Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “What did you do?”

  “Well. During the multistate manhunt for Dr. Cage, we figured out that he’d been moving around with Mr. Walt Garrity, an old army buddy from Texas. That was how he’d been evading capture. Garrity had brought an RV van over from Navasota, sleeps four. Got a kitchen and shower and everything in a tight little space. High-end thing. They’d been staying in that.”

  I haven’t seen Walt in court, but I know he’s here somewhere. He told my mother that John Kaiser had informed him he was unlikely to be arrested if he kept a low profile, although Billy Byrd could arrest him at any time for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Knowing Walt, he’s up in the balcony behind Serenity, wearing some kind of disguise.

  “What’s the significance of that vehicle?”

  “Well, after Dr. Cage turned himself in to the FBI, I figured we ought to search that vehicle, if we could find it, on the off chance that he might have left something incriminating in there. Dr. Cage was the primary suspect by then, of course. He’d skipped bail with Mr. Garrity’s aid, and the two had abandoned the vehicle a day or two earlier, so we decided to try to find it.”

  “And how did you proceed?”

  “Carefully. We had some jurisdictional issues relating to that search. Mr. Garrity had some law enforcement contacts on the Louisiana side of the river, where they’d mostly been hiding, and those agencies weren’t too keen on helping us. But after putting out the word sort of quietlike, I got a call from a Concordia Parish deputy who’d located the Roadtrek van.”

  “And where was it?”

  “Parked in the garage of a lake house owned by Dr. Cage’s younger partner, Drew Elliott.”

  A buzz of conversation fills the room, but a glare from Joe Elder kills it.

  “What did you do then?” Shad asks.

  “I consulted with you, the district attorney.”

  “And what did I advise?”

  “You said that since Garrity had been in law enforcement, we ought to be a little cagey about our search.”

  “And what plan did we agree on?”

  “We asked a Louisiana judge to write a search warrant on that van, specifying videotapes among some other articles.”

  “And then?”

  “A Concordia deputy searched the van right there in the garage.”

  “And what did he find?”

  “Several articles, among them one Sony mini-DV videotape, pressed up under one of the cushions that serves as a mattress in that vehicle. A Sony videotape that had been used but recorded over. Erased, in other words.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went down to the Ferriday Walmart and bought some Sony tapes exactly like those Henry Sexton had delivered to Viola Turner’s house.”

  I’m not quite sure what’s coming, but a dizzy sensation of falling tells me that it won’t be good.

  “And what did you do with those tapes?”

  “I opened one and recorded sixty minutes of footage with the lens cap on.”

  “Just what you would have done if you were going to erase a prerecorded tape.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then?”

  “I gave it to the CPSO deputy who had conducted the search. He removed the tape from Mr. Garrity’s van and bagged it as evidence. But he left the new erased tape in its place. We also left the van in place, as though it had never been searched.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “So that Mr. Garrity wouldn’t realize that the tape hidden in his van had been found by the authorities.”

  Shad turns away from Sheriff Byrd for a few seconds, giving the jury time to think about what has become a television cop show.

  “Was there anything special about the tape you replaced Mrs. Turner’s tape with?”

  Byrd tries and fails to conceal a smile of satisfaction. “Yes, sir. I planted a little GPS tracking device in it, so we could know where that substitute tape was at all times. We also planted a similar device on Mr. Garrity’s van, one that worked on a different frequency.”

  “I see. Did you learn anything else from the videotape?”

  “Yes, sir. Our fingerprint man determined that there were two sets of fingerprints on the tape.”

  “To whom did they belong?”

  “The majority belonged to Henry Sexton, but there were several others that belonged to Dr. Tom Cage.”

  A hundred heads in front of me turn and look at the person next to them.

  “And how did your expert match those?” Shad asks.

  “The same way he matched the ones on the morphine vial. From the prints Dr. Cage gave in Jackson when he applied for his concealed-carry permit back in 1991.”

