s been writing about the bad old days for years now, and he’s never hesitated to name names. That’s courting disaster if I ever saw it. He probably just pushed somebody too far in his last article.”

  “Mom, I think …” I falter, searching for some nonthreatening way to explain my concern. “Dad is somehow caught up in this old Double Eagle mess. He used to treat all those guys from Triton Battery, and he’s refusing to talk about it to the police.”

  This time her answer is longer in coming. “Your father’s no fool, Penn. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “You didn’t look so sure of that in court this morning.”

  “Well, that was upsetting, naturally. But Judge Noyes did the right thing in the end.”

  “The situation has changed now. Dad’s bail could be revoked at any time.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Don’t panic, Mom. But I need to ask you a simple question.”

  “Oh, Penn … I don’t like this.”

  “I’ve never known you to lie, and I need to know the answer to this.”

  Silence.

  Before anxiety can stop me, I ask what I’ve withheld up to now because of my reluctance to upset my mother. “I need to know what time Dad got home on the night Viola died.”

  The silence that follows this lasts longer than it should.

  “What are you really asking me?” she says softly.

  I close my eyes, already regretting my question. “Just a fact, nothing more.” Tell me it was before 5:38 A.M.

  “You don’t really believe your father could have killed Viola, do you? Tell me you don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t. But I’d like to be able to prove that he didn’t.”

  A long, pained sigh comes down the line. “Is this just between you and me?”

  Oh, God. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what time Tom got home that night. It was very late, and I’d taken a second pill by that time.”

  I’ve never known my mother to be so out of it that she didn’t know when Dad got home—especially during the past few years. She waits up for him like a helicopter mom praying for a teenager to get in. “Best guess, Mom. What time was it?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I really don’t.”

  “You said it was very late, so you obviously have a general idea.”

  “After three,” she says at length. “I was dead to the world, honestly.”

  After three … “Mom—”

  “Could anybody be taping this call?” she asks sharply.

  My stomach does a little flip. “No. That’s just on TV.” This isn’t exactly accurate, but Shad will assume that I’ve warned Dad against any dangerous discussions on the telephone, and Judge Elder isn’t likely to authorize a wiretap from the Mayo Clinic. “Why do you ask, Mom?”

  “Because whatever time your father needs to have gotten home that night, that’s what time I remember him getting home. He was right beside me in this bed. You hear me?”

  My heart thumps, hard. No. I didn’t hear that.

  “Just make sure I know the right time. Before it’s life-or-death.”

  I close my eyes and swallow hard. Only hours ago I realized my father may have been lying to me for most of my life. Now my mother has told me she’s willing to lie under oath to protect him. “Mom, I really need to talk to Dad tonight.”

  “I’ll have him call you when he wakes up. You know he hardly ever sleeps through the night.”

  “If he doesn’t call me before midnight, I’m going to drive over there and wake him up.”

  “What about Annie? You can’t wake that child on a school night, and you’re certainly not leaving her there. Is Caitlin staying over?”

  “No. Mom, please just make sure Dad calls me.”

  She sighs with irritation. “All right.”

  “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

  The intensity drains out of her voice, which suddenly becomes almost casual again. “You didn’t. I was reading.”

  “Did you take a pill tonight?”

  “After what happened this morning, that pill might as well be a placebo.”

  “Try a different book. A bad book is the best sedative. And leave Dad a note to call me, in case you fall asleep. He’s bound to get up to pee soon.”

  “I will. Good night.”

  After I hang up, I collapse into my most comfortable chair, my mind across the river with Henry. Hopefully, Drew will call to update me soon.

  Though I still mean to go over the autopsy report in detail, my hand picks up the Christmas party photo once more. Why does it haunt me so? Dad would have been thirty-one when this was shot, Viola … twenty-three. Both are looking directly at the camera, and Dad appears tired, as he often did when I was a boy. Beneath Viola’s beauty (which is obvious despite what almost seems an effort to conceal it), I sense something else, as Pithy Nolan once did. Something withheld. Perhaps a black woman with Viola’s power of attraction had already learned that she must conceal that power in the presence of others, or at least around whites.

  This afternoon, Pithy Nolan told me it would be impossible to work in close quarters with a woman like Viola and not fall a little bit in love with her. And what did Dad tell me about the 1960s last night? What happened here was a war, too. I can’t help but think of Yuri Zhivago working on the Russian battle front with Larissa Antipov (who is forever Julie Christie in my mind). How could Dad not have been smitten by Viola?

  Leaning back in my chair, I close my eyes and let the picture fall on my lap. Before a half-dozen breaths fill my lungs, I sit bolt upright, my heart pounding. Snatching up the picture, I study Viola once more, my heartbeat still accelerating. As soon as I stopped trying to figure out what I was missing in the photograph, an epiphany flashed through me. What I’ve been searching for isn’t visible in the picture. Nor was it ever visible in Viola’s presence.

