Natchez Burning (66 page)

I hear a click, and then a female voice says, “Hello, Penn.” Before I can respond, Doris Avery continues in a voice that holds many emotions: regret, fear, foreboding. “I pray to God we make it through this trial.”

“I do, too,” I tell her, meaning all of us, but most of all, Quentin and my father.

After she hangs up, I get less than twenty seconds of silence to reflect on the conversation. Then Caitlin is standing in front of me with her eyebrows arched and her hands on her hips.

“Today we talked about our old deal,” she reminds me. “I thought we’d decided to throw it out the window in this case. How can I help Tom if I don’t know everything that’s going on?”

She’s talking about my father’s needs, but her eyes tell me that her hunger for a major story is already overriding all other considerations. My recognition of that hunger unsettles me. I’m about to reply when her gaze lights on the sofa back where Jewel’s file lay a minute ago.

“You moved that autopsy report so I wouldn’t pick it up?” she asks with disbelief.

I feel like I’m talking to an addict who’s rationalizing her need for vodka or pills. “I’m not even supposed to have that report. Jewel Washington put her career on the line to pass me that.”

Caitlin’s incredulity changes into anger. “You think I’d do something that could hurt Jewel?”

“No. But you might well find yourself on the witness stand before this is over. I don’t want you committing perjury to protect me or anybody else, even if you’re willing to do it.”

The familiar pink moons have appeared on her cheeks. Before she can attack, I add, “We’re in unmapped territory, Caitlin. I tried to use the picture on Shad today, but he and Billy Byrd had already figured a way to defuse that particular bomb.”

This gets her attention. “How?”

“Billy will swear Shad was working undercover for him when that photo was taken. I could still release the photo, but it won’t stop the case against Dad.”

“I still think Shad would be run out of office.”

“Maybe. But I’m not sure I want that.”

She’s grinding her teeth now, which isn’t good, but it’s better than yelling. God only knows what she told Annie to keep her in the kitchen. “You don’t trust me,” she says flatly.

“That’s not it. You know it’s not.”

“Henry was going to come to work for me. You keeping this stuff from me is just—insulting.”

I toss the autopsy report onto the sofa. “The preliminary report pegs Viola’s cause of death as adrenaline overdose, but all that really does is muddy the water. And you obviously can’t report it.”

She stares at me for several awkward seconds. Then she nods once. “Thank you.”

“Why do you think Henry was going to say yes to working for you?”

“I just know it. You’ll see.” She shakes her head again, as though words have failed her. “I’m going back to work.”

“Can’t you stay and eat some ice cream with us?”

I only asked this out of courtesy. There’s no way Caitlin will sit in this room after what just transpired—not until she’s had time to vent her frustration.

“Too much to do,” she says. “I’ll text you later.”

I’d normally give her a hug, but tonight she would be stiff to my touch. Thankfully, Annie sails in with a bowl of Blue Bell vanilla in each hand. Before she can speak, Caitlin kisses the top of her head, then heads for the front door.

“Bye!” Annie shouts, looking perplexed.

“Bye,” comes Caitlin’s halfhearted echo.

“What happened?” Annie asks me, staring worriedly after her future stepmother.

“The attack on Mr. Henry has upset everybody.”

My daughter shakes her head slowly, then turns anxious eyes on me. “Don’t you and Caitlin want the same thing? Aren’t you on the same side?”

I reach out and squeeze her forearm. “Yes. Sometimes it gets complicated, Boo, that’s all. But down deep, we are.”

Annie thinks about this for several seconds. I expect her to say, “I know ya’ll are,” or something like that. But when my daughter’s eyes find mine again, she says, “I hope so.”

TEN MINUTES AFTER WE
finished our ice cream, I sent Annie to her room to work on her paper before bed. My conscious intention was to study Viola’s autopsy report, but not long after I picked up the photocopied pages, my mind was consumed by resentment that my father decided to confide his secrets—whatever they might be—to Quentin Avery.
Why has Dad chosen to leave me in the dark? Is he that ashamed of having an affair with an employee? Is he afraid of something else? Or is he simply trying to protect our family?
At this point, that’s about the only scenario I’d be willing to forgive. With Viola and Morehouse dead—and Henry Sexton close to death—there’s clearly information in play that people are willing to kill to suppress. The question is, does my father also possess it?

