Natchez Burning (Penn Cage)

by Greg Iles

  “Can I help you?” the young man asked without a trace of southern accent.

  “I’m Henry Sexton.”

  “Go in. He’s waiting for you.”

  Henry hiked up his khakis with his free hand and walked through the tall door behind the assistant’s desk.

  Shad Johnson waited behind an antique desk the size of a tennis court. He didn’t rise to greet Henry, much less make a move to come around the desk. A light-skinned black man, he regarded Henry with the cool superiority the reporter associated with men who wore their past laurels like social armor. Johnson’s dark blue suit probably cost ten times as much as the one Henry wore to church on Sundays. The wall to Henry’s right was covered with photographs of the district attorney with various celebrities and politicians, mostly African-American, who had come to Natchez to campaign for Shad in his unsuccessful 1998 bid for mayor. It took a moment for Henry to notice his video camcorder standing on a tripod in the opposite corner of the DA’s office.

  “Were you surprised to hear that Viola Turner died this morning?” Johnson asked without preamble.

  “Yes,” Henry admitted.

  “Surely you knew she was ill?”

  Henry nodded.

  “But still you were surprised.”

  “I was.”

  Shad pointed to the camcorder on the tripod. “Tell me about the video camera. It seems odd for a reporter to leave a video camera in the house of a dying old woman. What was your reason?”

  Henry didn’t like the DA’s presumptuous tone, especially since Johnson had given him so little help in pursuing unsolved civil rights cases. “I’ve been a reporter for a long time,” he said grudgingly. “Sometimes I can sense when a person is in torment.” He thought of Glenn Morehouse, sitting in his sickroom across the river, fearfully facing eternity. “A lot of people from the civil rights era are sick or dying now, and a lot of them are carrying secrets. Something was working on Viola Turner. She wanted to tell it, but she hadn’t quite reached the place where she could. That’s why I left the camera with her. You never know when the mood to talk is going to strike somebody, and I sensed that Miss Viola didn’t have long. So I aimed the camera at her, plugged it in, gave her the remote control, and showed her how to use it. Any time she wanted to, she could make a video recording of herself.”

  “What do you think she knew, Mr. Sexton?”

  Henry had to struggle to bring up the words. “I believe she knew what happened to her brother, Jimmy Revels, back in 1968. And to Luther Davis, of course.”

  Shad Johnson made a sour face. Henry figured the DA resented his mention of the case because Henry had pushed him for months to look into it. Johnson claimed he could take no action without new evidence, but Henry had pointed out the catch-22 that there was unlikely to be any new evidence until the investigation was reopened.

  “Be that as it may,” said Johnson, “you seem to be the last person outside the family who spoke to Mrs. Turner, other than her doctor. Did she say anything during your interview that might make you think she was contemplating suicide?”

  “Suicide?” Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. His preconceptions about Viola’s death went spinning off into space. “No, she didn’t. I interviewed her twice, by the way. And she gave me no reason to think she was contemplating something like that. She seemed like a strong woman, despite her illness. Spiritually, I mean. Physically she was very weak.”

  “Did she say anything about her doctor?”

  Henry detected a hostile edge in the DA’s voice. “You mean Dr. Cage?”

  “Yes, Tom Cage. How did you know Dr. Cage was her doctor?”

  “Mrs. Turner reminisced a little about working for him. She seemed very fond of him. She complimented Dr. Cage’s dedication to his patients, regardless of their race. Dr. Cage was making daily visits to her home, I believe, trying to ease Mrs. Turner’s last days as much as possible. She couldn’t breathe very well by the time I interviewed her. Conversation was difficult.”

  “Did you ever see Dr. Cage at the Revels home?”

  “No. But I was only there twice.”

  Shad suddenly stood, which revealed his somewhat diminutive height. Henry was a gangly six feet two, and towered over the DA, but the smaller man was animated by an energy that more than equalized the difference.

  “Can you keep a secret, Mr. Sexton?”

  “I’ve kept some for nearly forty years.”

