The Devil's Punchbowl (15 page)

 

“What are
you
doing at this crime scene?” I ask pointedly. “You usually stay away from the dirty work.”

 

Shad’s lips broaden into a smile; he enjoys a fight. “I was at a party a few blocks away. I’m only answering you as a courtesy, of course. You’re not the DA, Penn Cage. No, sir. This investigation is in my hands, and I’ll decide what gets done and when.”

 

“You’re in charge, all right. Just remember that with power comes responsibility. You’ll be held to the highest standard, make no mistake about that.” I turn to Logan. “Let’s put a rush on that autopsy, Chief.”

 

“There he goes again,” says Shad, “giving orders like he’s the district attorney.”

 

Instead of taking the bait, I turn and stride back toward the ladder. As soon as Shad leaves my field of vision, he leaves my mind. My anger remains unquenched, perhaps even unplumbed, but its
urgency recedes as I climb back up to Silver Street and make my way through the chattering crowd toward my car. Several acquaintances call out, but I brusquely wave them off. A cold heaviness is seeping outward from my heart. I’d rather clean and embalm Tim’s mutilated body than tell Julia Stanton that the father of her baby is dead. But some duties cannot be shirked. If Julia asks why Tim died, I wonder if I’ll have the courage to tell her the truth? That her husband almost certainly perished because I was late to our meeting.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER
11

 

 

Tim Jessup’s wife and son live in Montebello subdivision, a cluster of small clapboard homes built in the 1940s to house the employees of the International Paper Company. For most of their history, these structures sheltered generations of working white families, but in the past ten years, quite a few have been taken over by African-American families. Despite the age of the houses and the inexpensive materials with which they were built, most are well kept up, with fresh paint and well-tended lawns. What sticks in your mind when you drive through during the day is the abundance of kids, dogs, bicycles, flowers, lawn ornaments, and glitter-painted bass boats parked on the grass beside the driveways. Tim and Julia bought one of the more run-down houses when she got pregnant, then spent eight months fixing it up for the baby. Montebello is a long way down from the tony subdivision where Jessup grew up, but after he turned thirty, Tim stopped caring about things like that. His father never did. After my return to Natchez, I learned it was better not to mention Tim when I ran into Dr. Jessup. Whenever I did, all I saw in the old surgeon’s eyes was shame and bitterness.

 

I turn off Highway 61 at the Parkway Baptist Church and take the frontage road down into Montebello. A warren of curving, tree-shaded streets divides the neighborhood into asymmetrical sections, and it’s easy to get lost down here if you haven’t visited in a while.
After one wrong turn, I find Maplewood and swing around a broad curve through the parked cars and pickups that line both sides of the street.

 

In less than a minute I will shatter the life of Julia Stanton Jessup, and I’m suddenly aware that my outrage over Tim’s death is an order of magnitude smaller than what she will experience after the initial shock wears off. The explosion might even be immediate. Julia is no shrinking violet. She began life in a coddled existence, but fate soon had its way with her family, and she did not pull through without becoming tough. I still remember kissing her once at a senior party, when she was in the ninth grade. We’ve never spoken of it since, but the image of her as she was then remains with me, a beautiful girl just coming into womanhood, and unlike Tim she retained the glow of her youth through the hard years. I suspect that tonight’s shock may take that from her at last.

 

The instant Julia’s house comes into sight, I know something’s wrong. The front door stands wide-open, but there’s no car in the driveway and no one in sight. The doorway appears as a rectangle of faint yellow light coming from deep within the house, though
deep
is not exactly accurate in terms of a house that small. I reach under my seat for the pistol Tim told me to bring to the cemetery meeting. The cold metal is my only comfort as I leave the relative safety of my car and walk through the shallow yard toward the house. I should call Logan for police backup, but Tim’s words from last night keep sounding in my head:
You can’t trust anybody. Not even the police.

 

The neighborhood is relatively quiet. I hear the thrum of a few air-conditioning units, still laboring hard in mid-October. A couple of TV soundtracks drift through the air, coming from the houses that have opened their windows to the damp, cooling night. I press my back to the wall outside Jessup’s door, then crash through in a crouch, the way a Houston police detective taught me. The last thing I thought I’d be doing tonight was clearing a house, but at this juncture, there’s no point in analyzing my instincts.

