Deep South

by Nevada Barr

  Brandon tried to outwait her but lasted less than thirty seconds. “I guess you want to talk to me because I took Danni to the prom. I don’t know what Matt told you, but you can’t go believing what Matt Dryer says. Ask anybody. Matt’s a waste.”

  Fifteen more seconds ticked by. Anna heard them faintly marked off by the wall clock.

  “Look.” Brandon leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, full of boyish earnestness and the desire to please. “I cared about Danni, I really did, but she’d got wild. That’s God’s honest truth. She’d got to drinking and maybe into drugs, I don’t know. After the prom, I was going to break it off with her.”

  DeForest considered his words then changed them. “I would’ve stuck with her. Got her some help, you know. D.A.R.E. or something.”

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Anna sat. Oddly enough, it seemed the longer one lived, the more time one had. At eighteen, DeForest couldn’t stand it. “Danni got to drinking at the dance. I didn’t like it, and I left. End of story. If you’re fixin’ to arrest me, I want a lawyer.”

  Anna wasn’t fixing to do anything, so Miranda didn’t come into play.

  “After the dance,” Anna said. “Who went out to Rocky with you?”

  “Nobody. We ... I didn’t go out to the Trace. Me and some friends got some pizza, then went home. Maybe Danielle went out with somebody else.”

  “Who did you go out with after the dance?”

  “Just some friends.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember who you went out for pizza with?”

  Brandon said nothing.

  Anna came around in a new direction: “Mazzio’s?”

  “Huh?”

  “Is that where you went for pizza?”

  Nothing.

  “Pizza Hut? Papa John’s? Where?”

  “It might have been Mazzio’s.”

  “Might have been?”

  “What difference does it make? Okay, it was Mazzio’s. We went to Mazzio’s. Happy now?”

  “Easy enough to check,” Anna said.

  Brandon pushed back from the desk. He looked considerably younger than when he’d come into the office. Gone was the pose of being at ease. Anna thought for a second he was going to bolt from the room.

  “Do you have a cellular phone?” she asked, purposely jumping subjects.

  “A cell phone?” he said stupidly.

  “A cell phone.”

  “Dad does.”

  “Do any of your friends have one?”

  “Thad, I think. Why?”

  “What’s Thad’s last name?”

  Brandon didn’t want to answer, but there was no real way out. “Meyerhoff. What’s this about?”

  “Describe Thad.”

  “How do you mean? Like what does he look like?”

  “Tell me what he looks like.”

  “I don’t know. He’s thin. Maybe six feet tall. I don’t know. What do you want?” He was beginning to sound desperate. Anna liked that.

  “Color of hair?”

  “Brown, I guess.”

  “Long or short.”

  “Kind of short.”

  “Were you with Thad last night?”

  The pieces fell together. “I was at an away game in Meridian. Ask the coach.”

  “What time did you get home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Before five? After midnight?”

  “Ten, I guess.”

  “Then you were with Thad?”

  “We might’ve hung out. I don’t really remember. I mean it was just no big deal.”

  “Who went with you to Rocky Springs the night of the prom?” Anna asked.

  “I didn’t ... we took...” His mouth closed tightly, his lips a thin line.

  “Was one of the boys stocky, five-foot-ten or -eleven, dark hair, a football player and one a skinny guy, around six-foot, brown hair? Thad Meyerhoff maybe?” Anna described what she could remember of the boys she’d seen in the graveyard shortly before she’d found Heather.

  “I want to talk to my dad,” Brandon said.

  “That’s okay.” Anna got up, reached across the desk and shook hands with a now bewildered boy. “You’ve been a terrific help. I’ll let Ms. Mack know we’re done. Thanks again.” Anna smiled warmly and left quickly. She wanted to talk to Mr. DeForest before his son got to him.

  A few inquiries led her to Brandon’s father. He was the manager of the warehouse at the Sears in the Metro Center Mall on Highway 20 just inside the Jackson city limits. A helpful young man in khaki pants and shirt guided her through canyons of boxes to a small office with a picture window letting into the warehouse area.

