Turning Angel

He says nothing.

“You don’t come out looking too heroic in this, buddy. A cop would be reading you your rights about now.”

Drew looks at me with a direct gaze. “Probably so. But Kate wouldn’t have wanted me to destroy Tim’s image of me for the sake of her postmortem dignity.”

“Her mother might have. You said the blackmailer sounded like a black kid. What would a black kid be doing down at St. Catherine’s Creek? I don’t remember ever seeing any down there.”

“When was the last time you were down there?”

“When we were kids, I guess.”

“That was thirty years ago, Penn. A couple of apartment complexes you think of as white have gone black in the past ten years. A lot of the kids play down there. Smoke dope, have sex, whatever.”

“Do you think some random black kid would have recognized you?”

“Why not? I have a lot of black patients.”

“But earlier you said that whoever was watching you was probably the killer.”

“I think so, yeah.”

“You think Kate was murdered by some random black kid?”

“Why not? Some crazy teenager?”

“We’re talking about capital murder, Drew. Murder during the commission of a rape.”

“Happens all the time, doesn’t it?”

“It does in Houston or New Orleans. But Natchez is a universe away from there. Houston had two hundred and thirty-four homicides last year. I think Natchez had two. The year before that, nobody got murdered here.”

“Yeah, but in the last twenty years, we’ve had some seriously twisted crimes.”

He’s right. Not even Natchez has gone untouched by the scourges of the modern era—stranger-murder and sexual homicide.

“Only now I’m thinking it wasn’t one kid,” he says. “We just got shot at while we chased the guy on the motorcycle. That means two people, at least. Maybe there were more. Maybe Kate was waiting for me at the creek, and it was just the wrong time to be down there. Maybe a crew of horny teenagers was down there messing around and they saw her. Maybe they decided they wanted her, whether she wanted them or not. Like that ‘wilding’ thing in Central Park, remember?”

I don’t answer. As a prosecutor, I found that whenever a crime victim’s relative suggested minority-assailant murder cases as parallels, I needed to look more closely at that person. What I’ve learned in the past five minutes has fundamentally altered my perception of Kate’s death and Drew’s relationship to it. When the school secretary interrupted the board meeting tonight, Drew already had a good idea of what she was about to say. When Theresa Cook choked out that our beloved homecoming queen was dead, Drew felt no surprise. Only hours before, he had been pounding on her chest and kissing her dead lips, trying to breathe life back into her body. I’ve never thought of Drew as duplicitous, but I guess we’re all capable of anything in the interest of self-preservation.

“What happens now?” he asks.

“You tell the police about your involvement with Kate. If you don’t, you’re at the mercy of whoever was on that motorcycle. And his buddy with the rifle.”

“What happens if I do tell the cops?”

“At the very least, you can count on a statutory rape charge from Jenny Townsend.”

Drew shakes his head. “Jenny wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you crazy? Of course she would.”

He steps closer to me, close enough for me to see his eyes clearly. “Jenny knew about us, Penn. About Kate and me.”

I blink in disbelief. “And she was okay with it?”

“She knew I loved Kate. And she knew I was going to leave Ellen.”

Every time I think I have my mind around the reality of this case, Drew moves the boundaries. “Drew, we’re through the looking glass here. If you have any more earthshaking revelations, I’d just as soon hear them all now.”

“That’s the only one I can think of right now.”

My mind is spinning with new permutations of motive and consequence. “A minute ago you said you were thinking of carrying Kate up to her mother and confessing everything. Now you tell me she already knew about you. Which is it?”

“‘Confess’ was the wrong word. I meant tell Jenny how Kate died, that I’d found her. I felt it was my fault. I still do. I guess I said ‘confess’ because if I’d done that, everything would have become public.”

I mull over this explanation. “Given what’s happened, Jenny might change her mind about your relationship with Kate.”

“We were fine tonight. That house was full of grieving people, but Jenny and I were the only two who truly knew what was lost when Kate died.”

“Jenny doesn’t know you were at the crime scene, does she?”

