Natchez Burning (Penn Cage)

by Greg Iles

  For a several moments, Henry couldn’t find his voice. Obviously Snake had not performed the cleanup duties on his own. But what was the point in pushing Morehouse on this question? Finally, Henry cleared his throat and asked, “What about Commissioner Schott? Why didn’t he talk rather than go to prison?”

  Morehouse laughed hoarsely. “Is that a joke? Ed Schott knew exactly what Brody was capable of. Seven years in a minimum-security federal prison is a cakewalk compared to what you get for ratting on Brody Royal.”

  Henry grunted as if in agreement, but inside, his nausea had begun to recede. Filling its place was a familiar emotion, the same one he’d felt for decades at any mention of Brody Royal—an anger almost impossible to contain. “Why did you tell me that story, Glenn?”

  “Because it’s Brody you’re after. But son, if you ever get close to him, you’re gonna find yourself playing the same game those girls did, or one like it. And that’s no way to die.”

  Henry heard real concern in the old Double Eagle’s voice.

  “Shit, my sister just texted me,” Morehouse said anxiously. “She’s in Waterproof. We ain’t got but twenty-five minutes left. I didn’t hear your engine. You still out there?”

  “Yeah. I’m coming back in.”

  “You sure you want to, after what I told you?”

  Henry knew this was his personal Rubicon. If he walked back into that house, he was putting his life on the line. “I’ll bring in a log for the fire.”

  WHEN HENRY ENTERED MOREHOUSE’S sickroom for the second time, the old man was pissing in the plastic urinal. Henry turned away and set the red oak log on the dying fire, then stirred the coals. Groaning in discomfort, the old man set the jug beside his chair.

  “Last case,” Henry said, sitting down beside the La-Z-Boy and flipping open his notebook. “March twenty-seventh, 1968. Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis disappeared from Natchez. Neither man was ever seen again. Were they murdered?”

  Morehouse nodded reluctantly.

  Henry felt a rush of euphoria. He was about to get a truth that had been buried for thirty-seven years. “Before we go any further, would you clear up one thing for me?”

  “If I can.”

  “Between the bombing of George Metcalfe in August of sixty-five and Jimmy Revels disappearing in March of sixty-eight, there were no major Eagle operations that I know about. Snake Knox ran over an old black man who’d registered to vote down in Lusahatcha County, and killed him, but no charges were filed. That seemed more like a crime of passion. Big John DeLillo shot a black man in Babineau’s Barbecue, but you told me DeLillo was never an Eagle. So . . . why the time gap?”

  Morehouse sighed heavily. “Simple. Frank’s boy got killed in Vietnam in July of sixty-six. Friendly-fire incident. A short artillery round blew him to pieces in the shadow of the Rockpile, near the DMZ. Losing his oldest boy messed Frank up something terrible. He stayed drunk for two years, day and night. He didn’t snap out of it till right before he died, and even then . . . aw, hell. I don’t want to think about that.”

  Henry felt like an imbecile. How could he have overlooked this? Sometimes you studied a thing so hard for hidden significance that you missed the neon-lit truth staring you in the face. “Frank died just one day after Jimmy and Luther disappeared,” he thought aloud. “Was Frank drunk when that pallet of batteries fell on him?”

  Morehouse nodded slowly.

  “Okay. Why did you guys target Jimmy Revels? Because he was registering blacks to vote?”

  “Did you know that boy?” Morehouse asked softly, staring into the fire.

  The question prodded Henry like a finger. “No,” he lied. “But I know he spent a lot of time in Albert’s store, just like Pooky Wilson. I’ve wondered whether that connection had something to do with why the Eagles targeted him.”

  Morehouse shook his head. “Ferriday was a small town. All the nigras knew each other.”

  Henry didn’t buy this. He decided to leap off the cliff he’d been avoiding since the interview started. “Jimmy Revels was also Viola Turner’s brother. The nurse who worked for Dr. Cage?”

  Morehouse just kept staring into the fire.

  “You must have met her when you worked for Triton Battery,” Henry continued, watching Morehouse in profile. “Wasn’t Tom Cage the company doctor?”