  “Will you respect a request to go off the record?”

  “That’s my bread and butter, Mr. Johnson.”

  The DA’s eyes bored into Henry’s with unsettling intensity. “We may be dealing with a case of assisted suicide here. Or even murder by a physician. That’s why I’m involved in this matter.”

  Henry had already accepted the possibility of murder, but this new suggestion floored him. “You mean Tom Cage?”

  “That’s what the evidence points to at this time.”

  Henry gulped audibly. “Whoa. Look, I don’t even want to hear that. I don’t believe it, either.”

  “Nevertheless, there seems to have been a pact between Mrs. Turner and Dr. Cage to that effect.”

  Henry felt more flustered than he had in some time. “Well . . . what exactly do you want from me?”

  When the DA didn’t answer, a horrifying thought hit him. “The camera wasn’t on when she died, was it?” he asked, with a macabre feeling that Johnson was going to answer in the affirmative.

  “We don’t know. The switch was in the on position, but the tripod was overturned and the camera was on the floor. Its cassette door was open, and there was no tape inside. The plug was out of the wall, and the battery was dead as well.”

  Henry tried to imagine a scenario that could have led to such circumstances.

  “Had Viola Turner made any tapes for you prior to last night?” Johnson asked.

  “None that I know of. Did you find an audio recorder in the house?”

  The DA’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”

  “I left a handheld analog voice recorder with Viola after my first visit, for the same reason I left the video camera a week later.”

  Johnson wrote something on a piece of paper. “The sheriff’s department searched the house, but no tape recorder was found. What brand was it?”

  “Olympus.”

  Johnson noted this. “The killer must have stolen that as well, then. Do you know if Mrs. Turner had recorded anything on that?”

  “No idea.”

  Shad frowned and looked down at his desk.

  “How did she die?” Henry asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Morphine overdose, almost certainly. That’s off the record. We’ll have to wait on the toxicology report to be sure.”

  Glancing at his camcorder, Henry felt the burn of acid in his stomach. Still attached to the back of the Sony was a rectangle of beige plastic, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes. This was a Superstream hard drive, an accessory Henry had mounted before he left the camcorder at Viola’s house. A filmmaker friend had told him about the drives while working on a documentary about Henry’s investigations. The Superstream could be set to record simultaneously with the camera’s tape heads, which not only eliminated the laborious process of capturing taped video onto a computer drive before editing could begin, but also made the DV tape a backup of what was on the hard drive. The Superstream could also be set to begin recording when the mini-DV tape ran out, extending available recording time if you were stuck somewhere without extra tapes. Henry rarely kept extra tapes on hand, so he usually left the unit in that mode. He was almost sure the Superstream had been set that way when he left the camera at Viola’s house. Which means there might be something recorded on the hard drive right now—

  “What is it?” the district attorney asked sharply. “Why are you staring at the camera?”

  Henry was tempted to say nothing. Johnson probably meant to return the camcorder to him; Henry could almost certainly walk out of here with whatever was r
ecorded on the drive. But though he disliked the DA, he believed in the rule of law. If there was something on that hard drive, it might be evidence of a crime. And if he walked out of this office without telling the DA about it, he would probably be committing a crime himself. Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t think twice about filching evidence like that, but Henry couldn’t do it. That was probably why he worked at a weekly paper with only five thousand paid subscribers.

  “The camcorder might have recorded something,” he said in a monotone.

  “So what?” Johnson said. “The tape’s gone.”

  Henry almost held his silence, but his sense of fair play pushed him on. “There may be a recording attached to the camera. Now.”

  Johnson’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

  Henry explained about the hard drive. The DA was clearly no computer whiz, but eventually he understood. At Johnson’s instruction—which he barked out like a military order—Henry dismounted the Superstream from the Sony and laid it on the mammoth desk. Then he opened his briefcase and took out his PowerBook.

  “Can’t you just plug the drive into my computer?” Johnson asked.

