Turning Angel

SEVEN

Drew’s blackmailers lost no time making him pay for his indecisiveness. At 11:10 the next morning, I was helping my mother paint some bookshelves in her garage when my cell phone rang. The screen showed Drew as the caller. I walked out of the garage under the pretext of getting better cell reception, then answered by saying, “Are you as sore as I am?”

“You were right,” he said. “I’m fucked.”

A current of anxiety shot through me, but experience kept my voice calm. “What’s happened?”

“I just got off the phone with Shad Johnson. He got an anonymous call this morning.”

“Let me guess. The caller said you were having an affair with Kate Townsend and that you might have killed her.”

“Yep.”

“Did he give any details?”

“Johnson didn’t say so.”

“What did Shad ask you during the call? Did he ask straight out if the accusation was true?”

“No. He basically said, ‘Doc, I hate to have to call you about this, but I got this call with an accusation, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t ask you about it.’ He was pretty friendly, actually.”

“Shad Johnson is not your friend.”

“I understand that. I was just giving you his tone. He said he wanted to give me a chance to deny it as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t become any kind of thing.”

“‘Thing’? That was his word?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s already a thing, Drew. You can bet your ass on that. Did you flat-out deny that you were seeing Kate?”

“No.”

I sighed with relief.

“I acted stunned,” he said, “which I was. I told him I was too shocked even to respond to such an outrageous accusation, that Kate was a close friend of our family, and that we’d been shattered by her death. Shad said he understood. He said he’d like to talk to me about it at his office. He said I might have information about Kate that could help them piece together a better picture of her than they have now.”

“What did you say to that?”

“What could I say? I told him I wanted to do everything I could to assist the investigation.”

“Okay. When is this meeting?”

“Lunch today. Fifty minutes from now.”

Shit. “Was it a short call? Long? What?”

“Short.”

“That’s because Shad got what he wanted. He thinks he’s going to question you on his territory.”

“He’s not?”

“Not unless you’re a complete moron—which, after last night, I’m starting to believe.”

“Penn—”

“Damn it, why didn’t you volunteer the information last night like I told you to?”

“You know why! I didn’t want Tim and Ellen to have to deal with it if they didn’t have to.”

“Well, now they have to.”

“What do I do, Penn?”

“You really need a lawyer now.”

“I told you that last night.”

“And I told you I wasn’t your guy. Not for this.”

“The meeting’s in fifty minutes!”

I bowed my head in resignation. The odds of finding a Natchez lawyer qualified to take that meeting were low, and the odds of adequately briefing one in time were nil. “Where are you now?”

“At my office. Seeing patients.”

“You’re off at twelve?”

“Yeah.”

“You just had an emergency.”

Drew was silent for a moment. “I’m skipping the meeting?”

“I’m going in your place.”

“Is that the best thing?”

“We need to get some idea of what Shad is thinking. I’d also like to know what the autopsy turned up. Shad probably has the pathologist’s report in hand by now.”

“I don’t want to think about that. This is Kate we’re talking about.”

You’d better get used to it. “Sorry. Now … we have a tricky little problem to deal with. Think before you answer me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“The first thing Shad is going to ask me is where you were when Kate was murdered. He won’t be obvious about it, but he’ll ask. And I happen to know you were at the murder scene. Where did you go after you left the creek?”

“Home.”

I was silent long enough for Drew to realize that if he was lying, he had better come clean then or stick with his story. “Was Ellen there?”

“No. She was at her sister’s place.”

“What about Tim?”

“The maid had taken him to his music lesson.”

“So nobody can verify that you were home?”

“I answered some e-mails soon after I got there. Couldn’t we use those?”

“Maybe. But depending on how narrow a window they’ve established as time of death, the e-mails probably won’t put you in the safety zone.”

“Tim got home around five, and Ellen about six.”

“Okay. It’s also possible that someone saw your car parked in that vacant lot in Pinehaven. For that reason, and for others I can’t predict now, I may decide I need to tell Shad the truth. Everything. Today. The affair, the blackmail, everything.”

Drew said nothing.

“In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think coming clean may still be the best option we have. Even lying by omission digs a hole they can bury you in later.”

A woman on Drew’s end of the line called out a blood pressure reading. Drew lowered his voice. “You’re my lawyer, Penn. I trust your instincts. Say whatever you think you need to. I’m innocent—of murder, anyway—and I’m not going to hide anything except to protect my son.”

