The Devil''s Punchbowl

  “We ought to charge admission,” Jewel says bitterly. Seeing my quivering chin, she squeezes my arm above the elbow and says, “Tent’s on the way.”

  Her small gesture of compassion cracks the armor plating I buckled over my emotions back at the foot of the ladder. Deep within me, a caustic soup of guilt and rage boils upward, searching for an outlet. Jewel squeezes my arm harder.

  “Easy now.”

  “We grew up together,” I whisper by way of explanation.

  Jewel nods in sympathy. “I imagine this boy had a tough time growing up. I used to work with his daddy some. Never liked Dr. Jessup. Cold as an old-time scalpel.”

  Jewel has cut right to the heart of Tim’s family. The corpse lying on the ground was alive for forty-five years, but the soul that occupied it until tonight never managed to escape boyhood.

  “Stay in touch?” I ask.

  Jewel gives me a sad smile of encouragement. “You know I will.”

  I turn and walk back to the dim perimeter of the light, where Chief Logan stands talking to a man in the shadows. As I near the pair, I realize that the newcomer is Shadrach Johnson, Natchez’s district attorney, the man I defeated for mayor two years ago. The scars from our campaigns still sting, but our troubled history predates that election by five years.

  “Well, look who we’ve got here,” Shad says with mocking reverence. “You’re out mighty late considering all the mayoral duties you’ve got this weekend.”

  Shad was born in Natchez but moved to Chicago while he was still a boy. He attended college there on scholarship and worked as a big-firm lawyer until he was forty, when he returned to Natchez to run for mayor. His Southern accent waxes and wanes with his moods and motives. As usual, he’s dressed to the nines, wearing an expensive suit and tie on a weekend when most people are dressed like fans at a Jimmy Buffett concert.

  “Why don’t we skip the bullshit tonight?” I ask. “Tim Jessup was a friend.”

  “My condolences,” Shad says without empathy. “Seems like an odd friendship to me, the mayor of the city and a no-count blackjack dealer.”

  I take a deep breath and focus on Logan. “Could I speak to you alone, Chief?”

  Logan starts to step away, but Shad catches hold of his arm. “Not so fast, Chief. You need to finish my briefing here, and that might take a while.”

  “I just need a minute,” I add with as much civility as I can muster.

  “Well, Mr. Mayor,” Shad says with relish, “you’re just going to have to wait. I know you’re not accustomed to waiting, but I am the chief law enforcement officer of Adams County.”

  I pointedly ignore Shad, keeping my eyes on Logan. “Did you find anything else on Jessup besides his cell phone?”

  The chief shakes his head.

  “If somebody stole his wallet, it seems like they’d take his phone too.”

  “Seems like,” Logan agrees.

  “Could I see his phone?”

  “You know that’s a police matter,” Shad interjects. “You expecting them to find something special?”

  The anger I felt beside Tim’s body is reaching critical mass, and the DA is too convenient a target. I need to get away from him as fast as possible.

  “No, but I’m going to inform the widow in a few minutes. I’d like to be able to answer her questions and pass along any personal effects. Knowing the circumstances of his death would help.”

  Logan’s alert gaze is on me again, but he says nothing further. He glances at Shad, who gives a slight nod.

  “There were twentysome-odd people up on the balcony at Bowie’s,” the chief says. “Plus a couple over there in the gazebo, making out. There were probably some other people on the bluff too, but we haven’t got them separated from the mob yet. Thank God, the big doors of the bar were closed to enforce their cover charge. “

  “What did the wits see?”

  “Different things, of course. Or different versions of the same thing. After listening to everybody, the best I can figure is this. A tan or light-colored SUV, probably a Lincoln Navigator, came down Broadway from the direction of the Callon building. Nobody was paying much attention at that point. Then about a hundred feet past the gazebo, the SUV skidded to a stop. It squealed loud enough to make people turn. The guy on the gazebo saw Jessup running from Broadway toward the fence. He must have jumped out of the SUV. Then a second guy jumped out of the backseat and started to chase him. The second guy stopped in the grass. Jessup was screaming for help by then. The guy on the bandstand called 911, but we couldn’t get here fast enough to do anything.”