“No. But I’m probably going to tell her.”

“I wouldn’t rush into that. Even if she remains your biggest fan, if your affair with Kate becomes public, Jenny may feel she has no choice but to demand your head on a platter. If it were known that she sanctioned your relationship, she’d be crucified right along with you.”

“Jenny’s never been too concerned about the opinions of others.”

“This is a little different than … Oh, hell, the point’s moot anyway. If your affair becomes public, the police or the sheriff’s department will probably charge you with murder. Spurred on by the district attorney, of course.”

“Shad Johnson,” Drew says softly.

Even the name makes my gut ache. Shadrach Johnson is a black lawyer who was born in Natchez but raised in Chicago. Five years ago, he returned to Natchez to run for mayor, an election he lost by one percent of the vote. A year later he won the post of district attorney, taking the office from a white man who had never distinguished himself in the position. The mayoral race Johnson lost happened to be going on during my investigation of the unsolved civil rights murder, and during the stress of that case, Shad revealed his true colors to me. The man has one interest—his own political career—and he doesn’t care who he steps on, black or white, to advance it.

“Shad would charge you in a heartbeat,” I murmur. “He has wet dreams about getting a case like this.”

“Anything for headlines,” Drew agrees.

I’m starting to think Drew may have been right not to call in the cavalry when he discovered Kate’s body. My chivalrous side is revolted by his callousness, but the modern world is not a chivalrous place. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished.

“What will the blackmailers do now?” Drew asks.

“You gave them the whole twenty thousand?”

“Yeah. I thought about stacking some bills over a newspaper, but the geometry of the stadium wasn’t right for that. I knew he’d have too much time to check the bag before I could get him.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just take your rifle down there and shoot the guy when he showed up.”

Drew looks uncomfortable. “I figured whoever it was would be watching me, looking for a gun, so I didn’t take it down with me. I figured I could sprint back up to the four-wheeler before he got to the bag. I’d scanned the whole stadium with the night-vision scope before I went down, and I knew nobody was close to the fifty-yard line.”

“Actually, you did make it in time to shoot him,” I observe. “Only I showed up.”

Drew nods, but I can’t read his emotions. “So, what will our motorcyclist do now? Will he try to milk me or will he turn me in?”

“No way to know. But he knows one thing for sure after tonight. Blackmailing you is risky business. He probably didn’t realize you were such a psycho.”

“I think he’ll keep playing me for a while. If he turns me in, he won’t get another penny out of me. No more drugs either.”

“You gave him drugs?”

Drew shrugs. “Just some samples. Nothing big. You know, that guy on the hill couldn’t shoot worth a damn.”

“He may not have been trying to hit us. Only to slow us down.”

Drew snorts at the idea of such half measures.

“Can we get out of here yet?” I ask.

He leans over the ATV where the big padded seat usually sits and checks the rectangular box that holds the air filter. Then he snaps the seat back on, pulls out the choke, and turns the ignition key. The engine turns over a few times, dies. He tinkers with something, then turns the key a second time. This time the motor sputters resentfully to life. He nurses the throttle with a lover’s touch, and soon the motor is roaring with power.

“Ready,” he says with a satisfied smile.

The trip back to St. Stephen’s is much more agreeable than the roller-coaster ride out here. If it weren’t for the wind chilling my wet clothes, I might enjoy it. Several times we startle deer, which freeze in our headlight with wide yellow eyes, then explode into chaotic motion like panicked soldiers. All the way, we watch the ground for my Springfield, but we don’t find it.

Drew brings us out of the woods on the high rim of the stadium, then drives swiftly around to the elementary school. I worried that there might be a police car waiting, but my car is still parked by itself in the shadows. A police patrol would probably be drawn to the glaring stadium lights before rifle fire. It’s not uncommon to hear rifle shots on this end of town after dark, as poachers spotlight deer out of season.

“Did you drive all the way here on your four-wheeler?” I ask, getting off the ATV.

“No, my pickup is parked behind the main building.”

“Do you need help loading this thing?”