  The old man nodded, but he seemed a thousand miles away. Henry kept talking, trying to prod him. “Viola’s husband was killed in Vietnam, just like Frank’s older son. She got real close to her brother after that. She worried about the work Jimmy was doing. In February, Jimmy and Luther were attacked by the Double Eagles outside a drive-in. But then you know about that, don’t you?”

  Morehouse gave a sideways inclination of his head, but still he said nothing.

  “People thought Jimmy and Luther had been killed that night, because they vanished for so long. But they were actually hiding out at a place called Freewoods, way out in the county.” Henry started to mention the rumor he’d heard about how the Eagles lured Jimmy and Luther out of hiding, but he didn’t want to risk alienating the old man further by bringing up a gang rape. “Six weeks later—one day before Frank was killed in that accident—they returned to Natchez. They were seen cruising the parking lots of the redneck bars, and then they disappeared. Viola’s convinced that both Jimmy and Luther were kidnapped that night—a Wednesday—and murdered by the end of the week, probably out of revenge or rage over Frank’s death. She swore to me that if Jimmy had been alive after that, he’d have contacted her. I believe that.”

  Morehouse looked at him, suddenly alert. “You talked to Viola?”

  “I did.” Henry thought of the old nurse, somehow retaining her dignity as she lay in her sister’s house with scarcely enough flesh left on her bones to make an indentation on the mattress. “Twice, in fact.”

  “You flew up to Chicago?”

  This question took Henry aback. Would Morehouse have asked that question if he knew Viola had been in Natchez for the last six weeks? “I didn’t have to,” Henry replied. “Viola was right here in Natchez.”

  The old man’s eyes snapped to Henry, looking more alive than they had all day. “Say what?”

  “Viola spent the past six weeks in Natchez. Lung cancer.”

  Morehouse was staring a hole through him. “Viola Turner came back to Natchez?”

  “That’s right.” Henry paused before going on, trying to understand the surreal turn the conversation had taken.

  Morehouse was staring in disbelief. “She was warned never to come back here!”

  “Warned by whom, Glenn?”

  “Who do you think? Us. If Viola ever came back, she’d be killed. That was the deal. Like a postponed death sentence. Commuted, or whatever.”

  At some level, Henry realized, he hadn’t taken the force of the old death threat seriously enough. He recalled how quickly Shad Johnson had dismissed the idea of Double Eagle involvement in Viola’s death, and he felt guilty. “Considering her cancer, Viola probably didn’t much care about forty-year-old threats.”

  “Then she’s lost her mind,” Morehouse said, plainly speaking in the present tense. “I’ve got cancer myself, but I ain’t crazy.”

  Henry kept silent, afraid of saying the wrong thing. Morehouse seemed to have no idea Viola was dead. Before Henry revealed that fact, he would draw out what information he could. “Why was Viola threatened, Glenn? Did she know who killed her brother?”

  But Morehouse seemed to have sunk into himself again.

  “If she’d known who killed Jimmy,” Henry reasoned aloud, “she wouldn’t have made it out of Natchez alive. Would she?”

  “She damn near didn’t,” the old man muttered. “If it hadn’t been for Ray Presley and Dr. Cage, she wouldn’t have.”

  Henry raced through his mental files: Ray Presley had been a dirty cop in both Natchez and New Orleans. He had strong ties to the Marcello mob and was feared by everyone on both sides of the law. Stranger still, he’d been killed during Penn
Cage’s effort to solve Natchez’s most famous civil rights murder, which had also happened in 1968.

  “What did Ray Presley and Dr. Cage have to do with saving Viola?”

  The old man touched a knuckle to his forehead as though to ward off some evil spirit. “Ray’s dead, Henry. Best to pass over that bastard in silence.” A strange urgency came into his eyes. “Are you going to talk to Viola again?”

  Henry thought of the emaciated corpse from the video. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “If you do . . . you tell her I’m sorry. Okay? Tell her I didn’t mean her no harm.”

  Morehouse had to be thinking about the rape. “What did you do to her, Glenn?”

  Seeing dread in the old man’s eyes, Henry decided to press ahead. “Did you rape her?”

  Morehouse winced.

  “On March twenty-seventh of sixty-eight,” Henry said, “a rumor spread that Viola had been gang-raped by the Klan. I think you guys knew Jimmy and Luther wouldn’t be able to keep hiding if they thought Viola was suffering in their place. Was that just a story, Glenn? Or did you guys really rape her?”

