“Not as well as I hoped. But at least nobody got killed.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Right.”
At last she removes the burning cloth from my back. “I’m going to leave the soap in there. If you want it to stop hurting, go take your shower.”
“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”
She laughs, her eyes flickering with humor despite the day’s events. “Can you? Do you need me tomorrow?”
“After school, if you can make it.”
“Okay. See you then.”
She starts down the hall, but I call after her, “Have you heard anything else about Kate’s death?”
Mia walks back to the bathroom door. “Steve Sayers and his dad are down at the sheriff’s office right now, answering questions.”
“Steve was Kate’s boyfriend?”
“Figure of speech only.”
“Do you know where he was this afternoon?”
“He told John Ellis he drove down to his dad’s hunting camp near Woodville after school, to clean the place before turkey season.”
Woodville is a small logging town thirty miles south of Natchez. “Alone?”
“That’s what Steve told John. There may have been somebody down at the camp when Steve got there. I hope so, for Steve’s sake.”
“This time of year, I doubt it. So…Steve Sayers may not have an alibi.”
Mia bites her lower lip and looks down the hall toward the front door. She’s wearing small sapphire studs in her ears; I’ve never noticed them before. Suddenly she looks back at me, her dark eyes intense. “You don’t really think Steve could have killed Kate, do you?”
“I don’t know him. His parents either. What kind of boy is he?”
“He’s okay. Kind of red, I guess. He’s no brain surgeon. His dad’s a game warden. What can I say? He’s a jock of average intelligence.”
“Violent?”
Mia shrugs. “He’s been in a couple of fights, but then most of the guys I know have. The jocks, anyway.”
“Has the sheriff’s department talked to anybody else that you know about?”
“No. The police talked to Mrs. Townsend not long ago. That’s what I heard, anyway. They asked for the names of Kate’s closest friends.”
“Do you know whose names she gave them?”
“No. The truth is, Kate didn’t have any close friends. Not for the past year or so. I mean, we all thought of her as a friend, but nobody was really in her business, you know? Half the time, no one even knew where she was.”
The police are going to find this fact very interesting. “Did you ever ask her where she was? Or try to figure out where she might be?”
“Not really. Steve did, of course. Like I told you, he always insisted she had some secret boyfriend, one she was ashamed for us to know about. But no one ever saw her with another guy.”
I’m tempted to ask Mia if she ever saw Kate alone with Drew; she and her classmates might have seen them together and not thought twice about it. But there’s no point in alerting her to the true nature of that relationship. “Was Kate tight with any of the black kids at St. Stephen’s?”
Mia looks curiously at me. “Why?”
I’m not going to tell her about the blackmail call or Drew’s assessment of the possible caller. “It might be important.”
“Don’t tell me they’re going to try to railroad a black guy for this.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, from what I’ve read, that used to happen all the time around here in the old days. You know how it was. That’s why you took that civil rights case, right?”
“Yes and no. The truth is, I’m worried about ‘them’ railroading a white guy for Kate’s murder. What about my question?”
“Well, we only have four black guys in our class. We’re a pretty small class, so everybody knows everybody. But Kate didn’t have any special thing with any of the black guys. You talking about sex?”
“Not necessarily. Any special relationship.”
“I’ll ask around, but tonight my answer is no.”
“Okay.” I pull the towel tight across the cut on my back. “Thanks for staying tonight. I’m going to hit the shower now.”
She smiles and gives me a little wave. “Bye.”
“Hey, did Caitlin call while I was gone?”
“No. No calls.” Her eyes probe mine for a hidden reaction to this news.
“Thanks.”
Her gaze lingers a moment longer, and then she walks down the hall to the front door. “Tell Annie I’ll see her tomorrow afternoon.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
The front door slams.
I’m almost asleep when the telephone rings beside my bed. I’m too tired and sore to roll over and look at the caller ID. I took three Advil after my shower, knowing that without them I’d hardly be able to move in the morning. The answering machine can get this one for me.
“Penn?” Caitlin says after the beep, her voice sounding clipped and very Northern after Mia’s soft drawl. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your earlier calls. I was at a party for a reporter who’s leaving the Herald, and the band was so loud I couldn’t hear anything. I’m sure you’re sleeping now. Look, I got a call from one of our reporters at the Examiner. She said a St. Stephen’s girl named Kate Townsend was murdered today. Raped and strangled, she said, or at least that’s what it looks like. No autopsy until tomorrow morning. Have you heard about that? I think I played tennis with this girl at Duncan Park. She was really sharp, going to Harvard, she said. Well…I guess I won’t talk to you until tomorrow. I hope we can see each other soon. I know this sucks. I’m really getting a lot done, though. I may crack this thing soon. I hope the new book’s going well. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you. Bye.”
