Natchez Burning

  Tom swallowed hard and looked at the dead man on the ground. “You just shot a cop, Walt. We need to get out of here.”

  “You ain’t ever lied, brother. We’re truly fucked now. Both of us. Let’s get you into the van, and I’ll clean this scene up double quick.”

  Tom allowed himself to be led into the van, where Walt retrieved his medical bag from its hiding place. After swallowing one nitro pill and a Lorcet Plus, Tom stuck another nitro tablet and a Valium under his tongue for good measure.

  “You’d better come back out with me,” Walt said. “I need to be able to see you if you pass out.”

  Half in a trance, Tom followed his friend back outside. As he leaned against the van, Walt walked over to the state police car, switched off its light bar, took the keys from the ignition, and opened the trunk.

  “What are you doing?” Tom called.

  Walking back to the driver’s door, Walt leaned through it, then straightened up with a shotgun in his hands.

  “What the hell are you doing with that?”

  Without a word, Walt walked back to the trunk and fired four deafening shots into it. The cruiser rocked on its oversized shocks as it absorbed the impact of the rounds. Walt ducked into the trunk and began fiddling with something. After about thirty seconds, he stood up, triumphantly holding a paper bag in his hand. He carried the bag to Tom and opened it, revealing fragments of metal and plastic.

  “What’s all that?” Tom asked.

  “What’s left of a hard drive. The camera in that cruiser filmed everything that just happened. We’re taking this with us so no genius from the NSA can put the drive back together.”

  Tom felt as though he might collapse. “Walt, this is bad. We can’t run from this.”

  The Ranger grabbed his good shoulder and squeezed hard. “Forget the badge, Tom. From the moment he saw Sonny, that guy meant to kill us. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. Fifty years of experience told me. State cops don’t patrol dirt roads in the back of beyond at night. He came here to find us. You and me.”

  “But how could he? We switched off our phones, like you said.”

  Knowledge dawned in Walt’s eyes. “It wasn’t our phones. I left Sonny’s cell phone on so I could monitor his texts and hear his voice mails. Stupid! That trooper was looking for Thornfield, not us. He must have been on the Eagles’ payroll.”

  “A state cop?”

  Walt shrugged. “I don’t understand it, but now’s not the time to figure it out.” He looked back at the dead trooper. “I won’t lie to you, buddy. Even if he was dirty, it won’t make a bit of difference to any cop in this state if they figure out who killed him.”

  Stinging sweat dripped into Tom’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

  Walt’s smile had an ironic curve. “A little late for apologies.”

  A loud cry of pain came from the van.

  Walt ran to the Roadtrek, motioning for Tom to follow him into the van. Inside, they found Thornfield lying faceup in the aisle, clenching his left arm, his skin deathly gray.

  “He’s having a heart attack,” Tom said, kneeling.

  “Let him,” Walt said, trying to pull Tom up without hurting him. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Tom shook himself from Walt’s grasp and checked Thornfield’s pulse at the neck. It was thready, and the skin above the artery felt cool. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

  “A hospital?” Walt gawked at Tom. “We can’t even take you to a hospital. You think we’re gonna take this piece of shit, after what we just did?”

  Tom had already taken a vial of epinephrine from his bag and loaded a syringe. “He’s not going to tell anybody about that. Snake would kill Sonny if he knew we’d questioned him. Come on, Walt. Get us back to Ferriday!”

  Walt didn’t move as Tom injected the epinephrine into Thornfield’s vein. “You realize he may have seen everything. Outside.”

  Tom thought about it. “I don’t think he did.”

  “But you can’t be sure. Even seeing the body would be enough to put us in the death house at Angola.”

  Walt was right, and this knowledge chilled Tom. “What do you want to do?”

  “Leave him here,” Walt said flatly. “I can stage this thing where it looks like they shot each other, and the cops’ll find the syringe and vials besides. We’ll be clear of this thing, and you’ll be clear of Viola. It’s the only answer, Tom.”

  Sonny groaned and clenched his left arm with his right fist.

  Tom turned and looked up into Walt’s hardened eyes. “You’re talking about shooting him.”

