Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “Daddy?” Annie says as she watches the credits roll.

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Is Mr. Quentin Avery like Atticus?”

  “Ahh . . . yes and no.”

  Annie rolls off the pillow she’s been lying on and looks back at me, and I get one of those unexpected blasts of déjà vu, when her mother’s soul looks out of her eyes. “Quentin is actually more heroic than Atticus,” I tell her, trying not to think about her mother. “Atticus Finch is always seen as brave, and he was. But Atticus was white. Part of the dominant class. All he really risked by defending Tom was being spit on by trash like Bob Ewell, or not being invited to some fancy parties. But when Quentin was a young lawyer, he literally risked his life every time he took on the system. That took real bravery.”

  “And what about now? Is Mr. Quentin brave now?”

  I’m not sure I know the answer to this question. “Well . . . the world has changed a lot. Quentin’s made a lot of money, and in some ways that makes him part of the dominant class. Although to some people, he’ll always be just a black man, no matter how rich he gets.”

  “But as a lawyer, I mean. Is he as good as you?”

  “That’s hard to say. I was a prosecutor, but when Quentin took on criminal cases, he mostly defended people.”

  Annie groans in frustration. “Could you beat him? That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I never had to go against him, so I don’t know. I’m glad I never had to. I think the outcome would probably have depended on the evidence. Whose side it favored.”

  “Whose side does it favor in Papa’s case?”

  “That’s hard to say, since nobody’s sure exactly what all the evidence is. There may be witnesses none of us knows about.”

  Annie crosses her legs Indian style, then props her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “Well, I know something’s wrong. Ya’ll can’t hide that from me. Mr. Quentin’s upsetting everybody. Gram and Miriam, but you especially. I can tell. And I think there’s only one thing to do about it.”

  “What?”

  “You have to take over Papa’s case, like Mr. Rusty said. You have to defend Papa.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you’ll do the right thing. Like Atticus.”

  “Annie, these days, a lawyer like Atticus Finch wouldn’t be able to win many cases. These days it takes a smart, slick lawyer like Quentin to do it.”

  “But Atticus didn’t win his case, Daddy. He just did the right thing. My teacher would call that a moral victory.”

  This simple assertion of what should be obvious stuns me with the force of an epiphany. “Have you thought about what you’re saying, Boo? Atticus didn’t just lose his case. He lost his client. Tom Robinson died.”

  “But only because Tom hung himself. Papa wouldn’t ever hang himself.”

  I wonder if that’s true . . . If Dad could hear the faith in his granddaughter’s voice, he certainly wouldn’t—

  “Even if you lost this first trial against Mr. Shad,” Annie goes on, “you could appeal, and eventually you’d win.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because Papa would never do the wrong thing! He might do something that looked wrong. But if we could know all the things he did before he did it—and feel them—then we’d know it wasn’t wrong.”

  The logical gymnastics of a child can be amazing.

  “All you have to do is get the jury to see and feel everything Papa knew and felt before he did whatever it was he did. And then they’ll find him innocent. And I know you can do that.”

  It suddenly strikes me that Annie might have stumbled onto Quentin’s strategy at last. Could that really be what Quentin intends to do?

  “I’ll think about it, Boo.”

  “Don’t take too long. I heard Mr. Rusty say Papa doesn’t have much time.”

  Is she old enough to hear the truth? “Annie, I’m glad you have so much faith in me. But thinking I can save Papa is like saying Mama wouldn’t have died if Papa had treated her from the start. Papa’s a good doctor, but he couldn’t have saved her. No one could.”

  She knits her brows and focuses all her intelligence upon me. “Are you saying no lawyer can save Papa?”

  “No. But I’m saying that right now his best chance is Quentin Avery—even if the rest of us don’t understand what Quentin’s doing. I’m a good lawyer. Quentin is like a magician with rabbits up his sleeve. You just wait.”

  “If I have to wait, can I please do it in the courtroom?”

  I groan with exasperation. “Boo, we’ve been over this a hundred times.”

  “So this makes a hundred and one! Daddy, ya’ll think I don’t hear things, but I do. I hear everything. I know how bad things are. I know nobody’s perfect. Nobody tells the truth all the time. I’ve lied before. Everybody does, when they don’t want to hurt people.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t you see that going to court isn’t going to scar me for life? Papa needs me there! If he sees me, maybe he’ll realize he needs to tell you whatever it is he’s been keeping to himself.”

  Again I wonder if Annie could be right. Perhaps. But I’m not going to sit an eleven-year-old girl in a courtroom where my father’s bastard son might accuse him of God knows what.

  Catching Annie under the arms, I pick her up and hold her face close to mine. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not old enough. I’ll stay with you tomorrow, and Rusty will keep us up to date by hook or by crook.”

  As she rolls her eyes with theatrical exaggeration, female voices drift down the stairs. A few seconds later, Mia and my mother walk into the den together.

  “Well,” Mom says to Annie, “have you had any more little episodes like you did this morning?”

  Annie’s cheeks turn apple red. “I wouldn’t have had any episode if you and Daddy had taken me to court with you.”

