Logan looks at me like I’m crazy. ”
”I’m not Drew’s attorney, Don.“
”Who the hell is?“
”Quentin Avery.“
Logan freezes in his chair. ”You’re kidding, right?“
I shake my head. ”You know who Avery is?“
”Yessir, I do.“ The chief stands and removes his gun belt. Every move communicates an attitude of defensiveness. ”And I’m not waiting around for that SOB to make a federal case out of this. As far as I’m concerned, you’re all the lawyer Dr. Elliott needs. The interrogation starts in one minute.“
He walks past me without meeting my eyes.
”Don, wait,“ I plead.
”Fuck you.“
Chapter 23
When I called Quentin Avery to tell him about Drew’s impending interrogation, I got his wife instead. Doris Avery was reluctant to bring Quentin to the phone, but I heard him protesting in the background, and then his rich voice came down the wire from the far northern edge of the county.
”What are you pulling me out of bed for, Penn Cage?“
I quickly related everything that had happened since we last talked. Quentin sounded intrigued by the attack on Cyrus, and still more by his disappearance. But he wasn’t worried about Drew being interrogated by Chief Logan. If I felt nervous, he said, I should observe and make sure that Drew answered only questions pertaining to Cyrus’s death. Quentin’s nonchalance worried me. I felt that he was misreading Drew-whom he still had not met-and that Drew’s belief in his own innocence might cause him to make statements against his interest in the legal sense.
But Quentin turned out to be right. Chief Logan got nothing out of Drew other than a denial that he’d been involved in the attack on Cyrus and his guards. Drew appeared even more shocked than I to hear of the attack, but he was very interested in Cyrus’s escape. Like me, Drew raised the possibility that Cyrus might be attempting to fake his own death. As Chief Logan tried to shoot down this theory, I decided that if Cyrus was trying to fake his own death, he’d done it without premeditation, by simply taking advantage of a tragic but fortuitous event. But Drew seemed committed to the theory that the entire attack had been orchestrated by Cyrus to rid himself of his own men-potential witnesses against him-and then ”die“ to escape being punished for Kate’s murder. ”What better way to avoid prosecution?“ Drew challenged Logan. ”Cyrus is probably on his way to Chicago or Los Angeles by now.“
Logan ended his interrogation no wiser than he’d begun it. I warned Drew not to answer any more questions without myself or Quentin present, promised to visit him in the morning, then let Chief Logan walk me to my car.
”Something’s not right, Penn,“ he said. ”I don’t know whether it’s Drew or something I don’t know about yet. But something’s deeply wrong in this town.“
”Maybe something’s been wrong for a while, Don. Maybe it’s just coming to the surface at last.“
”You talking about drugs?“
”And the other things tied up with it. Race problems, teenagers in trouble, big enough money to draw out-of- town predators.“
”What about this Marko kid?“ Logan asked. ”What’s his story?“
”You didn’t have him on your radar before this?“
”No.“
”He’s a Croatian exchange student who wants to be Al Pacino.“
”What?“
”Nothing. Just something Sonny Cross said.“
Chief Logan looked like he wanted more information, but I was too tired to tell what I knew about Marko Bakic. ”What’s your problem with Quentin Avery, Don?“
The chief took out a cigarette and lit it. After a couple of drags, he said, ”Avery sued my uncle in a personal injury case. Danny Richards. Uncle Danny owned a trucking company. They hauled pulpwood, mostly. Well, one of his drivers was drunk one Friday. Black, of course. Some of those guys buy two cases of beer in the morning and drink all day up in the cab. It’s crazy, of course, but how you gonna stop them? Uncle Danny checked his drivers lots of times, but you can’t be up in the trucks with them all the time. Anyway, this particular driver overcorrected on a turn and spilled a load of logs on a housewife coming back from the grocery store. Paralyzed her. Avery took the case and pushed it to the limit. The driver didn’t have anything but a mountain of debt, so he spent a few years in jail, then got out. He’s driving log trucks again.“
”And your uncle?“
”Avery shut him down. All the assets of his company were seized to pay the punitive damages. The case was litigated in Jefferson County, of course. Uncle Danny killed himself two years later. Drove into a bridge piling, stone sober in broad daylight, one-car accident.“
”I’m sorry.“
Chief Logan blew out a long stream of smoke. ”That motherfucker comes into my station, he’d better hope there’s people around the whole time. Otherwise, he just might slip on a banana peel.“
I waited for more, but the chief added nothing to his story. It’s an ancient rule: lawyers make enemies. ”I’ll see you, Don.“
He dropped his butt and ground it out on the pavement. ”Yeah.“
As I drive away from the police station, my mind constructs a montage of images I never saw in life but which I now know happened: Cyrus White being attacked by a black-masked killer; the ethereal Kate Townsend walking alone into the Brightside Manor Apartments to score drugs for her married lover’s wife. And playing beneath these images like the black-and-white filmstrips of carnage I saw in driver’s education class, the death of Sonny Cross, my own personal nightmare of muzzle flashes and panic and black blood. My feelings about Sonny remain mixed. He was a flawed man, but he did his best to protect his hometown from a scourge he knew more intimately than most of us. It was an obligation he felt deeply, and as he died, he passed part of that obligation on to me, like a falling soldier passing a regimental banner to a comrade.
Reflecting on the hurricane of violence that began spinning through my town two days ago, I ask myself what lies in the eye of that storm. And the answer that comes to me is simple:
Dialing Directory Assistance on my cell phone, I request the home phone number of Paul Wilson, the retired professor who sponsored Marko in the student exchange program. It’s after eleven, but Paul keeps late hours. I’ve seen him jogging with his dog after midnight in his subdivision. I know this because I often keep late hours myself, especially when I’m writing. After Paul’s phone rings five times, I start to hang up, but then the professor answers in a wide-awake voice.
”Penn Cage! What’s up, fella?“ Paul is a Yankee, and he obviously saw my name on his caller ID.
”Hey, Paul. I know it’s late, but I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.“
”It’s not late over here. Janet and I were just having a glass of pinot noir and watching Puccini on PBS.“
A hysterical laugh almost escapes my mouth. Paul has instantly fulfilled my stereotypical image of him. I’ve heard that he and Janet drink a lot of wine, and I know from talking to him that he listens to too much NPR.
”Have you heard from the police tonight?“ I ask.
There’s a brief silence on Paul’s end. ”As a matter of fact, the sheriff called. He was quite rude, actually.“
”Are they questioning Marko now?“
”No, Marko’s out on a date.“
