Mississippi Blood

by Greg Iles

  “That depends on your point of view,” Quentin says.

  “Well, from the point of view of a lawyer, the sum total of Major Powers’s testimony was inadmissible. And you could have stopped it with a single objection.”

  “Your father won’t fire me, Penn.”

  I move to my right, demanding that he look me in the eye. “I hope I won’t have to ask him to. I’m asking you to step aside, as a point of honor.”

  Quentin takes a long breath, sighs heavily. “Tell me something. If you take over Tom’s case, how are you going to begin?”

  “By finding out what happened that night, and building a case from there.”

  “Tom won’t tell you.”

  “After what just happened in court, he might.”

  “You’re wrong. A little spit isn’t much to a man who’s faced gunfire.”

  “That wasn’t just spit. That was contempt. And contempt can maim a man like Dad worse than bullets can.”

  With his trademark click and whir, Quentin backs up and rotates his chair to face me. “I shouldn’t have to tell a big-shot prosecutor this, but juries don’t like being excluded. They don’t like lawyers trying to keep witnesses from saying what they want to say. They don’t like judges and lawyers whispering where they can’t hear, and they hate it when you go back into chambers. As you told me yesterday, we’re dealing with an interracial affair, a mixed-race child, a possible mercy killing, even murder of a patient by a doctor. Those are tantalizing issues. And the jury isn’t going to take kindly to a slick lawyer saying, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t see this bit here, as juicy as it may be. Yes, there’s a tape of the victim’s death, but by exploiting a technicality I’m going to stop you from watching it.’ That’s not the way I’m going to run this case, my brother. And that’s not the way your daddy wants it run.”

  “He wants the whole truth out there. That’s the deal?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “That’s quite a change of heart after lying for thirty-eight years, wouldn’t you say?”

  Quentin dismisses my implication with a wave of his hand. “The jury wants the truth, Penn. And I’ve finally got a client who’s willing to stand by everything he ever did.”

  “So to hell with the rules of evidence?” I glance at Doris, who obviously shares my confusion. “Let’s join hands and listen to Dad’s life story from the age of one, then let the jury decide his fate?”

  “If that’s the way Shad wants to go, so be it.”

  “What?”

  “I trust the jury, Penn. Even at my age. You’re still a prosecutor at heart. I don’t think the jury’s so quick to cast stones.”

  “But they are, Quentin. It’s human nature. With some jurors, the higher up you are, the more pleasure they take in pulling you down. With others, the more they worshipped you, the more furious they are when they find you’re not who they thought you were.”

  “That’s a sad way to look at the world, brother. You should have a little more faith in your fellow man.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been through too many murder trials for that.”

  Quentin shrugs in his wheelchair. “If you think your father’s ready to trade me for you, go up to the men’s room by the holding cell upstairs. That’s where he is. Give it your best shot. I’ll abide by his decision.”

  I’m reaching for the door when Walt Garrity crashes through it, a look of fury in his eye. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he bellows. Then he looks past me, at Quentin. “You’ve got to put me on the stand! That goddamn pilot didn’t tell half the story.”

  “Sorry, Captain,” Quentin says. “I don’t need you.”

  Incredulous, the old Texas Ranger looks at me, his face almost purple.

  “It’s not Quentin’s decision anymore,” I tell Walt, taking hold of his arm. “Or it won’t be in five minutes. I’ll be calling you to the stand myself in about ten minutes.”

  “Goddamn right!” Walt throws a glare at Quentin as he leaves the office.

  As I follow him, I look back at Doris. “Please answer your cell when I call.”

  She nods once, and I go.

