Turning Angel

While I wait for the light to change, the blare of a police siren pierces my ears. Several vehicles behind me pull onto the grassy median, and then a police car with blue lights flashing screeches to a stop behind me. With nowhere else to go, I shoot across two oncoming lanes of traffic and pull my right wheels onto the curb of Jeff Davis Boulevard. The squad car roars past me.

This kind of thing is pretty unusual in Natchez at midday. Maybe that’s what triggers my intuition, but in any case I hit the accelerator and take off in pursuit of the squad car.

The blue lights swerve into a parking lot on the right side of Jeff Davis Boulevard. Sure enough, it’s Drew’s office. What the hell could have happened so fast? I wonder, skidding into the lot behind the police car.

And then I see.

A muscular man in a blue cap is brandishing a wooden baseball bat at Drew, who stands in a half crouch with his hands held out from his body. Susan Salter is screaming at the man to put down the bat.

Two uniformed cops leap from the squad car. As one draws a can of pepper spray from his belt, I see two other men lying on the ground not far from the man with the bat. One rolls over onto his back, clutching his bloodied face in pain.

“Drop that bat!” yells one of the cops, who’s holding a deadly steel baton called an asp.

The man with the bat jerks his head toward the cop, and at that moment I realize something alarming: the blue cap he’s wearing is a St. Stephen’s Bucks baseball cap, which almost certainly makes him not a man at all, but a boy. From the rear, his size and muscularity gave him the appearance of an adult. But when I read the letters on the back of his jersey—SAYERS—everything clicks. The boy with the bat is Steve Sayers, Kate Townsend’s ex-boyfriend.

“Why are you pointing that at me?” Sayers screams at the cop, his eyes blazing with anger or fear and maybe both. “He’s the one! Look what he did!”

Steve points to the men on the ground, and I recognize one of them as a St. Stephen’s senior. What the hell is going on? As the cop yells again for Sayers to drop the bat, Steve swings the Louisville Slugger in a great roundhouse arc. Drew ducks beneath the whistling wood, and Steve keeps spinning. As the bat comes around a second time, Drew springs forward and snatches it from Steve’s hands.

“Get back, Steve!” he shouts. “I don’t want to fight you!”

But Sayers is beyond rational thought. He lunges for Drew’s throat, his eyes filled with rage. With a lightning motion, Drew thrusts the fat end of the bat into Steve’s midsection. There’s an explosive grunt, and Steve folds over the bat and drops to his knees, sucking for air. In the same moment, a cloud of pepper spray envelops Steve and Drew. Steve screams, and Drew begins clawing at his eyes with his free hand.

“That’s enough!” I yell at the cop. “That’s Dr. Drew Elliott! I’m his attorney. There’s no more danger!”

“Drop the bat, Doctor!” the cop yells at Drew again.

“Drop it, Drew!” I shout.

But Steve Sayers isn’t done. Somehow he gets to his feet and charges Drew like a blind bull. Drew must be blind himself, because he takes the brunt of the charge in his belly. From reflex he pops Steve across the upper back with the bat, and this time the boy drops to the cement and stays there. Drew tosses the bat away and holds up his hands in surrender.

The cop with the pepper spray takes a pair of handcuffs from his belt, rushes up to Drew, and cuffs his hands behind his back.

“I was defending myself!” Drew protests, tears streaming down his face. “Penn, these kids attacked me. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t listen!”

“He’s telling the truth!” shouts Drew’s med tech, stepping forward.

The other cop has cuffed Steve Sayers and is now checking the other boys on the ground.

“What happened here, ma’am?” asks the first cop.

Susan Salter swallows and tries to collect herself. “Dr. Elliott and I were just standing here talking, and these kids drove up and started cursing. They picked the fight. I have no idea why. It was crazy! Dr. Elliott did everything he could to avoid it.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Susan Salter. I’m Dr. Elliott’s medical technologist.”

The cop turns to me. “You’re Dr. Elliott’s lawyer?”

“Yes, I am, Officer. Penn Cage. As you saw, my client was clearly defending himself. But as serious as this looks, it’s still misdemeanor assault, and I very much doubt that my client will press charges. He knows these boys, and I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding. Isn’t that right, Drew?”