“Nah, I’ve got some ramps.”

I reach for the door to my Saab, then turn back to Drew. “When was the last time you had sex with Kate?”

“Last night.”

“Did you wear a condom?”

He shakes his head. “She’s on the pill.”

“She got pregnant while she was on the pill?”

“It’s highly unlikely,” he says. “That’s what I kept telling her. She always took it on time, so the chance of pregnancy was really nil.”

Unless she got pregnant on purpose, I think, but I only nod and open my door.

“What is it?” Drew asks.

“By tomorrow, a sample of your semen is going to be on its way to a DNA lab somewhere. New Orleans is my guess. And if the cops get any reason to test your blood against that sample, you’re going to look guilty of murder. There’s only one way to prevent that perception, Drew.”

“Tell the police I was having an affair with her?”

I nod again. “Right now. Don’t wait five minutes.”

He cuts the Honda’s engine. “If I do that, the first thing they’ll do is ask me for a DNA sample.”

“It’s still better than the alternative. You tell them first, they see you as trying to help. You don’t … you’re guilty as hell.”

Drew ponders this. “If I were going to tell them, who would I call? The sheriff or the chief of police? Not Shad Johnson, right?”

Like many communities, Natchez has suffered from a long-running rivalry between city and county law enforcement. And Kate’s body was found right at the border of the city limits, which could cause serious jurisdictional problems.

“Whoever you tell, it’s going to get to Shad eventually. You might as well tell him first. The only way to play this kind of thing is get out ahead of it and stay there. If you volunteer the information, people can get angry, but they can’t paint you as a liar. Think of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Tell it now, Drew, before anyone beats you to the punch.”

“Everything? Even that I found Kate’s body?”

“I didn’t hear that question, brother.”

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“We have a saying in the legal profession. Every client tells his story once.”

“Meaning?”

“The first and only time you tell your story is on the witness stand. That way—until that day—you have time to adjust the truth to emerging facts.”

Disgust wrinkles his face.

“A cynical view, I admit,” I tell him, “but experience is a hard teacher. If I hear you tell me one story tonight, I can’t put you on the stand and let you tell a different one later.”

“But I’m innocent,” he says. “I told you that.”

Drew’s handsome face is a study in the complexity of human emotion. “Yes, you did. But you’re not acting like a man with nothing to hide.”

SIX

Mia Burke’s eyes go wide when I walk into the living room of my town house.

“God, what happened to you?” she asks.

“I got a little wet.”

She rises from her chair and drops The Sheltering Sky onto an ottoman. “You’re bleeding!”

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

She walks into the hall and motions for me to follow her to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, I see abrasions all over my neck and arms, and one long scrape on my left arm. The burn on my right forearm is red and throbbing.

“Shit,” she says softly. “Yuck.”

“What?”

“Your back is worse than your front. It looks like you’ve got a bad cut under your shirt.”

“Great.”

“You’d better let me look.”

I feel a little awkward in the bathroom with Mia. Two days ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now … “Just pull it up and see if I need stitches.”

She laughs at my cautiousness, then slowly lifts my shirt, which is stuck to my back. “It’s a slash, really. It doesn’t look too deep, but it’s dirty. Are you about to get in the shower?”

“Yes.”

“If I rub some soap into it, you can rinse it out in the shower. That should take care of it.”

She slips around me and turns on the hot water tap, then rubs soap into a blue washcloth until she has a thick lather. “Are you going to cry?” she asks, holding up the cloth and stepping behind me again.

“Let’s find out.”

The soap stings like sulfuric acid, but Mia has shamed me into silence.

“Are you crying?” she asks, scrubbing like a hospital nurse. I can feel her pulling apart the skin to clean inside the cut.

“Thinking about it. What’s Lifehouse?” I ask, remembering her T-shirt.

“A band, old man. You’d like them. I’ll make you a disk.” The humor disappears from her voice. “Did whatever you went to do work out all right?”

“Not as well as I hoped. But at least nobody got killed.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Right.”