  “He’s dying anyway.”

  Walt was still carrying the trooper’s shotgun, and it lent him a frighteningly lethal aspect. “We can’t,” Tom said. “I can’t.”

  “This is no time to get religion, partner. Think of your family.”

  Tom did. And he understood why Walt was so ready to sacrifice Sonny Thornfield. Along with his fellow Double Eagles, this man had hurt and killed more innocent people than they knew. If Sonny died here (his death staged by Walt’s expert hands), and Tom left the syringe and vials behind, they could remove the threat of prosecution for Viola’s murder and probably get off the hook for the dead trooper’s death as well. With so much pain hanging in the balance for his family (and for Walt, who wouldn’t even be in this mess if he hadn’t driven hundreds of miles to help Tom), how much of a crime would that be? Was the life of a rapist and killer too high a price to pay for life and freedom? For a chance to make amends to those people he had failed so miserably?

  Tom had given up on religion decades ago, but looking down at Thornfield’s cyanotic fingernails, he felt his soul in peril. How different was this from finding Frank Knox dying on the floor of his surgery at Viola’s feet? Maybe not much. But something deep within him rebelled at the prospect of letting Thornfield die. Maybe he had been carrying so much guilt for so long that he couldn’t stand adding another death to his account. Not even the death of a killer.

  Tom looked anxiously up at Walt, who was not a man to be easily swayed. “No matter how you stage this, they’re going to know someone else was involved. The second you destroyed that hard drive, you proved it.”

  The Ranger’s eyes narrowed as he considered this. “Not if I leave the fragments behind. We’ll just have to chance them piecing it back together. They’ll never do it without FBI help. Besides, being on Eagle business, he probably found a way to switch off the camera.”

  “What about our footprints? All that forensic crap?”

  Walt set his jaw in frustration. “Goddamn it, Tom. Quit searching for excuses. There’s nothing pretty about this, but if we don’t do it, we won’t get out alive. Guys who kill state cops wind up cornered in barns somewhere. And when the meat wagon finally gets there, they have about thirty holes apiece in them. It’s time to buy ourselves some insurance.”

  Tom slowly straightened up to his full height. He had three inches on Walt, and the new perspective reinforced his sense of moral advantage. “I know you just saved my life. But we can’t kill this man. This isn’t like the ambulance. This is cold-blooded murder.”

  Walt looked down at the gray man on the floor. As the barrel of the shotgun drifted toward Sonny’s face, Sonny twisted up off the carpet and vomited on himself.

  “For God’s sake!” Tom pressed. “Let’s move!”

  With a wild grimace, Garrity carried the shotgun to the front of the van and settled into the driver’s seat. For a few seconds he sat in silence, still fighting his instincts. But to Tom’s relief, he finally started the Roadtrek and revved the motor in preparation for climbing back up the levee.

  “Shut off his goddamn cell phone!” Walt shouted. “We don’t want his whole outfit coming down on us!”

  As Tom moved to obey, the pain of his shoulder wound stabbed him, stealing his breath. He found the cell phone in Thornfield’s pocket, its LCD screen glowing blue. As he shut it off, he wondered if more state cops were a
lready homing in on its periodic pings for a tower.

  With a lurch, the van began to roll.

  “Help me, Doc,” Sonny gasped, gripping his arm and imploring him with glassy eyes. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Don’t let him kill me. I got a family.”

  Cursing silently, Tom stepped over Thornfield and moved carefully to the end of the aisle, as though walking in a speedboat. Through one of the van’s rear windows, he saw the dead trooper growing smaller in the fading red glow of their taillights. But that vanishing figure was an illusion.

  They would never leave that corpse behind them.

  CHAPTER 52

  IN MY HOUSE on Washington Street, Mom is helping Annie pack a bag upstairs while I sit in our front room, jotting down the most likely explanations for my father jumping bail. It’s remarkable how easy this is, now that my faith in his honesty has been stripped away.