  “Oh, now, come on.” Mom reaches out and pulls Annie to her. “Let’s go in the kitchen and get some ice cream. Your father’s had a monopoly on you long enough.”

  As they head into the kitchen, I give Mia a questioning glance. “Didn’t she go visit Dad earlier?”

  “She did.”

  “Usually she comes back feeling low.”

  Mia shrugs. “I perked her up a little.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “Mad skills.” She gives me a self-deprecating smile.

  Two years ago, Mia and I went through a series of events that rocked the whole town. People lost their lives, and reputations were damaged beyond repair. Mia Burke forever changed my view of high school girls, and with that change came a melancholy realization that my own daughter will likely lose her innocence sooner than I hope, and probably in ways I could never foresee.

  Mia walks over to the sofa against the wall and tucks her legs beneath her. She’s left room for me, but I sit in the chair opposite the TV.

  “Are you holding up okay?” she asks.

  “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  She looks over toward the kitchen door. “Can I ask you something about Caitlin?”

  “Sure.”

  Almost inaudibly, she says, “Is it true that she was pregnant when she died?”

  Why is she asking me this now? “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “It was in a story I read in a Jackson paper. About the autopsy report.”

  I nod in silence.

  “Your mom just mentioned it to me, though. A few minutes ago.”

  This surprises me. “Really?”

  Mia nods, her eyes still on the kitchen door. “Did Annie ever find out?”

  “Not so far, thank God.”

  “Okay. So . . . your mother also told me your father’s not handling this very well. That he’s pulled inside himself. That he’s not telling you guys anything. Only Quentin.”

  “I’m surprised Mom told you that much. By her law, nothing is ever mentioned outside the family circle.”

  Mia’s eyes flicker with
something I can’t interpret. “Maybe I’m inside the circle now. How much faith do you have in Quentin?”

  “It comes and goes.”

  “Options?”

  “Annie thinks I need to be defending Dad.”

  “From the mouths of babes—”

  “Comes baby talk.”

  Mia shakes her head, then stretches as though tired. “Don’t you think maybe you should go see your father?”

  “Did Mom push you to get me to visit him?”

  “She didn’t push me at all. But it seems clear that your father’s silence is crippling his defense. Are you sure he’s even talking to Quentin?”

  “I’m not. I’ll tell you something, though. Quentin’s erratic behavior has distracted our family from a very simple fact.”

  “What?”

  “From a prosecutor’s standpoint, Shad Johnson made his case today. A very compelling forensic case, right down the line. No matter what Miriam prints in the Examiner, after hearing today’s testimony, nobody can deny that Dad had the motive, the means, and the opportunity to murder Viola Turner. And so far as anyone knows, he has no alibi. When you add the bomb Sheriff Byrd dropped about that tape they found in the Dumpster . . . things look pretty grim.”

  Mia gets up from the couch and comes to sit on the ottoman in front of me. “Look at me,” she says, taking my hand. “Do you think your father killed Viola?”

  “He told me he did.”

  Her face drains of color. “What?”

  “When I visited the Pollock FCI that one time.”

  Mia is finally at a loss for words.

  “Truthfully, I don’t think he murdered her. But did he kill her? It’s possible. And I’m scared as hell of those videotapes.”

  “If he did kill her, do you think he would have told your mother?”

  “No. God, no.”

  Mia nods. “Agreed. Peggy believes he’s innocent, straight-up, no doubts.”

  “Oh, I know that all too well. She still worships him.”

  Mia squeezes my hand, then releases it. “Listen . . . your mom thinks you blame your father for Caitlin’s death. And she’s right, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, to a point. But to tell you the truth . . . right now I’m worried about his sanity. I’m thinking of asking Drew to go talk to him. Evaluate him.”

  Mia folds her arms across her chest and looks at me with a familiarity I haven’t experienced since Caitlin was alive. “I’m going to go out on a limb here,” she says, “because somebody needs to.”

  “What do you want to say?”

  “Do you think Caitlin blamed your father for her death?”

  “What?” I ask, unsure whether I’ve heard her correctly.

  “I mean out there in the swamp, when she was dying. Did she blame him?”

  A blast of anger surges through me, and I want to snap back at her. But then I remember Caitlin’s voice during her Treo memo, telling me not to blame anyone but her for her solo trip to the Bone Tree. An electric tingle races along my arms. It’s not as if any of this is new information, but—

  “Stop blaming your father,” Mia advises. “At least until you know all the facts. Caitlin and I weren’t exactly BFF, but the lady had her shit together. She was the closest thing to a role model I could find in this town. And I think that’s what she would say to you now, if she could. Cut your father some slack.”

  The ring of my cell phone spares me from having to respond to Mia’s plea—which in truth sounds like Caitlin speaking from the grave.

  I’m half expecting the caller to be Serenity, but the phone says unknown number. Usually I don’t answer such calls, but with the situation this fluid and the stakes so high, I can’t afford to ignore this one.

  “Penn Cage,” I answer.

  “Penn, it’s Doris Avery.”

  A premonition of danger moves through me. “Is everything all right?”

  “There’s no emergency, if that’s what you mean. But I was wondering if you could come by for a brief talk.”