What could I say to that? “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over. Keep your cell phone wired to your hip, and don’t answer any calls until you hear from me. Don’t talk to anybody.”

“I won’t.”

I hung up and turned back to the garage. My mother was watching me with a quizzical look on her face. In that moment I realized just how far my life had already slid off its accustomed track. After dropping Annie at school this morning, I drove down to the football field and searched it for my lost pistol. Failing to find it, I went up to the high school and told Coach Wade Anders to keep an eye out for it. Anders is the athletic director of St. Stephen’s, and he promised to have his assistants search the bowl again before any kids were allowed into it. He also asked if I knew anything about the switch box for the stadium lights being shot up. I told him I didn’t, but that I’d send someone to install a new box as soon as possible. He looked at me in silence for a little while, then nodded as though we shared a special understanding. Like everybody, Anders was building up capital where he could.

The lost gun problem didn’t end there. The land that Drew and I chased the blackmailer over is owned by a group of investors who use it as a hunting camp. I called the doctor who heads the group to tell him I might have lost a pistol on their land, and to ask his members to keep an eye out for it. When he asked what I was doing on their land, I made up a story about a troublesome armadillo rooting up the St. Stephen’s football field—an armadillo I chased onto their land in my single-minded quest to kill it. Remarkably, he laughed as though he understood completely.

“Mom, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I need to go take care of something.”

“Is everything all right?” she asked, her eyes making it clear that she knew better.

“Yes.”

“It’s not Annie, is it?”

“No, no.”

“Are you and Caitlin all right?”

“We’re fine, Mom. This is just some legal business.”

She went back to painting the shelves with long, smooth strokes of her brush. At sixty-eight, she works with the strength and flexibility of someone twenty years her junior. Being raised in the country does that for some people.

When I arrived at the house this morning, Mom held up the newspaper and asked me about Kate’s death. Thankfully, Caitlin’s staff had reported only the known facts, which left my mother as curious as the rest of the town. And like most of the town, Mom believes Drew Elliott hung the moon. She often says that Drew is the only “young” doctor who practices medicine with the conscientiousness of my father. What would she say if she knew that he was sleeping with Kate Townsend until the day she died?

“Be careful,” Mom called as I walked to my car.

“I will,” I called, thinking that was good advice to follow when dealing with Shadrach Johnson.

The district attorney’s office is on the third floor of the waterworks building in Lawyer’s Alley, across from the massive city courthouse. In a town filled with architecturally significant buildings, the waterworks is nothing special, a three-story concrete block with one glass-brick corner enclosing the staircase. I park under the courthouse oaks and cross the street, waving at one of my parents’ neighbors as she walks into the DMV office.

There’s no receptionist behind the door on the ground floor, just a staircase. As I climb the stairs, my errand weighs heavy below my heart. I’ve got to tell Shad Johnson the truth as I know it—up to a point, anyway. Drew had sex with Kate the night before she died, so I have to assume that the state pathologist has already recovered his semen from her body. And while no judge would order Drew to take a DNA test based solely on an anonymous telephone call, Shad may already have more proof connecting Drew to Kate.

Last night, Drew told me he’d been intimate with Kate for the past seven months. How many seventeen-year-old girls could sleep with a forty-year-old man that long without telling a single friend about it? If Kate told her mother about the affair, why not her best friend? And with Kate dead at the hands of a killer, how long will it take Jenny Townsend—however much she may like Drew—to tell the police what she knows? Shad may already have proof of the affair; he may have called this meeting simply to see if Drew will lie about it, using the lesser crime of sexual battery as a litmus test for deception before questioning Drew about the murder. I did the same thing many times as a prosecutor.

When I reach the third floor, a heavy female secretary with dyed-orange hair and a flower-print dress gives me a quizzical look from behind a glass partition. Five years ago Shad had a male factotum who dressed like Malcolm X, but he vanished shortly after Shad’s mayoral defeat. This woman was obviously expecting Drew, who is known on sight by most Natchezians. I’m pretty well-known myself, but in a small town no one ever quite attains the celebrity of the best doctors. My father is testament to that fact. He can’t walk twenty yards in Wal-Mart without being stopped by adoring or inquisitive patients.

“I’m Mr. Johnson’s noon appointment,” I tell the secretary.

