Turning Angel

“At the school?”

“No, at Anders’s house. Wade has just about wangled the kid a football scholarship at Delta State. Just what the world needs, right? One more soccer-style kicker. Anyway, I called Wade, and he told me he worked the phone for the kid about an hour. Marko was right there with him, doing homework. Then Wade tried to help Marko with his chemistry.” Cross laughs again. “The blind leading the blind. Anyway, no luck there.”

“Thanks, Sonny. I really appreciate the information.”

“Sometimes I think you’re the only one. You ask me, some of those people on the board have their heads most of the way up their asses.”

“To be honest with you, I’m resigning from the board tomorrow. But I’ll do all I can to help with the Marko situation.”

Silence. “Can you tell me why you’re resigning?”

“It’s the Drew Elliott thing.”

“Huh. I don’t see why you’d have to resign because of that. But you know more about it than I do. I hate to see you go, man.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”

“You ask me, Drew Elliott is a stand-up guy. Like the old-time docs. He actually gives a shit how you’re doing.”

“I think you’re right. Look, I hate to go, but-”

“One last thing, Penn. That Townsend girl wasn’t the all-American, lily-white virgin some people are making her out to be.”

Suddenly my haste is gone. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve done a lot of surveillance in this town. And I’ve seen Kate Townsend in some places good girls just don’t go, if you get my drift.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“She hung with some pretty bad company sometimes. And she’s no stranger to drugs.”

“Weed? Or worse?”

“Worse, I think.”

“This might be really important, Sonny. Important to Drew. Where exactly have you seen Kate?”

“Brightside Manor.”

This is the last thing I expected to hear. The Brightside Manor Apartments are a dilapidated group of buildings on the north side of town, the closest thing to a slum inside the city limits. Its occupants are poor and black, and the complex is named frequently in the newspaper as the site of crimes from domestic abuse to shootings. “What the hell was Kate Townsend doing there?”

“I’m not sure. But I’ve spotted her there several times over the last few months. I’ve even got videotape of her going in and out. About once a month, now that I think about it.”

“You think she was buying drugs?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t going to bust her to find out, being who she was. But the thing is, girls like Kate Townsend get their drugs from friends, not dealers. And looking like she did, Kate wouldn’t have tobuy drugs at all, you know?”

“I’m listening, Sonny.”

“Well, Brightside Manor is where Cyrus White lives.”

“Who’s that?”

“The top drug dealer in the city of Natchez. And its Cyrus’s building that I’ve seen Kate go in and out of.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s why I say she wasn’t buying weed. If Kate Townsend was visiting Cyrus White to get drugs, she was there for some heavy shit. Powder cocaine, or maybe even heroin.”

Every new sentence out of Cross’s mouth freaks me out more. “Do we have heroin in Natchez?”

“Brother, every town has every drug. You just have to know where to look.”

“Wonderful. Do you know anything else about Kate?”

“No. But I’ve got a theory, if you want to wrap your mind around something scary.”

“I’m listening.”

“She’s wasn’t going there to buy anything. She was there to see Cyrus.”

“You mean…”

“That’s what I mean. Cyrus has a real taste for white girls. A well-documented taste.”

Kate Townsend doing a drug dealer?“That sounds too crazy, Sonny.”

“Cyrus ain’t your average drug dealer. In past years, most Natchez dealers were punks barely out of their teens. Cyrus is thirty-four and smart as a whip. By the time I heard he was in business, all his competition had been wiped out. Ruthlessly. But I couldn’t pin a thing on him.”

Cyrus is thirty-four…Drew is forty. Did Kate have a thing for older men in general?

“Cyrus is a veteran of Desert Storm, if you can believe it,” Sonny continues. “He was in the air force. I’ve been trying to bust him for over a year, but nothing sticks. He’s the Teflon nigger.”

Sonny’s use of the N-word is completely unself-conscious. He belongs to that group of Southerners who modify their vocabulary by the company they’re in. Around whites he knows-and probably suspects he’s busting-Sonny says “nigger” without even a shading of caution. Around strangers, he’s as politically correct as the next guy. But there’s no question how he really sees the most frequent targets of his profession. There’s also no question that his prejudice is part of what makes African-Americans his primary targets, rather than the Kate Townsends of the world. But that prejudice isn’t unique to redneck sheriff’s detectives in Mississippi. It thrives in the blood of the American judicial system, all the way up to Washington.

“Does Sheriff Byrd know about Kate’s connection to Cyrus?” I ask.

The narcotics agent doesn’t answer for some time. Then he says, “It’s not that I don’t trust the sheriff, Penn. I just don’t like him messing around in my cases until it’s time to move on something. He can be a disruptive influence.”

“I hear you, Sonny. I appreciate you telling me all this. Anything else you get on Kate, please let me know.”

“Will do. And I’ll do anything I can to help out Dr. Elliott.”

I hang up, my mind spinning with the new information. How well did Drew really know Kate? Did he see her as an all-American, lily-white virgin, as Sonny described her? Or did he know about her shadow side? If not, that hidden part of her life might hold the key to the second semen sample found in her corpse, and thus the key to freeing Drew.

It’s that question that occupies me as I sit at my dining room table with Annie in the fading light of dusk. Annie is doing her homework, and now and then she throws a question at me, more out of boredom than from needing help. I’m supposedly working on my new novel, but what I’m really doing is trying to tease out the secret threads of Drew’s and Kate’s lives. My new awareness of Cyrus White has completely changed my perspective on Drew’s situation.

One thing that keeps coming back to me is Drew’s assertion that the blackmailer who called him that first night and told him to leave the money on the football field “sounded like a black kid.” I doubt that a thirty-four-year-old war veteran would sound like a kid, but sometimes people’s voices surprise you. Heavyweight champion and convicted rapist Mike Tyson sounds like a five-year-old boy when he speaks. But the more likely answer is that a big-time drug dealer like Cyrus White probably has dozens of kids working for him. And that’s who he’d get to make a call like that.

It wasn’t just money they wanted,I recall with sudden clarity. The blackmailers wanted drugs from Drew, as well. But does that point toward Cyrus White? Why would a drug dealer ask for drugs? As I ponder this question, my front doorbell chimes. I’m not expecting anyone, but given all that’s happened today, there’s no telling who it might be.

When I open the door, I find the last person I would have expected. Jenny Townsend, Kate’s mother. Jenny is tall and clear-eyed like Kate, and she’s holding a worn Jimmy Choo shoe box in front of her.

“Hello, Penn,” she says in a controlled voice.

“Jenny,” I say awkwardly. “Will you come in?”