Three Classic Thrillers (110 page)

“Maybe he didn’t intend to kill them.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they? The jury said he did it. They were blown to bits and buried side by side in the same neat little grave. Who cares if he intended to kill them? He was there, Adam.”

“It could be very important.”

Lee jumped to her feet and grabbed his hand. “Come here,” she insisted. They stepped a few feet to the edge of the patio. She pointed to the Memphis skyline several blocks away. “You see that flat building facing the river there. The nearest to us. Just over there, three or four blocks away.”

“Yes,” he answered slowly.

“The top floor is the fifteenth, okay. Now, from the right, count down six levels. Do you follow?”

“Yes,” Adam nodded and counted obediently. The building was a showy high-rise.

“Now, count four windows to the left. There’s a light on. Do you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Guess who lives there.”

“How would I know?”

“Ruth Kramer.”

“Ruth Kramer! The mother?”

“That’s her.”

“Do you know her?”

“We met once, by accident. She knew I was Lee Booth, wife of the infamous Phelps Booth, but that was all. It was a glitzy fundraiser for the ballet or something. I’ve always avoided her if possible.”

“This must be a small town.”

“It can be tiny. If you could ask her about Sam, what would she say?”

Adam stared at the lights in the distance. “I don’t know. I’ve read that she’s still bitter.”

“Bitter? She lost her entire family. She’s never remarried. Do you think she cares if my father intended to kill her children? Of course not. She just knows they’re dead, Adam, dead for twenty-three years now. She knows they were killed by a bomb planted by my father, and if he’d been home with his family instead of riding around at night with his idiot buddies, little Josh and John would not be dead. They instead would be twenty-eight years old, probably very well educated and married with perhaps a baby or two for Ruth and Marvin to play with. She doesn’t care who the bomb was intended for, Adam, only that it was placed there and it exploded. Her babies are dead. That’s all that matters.”

Lee stepped backward and sat in her rocker. She rattled her ice again and took a drink. “Don’t get me
wrong, Adam. I’m opposed to the death penalty. I’m probably the only fifty-year-old white woman in the country whose father is on death row. It’s barbaric, immoral, discriminatory, cruel, uncivilized—I subscribe to all the above. But don’t forget the victims, okay. They have the right to want retribution. They’ve earned it.”

“Does Ruth Kramer want retribution?”

“By all accounts, yes. She doesn’t say much to the press anymore, but she’s active with victims groups. Years ago she was quoted as saying she would be in the witness room when Sam Cayhall was executed.”

“Not exactly a forgiving spirit.”

“I don’t recall my father asking for forgiveness.”

Adam turned and sat on the ledge with his back to the river. He glanced at the buildings downtown, then studied his feet. Lee took another long drink.

“Well, Aunt Lee, what are we going to do?”

“Please drop the Aunt.”

“Okay, Lee. I’m here. I’m not leaving. I’ll visit Sam tomorrow, and when I leave I intend to be his lawyer.”

“Do you intend to keep it quiet?”

“The fact that I’m really a Cayhall? I don’t plan to tell anyone, but I’ll be surprised if it’s a secret much longer. When it comes to death row inmates, Sam’s a famous one. The press will start some serious digging pretty soon.”

Lee folded her feet under her and stared at the river. “Will it harm you?” she asked softly.

“Of course not. I’m a lawyer. Lawyers defend child molesters and assassins and drug dealers and rapists and terrorists. We are not popular people. How can I be harmed by the fact that he’s my grandfather?”

“Your firm knows?”

“I told them yesterday. They were not exactly delighted, but they came around. I hid it from them, actually,
when they hired me, and I was wrong to do so. But I think things are okay.”

“What if he says no?”

“Then we’ll be safe, won’t we? No one will ever know, and you’ll be protected. I’ll go back to Chicago and wait for CNN to cover the carnival of the execution. And I’m sure I’ll drive down one cool day in the fall and put some flowers on his grave, probably look at the tombstone and ask myself again why he did it and how he became such a lowlife and why was I born into such a wretched family, you know, the questions we’ve been asking for many years. I’ll invite you to come with me. It’ll be sort of a little family reunion, you know, just us Cayhalls slithering through the cemetery with a cheap bouquet of flowers and thick sunglasses so no one will discover us.”

