Natchez Burning

by Greg Iles

  Not a chance, Sonny thought, despite his exhaustion. If Forrest decided that last night’s events made him a liability, he would never reach Toledo Bend alive. It was even possible that this decision had already been made. Billy Knox was a businessman; sentiment didn’t figure into things. And Forrest was like an admiral on a battleship, moving plastic figures around on maps with a stick. To him every soldier under his command was expendable.

  Sonny turned at what he thought was the sound of footsteps, and a tall, rangy man in black pants and a high-collared shirt walked around the corner of the house. Sonny was so jumpy that he leaped to his feet, but Snake raised his rifle in greeting. The newcomer was Randall Regan, Brody Royal’s right-hand man.

  “What are you doing here?” Snake asked.

  “Delivering a message,” Regan rasped, like a man with laryngitis. “Last night Forrest said no phones, period. And I think ours are being tapped.”

  “What’s wrong with your voice?” Snake asked. “You swallow a wasp or something?”

  Regan scowled, then unbuttoned his collar, revealing a nasty reddish-purple bruise that covered his throat.

  “What the hell did that?” Snake asked.

  “Penn Cage. He braced me in a public restaurant about the Royal Insurance bitches you dumped out in the swamp. He knew every detail. I didn’t say a word. But later, he sucker-punched me in the bathroom.”

  This answer worried Sonny, but Snake started laughing so hard that Regan buttoned his collar again, all the while looking like he wanted to strangle Snake Knox.

  Once Snake stopped laughing, he said, “What’s your message?”

  Regan’s reply sounded like the wheeze of a diphtheria patient. “Brody doesn’t want you to wait until tonight. He wants it done right now. Or as soon as it can be done. He wants you to get word to Forrest.”

  “Tell Brody not to worry. Forrest knows what has to be done.”

  Regan pointed at the cage on the ground. “What the hell are you doing with that thing?”

  “You’ll find out.” Snake chuckled and kicked the trap again. The raccoon went crazy, biting the steel wire in a futile effort to reach her tormentor.

  I know how you feel, Sonny thought, touching his chest where the Texas Ranger’s boot had driven into his sternum. Jesus God.

  CHAPTER 70

  IN ALL HER life, Caitlin had never felt the kind of journalistic responsibility she did today, nor such frustration. Last night she’d been stunned by the horrific details contained in the single Moleskine notebook she’d found near the burned hulk of the Concordia Beacon. But today Henry Sexton had given her the fruits of decades of painstaking investigation into one of the darkest chapters in American history. Whatever it cost in time and money, she meant to vindicate the full measure of Henry’s faith. Yet Penn had made that impossible, by insisting that her story must run in tomorrow’s newspaper, as Henry had originally intended. Penn’s intentions were good—he meant for the story to render physical violence against Caitlin and his family pointless—but the result, she was sure, could only be a journalistic embarrassment.

  The sheer volume of Henry’s files astounded her. The multiple murder cases were unimaginably complex; the historical context alone would consume all the column inches usually devoted to news stories. Pursuing Penn’s plan would be like trying to tackle the Watergate story in a single night. She and her staff might be able to produce a sketch of the Double Eagle group’s crimes over the years, but they couldn’t possibly explore the larger implications, or the FBI’s failure to achieve justice for the victims and their families. Henry Sexton’s solitary struggle on behalf of the victims deserved a book in itself. And yet, Caitlin reminded herself, Henry had planned to publish one comprehensive story tomorrow, in the interest of his loved ones’ safety. Henry’s publisher had verified this plan by telephone.

  If only Henry’s first draft hadn’t been destroyed with his computer, she thought.

  Never one to shrink from a challenge, Caitlin had brought the full resources of her staff to bear on the problem. They’d begun with brute-force analysis. For the past two hours, five Examiner employees had been scanning every scrap of Henry’s files into their computer system using high-speed imaging machines. Their goal was to create a searchable database of Henry’s archive. From this epic record they would distill the macro story into discrete parts that could be handled by specific reporters. Caitlin would act as editor in chief, and write a master story that functioned as a hub for the others. Some stories would only be published in the Examiner’s online edition, and for the first time, stories in the actual paper would carry footnotes directing readers to the website for further detail. Caitlin had another groundbreaking idea, but executing it would require the permission of her father, and he had yet to call her back with an answer.

