Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  “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 bulldog. 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?”

  As soon as the words leave his lips, I realize I have no answer.

  “A mother wouldn’t want that, would she?” Shad asks gently. “Viola’s killer wanted her silenced before her son got there. He didn’t want Viola to be able to talk to her son face-to-face.”

  My cheeks are burning. “You’re saying my father killed Viola Turner to silence her?”

  Shad stares at me with the calm certainty of a man who believes he has the full weight of the facts behind him. But surely not even Shad Johnson could actually believe such a thing about my father? Maybe he doesn’t really believe it, I think. Maybe he’s content to know that others might believe it, or be made to. But no … that’s wishful thinking. The look in the DA’s eyes is clear: he believes my father committed murder last night.

  “What kind of lawyer is the son?” I ask, an unsettled feeling growing in my belly. “Criminal? Corporate? Bankruptcy? Ambulance chaser?”

  Shad shrugs as though this is irrelevant, then walks to his window and looks down to the street where Henry was parked only a few minutes ago. He taps the window glass lightly, his brown fingers moving like those of a violinist.

  “He’s smart,” he says. “You sense that right away.”

  “You didn’t know him in Chicago?”

  Shad laughs. “God, no. The man went to a night law school.”

  Our DA has always been quick with contempt. “You said he was about forty?”

  “Somewhere around there.”

  “Did you know he’s about to be disbarred for embezzling client escrow funds?”

  Shad seems to freeze for a moment, but then he looks back from the window like a man whose mind has moved on to oth
er issues. “You need to get your father a good criminal defense lawyer, Penn. Don’t even think about representing him yourself.”

  “Are you seriously thinking about arresting him?”

  “No, but Billy Byrd is.”

  A current of fear shoots through me. “When?”

  “I can probably hold him off until tomorrow morning. If you plan to pull a miracle out of your hat, do it tonight. Life’s going to get embarrassing after that.”

  Shad meets my eye and offers his hand. The guy has balls, I’ll grant him that. For him to utter the word embarrassing in connection with my father takes unimaginable gall. If Caitlin were to publish the dogfighting photo, Shad would be hounded out of the city by nightfall, no pun intended. Disbarment would follow, and possibly even prison. Yet in spite of all this, I take Shad’s hand. My old nemesis has told me more than he should have during this meeting, and even if he only did it out of fear, I owe him something.

  “Don’t try to see Lincoln Turner,” he says in a warning tone. “And don’t let your father try, either. You’ll only make things worse.”

  “Where’s Turner now?”

  “Leave it alone, Penn. Your father is the man you need to find.”

  CHAPTER 10

  AS HIS WRISTWATCH ticked over to eleven, Henry Sexton sat down beside the only admitted member of the Double Eagle group ever to agree to speak for the record. Glenn Morehouse had once been a giant of a man; pictures on the walls of the little den testified to that. One framed snapshot showed him in hunting camouflage beside a dead ten-point buck that looked more like a fawn next to the man who’d killed it. In another he sat behind the wheel of a glittering bass boat that looked like a toy that might not bear his weight. In a third he held two hefty toddlers, one in each huge hand, extended before him like dolls on display. But today, thirteen months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Morehouse had been reduced to a skeletal figure in a La-Z-Boy recliner, a crocheted comforter on his lap and a bifurcated oxygen hose running from his nose back over his ears and down to a steadily humming machine on the floor. Beside the oxygen machine, a white bucket half covered with a lid read CHEMOTHERAPY WASTE, and a plastic urinal stood beside that. The urine in the wide-mouthed vessel looked like strong tea. Henry could hardly imagine this man beating someone to death with a leather strap with roofing nails stuck through it. But that was the kind of thing Morehouse and his buddies had done in their heyday.

  Henry was doing his best to hide his nervousness. He wasn’t physically afraid. Morehouse wasn’t an immediate threat (unless he had a pistol under his comforter), and nobody knew this meeting was taking place. The house belonged to Morehouse’s sister, Wilma Deen, the secretary at a local Baptist church, and Morehouse had sent her out on an errand that should take at least ninety minutes. The house itself sat well back from the nearest pavement, at the end of a washboard gravel road potted with holes, so there were no near neighbors to spy on them. Yet still Henry felt edgy and ill at ease.

  In truth, the news of Viola’s death had rattled him badly. And with Shad Johnson focused on Tom Cage as a suspect, Henry felt obliged to plumb Morehouse’s knowledge of Viola’s death as well as the historical Double Eagle crimes. Unless Morehouse mentioned Viola first, however, Henry planned to proceed as though he knew nothing about the nurse’s death. Her name would naturally come up when he raised the subject of her missing brother, and at that time he could read Morehouse’s face and voice for his true knowledge.

  The old man coughed as though his lungs might come up. Henry tried to hide his revulsion at the stench of the room. A small fire crackled in a fireplace on the left wall, but even the burning pine knot in it couldn’t mask the stink of salves, urine, vomit, and reheated country cooking—vegetables boiled to a salty mush. In black-owned homes it would have been a sugary mush.

  Henry felt unsure how to begin the interview. While he considered the options for his all-important first question, Morehouse said, “Were you ever in the service, Mr. Sexton?”

  Henry was tempted to fib, but he never lied if he could help it. He shook his head. “I was One-A during Vietnam, but I got a college deferment. My daddy served, though.”

  Morehouse silently gauged Henry’s age. “Pacific or the ETO?”

  “North Africa.”