  “I see.” Shad looks at the jury as he asks his next question. “When did all this take place, Sheriff?”

  “The day after Dr. Cage turned himself in to the FBI, which was the day of Henry Sexton’s funeral. We didn’t know where Mr. Garrity was at the time, but he had a motel room in Vidalia. I learned later that he was actually staying at Dr. Cage’s home in Natchez.”

  “While Dr. Cage was in custody?”

  “That’s right.”

  Quentin should be objecting all over the place, but he sits like a man who’s been punched so hard he can no longer hold up his hands to guard his chin.

  “So, Sheriff, is that the end of the saga of the missing videotape?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What happened next?”

  “The next night, Mr. Garrity showed up to retrieve his van from Dr. Elliott’s lake house. We began tracking our devices at that time and also put visual surveillance on him. He visited a couple of places of interest.”

  “Which were?”

  “One was the CPSO jail, where he visited Dr. Cage, who was there under FBI protection. This was when the Bureau had temporarily taken over that facility.”

  “I see. What was the other place?”

  “Well, later on, after dark, he drove over the bridge to Mississippi.”

  “And you were tracking him via the GPS devices you’d planted?”

  “Yes, sir. Both of them. The one on the van, and the one in the videotape.”

  “What happened next?”

  Billy Byrd can’t contain his pleasure; a smarmy smile breaks out on his heavy face. “When he started over the bridge, we were tracking both signals. But when Garrity was a little over halfway across, only one signal kept coming, while the other stayed fairly static.”

  “How did you account for that?”

  “Well, about this time, our tailing unit had seen Mr. Garrity’s arm flick something out of his window, in the direction of the left-lane bridge rail.”

  “And what did you observe on the tracking unit?”

  “The GPS signal from the tape stayed in midriver for about fifteen seconds, then went dead. The one in the van kept right on driving, all the way to Ryan’s Steak House.”

  “And what did you conclude from this?”

  “That Mr. Garrity had dumped what he thought was the tape from Viola Turner’s house into the Mississippi River. I deduced that he had done that on Dr. Cage’s order, probably passed to him during the jail visit only hours earlier.”

  After about five seconds, during which time I am silently screaming at Quentin to object, Shad says, “Thank you, Sheriff. No further questions, Your Honor.”

  The click and whir of Quentin’s motorized wheelchair comes so fast it’s as though Shad’s voice triggered it. He cannot allow that testimony to go unchallenged. He rolls right past the podium and up to the witness stand, speaking in an incisive voice.

  “Sheriff Byrd, do you realize that Dr. Cage’s fingerprints on a blank tape found in Mr. Garrity’s RV in no way prove or even indicate that this tape came from the house of Viola Turner?”

  “Yes, I realize that.”

  “Then what makes you think that was the tape Viola had made for Henry Sexton?”

  “The lot number.”

  At the back wall, I cringe as thou
gh I’ve taken a sharp blow. I know what’s coming now.

  “The lot number on that tape proved it was from the same lot as the two tapes we found in Mrs. Turner’s house. That meant they had been sold in the same store at about the same time.”

  “Very well,” Quentin says, trying to cover as best he can. “Do you have any film of Walt Garrity driving that van that night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Does it show his face?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know. We have film of the van. I don’t know if it shows him driving. It was a dark night. But my men tailed him from the lake house.”

  “Mississippi deputies working in Louisiana?”

  “Uh, no, these were Louisiana officers.”

  “Sheriff Walker Dennis’s men?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Working under Sheriff Dennis’s orders?”

  Sheriff Byrd is slow to answer. “Not exactly. The mess they had over in Louisiana after that Forrest Knox was killed caused a lot of problems over there. Some interagency problems, as well.”

  “But those men will swear under oath that they saw Captain Garrity get into the van?”

  “They absolutely will.”

  “Sheriff, I have to say, this entire episode sounds like something out of Mission: Impossible rather than a small-town murder investigation.”

  “We do what we can to stay on top of technology.”

