Natchez Burning (31 page)

She comes around the desk carrying a big purse and a cake box. “I sure like your books, Mayor Cage. My husband does too. And he don’t hardly read nothing anymore, so that’s saying something.”

“I appreciate it, Mrs …?”

“Whittington,” she says. “I used to be a Smithdale, ages ago. I only say that ’cause Dr. Cage treated me when I was a teenager. They don’t make ’em like Dr. Cage anymore.”

I give the obligatory smile I always do in these situations.

As Mrs. Whittington passes me, I feel her hand close on my wrist, and she looks into my eyes with the disarming sincerity of country people. “I mean it,” she says earnestly. “You take care of your daddy.”

I promise that I will, realizing as I do that the rumors must already be spreading outward through landlines and the cellular airwaves like vibrations through a spiderweb.

“We’ll be praying for you,” Mrs. Whittington says, and then she’s gone.

I hear the glass door being locked as I pass through the doorway into a larger room containing several small desks, a photocopier, and tall shelves holding big bound volumes filled with back issues of the
Beacon
. Seated behind one of the desks, playing an old National guitar with a shining silver resonator, is Henry Sexton, the lanky, unassuming baby boomer who has stirred up more trouble for ex-Klansmen than almost any reporter in the South. Henry nods when he sees me, but he keeps on playing, using a gold cigarette lighter as a slide, filling the room with crystalline wails that soar over droning low notes that ebb and flow like the moaning of a grieving man. With his graying mustache and goatee, he looks more like an old musician than a journalist.

“Come on in and sit down,” he says, scrunching up his mouth as he plays a particularly difficult passage; then he tosses out a flurry of blue notes that vanish into a shimmering harmonic at the twelfth fret.

“Sounds good,” I say, as he lays the National flat in his lap.

“I try to keep my hand in. Calms me down when I’m stressed out. Playing this guitar always makes me think of Albert Norris.”

As Henry takes his hands from the strings, I notice his hands are shaking. “Did you know him personally?” I ask, quickly looking up at his eyes.

A deeper sadness comes into Henry’s perpetually sad eyes. “I knew him well. As a boy, of course.” His face brightens a little. “As a matter of fact, I bought that guitar off a man Albert sold it to back in the fifties. Albert was a pianist by training, but he could play a mean guitar when he wanted to. But it was Jimmy Revels who taught me to play the slide like that—with a cigarette lighter instead of a bottleneck. Steve Cropper did the same thing on some big records. But you didn’t come here to learn about the blues.”

“I didn’t realize you knew Jimmy Revels, either. You’ve never mentioned that in your articles, have you?”

“No. I try to keep my writing as objective as possible. But I knew Jimmy pretty well. Luther Davis, too. I was close to Albert’s whole family, and most everybody who hung out in the store. That’s one reason I’ve never let those cases rest. Maybe the main reason.”

“Well, I admire you for it.”

Henry shakes his head. “I respect you more for taking on the Del Payton case. It’s easy to work hard at something when you have a personal stake in it.”

I don’t want Henry thinking I’m a better man than I am. “Honestly, when Payton’s family first came to me, I turned them down. They sort of embarrassed me into taking the case. You could say I took it out of white guilt.”

Henry goes still, his eyes smoldering in his mild face. “Don’t knock white guilt. Let me tell you something. There’s a PBS crew filming a documentary about my work. They’re covering a few other investigative journalists, too. And the question people always ask when the director shows them footage is ‘Where are the black reporters in this story? All you’re showing us is white men trying to solve these civil rights murders.’”

“How do you answer them?”

“With the same question. Where
are
the black reporters? I need all the help I can get. But it’s white men working these cases, almost exclusively. And I’m not sure why. Is it guilt, like you said? I’ll tell you this: when I read my list of black murder victims from the sixties, hardly a black person in America recognizes a name. There’s something wrong with that, brother.”

Henry leans back and flicks his fingernails across the open-tuned strings on the National. “Albert Norris was like a father to me, Penn. But Jimmy Revels broke my heart. And he never even knew it. Ain’t that something?”

Jimmy Revels broke my heart?
This strange lament stops me cold. For a moment I wonder if Henry is telling me he’s gay, but he reads my mind and snaps this delusion with a laugh. “No, not like that. But we don’t have time to go into that story. Did you tell Shad Johnson I made a copy of what was on that hard drive?”