 

As I move from room to room, it becomes obvious that the house has been thoroughly searched. Every drawer and cabinet has been opened, the books pulled from the shelves and rifled, and the mattresses slit to pieces. Even the baby’s mattress was yanked from the crib and slit open.

 

The house has only six rooms, all clustered around a central bathroom. I call out Julia’s name, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere. But I’ll be happier if she’s not. I hope she’s miles away from this place, safely hidden or running for her life. For the state of this house tells me one thing: Whatever evidence of crime Tim was looking for today, he found it. And that discovery cost him his life. The only questions remaining are what did he find, and where is it now?

 

I lean out the back door, but all I see in the backyard is a plastic playhouse bought from Wal-Mart, looking forlorn and abandoned. I’m raising my cell phone to call Chief Logan when it buzzes in my hand. I jump as though shocked by a wall socket, and this makes me realize how tense I was while I searched the house. The number has a Natchez prefix, a cellular one.

 

“Penn Cage,” I answer, wondering who might be calling me after 1:00 a.m.

 

The first sound I hear is something between sobbing and choking, and I know before the first coherent word that Julia Jessup already knows that her husband is dead. She is so hysterically anguished that speech is almost physiologically impossible. Yet still she tries.

 

“Ih—ih—ih—” The vocalization catches repeatedly in her throat, like an engine trying to start in cold weather. And after a couple of gulps and stutters, the full sentence emerges. “Is Tim dead?”

 

“Julia—”

 

“Huh—he-he told me not to kuh-kuh-call you. Unless something hah-
hap
pened. But Nancy Barrett called me from Bowie’s. She said…Tim feh-fell. Off the bluff. I don’t understand. Tell me the truth, Penn. Tell me right this minute!”

 

More than anything I want to ask where Julia is, but there’s no way I’m going to do that over a cell phone. Whoever killed Tim may be searching for his wife at this moment, believing she’s in possession of whatever evidence Tim found.

 

“It’s true,” I say as gently as I can, walking quickly back to my car. “I’m sorry, Julia, but Tim died tonight.”

 

A scream worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama greets this news, then the words pour out in a senseless flood. “
OhmiGodohmiGodoh—oh—oh—
I knew it! I
knew
something was going to happen. He
knew it too. Goddamn it!” Another wail. “Oh my God. After everything I’ve done to get him clean…. No. No, no, no. It’s not—no, I can’t go there. What am I supposed to do, Penn? Tell me that! How am I supposed to raise this baby?”

 

“Are you with somebody, Julia?”

 

“
With
somebody? I’m at—”

 

“Stop! Don’t tell me where you are. Just tell me if you’re with somebody.”

 

Even before she answers, I realize I need to get Julia off the phone. Anyone with direction-finding equipment or good hacking skills could triangulate her position. She’s sobbing again, so I speak with as much firmness as I can. “Julia, are you
with someone
? Answer me.”

 

“Yes,” she whispers.

 

“Listen to me now. If you’re in a building—a house or a hotel or whatever—I want you to lock the doors. Keep your cell phone with you, but switch it off. Then switch it back on again exactly thirty minutes from now.”

 

“What? Why thirty minutes?”

 

“Because I’m going to call you back and give you some instructions. I have to make some arrangements first. Don’t forget to switch off your phone. The people who—who hurt Tim—can use that phone to track you down.”

 

“Oh, God. Oh…I knew it. I told him not to do anything.”

 

“Julia! Don’t say anything else. Don’t trust anyone Tim didn’t mention specifically. And don’t come home. Don’t even think about it. I’m there now, and the place has been torn to pieces.” I glance at my watch as Julia whimpers incomprehensibly. “I’ll call you back at one thirty-five. I’m hanging up now.”

 

It’s hard to do, but I press END and run for my car. My hand is on the doorknob when two police cars roar around the bend of Maplewood and screech to a stop behind me. A blue-white spotlight hits my face and a harsh voice speaks over the car’s PA system.

