Natchez Burning (45 page)

“I’m working on it. But I don’t think there’s any way to prevent an arrest tomorrow.”

She raises her eyebrows like a schoolteacher silently reprimanding a student.

“You’re thinking about the photo. The nuclear option.”

“I’m thinking about
survival,
” she says.

“Let’s wait and see what Dad says tonight. An arrest isn’t the end of the world. The charge is more important. I already let Shad know the stakes, and I think he got the message.”

Caitlin makes it clear that this answer doesn’t satisfy her. Suddenly the heat is too much for me. “I need to get out.”

“Me, too,” she says, almost in surrender.

She waits for me to stand and then pull her to her feet, which is our habit. Afterward, we hug for a few moments, but soon the chill is too much. Lifting towels off a nearby chair, we dry off in front of the gas heater.

“Stop staring at my butt,” she says, whipping her towel behind her to block my view. “As soon as you get back from your parents’, I’m going back to work. And I’m going to search all my databases while you’re gone. Isn’t there something you can give me to work on that might help Tom? You know what I can do, Penn. Exploit me, for God’s sake.”

As I close my eyes in forbearance, a little voice says,
You’d better use every resource you have on this.
Even if I give Caitlin nothing, she’ll be an expert on the Double Eagle group within two hours. Taking hold of her shoulders, I look hard into her eyes.

“I’m going to give you two names. Don’t ask me
any
questions. Not whether they have any relation to each other, or even to these cases. But if you can find out everything there is to know about them—without them knowing you’re digging—it will be a big help.”

She smiles with her eyes. “Deal.”

“The first is Brody Royal. The second is Forrest Knox.”

She’s already committed the names to memory. “That’s it?”

I nod. “Go do your thing. And stay below the radar. This case is more dangerous than you know.”

“Have these guys really threatened your family?”

“I don’t know for sure. I do know that one is a ruthless killer. The other may be a corrupt cop.”

Caitlin slowly shakes her head, her eyes burning with desire to strike back at anyone who would threaten us. Her fierce resolve gives me more inspiration than Henry’s noble but slow-burning commitment. Caitlin stirred to action is an unstoppable force. Two months ago, she was compelled to listen to a woman being raped in a room next to the one in which she herself was being held captive. Since then, she has become a tireless crusader for victims of sexual violence, raising money and awareness on a national scale.

“There’s one more thing,” I say softly. “I’m breaking my word to Henry to tell you, but this bears on Lincoln’s paternity.”

“I understand.”

“Viola Turner was gang-raped by the Double Eagle group just before she left Natchez. On two different occasions. Henry thinks one of those rapists is Lincoln’s biological father. I just thought you should know. For Dad’s sake.”

Caitlin opens her mouth but says nothing. Her chin is quivering like Annie’s did an hour ago, and her eyes blaze with a hatred I can scarcely imagine. “Anything else?” she asks hoarsely.

I shake my head. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

She drops her towel to the floor and walks stark naked into my bedroom to get dressed. Paradoxically, I’m reminded of nothing so much as a soldier girding herself for war.

DRIVING TO MY
parents’ house, I call Henry Sexton to let him know Kirk Boisseau will be diving the Jericho Hole at dawn. The reporter sounds beside himself with excitement. He’s already informed the FBI of Glenn Morehouse’s death and relayed the Double Eagle’s confirmation of the murder of Bureau informant Jerry Dugan in 1965. As a result, at least one Bureau agent has promised to look into the Morehouse case immediately, and Henry believes he meant what he said. Before he lets me go, Henry apologizes for calling my father’s honor into question, and I tell him I’ve never developed the habit of shooting the messenger. By the time we hang up, I’m nearing my parents’ house, so I call ahead.

“Dr. Cage,” says the confident baritone that’s greeted every late-night caller for the past forty-three years.

“It’s me.”

“The garage door’s open. Come in that way. I’m in the study.”

“Is Mom all right?”

“More or less. You know your mother.”

Yes. Her picture is in the dictionary under “steel magnolia.”
“I’ll see you in a minute.”