“Stop it,” she said, and Adam saw the tears. They were flowing and were almost to her chin when she wiped them with her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said, then turned to watch another barge inch north through the shadows of the river. “I’m sorry, Lee.”

S
o after twenty-three years, he was finally returning to the state of his birth. He didn’t particularly feel welcome, and though he wasn’t particularly afraid of anything he drove a cautious fifty-five and refused to pass anyone. The road narrowed and sunk onto the flat plain of the Mississippi Delta, and for a mile Adam watched as a levee snaked its way to the right and finally disappeared. He eased through the hamlet of Walls, the first town of any size along 61, and followed the traffic south.

Through his considerable research, he knew that this highway had for decades served as the principal conduit for hundreds of thousands of poor Delta blacks journeying north to Memphis and St. Louis and Chicago and Detroit, places where they sought jobs and decent housing. It was in these towns and farms, these ramshackle shotgun houses and dusty country stores and colorful juke joints along Highway 61 where the blues was born and spread northward. The music found a home in Memphis where it was blended with gospel and country, and together they spawned rock and roll. He listened to an old Muddy Waters cassette as he entered the infamous county of Tunica, said to be the poorest in the nation.

The music did little to calm him. He had refused breakfast at Lee’s, said he wasn’t hungry but in fact had a knot in his stomach. The knot grew with each mile.

Just north of the town of Tunica, the fields grew vast
and ran to the horizon in all directions. The soybeans and cotton were knee high. A small army of green and red tractors with plows behind them crisscrossed the endless neat rows of leafy foliage. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, the weather was already hot and sticky. The ground was dry, and clouds of dust smoldered behind each plow. An occasional crop duster dropped from nowhere and acrobatically skimmed the tops of the fields, then soared upward. Traffic was heavy and slow, and sometimes forced almost to a standstill as a monstrous John Deere of some variety inched along as if the highway were deserted.

Adam was patient. He was not expected until ten, and it wouldn’t matter if he arrived late.

At Clarksdale, he left Highway 61 and headed southeast on 49, through the tiny settlements of Mattson and Dublin and Tutwiler, through more soybean fields. He passed cotton gins, now idle but waiting for the harvest. He passed clusters of impoverished row houses and dirty mobile homes, all for some reason situated close to the highway. He passed an occasional fine home, always at a distance, always sitting majestically under heavy oaks and elms, and usually with a fenced swimming pool to one side. There was no doubt who owned these fields.

A road sign declared the state penitentiary to be five miles ahead, and Adam instinctively slowed his car. A moment later, he ran up on a large tractor puttering casually down the road, and instead of passing he chose to follow. The operator, an old white man with a dirty cap, motioned for him to come around. Adam waved, and stayed behind the plow at twenty miles per hour. There was no other traffic in sight. A random dirt clod flung from a rear tractor tire, and landed just inches in front of the Saab. He slowed a bit more. The operator twisted in his seat, and again waved for Adam
to come around. His mouth moved and his face was angry, as if this were his highway and he didn’t appreciate idiots following his tractor. Adam smiled and waved again, but stayed behind him.

Minutes later, he saw the prison. There were no tall chain-link fences along the road. There were no lines of glistening razor wire to prevent escape. There were no watchtowers with armed guards. There were no gangs of inmates howling at the passersby. Instead, Adam saw an entrance to the right and the words
MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY
spanning from an arch above it. Next to the entrance were several buildings, all facing the highway and apparently unguarded.

Adam waved once again at the tractor operator, then eased from the highway. He took a deep breath, and studied the entrance. A female in uniform stepped from a guardhouse under the arch, and stared at him. Adam drove slowly to her, and lowered his window.

“Mornin’,” she said. She had a gun on her hip and a clipboard in her hand. Another guard watched from inside. “What can we do for you?”

“I’m a lawyer, here to see a client on death row,” Adam said weakly, very much aware of his shrill and nervous voice. Just calm down, he told himself.

