Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“What is it?”

I yell. “What happened?”

There’s a rattle that sounds like Libby’s cell phone skating across a tile floor. I hear confused shouts, several slaps, then a shriek followed by a bellow of rage and anguish. The phone rattles again, and then I hear sobbing. Libby has the phone. After twenty seconds of gulping air, she begs me in a torrent of words to come to the station. I wait until she runs out of air, then ask again what happened.

“They’re beating him up! They

maced

him.”

I try to picture this scene, but I can’t see the Natchez police beating a nineteen-year-old kid without some physical provocation. “Did Soren do something first?”

“He hit one of the cops,” she whispers. “They were dragging him back to the cell, really being rough, and he lashed out at somebody. It was just a reflex! Penn, help me. Please! I'm so scared they'’re going to do something terrible to him, or put him back there with somebody horrible. If you ever cared for me at all, please, come now.”

A minute ago, I would have said nothing could keep me from meeting Tim at the stroke of midnight, but guilt is a powerful motivator. With a silent

Goddamn it,

I wrench the wheel right on Madison Street and speed northward to the police station.

It’s thirteen minutes after twelve when I finally squeal out of the police station parking lot, my hands shaking with anger and fear. Libby is shouting after me, but not as loudly as her son is screaming mindless profanity in the drunk tank. The police found half a pound of grass in the trunk of the car Soren was driving, but I'm almost positive he was high on crystal meth. Soren is essentially a gentle kid, not prone to violence, but when he drinks or ingests any drug but marijuana, his anger at his father surfaces, and he gets unpredictable.

A passenger in the car that he T-boned had to be evacuated by hel

icopter from St. Catherine’s Hospital to University Medical Center in Jackson. Worse than that—for Soren, at least—was the poke he took at the cop who was trying to drag him from the booking area to the cellblock. That blow placed Soren Jensen on the wrong side of a stark line for the Natchez Police Department. The cop required three stitches for the blow to his cheek, and Soren went to the cell with a faceful of pepper spray; but this is merely prologue for what will happen when Shad Johnson gets hold of the case.

All this minutiae drains quickly away as I race westward toward the cemetery. Even if a patrol car doesn’'t stop me for speeding, I'’ll be nearly half an hour late for my rendezvous with Tim.

Flying up Cemetery Road, past the prepossessing silhouette of Weymouth Hall, I realize why Tim chose Jewish Hill for our meetings. The cemetery’s front lower level, which houses the Turning Angel, is bathed in a yellow-orange glow from the sodium streetlights on Cemetery Road. But because of its height, the tabletop of Jewish Hill remains shrouded in darkness.

Is Tim still here? I see no car parked along the cemetery wall, but then I saw none last night either. I still don'’t know how Tim approached me from the back of the cemetery, since the only entrances I know about face Cemetery Road. But an old dopehead like Jessup probably knows a lot of things I don'’t about the deserted areas of the city.

An hour ago I planned to park more secretively than I did last night, but there’s no time for that now. I stop at the foot of Jewish Hill, take my pistol from my briefcase, shove it into my waistband, and leave the car. A quick push takes me through the hedge behind the wall, and then I'm climbing the steep face of the hill, toward the wire bench and the flagpole.

As feared, I find no one waiting at the top. No one was waiting for me last night either, but tonight feels different somehow. There’s a different silence among the stones. The air doesn’'t seem quite still, as though it’s recently been stirred, and the insects are silent. That could be the result of someone approaching, but my instinct says no. I feel a dreadful certainty that Tim has already been here and gone. Turning my back to the river and the moon, I walk deeper into the marble necropolis, scanning the darkness for signs of movement.

Out of the pulse beat of my blood comes a deep, subsurface rumble, almost too low for my ears to detect. It seems to vibrate up from the very ground. Thirty seconds later, I realize I'm hearing the engine of a push boat driving a great string of barges upriver, its massive cylinders propelling an unimaginable weight against the current. Turning, I see the red and green lights on the bow of the foremost barge, a third of a mile forward of the push boat’s stern. The pitch of the engine changes as the boat moves northward, then out of its steady drone a higher hum rises. A blue halogen wash fills the near sky, dimming the bow light on the barge, and I realize a vehicle is passing below me on Cemetery Road. It’s coming from out in the county, from the direction of the Devil’s Punchbowl, heading toward town.

