Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  I hold up both hands to stop his flow. “Preacher Avery,” I mutter, “the evangelist of reasonable doubt.”

  “That’s right. And in this trial, I’ve got the dream client. Your father’s done so much good in this town, somebody on that panel’s got to be yearning for a way to let him go home to his family. All I’ve got to do is give them a hook to hang their doubt on.”

  “You’ve got a long way to go. You let Shad dig a mighty deep hole today.”

  “A circumstantial hole.”

  “And the tapes?”

  This time he drops the smile, but he lets me know he resents me forcing him to be so pragmatic. “Look, on the way over here, I called a forensic guy I use in New York, top of his field. He tells me there’s less than a ten percent chance that Sony can restore the data on those tapes to any usable form. I’ll take those odds any day.”

  Relief floods through me with surprising power. “That’s good to know. But even if the tapes stay erased, the forensics aren’t your only problem. Shad’s outflanked you on race.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “He didn’t sidestep it. He shoved race right onto the front burner. And not even the great Quentin Avery can predict how a jury of seven blacks and five whites is going to react to evidence of an interracial affair, a mixed-race baby, and a white man killing a black woman to keep her quiet. The blacks may want to punish Dad for not acknowledging that baby, and the whites might crucify him for letting down his own race and his legal family. Hell, Shad could argue that every good thing Dad has done to help blacks since 1968 was a pathetic attempt to expiate his guilt over Viola and her child.”

  “Is that what you’d argue in his place?”

  “You’re damn right.”

  Quentin nods slowly, as if listening to me for the first time. “Do you think Shad’s smart enough to do that?”

  “Harvard Law isn’t a charm school.”

  “No. But it’s the kind of place that turns out lawyers so clever that sometimes they outsmart themselves.”

  “That’s wishful thinking, Q. Look, either you give me some sort of substantive outline of your strategy, or a change is going to have to be made.”

  He glances back at Doris, but she’s looking at the floor. “You hear that, baby? Penn’s talking like he’s my client.”

  “I heard him,” she says softly.

  The old man turns back to me with hardened eyes. “Boy, you know only your father can fire me.”

  “Quentin, Dad may be your client, but Mom’s paying your fee.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He put his assets in her name long ago.”

  The old eyes flare with indignation. “I’ll handle the case pro bono, then.”

  This brings a faint smile to my lips. “Will you?”

  “You’re damn right I will. I’m rich as Croesus, goddamn it!”

  “It may come to that, buddy. But it doesn’t have to.”

  “So long as I run every step of my case by you for approval? No, thank you. Hey, what have you been spending your time doing? You made any progress convincing a Double Eagle to flip?”

  This stops my train of thought. So Dad told him about our conversation in the Pollock FCI.

  “What about Will Devine’s truck?” he asks. “The Darlington Academy sticker?”

  I glance at Doris, who looks confused by this conversational turn.

  “I’ve made some progress,” I tell him, thinking of my last visit to the Devine house and of Dolores St. Denis. “But until you show me more than you have today, I think I’ll keep it to myself.”

  “How’s that supposed to help Tom?”

  With a quick glance at Doris, who seems to be silently pleading with me for something, I say, “How did Dad feel after court adjourned today?”

  “He knew what to expect.”

  “He wasn’t ready for the news about that Dumpster tape. I can’t believe today’s events didn’t shake him.”

  “Go see him, if you don’t believe me. You can tell Peggy you tried to convince Tom to fire me. But it’s a waste of time. Your father knows exactly what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.”

  “Then why the hell don’t you enlighten me, so I can keep my mother from having a stroke?”

  “You’re mother’s a lot stronger than you think, boy. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’s strong, all right. But today . . . she just about gave out.”

  He jabs a finger at me. “Then you find a way to be in that courtroom for her tomorrow. Because things are likely to get worse before they get better.”

  A pall of dread settles on my shoulders. “How could they get worse?”

  “Things can always get worse. If you came from the same generation as your father and me, you’d know that.”