  “I’m sure. But to what purpose, Sheriff? If you’d found the tape Mrs. Turner supposedly made, why go to all that trouble to pretend you hadn’t?”

  “May I answer that, Judge?” Shad asks.

  Judge Elder leans forward and says, “The witness will answer, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Well . . . being as the tape we’d found had been erased, the district attorney figured we might learn a lot more about what Dr. Cage and Mr. Garrity was up to if they didn’t know we was onto them. We thought the adrenaline ampoule might have been in that van as well. If Garrity was going to try to destroy it at some later date, we wanted a record of that.”

  “And was the adrenaline ampoule in the van?”

  “Not that the deputy could find.”

  “Yes or no, Sheriff?”

  Byrd grits his teeth. “Negative.”

  “Sheriff Byrd, if Dr. Cage was guilty of murder, why do you think he would keep a very incriminating piece of evidence for, let’s see, seven days? And keep it where it could easily be found?”

  The sheriff shrugs. “Guilty folks do crazy things all the time. They’re under stress.”

  “So you assumed at that time that Dr. Cage was guilty?”

  “Well . . . yeah. He looked guilty as hell, pardon my French.”

  A couple of people chortle in the gallery. From behind, Shad Johnson looks like a man trying hard to keep control of himself.

  “Look,” says Sheriff Byrd, “Doc Cage had probably erased the tape on the first day. He probably knew it couldn’t really hurt him much—since erased videotapes can’t be restored—and he had other things on his mind.”

  “Like trying to find out who had really murdered Viola Turner?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I find that very easy to believe, Sheriff.” Quentin touches his joystick and executes a quarter turn away from Byrd. “Let me suggest another scenario to you. One that might easily explain the fingerprints and the lot number.”

  Byrd looks at Shad, but Shad doesn’t risk trying to send him any signals.

  “Henry Sexton leaves a camcorder at Viola Turner’s house, hoping she will record memories from her past. Viola tells Dr. Cage, who visits her almost every day, about this arrangement. She does just as Henry Sexton suggested and makes a tape. But perhaps one day she decides she has said too much—more than she might ever want to become public, even after she’s gone. So she asks Dr. Cage to erase it. In his fiddling with the camera, he removes the tape, leaving his fingerprints on its plastic case. Quite possible, yes?”

  “I suppose. But that’s not what Miss Cora said happened.”

  “True enough. But another scenario occurs to me, Sheriff, one that better fits testimony we’ve already heard. Let’s assume Viola did make the tape for Henry that Cora Revels described, one filled with potentially embarrassing material for both herself and Dr. Cage. All right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She initially plans to keep the tape secret from her old lover, but in the end she tells him about it. As a test, as Cora suggested. On the night of her death, she tells Dr. Cage to take the tape with him when he leaves, and to give it to Henry Sexton. Viola is alive when he leaves, mildly sedated by morphine, as usual. After leaving the house, Dr. Cage watches the tape—a natural impulse, and something most of us would do. On it are very personal things that he appreciates, but that he would prefer that his wife and children not have to deal with. Dr. Cage now has a moral dilemma.

  “Only hours later, he learns that Viola is dead and that he may be charged with her murder. Shortly after this, he realizes he has become the object of a witch hunt by your department. So he packs the tape into his bag and leaves with Mr. Garrity.”

  “I don’t have to take that,” Byrd growls. “The man jumped bail. He was a fugitive.”

  “Please bear with me, Sheriff. You’ll get your chance to respond, I assure you. Yes, Dr. Cage did jump bail, but he did not flee the jurisdiction. In fact, he spent every day trying to track down members of the Double Eagle group, whom he believed to be responsible for Viola Turner’s death. Further, he eventually attended the public funeral of Henry Sexton—the man who provided Viola the tape in the first place—and then turned himself in to the FBI. And all the while that videotape was in his van. Do those sound like the actions of a guilty man?”

  “Hell, yes. He was a fugitive on a murder warrant.”

