Turning Angel

THREE

“Penn?” Drew says, breathing shallowly. “Are you there?”

My old friend’s words have paralyzed me in the study of my house. “Twenty thousand dollars cash in an hour? At nine o’clock at night? That’s crazy. That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not. I have the cash. We have a safe here in the house. Three, actually. One for documents, one for guns, one for cash and jewelry.”

I should have guessed. Drew Elliott lives in a stunning Victorian palace sited on five acres in one of the affluent subdivisions near St. Stephen’s, a mansion that contains every technological gadget known to man. “Do you think the blackmailer knows that?”

“He said he knew I had the money.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“No. But it sounded like a black kid.”

“A black kid? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. He asked for drugs, too.”

“Drugs?”

“Prescription drugs. Painkillers. Anything I have. He said I should consider this drop as a down payment. His words. A sign of good faith.”

“I hear something in your voice I don’t like, Drew.”

“I know what you’re going to say, but—”

“You’re not delivering that money, brother. You have two choices. Ignore the call, or phone the police and tell them everything right now.”

Drew is silent for too long. “There’s a third choice,” he says.

“Drew, listen to me. There is no upside to paying this money. Just by showing up, you’d be admitting some guilt. You could also be taking your life into your hands.”

“Because the caller could be Kate’s killer? That’s what you were thinking, right?”

He has me. “I guess so.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

“Then you should call the cops. At this point, an act of God couldn’t keep your affair with Kate from becoming public. You have to think damage control now. It’s a hundred times better if the police learn the story from you than from someone else. Better for your family, too. Think of Tim.”

“I have until tomorrow morning to make that decision.”

“Don’t assume that.”

“Penn, the guy who called me probably murdered Kate. I want to see his face. I want to—”

“I know what you want to do. Forget it. Go home, mix yourself a stiff drink, and start thinking about what’s best for your son. That ought to be a change.”

Drew sucks in air as though I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “I know Tim needs me, okay?”

“You haven’t been acting like you do. Tim would be lost without you. And if you really think Ellen isn’t a good person, that’s twice the reason to keep yourself out of jail.”

More silence. “You’re right. Goddamn it, I just need to do something about Kate.”

“There’s nothing you can do. It’s time to suck it up and be a man. Kate’s beyond help. She’s gone. All you can do now is pick up the pieces of your own family.”

“Daddy?” comes a small voice.

Glancing toward the hall, I see my daughter poke her head around the kitchen door frame. Annie is a physical echo of her mother, a tawny-haired beauty with eyes that miss nothing. This is both a blessing and a curse, as I am continually confronted by what is essentially the ghost of my dead wife.

“Annie’s calling me, Drew. I need to go. You go home and calm down. I’ll call you in a bit and we’ll decide what you’re going to do.”

Silence.

“Drew?”

“I will.”

“How’s Jenny handling it?”

“It’s destroyed her. I had to sedate her. She ought to be asleep soon.”

“Jesus … okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

By the time I hang up, Annie is standing in front of me, her cheek pressing into my stomach. The one eye that I can see is full of sleep. She yawns, then says, “Where’s Mia?”

“Mia had to go home, Boo.”

“Aww. Mia’s fun.”

“I know. She’ll probably be back tomorrow. She said you fell asleep during the movie.”

“I guess I did. I already knew what was going to happen. Are you going to call Caitlin tonight?”

“Probably.”

“Will you do it now?”

“Let’s get you in the bed first. Then she can tell you good night.”

Annie smiles, then tugs me toward the stairs. I follow, but she stops at the base of the staircase. “Will you carry me, Daddy?”

“Nine years old? You’re pretty big to get carried these days.”

“You can do it.”

Yes, I can, I say silently, for some reason thinking of Annie’s mother. Sarah will never carry her child up the stairs again. An ache passes through my chest, like the pain from an old wound, and then I sweep Annie up into my arms and march up the steep staircase to the second-floor bedrooms. The old Victorians in Natchez have stairs seemingly designed to keep pro athletes in peak condition. I turn into Annie’s room, bend my creaking knees enough to pull back the covers, then slide her underneath them. She laughs and yanks the blanket up to her neck.

“Now call Caitlin!” she squeals.

I take my cell phone from my pocket and speed-dial Caitlin’s cell phone. She’s working a special assignment in Boston, as an investigative reporter for the Herald. I met Caitlin when her father, a newspaper magnate who owns the Natchez Examiner and ten other papers in a Southern chain, sent her down here to whip the Examiner into shape. We got close during my efforts to solve a decades-old civil rights murder and during the trial that followed. Caitlin grew to love Natchez—and me—but after the excitement of that trial faded, along with the glow of the Pulitzer she won for her stories covering it, she realized that Natchez might not be the most exciting place to spend your days, especially when you’re under thirty and hungry for challenges.

