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 downtown.”
“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 upstream 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.
“All right,” I say in a tone of surrender. “What about this? Dr. Elliott has a laboratory in his office. Send over a couple of police officers right now, during his lunch hour. His lab tech can draw the blood you need—do a buccal swab, whatever—and the cops can attest that it’s his. The chain of custody remains intact, and so does Dr. Elliott’s reputation.”
Shad nods. “I can live with that.”
I look at my watch. “I’d better call him.”
“I thought he had an emergency.”
“He’s probably handled it by now.” I get up and offer Shad my hand.
He takes it, but he squeezes gently rather than shakes, then withdraws his hand. “I hope your boy comes up clean, Penn. If he doesn’t…”
“He will.”
Shad looks surprised by my statement. But I was talking about Kate’s murder, nothing else.
I’m almost to the door when he says, “Penn, about the mayoral situation.”
I turn and regard him steadily. “Yes?”
“I heard some local power brokers asked you to run against Wiley Warren last year.”
“That’s right. I wasn’t interested.”
“Not interested in running against Warren? Or not interested in being mayor?”
“Both. Neither.”
Shad studies me with unguarded curiosity. “The town’s in a lot different place than it was a year ago.”
“You’re right, I’m sad to say.”
It kills him to ask the next question. “Are you still not interested?”
I turn up my palms, then smile easily. “No more than you. Have a good day, Shad.”
Outside the D.A.’s office, I stand in the sun and stare across the street at the courthouse. Somewhere inside, a simple white man named Doug Jones is wrestling with his fear of death and deciding when to resign the office of mayor. I’m surprised he’s waited two months, given the gravity of his diagnosis. I watched an uncle die of lung cancer, and I’ve forgotten neither my horror nor his pain. But while Mayor Jones struggles with his mortality, Shad Johnson watches from across the street like a hungry vulture waiting to draw life from death. My new appreciation of Shad’s deeper motive has clarified Drew’s situation.
If Shad can get sufficient evidence, he will rush Drew to trial in record time, hoping to convict him—or at least garner a week’s worth of headlines—before Mayor Jones resigns. But Drew’s legal jeopardy is not the sole reason for my interest in Shad’s political intentions. For the past six months, despite my decision not to seek the office of mayor a year ago, I have been pondering the idea of entering the special election.
My reasons are simple. One month into Doug Jones’s administration, the International Paper Company—the largest employer in the county—announced that it would close its Natchez mill after fifty years of continuous operation. The shock to the community still hasn’t passed. Closure came swiftly, and about a month ago the severance pay of former employees began to peter out. So did their heath insurance benefits. And IP was merely the last in a short but devastatingly complete line of local manufacturing companies to shut down. Triton Battery. Armstrong Tire and Rubber. Johns-Manville. That leaves tourism the only industry pumping outside dollars into Natchez. And tourism is a seasonal business.
In a single year, Natchez has been transformed from a fairly healthy city into a community on the edge. We’ve lost more than five hundred families in the wake of the IP closure, and more are leaving every week. In 1850, Natchez boasted more millionaires than every city in America except New York and Philadelphia, the money flowing in as cotton flowed out by the hundreds of thousands of bales. But as the soil was slowly depleted, cotton farming moved north to the Delta, and Natchez entered a period of decline. Then in 1948, oil was discovered practically beneath the streets. By 1960, the year I was born, the city was flush with millionaires again, and Natchez became a truly magical place in which to grow up. But in 1986, the price of oil crashed, and the Reagan administration sacrificed domestic oil producers in his battle to win the Cold War. The number of local oil companies dwindled from sixty to seven, and by the time the price of oil began to climb again, there wasn’t enough industry left to exploit what remained of our depleted reserves. Without visionary leadership, Natchez will soon shrink to a quaint hamlet of ten or twelve thousand people—mostly retirees, service workers, and people on welfare—and the thriving city of twenty-five thousand that I grew up in will be only a memory.
When I first heard about Doug Jones’s terrible diagnosis, I sensed the hand of fate offering this city a final opportunity for salvation. And to my surprise, I felt a powerful surge of civic responsibility swelling in my heart. Shad Johnson will tell voters he felt a similar call to public service, but I know him too well to believe that. Five years ago, he left his Chicago law firm to return to Natchez and run one of the most cynical campaigns I’ve ever witnessed on either a local or national level. I’m proud that my efforts in the courtroom helped snatch victory from his grasp, but it was black voters who ultimately did that. Enough of them saw through Shad’s theatrical skills to tip the balance against him. They closed their eyes, gritted their teeth, and voted for what they hoped was a harmless white man. But as Shad himself said earlier, Natchez was a different city a year ago. Now we are in crisis. And a man who does nothing during a crisis is as bad as a man who causes one.