“No, you’re not.”

“You expecting Dr. Drew Elliot?”

She looks confused. “That’s right.”

“I’m his attorney.”

Her lips form a perfect O, just like they do in cartoons. “You’re Penn Cage.”

“I am. I’m Dr. Elliott’s attorney.”

The expression of surprise morphs into an uncertain glare. “I know about you.”

“Your boss and I once went a few rounds over a civil rights murder.”

She picks up the phone and begins speaking in a hushed tone.

My statement about the civil rights murder is true. The irony of that case is that I, the white lawyer, was crusading to solve the twenty-year-old murder of a black man, while Shad, the black politician, was trying to bury the case to keep from upsetting the white voters he needed to win the mayor’s office.

The secretary hangs up and buzzes me through the door. “End of the hall,” she says curtly.

As soon as I enter the blandly painted corridor, a door at the far end opens and a black man a few inches shorter than I peers out, an expression of annoyance on his face. “Son of a bitch,” he says without a trace of Southern accent. “I was having a good day until now.”

“Hello, Shad.”

The district attorney shakes his head, then walks back into his office, squaring his shoulders for combat as he goes. I follow him inside and wait to be invited to sit.

As usual, Shadrach Johnson is dressed to the nines in a bespoke suit and Italian shoes. His hair has a little more gray in it than the last time we locked horns, but his eyes still flash with quick intelligence. My first impression of him was of a brash personal injury lawyer, and nothing in the intervening years has changed that. Shad’s jutting jaw greets the world with a perpetual challenge, his eyes project arrogance and mistrust, and his shoulders stay flexed under the weight of an invisible yet enormous chip.

“Your buddy’s not playing this right, Cage,” he says, taking a seat behind an enormous desk that looks like an antique. “An innocent man doesn’t send his lawyer to speak for him in a situation like this. Have a seat.”

Go for it, I tell myself. Turn on the gravitas and recite the lines you rehearsed on the way over: This is a very serious matter, Shad. Dr. Elliott was indeed seeing the dead girl, but he did not kill her. You and I have to set aside our personal history and help the police to find a dangerous killer. Dr. Elliott wants to assist the investigation in every way, but he also wants to keep this unfortunate matter from escalating into something that could ruin reputations and break up families unnecessarily.

I was prepared to say those things, but now that I’m actually facing Shad Johnson, something stops me. It all seemed so clear in the car: pay the short-term price for a long-term gain. But this office, as modest as it is, gives me the old feeling I had when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. Irrevocable decisions are made in this room, decisions about who will be punished and who will not. Who will spend decades in prison? Who will die at the hands of the state? For any prosecutor, Drew Elliott would be a juicy target, but for a man like Shad Johnson—a man who dreams of being governor and more—Drew is a prize elephant.

There’s no doubt that Drew would look better to a future jury if he told the truth now. But what other consequences might result? Natchez is a small town, and when small-town cops are handed a likely suspect, they don’t look too hard for another. Truth be told, city cops aren’t much different. And confessing to the affair with Kate would immediately open Drew to a sexual battery charge that Shad could use to jail him, should he choose to. No, better to keep my cards close to the vest.

“That’s a lot nicer desk than the one the last D.A. had,” I observe, stalling for time as I take the chair opposite Shad.

The district attorney can’t help but brag; it’s his nature. “I got it out of storage from the old Natchez Museum,” he says, rubbing the finely grained wood. “It came from the attic of one of the antebellum homes. Longwood, I think. Ironic, isn’t it? Me working at a cotton planter’s desk? I had it appraised. It’s worth sixty grand.”

I give Shad a level gaze. “I hope you’re not one of those people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Shad’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing here, Penn? Where’s Dr. Elliott?”

“He had an emergency at his office. He had to stay and handle it.”

“Bullshit. Your client’s scared. His dick’s got him tangled up in a capital murder case, and he’s terrified.”

Shad must have more than the anonymous call in his pocket. “How do you figure that?”

“Did Elliott tell you about the call I got this morning?”

“He said you mentioned an anonymous caller who told you some story about him being intimate with Kate Townsend.”

“That’s right. And the good doctor did not deny it.”

“Did he confirm it?”

“That’s what this meeting was for. For him to confirm or deny. Now he’s sent you in his place. The big-time mouthpiece. I didn’t think you practiced anymore.”