I park behind his old 740 and quickly make my way through the dark garage. This house has never grown familiar to me—the house I grew up in was burned to the ground by Ray Presley in 1998. Once I gain the hall, I spy a faint glow beneath Dad’s study door. Walking softly, so as not to wake my mother, I find him sitting at his study desk, smoking a Partagas and poring over a thick book, his trifocals gleaming in the light of the reading lamp.

“Dad?” I say softly.

He looks up and smiles. “Come in, son. I tried to sleep earlier, but it was no use.” Closing the book on a brass marker, he sets it aside. “I’ve been reading Shelby Foote.”

Naturally.
My father’s future hangs by a thread, and he’s reading Civil War history.

“Did you know he died this past June?” he asks, as though we have nothing more urgent to discuss. “Heart attack, secondary to a pulmonary embolism.”

“I didn’t know that.” I take a seat in the more comfortable of the two chairs that face his desk. Behind him, his shelves are filled with rare books sent by dozens of friends and dealers who felt compelled to offer some tangible expression of solace after his library burned. Only now do I realize that Dad is wearing a multicolored robe that my sister and I gave him for Christmas thirty years ago.

He’s not going to change his mind,
I realize.
He’s really going to make my mother watch him walk to a sheriff’s cruiser in handcuffs
.

“Dad, Billy Byrd is going to arrest you tomorrow morning.”

His smile fades but doesn’t quite disappear. “He’ll enjoy that.”

“What’s the deal there? Shad says Sheriff Byrd has some kind of personal grudge against you.”

“Oh … well, I treated Billy’s wife for years. She had a long history of suspicious bruises and lacerations, plus one fracture. Need I continue?”

“Sheriff Byrd is a wifebeater?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And he knows you know that?”

“Yes.”

“The wife told him?”

“No. Billy came in for a physical, and I told him that if his wife showed up in my office with another suspicious injury, I’d swear out a warrant against him with the chief of police.”

I sit back and try to process this. “Well, given that history, don’t you think you’d do well to stay out of the county jail?”

Dad lays his hand on the volume of Foote and sighs. “I’ve treated most of those deputies down there, or their parents. I think that will probably balance the sheriff’s ill will. Billy finally divorced that wife, by the way, to her everlasting good fortune.”

“Dad, from what I know, the physical evidence at the death scene is against you. The facts as I know them are against you. That doesn’t bode well for your legal prospects.”

He puts the Partagas between his teeth, and a blue nimbus of smoke floats out of his mouth as he speaks. “Old Shelby said something interesting about facts: ‘People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.’”

How do you respond to a guy who talks like this? He should write a book:
Zen and the Art of Evading Questions,
by Tom Cage.

“You said you spoke to Henry Sexton,” he reminds me. “What did he tell you?”

I want to probe Dad about the extent of his relations with Viola, but I can’t quite bring myself to open with such an invasion of his privacy. “Do you remember a man named Glenn Morehouse?”

“I think so. Big fellow? Hypertensive.”

“That’s him. He was murdered tonight, for talking to Henry Sexton.”

Dad’s eyes widen slightly behind his glasses. “I see. I imagine Morehouse knew a lot about … Henry’s special areas of interest.”

“That’s an understatement.” I can’t temporize any longer. “Dad, forgive me, but earlier you told me you’d take a DNA test regarding Lincoln Turner’s paternity. I have to go one step further. Could you conceivably be Lincoln’s father? Is there
any
chance of that?”

He takes the cigar from his mouth and sets it in his ashtray. “No,” he says, his voice and eyes steady.

Thank God,
I say silently, trying not to show my relief
.
“Well, Lincoln seems to believe you are. He was parked outside my house tonight when I got home.”

Real alarm comes into Dad’s face. “Did he threaten you?”

“Only with exposure of the truth, which he said would destroy you.”

After a few moments, Dad waves his hand. “Don’t pay any attention to that.”

“Could Viola have told him he’s your son?”

Dad sighs. “If you’d asked me two months ago, I’d have said no. But after what I saw these past weeks … it’s possible. Viola was depressed, even desperate. And considering the alternative story …”

So Dad knows about Viola’s rape.
“All right, then. We need to get the DNA test out of the way as soon as possible, so both Shad and Lincoln can start seeing this thing more objectively.”