  Morehouse struck out with one arm, as though to ward off a blow.

  “You need to tell it, man. Let go of this thing. That’s why you brought me here.”

  The old man clung to his silence like a shield.

  “Viola wouldn’t admit the rape to me,” Henry said softly, “but I saw the pain in her eyes. You took a turn, didn’t you?”

  Morehouse’s face had gone bone white, and his eyes looked wild.

  Henry forced down his disgust and laid a hand on the old man’s arm, hoping to appeal to his Baptist fundamentalism. “It’s God’s judgment you need to worry about, not Snake Knox. God already knows what you did. He wants to hear you own up to what you did, Glenn. That’s what matters to Him.”

  Morehouse jerked his arm away and pulled the crocheted comforter over the lower half of his face. Only his eyes and nose showed, like those of a terrified child after a nightmare. To imagine this pathetic shell of a man brutalizing a proud young woman like Viola Turner sickened Henry; yet he knew now that it had happened.

  “You just do what I asked you to do,” Morehouse said through the crocheted yarn. “Tell Nurse Viola I never meant her no harm, and tell her to get back to Chicago. Quick. I’ll pay her airfare if she needs it. She don’t deserve what Snake and the others will do to her.”

  Present tense again. “I’m afraid I can’t do that for you, Glenn.”

  “Why not?”

  All Henry’s senses kicked wide open, preparing to read the old man’s reaction. “Because Viola’s dead. Somebody killed her this morning.”

  The shock in the old man’s eyes was so profound that Henry acquitted him of murder on the spot. Morehouse worked his jaw, trying to gum up some spit, but he couldn’t seem to do it. The implications of his ignorance spun out in Henry’s mind. If the Eagles had fulfilled their threat against Viola—and kept Morehouse out of it—then that meant they no longer trusted him. Had the old man realized this yet? Was he gauging the odds of his survival even now? Henry didn’t think so. Casting his gaze desperately about the room, Morehouse looked like a man with a terrible sin lashed to his back, one that Viola’s death had cursed him to carry into the afterlife.

  Henry gently shook his arm. “The Eagles killed Jimmy and Luther back in sixty-eight, didn’t they?”

  Morehouse nodded like a man struck dumb.

  Triumph surged through Henry’s chest. He’d toiled for more than a decade to prove this. “Where are their bodies, Glenn? Tell me, man. For the sake of the families.”

  Morehouse stared into the flames as though hypnotized. The news of Viola’s death had pushed him into some kind of fugue state. But Henry could no longer restrain himself. He stood over the recliner and glared down without a shred of mercy in his heart. “You were there when they died, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

  The old man’s cheek twitched, but he held his stony silence.

  “What did you do to them, Glenn? Is that who you saw crucified?”

  “Damn your eyes!” Morehouse shouted, jabbing a fist up at Henry. “You don’t know a goddamn thing. Get out of my house!”

  “Why were they killed, Glenn? Why Jimmy and Luther?”

  “They were goddamn Muslims, that’s why! They was fomentin’ a Muslim rebellion. Snake knew all about it. They was running guns and all kinds of other shit. Hand grenades, dope, you name it!”

  Henry would have laughed, were the old man not so enraged. If the Knoxes had given credence to this kind of delusion, they were not only paranoid but stupid. “Jimmy Revels was no Muslim,” he said with quiet conviction. “He was Roman Catholic. He sang in local churches. And he sure never ran any guns. He was a pacifist, for God’s sake. That’s verified in his navy record.”

  “If he was a pacifist, what was he doin’ with a badass nigger like Luther Davis? Davis was a dope dealer and a gunrunner.”

  “Luther Davis served in Vietnam. Didn’t that count for anything with you guys?”

  Morehouse looked back at the fire. “I’ll tell what it counted for with Snake. Both them boys had tattoos on their arms. Luther’s said ‘Army,’ with an eagle under it. Jimmy’s said ‘USN,’ with the anchor. Neither of them boys was wearing their tattoos when they died,” Morehouse murmured. “Get the picture?”