  Fred Posey had referred to Brandon’s father as Colonel DeForest. Subconsciously, Anna had been expecting a much older man. Men her age, Vietnam vets mostly, didn’t tend to hang on to the title of their military rank after they left the service. She’d thought that was reserved for lifers, or men who fought in WWII.

  Mr. DeForest was probably Brandon’s worst nightmare, if the boy was imaginative enough to be plagued by nightmares.

  Once undoubtedly as good an athlete as his son and boasting as fine a physique, Mr. DeForest had seen his muscle turn to fat and congregate under his belt. all in front like a woman pregnant with twins, and yet Anna found him more attractive than his son. There was genuine concern in his voice when he expressed his shock over Danni’s death. They’d known Danni Posey for three years, ever since she and Brandon had begun dating steadily. Danni spent a lot of time at the DeForest house. “Her mama had sick spells,” Mr. DeForest explained delicately.

  When he’d finished what he considered the necessary pleasantries to make Anna feel at home, he seated her in his claustrophobic office and said: “Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. Pigeon?”

  Anna didn’t correct him. In this part of the world she assumed “Mrs.” was a title of respect, and this kindly man was giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  “We are trying to talk with as many people as we can who might have been in or around Rocky Springs the night that Danni died in hopes somebody might have seen or heard anything that could help us.”

  “We’ll sure do anything we can. What happened to Danni, that was just awful.”

  Anna wondered who “we” was but didn’t want to break his rhythm of helpful cooperation by asking. “I know some of the kids that were there,” Anna said. “Heather Barnes and your son said Thad Meyerhoff was with them and another boy—oh what was his name? Stocky, dark hair, football player type?” .

  “That’d be Lyle Sanders,” Mr. DeForest filled in helpfully. “Those boys are like the Three Musketeers.”

  “Did Brandon happen to mention to you or his mom anything he might have seen at Rocky the night of the prom?” Anna asked.

  “No. Not that sticks in my mind. The kids like to go out there. Makes the girls scared and needing protection is what the draw is, I guess.”

  “Or makes them pretend to be to get the boys to put their arms around them,” Anna said, and Mr. DeForest laughed. They were just reminiscing about the motives of their own youth. Seniors in high school now had resolved the kiss-on-the-first-date controversy by the time they reached fifth grade.

  “I know the kids went out that way after the dance because Brandon was telling his mom you all had cut a bunch of pines out of the campground there and it’s not near as pretty as it used to be.”

  Anna’d seen the stumps and asked Barth about it. “A lot of the pines on the Trace are diseased,” she said.

  “Ah. Anyway, I guess he and Danni had a falling-out. He didn’t seem to want to talk much.”

  “Had they been quarreling?”

  For the first time it seemed to sink in that this call might not be quite as harmless as he’d thought. Mr. DeForest’s face hardened. Anna saw the underlying toughness that had gotten him to the rank of colonel.

  “These boy-girl things run hot and cold,” he said carefully.

&nb
sp; “Was it running cold?”

  “I think they were growing apart. Senior year. Applying to colleges. That sort of thing.”

  “But they’d been together, what? Three years? That’s a long time at that age.”

  Colonel DeForest looked down at his desk. His hair was thinning on top, a circle reminiscent of a monk’s tonsure. When he looked up, the friendliness was gone. “I can see the direction you’re going with this, Mrs. Pigeon, but it’s the wrong direction. Kids don’t kill each other because of girlfriend problems.”

  Into the silence that followed came the memories of the high school shootings in the last half of the 1990s that had left children and teachers dead. Kids killing kids because of girlfriend problems. One of the deadliest had taken place in Pearl, just over the river from the city of Jackson.

  “Mrs. Pigeon, we all liked Danni. She was a sweet girl. But I’ve given you all the help I can, and it’s time I was getting back to work.”

  When an interview’s over, it’s over. Once Colonel DeForest compared notes with his son, Anna doubted he’d do much in the way of cooperating with the law and certainly not with her.

