The Devil's Punchbowl (29 page)

 

Logan gives me a guarded look. “You’ve got the power to fire me.”

 

“I’d happily trade that for the power to fire the district attorney.”

 

The chief grunts as if he agrees. “My folks always told me Natchez was run by the garden clubs. Maybe that was true once, but that idea’s a laugh and a half now.”

 

“They never really did, Don. This town was always run by a few big men behind the scenes. Men like Leo Marston. Judges, bankers, lawyers, oilmen. But things have changed. The big money’s mostly gone or spread among the heirs. There’s not that much power here
anymore. It’s a free-for-all. White or black, everybody’s chasing whatever money they can find. We’re just like the rest of the country that way.”

 

Logan nods dejectedly, but something else seems to be eating at him. “I tell you, I’m starting to feel like the marshal in a company town. Mining town, lumber town, whatever.”

 

“Gambling town?” I suggest quietly.

 

A quick, worried glance. “You said that, not me. Look, gambling is gambling, and everybody knows what comes with it. But it’s legal now, and given that, I have to say the casinos have been good partners.”

 

“You sound like a lot of people when they talk about casinos.”

 

“How’s that?”

 

“Careful.”

 

“Well. It’s like being police chief in a town by an army base. If you’re not pro-army, you’re in the wrong job. The way I see it, my job is to collect evidence and make arrests. I can only go by the evidence I find.”

 

“Chief, your job is to uncover the truth.”

 

Logan looks at me with a dogged defiance in his eyes. “No, sir. That’s a jury’s job. And a judge’s. Lawyer’s, maybe. And it don’t make a bit of difference how much detective work I do if the DA doesn’t want to prosecute something.”

 

Now I stand. “If you find solid evidence, Shad will have no choice.”

 

“You really believe that? You were an assistant DA yourself. You know how political that stuff gets.”

 

“Murder is murder, Don.”

 

The chief makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “Well, I’ll sure be interested to see the results of Jessup’s autopsy.”

 

“When will you get those? Next week?”

 

“Actually, Jewel Washington put a rush on it. She’s pretty tight with the people at the crime lab in Jackson. I think the pathologist may be cutting Jessup late today.”

 

A fillip of excitement shoots through me. “Does Shad know that?”

 

Logan shakes his head. “I wouldn’t want to be Jewel when he finds out either.”

 

“If he tries to retaliate against Jewel for doing her job the way it ought be done, Shad’ll find out just how much power I
have.
”

 

“Penn, look—”

 

“No, this is bullshit. You tell me one thing. If the autopsy comes in conclusively as homicide, are you going to press the investigation or not?”

 

Logan straightens up with impressive dignity. “If it comes back homicide, I’ll be investigating a homicide. I’ll do it by the book, and I won’t miss a lick. But, brother, in the end, being chief of police is a lot like being mayor. Unless you’re backed up by the people above and below you, it’s just a nice-sounding title.”

 

As Logan grimaces under the burdens of his office, something disturbing strikes me. “Don, we’ve been talking quite a while, and you haven’t asked me anything about my balloon getting shot down.”

 

He takes a deep breath, then answers with carefully chosen words. “First off, I can see you weren’t hurt bad. Second, it happened over Louisiana. Not my jurisdiction. Mine ends at the river.”

 

I sense barely contained anger behind his eyes, but he will not voice it.

 

“One thing has troubled me since last night,” I tell him. “You said Tim tried to call me several times before his death. I was in one of the highest parts of the city, but I never got those calls. No texts either. How could that be?”

 

Logan folds his arms and looks at the institutional green carpet.

 

“May I see Tim’s phone?”

 

The chief shakes his head. “I can’t do that.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Ask the district attorney, not me.”

 

“Do you
have
the phone? Is it in the evidence room?”

 

Logan keeps his gaze on the carpet. “You’re outside the bounds of what I can answer.”

 

“Jesus, man, what
can
you tell me?”

 

Logan chews on his bottom lip for a while. Then he glances at his door and walks to within a foot of me. “Last night, there were two localized interruptions of cellular service. In two different places, and at two different times.”