After a year of living next door to Annie and me, Caitlin began taking assignments in other cities, mostly working on investigative stories for other papers in her father’s chain. We’ve remained committed to each other, and to our plan of marrying one day. But following through with that plan would mean changes that Caitlin isn’t ready to handle yet. Annie would begin to see Caitlin more as a mother, and would expect her to be around much more consistently. Caitlin has asked me about moving to a city—after all, I lived in Houston for fifteen years—but to my surprise, I find myself reluctant to leave the town where I grew to adulthood.

Caitlin’s phone kicks me to voice mail. “This is Penn and Annie,” I say. “We’re trying to get a long-distance good-night kiss. Call us when you can.”

“Voice mail,” I tell Annie, trying to sound unconcerned. “She must be working.”

“You should hurry up and marry her,” Annie says. “Then she can be my real mom. Then she can live here.”

I can’t help but feel some resentment. When the Herald offered Caitlin a plum assignment investigating further sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Boston, she almost turned it down. The job meant at least two months away from Natchez, and though we talked about flying to see each other on weekends, we knew that probably wouldn’t work out. But the offer came from a renowned editor for whom Caitlin had worked as an intern while at Radcliffe, and I sensed that if she said no, she would eventually resent it. I’m glad she took the assignment, but our fears about visiting have proved true. The sum of our recent contact? I’ve flown to Boston once, and she flew down to Baton Rouge for a weekend with Annie and me.

“She works this late?” Annie asks.

Lately it’s become more and more difficult to reach Caitlin at night. “It’s not that late for grown-ups. Maybe she’s working undercover.”

“Yeah, she does that sometimes,” Annie says thoughtfully. “Like a spy.”

“Yep. Now, shut those eyes.”

Annie opens her eyes as wide as possible, then giggles like a two-year-old.

I poke her in the side. “You’re a pain in the you-know-what.”

More giggles. I give her a kiss, then walk into the hall and descend the long staircase. “See you in the morning!” I call.

“Not if I see you first!” she yells back.

In the kitchen, I raid the refrigerator and construct a colossal turkey po’boy. I only had a salad before the school board meeting, and I’m starving. To keep my mind off Drew and his problems I click on CNN, but there’s no escaping. CNN makes me think of Caitlin, and thoughts of Caitlin bring me back to Drew.

The essential problem that has kept Caitlin and me from marrying is our age difference. At thirty-three, she is very much in the midst of proving herself in her chosen profession, which requires her to leave Natchez often. At forty-three, I’ve already succeeded in two different careers, and the only thing I have left to prove is that I can raise my daughter well. Having endured the problems that come with a ten-year age difference, I can’t help but view Drew’s dream of a real life with Kate as absurd. Did he plan to divorce Ellen and commute by air between Natchez and Boston in order to see Tim? He couldn’t have continued practicing medicine in Natchez. The local society women would have risen as one to boycott his practice and ostracize the former darling of St. Stephen’s Prep. How would Drew have introduced Kate to fellow doctors in Boston? This is my wife. She just graduated—from high school. Of course, Drew wasn’t concerned about such mundane matters. He loved Kate, and the rest of the world could go to hell.

But now the world may have its way with him. As the CNN anchor reads a litany of global crises, I make a list of the threats Drew faces. First, statutory rape. Given the age difference between him and Kate, he could get twenty years in Parchman prison. And since Kate was his patient, he could lose his medical license. Even if he doesn’t, the mere rumor of such an affair in Natchez could kill his practice. If Kate was raped, and physical evidence links Drew to her corpse, he could be charged with capital murder for homicide during the commission of another felony. In Mississippi, conviction for capital murder brings with it the very real possibility of death by lethal injection.

If Kate was in fact murdered, the police have a tough job ahead of them. By carrying her body to the emergency room rather than leaving it where they found it, the fishermen who found Kate deprived investigators of any chance to examine her body in situ. They might have lost or destroyed critical evidence. And since Kate was found wedged in the fork of a tree during high water, the actual crime scene is probably upstream somewhere along St. Catherine’s Creek. With today’s heavy rain, the police may never find out where she actually died.

Right now, detectives are probably focusing on the “helpful” fishermen, since these Samaritans may well have raped and killed Kate before taking her to the hospital. St. Catherine’s Creek has never been noted for its fishing, and it’s quite dangerous for boats during heavy rains. After interrogating the fishermen, the police will move on to Kate’s mother, her boyfriend, and any close friends who might have information about her last hours. That could take much of the night, and will probably continue through tomorrow. If the blackmailer didn’t exist—and if Drew is right about Kate not confiding their affair to anyone—Drew might just be safe.