Drew looks in my direction with tears streaming down his face. “Uh … that’s right, Officer. We were just horsing around, and it got out of hand.”

“Bullshit!” yells one of the boys on the ground. “That bastard tried to kill us! He broke my fucking nose!”

The cop points at Steve Sayers. “In that kid’s hands, a baseball bat is a deadly weapon. It looked like aggravated assault to me.”

The cop is right. Steve Sayers is at least six-foot-one, and he has the hyperinflated musculature I associate with the use of anabolic steroids. All three boys do, come to think of it, which makes me think of Marko Bakic and his little drug business at St. Stephen’s.

“Aggravated assault is a felony, Officer,” I say evenly. “Steve’s a good kid. There’s no reason to put a felony arrest on his record.”

“Everybody wait right here,” says the cop, who looks young enough to be a rookie. He’s not going to make decisions involving prominent citizens without some advice from a superior. As he goes back to his squad car to use the radio, I turn to one of the seniors on the ground. “What the hell were you guys doing?”

“Kiss my ass!” he barks. “That bastard needs his ass kicked. Fucking cradle-robber. Pervert.”

Then it hits me: They know about Drew and Kate.

I’d like to question Drew, but the second cop is standing too close to him. I try to catch Drew’s eye, but the pepper spray has rendered those organs useless for the time being.

When the young cop returns from his car, he walks right past me, informs Drew that he’s under arrest for aggravated assault, then begins reading him his Miranda rights. The other cop takes his cue and does the same to Steve Sayers.

“What are you guys doing?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster. “Dr. Elliott was clearly defending himself. You heard what he said during the fight.”

“Judge’ll decide that,” says the young cop. “Step back, sir.”

“The most you can arrest him for is simple assault.”

“I’m just doing what the chief told me to do.”

“The chief of police told you to do this?”

“That’s right. You got a problem, take it up with him.”

“I’ll do that,” I reply, but what I’m thinking is, Son of a bitch! This situation is becoming more political by the minute. The police chief should have ordered the patrolman to let Drew go, or at most to arrest him for simple assault, then release him on a recognizance bond. An arrest for aggravated assault can only mean one thing: the chief wants Drew and Steve in his custody. And the only reason I can see for that is the long-running turf war between the police department and the sheriff’s office. In the arena of that conflict, the police chief has been handed a gift from the gods. He can now hold Sheriff Byrd’s two main murder suspects in his jail for at least one night.

The boys cuss and spit at Drew as the cops haul them to their feet. One’s face is a mass of blood below the nose; the other’s left eye is already swelling shut. For a man defending himself against three assailants, Drew did a lot of damage.

A second squad car pulls into the lot. As the police herd their charges into the cars, I promise Drew I’ll meet him at the station. Then I pull Susan Salter into the courtyard of Drew’s office building. She’s hyperventilating now, and her tears are flowing nonstop.

“I don’t understand!” she says in a stunned voice. “This morning everything was fine, and now … everything’s upside down! It doesn’t make any sense. How could they think Dr. Elliott could do anything against the law?”

Is she talking about the fight? I wonder. Or about Kate’s murder? I take hold of Susan’s thin wrists and speak in a reassuring voice. “Listen to me, Susan. I don’t know how much Drew told you about his situation, but I do know this: he trusted you with his life. He told me you’d worked for him nine years, and that he had absolute confidence in you. What you just saw will be the talk of the town by tonight. If you add to that talk, it can only hurt Drew. Do you understand?”

She sucks her upper lip into her mouth as though thinking hard, then nods and wipes her nose. “Don’t worry about me saying anything. I hate gossip. That’s why I quit the hospital. All they do over there is cheat on their spouses and gossip about it afterward. I think they like the talking better than the cheating.”

“Will you tell me what you saw in the parking lot?”

She nods helpfully. “It happened just like I said. We were standing there talking about recombinant DNA, and this big pickup truck screeched to a stop beside us.” She points at a jacked-up orange pickup parked thirty yards away. “There were three guys inside. They looked like high school kids, but big, you know? I think Dr. Elliott knew them, because he waved and spoke to the driver. But then a guy jumped out of the backseat and started screaming at Dr. Elliott.”

