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She picks up the phone and begins speaking in a hushed tone.
My statement about the civil rights murder is true. The irony of that case is that I, the white lawyer, was crusading to solve the twenty-year-old murder of a black man, while Shad, the black politician, was trying to bury the case to keep from upsetting the white voters he needed to win the mayor’s office.
The secretary hangs up and buzzes me through the door. “End of the hall,” she says curtly.
As soon as I enter the blandly painted corridor, a door at the far end opens and a black man a few inches shorter than I peers out, an expression of annoyance on his face. “Son of a bitch,” he says without a trace of Southern accent. “I was having a good day until now.”
“Hello, Shad.”
The district attorney shakes his head, then walks back into his office, squaring his shoulders for combat as he goes. I follow him inside and wait to be invited to sit.
As usual, Shadrach Johnson is dressed to the nines in a bespoke suit and Italian shoes. His hair has a little more gray in it than the last time we locked horns, but his eyes still flash with quick intelligence. My first impression of him was of a brash personal injury lawyer, and nothing in the intervening years has changed that. Shad’s jutting jaw greets the world with a perpetual challenge, his eyes project arrogance and mistrust, and his shoulders stay flexed under the weight of an invisible yet enormous chip.
“Your buddy’s not playing this right, Cage,” he says, taking a seat behind an enormous desk that looks like an antique. “An innocent man doesn’t send his lawyer to speak for him in a situation like this. Have a seat.”
Go for it, I tell myself. Turn on the gravitas and recite the lines you rehearsed on the way over: This is a very serious matter, Shad. Dr. Elliott was indeed seeing the dead girl, but he did not kill her. You and I have to set aside our personal history and help the police to find a dangerous killer. Dr. Elliott wants to assist the investigation in every way, but he also wants to keep this unfortunate matter from escalating into something that could ruin reputations and break up families unnecessarily.
I was prepared to say those things, but now that I’m actually facing Shad Johnson, something stops me. It all seemed so clear in the car: pay the short-term price for a long-term gain. But this office, as modest as it is, gives me the old feeling I had when I worked for the D.A. in Houston. Irrevocable decisions are made in this room, decisions about who will be punished and who will not. Who will spend decades in prison? Who will die at the hands of the state? For any prosecutor, Drew Elliott would be a juicy target, but for a man like Shad Johnson—a man who dreams of being governor and more—Drew is a prize elephant.
There’s no doubt that Drew would look better to a future jury if he told the truth now. But what other consequences might result? Natchez is a small town, and when small-town cops are handed a likely suspect, they don’t look too hard for another. Truth be told, city cops aren’t much different. And confessing to the affair with Kate would immediately open Drew to a sexual battery charge that Shad could use to jail him, should he choose to. No, better to keep my cards close to the vest.
“That’s a lot nicer desk than the one the last D.A. had,” I observe, stalling for time as I take the chair opposite Shad.
The district attorney can’t help but brag; it’s his nature. “I got it out of storage from the old Natchez Museum,” he says, rubbing the finely grained wood. “It came from the attic of one of the antebellum homes. Longwood, I think. Ironic, isn’t it? Me working at a cotton planter’s desk? I had it appraised. It’s worth sixty grand.”
I give Shad a level gaze. “I hope you’re not one of those people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Shad’s eyes narrow. “What are you doing here, Penn? Where’s Dr. Elliott?”
“He had an emergency at his office. He had to stay and handle it.”
“Bullshit. Your client’s scared. His dick’s got him tangled up in a capital murder case, and he’s terrified.”
Shad must have more than the anonymous call in his pocket. “How do you figure that?”
“Did Elliott tell you about the call I got this morning?”
“He said you mentioned an anonymous caller who told you some story about him being intimate with Kate Townsend.”
“That’s right. And the good doctor did not deny it.”
“Did he confirm it?”
“That’s what this meeting was for. For him to confirm or deny. Now he’s sent you in his place. The big-time mouthpiece. I didn’t think you practiced anymore.”
“I wasn’t practicing when I took the Del Payton case either.”
Shad looks like he just bit into something sour. My punishing Del Payton’s murderers after Shad had resisted reopening the case cost him just enough support in the black community to take the mayoral election away from him. But that’s old news. I’ve got to get a handle on his present intentions before I paint myself into a corner.
“Shad, let’s—”
“Stop,” he says, jabbing a forefinger at me. “You’re here because you want something.”
He’s right. “I would like to know what was discovered during Kate’s autopsy.”
Shad studies me for several moments. “And you think I’m just going to give that to you?”
“If you continue to pursue my client, I’ll get it one way or another. Why don’t we try to foster a spirit of cooperation here?”
“You haven’t done any cooperating with me so far.” He lifts a sheaf of fax paper off his desk and flips to the last page. “But I’m feeling generous. What do you want to know?”
“Time of death?”
Shad shakes his head. “We’ll pass on that for now.”
“Cause?”
“Strangulation. There was also head trauma that might have killed the girl if she hadn’t been strangled first.”
“Interesting. There are rumors going around town about rape. Nurses at the hospital did some talking. Was the girl raped or not?”