  The old man nodded and gave another ragged cough. “Do I have your word not to print anything I tell you until … until I’ve passed?”

  “That was the deal.” Henry fought the urge to scoot back from Morehouse’s chair. The man looked like he had an infection in his left eye, which was inflamed and leaking an opaque fluid. “And I plan to abide by it. Is there anything you won’t talk about?”

  Morehouse opened and closed the inflamed eye. “There may be a lot I won’t say this first time. I’ll tell you a bit, and we’ll see if you can hold your peace past Thursday’s edition. If you can, then we’ll meet again. And no tape recorders, remember? I want your word on that.”

  A murderer asking me to give my word? Henry held up the Moleskine notebook in his hand. Viola Turner had been equally adamant about not recording anything, but she had good reason to fear a reprisal. He wondered who Glenn Morehouse feared during this last stage of his journey to the grave.

  “First off,” Henry said, consciously dropping into the syntax of his youth, “I’ll ask you to provide me some bona fides. How do I know you were really a member of the Double Eagles?”

  “Ain’t no were to it,” the old man said. “Once in, never out—that’s the rule. Just like the IRA.” He lifted the comforter and held out a shaking arm to Henry. When Morehouse opened his hand, Henry saw the dull gleam of gold. The still-huge palm held a twenty-dollar gold piece, minted in 1927. A hole had been drilled or shot through the upper half of Lady Liberty and a leather strap wound through the hole, so that the coin could be worn around the neck.

  Henry had heard the legend of the Double Eagle gold pieces long ago, but this was his first glimpse of one. “When did you get that?”

  “Frank Knox give it to me in August of sixty-four, the day he founded the Double Eagles. Five days after the FBI found them three bodies up in Neshoba County. Frank’s long dead, so tellin’ that don’t hurt nothin’.”

  Henry felt his heart skip. He’d always heard that Frank Knox had created the Double Eagles, and now an actual member had given him the exact date: just twenty-two days after the firebombing of the man that Henry had cared most about in the world. Henry wanted the truth about Albert Norris’s murder more than anything else Morehouse could give him, but he couldn’t let his subject know that. Like all good hunters, Henry would have to be patient. “Will you name the other members of the Double Eagle group?”

  Morehouse hacked up some phlegm and spat into his puke bucket. “Not today, I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Most of those men have families, for one thing. Wouldn’t be right for me to ruin their lives just to ease my conscience. Second, our vow was a rough one, with a specified penalty. I wouldn’t want to put my family through that.”

  “What’s a ‘rough’ vow?”

  “Kind of like the Masons’ oath, but simpler. We all swore that if we betrayed a brother, our firstborn child would be killed. Whatever else you got was up to Frank. And that weren’t no Tom Sawyer bullshit, neither. You ever hear of Earl Hodges, up toward Eddiceton?”

  Henry nodded. “A Klan informant. He was beaten to death in Franklin County. The flesh was ripped off him by a strap with roofing tacks in it.”

  Morehouse’s eyes went cold. “Strap, my ass. We used two-by-fours with nails hammered through ’em. When it was over, you could see Earl’s teeth through the back of his skull.” A look of pain entered the old man’s face. “Frank had no mercy on informants. Which is what I am now, I reckon.”

  Henry felt a strange numbness creeping through him, as though he’d been bitten by some venomous creature. He’d thought he’d been prepared for this interview, but he was wrong. Morehouse had just confessed to firs
t-degree murder, yet the detachment with which he spoke of human butchery was beyond Henry’s experience. The men who’d debriefed Death’s-Head SS men after World War II must have felt a similar horror.

  Morehouse gave him a disturbingly direct look. “And Earl wasn’t even an Eagle, you know? I need to know whether you can keep a secret, Henry, like you promised. At least until I’m gone. Frank always said, ‘A man’s biggest enemy is his mouth.’ And God knows he was right.”

  “I can keep a secret.”

  “Well, get on with it, then.”

  Henry consulted the notes he’d made prior to the interview. “I know the Double Eagle group was founded by Frank Knox. Twenty men, organized into wrecking crews. I’m curious about Frank Knox’s younger brother, the one they call Snake. He seems to have been the most violent of all the Eagles, and he’s made some pretty fantastic claims in the past three years. About Martin Luther King’s assassination, for example.”

  Morehouse bit his lower lip, and his pale face lost some color. “We won’t be talking about Snake Knox today. Move on.”

  Henry didn’t like this, but he decided to go with the flow and return to Snake later. “As best I can tell, the Eagles killed between eleven and fifteen people over the years.”

  “I don’t honestly know. I know about my squad, plus some of the bigger operations by the others.”

  “Who did your squad kill?” Henry asked in a neutral voice.

  Morehouse closed his eyes and breathed in and out several times. “The first hit I was in charge of was an FBI informant who worked with us at Triton Battery.”

  Henry felt the thrill he’d felt as a boy in a freezing duck blind when the first mallards came in over the tree line. “Are you talking about Jerry Dugan?”

  Morehouse’s left cheek twitched. “That’s right. Dropped him in a tank of sulfuric acid. The foreman wrote ‘accidental fall’ on the incident report, but that guardrail was four feet high. Jerry needed a little help getting over it.”

  Henry had seen Dugan’s name in FBI 302s that he’d obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The Bureau had never been positive that Dugan’s death was a homicide. The Natchez police had ruled it an industrial accident. Now, with no more than a facial tic, Glenn Morehouse had not only confirmed the murder but also taken responsibility for it. Two murders solved in as many minutes.