 

I ponder this for a minute. “Let me guess. The first was around midnight, near the cemetery.”

 

Logan nods almost imperceptibly.

 

“And the second was right around the time Tim died. When he jumped out of the SUV and was trying to get away from whoever was inside.”

 

“You get the prize.”

 

“How widespread was the interruption?”

 

“From the complaints, the best I can figure was about half a square mile near the cemetery. Up on the bluff it was more widespread, but it had a shorter duration. Generated a lot more complaints, though, with all the people partying up there.”

 

“Were all carriers interrupted, or just one?”

 

“All.”

 

“Shit. Somebody was jamming the radio spectrum.”

 

Logan licks his lips but says nothing.

 

“That’s serious business. Have you talked to the cellular providers?”

 

“No way. I figured this out from the complaints of witnesses. And a couple of my black officers live out by the cemetery.”

 

“You know what happened. Whoever killed Tim jammed the cell signals around the cemetery while they were chasing him out there. They stopped it after they had him in the SUV, when they were torturing him. Then they started jamming the lines again when he broke loose and ran for the fence.”

 

Logan sniffs and looks back toward his door. “Are you prepared to tell me who ‘they’ are?”

 

Is he asking me this honestly?
I wonder.
Or is he testing me? And if he’s testing me, is it for himself or for Jonathan Sands?

 

“Do I need to tell you?”

 

The chief walks back behind his desk. “Six months ago I got an offer to be chief of police in a little town on the Florida coast. Ever since I saw Jessup lying in that ditch, I’ve been wishing I hadn’t said no.”

 

I walk forward and lay a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a sad day when two Mississippi boys can’t trust each other any more than this.”

 

“Yes, sir, it is. Things have slid a long way out of whack.”

 

“Maybe we need to try to do something about it.”

 

Logan’s eyes open a little wider. “Maybe. Let’s see what that autopsy says. You stay in touch, Penn.”

 

I turn to go, but the chief’s voice stops me at the door.

 

“How’s that little girl of yours doing?”

 

“She’s fine,” I reply, my eyes hard and flat. “It was good to see you, Don. Take care of yourself.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER
21

 

 

I’m standing before the grave of Florence Irene Ford, who died in 1871 at age ten. Because the child was afraid of storms, Irene’s mother had a glass window installed in the casket, so that during inclement weather she could descend the little stairway behind the gravestone and reassure her child. This tale always fascinated Tim Jessup, so I thought Florence’s stairway might make a good hiding place for the stolen disc. But a locked metal trapdoor protects the stairway now, the price of protecting the cemetery from vandals.

 

For ninety minutes I’ve crisscrossed the cemetery in search of Jonathan Sands’s missing disc, following a map that only I could have drawn. Sketched hastily in my Moleskine notebook, it shows the locations of graves of people that Tim and I both knew. If Tim were running for his life and meant to hide evidence with the intent of retrieving it later—or in the worst case for me to retrieve it—I figured he would choose a spot I might think of on my own. A grave we both knew seemed the likeliest place. Had I chosen to include deceased people from my parents’ generation, it would have been a long list indeed, but knowing that time was short, I included only ours, with two exceptions. Still, I could easily think of nine, and they were spread throughout the vast cemetery.

 

There was Mallory Candler, our Miss Mississippi, who was mur
dered in New Orleans. Tim’s in-laws are also buried here: Julia’s father, a suicide at forty-nine, and her mother, dead from a stroke two years later. Two St. Stephen’s schoolmates who died in accidents also made the list: a boy shot by his brother while hunting, and a girl who broke her neck diving into a pond when she was twelve. Kate Townsend, a St. Stephen’s student who was murdered a year and a half ago, also went on my map, but I found no sign of anything hidden near her—or any other person’s—tomb.