  Shaken by my confrontation with Quentin, and speeding from adrenaline at the prospect of taking over Dad’s defense, I experience the walk to the upstairs restroom in slow motion. As I pick my way through the crowd, an old filmstrip of images flashes like a Super 8 movie projected onto my retinas. I see my father as a younger man, wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeve no-iron shirt in glaring sunlight, looking down at my outstretched hands as I beg him to come into the pool with me. So many summer activities revolved around water in Mississippi, but Dad rarely ever went into pools or ponds, or even the ocean. I can still hear my mother telling me, “Daddy doesn’t like to swim,” or “Daddy doesn’t like the sun.” In my mind, this explained why he was always pale, why he never took his shirt off, even when the other dads waded in to lift us onto their shoulders to fight battles in the shallow end.

  But a few times, on vacation, Dad did go swimming. Maybe five times in my entire childhood. The time that remains indelible is the summer our parents took us to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a medical conference. Dad had bought me a toy submarine, a sleek gray plastic model that could actually submerge by means of a dissolvable tablet that trailed bubbles behind the sub. I was having so much fun that I repeatedly begged him to come in, and to my amazement, he finally relented and went back to the room to change into a bathing suit.

  When he returned, I saw puckered purple scars on his shoulders, belly, and thighs. Time had faded the marks, but his general color was so pale that they stood out like night crawlers on his skin. Before I could think much about them, Dad splashed into the water and started a game of submarine warfare with me, and I forgot the scars. After we ran out of submerging tablets, he set aside the toy and gave me “real submarine rides” underwater. I’d hold my breath and cling to his neck, then stare at his big freckled shoulders as he frog-kicked between the forest of white legs in the blue-green water of the hotel pool. Looking back now, that might have been the best day of my childhood—the day my daddy did something he hated so that I would be happy. The livid bumps on his shoulders and stomach did little to dampen my fun, but I didn’t completely forget them. Later I asked Mom about them, and I saw sadness come into her face.

  “Daddy got those in the war,” she said.

  “How?” I asked. “Did the Germans shoot him?”

  “A different war. Koreans shot him, I guess, or Chinese. I don’t really know. Daddy doesn’t like to talk about it. So don’t ask him, all right? Not until you’re older.”

  I promised I wouldn’t, and for a long time I didn’t. When I finally got up the nerve, at fifteen, Dad shrugged it off and said he’d been hit by shrapnel in Korea, but it was nothing to write home about. Those were his exact words. But if that was so, why did I always perceive a sense of shame when I saw him without his shirt, or wearing short pants? It was like walking into a room and seeing your father’s genitals, only a lot more awkward. Like Dad, I had a penis of my own. But I didn’t have war wounds. Even now, as a man, I have no firsthand knowledge of war. But after hearing Major Powers’s account of what happened in that ambulance, I finally have some idea of what my father did in Korea. Perhaps I also understand the sense of shame that went with his wounds.

  Pushing through the men’s room door at last, I find Dad leaning over the sink. He looks like a man who’s been beaten by someone who knows how to hurt you deep without leaving marks on the surface.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says. “I hoped you’d never have to hear that story. Korea wasn’t all like what happened in that ambulance.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you. But right now’s not the time to talk about that. We have to move fast.”

  “What do you mean, son?”

  “Dad . . . Quentin can’t represent you any longer. I know you had your own reasons for hiring him, but if you let
him continue like this, you’ll never hold Annie in your arms again outside a prison.”

  He blinks as though this prospect has finally begun to sink in. “What would you do if I fired Quentin?”

  “Ask for a mistrial. If I don’t get that, I’ll cross-examine every witness and keep out all inadmissible testimony. The jury should never have heard Major Powers’s story, and Judge Elder knows it. The circuit clerk just told me we need to fire Quentin.”

  “But Shad’s almost finished his case.”

  “Has he? I’m afraid he’s going to parade a dozen relatives of dead patients through there and have them accuse you of euthanizing their sainted mothers. And Quentin will let him do it.”

  Dad shakes his head. “There won’t be any of that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because by the time a patient reaches the point where they need some help crossing over—in those very rare cases—the family wants it, too. Often the patient’s too far gone to know. And those times . . . well, they’re sacred. Nobody’s going to come in here and talk about that.”