“The pathologist says she was.”
“Genital trauma?”
Shad nods slowly.
“Did they recover semen from her?”
“Affirmative. Both holes.”
His crudeness is meant to shock, but I saw too much rape and murder in Houston for this to bother me. “So, the killer had some time with her.”
Shad shakes his head, a strange smile on his face. “Not necessarily. The pathologist already ran serology on the semen samples. They came from two different men.”
A glimmer of hope sparks in my soul. “Multiple assailants?”
“You could read it that way.”
“What other way is there? You have a different scenario in mind?”
“After the call I got this morning, you can’t blame me for speculating a little.”
“I’m listening.”
Shad leans over his desk and steeples his fingers. “Let’s say Dr. Elliott was having an affair with this high school girl. In his mind, it’s true love. Then he finds out his prom queen’s been sharing the poonanny with somebody else when he’s not around. Her old boyfriend, say. The doc finds out, and he flips out. Maybe Kate is cruel about how she tells him—you know some women. So, your client starts choking her, trying to make her shut up. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s shut her up for good.”
“By that scenario, the girl wasn’t raped at all.”
Shad waves his hand as though at a minor annoyance. “Rape is a subjective finding in a dead girl. She’s not accusing anybody. So she had some genital trauma. Rough consensual sex can cause that. Hell, I’ve had women get mad if I didn’t traumatize them down there.”
“You’re reaching, Shad.”
He settles back in his chair. “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you something else for free. The St. Stephen’s homecoming queen was pregnant.”
Shit. “How far along?”
“A little over four weeks. And that—according to the laws of the great state of Mississippi—makes this a double homicide, Counselor.” Shad arches his eyebrows in mock concern. “The community’s going to be very upset by that idea, the murder of an unborn baby. You know, I can see some people speculating that Dr. Elliott was just playing with this poor girl—getting a little on the side—and when she turned up pregnant, he saw his nice little life crashing down around him. He saw thirty years in Parchman for having sex with a juvenile patient, so he killed her.”
I suddenly see a glimpse of the future. This case is going to trial, and Drew Elliott will be the defendant, whether he deserves to be or not. Thank God I didn’t march in here spouting his secrets. “The public shouldn’t be able to make that kind of speculation,” I say evenly, “because they shouldn’t associate my client’s name with this case in any way.”
Shad smiles and shakes his head. “We’ve got a simple situation here, Counselor. Somebody is making telephone calls saying your client was screwing the dead girl. I can’t control that caller’s actions. So you’ve got to assume that Dr. Elliot’s name is going to be in the street soon. The best thing Drew can do for himself is provide us a DNA sample and clear his name as quickly as possible. If his DNA doesn’t match what the pathologist swabbed out of the girl, nobody can ever say a word against him.”
Check and mate. If I’m going to come clean about the affair before the trial, now is the time. But the truth as I know it will only lend credence to Shad’s first scenario—murder committed in a jealous rage.
“You asked about time of death,” Shad reminds me. “If you’ll tell me where Dr. Elliott was during the hours surrounding it, I’ll give you the time of death.”
“No deal. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”
Shad’s eyes glint with a predator’s love of the hunt.
“What about the fishermen who found the girl’s body?” I ask, trying to take Shad’s mind off Drew’s alibi. “Have you ruled them out?”
“They’re down at the hospital providing DNA samples as we speak. They couldn’t wait to do it.”
Damn. “And Kate Townsend’s boyfriend?”
“Steve Sayers? Same deal.” Shad taps the cherry desktop with manicured fingernails. “The boy’s alibi is a little weak, but he couldn’t wait to get over to the hospital and give blood. He offered to whack off in a cup right here in my office. Says he hasn’t had sex with the victim in months. Seems Miss Townsend just up and stopped putting out, no explanation. And before that, she was as hot as they come, according to the Sayers boy. Kinky, he said.” Shad gives me a cagey look. “You think she got religion?”
I keep my face impassive.
Shad smiles and leans back in his chair. “The bottom line is this: I need DNA from everybody who might have known the Townsend girl in the biblical sense. And any reasonable man would have to include your client on that list. Now, everybody but your client is chomping at the bit to give me said sample. Your client, on the other hand, has sent his celebrity mouthpiece down here to talk for him. So I’ll ask you straight out, is Dr. Elliott going to provide a DNA sample to the state in the interest of expediting this investigation? Or is he not?”
I choose my words with great care. “No judge would order my client to give a blood sample on the basis of an anonymous call alone.”
Shad concedes this with a slight inclination of his head. “That may be true. But in the interest of protecting the community, what innocent man would object to it?”
“In a perfect world, I’d agree. But if it got out that you asked Drew Elliott to give a DNA sample in connection with this murder—and it would get out, if he complied—the rumor alone could destroy him. It’s practically a child molestation charge. The stigma would never go away.”
“You can’t keep his name out of this mess, Cage. Our mystery caller didn’t telephone just me this morning.”
I cover my mouth and swallow hard. “Who else?”
“Sheriff Byrd and the chief of police. Our caller’s a persistent fellow. He seems to believe strongly in his cause.”