 

“Stop right there! Put your hands up and step away from the vehicle!”

 

I feel no fear at this order, only anger and impatience. And curiosity. I haven’t had time to call the chief and tell him that Jessup’s house was broken into. It might make sense that Logan would send
someone to make sure I’d informed the widow—or even to search Jessup’s house—but to see a brace of squad cars wheeling around Maplewood as though responding to a home invasion is more than a little surprising. Yet all I can think about as two cops approach is how I’m going to get Julia to safety.

 

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” barks the first cop.

 

“I’m Mayor Penn Cage. I came here to inform Julia Jessup that her husband was killed tonight. Chief Logan can confirm that, and you’d better call him right now. I don’t have all night to stand out here talking.”

 

The cop on my left looks closer at me, then taps his partner on the upper arm. “It’s okay. He’s the mayor.”

 

“You sure?” asks the second guy.

 

“What the fuck, am I
sure
? My dad went to school with the guy, dude.”

 

On another night I would ask the young cop who his father is, but not this time. “Guys, I’ve got to go. Somebody took that house apart. You need to lock it down. Don’t let anybody inside.”

 

“The wife’s not here?” asks the young cop.

 

I answer him while climbing in to my car. “Still trying to find her. I’ll update the chief later.”

 

I jerk the Saab into gear and head back to Highway 61. I can be at my house on Washington Street in less than five minutes, and I need a plan of action by the time I get there. Julia could come apart in less time than that, and a wrong move on her part could be fatal. But my options are almost nonexistent. All the resources I would normally use in this kind of situation have been placed out of bounds by Tim’s warnings. Last night I wasn’t sure his caution was warranted, but after seeing the condition of his body and the state of his house, I have no intention of risking the lives of his wife and son on assumptions.

 

I’ve called on other, private resources in extraordinary situations, but none are ready to hand tonight. The man I trust most to help me in a crisis is in Afghanistan, working for a security contractor based in Houston. His company may have some operators Stateside who could help protect Julia, but none would be any closer than Houston—seven hours away by car.

 

Most people who felt they couldn’t trust local law enforcement
would probably call the FBI, but that option presents problems for me. Seven years ago I forced the resignation of the Bureau’s director, when I proved that he’d been involved in the cover-up of a civil rights murder in Natchez in 1968. That won me few admirers in the Bureau (open ones, anyway) and made me a liability to the field agents I’d befriended during my successful career as an assistant district attorney in Houston.

 

“Damn it!”
I shout, pounding the wheel in frustration.
“What the fuck is going on?”

 

It’s like screaming inside a bell jar, but at least my outburst gives vent to the rage and frustration that have been building since I saw Tim’s body. Closing my right hand into a fist, I pound the passenger seat until my wrist aches. When the national park at Melrose Plantation flashes by, I realize I’m driving eighty—forty miles an hour over the speed limit.

 

Settle down,
I tell myself, remembering my father, who becomes calmer the more dire the medical emergency. When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death.
Panic is the enemy….

 

My decision to run every stop sign on Washington Street is perfectly rational. They are four-way stops, and unless someone else is doing the same thing I am at exactly the same place and time, I have enough visual clearance to safely jump the intersections.

 

I park on the street, exit my car, and move toward the house in continuous motion, my mind in flux. Taking the porch steps at a near run, I notice that the cast-iron lamp hanging above me is out. Mom must have inadvertently switched it off. That isn’t like her, but I don’t have time to worry about personal inconsistencies tonight. I’m slipping my key into the lock when a man’s voice speaks from the shadows to my right.

 

“That’ll do, Mr. Cage. Stand easy where you are. No need to disturb the women.”

 

I fight the urge to whirl toward the sound. I’ve tried too many cases where people were shot because they saw the face of someone who didn’t want to be remembered. Yet from the voice alone, I’m almost certain that the man in the shadows is Seamus Quinn, the security chief on the
Magnolia Queen.
I’ve never heard an Irish accent like Quinn’s outside the movies, and even then only in Irish-made films.