“Is Lincoln Turner all Henry spoke to you about?”

“No. He told me a lot, but we both need to get some sleep soon. Based on what Henry told me, there are three questions I’d like to ask you.”

He sits back and laces his fingers across his belly. “Go ahead.”

“Did Dr. Leland Robb tell you who killed Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson before he died in that plane crash? Have you known for all these years and kept quiet about it?”

Dad shifts forward and sits straighter in the chair. “What’s the second question?”

“You can’t answer that one first?”

“I’d prefer to hear all three before I answer.”

This is like questioning a guilty client
. “All right. Glenn Morehouse told Henry that Viola would have been killed in 1968 if it hadn’t been for you and Ray Presley.”

This time he remains motionless, but something subtle changes in his eyes.

“I assume I know why you saved her,” I go on. “But
how
did you do it? When she was on the wrong side of the Double Eagles and …”

“And what?”

“That’s my third question.” I lean forward and slide the picture of Dad on the fishing boat with Brody Royal, Claude Devereux, and Ray Presley across his desk. “I think she was a threat to Brody Royal as well.”

“My God,” he breathes, leaning over the photo. “Where did you get this?”

“From Henry. Tell me about Brody Royal, Dad. According to Henry, he was behind the deaths of Albert Norris, Pooky Wilson, Jimmy Revels, Luther Davis,
and
Dr. Robb. This morning I’d have said this guy was a typical Louisiana businessman, only richer. An upper-echelon Rotary type. Now I hear he’s a sociopath who plotted with Carlos Marcello to assassinate Robert Kennedy.”

Dad looks up, obviously startled.

“In this photo you seem to be deep-sea fishing with Royal and two other world-class bastards.” Mindful of my mother, I prevent myself from raising my voice. “What’s the deal?”

He leans back and regards me with what looks like regret. “Penn … why are you digging into all this?”

I want to lean across the desk and shake him by his shirt. Instead, I take a deep breath and force my voice lower. “The moment I saw Henry’s video, I knew you didn’t kill Viola. But since you wouldn’t tell me who did kill her, I set out to find the answer myself. I now believe the Double Eagles killed her, either for their own reasons or to protect Brody Royal. After what Henry told me today, I think that no matter what happens with your case, I’m going to have to help him solve those cases he’s been working. In fact, tomorrow morning, I’m having a friend dive the Jericho Hole to search for bodies.”

I pause to let Dad absorb what I’m saying. “The past is coming up to the surface, one way or another. I’ve come here to give you a chance to warn me if we’re likely to find something that implicates you in any way.”

He looks around his study as if searching for something. “Penn,” he says finally, “this isn’t like the Del Payton case. As important as that was, it was basically a case of greed. The race angle was only incidental.”

I feel my face flush with frustration. “You’re avoiding my question. This picture isn’t all Henry has, you know. I saw FBI surveillance records that document Marcello’s hoods driving up from New Orleans to visit your office in the 1970s. Can you explain that?”

To my surprise, he shrugs as though he has nothing to hide. “I probably did treat some of Ray’s friends from New Orleans. God knows I treated enough Ku Klux Klansmen among the workers at Armstrong and Triton and IP. But there’s nothing evil in that. Assholes need doctors, too.”

“But why would mobsters drive the three hours from New Orleans to see you? In at least one case, a visit was after hours, and Ray Presley showed up at your office at the same time.”

Dad looks confused for a few moments, but then he seems to recover his composure. “I remember that! Some of Ray’s old cronies tried to bribe me to write fraudulent prescriptions for amphetamines. That was the big-demand drug back then. I said no, and that was that. Honestly, I didn’t see it as any different from Natchez lawyers asking me to pad my bills to fatten up their personal injury lawsuits. Human beings are avaricious, Penn. You know that.”

He’s responded to all my questions with calm assurance, yet amid all the words I sense a different kind of concealment. “Dad … so far as I know, in all my life, you only refused to open up to me about one thing—Korea. But today I discovered there’s a whole other chapter you kept back. This afternoon you lamented not doing more to help during the civil rights struggle, but it sounds like you were neck-deep in it. Henry says he’s been trying to interview you about that era for years, yet you’ve constantly put him off. Why?”