“We ain’t got nobody on death row, sir.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ain’t no such place as death row. We got a bunch of ’em in the Maximum Security Unit, that’s MSU for short, but you can look all over this place and you won’t find no death row.”

“Okay.”

“Name?” she said, studying the clipboard.

“Adam Hall.”

“And your client?”

“Sam Cayhall.” He half-expected some sort of response
to this, but the guard didn’t care. She flipped a sheet, and said, “Stay right here.”

The entrance became a driveway with shade trees and small buildings on each side. This wasn’t a prison—this was a pleasant little street in a small town where any minute now a group of kids would appear on bicycles and roller skates. To the right was a quaint structure with a front porch and flower beds. A sign said this was the Visitors Center, as if souvenirs and lemonade were on sale for eager tourists. A white pickup with three young blacks in it and Mississippi Department of Corrections stenciled on the door passed by without slowing a bit.

Adam caught a glimpse of the guard standing behind his car. She was writing something on the clipboard as she approached his window. “Where’bouts in Illinois?” she asked.

“Chicago.”

“Got any cameras, guns, or tape recorders?”

“No.”

She reached inside and placed a card on his dash. Then she returned to her clipboard, and said, “Got a note here that you’re supposed to see Lucas Mann.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s the prison attorney.”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to see him.”

She held a piece of paper three feet from his face. “Says so right here. Take the third left, just up there, then wind around to the back of that red brick building.” She was pointing.

“What does he want?”

She snorted and shrugged at the same time, and walked to the guardhouse shaking her head. Dumbass lawyers.

Adam gently pressed the accelerator and eased by the Visitors Center and down the shaded drive. On
both sides were neat white frame houses where, he learned later, prison guards and other employees lived with their families. He followed her instructions and parked in front of an aging brick building. Two trustees in blue prison pants with white stripes down the legs swept the front steps. Adam avoided eye contact and went inside.

He found the unmarked office of Lucas Mann with little trouble. A secretary smiled at him, and opened another door to a large office where Mr. Mann was standing behind his desk and talking on the phone.

“Just have a seat,” the secretary whispered as she closed the door behind him. Mann smiled and waved awkwardly as he listened to the phone. Adam sat his briefcase in a chair and stood behind it. The office was large and clean. Two long windows faced the highway and provided plenty of light. On the wall to the left was a large framed photo of a familiar face, a handsome young man with an earnest smile and strong chin. It was David McAllister, governor of the State of Mississippi. Adam suspected identical photos were hung in every state government office, and also plastered in every hallway, closet, and toilet under the state’s domain.

Lucas Mann stretched the phone cord and walked to a window, his back to the desk and Adam. He certainly didn’t appear to be a lawyer. He was in his mid-fifties with flowing dark gray hair which he somehow pulled and kept situated on the back of his neck. His dress was the hippest of fraternity chic—severely starched khaki workshirt with two pockets and a mixed salad tie, still tied but hanging loose; top button unbuttoned to reveal a gray cotton tee shirt; brown chinos, likewise starched to the crunch with a perfect one-inch cuff falling just enough to allow a peek at white socks; loafers shined immaculately. It was obvious
Lucas knew how to dress, and also obvious he was engaged in a different practice of law. If he’d had a small earring in his left lobe, he would have been the perfect aging hippie who in his later years was yielding to conformity.

The office was neatly furnished with government hand-me-downs: a worn wooden desk that seemed impeccably organized; three metal chairs with vinyl cushions; a row of mismatched file cabinets along one wall. Adam stood behind a chair and tried to calm himself. Could this meeting be required of all visiting attorneys? Surely not. There were five thousand inmates in Parchman. Garner Goodman had not mentioned a visit with Lucas Mann.

The name was vaguely familiar. Somewhere deep in one of his boxes of court files and newspaper clippings he had seen the name of Lucas Mann, and he desperately tried to remember if he was a good guy or a bad one. What exactly was his role in death penalty litigation? Adam knew for certain that the enemy was the state’s Attorney General, but he couldn’t fit Lucas into the scenario.