“What did he scream?”

“Curse words, mostly.”

“Try to remember exactly.”

Susan has a primitive Baptist’s reluctance to utter profanity. “‘You motherfucker,’ I think he said first. “You sick mother-fucker. It was you. It was you all along.’”

Oh wow. This is only a preview of the community reaction to Drew’s secret private life. “Did Drew say anything back?”

“No. He looked too shocked to speak.”

“Go on.”

“‘You need your ass kicked,’ I think the boy said next, and then he jumped at Dr. Elliott like he was going to hit him. Dr. Elliott called him by name then. He told Steve to calm down and get back in the truck. But the kid just threw up his fists and kept jumping forward like he was going to hit Dr. Elliott. I was kind of freaked out, but not really scared at that point. It was so weird. But then the other two guys jumped out of the truck.”

“Is that when the bat came into it?”

“No. That only happened after Drew knocked the other two guys down.”

“Who threw the first punch?”

“The first kid. Steve.”

“Did Drew fight back?”

“Not at first. He kept trying to calm Steve down. But after Steve hit him five or six times, Dr. Elliott shoved him backward. Steve fell down, and I think that really embarrassed him. He screamed for the other guys to help, and at that point the other two guys jumped Dr. Elliott.”

“What happened then?”

Susan shakes her head as though in wonder. “I’m not really sure. I mean, it happened so fast. It was like Dr. Elliott knew how to fight and they didn’t. They were really mad, and they were screaming and throwing punches everywhere, but it looked sort of like my husband wrestling with my ten-year-old son. The second it got serious, it was like, over.”

“How did the baseball bat come into it?”

“Steve went down first, but while Dr. Elliott was handling the other two, Steve grabbed the bat from the truck.” Susan shakes her head as if reliving the fight. “It was scary. I’ve never seen Dr. Elliott like that. I saw him once at the hospital picnic. He played softball with his shirt off, and he was like, ripped, you know?”

“I know. I grew up with him.”

“But he wasn’t that competitive, not like the other guys. He was just out there for fun. But today … Dr. Elliott did everything he could to stop that fight, but once he knew it was going to happen, he just switched on. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

I can understand Susan’s awe. Steve Sayers and his buddies have been pumping iron seriously for two or three years. But their steroid-plumped muscles are no match for the speed and strength that genetics bestowed upon Drew Elliott at birth. And their teenage anger couldn’t begin to compare with the deadly resolve of a man who sensed he was fighting for his life.

“But in your mind, it was the other guys’ fault?” I ask.

“Oh, totally. Absolutely. They wanted a piece of Dr. Elliott, and they pushed him until they got it. Dear Lord.”

“All right, Susan. Will you be okay if I go on to the station now?”

She nods uncertainly. “I think so. Thanks for staying with me.”

“Glad to do it. And you’re not going to talk to anybody about this? Other than the police?”

“No, I understand.” She looks suddenly upset again. “Mr. Cage, is Drew going to be all right?”

The look in Susan Salter’s eyes tells me she’s more than half in love with her boss, but I don’t even want to go there. I nod at her as though any other outcome would be impossible. “You take care, okay?”

“I will.”

As I hurry back to my Saab, one thought fills my head: How did Steve Sayers find out that Drew was involved with Kate? But once in the car, another, more frightening thought takes its place: Who else knows about it?

NINE

Natchez police headquarters is a one-story building sandwiched between a Pizza Hut and an abandoned strip mall on the north side of town. The PD used to be downtown, but that more stately building was razed to make room for a modern juvenile justice center. By the time I arrive at the station, both Drew and Steve Sayers have been processed and taken to detention cells in the rear of the building. The other two high school boys were booked on simple assault and now await their parents in holding cells; a six-hundred-dollar bond will free them.

I demand a meeting with the chief of police, and almost immediately I’m escorted to his office. Chief Don Logan sits waiting for me behind his desk. He’s a thin man in his forties who looks more like an engineer than a policeman. His spartan office reflects his reputation as a managerial type. Chief Logan has family photos on his desk, and more computer manuals than law enforcement texts on his bookshelves. He’s known for being careful about procedure, so it’s all the more surprising that he’s made the political move of arresting Drew.