  If Dad is innocent of Viola’s murder, then four explanations seem possible: one, he’s trying to solve the murder himself, which would involve proving someone else killed her; two, he’s avoiding a DNA paternity test; three, he’s trying to avenge Viola’s death; or four, he’s trying to stop all further investigation by making himself look guilty by flight. This last possibility seems doubtful, since Shad and Sheriff Byrd have already settled on Dad as the killer and are unlikely to pursue any other suspects.

  If my father did kill Viola, then the possible explanations become simpler—yet far more difficult to believe. One, he might be fleeing the country, which would mean setting up a new life somewhere for himself, and presumably for my mother as well. This seems patently absurd, since Dad would consider being separated from Annie for the rest of his life a fate worse than death. On the other hand, he might prefer that to having Annie watch him be sent to prison. I suppose he might rather vanish than have certain secrets revealed, but if so, those secrets must be truly horrific. I can’t imagine that being the father of Lincoln Turner would be sufficient to drive him away from his family.

  The sound of an engine on Washington Street draws my attention long enough for me to wait for it to pass. But it doesn’t. Someone has parked outside my house, their engine idling.

  Taking my .357 Magnum from the table beside me, I go to the window and look out. A white pickup truck is parked across the road. The same white pickup that Lincoln Turner was driving last night. Rather than frightening me, the sight of him stalking our house suddenly pushes me past my limit.

  Running to the door, I jerk it open and race down the steps, but before I can reach the truck, Turner guns his motor and screeches away from the curb, headed toward the river. Like last night, I want to follow him, but tonight I can’t risk leaving Annie and Mom alone.

  Taking out my cell phone, I call Chief Logan and ask why the hell his patrolmen haven’t managed to locate Turner yet, when he’s obviously stalking my family. Logan apologizes and promises to find Lincoln within the next few hours.

  Only slightly mollified, I hang up and trudge back toward the steps of my house. Before I reach them, I hear another engine coming from the direction opposite where Lincoln fled. Crouching behind my car, I watch until I recognize the vehicle, which turns out to be a Concordia Parish sheriff’s cruiser. It pulls into the space Lincoln just vacated, and its engine dies. Walker Dennis climbs out and looks up at my front door.

  I start to rise from my hiding place, but then I remember John Kaiser asking if Sheriff Dennis might have set up the hit on Henry Sexton—or at least made it possible by pulling his guard patrols. It’s certainly possible, but as I watch the new sheriff studying my door, all my instincts tell me he’s no threat, but rather a man trying to decide whether I can be trusted.

  When I rise from behind the Audi, my pistol in my hand, Dennis stares at me in amazement. “You gonna use that pistol, or whistle Dixie?” he asks, a strange smile on his face. “What the hell are you doing, Mayor?”

  “Lincoln Turner was just here. He’s stalking me.”

  Dennis shakes his head, meaning to convey sympathy.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me this morning. About busting the Knoxes’ meth operations.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t prove they were involved in any of that.”

  The sheriff waves his hand dismissively. “I didn’t want to go into any of that with Henry Sexton around. But I’ve got a history with Forrest Knox.”

  An electric chill of presentiment races along my arms. “Tell me.”

  “Two years back, I lost a cousin who worked undercover in our department. I was just a deputy then. Mikey ran our K-9 unit. Long story short, he got shot making an undercover buy with another cop. Earlier that day, he told me what was supposed to go down. He and this state-cop-slash-informant were supposed to buy some bulk meth chemicals. When Mikey was killed, the state CIB told us he’d died alone. They claimed their guy had been working two hundred miles away with the Gulf Coast High Density Drug Traffic Unit. I tried to follow up that story, but every door got slammed in my face. So one day I took Mikey’s drug dog to where the bastard was. The dog nearly went crazy. I pushed for an investigation based on that, but it got quashed. By Lieutenant Colonel Forrest Knox, in case you’re wondering.”

  “I’m sorry, Walker. I had no idea.”

  “Bottom line, I guess I’ve been waiting for somebody to come along who’s willing to go to war with the Knox family. My DA sure isn’t hungry to take them on. Most people from Natchez don’t care what happens on my side of the river at all. But after what you did back in October with that dogfighting ring, I figure you might be the guy.”