  A flash of anger makes my face hot. Having lost one wife and one fiancée, I feel I’ve endured my share of grief. “I know how bad life can get, Quentin.”

  He snorts. “You’ve lost two women, Penn. I feel for you. But you ain’t sick or in jail, and you still got a beautiful little girl to raise.”

  With shaking hands I take a step back toward the door, looking over Quentin’s head at Doris, who is shaking her head as though in apology.

  “You’ve got half a day,” I tell him. “If you don’t start turning things around tomorrow morning, I’ll find a way to stop this circus. And I think I know somebody who can help me.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  I tilt my head toward Doris. Fear and anger flare in her eyes, but I’m past caring about marital intrigues. “If Doris and Mom get on the same side, you’ll be back in Jefferson County before Judge Elder even notices you’re gone. You and Dad won’t have a thing to say about it.”

  This gives him pause. “And what if that happens? Who’s gonna take my place? You?”

  “I don’t want the job. But I’ll take it before I let you sabotage the trial.”

  “You might as well put your daddy on that old gray bus to Parchman this afternoon.”

  “Quentin, I’ll put a night-school ambulance chaser in that courtroom, so long as he knows when to yell ‘Objection’ and he can tell hearsay from legitimate testimony.”

  Doris marches out of the doorway, circumnavigates the island, and interposes herself between Quentin and me, then begins speaking softly to him, so softly that I can’t make out her words. I start to leave, but in a much more restrained voice Quentin says, “You don’t know anything about the Impressionists, Penn?”

  My hand is on the back doorknob. “Some. What’s your point?”

  “Only this. When hack artists looked over the shoulder of Monet, all they saw was a man painting dots. Daubs and dots.”

  “But when they took a few steps back, they saw the whole picture?”

  “You got it.”

  “I need to get home. I’m sorry, Doris.”

  “Come on, my brother!” Quentin says, as though I’m taking all this too seriously. “I’m just tryin’ to make you feel better.”

  I walk out onto the gallery, then look back at him through the half-open door. “You get Dad acquitted, you can tell me what a genius you are all day long. Until then, why don’t you try to remember a little basic legal procedure?”

  He shakes his head as though I’m a hopeless case. “Why don’t you get out of my light, hack?”

  “Half a day, Quentin. Then you get your walking papers.”

  As I shut the door, I see Doris watching me over her shoulder, her dark eyes inscrutable as ever.

  One block away from my house, my cell phone rings. It’s Rusty, of course.

  “What did Quentin say?” he asks.

  “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  “Fuck.”

  “At least he dropped his Leonardo bit. Now he thinks he’s Monet.”

  “I think he’s freakin’ Big Bird. He’s got to go, amigo. When court opens tomorrow, you’ve got to be standing at the defense table. You, your father, and nobody else. That
’s something the jury can believe in, right there.”

  “I gave him half a day, Rusty.”

  “You what? Q can sink your old man in less time than that.”

  “I went with my gut.”

  “Well, usually that’s a good thing. But not this time.”

  “I’ll tell you what scares me most. There’s some kind of split between Quentin and his wife. I think Doris is worried Quentin’s out of his league, too. Something’s messed up. I don’t know what.”

  “Go talk to your father.”

  “There’s no point. He won’t fire Quentin. Whatever’s at the heart of this case, Dad won’t confide it to me.”

  “Shit, man. Is he that embarrassed about all this? So he tagged Halle Berry, and she got pregnant. That’s no reason to go to jail.”

  “I’m glad you’re not making the closing argument.”

  “Better me than Quentin Avery. Dude, I’ve known your mom a long time, and she’s close to cracking. She doesn’t care who Tom nailed back in the Dark Ages, she just wants him out of jail. Why can’t he see that?”

  “Maybe Dad really believes the Knoxes will kill Annie or me unless he takes the fall.”

  Rusty breathes into the phone for a few seconds. “Well . . . if that’s it—”

  “I know. Nothing’s going to change his mind.”

  “Where’s Ray fucking Presley when you need him? Or your blond buddy from the Special Forces?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Call me later.”