  Henry shuddered. He remembered the indigo anchor on Jimmy’s arm. He’d seen it when the young vet had taught him R&B guitar riffs in the back of Albert’s store. Henry hadn’t realized that black skin would show tattoos until he saw Jimmy Revels’s arm. “Are you saying Jimmy and Luther were skinned alive? Is that who you saw flayed?”

  Morehouse shook his head. “Not like you’re thinking. Just the tattoos. Snake said niggers wearing service tattoos was an abomination.”

  Henry felt like he might vomit. But more than this, he wanted to send Brody Royal to death row at Angola Prison. “Tell me how all this is connected. Tell me about Ray Presley and Dr. Cage. How could they save Viola?”

  “It don’t matter now,” Morehouse whispered. “Not if she’s dead. But if you want to prove who killed them two boys, you find those tattoos.”

  Henry recalled some of the grisly trophies taken by serial killers whose cases he’d followed while working as a reporter. “Are you saying those tattoos still exist? Is that even possible?”

  “Oh, yeah. Anybody who knows about tanning can keep a thing like that for a hundred years. Just like a scalp or a hide. It’s all skin.”

  “Damn it, Glenn, think about what I said before. With one taped statement, you could put an end to all this. You could have Snake and the others behind bars by suppertime tomorrow. You could give all those poor victims’ families peace. And you could save your own soul. Isn’t that why you called me here?”

  Desperation shone from the old man’s eyes. “I’ll think about it. It ain’t just myself I’m worried about, you know? I’ve got family, too. I’ve got a son, plus two grandkids. They don’t live here, and they don’t much care whether I live or die. But I care about them. And Snake knows that.”

  “Glenn, you can defang Snake Knox any time you want. Brody Royal, too. They won’t be able to hurt your family.”

  Morehouse looked at Henry in disbelief. “You ain’t heard a damn word I’ve said, have you? Frank and Snake had sons, Henry, and most are on the wrong side of the law. This shit don’t die. It goes down through the generations. Look what happened to Viola! Don’t assume Snake done it. He would have wanted to, but he could’ve sent any number of guys to do that for him.”

  Henry thought about Shad Johnson and his quest to convict Tom Cage. “You’ve got to tell the DA what you know, Glenn. That’s the only way to protect yourself. If Snake ordered Viola’s death, and he didn’t let you know about it, then he already doesn’t trust you.”

  “And why should he?” Morehouse took hold of Henry’s wrist. “Listen to me. Ain’t no John Law gonna jail Snake. He’s got protection.”


  “What kind of protection? Brody Royal?”

  A curtain fell over Morehouse’s eyes. “We don’t have time to go into that.”

  “No?” Henry couldn’t bring himself to leave the house when there was so much to be learned. Yet his neural circuits felt overloaded. He’d forgotten to ask anything about Joe Louis Lewis, the missing busboy. Yet of all the unanswered questions sparking in his mind, the most fantastic found its way to his vocal cords. “Answer me one question. I know of at least three people that Snake Knox told he shot Martin Luther King. I always assumed that was bullshit. Just a drunk redneck talking. But the FBI won’t comment one way or the other. And photographic evidence from the scene suggests that the shooter fired from the mechanical penthouse above the elevator shaft of the Fred P. Gattis Building, not the bathroom of the rooming house across the street, where James Earl Ray was. Before I go, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me Snake Knox is full of shit.”

  Morehouse’s eyes had grown round and white. “I’m only going to tell you one thing about Snake, Henry. The motherfucker is crazy, but crazy like a fox. What he’s done or ain’t done, nobody knows but Snake and the devil himself. And in case you didn’t know, he served as a sniper in Korea.”

  A chill ran along Henry’s arms.

  “You watch your ass after you leave here,” Morehouse said, in the tone of a fellow soldier. “Don’t stray far from cover.”

  Henry glanced anxiously at his watch. “Please give me the bodies, Glenn. Without the bodies, Jimmy and Luther stay a kidnapping on the books.”

  The old man shook his head. “Not today. You ain’t proved I can trust you yet. And I don’t want to read all this in the Beacon on Thursday. You prove I can trust you, I’ll tell you some things that’ll scorch your eardrums.”

  Henry’s frustration finally boiled over. “I won’t print a damned thing you’ve told me! I swear it.”

  Morehouse glanced at the wall clock. “Wilma’s gonna come up the driveway any minute. If she does, we’re both dead.”