Turning Angel (8 page)

“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.”

Chapter
6

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‘ railroading 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.”