“Hello, Chief Logan,” I say equably.

He regards me coolly over a steaming cup of coffee. “In my seven years as chief,” he says, “I’ve never seen anything like the furor over this situation. I understand the emotional side, of course. A pretty young girl, so much potential. A prominent physician suddenly associated with her murder. But people are losing their perspective over this thing. There’s a mob mentality developing out there. Nobody seems to want to let matters take their normal course. To let the system work.”

“Including the district attorney?” I prompt.

Chief Logan raises one eyebrow, but he doesn’t take the bait. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve charged your client with aggravated assault.”

“You read my mind, Chief.”

“I’m going to lay my cards on the table, Penn. We have a troubled history with the sheriff’s department. You know all about it, I’m sure. The city of Natchez is under the jurisdiction of the police department, but technically, the sheriff has jurisdiction over the entire county, which includes the city. In general, we have a working agreement whereby we work crimes inside the city limits and the sheriff takes the county.”

“But?”

Logan takes a sip of coffee. “But Billy Byrd is a political animal. And when a high-profile case comes along, the sheriff believes it’s his God-given right to storm in and take over the investigation. Billy ran roughshod over the last police chief, and he’s tried to do the same to me on occasion. He’s actually had his deputies try to arrest one of my officers at a couple of crime scenes. They almost came to blows. I’ve requested several legal opinions from the attorney general’s office in Jackson, but nothing they send us is ever definitive enough.”

“I understand your problem. I dealt with some of the same issues in Houston.”

Chief Logan nods as though encouraged. “I’m glad you do. Because today I’m drawing the line. Kate Townsend’s body was discovered just within the boundary of the city, which alone makes it our case. But she almost certainly died farther upstream in that creek, which removes any doubt whatever about jurisdiction.”

Sheriff Byrd won’t see it that way. “You’re preaching to the choir, Chief. Tell me about the assault charge.”

“Since that’s a felony charge, Dr. Elliott and the Sayers boy will have to spend the night in this building. I’ll have a chance to talk to them without any interference from Sheriff Byrd. Now, as Dr. Elliott’s lawyer, you can stop me if you want to. But know this: my sole interest is in solving Kate Townsend’s murder. I’m not rail-roading anybody to judgment in order to grab some headlines, here or anywhere else.”

This is good news indeed.

“If Dr. Elliott’s guilty,” Logan goes on, “then he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But if he’s not, the man deserves some protection.” The chief shakes his head. “Drew’s reputation will be blown to hell by suppertime tonight, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing against him but some anonymous phone calls and a fistfight.”

“Which he didn’t start,” I point out.

The chief waves his hand as though shooing away a fly. “The judge will throw out the assault charge tomorrow morning. The bottom line is, I think Dr. Elliot’s safer in my jail than anywhere else in this town tonight.”

I sit back in my chair and study the chief. He’s the first rational man I’ve spoken to in some time. “I hear you loud and clear.”

“I don’t have isolation cells here,” he says, “but I do have some eight-man units that are empty. I’ve put Drew in one and the Sayers boy in the other. They’ll be safe and relatively comfortable until tomorrow.”

I try to suppress a smile at the thought of Shad Johnson learning about this development. “Have you spoken to the D.A. about this assault arrest?”

Chief Logan looks out his solitary window and gives a long-suffering sigh. “I try very hard to get along with the district attorney. But I have a feeling Mr. Johnson isn’t going to like this one bit.” He looks back at me, his dark eyes hard with conviction. “You know what? Tough titty. This ain’t right, and I ain’t going along with it. There’s not a damn thing Mr. Johnson can do about this arrest before tomorrow, unless he wants to call a judge and have Dr. Elliott released on the strength of the D.A.’s word. And given Mr. Johnson’s main political support base, I don’t think he’ll want to do that.”

I stand and shake hands with Logan. “I’m quite satisfied that procedure has been followed, Chief. Do you have any problem with me speaking to my client before I go?”

“I’ll have him brought to the visitors’ room.”

On my way out, I stop and turn back. “Do you know Kate’s time of death yet?”