  Logan pauses as if expecting me to question his department’s response time, but I motion for him to continue.

  “By this time people on the balcony were looking in that direction, but there are a few trees up there, so they couldn’t see a lot. It looked like the guy chasing Jessup disappeared under the trees. He must have been getting closer because Jessup climbed over the fence and started running along the ledge toward Silver Street. Nobody’s sure whether the second guy ran up to the fence or not. Half the witnesses figured Jessup and the other guy were just drunks horsing around.”

  “But the guy in the gazebo called 911.”

  “His wife made him do it,” Logan explains. “Anyhow, for whatever reason, Jessup stopped on the ledge. He was twisting around like he was fighting an invisible man—that’s what the guy in the gazebo said—and then he went over the edge. That’s it. For now anyway.”

  I look up to the ledge forty feet above and try to imagine Tim desperate enough to make that leap voluntarily. If the man chasing him had been torturing him, Tim might have leapt from the ledge in the hope that he could clear the drainage ditch and hit the limbs of the trees beyond it. But the odds of death would still be high. The logical thing would have been to run back toward the tavern, or even down the ledge along Silver Street. Cars travel that hill at all hours, and he might have flagged someone down.

  “Did anybody see the plates on the vehicle?”

  Logan shakes his head. “The SUV got out of here in a hurry. Nobody’s even sure it had Mississippi plates.”

  “Damn. What do you make of all that?” I ask, more to observe Logan’s reaction than to learn anything valuable.

  “Could be a lot of things. Jessup was a known drug abuser.”

  “He’s been clean for a year.”

  Shad Johnson, quiet up to now, snorts in derision. “Jessup rear-ended a friend of mine a couple months back, and my friend swears he was fucked-up at the time.”

  Tim was high two months ago? “Did the police do a blood test?”

  Shad shakes his head. “Wasn’t that much damage. And Jessup wasn’t worth suing. He didn’t have anything but debts.”

  Logan winces. He doesn’t like being caught between us.

  “This could have resulted from any kind of dispute,” the DA speculates. “Argument over a woman. Jessup’s dealer taking the price of dope out of his ass. I expect we’ll know by Monday or Tuesday.”

  “Have you done a grid search around the body?” I ask Logan.

  “Best we could. We didn’t find anything within throwing distance, but there’s a lot of damn kudzu and trees down there. If he threw something full force from the top of the bluff, it’ll take daylight to find it.” Logan stops speaking, but his engineer’s eyes ask me what I think Tim might have been carrying. “If he threw something with some weight, he might have thrown it all the way to the river.”

  “Dope doesn’t weigh that much,” Shad says. “Not throwing size, anyway. You’ll find his stash in the morning, if the rats and coons don’t eat it first.”

  “What are you doing at this crime scene?” I ask pointedly. “You usually stay away from the dirty work.”

  Shad’s lips broaden into a smile; he enjoys a fight. “I was at a party a few blocks away. I’m only answering you as a courtesy, of course. You’re not the DA, Penn Cage. No, sir. This investigation is in my hands, and I’ll decide what gets done and when.”

  “You’re in charge, all right. Just remember that with power comes responsibility. You’ll be held to the highest standard, make no mist
ake about that.” I turn to Logan. “Let’s put a rush on that autopsy, Chief.”

  “There he goes again,” says Shad, “giving orders like he’s the district attorney.”

  Instead of taking the bait, I turn and stride back toward the ladder. As soon as Shad leaves my field of vision, he leaves my mind. My anger remains unquenched, perhaps even unplumbed, but its urgency recedes as I climb back up to Silver Street and make my way through the chattering crowd toward my car. Several acquaintances call out, but I brusquely wave them off. A cold heaviness is seeping outward from my heart. I’d rather clean and embalm Tim’s mutilated body than tell Julia Stanton that the father of her baby is dead. But some duties cannot be shirked. If Julia asks why Tim died, I wonder if I’ll have the courage to tell her the truth? That her husband almost certainly perished because I was late to our meeting.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Tim Jessup’s wife and son live in Montebello subdivision, a cluster of small clapboard homes built in the 1940s to house the employees of the International Paper Company. For most of their history, these structures sheltered generations of working white families, but in the past ten years, quite a few have been taken over by African-American families. Despite the age of the houses and the inexpensive materials with which they were built, most are well kept up, with fresh paint and well-tended lawns. What sticks in your mind when you drive through during the day is the abundance of kids, dogs, bicycles, flowers, lawn ornaments, and glitter-painted bass boats parked on the grass beside the driveways. Tim and Julia bought one of the more run-down houses when she got pregnant, then spent eight months fixing it up for the baby. Montebello is a long way down from the tony subdivision where Jessup grew up, but after he turned thirty, Tim stopped caring about things like that. His father never did. After my return to Natchez, I learned it was better not to mention Tim when I ran into Dr. Jessup. Whenever I did, all I saw in the old surgeon’s eyes was shame and bitterness.