“I wasn’t practicing when I took the Del Payton case either.”

Shad looks like he just bit into something sour. My punishing Del Payton’s murderers after Shad had resisted reopening the case cost him just enough support in the black community to take the mayoral election away from him. But that’s old news. I’ve got to get a handle on his present intentions before I paint myself into a corner.

“Shad, let’s—”

“Stop,” he says, jabbing a forefinger at me. “You’re here because you want something.”

He’s right. “I would like to know what was discovered during Kate’s autopsy.”

Shad studies me for several moments. “And you think I’m just going to give that to you?”

“If you continue to pursue my client, I’ll get it one way or another. Why don’t we try to foster a spirit of cooperation here?”

“You haven’t done any cooperating with me so far.” He lifts a sheaf of fax paper off his desk and flips to the last page. “But I’m feeling generous. What do you want to know?”

“Time of death?”

Shad shakes his head. “We’ll pass on that for now.”

“Cause?”

“Strangulation. There was also head trauma that might have killed the girl if she hadn’t been strangled first.”

“Interesting. There are rumors going around town about rape. Nurses at the hospital did some talking. Was the girl raped or not?”

“The pathologist says she was.”

“Genital trauma?”

Shad nods slowly.

“Did they recover semen from her?”

“Affirmative. Both holes.”

His crudeness is meant to shock, but I saw too much rape and murder in Houston for this to bother me. “So, the killer had some time with her.”

Shad shakes his head, a strange smile on his face. “Not necessarily. The pathologist already ran serology on the semen samples. They came from two different men.”

A glimmer of hope sparks in my soul. “Multiple assailants?”

“You could read it that way.”

“What other way is there? You have a different scenario in mind?”

“After the call I got this morning, you can’t blame me for speculating a little.”

“I’m listening.”

Shad leans over his desk and steeples his fingers. “Let’s say Dr. Elliott was having an affair with this high school girl. In his mind, it’s true love. Then he finds out his prom queen’s been sharing the poonanny with somebody else when he’s not around. Her old boyfriend, say. The doc finds out, and he flips out. Maybe Kate is cruel about how she tells him—you know some women. So, your client starts choking her, trying to make her shut up. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s shut her up for good.”

“By that scenario, the girl wasn’t raped at all.”

Shad waves his hand as though at a minor annoyance. “Rape is a subjective finding in a dead girl. She’s not accusing anybody. So she had some genital trauma. Rough consensual sex can cause that. Hell, I’ve had women get mad if I didn’t traumatize them down there.”

“You’re reaching, Shad.”

He settles back in his chair. “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you something else for free. The St. Stephen’s homecoming queen was pregnant.”

Shit. “How far along?”

“A little over four weeks. And that—according to the laws of the great state of Mississippi—makes this a double homicide, Counselor.” Shad arches his eyebrows in mock concern. “The community’s going to be very upset by that idea, the murder of an unborn baby. You know, I can see some people speculating that Dr. Elliott was just playing with this poor girl—getting a little on the side—and when she turned up pregnant, he saw his nice little life crashing down around him. He saw thirty years in Parchman for having sex with a juvenile patient, so he killed her.”

I suddenly see a glimpse of the future. This case is going to trial, and Drew Elliott will be the defendant, whether he deserves to be or not. Thank God I didn’t march in here spouting his secrets. “The public shouldn’t be able to make that kind of speculation,” I say evenly, “because they shouldn’t associate my client’s name with this case in any way.”

Shad smiles and shakes his head. “We’ve got a simple situation here, Counselor. Somebody is making telephone calls saying your client was screwing the dead girl. I can’t control that caller’s actions. So you’ve got to assume that Dr. Elliot’s name is going to be in the street soon. The best thing Drew can do for himself is provide us a DNA sample and clear his name as quickly as possible. If his DNA doesn’t match what the pathologist swabbed out of the girl, nobody can ever say a word against him.”

Check and mate. If I’m going to come clean about the affair before the trial, now is the time. But the truth as I know it will only lend credence to Shad’s first scenario—murder committed in a jealous rage.

“You asked about time of death,” Shad reminds me. “If you’ll tell me where Dr. Elliott was during the hours surrounding it, I’ll give you the time of death.”

“No deal. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”

Shad’s eyes glint with a predator’s love of the hunt.