Natchez Burning (17 page)

“Did that look like a morphine overdose to you?” Henry asks.

“No. Is that what Shad thought it was?”

“I think he expected to see a morphine overdose until he saw this.” Henry puts his hand on my arm. “Did I break the law by making a copy of this? Or by showing it to you?”

“That’s probably open to interpretation. But you don’t have to worry about it. I won’t tell a soul I’ve seen it.”

“I trust you. I just don’t trust Shad Johnson.”

“You’re not alone in that.” I take a deep breath, then rub my eyes until I see stars. “I don’t mean to keep you, but you said Shad mentioned my father to you?”

“When I first got to his office, he said he thought he had an assisted suicide situation on his hands. He said Viola and your father had some kind of pact about it. But after he saw this, I got a very different feeling.”

“What did he say afterward?”

“Just that the drive was evidence and he had to keep it. But everything had changed somehow. It was more his demeanor than anything else. I had the feeling he was gloating inside. You know?”

“I do.” Given the past enmity between Shad and me, this would normally be no surprise, but considering the leverage I have over him—

“This looks bad for your father, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Do you intend to report this in the
Beacon
?”

“Not until I have a much better idea of what’s going on.”

I look at Henry from the corner of my eye. “A lot of reporters would.”

He shakes his head firmly. “Your father took care of my daddy right up to the day he died. Some days, Dr. Cage listened to Mama cry for an hour in his office. Not many doctors would do that. None, these days. I owed you this, Penn. Or him, I reckon.”

I lay my hand on his forearm and squeeze it. “Thank you, buddy.”

“What does Doc say about all this? Off the record.”

“He told me to mind my own business.”

“Huh.” Henry pooches out his lower lip. “Well … I’m sure Doc knows what he’s doing.”

“Don’t count on it. When it comes to the law, he’s about as naïve as a seventh grader. He believes the law is about justice.”

Henry shakes his head slowly. “It ought to be, but it ain’t. I’ve sure learned that these past few years.” He looks over at the door of the public library, where a heavy woman with three small children tries to herd them up the steps. “I hate to say this, Penn, but I need to go. Do you want me to drop you back where we were?”

“You don’t need Shad to see you doing that. I’ll run from here.”

Henry takes the computer from my lap and sets it on the backseat. “I appreciate it. Good luck to you.”

As I jog back toward the courthouse, Henry puts the Explorer in gear and roars past me, making for the river.

SHADRACH JOHNSON NORMALLY SITS
behind his antebellum-period desk with the condescension of an Arab potentate. Today, however, his customary arrogance is tempered by a watchfulness I’ve rarely seen in him. Shad’s wary demeanor can only be explained by his awareness that I have the power to destroy his political career, and I see no reason to let him forget that during this conversation.

“Before we begin,” he says, “I want us to be clear about something.”

“What’s that?”

“We both know two months ago, you had a certain photograph in your possession. A photograph with me in it.”

“Mm-hm,” I murmur in a neutral tone, my gaze playing over Shad’s jacket, which looks like a Zegna. The DA has always been a clotheshorse. He dresses as precisely as he grooms himself, which is rare among our lawyers and city officials these days. His keeps his hair cut close to his skull and his nails manicured, another unusual touch. The county coroner—an African-American woman with keen observational skills—once quietly suggested to me that Shad is gay, but I’ve never heard this confirmed. And since Natchez has long been a haven for gays in Mississippi, it seems odd that Shad would remain in the closet.

The photograph that so worries him has nothing to do with sexuality—not so far as I know, anyway. Rather, it shows the district attorney in the presence of a professional football player and a pit bull dog. The dog in question is hanging by its neck from a tree limb, and the football player has a cattle prod in his hand. Both men look fascinated, even excited, by the brutality in which they are taking part.

“You told me you gave me the original JPEG file,” Shad goes on, as though each word causes him discomfort. “On that SD card.”

“That’s right.”

“Was that …?”

“The only copy?” I finish helpfully.

“Yes.”

I shrug.

His face darkens. “Now, see? Goddamn it, this is just what I expected. A veiled threat.”