But the blackmailer does exist, and my experience as a prosecutor tells me it’s unlikely that Drew will escape entanglement in this case. If he had sex with Kate in the last seventy-two hours, she may have traces of his semen inside her. A phone call from the blackmailer to the police would focus their attention on Drew. Any confirming piece of evidence linking Drew to Kate in an inappropriate way would prompt police to request a DNA sample from him. That would bring disaster in three to four weeks—the time it usually takes to get the DNA results in a rush situation. And when the police start searching upstream in St. Catherine’s Creek for the murder scene, they will eventually come to the bend where the two most exclusive subdivisions in Natchez come together. One of those subdivisions—Pinehaven—is where Kate Townsend lived. The other—just across the creek and through the woods—is Sherwood Estates, where Drew Elliot’s Victorian mansion stands. In the absence of other evidence, this juxtaposition might not suggest anything, but if the blackmailer gets the rumor mill churning …

The microwave clock tells me forty minutes have passed since I last spoke to Drew. Feeling a little anxious, I pick up the kitchen phone and call his cell phone. He doesn’t answer. I wait about a minute, then try again. Nothing. I hate to call his wife, given all that I’ve learned about their marriage, but I need to know that Drew is safely drunk somewhere, and not on his way to the St. Stephen’s football field with a bag of cash.

“Hello?” says a groggy female voice.

“Ellen? It’s Penn Cage.”

“Penn? What’s going on? Is Drew with you?”

I knew it. “No, I was actually calling for him.”

“Well”—loud snuffling, rustling of cloth—“I thought I heard him pull up outside a while ago, but then he didn’t come in. Maybe he’s out in his workshop. He goes out there sometimes when he’s feeling moody.”

“Is there any way to check without you having to get up?”

“Intercom. Just a sec.” There’s a burst of static. “Drew? Drew, are you out there?”

More static. “He’s not answering. He called a while ago and told me he was leaving the Townsends’ house. Maybe he got called to the hospital on his way home. I think he’s covering tonight.”

“That’s probably it. You get back to sleep, Ellen.”

“Sleep. God … I had to take a pill to even have a chance at sleep. I was really close to Kate, you know.”

“I knew you played tennis with her.”

“That girl was gifted, Penn. I think she would have made the team at Harvard. God, wouldn’t that have been something?”

“Yes, it would. I’m sorry, Ellen.”

I hear a sound I can’t identify. “We raise these children,” she murmurs, “we pour everything into them, all our hopes and dreams, and then something like this happens. If I were Jenny Townsend, I’m not sure I could handle it. I might do something crazy. I really might.”

“Well, I hope she finds the strength to deal with it.”

“It’s good to talk to you, Penn. We don’t see you enough. You should come by for a drink. I really liked your last book. I want to talk to you about some of the characters. I think I recognized a few.”

I give Ellen an obligatory laugh and ring off. Where the hell is Drew? I’m afraid I already know the answer. I start to dial my parents’ house, but it’s too late to ask my mother to come over. Instead, I dial Mia’s cell. She answer after two rings.

“Penn?”

“Afraid so. Is there any chance you could come back for about an hour? Annie’s asleep, but I need to go out.”

“Um, I guess so. Is it important? Of course it is. You wouldn’t call if it weren’t.”

“Are you with your friends now?”

“Such as they are. Everybody’s pretty freaked out. But I’m not far away from you, actually. I can be there in five minutes.”

“Thanks. I’ll pay you double your usual rate.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m on my way.”

I hang up and walk back to my bedroom, the only one on the ground floor of the house. In the top of my closet is a nine-millimeter Springfield XD-9 with a fifteen-round clip. I carried a .38-caliber revolver in Houston, but recent experience taught me the wisdom of having a large magazine. I keep the weapon close, albeit with a trigger lock to protect Annie. Unlocking the guard mechanism, I slip the pistol barrel into the pocket of my jeans and grab a waterproof windbreaker from the closet.

Waiting on the front steps for Mia, I call Drew’s cell phone again. When he fails to answer, I consider calling the police for help—but only for a moment. The risks to Drew are too great. When Mia pulls up to the curb, I give her a wave and walk to my Saab, hoping to avoid any explanations.

“Everything okay?” she calls.

I turn back to her. “Fine. Annie’s still in bed. I just need to run an errand.”

Mia nods, but I see suspicion in her eyes. I’ve never called her on such short notice before.

“What else have the kids been saying?” I ask.

“All kinds of things. But it’s mostly bullshit. You know how people are. Like you said … Natchez.”

“I should be back in less than an hour, but if I’m not, you can stay, right?”

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

I move toward my car. “I really appreciate it, Mia.”

“Is that a gun in your pants?”

I look down. The butt of the Springfield is sticking up in front of my windbreaker.

Mia isn’t looking at the pistol but at me, her eyes questioning. I start to give her an explanation, but nothing would really make sense. As casually as possible, I pull the tail of the windbreaker over the gun.

“Penn, are you okay?”

“Yes. Mia, you—”