I was near to picking up the receiver when Caitlin signed off. I’m not sure why I didn’t. But I can’t help wondering why a Natchez reporter was able to get through to Caitlin when I wasn’t. And half of her message was about Kate’s murder, almost as if she were calling me to get details for a story. It’s not that I don’t want to share things with her. But I want her to be here to share actual experiences with me, not call for reports when things sound interesting.
A wave of relief goes through me when the phone rings again. I roll over onto one elbow and answer.
“Hey, babe,” I murmur. “Sorry. I was half sleep before.”
“Penn?” says a male voice.
“Yeah, Drew. What is it?”
“I was surfing the Web, and I found a site maintained by the Mississippi Supreme Court. They’ve got the whole criminal code posted there. And from what I can tell, statutory rape only applies to girls under sixteen, not eighteen.”
I blink in the darkness. “Are you sure? I remember the statute pretty well. Of course I learned it before moving to Texas for fifteen years. The legislature could have changed it.”
“Here’s the applicable language. ‘The crime of statutory rape is committed when any person seventeen years of age or older has sexual intercourse with a child who: one, is at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age.’ There are qualifications, but they all deal with even younger victims and the age difference between victim and perpetrator. It also says, ‘Neither the victim’s consent nor the victim’s lack of chastity is a defense to the charge of statutory rape.’”
“They must have changed the statute,” I say in disbelief. But even as relief courses through me, a sense of foreboding rises in my mind. “Drew…I think I read somewhere that some states were moving in this direction because there were so many suits being brought by parents who hated their daughters’ boyfriends. You’ve got two seventeen-year-olds having consensual sex. The guy turns eighteen and bam, the girl’s parents try to lock him up for statutory rape.”
“So, I’m in the clear?”
“Under that statute,” I say uneasily. “But somehow I don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.” What is it? I wonder, searching m
y memory for the source of my anxiety. “There’s definitely a sexual harassment issue here, but of course that’s a civil matter. It’s criminal charges we’re worried about, felonies in particular.” Suddenly, a voice is sounding in my head, the voice of my old boss, the district attorney of Houston: lascivious touching or handling of a minor…contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and then the big one, sexual—“Drew, are you still at your computer?”
“Yes.”
“Look up sexual battery.”
I stare up at the dark ceiling, listening to the clicking of keys and praying that my instinct is wrong. “What does it say?”
“Just a minute. Okay…uh…”
“Read it aloud.”
“Here…‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with (A) another person without his or her consent.’ I’m okay there.”
“Keep reading.”
“ ‘(B) a mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless person. (C) A child at least fourteen but under sixteen years of age, if the person is thirty-six or more months older than the child.’ Thank God.”
Drew sounds so relieved that I’m tempted to let him hang up and get a good night’s sleep. But I’m almost certain that bad news is coming. “Keep reading.”
“Okay. There’s a second paragraph. ‘A person is guilty of sexual battery if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of…’ ”
His voice falters. “Drew?”
“Eighteen,” he whispers. “It says eighteen here.”
“Keep reading.”
“Oh, God. Oh, no.”
“Please read it for me.”
“ ‘…if he or she engages in sexual penetration with a child under the age of eighteen years if the person is in a position of trust or authority over the child including without limitation the child’s teacher, counselor, physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, minister…’ ”
Drew’s voice sounds like that of a man being sedated before an operation, a monotone fading into nothingness. “You can stop, Drew.”
He continues as though he can’t hear me over the print screaming from his computer monitor. “ ‘…priest, physical therapist, chiropractor, legal guardian, parent, stepparent, aunt, uncle, scout leader or coach.’ ”
“Drew, listen to me. Are you listening?”
Out of a deep well of silence comes a single sob.
“Drew, it’s all right. I know you’re feeling terrible guilt right now. Seeing it written down like that, you may feel for the first time that you’re guilty of a crime.”
“She’s dead,” he says in a shattered voice. “And if I hadn’t crossed this line with her, she’d be alive right now.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not God. Listen to me, buddy. I love you. I love you, and I respect you. You’re just human, like the rest of us.”
“Wait a minute,” he says wetly. “I’m looking for the penalty.”
“Don’t. Leave that for tomorrow.”
“I need to see it.”
No, you don’t, I say silently. It’s going to be thirty years—
“Jesus Christ. It’s thirty years.”
“That’s not going to happen, Drew. I promise you that.”
“Oh my God,” he says with fresh dread.
“What? What is it?”
“For a second offense, it’s forty years. Timmy would be—”
“Turn off that computer! That’s not the real world, Drew.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hell, yes. I was a prosecutor for fifteen years. That’s why you wanted my advice about all this, remember? And my advice is to go to sleep and let me do the worrying for you. That’s what you’re paying me for.”
“Twenty bucks doesn’t pay for much worrying.”
I don’t reply for some time. Then I say, “You saved my life. And you risked your own to do it. If you hadn’t, my daughter would never have been born. That buys you a lot of worrying.”
“You never asked for this.”