  It was four o’clock. School would be out by now, the Sanders boy and Thad Meyerhoff would have scattered. More important, Brandon would have had time to talk to them. She would be surprised if the next time she talked with them they hadn’t synchronized their stories. Synchronized to hide what? At that age, troubles tended to seem the same size, unwanted pregnancy as terrifying as assault and battery, cheating on an exam on a par with driving under the influence. Because the boys were lying to hide something didn’t prove that something was murder.

  The alligator with the clothesline around its neck, a prank gone sour that nearly killed her dog and could have killed or crippled her. The yellow line around Danni’s neck, the newly hacked eyeholes in a dirty sheet; they had the same half-thought-out, reckless disregard of the alligator prank.

  More and more, it seemed, murder, brutality, was just kid stuff.

  ★ 10 ★

  After five o’clock, when Anna got back to the Port Gibson Ranger Station, there were two messages from Sheriff Davidson on the answering machine. The first told her he had information to share from the day’s interviews; the second invited her to go with him to talk with Leo Fullerton, the Civil War re-enactor and Baptist minister, in Port Gibson.

  Anna erased them and stood for a moment awash in thought. This was business. She was new and female and single and in a strange place, a place where she was unsure of the rules. This was also social. Unless her romantic instincts had atrophied from years of neglect, the second of the sheriff’s messages was tinged with the odor of a date. The words had been too casual, too offhand, as if he too knew they’d slipped over some professional line and he was unsure of himself.

  Truth was, Anna wanted to go. She was interested to hear what he’d learned, interested to find out what the minister had seen, if anything, but mostly she knew she’d rather spend the evening in a patrol car with Paul Davidson than in her pajamas with Piedmont. It had been a long time since she could say that about a man.

  Feeling the unpleasant frisson of a woman with a hidden agenda, she dialed the number he left. It was different from that on the Rolodex she had inherited. Probably he was at home.

  Because of her tortuous thoughts, Anna was businesslike to the point of brusque. It was quickly decided she would meet him at the Port Gibson Sheriff’s Department, where he had a loose end from another case to tie off. They would go from there. She hung up wishing he’d been stereotypical: a fat redneck with mirrored sunglasses. Then there would be no danger of complications. She deeply resented the space in her brain that the machinations of interpersonal relationships required. Lady Macbeth crying “Unsex me!” suddenly didn’t strike her as unsympathetic.

  The door banged open and she started guiltily, caught in the act of thinking about a boy. A man in a suit and tie came in. It took her a second to recognize George Wentworth out of uniform. Behind him was a handsome youth in blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “You’re working late,” Wentworth said. “I’d like you to meet my son Lockley. I’ll just be a second. I’ve got to pick up some paperwork I need to fax.” The Port Gibson Ranger Station had yet to stumble into the age of the fax machine. They still used the local drugstore. George disappeared into his office.

  “Anna Pigeon,” Anna said, proffering her hand. “Your dad has told me a lot about you.”

  Lockley took her fingertips and shook them gingerly. Lockley Wentworth, for all his bulk and youthful vitality, looked drawn and pale. Anna’d never seen an African-American look pale, but he did. The skin around his eyes and mouth was drawn and had a grayish cast under the dark pigmentation. “Are you okay?” she asked impulsively.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lock replied politely. He didn’t sound it, and he didn’t meet her eye.

  “Your dad says you’re being courted by the big leagues,” Anna tried.

  “The pros. Yes, ma’am.”

  The fellow didn’t want to talk. That was fine with Anna. “I’m off, George,” she called. “Don’t bother to close the gate. Nice to meet you, Lockley,” and she escaped to the sanctity of her patrol car. Though she’d cleaned it, it still smelled of blood and urine where Taco had lain. Yet another reason to be glad the dog had survived. Living with a constant reminder of his demise would have been hard to take.