“No. I promised you I wouldn’t, and I keep my promises.”

“Thank you. I need favors from Shad from time to time.”

“Has he helped you in the past?”

“No. But he’s all I’ve got to work with over there right now.”

“My fiancée would tell you you’ve got nothing, then.”

Henry looks strangely uncomfortable.

“Do you know Caitlin?”

“I’ve met her a couple of times,” he says quietly.

His tone doesn’t sound favorable. “But?”

“Well …” He looks at the floor between us. “She’s big-time, you know? Pulitzer Prize and everything. I just work for a little weekly paper.”

“Don’t underestimate what you’re doing, Henry. I’ve heard Caitlin compliment your stories many times. She has tremendous respect for you.”

He actually blushes at this. “I appreciate that.”

Henry probably thinks I’m just being polite, but the truth is, Caitlin has sounded almost jealous when she’s mentioned Henry’s work. I’ve occasionally wondered whether she’s followed up some of the leads he’s unearthed, without telling me about it. Maybe that’s what Henry’s worried about. He doesn’t want to reveal hard-won information to me, when it might wind up in Caitlin’s hands an hour later.

“Henry, let me put your mind at rest about something. Caitlin Masters is no threat to you—not through me. She and I keep a high wall between our careers. We have to. You may find that difficult to believe, but as Natchez’s mayor and her one newspaper publisher, we’ve been through enough conflict-of-interest situations that we’ve learned to compartmentalize. And that arrangement has been tested, believe me. It’s caused serious stress in our relationship. But we’ve stuck to it.
Nothing
you tell me will get to Caitlin. Okay? Not without your permission.”

Henry sighs with obvious relief. “I appreciate it.”

“So, tell me why you called me.”

Henry raises the National into playing position again, almost like it’s a shield. “Penn, do you believe your daddy killed Viola?”

“Are we alone in this building?”

“We are now.”

“And we’re off the record?”

“You’re not even here, brother.”

“He might have, Henry. I don’t know. You saw the tape. We may have seen a botched attempt at euthanasia. An unexpected drug reaction. I can’t see my father screwing up such a thing, but he might cover for someone else who did. A family member, maybe. I just spent half an hour talking to Dad, and he stuck to the doctor-patient privilege pitch like the Maginot Line. What do you think happened?”

“I think it was straight-up murder, and the Double Eagles did it.”

This assertion hits me like cold water in the face. “The splinter group of the Klan you’ve written about?”

Henry nods. “In 1968, the Double Eagles warned Viola that if she ever returned to Natchez, they’d kill her. They kidnapped and murdered her brother, Jimmy Revels, and I believe Viola saw enough to put some Eagles behind bars. She may even have seen them kill Jimmy, or Luther Davis.”

“How do you know this? I’ve never read it in your stories.”

“Viola told me about the old warning two weeks ago, but she wouldn’t go farther than that. But today, right after I talked to you, I interviewed the first Double Eagle ever to go on the record about any of their crimes. He’s positive that some of his old brothers killed Viola to fulfill that threat.”

My breath comes a little shallower. “Does he know that for a fact?”

“No. He’s out of the loop these days, as far as they’re concerned. But I believe he’s right.”

“Do you have any evidence?”

“Only circumstantial, I’m afraid. But that’ll change soon.”

Not what I’d hoped for, but …
“Who is this Double Eagle?”

“I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”

Henry’s refusal hits me with delayed effect, like the pain of a puncture wound. “Are you serious? We need to get this guy in front of a district attorney. Or some FBI agents, at least.”

“That’ll never happen. He only talked to me on the condition that I not print anything until after he’s dead—which from the looks of him won’t be long.”

“Henry, Shad means to charge my father with murder tomorrow. First-degree murder.”

“I was afraid of that. But you don’t have to worry. Your father’s innocent. There’s no way he’ll even go to trial for this crime. A week from now, I’ll have nailed the Eagles for it.”

“A week in the county jail could easily kill my dad. Please tell me who this guy is. I’m a former prosecutor. I have a lot of experience persuading reluctant witnesses to turn state’s evidence.”