  I nod, weighing the possible outcomes of my earlier plan. “Putting legal pressure on the Knoxes sounds like a good idea to me. Especially since they’d be facing mandatory drug sentences. How soon could you do it?”

  “And keep the element of surprise? Twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty-six. It depends on a lot of variables.”

  Given that Dad has jumped bail, this doesn’t seem fast enough. As I look into Sheriff Dennis’s earnest eyes, another thought strikes me—something that’s been simmering in my mind ever since I visited Pithy Nolan, and she reminded me of Judge Leo Marston. Back in 1968, J. Edgar Hoover refused a request by one of his agents to tap Judge Marston’s phone, even though he was a murder suspect. As a result, Special Agent Dwight Stone broke into Marston’s home and planted bugs in every part of it, including an outdoor gazebo. Then Stone did something he called “shaking the tree,” which, roughly translated, means scaring the hell out of the suspect. Within hours, Stone got a recording of Judge Marston discussing the murder with Ray Presley—under the gazebo.

  “Walker, do you know a judge who will give you a warrant to tap Brody Royal’s cell phone?”

  The sheriff whistles long and low.

  “Plus his son-in-law, Randall Regan.”

  “Jesus, man. I don’t know. The requirements to start a tap are pretty stringent. And Brody’s a heavy hitter in this state.”

  “Any chance?”

  “Well … I know one judge who’s no fan of his.”

  My mother’s voice calls from my front door. “Penn? What are you doing?”

  “Talking to the Concordia sheriff! Go back inside.”

  Walker looks over and sees Annie standing beside my mother, a suitcase in her hand.

  “You guys going on a trip?” he asks.

  I give him a look stripped of all affect. “I’m not going to lose my daughter the way you lost your cousin.”

  The sheriff’s face closes like a curtain. “Will I be able to reach you tomorrow morning?”

  “Call my cell.”

  “Okay. You take care of your family. I’ll proceed on all fronts.”

  “Thanks, Walker. Thanks for taking a stand. Henry was working on his own for too long, and we all share the blame for that.”

  He shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. If I’d manne
d up this morning, Henry might not have gotten stabbed. Brody Royal and the Knoxes have had their way in my parish for too damn long. It’s time to shut ’em down.”

  After a grim salute, he climbs into his cruiser and pulls away, following the invisible tracks of Lincoln Turner. The memory of that white truck sends a rush of anxiety through me. Where did the man who believes himself my half brother run to? Where is my father at this moment? How long have the two of them known about each other? Have they spoken before? Have they embraced? If so, who brought them together? Who could have, other than Viola Turner? With an exhausted sigh, I turn and walk toward my front steps, praying I can get my mother and daughter to safety without being seen.

  CHAPTER 53

  TOM HAD BEEN watching the fluorescent glow of the Sidney A. Murray Jr. Hydroelectric Station from a great distance as the Roadtrek hummed over the empty croplands of the Louisiana Delta. Over Walt’s protests, he’d deposited Sonny Thornfield in the ambulance bay of Mercy Hospital, and once Walt had got them safely out of town, Tom had come forward and sat in the passenger seat. There was zero risk of a cop pulling them over. They were following the levee road that paralleled the river southward, and it felt like they were driving on the dark side of the moon. No streetlamps, no service stations, not even billboards broke the black monotony that enveloped them. Only the occasional glimmer of moonlight on the borrow pits at the foot of the levee reassured Tom that they were still on Earth.

  Walt was so angry that he’d hardly spoken since they left the dead trooper behind. Tom understood, and didn’t try to force conversation. He knew his decision might have doomed them both. He also knew he had no right to put Walt into further jeopardy. Yet he didn’t regret what he’d done. No matter what Walt believed, another murder wasn’t going to save them.

  Tom’s shoulder still throbbed relentlessly, but he’d endured worse in Korea, and with adequate treatment the bullet wound wouldn’t kill him. His angina, however, still lingered high between his shoulder blades like a harbinger of death. He didn’t want to take any more nitro until more time had passed, but as soon as they found a safe phone, he would call Drew Elliott and arrange for some clandestine trauma treatment.