  She took a sip of green tea and went back to her computer display. In studying Henry’s files so far, she’d learned three things: Sexton was a gifted investigator, a solid writer, but a twentieth-century organizer. To address the organizational challenge, a Columbia-educated reporter named Donald Pinter had begun creating data maps and spreadsheets containing breakdowns of every major and minor personality related to the 1960s-era murders. Victims were highlighted in blue, Double Eagles and Klansmen in red, and police and FBI informants in orange, which denoted uncertain allegiance. Any local police officer of that era had to be considered potentially corrupt or ideologically loyal to the Ku Klux Klan, while FBI agents could have been motivated more by fear of or loyalty to J. Edgar Hoover than by a sense of justice.

  Pinter was also building a master timeline that began with the birth of Albert Norris in 1908 and ran to the present day. Contained within that master line were markers that kicked viewers to “sub-lines” with more detail. The most important of these gave a month-by-month chronology from January 1963 to December 1968. The watershed assassinations bookended this timeline in flaming red—Medgar Evers and John Kennedy at the beginning, Reverend King and Bobby Kennedy at the end—while local race murders were highlighted in dark blue. The simple beatings and “rabbit hunts,” as the Klan had called nonlethal attacks, were marked in yellow and dotted the line like a chain of daisies. Pinter had created a digital masterpiece of organization, yet still Caitlin felt overwhelmed by the data. Her personal story notes had already run to fifteen pages, and even her outline was already three pages long. In truth, she hadn’t been planning a news story, but a comprehensive investigation that would take weeks to accomplish, at the least.

  Despite the importance of the historical murders, Caitlin’s mind gravitated to Henry’s most recent discoveries, detailed in the Moleskine notebook she’d found at the fire. Last night, descriptions of savage beatings, flayings, and a possible crucifixion had still retained the power to shock her. But the sheer weight of the horrors Henry had uncovered had begun to deaden her sensibilities. The same thing could easily happen to the Examiner’s readers, so she had to choose her focus carefully. The dozen-odd murders committed by the Double Eagles comprised a diffuse mass of data spanning a decade and involving unknown witnesses who could take years to locate, if they weren’t dead already. Nailing a few wrinkled old Klansmen who’d been peddling crystal meth to pay their rent might sell a few newspapers, but it wouldn’t win her any prizes. Glenn Morehouse’s sickening account of the murder of the whistle-blowers from Royal Insurance was the kind of story that grabbed modern readers by the throat. Further, Brody Royal was about the juiciest target imaginable in terms of a marketable story. If she brought down one of the richest men in the state by tying him to Carlos Marcello and the attempted assassination of Robert Kennedy, the story would break worldwide in a matter of hours.

  Caitlin set down her teacup, her heart racing. The last thing she needed now was more caffeine. To nail Brody Royal for murder, she needed one of two things: a witness who could tie him to one of the murders, or a line into his secret life that could yield damning evidence. The only witness she knew about was the one Henry had du
bbed “Huggy Bear” in his notebooks—an unidentified black man who had mysteriously appeared at the bedside of Pooky Wilson’s dying mother. Yet Henry had committed many hours to finding this man, and he’d failed, even with the advantage of having known many of the boys who’d worked at Albert Norris’s store. As for finding a door into Royal’s secret life, Caitlin’s possible lines of infiltration were few. One was Brody’s daughter, Katy Royal Regan, who’d been Pooky Wilson’s lover forty years ago. Another was Royal’s homicidal son-in-law, who was as likely to rape and kill her as talk to her. And then there was Claude Devereux, Royal’s wily old attorney. Caitlin didn’t hold out much hope of tricking a lawyer into admitting anything damaging about a client, much less his richest one. The daughter, on the other hand, might make a vulnerable interview subject. Henry had interviewed Katy Royal and come up dry, but then … Henry was a man.