“Shad, you ought to know me by now. If I make a threat, there won’t be any veil. Why don’t you just tell me why you summoned me? I thought maybe you were going to introduce me to Lincoln Turner.”

The DA barks a laugh. “You don’t want that, believe me. That guy’s angry enough to punch you out. Your father, for sure.”

“If the man’s so upset, why did he only get to town a half hour
after
his mother died?”

“Always the lawyer,” Shad says drily. “I don’t know much about Lincoln Turner yet, and I don’t much care to. Right now I just want to make sure things are clear between you and me. Because I’m going to have to move forward in this matter, Penn. I’ve got no choice.”

I expected this, but not quite so soon. “What exactly do you mean by ‘move forward’?”

Shad steeples his fingers and leans back in his chair. “When we spoke this morning, I thought we were dealing with a case of assisted suicide. Maybe just plain suicide, okay? I just wanted it to go away. And I believed there was some chance that it would.”

“But now?”

“This thing isn’t going away, Penn. No way.”

“What’s changed?”

“We’re looking at murder now.” The DA’s voice is like a wire drawn taut. “First-degree murder.”

I have to struggle to hold my face immobile. Even with the video recording, I don’t see how he gets to first-degree murder. “What are you talking about?”

“Since we spoke this morning, new evidence has surfaced.”

“What kind of evidence are we talking about?”

“You know anybody else sitting in this chair would refuse to answer that question.”

“No other DA’s future would be hanging by a thread that I hold.”

Shad’s eyes blaze with frustrated anger. “I can’t give you the state’s case, damn it! Nobody knows that better than you. And based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, anybody sitting in this chair would proceed against your father. They’d be negligent not to.”

“What’s your evidence, Shad?” I ask patiently. “I need to know what my father’s facing.”

He angrily expels a rush of air. “The sheriff’s department took your father’s fingerprints off two empty ampoules of morphine and a large syringe found at the scene.”

I slowly digest this. Viola didn’t appear to have died from a morphine overdose on Henry’s recording. “They traced his fingerprints in less than a day?”

“Four years ago, your father registered for a concealed-carry permit. The Highway Patrol fingerprints all applicants for that. When the sheriff’s department fed the prints from the syringe into AFIS, Dr. Cage’s name popped right out.”

“All that proves is that my father held that syringe at some point prior to it being collected at the scene. It doesn’t even put him in the house.”

“Viola’s sister put him in the house. Cora Revels.”

“She says she left Dad alone with Viola?”

“That’s right. She went to a neighbor’s house and fell asleep on the couch.”

My mind flies back to Henry’s video. “Are you certain that Viola died of a morphine overdose?”

Shad gives a small shrug. “You know we can’t be sure of that until the toxicology comes back. That could take weeks.”

“Ask the state crime lab to rush it. They’ll do that for you on a murder case.”

“Are you telling me how to run this case?”

“I’m not convinced this
is
a case. I think you’re jumping the gun.”

Shad looks genuinely upset. “Penn, you’ve sat where I’m sitting. No child in the world wants to believe his parent committed a terrible crime. But I have a duty here. If I shirk it, I’ll be buried by public opinion as surely as if you published that photo in the
Examiner
.”

“I honestly don’t see how you get to first-degree murder. But I didn’t go to Harvard like you. Help me out here.”

Shad clearly wants me out of his office, but so long as he thinks I have the photo, he’ll handle me with kid gloves. “Lincoln Turner believes his mother was murdered. The physical evidence supports his assertion. And whether your fiancée chooses to print it in the paper or not, his assertion is likely to become a public accusation very soon. If the past is any guide, the rumor will be all over town long before tomorrow’s paper hits the streets.”

The mention of Caitlin momentarily derails my thoughts; thankfully, she’s out of town for the day, interviewing Katrina evacuees at a FEMA trailer park near the Louisiana state line. “Those were not legal points, Shad.”

“But they matter, and you know it. I wish I had better news for you. But the only person who might be able to prevent this situation from getting worse is your father. And you said he wouldn’t talk to you. Is he sticking to that position?”

“I haven’t spoken to him since our first conversation.”