  I turn off Highway 61 at the Parkway Baptist Church and take the frontage road down into Montebello. A warren of curving, tree-shaded streets divides the neighborhood into asymmetrical sections, and it’s easy to get lost down here if you haven’t visited in a while. After one wrong turn, I find Maplewood and swing around a broad curve through the parked cars and pickups that line both sides of the street.

  In less than a minute I will shatter the life of Julia Stanton Jessup, and I’m suddenly aware that my outrage over Tim’s death is an order of magnitude smaller than what she will experience after the initial shock wears off. The explosion might even be immediate. Julia is no shrinking violet. She began life in a coddled existence, but fate soon had its way with her family, and she did not pull through without becoming tough. I still remember kissing her once at a senior party, when she was in the ninth grade. We’ve never spoken of it since, but the image of her as she was then remains with me, a beautiful girl just coming into womanhood, and unlike Tim she retained the glow of her youth through the hard years. I suspect that tonight’s shock may take that from her at last.

  The instant Julia’s house comes into sight, I know something’s wrong. The front door stands wide-open, but there’s no car in the driveway and no one in sight. The doorway appears as a rectangle of faint yellow light coming from deep within the house, though deep is not exactly accurate in terms of a house that small. I reach under my seat for the pistol Tim told me to bring to the cemetery meeting. The cold metal is my only comfort as I leave the relative safety of my car and walk through the shallow yard toward the house. I should call Logan for police backup, but Tim’s words from last night keep sounding in my head: You can’t trust anybody. Not even the police.

  The neighborhood is relatively quiet. I hear the thrum of a few air-conditioning units, still laboring hard in mid-October. A couple of TV soundtracks drift through the air, coming from the houses that have opened their windows to the damp, cooling night. I press my back to the wall outside Jessup’s door, then crash through in a crouch, the way a Houston police detective taught me. The last thing I thought I’d be doing tonight was clearing a house, but at this juncture, there’s no point in analyzing my instincts.

  As I move from room to room, it becomes obvious that the house has been thoroughly searched. Every drawer and cabinet has been opened, the books pulled from the shelves and rifled, and the mattresses slit to pieces. Even the baby’s mattress was yanked from the crib and slit open.

  The house has only six rooms, all clustered around a central bathroom. I call out Julia’s name, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere. But I’ll be happier if she’s not. I hope she’s miles away from this place, safely hidden or running for her life. For the state of this house tells me one thing: Whatever evidence of crime Tim was looking for today, he found it. And that discovery cost him his life. The only questions remaining are what did he find, and where is it now?

  I lean out the back door, but all I see in the backyard is a plastic playhouse bought from Wal-Mart, looking forlorn and abandoned. I’m raising my cell phone to call Chief Logan when it buzzes in my hand. I jump as though shocked by a wall socket, and this makes me realize how tense I was while I searched the house. The number has a Natchez prefix, a cellular one.

  “Penn Cage,” I answer, wondering who might be calling me after 1:00 a.m.

  The first sound I hear is something between sobbing and choking, and I know before the first coherent word that Julia Jessup already knows that her husband is dead. She is so hysterically anguished that speech is almost physiologically impossible. Yet still she tries.

  “Ih—ih—ih—” The vocalization catches repeatedly in her throat, like an engine trying to start in cold weather. And after a couple of gulps and stutters, the full sentence emerges. “Is Tim dead?”