  Caitlin felt sure she could do better.

  The only problem was that after leaving the Jericho Hole, she’d promised Penn not to publish anything about Brody Royal until midnight tonight. She regretted that promise now, but Penn had told her that he and John Kaiser were working together to obtain proof of Royal’s involvement in Viola Turner’s death. She couldn’t very well argue against a strategy that might gain Tom his freedom.

  As her mind shifted to thoughts of Tom on the run, someone cleared their throat in her doorway. She looked up and saw Jenna Cross, her personal assistant, looking harried.

  “What is it, Jen?”

  “Your father’s on line two, returning your call.”

  Caitlin nodded and lifted the landline next to her computer. She often called her father to authorize extra funds for specific stories, and their pattern of negotiation was invariable. John Masters would complain for a while, but in the end he would give his daughter what she wanted. But this time Caitlin’s request had been unusual. She’d asked her father to publish tomorrow’s Double Eagle stories not only in the Natchez Examiner, but in all twenty-six other papers of his chain. Since most Masters papers were based in the Southeast, the public reaction would come like a storm. But Penn’s goal of making the story so big that attacking Caitlin or Annie or Peggy would seem pointless would be well and truly accomplished.

  “Hello, Daddy. What did you decide?”

  Her father’s deep chuckle filled the earpiece. “I’ll run your story in ten papers.”

  Caitlin started to argue out of reflex, then reconsidered. “Which ten?”

  “The urban markets. Charleston, Wilmington, Savannah, Birmingham, et cetera, down the line.”

  She closed her eyes and suppressed the impulse to ask for more. Agreeing to run her story in ten papers was an unprecedented concession from her father, whose strategy of expansion had always been based on giving small cities what they wanted: good news rather than strong medicine.

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “How much space are these stories going to take up?”

  “Pretty much the whole edition here, excepting the sports page.”

  “You know I can’t give you that in the other papers.”

  “What can you give me? This story’s going to go international sixty seconds after we go out with it.”

  “Three related stories, a total of … three thousand words.”

  This was like a gift from the gods, but still she clenched her jaw and said, “Four.”

  “Thirty-five hundred, Cait, and that’s pushing it.”

  Caitlin wanted to press him, but she stifled herself. She’d have to be content with adding links to the full suite of stories on the Examiner’s Web edition. “Done,” she said.

  “When will you be finished with these stories?”

  She was going to have to lie now and beg forgiveness later. “What’s the absolute latest I can get them out?”

  “Midnight, if you want them in the other papers. That’s nonnegotiable. I can’t pay the staffs of ten papers overtime because you’re late getting a story in. If you need more time, we can run it day after tomorrow.”

  “I’d like nothing better. But Penn says no.”

  “Is Penn making your publishing decisions now?”

  She quickly explained her fiancé’s theory of achieving security for the family by running the story as soon as possible.

  “I agree with Penn,” her father said. “You have those stories done by eleven—no ifs, ands, or buts. If you don’t, I’ll call Penn and have him dictate a story. I’m not suffering through one more night like I did two months ago.”

  Caitlin closed her eyes and tried to remain in the present. “I’ll make the deadline. And you’d better get ready. We’re going to have every TV network in the country calling us tomorrow.”

  “I’ll let the other editors know.”

  Caitlin thanked him again, then hung up and looked at her watch.

  It was 4:42 P.M. She had approximately seven hours to produce the stories that would run in the chain’s flagship papers tomorrow. Maybe a couple of extra hours to write additional material that would run only in the Examiner. That meant she had a decision to make. Would she write those stories based on Henry’s work alone? Or would she use part of her time to try to accomplish what Henry Sexton had not?

  Seven hours. Fourteen if I’m willing to break a story in the online edition alone. Could brazenness, daring, and insight allow her to crack the most explosive mystery of this complex epic in a single night? An image of Katy Royal Regan rose into her mind—her most promising target of opportunity. But to take that shot, she would have to break her promise to Penn, and possibly damage Tom’s chances of a quick dismissal of his case. With a resentful sigh, she got up and closed her door, then picked up Henry Sexton’s charred Moleskine and began to reread his most recent entries, hoping to find something she’d missed before.