Shad’s nostrils flare. “Remember when I told you I didn’t think any cop or deputy in town would serve a warrant on your father?”

I nod.

“I’ve since learned I was wrong.”

This tells me that everything Shad knows is leaking through the sheriff’s department as we speak. With Billy Byrd wearing the star, that’s no surprise. Two years ago, Sheriff Byrd, Shad, and a local circuit judge colluded to try to railroad a friend of mine into Parchman. And while I’ve never uncovered the basis for that unholy alliance, I know that none of those three will hesitate to use the power of his office to settle personal scores.

“For some reason,” Shad goes on, “Billy Byrd has a hard-on to bust your old man. The sheriff seems to be one of the few people who don’t worship Tom Cage. In fact, I got the feeling he hates him. You might want to ask your dad about that, as well.”

I close my eyes and speak in an exaggerated Eastern European accent. “I’m seeing something in my mind … wait …
yes
. It’s a picture of … a bull? No, a bull
dog
. The dog is hanging from a tree … and there’s a district attorney hanging beside it. And people are beating the district attorney with sticks. Now somebody’s hanging a sign on his chest. The sign says
DISBARRED
in big capital letters—”

“Keep your voice down!” Shad hisses, coming half out of his chair. “Goddamn it.”

“Only one thing will keep my voice down. Give me whatever you’ve been holding back.”

With the look of a cornered animal, he spits out three words. “There’s a tape.”

I don’t even blink. “What kind of tape?”

He gives me a brief summary of the video I just watched in Henry Sexton’s Explorer. The DA clearly interprets Viola’s dying words as evidence of my father’s guilt.

“That doesn’t sound like proof of anything. It sounds like the confused ranting of a person having a heart attack.”

“Penn, you might as well save it for—”

“Viola was a trained nurse,” I point out. “Why would my father inject her? If she died as the result of an injection of any drug, she almost certainly gave it to herself.”

“Save it for the courtroom. I don’t have any choice here.”

I realize I’m breathing hard. “There’s got to be more, Shad. Come on. Murder One?”

The DA shifts in his seat. “I’m not going to let you hold that photo over my head like a sword. Before this is over, you’ll want to use it, but you’d better think long and hard before you do.”

I hear steel in his voice. “Why is that?”

“Better the devil you know—that’s why. You bust me, there’s no telling who’ll wind up in this chair. The judge could appoint a special prosecutor. And depending on the judge, there’s no telling who you might get.”

This is a veiled reference to Arthel Minor, the judge who colluded with Shad in the past. “I hear you,” I tell him. “But there’s something missing from this equation. I haven’t heard anything that suggests a motive for murder.”

Shad waves this objection away with a flick of his hand. “Malice aforethought is enough to get the state to murder. And in this type of case, intent alone is sufficient to meet the standard for malice.”

“By ‘this type of case,’ you mean an assisted suicide situation?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Shad tries to look inscrutable, but I see something flickering behind his civil-servant-trapped-by-duty mask. As hard as he’s trying to conceal it, Shad cannot hide the fierce joy burning within him. Fate has handed him a chance to pay me back a hundredfold, and by God, he means to use it.

“Are you implying my father killed Viola Turner not to relieve her suffering, but for some other reason?”

The DA blinks once, slowly. “I haven’t said that.”

You just did.
“Shad, what’s really going on here? What are you sitting on?”

Shadrach rubs his temples with both hands, like a man in real pain. “As far as your father having a motive to kill Viola Turner, I’ve got more than you want to hear. But you
won’t
hear it in here. Not today. There are some lines I can’t cross, no matter what you threaten me with.”

He pushes back his chair, rises, and looks down at me with the closest facsimile of compassion he can manufacture. “This case is going to trial, Penn. Even if it was you sitting in this chair, if you knew what I know, you’d go forward and indict for murder. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“
Motive,
Shad. I’m not leaving this office without a motive. Where did it come from? The sister? Cora Revels?”

“I’m not saying another word.”

“The son, then. Lincoln.”

Shad looks down at his desk. Then he raises his eyes and says very softly, “Have you asked yourself why a mother would want to be euthanized a half hour before her son arrived to tell her good-bye?”