  “On a charge that never should have been made.”

  “Objection,” Shad interjects. “Badgering the witness.”

  “Sustained.”

  “If the doc was innocent, why did he erase the tape?” Byrd demands.

  “We have no evidence that he did that,” Quentin says with conclusive authority. “Moreover, you just testified that the tape sat in an unattended van for, what? At least two days? Possibly three?”

  Sheriff Byrd isn’t used to this kind of treatment in a courtroom. “This is ridiculous,” he says angrily.

  “Further,” Quentin goes on, “since the tape is blank, the only indication we have of what might have been on it comes from the testimony of Cora Revels.”

  “So?” Byrd violently turns up his palms as though weary of dealing with a fool.

  Quentin answers with a lazy cadence that easily blunts Byrd’s anger and frustration. “So the veracity of her statements depends totally upon her credibility as a witness. And I will be returning to that subject in greater detail later.”

  Billy Byrd looks at the prosecution table and swallows. Shadrach Johnson offers him no help.

  “Sheriff Byrd,” Quentin says in the tone of a regretful headmaster to a student, “I have been told that prior to this case, relations between you and Dr. Cage were not exactly friendly.”

  Byrd’s porcine eyes snap back to Quentin. “We spoke when we passed.”

  “That’s not what my client told me. In fact, after learning the history between you two, I’ve had to ask myself whether, given the past friction between you, there’s any way you could deal impartially with him in this case.”

  Shad could object here, but he doesn’t want the jury to spend a half hour listening to tales of Billy Byrd’s domestic abuse if he can avoid it. I’d like to see Quentin explore just that, but he doesn’t.

  “For example,” he continues, “do you dislike Dr. Cage enough to have your men stage this deep-six incident over the Mississippi River in order to make Dr. Cage look guilty?”

  Byrd’s face goes dark with blood. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to that!”

  “I’m afraid you do, Sheriff. You’re no mor
e immune to the judicial process than Dr. Cage or myself, or even Judge Elder. And at this point, I have to ask the simplest question of all: Was that tape ever in the bedside table of that sickroom in the first place, as Cora Revels suggested? And if so, was there ever really anything on it?”

  Byrd’s enraged eyes narrow. “You’re trying to get me all turned around!”

  “On the contrary, Sheriff. I’m trying to strip away all conjecture and assumptions and leave only facts. And what we know is that, even if there was a tape in that bedside table, no one can say what happened to it. Certainly no one saw Dr. Cage remove any tape from that house.”

  “Well, who else could have done it?”

  At this point Quentin is turned in profile to me, and I see him smile. “That, Sheriff Byrd, is a very good question. One I think you should have been asking from the very beginning. But you didn’t feel that was necessary, did you? Lincoln Turner told you who his mother’s killer was, his suspect suited you just fine, and you never looked seriously at any other possibility.”

  “But his prints were on the tape!”

  “His fingerprints are on a tape, Sheriff. A blank tape. An erased tape that you say a deputy working surreptitiously for you supposedly discovered in an abandoned van.”

  Sheriff Byrd shakes his head in impotent rage.

  Quentin looks up as though about to ask another question, but then he simply says, “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  As Quentin rolls back to the defense table, Sheriff Byrd growls, “You think you’re so damn smart. What about the other tape? Why don’t you ask me about that? Huh?”

  Quentin’s face is toward me as the words leave Byrd’s mouth, and I see him lose a shade of color. Oh, no, I groan silently, bracing for the worst.

  If Quentin doesn’t respond to Byrd’s parting shot, then Shad will happily lead Byrd wherever it is he wants to go on redirect. Except . . . Shad’s suddenly rigid posture tells me he might not be happy about Byrd’s little taunt.

  “Your Honor,” Quentin says, turning his chair again, “in light of the witness’s outburst, may I continue my cross-examination?”

  “You may, Counselor.”

  Quentin drives his chair back up to the witness box. “What tape were you referring to, Sheriff?”