As I reflect on this possibility, the obvious implication of my earlier deduction hits me like a stitch in the side. If Dad is lying about his relationship with Viola … then everything Lincoln Turner contends could be true. And Shad Johnson could be prosecuting Dad in the legitimate belief that he killed Viola to silence her about Lincoln’s paternity.

Despite Quentin’s injunction against bothering Dad, I feel an almost irresistible compulsion to do just that. The old lawyer might be content to let matters proceed at a glacial pace, but I can’t do that while Henry’s life hangs in the balance. For while the attack on the reporter
might
have been triggered by his interviews with Viola and Morehouse, it might just as easily have been caused by his meeting with me, or the visit we made to Sheriff Dennis’s office. And none of those contacts would ever have occurred had my father come clean about Viola’s death from the beginning.

Holding my compulsion in check, I walk down to my basement office and take a manila folder from the bookshelf. It contains dozens of snapshots and mementoes I used to make a short video for Dad’s seventy-second birthday. Shuffling through the photos, I find the image I’m looking for: Christmas Eve at Dr. Wendell Lucas’s office, December 1963. John F. Kennedy has been dead just about a month. Dad and Mom have just moved Jenny and me to Natchez, in the midst of a harrowing blizzard.

Why have I come for this photograph? What can it tell me?

Dr. Lucas’s waiting room has been decorated with red poinsettias, and four bottles of champagne stand open on a coffee table. The clerical staff are big-bosomed country girls with bouffant hairdos. Dr. Lucas and my father stand center stage, their white coats open to reveal the suits and ties they wore to work every day. To their right stand two elderly white nurses I remember vaguely, and beside them the dark-skinned Esther Ford, whose kind eyes remain indelibly alive in my memory. Behind these three women—taller, younger, and so strikingly beautiful that, once your eye falls upon her, she dominates the entire photograph—stands Viola Turner.

Most of the women are grinning and toasting the camera, and even Esther’s smile is wider than usual. Viola’s expression is more remote, her wide brown eyes alert as those of a doe in an open field, her perfect teeth not showing at all. Her beauty is simultaneously earthy and ethereal. It’s also a special pass, of sorts. Viola stands easily among these mostly white people, as Esther does, but she is not
of
them. She’s an interloper, a silent scout for an army that would soon be fighting a bloody war for equality. Less than a year after this picture was taken, the first skirmishes would break out on both sides of the river, and Albert Norris would die. Pooky Wilson, too.

As I try to decipher the reality behind Viola’s façade, a sudden association tugs deep in my brain.
What is it?
Maybe the longer I study her face, the more powerful my childhood memories become, like embers in a breeze being fanned into flame. Yet the harder I focus on her, the more whatever I’m trying to remember recedes. I shouldn’t be surprised. This photograph is only a frozen slice of the past: two-dimensional, opaque, easily deceptive. My visit with Pithy was more penetrating, like a medical history, facts enhanced by a temporal context and by Pithy’s insight—yet still insufficient. What I need now is the psychological equivalent of an MRI, a three-dimensional scan of the relationships between these characters I’m only just coming to know: Viola Turner, Brody Royal, the Knox family, even Lincoln Turner. For only with the deepest knowledge can one diagnose that most elusive of conditions: the truth.

Touching my fingertip to Viola’s face, I realize that one question must be answered before all others:
How far did Dad go with you?

Walking to my desk, I lift the phone and dial my parents’ house again. I’d rather speak to Dad in person, and away from my mother, but the only way I could pull that off would be to take Annie with me to distract Mom, and Mom would instantly see through my ploy.

“Penn?” says my mother, her voice surprisingly alert. “Has something happened? Did Henry die?”

“No.” I’d expected the reassuring “Dr. Cage” that usually greets night callers. “I was hoping to talk to Dad, remember?”

A shuffling sound comes through the phone. “He’s still asleep.”

