Turning Angel

“There’s just one problem with your scenario, Shad. A tiny little hole that a second-year law student could drive a cement truck through.”

“What’s that?”

“The second semen sample. You’re completely ignoring it. Who else had sex with Kate Townsend? Who raped her? That’s what you should be trying to find out.”

“On the contrary,” he says, “that’s the cornerstone of my case. Dr. Elliott murdered Kate Townsend in a jealous rage over what he perceived as infidelity on the girl’s part.”

“Then who’s the mystery man? If the semen in her vagina wasn’t deposited during a rape, why hasn’t the guy come forward?”

Shad glances at Sheriff Byrd as if deciding how much to reveal. “I think it’s a kid,” he says finally, “just like the deceased. A kid who’s scared shitless, and with good reason. He doesn’t want to jump into the middle of a capital murder case. Also, he’s probably scared of Dr. Elliott. Maybe he saw Elliott kill the girl. If so, he’s got to figure, ’If he killed her, he’ll damn sure kill me to keep me quiet.‘ Or the kid may have told his parents what he saw.They may be keeping him from coming forward. These days, a lot of parents would do that.”

“Everything you just told me is pure speculation.”

Shad shrugs. “Maybe so. But it’s the kind of speculation juries like.”

He’s right. And although he might have some difficulty getting this speculation into the record in a normal courtroom, he’ll have no trouble with Judge Minor. Good old Arthel will give Shad all the rope he needs to hang Drew with innuendo.

“Come on, Cage,” says Sheriff Byrd. “You know as well as I do that most murder victims are killed by people they know, and know well. Same with rape.”

“You’re absolutely right. Are you satisfied that you’re aware of everybody Kate Townsend knew well?”

“We’re getting there.”

“So you know all about Cyrus White.”

Byrd’s eyes narrow, but Shad looks blank.

“What are you talking about?” asks the sheriff.

“I’m talking about regular contact-regular and documented contact-between Kate Townsend and Cyrus White. And I’m not talking about casual encounters in the mall. I’m talking about her visiting his crib in the Brightside Manor Apartments.”

“Stop right there,” Shad says irritably. “Who the hell is Cyrus White?”

“Only the biggest drug dealer in the city of Natchez.”

Shad glances at Byrd. “Is that right?”

The sheriff nods reluctantly.

“Why haven’t I heard of him before?”

I can’t resist answering. “The voters of this city would probably like to ask you the same question, Shad.”

The sheriff gives me a dark look, then cuts his eyes at Shad. “You don’t know who Cyrus is because he’s never been arrested. Where did you get your information, Cage?”

Since I can’t betray Sonny Cross, I barb my evasion with a point. “From the same person who told me Cyrus was sexually obsessed with Kate Townsend.”

“Bullshit.”

“Cyrus has a serious jones for white girls, Billy. That seems like the kind of thing you ought to know about, given the circumstances of this case.”

“Cyrus is black?” Shad asks. “I mean, if he lives in Brightside Manor, I guess he must be.”

“He’s black,” the sheriff confirms. “But he doesn’t always stay at Brightside. He has safe houses and apartments all around town. The crib at Brightside is just one of them. Cyrus moves around a lot.”

“Where was this guy when the murder happened?” Shad asks.

Sheriff Byrd looks at me again but says nothing.

“He doesn’t know,” I tell Shad. “Billy figured he could nail Dr. Elliott on circumstantial evidence alone, and since that’s what you want him to do, why look any further? Right, Sheriff?”

“Screw you, Cage. Don’t tell me how to run my business.”

“Somebody needs to. Has it seeped into your brain yet that St. Catherine’s Creek runs right behind Brightside Manor?”

Sheriff Byrd’s mouth falls open. He looks like a largemouth bass that’s been hooked deep in the gut.

“That’s what I figured.” I turn to Shad. “Ain’t it a bitch? You were all ready to rush a pillar of this community to execution to make yourself look good for an election, and now Cyrus White drops out of the woodwork. Nailing a black drug dealer for killing a white girl won’t buy you much capital with black voters, will it? In fact, it might hurt you some.”

Shads eyes are no longer focused on me. They’ve moved off to the middle distance as he makes lightning calculations about the political ramifications of all this.

“Ask yourself this, Shad,” I say softly. “On one hand, you’ve got a distinguished physician who’s never been in trouble in his life. He was having sex with an underage girl, but he was in love with her and ready to marry her. That’s the guy you’ve got sitting in jail. On the other hand, you’ve got a notorious drug dealer who violently wiped out all his competition, who is known to have been sexually obsessed with the murder victim, and who lives on the creek into which the body was dumped. Now-which suspect would a reasonable man conclude is the most likely killer?”

Shad swallows audibly. The sound gives me great satisfaction.

Sheriff Byrd stands up straight and tries to stare a hole through me. Except for the paunch, he looks a lot like the black-hatted gunfighters in the old Westerns my dad and I watched when I was a kid. “Tell me where you got your information about Cyrus and the Townsend girl,” he says, taking two steps toward me.

“Sorry, Sheriff. If I told you everything, that wouldn’t be right, would it?”

Shad speaks in a cold voice. “Tell him, or I’ll charge you with obstruction of justice.”

“You call what I saw when I walked into this office justice?” I laugh outright, then turn and walk to the door. “I’ll see you boys tomorrow, after you’ve taken a DNA sample from Cyrus White. And be sure to inform the newspaper, the grand jury, and Judge Minor that you have a second suspect. Or I’ll have to do it for you.”

“Hold it, Cage,” Sheriff Byrd warns. “We’re a long way from done here.”

I keep walking.

“You can’t get out,” Shad calls after me. “The downstairs door is locked.”

He’s right. “Then get your ass down there and open it. Or I’ll smash it open.”

“Do that, and I’ll arrest you,” threatens the sheriff, his voice edged with hatred.

It’s times like this that I think the judicial system should be entrusted solely to women. “Arrest me, and I’ll make you look like the biggest asshole in the county on the front page of tomorrow’s paper. And that’s saying something.”

Billy Byrd looks like he’s about to stroke out.

“Open it for him,” Shad says softly. “Here are the keys.”

I walk downstairs without waiting for Billy. He’ll be ready to kill me by the time he reaches the ground floor, but right now I don’t give a damn.

I stand at the glass door, listening to his boot heels hammer the steps and the keys jangling in his hand. He stops behind me but makes no move to open the door.

“You’re writing mighty big checks with that mouth of yours,” he says in a low voice.

I turn and face him, my jaw set. “What did Shad buy you with, Billy? Whatever it was, it must have been big. I know you don’t sell cheap, especially to a black man. They’ve never been your kind of folks.”

Byrd’s trigeminal nerve twitches his cheek. “Be careful, boy.”

“Of what, exactly?”

The smile that cracks his face is like another man’s grimace.

“Don’t you wish it was forty years ago?” I say softly. “So you could just put two in the back of my head and say I assaulted you? Or maybe that I tried to escape?”

The smile leaves Byrd’s lips. “Sometimes I think they had it right back then, yeah.”

“Open the door.”