Logan watches me in silence for a few moments. Then he says, “From the body temperature—which they did take when the fishermen got her to the ER—the M.E. figures she died between three and five-thirty p.m.”

“That’s pretty exact.”

Logan nods. “They know she left the school alive at two fifty-five, and she hadn’t cooled much by seven-thirty, when they took the temp. The M.E. says he feels pretty confident about that window.”

“Does he have any idea how long she was in the water?”

“It’s hard to say, given how quickly everything happened. If he did know that, we might be able to figure out how far upstream she died. But that creek moves very fast in flood. She wouldn’t have to be in it long to be swept miles downstream. And remember, Kate was found at six-twenty. No matter what the M.E. says, a maximum of only three hours and twenty minutes could have passed after death, even if someone strangled her the minute she walked out of St. Stephen’s. I don’t think the body temperature is going to tell us what we want to know, Penn.”

“Okay. So as of now, suspects need alibis from three p.m. to five-thirty.”

“Yep.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

He smiles. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

Five minutes later, Drew is escorted into the tiny visitors’ cubicle and seated behind a glass partition with a metal screen in it. He looks pale and drawn, and his eyes have the dull sheen I associate with lifers in the Walls unit at Huntsville, Texas, where I used to spend quite a bit of time. Has thirty minutes in a cell done this to one of the toughest friends I ever had?

“When am I getting out, Penn?”

“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

I expect anger, but Drew hardly reacts. Maybe his listlessness is a symptom of grief. Maybe the attack by the St. Stephen’s teenagers has punctured his illusions about his relationship with Kate—or maybe his image of himself as a good man.

“Chief Logan’s done you a big favor,” I explain. “He’s isolated you from Sheriff Byrd, who would love to use you to grab some headlines. He’s also put you at more of a remove from Shad Johnson, who wants to use you as a stepping-stone to higher office. Both men would like to interrogate you at their leisure, but I doubt either one will be bothering you in here.”

“You never gave me the details of Kate’s autopsy,” Drew says, his eyes boring into mine.

“I gave you the main points. The rest is medical jargon.”

His eyes don’t waver. “Don’t bullshit me. Don’t try to spare me.”

I focus on some dried pink bubblegum on the glass between us. “The pathologist thinks she was raped.”

“Based on?”

“Genital trauma.”

Drew looks confused by this. “Go on.”

“They found semen from two different men inside her body.”

He closes his eyes like a man fighting bone-deep pain. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“I wanted you sane when the deputies came to collect your blood.”

He shakes his head as though I’ve betrayed him.

“Drew, I have to ask you this. Is there any chance that Kate was having consensual sex with someone else besides you?”

A slow blink. Then an odd smile. “You still don’t get it, do you? Kate loved me. She loved me absolutely. If you’d told me earlier that they found two different semen samples inside her, I could have told you right away that she’d been raped.”

“Well … I wish there were some way to prove absolute love. Because I think the D.A. is going to paint you as a jealous older man who went crazy when he found out his teenage mistress was sharing her natural bounty with someone else.”

Drew’s mouth wrinkles with disgust. “I don’t care what he does.”

“You’d better start. You’d better give the whole situation some serious thought tonight. Try to conjure up some idea of who might have wanted to rape or kill Kate. Because the fact that she was pregnant means that you could be charged with double homicide.”

Drew’s blue eyes are impenetrable to me. After a time, he says, “What happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I’ll have the assault charge against you dismissed. You don’t want to charge Steve Sayers for attacking you.”

“No.”

“All right—”

“Fuck!” Drew exclaims, his face suddenly flushed. “What about Tim? He’s going to see the newspaper. Kids are going to tell him his dad’s in jail!”

I wish there was something I could do to ease Drew’s mind about his son, but there’s not. “Tim’s going to have a bad time throughout this thing,” I say evenly. “You have to accept that. I’ll get you out as early as I can tomorrow, and you can talk to him yourself.”

Drew shakes his head, his eyes flicking back and forth in helpless rage.

“Something else you’d better get used to,” I add. “Steve Sayers and his buddies are a pretty typical example of how the people in this community are going to feel about you for a while.”