“Did you trace the source of the calls from phone records?”
“They originated from a pay phone on the north side of down-town.”
“The black section?”
Shad inclines his head again.
This fits what Drew told me about the blackmailer’s voice. “Did the police fingerprint the phone?”
“They’re working that angle, but no matches yet.” Shad suddenly gives me a look of honest puzzlement. “The thing is, Penn, accusing Dr. Elliott of this affair seems so out of left field, it’s hard to imagine anyone making it up. You know? If it’s not true, who would even think of it?”
“Somebody who hates Drew Elliott.”
Shad turns up his palms. “From what I gather, the good doctor hasn’t got an enemy in the world. Everybody talks about him like he’s a saint.”
“There’s a reason for that. He’s a genuinely good man.”
Another beatific smile. “Then he’s got nothing to worry about. The way I see it, providing a DNA sample is about the only way Dr. Elliott is going to be able to preserve his sterling reputation.”
“There’s no way I’m letting Drew go down to the St. Catherine’s Hospital lab for a DNA test. The man’s on staff there, for God’s sake. Word would shoot through that building in less than an hour. By nightfall, everybody in town would know about it.”
Shad leans back and speaks in a cold voice. “I’m sorry to hear that. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll be forced to consider other alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. One thing, it’s the first week of the month. That means the grand jury’s in session. Probably will be for two more days. They might be real interested in hearing about this situation. About the anonymous call, and about the strange coincidences, like how Dr. Elliott lives up-stream on that creek where the girl’s body was found. They might just decide they want a DNA sample from the doctor on their own.”
Jesus. “That’s unethical, Shad. You’d be perverting the purpose of the grand jury. It doesn’t exist to investigate crimes. And for your information, at least a thousand people live upstream on that creek, maybe more.”
Shad’s eyes brim with confidence. “Just a thought, Counselor. But emotions are running high in this town. People want a brutal killer like this caught and punished. That’s my sole interest here. And I’m not going to let the fact that your client is white and rich stop me from getting to the bottom of this poor girl’s death. That kind of miscarriage of justice stopped the day I took over this office.”
Like a chess player experiencing a flash of insight, I suddenly see a dozen moves down the board. And what I see sends a rush of adrenaline through my veins. This conversation isn’t about murder at all—it’s about politics. I should have realized that before I walked in the door.
The mayoral election Shad lost five years ago was the most hotly contested in Natchez history. He lost to Riley Warren, a two-term white incumbent with a flamboyant style and a love for backroom business schemes that earned him the nickname Wiley. While some of those schemes benefited the city, others weighed it down with suffocating debt, and by the end of his term—last summer—even Wiley’s supporters suspected that he’d enriched himself more than the city he was elected to serve. Shad might have defeated Warren then, but he was only halfway into his first term as district attorney. It wouldn’t have looked good for him to resign after the promises he’d made to rectify “racial inequalities” in Natchez’s criminal courts.
Despite dwindling support, Wiley Warren ran for mayor a third time. His enemies polled local worthies in search of an opposition candidate—myself included. Like most who were asked, I declined to enter the fray. Ultimately, Warren’s enemies ran a rather dim bulb named Doug Jones against their nemesis, and despite Jones’s utter lack of distinction or vision, he handily defeated Warren in the primary. The only black candidate to step forward was a funeral director with a checkered past, a man with enemies of his own in the black community. Black turnout was low on election day, and Doug Jones won by a 58 to 42 percent margin. The newly Honorable Mayor Jones took office and promptly became the invisible man. If he took no bold new initiatives for the city, neither did he make any tragic mistakes. He managed this by doing almost nothing at all. But shortly after Christmas he finally did do something: he held a press conference and announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and would resign his office within ninety days.
That was two months ago.
If Mayor Jones pulls the trigger within the next four weeks, as promised, then the chief executive office of the city will be up for grabs. Local election rules dictate that once the mayor’s office is vacated, a special election must be held within forty-five days. Sitting here in this office, I realize just how important that fact is to Shad Johnson. If Shad were to convict a rich white doctor of capital murder, he could pronounce his election promises to the black community fulfilled and enter the mayoral race with a united front behind him—something that didn’t happen five years ago.
The seemingly boundless confidence in Shad’s eyes triggers another revelation: he doesn’t even have to convict Drew. Even if Shad loses, he wins politically in the black community, just for making the effort. He can always blame a courtroom loss on the white man’s secret manipulation of the system.
I look Shad hard in the eyes but speak softly. “You’re going to run for mayor again.”
He blinks like a reptile basking in the sun. “No comment, Counselor.”
“You think putting Drew Elliott in Parchman is your ticket to a unified black electoral base.”
Shad attempts to dispose of my theory with a wave of his hand. “Our business here is to rule out Dr. Elliott as a murder suspect—if we can—so that my officers can get on with the investigation of this heinous crime.”
Spoken as though for reporters. My new understanding of the political situation has sent my mind racing down a dozen different paths, but I’m not here to figure out the future of Natchez. I’m here to protect Drew Elliott.