  A hard knocking at her door startled her, and before she could call “Come in,” the door opened.

  Jamie Lewis came into her office and shut the door behind him. A professional cynic, he rarely delivered news without a smartass remark. But Caitlin could tell by his manner that he had bad news.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “An APB has gone out for Tom Cage and his friend Walt Garrity. The Louisiana State Police issued it.”

  Caitlin’s palms went cold. “What’s it for? Jumping bail?”

  “No. Killing a cop. A state trooper.”

  The blood drained from her face. She waved Jamie out, then grabbed the telephone, all her anger at Penn forgotten.

  CHAPTER 71

  “THAT’S ALL I can say on the phone,” I tell Caitlin, driving down Washington Street toward Edelweiss. “Just keep working on your story, and I’ll come to you as soon as I can.”

  “But Tom—”

  “I’m doing the only thing that I think might possibly get Dad to safety. That’s really all I can say. I’m checking on Mom and Annie now. Don’t leave your office if you can avoid it. Okay?”

  “All right. But please come down here as soon as you can.”

  “I will.”

  Taking a sharp turn, I pull into the backyard of Edelweiss, which is only accessible by a small opening in the overgrown fence on the Washington Street side. I park behind a small brick outbuilding, trot to the back door of the ground floor, let myself in, then climb the stairs to the main floor.

  From the sound, Mom and Annie must be watching TV in the third-floor master suite. When I call up the long staircase, Annie comes to the head of the stairs. I smile and wave to her, but then I hold up my hand and ask her to send her grandmother down. Annie is clearly worried, but I don’t want her to see me too closely. A reddish-blue bruise is already spreading around my neck where Randall Regan choked me.

  As soon as Mom reaches the bottom of the steep stairs, I walk her into the kitchen. She can tell that something has happened, and suddenly her gaze settles on my neck. Raising my hand to stop her question, I speak in a low voice.

  “Mom, you need to brace yourself.”

  Her right han
d flicks out and seizes mine, her eyes wild. “Tom’s not dead!”

  “No, no. But a Louisiana state trooper was found shot to death this morning, by one of the borrow pits across the river. The state police have already put out an APB for Dad and Walt Garrity. Every cop in three states is hunting them now.”

  My mother’s face looks as though it’s turned to wax. “But … why would they think Tom would kill a state trooper?”

  “You knew Dad was with Walt, didn’t you?”

  “No! But I’m glad he is. What else do you know?”

  “A lot. I just talked to Sheriff Dennis. Basically, all the physical evidence looks bad for Dad, and the state police have a witness who’ll place both him and Walt at the murder scene. A man named Sonny Thornfield.”

  Mom is shaking her head in denial or disbelief.

  “Do you have any idea what Dad’s plan was when he jumped bail? If you do, tell me now. If I can reach him by phone, I can try to arrange a surrender to the FBI. One of their agents is willing to protect Dad as a federal witness. Or to try, anyway.”

  She stares back at me with a look I recognize from my experience with the wives and mothers of criminal defendants: uncertainty about what to say to support the unknown alibi of a loved one.

  “Mom, listen to me. There’s an officer high up in the LSP who wants Dad to go down for Viola’s murder. He’s the son of Frank Knox, the founder of the Double Eagle group. And the best way he can get the result he wants is to have Dad shot as a fugitive while resisting arrest.”

  “Annie’s going to come down in a minute,” Mom says, looking bewildered. “She’s terrified, Penn.”

  “I know she must be. Mom, I need you to focus.”

  She grabs my wrists with surprising strength. “You don’t really think Tom or Walt could have killed a police officer?”

  I’ve been pondering this question from the moment John Kaiser told me about it. “I’d like to say no, but even an honest cop might have drawn down on Dad if he saw him as a bail jumper. And if they were dealing with a dirty cop … I can see Walt shooting to protect Dad in either case.”