At last she removes the burning cloth from my back. “I’m going to leave the soap in there. If you want it to stop hurting, go take your shower.”

“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”

She laughs, her eyes flickering with humor despite the day’s events. “Can you? Do you need me tomorrow?”

“After school, if you can make it.”

“Okay. See you then.”

She starts down the hall, but I call after her, “Have you heard anything else about Kate’s death?”

Mia walks back to the bathroom door. “Steve Sayers and his dad are down at the sheriff’s office right now, answering questions.”

“Steve was Kate’s boyfriend?”

“Figure of speech only.”

“Do you know where he was this afternoon?”

“He told John Ellis he drove down to his dad’s hunting camp near Woodville after school, to clean the place before turkey season.”

Woodville is a small logging town thirty miles south of Natchez. “Alone?”

“That’s what Steve told John. There may have been somebody down at the camp when Steve got there. I hope so, for Steve’s sake.”

“This time of year, I doubt it. So … Steve Sayers may not have an alibi.”

Mia bites her lower lip and looks down the hall toward the front door. She’s wearing small sapphire studs in her ears; I’ve never noticed them before. Suddenly she looks back at me, her dark eyes intense. “You don’t really think Steve could have killed Kate, do you?”

“I don’t know him. His parents either. What kind of boy is he?”

“He’s okay. Kind of red, I guess. He’s no brain surgeon. His dad’s a game warden. What can I say? He’s a jock of average intelligence.”

“Violent?”

Mia shrugs. “He’s been in a couple of fights, but then most of the guys I know have. The jocks, anyway.”

“Has the sheriff’s department talked to anybody else that you know about?”

“No. The police talked to Mrs. Townsend not long ago. That’s what I heard, anyway. They asked for the names of Kate’s closest friends.”

“Do you know whose names she gave them?”

“No. The truth is, Kate didn’t have any close friends. Not for the past year or so. I mean, we all thought of her as a friend, but nobody was really in her business, you know? Half the time, no one even knew where she was.”

The police are going to find this fact very interesting. “Did you ever ask her where she was? Or try to figure out where she might be?”

“Not really. Steve did, of course. Like I told you, he always insisted she had some secret boyfriend, one she was ashamed for us to know about. But no one ever saw her with another guy.”

I’m tempted to ask Mia if she ever saw Kate alone with Drew; she and her classmates might have seen them together and not thought twice about it. But there’s no point in alerting her to the true nature of that relationship. “Was Kate tight with any of the black kids at St. Stephen’s?”

Mia looks curiously at me. “Why?”

I’m not going to tell her about the blackmail call or Drew’s assessment of the possible caller. “It might be important.”

“Don’t tell me they’re going to try to railroad a black guy for this.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, from what I’ve read, that used to happen all the time around here in the old days. You know how it was. That’s why you took that civil rights case, right?”

“Yes and no. The truth is, I’m worried about ‘them’ rail-roading a white guy for Kate’s murder. What about my question?”

“Well, we only have four black guys in our class. We’re a pretty small class, so everybody knows everybody. But Kate didn’t have any special thing with any of the black guys. You talking about sex?”

“Not necessarily. Any special relationship.”

“I’ll ask around, but tonight my answer is no.”

“Okay.” I pull the towel tight across the cut on my back. “Thanks for staying tonight. I’m going to hit the shower now.”

She smiles and gives me a little wave. “Bye.”

“Hey, did Caitlin call while I was gone?”

“No. No calls.” Her eyes probe mine for a hidden reaction to this news.

“Thanks.”

Her gaze lingers a moment longer, and then she walks down the hall to the front door. “Tell Annie I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

The front door slams.

I’m almost asleep when the telephone rings beside my bed. I’m too tired and sore to roll over and look at the caller ID. I took three Advil after my shower, knowing that without them I’d hardly be able to move in the morning. The answering machine can get this one for me.