“No, but I can handle it. You’ve got to stay in control for me, though.”
“You’re not leaving town or anything tomorrow, are you?”
“No way. Now, what are you going to do about the blackmail issue? Are you going to come clean with the cops?”
“After what we just learned? I don’t know.”
“You’re a smart guy, Drew. Let’s talk about probability.”
“Okay.”
“How often did you see Kate? I don’t mean platonically. How often were you alone with her, intimate with her?”
“Every day. Or night, rather.”
Unbelievable. “For how long?”
“For the last seven months, I guess. Ever since the mission trip to Honduras. After that, we couldn’t stand to be apart.”
“Get out ahead of this thing, Drew. It’s your only chance.”
“I hear you.”
I let the silence do its work for a while. “Do you?”
“It’s Tim that’s holding me back. I don’t want him to have to know about this if he doesn’t have to. I don’t want him to have to go through the grief he’ll get at school because of it. I don’t even want Ellen to have to deal with it, now that Kate’s dead. There’s just no reason anymore.”
“Yes, there is. This thing is beyond your control now. No matter what you do, it’s eventually going to come out.”
“I’m not so sure. If Kate said she didn’t tell anybody, she didn’t.”
“Then who’s blackmailing you?”
“Kate’s killers.”
I grunt noncommittally. “I’m not so sure.”
“I know. But I am.” He breathes steadily into the phone. “Thanks for tonight, Penn. I mean it.”
“Night, buddy.”
The open line hisses in my ear.
I hang up.
Chapter
7
Drew’s blackmailers lost no time making him pay for his indecisiveness. At 11:10 the next morning, I was helping my mother paint some bookshelves in her garage when my cell phone rang. The screen showed Drew as the caller. I walked out of the garage under the pretext of getting better cell reception, then answered by saying, “Are you as sore as I am?”
“You were right,” he said. “I’m fucked.”
A current of anxiety shot through me, but experience kept my voice calm. “What’s happened?”
“I just got off the phone with Shad Johnson. He got an anonymous call this morning.”
“Let me guess. The caller said you were having an affair with Kate Townsend and that you might have killed her.”
“Yep.”
“Did he give any details?”
“Johnson didn’t say so.”
“What did Shad ask you during the call? Did he ask straight out if the accusation was true?”
“No. He basically said, ‘Doc, I hate to have to call you about this, but I got this call with an accusation, and I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t ask you about it.’ He was pretty friendly, actually.”
“Shad Johnson is not your friend.”
“I understand that. I was just giving you his tone. He said he wanted to give me a chance to deny it as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t become any kind of thing.”
“ ‘Thing’? That was his word?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s already a thing, Drew. You can bet your ass on that. Did you flat-out deny that you were seeing Kate?”
“No.”
I sighed with relief.
“I acted stunned,” he said, “which I was. I told him I was too shocked even to respond to such an outrageous accusation, that Kate was a close friend of our family, and that we’d been shattered by her death. Shad said he understood. He said he’d like to talk to me about it at his office. He said I might have information about Kate that could help them piece together a better picture of her than they have now.”
“What did you say to that?
”
“What could I say? I told him I wanted to do everything I could to assist the investigation.”
“Okay. When is this meeting?”
“Lunch today. Fifty minutes from now.”
Shit. “Was it a short call? Long? What?”
“Short.”
“That’s because Shad got what he wanted. He thinks he’s going to question you on his territory.”
“He’s not?”
“Not unless you’re a complete moron—which, after last night, I’m starting to believe.”
“Penn—”
“Damn it, why didn’t you volunteer the information last night like I told you to?”
“You know why! I didn’t want Tim and Ellen to have to deal with it if they didn’t have to.”
“Well, now they have to.”
“What do I do, Penn?”
“You really need a lawyer now.”
“I told you that last night.”
“And I told you I wasn’t your guy. Not for this.”
“The meeting’s in fifty minutes!”
I bowed my head in resignation. The odds of finding a Natchez lawyer qualified to take that meeting were low, and the odds of adequately briefing one in time were nil. “Where are you now?”
“At my office. Seeing patients.”
“You’re off at twelve?”
“Yeah.”
“You just had an emergency.”
Drew was silent for a moment. “I’m skipping the meeting?”
“I’m going in your place.”
“Is that the best thing?”
“We need to get some idea of what Shad is thinking. I’d also like to know what the autopsy turned up. Shad probably has the pathologist’s report in hand by now.”
“I don’t want to think about that. This is Kate we’re talking about.”
You’d better get used to it. “Sorry. Now…we have a tricky little problem to deal with. Think before you answer me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“The first thing Shad is going to ask me is where you were when Kate was murdered. He won’t be obvious about it, but he’ll ask. And I happen to know you were at the murder scene. Where did you go after you left the creek?”
“Home.”
I was silent long enough for Drew to realize that if he was lying, he had better come clean then or stick with his story. “Was Ellen there?”