more.“
Wade’s honesty surprises me. But is he playing me as well? ”Do you always say no, Wade?“
His jaw tightens. ”Yessir, I do. Know why?“
”Why?“
”My mama taught me one lesson. Don’t shit where you eat.“ He glances at the door again. ”I need this job, Penn. And screwing a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old would eventually lose it for me. Because these girls can’t handle what they’re playing with. They have sex, but they don’t understand what it really is, you know? Hell, adults don’t either, half the time. Maybe that’s what happened to Drew. The truth is, we’ll probably never know what happened to Kate.“
”Yes, we will,“ I promise. ”Because I’m going to find out.“
Wade Anders stands and offers me his hand. ”More power to you, brother. Anything I can do to help, you let me know.“
I shake his hand and turn to leave the office.
”Oh, hey,“ he says. ”I had my baseball team go over the football field and track with a fine-toothed comb, but they never found that pistol you told me you lost.“
I stop and look back at him, searching for hidden meaning in his face. ”Did the crew I sent over get your light control box fixed?“
”Yep, good as new.“ Wade leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on his desk. ”Man, those bullets tore up the inside of that box. Good thing you didn’t hit anybody with them.“
I freeze. ”I never told you it was me who shot the box.“
He looks blank. ”I guess you didn’t. I just assumed…“
”What?“
”That you were down here spotlighting deer or something. That you crossed over from the hunting camp. I didn’t mean nothing by it.“
I keep studying his face, looking for cracks in his composure. ”That’s pretty much what happened. Thanks for the effort, Wade.“
”No problem. You be careful. Lots of crazy shit happening in this town.“
”I will.“
Chapter 26
At seven stories the Eola Hotel is the tallest building in Natchez. Built in 1927, the year of the great flood, the Eola has weathered boom and bust to find itself in the National Register of Historic Places. When I was a boy in the 1960s, the lobby of the Eola was a seedy place where old men played chess and smoked cigars while families fresh from church walked through the stale air to eat their Sunday dinners in the hotel restaurant. In that era, uniformed black men operated the elevator and attended the restroom while Yankees like Dan Rather, his CBS news crew, and New York print journalists stood in the cafe watching robed Klansmen on horseback march down Main Street outside. Quentin Avery remembers that era a lot better than I do. And now he will run Drew Elliott’s legal defense from the penthouse suite of a hotel that wouldn’t have given him a reservation when he was a thirty-year-old lawyer.
Today I operate the elevator myself as I ride up to the seventh floor. When the door opens, I see two young white men carrying computer equipment between rooms. They have the harried look of young lawyers. I nod at them and make my way up the hall to Quentin’s suite. The door is propped open with a heavy law book. I knock and walk inside.
The suite is huge: three separate rooms and two baths, all decorated with obsessive attention to detail. Quentin is standing on the long balcony, which gives a panoramic view of Natchez, the Mississippi River, and the Louisiana delta stretching away for miles to the west. He’s wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt. From the rear, his grayish-white Afro gives him the look of a much younger man.
”Quentin?“ I call. ”It’s Penn Cage.“
Avery turns and smiles, and though I see every one of his seventy-plus years in his face, the light in his eyes tells me he’s excited to be back in the game again.
”What do you know?“ he asks. ”Anything new?“
”I talked to Chief Logan this morning. Marko Bakic has vanished. Ditto Cyrus White.“
Quentin’s smile broadens. ”Good, good. That’s just how we like it.“
”Why’s that?“
”You need to ask me that? Come out here into the sun. Maybe it’ll prod your brain.“
I walk out onto the balcony. There’s a cool breeze blowing off the rust-colored river, which is high for this early in the spring. ”Tell me.“
”This is a murder case, Penn. Our goal is acquittal. To get that, we need one thing: reasonable doubt.“
”And?“
”Cyrus White is our reasonable doubt. Just as he is. If I could stop time right now and go to trial, I would. Because no sane jury can convict Drew Elliott of murder with unidentified sperm in that dead girl and Cyrus White on the loose. Not with proof that Kate and Cyrus knew each other.“
”I’m not sure we can prove that.“
Quentin’s smile vanishes. ”You told me the police had video of the dead girl going into Cyrus’s apartment.“
”Sonny Cross told me that. He’s dead now. And, well…he worked for the sheriff’s department.“
”So the sheriff’s department will have the video. We’ll get that during discovery.“
”I hope so.“
”What do you mean?“
”When I talked to Sonny, I got the feeling he kept a lot from the sheriff. I don’t think they got along too well.“
Quentin’s face hardens. ”I need that video, Penn. You’ve got to get it for me.“
”I’ll do my best.“
”Is there any other proof that Kate Townsend and Cyrus knew each other?“
An image of Kate’s secret journal fills my mind, but I’m not ready to tell Quentin about that yet. There’s no way we could use that diary in the trial without causing Drew further damage. Besides, Jenny Townsend gave me Kate’s private things specifically so that they wouldn’t be seen by prying eyes. Even if I wanted to make the diary public, I’m not sure I could bring myself to violate Jenny’s trust. If it meant saving Drew’s life, I would, of course. But right now, that journal is as likely to hurt him as help him. There might be digital proof somewhere that Cyrus was tracking Kate’s cell phone, but I’ll find that out on my own.
”I don’t know,“ I murmur. ”I’ll try to find out.“
”You’ll have to talk to Cyrus’s crew,“ Quentin says, ”see if they remember her coming around.“
”You think they’ll talk to me?“
Quentin shrugs. ”You’re my investigator. We’ll subpoena them if we have to, but that’s never the best way to get information.“
It’s time for me to come clean with Quentin about Kate’s relationship with Cyrus. As succinctly as possible I explain Ellen Elliot’s Lorcet addiction, and Kate’s reason for visiting Cyrus once a month. He listens like a man who has heard it all in his time. He can’t be shocked, only disappointed.
”This ain’t good,“ Quentin says when I finish. ”I can make the jury feel sorry for a good doctor who happened to fall in love with a beautiful young girl. Even an underage girl. But I can’t make them feel sorry for a manipulator who used a high school girl in a sleazy scheme to get drugs.“
”I’ll be very surprised if Shad makes that connection.“
Quentin raises one eyebrow. ”I’ve learned something in my long years of practicing law, Penn. What holds true of adultery holds true for most other sins. Sooner or later,
”In other words, how soon will Drew be indicted and go to trial?“
Quentin nods. ”I look for sooner rather than later. As soon as Shad gets a DNA match on the semen taken from