  “No. You have a PC. This drive takes a special program to view, and I only have the Mac version. If you have a FireWire port and cable, I can set things up so that a converted copy will be sent to your computer while we watch the original on mine. You’ll be able to watch that copy on your PC afterward.”

  “There’s no ‘we,’ ” Johnson said firmly. “I’m viewing the tape alone.”

  “It’s not a tape,” Henry said patiently. “It’s a digital file on a hard drive. And that hard drive belongs to my newspaper.” This was not strictly true. Henry had purchased the Superstream with his own money; the Beacon didn’t have the budget for that kind of equipment, and if he weren’t divorced with a grown child, he wouldn’t, either.

  “That drive may contain evidence in a murder case,” Johnson argued. “I’ll make the decision about what’s going to happen to it after I’ve seen what’s on it.”

  Henry thought about this. “I don’t think you can legally keep me from seeing what’s on my newspaper’s hard drive. But whatever you decide now, I’m taking my computer with me. It’s not evidence in a trial, and all my work is on it. So you’d better let me make you a copy you can watch on your computer.”

  While Johnson left the office to find a FireWire cable, Henry made a fast decision. After opening the program that would play the video file on the hard drive, he altered its settings so that the file would be copied to his PowerBook’s hard drive at the same time it was being converted and streamed to the district attorney’s computer. In all probability there was nothing on the drive, but if there was, Henry would leave the office with his own copy. By the time Shad returned, Henry was standing beside the DA’s Wall of Respect, looking at a photo of Johnson with Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, celebrities whose stock had fallen quite a bit since the days of Shad’s mayoral campaign against Wiley Warren.

  “This what you need?” Johnson asked, holding out a FireWire cable.

  Henry made the necessary connections, then set the program so that all the DA would have to do was tap the PowerBook’s trackpad to play the file.

  “Time for you to go,” Shad said. “How do I watch the tape?”

  It’s not a tape, Henry repeated silently. “Just tap the trackpad on my Mac. That’ll engage the play button on the screen. Do you want me to start it for you?”

  “Yes. But as soon as you hit play, go out to my assistant’s office. I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

  Henry touched the trackpad, and the light on the Superstream began to blink. A clattering sound emerged from the Mac’s speakers, then something like a strangled wail.

  “Get out!” Shad ordered.

  As Henry moved toward the door, he glanced down and saw the familiar image of Viola Turner’s sickbed. The woman herself was rolling across it as though trying to escape from some predatory animal. His heart leaped into his throat.

  “Get out!” the DA shouted.

  Henry hurried into the anteroom and shut the door behind him, his pulse still accelerating. The drive had recorded something. And whoever had stolen the DV tape from the camera hadn’t realized that. And why would they? Few laymen would recognize a Superstream video drive, and the idea of old Ku Klux Klansmen recognizing advanced digital technology almost made him laugh. Henry hoped Shad Johnson wouldn’t notice the PowerBook’s hard drive thrumming as it copied the file from the Superstream. The DA would probably be too absorbed with whatever was on his own screen to notice the whirring of the Mac’s drive motor; also, his clunky desktop PC would be droning and clicking like an old washing machine as it copied the video stream.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Sexton?” asked the DA’s assistant.

  Henry wiped his forehead, and his hand came away covered in sweat. He hadn’t realized how anxious he was. What the hell? he thought with amazement. I’m copying evidence in a criminal case without permission. Technically the hard drive belonged to him, of course, but still. Shad Johnson wouldn’t hesitate to jail him over something like that. “Do you have any water?”

  “Through that door, down the hall.”

  Henry found a water dispenser down the hall and drank two Dixie cups dry. Even the brief image of Viola Turner in obvious distress had shaken him to the core. Johnson’s revelation that he suspected Tom Cage of assisted suicide—or even murder—was too momentous for Henry to focus on now. He felt like an idiot for spending more than four hours with Viola Turner and failing to inspire enough faith for her to confide in him. After a third cup of water, he gathered himself, went back to the anteroom, and sat down.