“Maybe so. But you’re not the prosecutor here or across the river. You can’t offer immunity in exchange for testimony.”

“A district attorney can.”

“The DA hates your guts.”

“Shad Johnson hates my guts. But what about the Concordia Parish DA?”

Henry folds his arms over the face of his guitar and looks hard into my eyes. “No one can offer a man immunity against death. And death is the only thing motivating this source. Fear of Hell with a capital
H
.”

Ever since I talked to Dad, the simmering anxiety in my chest has threatened to boil into panic. Henry’s refusal to confide in me isn’t helping matters. “Henry … with all due respect, are you being honest about your reason for holding back this witness? Are you afraid I’m going to tell Caitlin about him? Because I absolutely won’t do that.”

“I believe you. But your sole priority right now is your father. You desperately want to save him. And I can’t risk you scaring off this source by trying to rush him. You might even accidentally expose him to the Eagles and get him killed. We can’t blow the chance to solve a dozen murder cases just to get your father clear of trouble a few days faster.”

I have to admit that Henry is making sense. It’s not his fault that Dad won’t speak up in his own defense. But something about Henry’s thesis
doesn’t
make sense, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.

“Did any of this come up with Shad today?”

“I told him about the 1968 threat.”

“How did he respond?”

“Wasn’t interested. Shad said if the Eagles were still active, they’d have killed me a long time ago, not some old nurse who was already dying.”

“That actually makes sense.”

The reporter gives me a sour look. “Not really. Until about a month ago, I didn’t really know enough to hurt them. Not seriously. Unlike Viola Turner.”

I grunt noncommittally.

“I’ll tell you something Shad doesn’t know,” he says. “The Eagles are no stranger to drugs. I’d heard rumors, but today my source confirmed it. The Eagles are heavy into the crystal meth trade statewide. They could easily have gotten ahold of something that would kill Viola.”

“Why haven’t you told Shad this?”

“Because I promised I wouldn’t reveal anything my source told me until after he’s dead. And because he’d deny it, if I did.”

“They’re into the drug trade
now
?”

“Yes, with their sons. And they would be far more likely to make a mistake with them than your father.”

The idea of the Double Eagles dabbling in the drug trade tickles something deep in my mind, but Henry’s mention of my father blanks out all intuition. The logical flaw in Henry’s theory of Viola’s murder is flashing like an electrical scoreboard behind my eyes.

“Henry, we’re missing the forest here.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the Double Eagles killed Viola, then why is my father acting the way he is? If he’s innocent …
why is he acting guilty
?”

This stumps the reporter. He reaches out and gives one of the National’s tuning pegs a twist, then answers in a thoughtful voice. “What if the Eagles framed your father? They knew Dr. Cage was treating her, they saw a chance to blame him for their hit, and they seized their chance.”

“Then why isn’t Dad screaming from the rooftops that he’s innocent?”

Henry’s sad eyes move from the tuning pegs to my face. “They must have something on him. Something from the past that your father doesn’t want exposed.”

“Something he’d go to prison over? No way.”

Henry doesn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? Such things certainly exist, depending on a man’s concern over how people see him.”

“What could be that bad, Henry?”

The reporter clucks his tongue. “Let me tell you something my source said today. First, he inadvertently let slip that Viola had witnessed the torture of her brother and Luther Davis. When I asked why on earth the Eagles would have let her live after that, guess what he told me.”

“No idea.”

“‘If it hadn’t been for Ray Presley and Dr. Tom Cage, she wouldn’t have lived
.
’”

A chill of presentiment races along my back and shoulders, and I can see Henry knows I know the significance of Presley’s name.

“Ray was the dirtiest cop who ever set foot in Natchez,” he says, “and maybe even New Orleans. I know from your book that Presley was up to his neck in the Del Payton murder. And from other sources, I’ve gathered that Presley had a long-standing relationship with your father, which has always puzzled me. I can’t imagine what that was based on.”

My thoughts and memories swirl without coherence. Ray Presley was one of the worst human beings I’ve ever known, and I’ve met some deeply disturbed men in my career. Presley not only disgraced his badge and murdered men for money; he also raped my high school sweetheart, something I didn’t discover until almost twenty years after the fact.