 

My next step was to include the famous monuments of the cemetery, figuring that in the dark Tim might not have had time to search out the stones of the recently deceased. This trek took longer, for the older sections have no modern grid layout or uniform tombstones. Sweating from the midday heat, I crawled through a world of fantastical sculptures, mausoleums fenced with heavy wrought iron, cracked marble and masonry filled with crannies ideally suited to hide contraband. I probed like an archaeologist beside the graves of the principals in the Goat Castle murder case; of Rosalie Beekman, the only casualty of the Civil War at Natchez; of Louise the Unfortunate, an unknown woman from the North who died in a Natchez brothel; and of Bud Scott, the famed black bandleader many believe to be the father of Louis Armstrong, who spent several summers in Natchez as a boy. Yet none of these mossy monuments concealed the treasure I sought.

 

While concealed in the shadows between two mausoleums, I used the Blackhawk satellite phone to check on Annie and my mother. They had already reached Houston, and were nearly to the safe house that awaited them. I gave the Blackhawk dispatcher the names of the five percent investors in Golden Parachute and asked if the company could check out the two Chinese investors for me. After promising this would be done, the dispatcher informed me that Daniel Kelly could arrive in Natchez in twelve to fifteen hours, depending on certain variables. This was faster than I’d hoped, and welcome news. During bad times, Kelly makes good things happen, and when he can’t manage that, he at least deters those who would like to make things worse.

 

Knowing that the missing disc is all that might bring my family safety from Sands—or give me the weapon I need to destroy him—I prepare to continue my search, but the sheer size of the task is
overwhelming. I see why Quinn was so anxious for me to take it on. It would take strangers weeks to search this graveyard.

 

When my cell phone rings, I half expect to hear Seamus Quinn’s voice, but the caller is Paul Labry.

 

“Penn, you need to get over here,” he says.

 

“Where? The Ramada?”

 

“No, we moved the pilots’ meeting to the Visitors’ Center. We needed the space. All the pilots know about the shooting, and they all want a say in what happens next.”

 

“Well, that’s the city’s decision. The pilots can stay or leave as they will.”

 

“Most of them want to hear what happened from the horse’s mouth before they decide. I really need you to get over here. The meeting is controlled chaos right now. Another fifteen minutes, and it could be a riot.”

 

“I’m on my way.”

 

 

The Natchez Visitor and Reception Center looks like the student union building of a junior college. Cut into a slope in the shadow of a Hampton Inn and a casino hotel, it’s almost invisible as you cross the bridge from Louisiana to Mississippi. When large events are held here, access is virtually impossible. Nearly a hundred pickups with balloon trailers have wedged themselves into the parking lot. There would be enough room were it not for the regiment of cars that have filled every remaining space in the lot and even the grassy shoulders. The license plates tell me these are local people drawn to the scene by the rumor of this morning’s shooting. Making my way up the sloping asphalt, I realize it could take me a half hour to get through the milling crowd of locals. As I near its periphery, though, Paul Labry texts me to walk around to a service door behind the center, where he will be waiting.

 

True to his word, Labry admits me to the building and rushes me down a bland corridor to the main meeting area, which looks like a breakout meeting room in a convention hotel. A hundred men and half as many women sit in folding chairs before a lectern on a small riser. Eddie Jarvis, one of the city selectmen, is speaking to them, and everyone seems amazingly calm. Labry is talking in my ear, but it takes me a few moments to register the import of his words.

 

“Hans Necker just saved our ass. He called some key pilots as soon as he got out of surgery and told them he thought the shooting was a freak accident, some kids out hunting who got out of hand. About half the pilots wanted to keep flying anyway. The weather hasn’t been this good in years, and there’s always the prize money.”

 

“What’s the festival committee say?”

 

“What do you think? Balloons in the air means money, especially tomorrow. Sunday without balloons is always a dud, financially speaking.”

 

“Do I need to talk at all?”

 

“Just a quick word of thanks. Show them you’re all right. Reassure them.”

 

Many in the crowd have noticed me, and they’re watching me now, not Eddie Jarvis. Jarvis waves me forward, and I take the lectern.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for getting here on short notice. What happened to Hans Necker and me today has rattled everyone, I’m sure. But I want you to know that I agree with Hans. I feel sure this was an isolated occurrence. I think everyone should make his or her own choice about whether to continue flying, but we intend to go on with the festival. Law enforcement will have a strong presence along the course this afternoon and tomorrow.”