“Penn?” Caitlin says after the beep, her voice sounding clipped and very Northern after Mia’s soft drawl. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your earlier calls. I was at a party for a reporter who’s leaving the Herald, and the band was so loud I couldn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re sleeping now. Look, I got a call from one of our reporters at the Examiner. She said a St. Stephen’s girl named Kate Townsend was murdered today. Raped and strangled, she said, or at least that’s what it looks like. No autopsy until tomorrow morning. Have you heard about that? I think I played tennis with this girl at Duncan Park. She was really sharp, going to Harvard, she said. Well … I guess I won’t talk to you until tomorrow. I hope we can see each other soon. I know this sucks. I’m really getting a lot done, though. I may crack this thing soon. I hope the new book’s going well. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you. Bye.”

I was near to picking up the receiver when Caitlin signed off. I’m not sure why I didn’t. But I can’t help wondering why a Natchez reporter was able to get through to Caitlin when I wasn’t. And half of her message was about Kate’s murder, almost as if she were calling me to get details for a story. It’s not that I don’t want to share things with her. But I want her to be here to share actual experiences with me, not call for reports when things sound interesting.

A wave of relief goes through me when the phone rings again. I roll over onto one elbow and answer.

“Hey, babe,” I murmur. “Sorry. I was half sleep before.”

“Penn?” says a male voice.

“Yeah, Drew. What is it?”

“I was surfing the Web, and I found a site maintained by the Mississippi Supreme Court. They’ve got the whole criminal code posted there. And from what I can tell, statutory rape only applies to girls under sixteen, not eighteen.”

I blink in the darkness. “Are you sure? I remember the statute pretty well. Of course I learned it before moving to Texas for fifteen years. The legislature could have changed it.”

“Here’s the applicable language. ‘The crime of statutory rape is committed when any person seventeen years of age or older has sexual intercourse with a child who: one, is at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age.’ There are qualifications, but they all deal with even younger victims and the age difference between victim and perpetrator. It also says, ‘Neither the victim’s consent nor the victim’s lack of chastity is a defense to the charge of statutory rape.’”

“They must have changed the statute,” I say in disbelief. But even as relief courses through me, a sense of foreboding rises in my mind. “Drew … I think I read somewhere that some states were moving in this direction because there were so many suits being brought by parents who hated their daughters’ boyfriends. You’ve got two seventeen-year-olds having consensual sex. The guy turns eighteen and bam, the girl’s parents try to lock him up for statutory rape.”

“So, I’m in the clear?”

“Under that statute,” I say uneasily. “But somehow I don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.” What is it? I wonder, searching my memory for the source of my anxiety. “There’s definitely a sexual harassment issue here, but of course that’s a civil matter. It’s criminal charges we’re worried about, felonies in particular.” Suddenly, a voice is sounding in my head, the voice of my old boss, the district attorney of Houston: lascivious touching or handling of a minor … contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and then the big one, sexual—“Drew, are you still at your computer?”

“Yes.”

“Look up sexual battery.”

I stare up at the dark ceiling, listening to the clicking of keys and praying that my instinct is wrong. “What does it say?”

“Just a minute. Okay … uh …”

“Read it aloud.”

“Here … ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with (A) another person without his or her consent.’ I’m okay there.”

“Keep reading.”

“‘(B) a mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless person. (C) A child at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age, if the person is thirty-six or more months older than the child.’ Thank God.”

Drew sounds so relieved that I’m tempted to let him hang up and get a good night’s sleep. But I’m almost certain that bad news is coming. “Keep reading.”

“Okay. There’s a second paragraph. ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of …’”

His voice falters. “Drew?”

“Eighteen,” he whispers. “It says eighteen here.”

“Keep reading.”

“Oh, God. Oh, no.”

“Please read it for me.”

“‘… if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of eighteen years if the person is in a position of trust or authority over the child including without limitation the child’s teacher, counselor, physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, minister …’”

Drew’s voice sounds like that of a man being sedated before an operation, a monotone fading into nothingness. “You can stop, Drew.”

He continues as though he can’t hear me over the print screaming from his computer monitor. “‘… priest, physical therapist, chiropractor, legal guardian, parent, stepparent, aunt, uncle, scout leader or coach.’”