  It was her smell.

  Even now, I remember it with startling clarity. When Viola sat me down to prick my finger or to give me a tetanus shot, then reached into the glass jar to give me a peppermint, her scent teased my nose in a way I’ve never forgotten. There was perfume in it, one whose name I’ll probably never know. But there was something else beneath that fragrance, something as clean as fresh-turned earth or newly mown grass. The perfumed fraction of that complex scent smells expensive in my memory, something a nurse would not likely have been able to afford. But whether I’m right or wrong about this, one thing I know with certainty: The night my father picked me up so late from the hospital, and told me he’d been on a house call, his imported cigar wasn’t the smell that struck me as
I climbed into the car.

  It was the tantalizing scent of Viola Turner.

  CHAPTER 46

  BILLY KNOX SAT at the oak desk in the study of the lodge at Fort Knox, a Walther pistol before him. Two of the three young men who had attacked Henry Sexton stood across from him, their eyes pinned as though flying high on speed. Fear had done that: raw, gut-churning fear. Their wounded friend—the one the old lady had plugged in the belly—lay on a bench against the wall opposite the desk, a tarp folded under him to stop him bleeding onto the upholstery. His name was Casey Whelan. Sonny had injected him with something that was supposed to stop the pain, and Snake had wrapped two turns of camouflage-pattern duct tape around his mouth. Though the tape had slipped a bit, the screaming had finally subsided, but Whelan was still moaning.

  Snake Knox stood behind Billy like an older ghost of his son. Beside Snake crouched the seven-hundred-pound razorback Forrest had killed with a spear, the shaft of which still jutted from the hog’s back. And near the hog, concealed behind a partly open door, stood Forrest Knox himself.

  “Why do you think Brody chose you guys to kill Henry?” Billy asked.

  “It was Randall Regan give us the job,” answered Charley Wise, the braver of the two boys. The other boy, Jake Whitten, had said nothing since their arrival. “Randall’s my uncle, Mr. Knox. I don’t even think Mr. Brody knows us by name. He’ll come around to wells when we’re drillin’ sometimes, even had a drink with us once. Told us stories about chasin’ pussy and getting into brawls and such. But it was Randall who called us with this.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He asked us to come out to Mr. Royal’s place on Lake Concordia. He told us he had a job for some tough boys, and there was good money in it.”

  “How much?”

  “Five grand apiece.”

  Sonny whistled, and Billy and Snake shared a look. “What did he tell you to do?”

  “He said to grab Mr. Henry and bring him to Mr. Brody’s house on the lake. To that basement room out there. They wanted to question him about something.”

  “Did they mean to kill him?”

  The two boys looked at each other. “I’m pretty sure they did,” Charley said. “Uncle Randall hates Mr. Henry. Always did. But he didn’t want us to take any guns on the job, in case a cop stopped us. He also told me that if Mr. Henry had anything in his Explorer, like a computer or anything, to bring it with us. That’s why we brought them files along.”

  Charley pointed at a stack of banker’s boxes on the floor to his left.

  “That’s the only smart thing you did tonight,” Billy said. “And what brought you to us?”

  “Mr. Royal, I guess you could say. Once that old bitch shot Casey, we hauled ass and called Uncle Randall. He cussed up a storm and told me he’d call me back. I figure he must’ve called Old Man Royal at that point, because he called back and told me he couldn’t help Casey. He told me not to go to any hospital within a hundred miles, and that if his or Brody’s name got mentioned, we’d be dead by sundown the next day. I called Mr. Thornfield because I know some guys in the meth business, and I always heard your crew had a first-class operation. Cops on the pad, and even a doctor for emergencies.”

  Snake grunted behind Billy. Billy and Sonny shared a worried look. From the moment Sonny called Billy about the three boys, Billy had figured the only choice was to liquidate them (and then decide how to handle Brody Royal going rogue). But to Billy’s surprise, Forrest had wanted to hear out the boys first. He thought it might be possible to let two of them live. Billy saw no sense in taking this risk, but he’d humored Forrest by giving the boys a chance to tell their side of the story. He wondered what Forrest was thinking now.

  Casey Whelan gave out a long, guttural moan. Billy looked over and saw a froth of blood on the duct tape covering the boy’s mouth. He shook his head with distaste. Raiford Prison in Florida, where he’d served a stretch for dealing coke in the early eighties, had been filled with hapless would-be criminals like these.

  “I know we messed up, Mr. Billy,” Charley admitted. “But we’ll make it right. Let me run over to the hospital. I’ll finish the job right now. That son of a bitch won’t ever write another line in that newspaper.”

  Billy toyed with the Walther on his desk, then glanced over his shoulder. “What do you think, Daddy?”

  Snake replied in a dry voice, like palm fronds rattling in the wind. “You send boys to do a man’s job, you get what we got now. A clusterfuck.”