  “Yeah.”

  Chapter 32

  Snake Knox crouched behind the desk in the sod farm office, his mouth open and his hands lightly over his ears. Junelle Crick stood over him, begging him not to go through with it. Snake told her to shut up and get down.

  His fling with the VK mama had paid off in spades. This morning she’d told him that his passport and other ID had been delivered two days ago, but that Toons Teufel had locked both in the company safe. Toons had also ordered two of his men to stay behind and make sure Snake didn’t leave the compound. After hearing this, Snake had lost no time liberating enough plastic explosive to blow the safe with a shaped charge. He’d planted the charge five minutes ago, after the security guys jumped on an ATV and went out to help change a PTO implement on the farm’s main tractor.

  Snake glanced at his watch. At the last instant, he reached up and snatched the babbling Junelle down behind the desk, saving her from the flash and possible mutilation by shrapnel. It wasn’t gratitude that had prompted this action, but his awareness that he might yet need an ally in this location, despite his immediate plans.

  While Junelle shook her head in shock at the explosion, Snake got up, walked through the smoke, and crouched before the open safe. He found his new ID documents in a manila folder with Chinese characters on it. He laughed cynically as he got up. To get these documents, the white-supremacist bikers had dealt with local Arabs who then procured the desired articles from a Chinese supplier.

  As he walked past the desk, Snake picked up the flight bag he’d packed earlier and headed toward the door. At that point, Junelle finally figured out that he was leaving, and what his departure was likely to mean for her future. As she begged him to take her with him, he said, “Sorry, hon, my plane only holds one.”

  “But—but they’ll kill me,” she said. “Toons will kill me!”

  “Tell him I made you tell me about the IDs.”

  “He won’t believe me.”

  “Yes, he will.” Snake drew his pistol from the holster on his hip and cracked her across the face with it.

  Junelle dropped like a sack.

  He kept his pistol out as he left the office and crossed the open space between it and the airstrip, listening for the sound of the ATV’s engine returning. He knew they had tried to sabotage his plane, but the bikers were amateurs when it came to that kind of work. Snake had slipped out before dawn and repaired the wires they’d cut.

  He climbed into the Air Tractor and started the engine, then turned the plane and taxied into the wind, building speed as fast as he could. When the plane’s wheels left the earth, he felt a wild laugh building in his chest, the same one he’d felt when Alois showed him the Needle Box.

  As the plane climbed, Snake banked and flew over the sod field. Three hundred feet below him, the blue ATV was parked beside the big orange tractor. The men by the Kubota looked up, looked down, then looked up again and began pointing and yelling.

  “Adios, assholes!” Snake yelled, even as the men drew handguns and began firing at him.

  He wished he had a load of herbicide to dump on them as a parting gift. Talk about fucking up somebody’s day . . .

  As Snake climbed away from the futile bullets, he felt his burner phone vibrate in his pocket. Taking it out, he yelled, “Toons? That you?”

  “This ain’t Toons,” said a woman. “You know who this is?”

  Wilma Deen. Wilma and Alois had headed back to Natchez a few hours ago. “I do. What’s going on?”

  “I heard some taped testimony from the trial. The dead nurse’s sister testified today. And you should have been there to hear it.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Your brother didn’t die from them batteries fallin’ on him. That nigger nurse killed him.”

  Snake flew right through a pillar of smoke spewing from one of the chemical plants near Westlake. “Hold up. Cora Revels said that?”

  “Not willingly. That Quentin Avery pulled it out of her. But it sounded pretty conclusive. She killed him while he was waiting for treatment back there in Dr. Cage’s office. And Dr. Cage likely covered it up for her. I mean, he had to, didn’t he? He was dickin’ her.”

  Snake felt acid flood into his gut. “That nigger murdered Frank?” he said dully, not really believing it. He thought back to the day that pallet load of batteries had tumbled off the forklift and crashed into his brother, crushing bones and opening his chest. And how Sonny and Glenn had rushed him to Tom Cage’s office rather than the hospital, because that was what Frank wanted . . .