  “With Quentin?”

  “Quentin’s asleep.”

  I look away from Mia’s questioning eyes and try to guess what has prompted this call. “Are you at Edelweiss?”

  “Yes. I’m out on the gallery.”

  “I’m only a few blocks away. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Hurry, Penn. Please.”

  Chapter 34

  Edelweiss has two staircases that ascend to the gallery like the legs of a capital A. As I climb the right staircase in search of Doris Avery, the orange eye of a cigarette appears from the darkness under the north gallery above me. I smelled the tobacco smoke from half a block away, but the overhead lights are off, so I didn’t see Doris. Even now, her coffee-colored skin seems to drift in and out of the dark. Only her eyes, which catch the light from the streetlamp on the bluff, remain constant in the gloom.

  Her low voice, taut with tension, says, “I hoped that after lunch today, you’d feel it was worthwhile to come down here tonight.”

  “How long have you been out here?”

  “Long enough to smoke too many cigarettes.”

  “What’s going on, Doris? Quentin didn’t want me in this house today, but you did. Why?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Obviously. But what?”

  She takes a quick drag on the cigarette, then blows the smoke away from me. “I’m not sure.”

  “Is something wrong with Quentin? Health-wise?”

  “Health-wise? Of course. Where do you want to start?”

  “I meant mentally.”

  She takes some time with this. “Is he mentally competent? Yes. Is he as sharp as he used to be? Sometimes I think he’s even sharper.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  She walks to the rail and gazes off the bluff toward the great twin bridges to the south, their silver metal glowing like an erector set project spanning the dark river. “I was third in my law school class at Emory, Penn. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m not surprised. I live in a mighty big shadow. I worked for the U.S. attorney in Atlanta as well, on a federal task force.”

  Her revelation amazes me. “Why have you never told me?”

  “You never asked. You just assumed I was the trophy wife. Which I am, to a degree.”

  “But Quentin—”

  “He never told you either, right? There are good and bad reasons for that. I do a lot of work for my husband, but sometimes it suits his purposes for juries to see him struggling alone against a battery of corporate sharks. David and Goliath, right? That’s why I sit behind his table, and sometimes even behind the bar. He lets them think I’m his trophy wife, and I let him let them think that.”

  These revelations have scrambled my assumption that Doris is an essentially powerless bystander to what’s been going on. “Well . . . Jesus. As a lawyer privy to the defense, can you tell me what the hell Quentin was doing in court today?”

  She sighs heavily. “What people saw in court today was a horse with hobbles on. You ever seen that?”

  “I’ve always heard the term. I’ve never seen it, though.”

  “Hobbles are like handcuffs for a horse. Keeps them from walking away.”

  “Who’s handcuffing Quentin?”

  She shrugs her shoulders, and in her eyes I see pain. “I don’t know. But that’s what’s wrong. I usually know everything about his cases. Quentin bounces ideas off me all the time. Every case. I’ve won more than a couple for him, I can tell you.”

  “But this one’s different?”

  Doris blows out a stream of smoke as she nods. “He’s walled me out completely.”

  A worm of fear begins gnawing at my heart. “Just like my father and me.”

  She nods with the weariness of someone who is far ahead of me in her fears. “They’re like two old lions who’ve crawled into a thicket to lick their wounds.”

  “And Quentin hasn’t told you why.
”

  Doris goes rigid; then I see she’s pointing into the shadows beneath the crape myrtles on Washington Street. A deep, man-shaped umbra is just discernible against the dark background.

  “He’s with me,” I tell her, laying a hand on her arm. “Protection.”

  The tension drains out of her as if from an uncoiling spring.

  “Surely you have some theory about what’s behind Quentin’s reticence?”

  “All I know for sure is that he’s scared. And if he’s scared, it’s because your father’s scared.”

  “What are they scared of?”

  Doris shakes her head like someone who’s been trying to answer this question for months. “Your father wouldn’t act out of fear for his own life. That I know. Quentin wouldn’t, either. Sometimes he doesn’t want to go on living anyway.”

  “Has he said that to you?”

  She looks me fully in the eyes at last, and I realize how beautiful she really is. Her eyes are large, though filled with sadness, and her jaw is perfectly curved, the line of bone as clean as a strung bow.

  “You think a man with Quentin’s vanity can lose both legs and keep going like it’s nothing? Quentin Avery used to be tall and strong—vital even at seventy. Now he has to look up to everybody he meets. How do you think he handles that?”

  “I’m sorry, Doris.”

  She leaves those bottomless eyes on me for a couple of seconds more, then turns away. “This, too, shall pass.”

  After staring out at the dark river for a while, she says, “Penn, I think we’re all hostages, even though we’re walking free. Annie, you, me . . . all of us.”

  “You mean literally? Hostages to the Double Eagles?”

  She nods. “Quentin’s dealt with death threats all his life, especially back in the sixties. But the thing is, very few people follow through on death threats. Even hardened criminals. A few racists did, and those are the stories we remember. But nobody shot Jackie Robinson. I’m sure you were threatened plenty of times as an ADA.”