  A cautious sense of relief eases some of the pressure in my chest. “I hope you’re right. Tell me this. If Walt were called as a witness, could he provide any details that might make the two of you look better than you did in Powers’s account?”

  While Dad thinks about it, I say, “I think Walt would have killed Major Powers if he met him in the hallway after his testimony.”

  “Walt suffered a lot that night, and the days after. A lot more than Powers did.”

  “So, could Walt make up some of that ground in the courtroom?”

  Dad finally shakes his head. “No. What happened that night happened pretty much the way Powers described it. But it doesn’t matter. Quentin’s not going to call Walt as a witness.”

  “Forget Quentin, Dad. Given his erratic behavior up to now, I’m sure Judge Elder would give me at least a day to prepare a proper defense. Every lawyer in that courtroom thinks Quentin has either lost his mind or is throwing the case on purpose.”

  Dad looks away.

  “Which is it? I know you know.”

  “He hasn’t lost his mind.”

  “Then he’s throwing the case?”

  “He’s doing what he has to do. What I’ve told him to do.”

  “You wanted Major Powers to say those things he said in there today?”

  “No. I would have preferred that bit of history stay buried in the snows of Korea. For the sake of those boys’ families. Now the media won’t stop digging until they figure out who died in that ambulance. I’m sure their parents are all dead, which is a blessing, but there’ll be brothers and sisters who’ll suffer when they learn what happened.”

  “Dad, this isn’t going to sound noble, but you’ve got to start thinking about yourself. And if not yourself, then the rest of us. Your family is suffering. Do you understand that?”

  “I do.”

  He’s still not looking at me. I hear my voice rising, but I can’t stop myself. “If the Double Eagles have threatened us, tell me. I’ll get us protected until I find a way to put them behind bars.”

  “You can’t protect your family against men like that. Life doesn’t mean the same thing to them that it does to us. They’ll take risks normal people won’t. They know people who’ll kill Annie in exchange for a day’s supply of methamphetamine.”

  “So that’s it, then? That’s the reason you’re doing all this? You’re exchanging your life for our safety?”

  I don’t realize how badly I need to hear a yes to that question until he says, “If my going to prison ensures that you and Annie and Jenny and your mother will be safe from now on . . . I’m happy to go. I almost died last October, Penn. I’ll be lucky to live another year, even with the best care.”

  “Stop talking like that! This is like committing suicide because you can’t take the pain when a cure might be possible.”

  As my voice reverberates in the tiled bathroom, Dad steps away from the sink and squeezes my upper arm. “No, it’s not. I can endure pain. But there are things I couldn’t endure. I’ve had three months to think about all this. The hardest thing has been not being able to tell you the whole truth. I hope that by the end of this ordeal, you’ll understand. But right now, I can’t go beyond a certain point.”

  “Even with all that’s at stake?”

  “No. Because of it.”

  A deputy bangs on the door, then opens it a crack. “One minute till the recess is over, Doc.”

  Dad grabs my arms with surprising strength. “No matter what happens in that courtroom, remember this. What matters is you, not me. You and Annie. Jenny, too. But here, now, alone, I’m going to tell you something, and you don’t ever forget it. You are me. You hear?” Dad shakes me bodily, his eyes burning into mine. “The older I get, the more I see myself in you. Do you know how that feels? To look at the man you’ve become, and know I had a part in that? To know I didn’t survive that war for nothing? Long after I’m gone, you’ll be here, and I’ll be alive in you. And in Annie.” A smile lights his whole face. “That girl’s a Cage through and through.”

  Hot tears slide down my cheeks. I’ve been preparing for my father’s death for a long time, but to see life and death as he does now . . . it’s more than I can take.

  “And Lincoln?” I ask softly. “He’s your son, too.”

  Dad winces as though from physical pain. “Lincoln has my genes, yes. But I had nothing to do with shaping him. And all the regret I feel doesn’t help him one iota. From what Viola told me, the father Lincoln had was worse than none at all. But let’s not dwell on what we can’t change.”

  “And Mom? What about her?”