  Port Gibson was the city the Civil War re-enactors told her retained its historical aspect because General Ulysses S. Grant had declared it “too beautiful to burn.” Its glory days were gone. There were still beautiful houses and gardens that had been cultivated for more than a century, but many of the old buildings were in sore need of paint and repair. The courthouse, grand and domed, seemingly too large for the shrunken city, lorded it over a shabby Main Street with an air of genteel poverty.

  Behind the courthouse was the uninspired low-roofed building that housed the Sheriff’s Department. On her tour the first day with George Wentworth, they’d driven by, but Anna’d never been inside. Familiarizing herself with it was one of the many things on her list that had been preempted by the murder investigation. Because of the vagaries of law, jurisdiction and accreditation, any individuals arrested on the Natchez-to-Jackson stretch of the Trace had to be brought to Port Gibson for incarceration.

  Davidson’s car was out front. Anna parked beside it.

  Inside, the Sheriff’s Department was even more depressing than most. A waiting room steeped in pain neglected was watched over by a glassed-in kiosk where a black woman buzzed the unfortunates and their keepers through a double-door setup, a sort of crime airlock. The only cheery note was the department’s uniform. The woman in the kiosk wore a nifty burgundy number.

  Anna introduced herself.

  “I’m Cameron. We been hearin’ about y’all,” the policewoman said. “It’s this big deal. Like there haven’t been policewomen down here forever. Glad to finally meet you.”

  After stowing her weapon in a lockbox outside the jail area, Anna was ushered into the inner sanctum, where Cameron showed her the location of the Breathalyzer and the grim double row of locked doors. Prisoners, bored, hungover, angry, shouted questions in hopes of getting a crumb of attention. Anna ignored them. Cameron knew them by name and was good-natured about the distraction.

  Davidson was waiting when Anna reclaimed her weapon and her freedom. The sun had set and the velvet evening was upon them. In her mind, Anna heard the strains of the old song “Blue Velvet.” Blue velvet was the night, the lyric went. The songwriter must have been from the South. The sky was a deep blue pricked with stars.

  Murder proved a nice distraction and, as the sheriff told her of his day’s findings, Anna relaxed into the familiar role with which work always provided her. A comfortable place where reason and not emotion was the most effective tool.

  “The boys are going to stonewall,” Davidson said as he backed his vehicle out of the lot. “My deputy got to the two you
’d named, Thad Meyerhoff and Lyle Sanders, but the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. They’re saying they were drunk prom night and remember nothing. My guess is that’ll be Brandon DeForest’s story when next we talk to him.”

  “The Three Musketeers: one for all and all for one,” Anna said, then explained, telling him of her interviews with Brandon and his father.

  “Colonel DeForest and the Meyerhoffs are good people,” Davidson said. “They won’t take kindly to their sons saying they were so drunk they blacked out. Whatever those boys are hiding, they’ve got to figure it’ll get them in worse trouble than admitting to drunkenness.”

  “If I hadn’t actually seen those two boys—probably Sanders and Meyerhoff—in the graveyard, the story they made up would probably have been less toxic,” Anna said. “Maybe the three of them playing cards or night fishing together.”

  “No doubt.”

  “How about the Sanderses? Are they ‘good people’?”

  “Lyle’s father is an abusive alcoholic. Hearing Lyle admit to the family failing, my guess is he’ll beat that boy half to death.”

  They ruminated on that for a while, the silence in the car deepened by the crackling worries of the police radio. What would a kid take a beating to avoid? Jail? A murder rap?

  “Do you think they killed Danni Posey?” Anna asked.

  “I sure don’t want to.”

  Neither did she. “What did you get from our used-car salesman, McIntire?”

  “Not much. He said they’d had a little too much bourbon and went to bed early. He slept right through the cars and the shouting that the other campers complained of. Says he knew nothing about it till the next morning.”

  “It seems alcohol’s the excuse du jour in these parts,” Anna said.

  “Everybody everywhere drinks too much. It’s just in Mississippi most folks don’t waste time going to AA meetings in between.”

  That was the first cynical remark Anna’d heard him make. She liked him better for it. Saints had a way of wearing on the nerves of the less exalted.