This surprises me. Despite the emotional toll that today’s events must have taken on him, my father is a night owl, and always has been. Almost nothing can force him to sleep during what most people consider reasonable hours. Maybe being arrested and handcuffed in his own yard pushed even Dad past his limit. “I really need to talk to him, Mom.”

“You don’t want me to wake him, up, do you? Not after today.”

Yes, I do. And then I want you to go into the other room and watch television while we talk.
“I guess not. But I
must
speak to him before nine tomorrow morning.”

“Do you think that attack on Henry Sexton had anything to do with your father? Henry’s been writing about the bad old days for years now, and he’s never hesitated to name names. That’s courting disaster if I ever saw it. He probably just pushed somebody too far in his last article.”

“Mom, I think …” I falter, searching for some nonthreatening way to explain my concern. “Dad is somehow caught up in this old Double Eagle mess. He used to treat all those guys from Triton Battery, and he’s refusing to talk about it to the police.”

This time her answer is longer in coming. “Your father’s no fool, Penn. He knows what he’s doing.”

“You didn’t look so sure of that in court this morning.”

“Well, that was upsetting, naturally. But Judge Noyes did the right thing in the end.”

“The situation has changed now. Dad’s bail could be revoked at any time.”

“Oh, no.”

“Don’t panic, Mom. But I need to ask you a simple question.”

“Oh, Penn … I don’t like this.”

“I’ve never known you to lie, and I need to know the answer to this.”

Silence.

Before anxiety can stop me, I ask what I’ve withheld up to now because of my reluctance to upset my mother. “I need to know what time Dad got home on the night Viola died.”

The silence that follows this lasts longer than it should.

“What are you really asking me?” she says softly.

I close my eyes, already regretting my question. “Just a fact, nothing more.”
Tell me it was before 5:38
A.M.

“You don’t really believe your father could have killed Viola, do you? Tell me you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t. But I’d like to be able to
prove
that he didn’t.”

A long, pained sigh comes down the line. “Is this just between you and me?”

Oh, God.
“Yes.”

“I don’t know
what
time Tom got home that night. It was very late, and I’d taken a second pill by that time.”

I’ve never known my mother to be so out of it that she didn’t know when Dad got home—especially during the past few years. She waits up for him like a helicopter mom praying for a teenager to get in. “Best guess, Mom. What time was it?”

“I don’t know for sure. I really don’t.”

“You said it was very late, so you obviously have a general idea.”

“After three,” she says at length. “I was dead to the world, honestly.”

After three …
“Mom
—
”

“Could anybody be taping this call?” she asks sharply.

My stomach does a little flip. “No. That’s just on TV.” This isn’t exactly accurate, but Shad will assume that I’ve warned Dad against any dangerous discussions on the telephone, and Judge Elder isn’t likely to authorize a wiretap from the Mayo Clinic. “Why do you ask, Mom?”

“Because whatever time your father needs to have gotten home that night, that’s what time I remember him getting home. He was right beside me in this bed. You hear me?”

My heart thumps, hard.
No. I didn’t hear that.

“Just make sure I know the right time. Before it’s life-or-death.”

I close my eyes and swallow hard
.
Only hours ago I realized my father may have been lying to me for most of my life. Now my mother has told me she’s willing to lie under oath to protect him. “Mom, I really need to talk to Dad tonight
.
”

“I’ll have him call you when he wakes up. You know he hardly ever sleeps through the night.”

“If he doesn’t call me before midnight, I’m going to drive over there and wake him up.”

“What about Annie? You can’t wake that child on a school night, and you’re certainly not leaving her there. Is Caitlin staying over?”

“No. Mom,
please
just make sure Dad calls me.”

She sighs with irritation. “All right.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

The intensity drains out of her voice, which suddenly becomes almost casual again. “You didn’t. I was reading.”

“Did you take a pill tonight?”

“After what happened this morning, that pill might as well be a placebo.”

“Try a different book. A bad book is the best sedative. And leave Dad a note to call me, in case you fall asleep. He’s bound to get up to pee soon.”

“I will. Good night.”

After I hang up, I collapse into my most comfortable chair, my mind across the river with Henry. Hopefully, Drew will call to update me soon.