  “There’s no time, Penn. But however rough this seems on her . . . this is the bargain Peggy made. I let her down with Viola, God knows, but Peggy fell short, too—in her own eyes, I mean. But I stayed, and to Peggy that’s what counts. You hear me? To her people, children are what matter—period. You do what’s necessary to protect the next generation. Your mother may not know exactly why I’m doing this, but she knows I’ve got my priorities straight. And she has enough faith in me to let me do it.”

  “She doesn’t let you see how hard it is on her.”

  “I know, believe me. But she can take it.”

  Jesus, the hardness of their generation. “I’m not so sure. If you’re convicted . . . she might do something desperate.”

  Dad actually smiles at this. “Not a chance, boy. Don’t give that another thought.”

  “Time to go, Doc!” cries the deputy, holding open the door.

  As he turns to shoo away some rubberneckers in the hall, I force my cell phone into Dad’s hand. “Doris and Quentin are waiting for your call. Tell Quentin it’s over. Let me defend you, Dad.”

  He pushes away the phone. “It’s too late, Penn. I’m sticking with Quentin. We’ll take the hill together or go down fighting.”

  “But he’s not fighting.”

  Dad takes hold of my right wrist and squeezes. “He will. You just keep coming to court. We’ll see how much damage a couple of old men can do.”

  The glint in his eye almost makes me believe, but then I remember how the jury looked when Major Powers spit on his chest. Before I can speak again, he turns to the deputy and says, “Let’s go, Jimmy. Back to the trenches.”

  “Stay right on my ass, Doc. Whole courthouse is full of freaks today.”

  “I’m with you. Lead on.”

  Chapter 41

  When court resumes, Shad stuns me by calling Walt Garrity as his next witness. It takes a few seconds for me to realize the brilliance of this move, but I do, just in time to explain it to my mother.

  “Shad expects Quentin to call Walt to refute Major Powers’s account of what happened in the ambulance, so he’s doing it himself. This way he can guide the questioning. See? Judge Elder just gave Shad permission to treat Walt as a hostile witness. That means Shad can lead Walt where Shad wants him to go. Plus, Shad can make
it painfully clear that Walt’s on Dad’s side. The irony is, Quentin had no intention of calling Walt.”

  “But Quentin can cross-examine him, right?”

  “Quentin could have cross-examined Major Powers, too.”

  Mom closes her eyes and braces herself for whatever is coming.

  “Captain Garrity,” Shad begins, “you heard the testimony of Major Powers about what happened in that ambulance on the night of November thirtieth, 1950.”

  The weathered old Ranger looks as though he is bursting to tell his version of what happened that night. “I did.”

  “And does your recollection of that night differ in any significant way from the account Major Powers related?”

  “As to the sequence of events, no. The character of events was a bit different than he portrayed.”

  “How so?”

  “The major’s story reminded me of our old reports in the Texas Rangers.”

  “Back before computers?”

  “Back when we rode horses.”

  Several spectators laugh, but Walt wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “A typical report might read: ‘Pursued robbery suspect south-southeast for three days. Cornered him near Terlingua. Shot suspect next day after altercation with associates. Returned to El Paso.’ It hits the high spots, but it don’t exactly cover the subtleties of the thing.”

  “Well, that’s why I’ve called you up here.”

  “Is it?” Walt looks skeptical.

  “Yes, sir. Please feel free to add anything you believe Major Powers should have included.”

  “Well, first off, the major wasn’t in a position to make the same judgments Tom and I were about those men. Powers had no medical training, beyond survival school for pilots. Even if he’d had training, he had limited mobility, and he suffered a concussion when the ambulance went over the cliff.”

  I can see the jury warming to Walt’s delivery, but Shad seems willing to pay the price to get what he wants from Dad’s old friend.

  “Second, the major said Tom had only minor wounds himself. In fact, Private Cage had sustained serious shrapnel wounds from fragmentation grenades on the night of November twenty-fifth, when the Chinese first attacked our position.”