  “If Tom Cage knew all along that bitch killed Frank . . .”

  “What’d you say?” Wilma shouted. “All I can hear is a roaring!”

  “I said, Ya’ll get that place we talked about ready! I’ve got my papers and I’m on my way.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Do what I told you, goddamn it! Out.”

  Snake rocked back and forth in the small cockpit, fighting a compulsion to throw the phone out of the plane. He felt like his brain was on fire. His beloved brother had not died in an accident; Frank had been murdered. Using all the skill he had, Snake lifted the AT-501 to its operational ceiling and then beyond it. The flat land of Louisiana drifted beneath him like a slow-motion film, unrolling endlessly. Snake never looked down, only forward. He was watching for the most familiar landmark of his flying career, the great brown serpent of the Mississippi River. The only fluid that could quench the fire in his head waited on the far bank of that river, pulsing with ignorant hope.

  The blood of the Cage family.

  Chapter 33

  It’s night, and Annie is watching our DVD of To Kill a Mockingbird, searching for clues to the legal system and ideas on how to defend her grandfather. She has long known that Atticus Finch inspired me to become an attorney—as he did thousands of other lawyers—and that in many ways, To Kill a Mockingbird inspired me to write my first novel. The irony is that, for most of my life, I believed I was raised by a father who was as close as you could come to Atticus Finch in the real world. Dad might have been a doctor rather than a lawyer, but people still looked at him the way they looked at Gregory Peck in that film, and the way most citizens of Maycomb looked at Atticus in the novel: as a paragon of honor, courage, and rectitude.

  More to the point, the black people of my little Mississippi town seemed to honor my father with the same respect shown to Atticus, as when the old preacher says: “Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passi
n’.” But tonight, all I can think about as Annie watches the old black-and-white classic is what Scout would have thought if, at age forty-five, she’d learned that she had a half brother fathered by Atticus on Calpurnia, their maid. Such things seem unimaginable in the idealized world of the film, but in Lee’s novel, Mr. Dolphus Raymond married a black woman and fathered interracial children, thus earning social exile for himself, his morphine-addicted wife, and his children.

  What does Annie see, I wonder, as she watches the movie trial and thinks about her grandfather? Does she see how much the world has changed since 1960? Or does it look essentially the same to her, with the colors of the accused and accuser inverted? In the film, a black man is unjustly imprisoned by whites. In Annie’s world, her white grandfather has been unjustly imprisoned by a black district attorney. Does she see race behind my father’s indictment? Annie attends private school with quite a few black children—the offspring of black physicians and attorneys (plus a few exceptional athletes)—but the public schools are almost entirely black. More telling still, we could dine out in restaurants every night for a year and not see a mixed-race couple. We see them other places now and then—at Walmart or the baseball field, for example—but in what passes for “society,” such things remain unseen, if not unknown.

  Something else struck me at the beginning of the film: the first time we see Atticus—always remembered as a man who regards violence as the desperate tactic of lesser men—he’s revealed to be the “best shot in Maycomb County,” and he actually kills a rabid dog before his children’s eyes. What could more firmly establish the credibility of an action hero than this? And if we didn’t know that Atticus was willing to be ruthless when necessary, would we so readily listen to his homilies about honor and fairness?

  I also wonder what Atticus Finch would have done if the woman he loved had been murdered on the order of a man beyond the reach of any court. Surely the “best shot in Maycomb County” might be tempted to use his rifle to eliminate Forrest or Snake Knox? At the end of the film, Sheriff Heck Tate leaves us in no doubt that if rough justice happens to strike down a monster like Bob Ewell—who tried to kill the Finch children—it’s best to simply look the other way. In the spirit of Sheriff Tate, Rusty Duncan today mourned the fact that Ray Presley or Daniel Kelly isn’t around to neutralize the Knoxes by whatever means necessary. Would that moral trade-off buy us freedom from fear? If Snake Knox turned up dead tomorrow morning, would my father still sit silent in court while Shad Johnson ushers him toward Parchman Farm?