  “That hospital’s crawling with cops now,” Billy thought aloud. “Sheriff Dennis is over there, and maybe even the FBI by now. If they caught you, you’d spill everything you know before an hour passed.”

  “No, sir!” Charley practically yelped. “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Yeah. What about you, Jake? You’re mighty quiet.”

  The burly young roughneck standing behind Charley shook his head like a confused little boy. Fear had rendered him physically unable to speak. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Casey Whelan, who appeared to be dying on the bench.

  “Well, Pop?” Billy said, mostly for the sake of his father’s pride. The real decision belonged to Forrest.

  “They look like talkers to me,” Snake rasped.

  Charley looked like he was straining not to pee down his leg.

  “Ya’ll stay here,” Billy said. “I’ll be back in a second with somebody who knows about gunshot wounds. Don’t say a word while he’s in here. You understand?”

  Jake and Charley nodded anxiously.

  Billy pushed open the door behind his desk and went out. Forrest was already walking down the hall to the master bedroom, where a Steve McQueen movie was playing on the flat-screen.

  “Did you hear all that?”

  Forrest nodded. He’d changed out of his state police uniform, into jeans and a Who Dat? New Orleans Saints sweatshirt.

  “What do you think about their story?”

  “I think Brody must be getting Alzheimer’s.”

  “He’s got professional security. Why would he use those idiots?”

  Forrest snorted. “His pros are legit. He can’t ask them to go kill a reporter.”

  “Huh. Well, I say we drop them in the swamp. Have Daddy dump their truck in Dallas or somewhere even farther.”

  “They’re locals,” Forrest pointed out. “All of them going missing at the same time would draw attention.” He reached into a dresser drawer and brought out a camouflage balaclava mask, one of dozens the club kept for hunting during the coldest months. Forrest stretched out the neck opening, then pulled the mask over his head, taking care over the lump of scar tissue that marked his missing ear. Walking to a mirror, he chuckled as he centered the mask over his mouth.

  “Reminds me of the A Shau Valley,” he said.

  Whatever, Billy thought, turning to lead his cousin back to the study.

  When he opened the door, he saw Casey Whelan flailing in agony, and Sonny trying to hold him down on the bench. The other boys looked frightened, but their faces went white at the sight of the masked figure behind Billy.

  “Is he the doctor?” asked Jake Whitten.

  Billy raised a finger to his lips.

  Forrest walked to the bench and knelt beside Whelan’s squirming body. Taking a small flashlight from his pocket, he studied the boy’s bloody abdomen, then palpated it with two fingers. Whelan screamed. Forrest held his bloody fingers in the light beam and checked them. Then he stood.

  “Liver,” he said. “Nothing anybody can do for him.”

  Whelan moaned in despair.

  “Not even at a hospital?” asked Charley.

  Forrest shook his head, then walked to the door behind the desk and left the study.

  Billy held up his hand to prevent questions, then followed Forrest.

  He found his cousin sitting on the bed, watching Steve McQueen drive a green ’68 Mustang GT Fastback hell-for-leather down a crowded street.

  “You still say let the
other two go?” Billy asked.

  Forrest nodded without taking his eyes off the movie.

  “Do you really think those two chickenshits can keep their mouths shut about this?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the two healthy ones are going to finish off their buddy. Go back and explain that’s the only way they get to walk out of here alive. That way, instead of three dead roustabouts, we get two expendable grunts who’ll do anything we tell them to.”

  It took Billy a few seconds to grasp Forrest’s reasoning, but once he did, he realized that his cousin had been thinking two moves ahead of him, as always. “What if they won’t do it?”

  “Not an option.” Forrest’s eyes tracked the Mustang across the screen. “This kind of plan sells itself, William.”

  Realizing the conversation was over, Billy walked back down to the study, then sat behind his desk. “You two boys want to keep on breathing?”

  Charley nodded first, and his eyes told Billy that he sensed the price of survival might be high. Billy reached into his desk and took out a Buck knife with an eight-inch blade. Too big to be a practical deer-skinning knife, it looked more like a bayonet. “You’ll have to prove it.”

  “How?” Charley asked, his eyes locked on the knife.

  “Shut your friend up. For good.”

  Behind the boys, Sonny Thornfield blanched. Charley’s mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. He swallowed, then turned to Jake, who was shivering.

  “That guy in the mask said Casey’s dying already,” Charley pointed out. “Can’t we just let him pass in his own time?”

  “You’re missing the point, son,” Billy said, not unkindly. “Think about it.”

  While Charley tried to do that, his friend Jake seized the knife from Billy and moved toward the bench.

  “Not in here!” Billy snapped. “I don’t want blood spraying all over the damn wall. And we’d never get it out of the rug. There’s a deck right outside this room. Take him out there. The door’s behind that curtain.”