  “Julia—”

  “Huh—he-he told me not to kuh-kuh-call you. Unless something hah-happened. But Nancy Barrett called me from Bowie’s. She said Tim feh-fell. Off the bluff. I don’t understand. Tell me the truth, Penn. Tell me right this minute!”

  More than anything I want to ask where Julia is, but there’s no way I’m going to do that over a cell phone. Whoever killed Tim may be searching for his wife at this moment, believing she’s in possession of whatever evidence Tim found.

  “It’s true,” I say as gently as I can, walking quickly back to my car. “I’m sorry, Julia, but Tim died tonight.”

  A scream worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama greets this news, then the words pour out in a senseless flood. “OhmiGodohmiGodoh—oh—oh—I knew it! I knew something was going to happen. He knew it too. Goddamn it!” Another wail. “Oh my God. After everything I’ve done to get him clean . No. No, no, no. It’s not—no, I can’t go there. What am I supposed to do, Penn? Tell me that! How am I supposed to raise this baby?”

  “Are you with somebody, Julia?”

  “With somebody? I’m at—”

  “Stop! Don’t tell me where you are. Just tell me if you’re with somebody.”

  Even before she answers, I realize I need to get Julia off the phone. Anyone with direction-finding equipment or good hacking skills could triangulate her position. She’s sobbing again, so I speak with as much firmness as I can. “Julia, are you with someone? Answer me.”

  “Yes,” she whispers.

  “Listen to me now. If you’re in a building—a house or a hotel or whatever—I want you to lock the doors. Keep your cell phone with you, but switch it off. Then switch it back on again exactly thirty minutes from now.”

  “What? Why thirty minutes?”

  “Because I’m going to call you back and give you some instructions. I have to make some arrangements first. Don’t forget to switch off your phone. The people who—who hurt Tim—can use that phone to track you down.”

  “Oh, God. Oh I knew it. I told him not to do anything.”

  “Julia! Don’t say anything else. Don’t trust anyone Tim didn’t mention specifically. And don’t come home. Don’t even think about it. I’m there now, and the place has been torn to pieces.” I glance at my watch as Julia whimpers incomprehensibly. “I’ll call
you back at one thirty-five. I’m hanging up now.”

  It’s hard to do, but I press END and run for my car. My hand is on the doorknob when two police cars roar around the bend of Maplewood and screech to a stop behind me. A blue-white spotlight hits my face and a harsh voice speaks over the car’s PA system.

  “Stop right there! Put your hands up and step away from the vehicle!”

  I feel no fear at this order, only anger and impatience. And curiosity. I haven’t had time to call the chief and tell him that Jessup’s house was broken into. It might make sense that Logan would send someone to make sure I’d informed the widow—or even to search Jessup’s house—but to see a brace of squad cars wheeling around Maplewood as though responding to a home invasion is more than a little surprising. Yet all I can think about as two cops approach is how I’m going to get Julia to safety.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” barks the first cop.

  “I’m Mayor Penn Cage. I came here to inform Julia Jessup that her husband was killed tonight. Chief Logan can confirm that, and you’d better call him right now. I don’t have all night to stand out here talking.”

  The cop on my left looks closer at me, then taps his partner on the upper arm. “It’s okay. He’s the mayor.”

  “You sure?” asks the second guy.

  “What the fuck, am I sure? My dad went to school with the guy, dude.”

  On another night I would ask the young cop who his father is, but not this time. “Guys, I’ve got to go. Somebody took that house apart. You need to lock it down. Don’t let anybody inside.”

  “The wife’s not here?” asks the young cop.

  I answer him while climbing in to my car. “Still trying to find her. I’ll update the chief later.”

  I jerk the Saab into gear and head back to Highway 61. I can be at my house on Washington Street in less than five minutes, and I need a plan of action by the time I get there. Julia could come apart in less time than that, and a wrong move on her part could be fatal. But my options are almost nonexistent. All the resources I would normally use in this kind of situation have been placed out of bounds by Tim’s warnings. Last night I wasn’t sure his caution was warranted, but after seeing the condition of his body and the state of his house, I have no intention of risking the lives of his wife and son on assumptions.