I'm too deep inside the cemetery to see the vehicle. On impulse, I run back along the top of Jewish Hill, but too late. All I see are vertical taillights winking through the leaves of the ancient oaks in the low-lying part of the cemetery where Sarah is buried. The taillights look as if they belong to a truck or an SUV, not Tim’s Sentra.

My watch reads 12:37. The pistol feels awkward in my waistband but not completely unfamiliar. As a prosecutor of major felony cases in Houston, I was sometimes forced to carry a weapon for extended periods. Even after retiring from that position and taking up writing, certain circumstances have required me to carry a gun for protection, and on several occasions I’'ve been forced to use it, sometimes with fatal results.

I feel an almost unbearable compulsion to call Tim’s cell phone, but I resist it. Tim might simply be later than I am. Certainly, more things could have delayed him, or so I’d guess. After jogging in place for half a minute to relieve my anxiety, I sit on a low grave wall that commands a good view of Cemetery Road. With my mother watching Annie, I can afford to give Tim an hour of my time. I only wish I had a cup of coffee to keep me warm and alert. I’d like to lay my cell phone on the wall beside me, but I'm afraid its light will betray my position if anyone is watching.

My body has just begun to gear down when the Razr in my pocket vibrates, bringing me to my feet. I dig the phone from my pocket and cup it to my chest like a man trying to light a cigarette in

a strong wind. I didn't expect to recognize the number, and I don'’t, but it has a Mississippi area code and a Natchez prefix.

“Hello?” I say in a stilted tone.

“Is this Penn Cage?” asks a voice both familiar and unfamiliar.

My heart rises into my throat, and for some reason I glance at my watch. Nine minutes have passed since I saw the taillights on Cemetery Road. “Who is this?”

“Don Logan, chief of police. Is this the mayor?”

A dozen reasons the chief might be calling me after midnight come to mind, none of them good. The most likely is something to do with Soren Jensen—the last thing I want to talk about right now.

“Yeah, Don, this is Penn. Don’t tell me the kid’s done something else.”

There’s a brief silence, then Logan speaks with the gravity I heard too often from homicide cops in Houston. “No, it’s not that. I'm down by Silver Street on the bluff—well, underneath it really—forty feet underneath it. I'm in that drainage ditch that runs along the foot of the retaining wall.”

“Uh-huh,” I reply, my throat tightening.

“We’'ve got a situation down here, Penn. Bad.”

“Okay.” I look desperately around the cemetery for a sight of Tim.

“We got what looks to me like a homicide. Or a suicide, I'm not sure which yet. Guy went over the fence and hit the cement”—Logan says “

see

-ment”—“and I was wondering if you might come down here and look at the scene.”

This request is unusual, but I have a lot of experience with homicide cases. Maybe the chief wants my opinion on some evidence. “What do you think I can do for you, Don?”

“Couple of things, I figure. I don'’t really want to say on a cell phone. But you knew the victim.”

As the chief finishes speaking, the last threads of Tim’s destiny are pulled into place. “Who is it?”

This time the silence lasts awhile. I suspect the chief wants to ask me if I already know. “Initials are T.J. That ring any bells for you?”

Logan probably mistakes the silent seconds I require to endure this blow as my trying to figure out whose initials those are. Only now do the squawks of police radios cut through the staticky silence

of Logan waiting. “I'm too tired for guessing games, Don. Let me just get down there and see for myself.”

“How long will it take you? We’'ve got quite a crowd gathering here.”

“Have you got Silver Street blocked off?”

“Hell, I can’t block Silver Street. The casino would go crazy. I’'ve got the runoff gutter where the victim landed blocked. But all the rubberneckers have to do is lean over the fence for front-row seats. Bowie’s Tavern was busting at the seams with tourists when this happened.”

“Get a goddamn tent over the body!”

“I'm working on it, but we’ve lent all our stuff out to the Katrina shelters.”

“Well, grab something from the carnival up at Rosalie. Just take it.”

“Good idea. I’d disperse this crowd, but some of them are witnesses. I have the people who were on the balcony at Bowie’s—”

“Detain anybody who might have seen any part of what happened, whether it seems important to your men or not. And don'’t let anyone contaminate that crime scene.”

“You sound awful sure it’s a murder all of a sudden.”

“Suicide’s a crime too. Common law, anyway. Is Jewel Washington there?” Jewel is the county coroner.

“She just got here.”

“Good.” The potential for collateral damage suddenly strikes me. “Has anybody told—Have you informed the next of kin?”