  “Wasn’t there a woman receptionist the last time I was here?” he asked distractedly.

  “She got pregnant,” the young man said with apparent disdain.

  Henry checked his watch twenty times before the DA’s door opened again, his mind on his upcoming interview across the river. Glenn Morehouse knew enough about the Double Eagles to break a dozen murder cases wide open, and Henry wasn’t about to postpone talking to him. If Shad Johnson didn’t come out of his office within five minutes, Henry was going to leave. He could retrieve his computer later. More than thirty minutes had passed since he’d started the video player for the DA. That made sense; the Superstream could hold thirty minutes of video at maximum resolution. What had Shad Johnson witnessed in that span of time? An assisted suicide? Or a brutal murder?

  Thirty seconds before Henry’s self-imposed deadline, Johnson’s office door opened. With a sober look, the DA beckoned him back inside. Henry tried to read Johnson’s eyes, but he couldn’t tell much.

  As soon as Shad closed the door behind Henry, he said, “That hard drive is evidence, Mr. Sexton. It’ll have to go into the evidence room at the sheriff’s department.”

  “What’s on it?”

  Shad sat down behind his desk. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “That’s my newspaper’s property, sir.”

  “It’s evidence in a criminal case. End of discussion.”

  “What about freedom of the press?”

  Johnson gave him a thin smile. “In this situation, that and four dollars will buy you a cup of coffee. You can file a protest or hire a constitutional specialist, but that disk drive is going to the evidence room.”

  Henry considered arguing further for appearance’s sake, but he didn’t have the time or the energy for a show. As long as he got out of the office with his PowerBook, he would have his own copy of the video file.

  “Mr. Sexton,” Johnson said, “you’re a serious journalist, and I know you care about people. I’m going to ask you not to tell anyone about the existence of this tape. I feel pretty sure you won’t do it immediately in any case, because you write for a weekly paper and you don’t want Caitlin Masters at the Examiner getting the jump on you.”

  Henry colored but said nothing.

  “This case is very del
icate,” Johnson continued. “I’m going to proceed with the utmost caution and deliberation. Do you understand?”

  “You mean it involves the mayor’s father, and you don’t want your ass hanging out on a limb until you know you’re right.”

  Shad raised his right hand and pointed at Henry. “Don’t fuck with me, Henry. I’m not a man you want for an enemy.”

  Henry believed this, but he’d irritated more frightening people than Shadrach Johnson in his time. “Does the drive show an assisted suicide? Or a murder?”

  Johnson turned the question back on him. “Do you know why anyone would want to murder Mrs. Turner?”

  Henry swallowed hard, but he held his silence.

  “Take your computer and go, Mr. Sexton. I may ask you to appear before a grand jury in the near future.”

  There it was. All Henry had to do was pack his Mac into his briefcase and leave. Yet he stood rooted to the carpet, like a Cub Scout itching to confess a lie.

  “What’s the matter?” Johnson asked.

  “There’s something you should know,” Henry said awkwardly.

  “What?”

  “Members of the Double Eagle group threatened to kill Viola Turner if she ever returned to Natchez.”

  Shad thought about this for a few moments. “When was this threat made?”

  “Before she moved to Chicago.”

  The DA looked confused. “You mean forty years ago?”

  “That’s right. Mrs. Turner told me this during our second interview.”

  “You’re talking about the Ku Klux Klan?”

  “Not the Ku Klux Klan,” Henry said, making his annoyance plain. “The Double Eagles. They killed a lot of people, and they probably kidnapped and killed Mrs. Turner’s brother.”

  Shad snorted. “Are you suggesting that some seventy-year-old men went over and killed Viola Turner at five o’clock this morning?”

  “I’m just telling you what I know.”

  “What was the basis of this threat?”

  “I believe the Double Eagles knew—or at least believed—that Viola Turner possessed information that could have convicted them for her brother’s murder.” Henry stopped, then added, “There’s also some evidence that the Double Eagles gang-raped Viola Turner back in 1968.”