“Not yet. I was kind of thinking you might want to do that.” When I don'’t reply, Logan says, “You figured out those initials yet?”

“I’'ve got a bad feeling that I might have. If I'm right, then I agree with you. I’d better do the telling.”

“Works for me.”

“Don’t let your men mention his name on the radio.”

“It may be too late for that. Plus, we got sheriff’s deputies wandering around, and I’'ve got no authority over them.”

For the thousandth time I curse the territorial problems caused by overlapping jurisdictions. “It’s your crime scene, Don. Don’t let anybody tell you different. And get that tent up over his body. Everybody on that bluff has a cell phone, and somebody’s going to recognize him.”

“I doubt it. He’s facedown right now, and he’s busted up pretty bad.”

Jesus.

“I'’ll be there in three minutes, and I won'’t be driving the speed limit. Let your cruisers know.”

“Hell, all my guys are down here. Floor it, brother.”

CHAPTER

10

The scene atop the bluff where Silver Street joins Broadway looks like Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. More than two hundred people are milling over the broad expanse of grass and pavement between the fence where Caitlin and I walked a few hours ago and the tavern across Broadway. The buzz of recent tragedy is in the air, and as I shoulder through the crowd, I see that about a third of the people are carrying styrofoam go-cups or beer bottles.

I spent most of the ride from the cemetery trying to decide whether to phone Julia Jessup with news of her husband’s death. No one should get that kind of blow by telephone, but it will be worse if someone else calls her first, someone reveling in the thrill of passing on the ultimate gossip. With so many people near the crime scene, there’s a real danger this could happen before I can get to Julia’s home, but still I wait. I need to see Tim’s body before I talk to his wife. I know what kind of questions survivors ask, and the one at the top of the list is always “Did he suffer?”

Silver Street sweeps down at a precipitous arc from Broadway on the bluff to historic Natchez Under-the-Hill and the Mississippi River. I can’t imagine how the horses handled it in the 1840s, when they had to haul freight up from the landing and the slave market. When I was a boy, we used to ride skateboards down this street, tak

ing our lives in our hands every time we descended the half-mile-long hill. Then, as now, there was no stopping place on the narrow road. But tonight, about thirty yards down the hill, the police have placed an aluminum extension ladder against the guardrail to provide restricted access to the concrete drainage ditch that follows the base of the colossal retaining wall built to stabilize the bluffs. This wall runs more than a mile from end to end and is held in place by steel anchors that reach a hundred feet back into the bluff. At some places the wall towers a hundred feet from top to bottom, but here it averages about forty, as Chief Logan estimated on the phone.

Two uniformed cops stand at the head of the ladder. They’re obviously expecting me, because one trots forward and escorts me to the ladder while the other marches up the hill to ward off an inquisitive drunk who has followed me. Mounting the ladder, I climb carefully down into a well of darkness, but at the bottom I see a hazy glow coming from beyond a bend in the wall. The air is thick with the scent of kudzu and backwater, but even with more light I could not see the river. A wall of treetops stands between me and the water, reminding me that I'm walking on an earthen ledge, a shallow step-down only halfway to the bottom of the bluff.

When I round the bend in the wall, two more uniforms confront me, but after shining a SureFire in my face, they wave me through. Thirty yards beyond them, a bubble of artificial light whites out the night. Men in uniforms and street clothes move deliberately through that light, and even from this distance I see the rumpled mess they are orbiting. I feel a rush of vertigo that could have been caused by the ladder climb, but I know better. A man I knew from the age of four is dead, and I am about to look into his empty eyes. I pause to gather myself, then walk forward.

As I get closer, Chief Logan notices me and breaks away from the others. Logan is thin and fit and looks more like an engineer than a cop. Tonight he’s wearing street clothes and carrying a small flashlight, which he aims just in front of his feet. A wise man. I’d hate to know how many venomous snakes are within a hundred feet of me right now.

“That

was

quick.” Logan gives my hand a quick but firm shake. “I didn't want to say any more on the phone, but you’d better steel yourself. It’s bad.”

“I’'ve seen a lot of homicide victims,” I say with more bravado than I feel. The truth is, I’'ve seen a lot more crime-scene photos of victims than victims themselves, though I have seen my share of violent death. But when it’s someone you know, it’s different. Once the insulating barrier of professional detachment is breached, there’s no telling what emotions will come pouring out.