“It says you need your job.”
“Yeah. But I’m a deacon in the church. That ain’t just a title to me. It means something. And what them fellas do, that Poker Club . . . it galls me. I been watching them rich white men run this town since I was a boy. In the old days we had to take it. Didn’t have no choice. But now . . . I don’t know.”
I feel my heart beating in my chest. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Spell it out.”
“I’m thinking you run a newspaper. And I got some news.”
A bracing burst of adrenaline shoots through my system. Men of integrity and courage are rare these days. I’ve known a few, but it’s been a long time since I ran into a genuine Christian, one who makes difficult choices based on his faith and then follows through. “Are you talking about anonymous information? Or being named as the source?”
“If I say something, I put my name to it.”
Even though I’m driving, I close my eyes in gratitude. “Okay, brother. I’m ready. Tell me what you want to say.”
When Byron Ellis starts talking, I feel the rush I used to feel in Washington when a whistle-blower started giving me a world-class story. The rush is no less intense because I’m in the small town in which I grew up. The coroner’s words are going to ruin tomorrow morning for a lot of powerful men, and that, in the end, is what I got into this business to do.
Buck Ferris’s rental house stands in a neighborhood built in the 1940s for the workers employed at the Bienville fiberboard plant. The small frame houses were modest even for that period, but the carpenters back then were such craftsmen that the homes are considered desirable now and sell for about a hundred grand apiece. There’s no car in the driveway of 325 Dogwood, but I drive the length of the street anyway, checking for signs of surveillance. After satisfying myself that I’m clean, I park in front of a mailbox two houses down from 325. Then I walk fifty yards up the street, cut around back, and try the key Quinn gave me in the patio door.
After a couple of jiggles, it works.
The interior of 325 looks like the abode of a single man, and the books and records on the shelves tell me he’s over seventy. I move to a small hall that leads off the den. The house has only two bedrooms, and the one on the right contains a drafting table. Other than the table, the room holds two filing cabinets and some map tubes. Tacked on the wall above the drafting table is an enlargement of what looks to me like B. L. C. Wailes’s hand-drawn map of what is now the paper mill site. Scotch-taped to the drafting table is a smaller map labeled poverty point site.
Kneeling before the file cabinets, I find they’re only a quarter full, but along with papers they contain several small boxes of pottery fragments, beads, tiny figurines, and what appear to be spear points about three inches long. Rather than try to skim through everything, I transfer the papers into the file drawer with the artifacts, then remove the drawer from the cabinet. If I’m going to meet Jet at three, I can’t sit around here for an hour. The map tubes present a problem. In the end, I tape them together and get them under my left arm, then pick up the file drawer and make for the back door.
Crossing the open space between the rental house and the Flex, I notice a woman watching me from the carport of a house across the street. She’s holding a cell phone to her cheek. Should that worry me? Half the people I see these days are on their phones. As nonchalantly as possible, I load the file drawer and tubes into the cargo area of the Flex, then head back to Highway 61.
I should stop by the Watchman office before I head home. But if I go to the rooftop party at the Aurora tonight with Nadine, I can stop by the newspaper afterward, while they’re finalizing tomorrow’s issue. Instead of going downtown, I point the Flex east and take out my iPhone. As I drive, I dictate a draft story about the coroner’s findings, then email it to Ben Tate. I tell Ben not to post it on our web edition until I’ve had time to ask some Poker Club members for comment.
Less than five minutes later, Ben calls me to complain. I let him vent his frustration, but when he finally takes a long breath, I say, “Don’t post it till midnight, Ben. End of discussion. I’ve got something else for you to do. Call the locum tenens pathologist at the hospital and ask him twenty questions about Buck Ferris’s autopsy. Why the rush? Why break from procedure and do it locally? You know the drill. I want you to scare him. Tell him we’re going to be all over the cause of death in that case. And let him know you’ve already heard the family intends to pay for a private autopsy.”
“You’re trying to intimidate him into an honest result?”
“He’ll find it tough to lie if he thinks Michael Baden will be coming along behind him to repeat the post. And do it now. He might have already cut Buck. He could be dictating his findings as we speak.”
“What if I can’t get him on the phone?”
“Drive to the hospital. Push him hard, Ben.”
“Understood.”
As I end my call with Ben, my burner phone pings. I snatch it off the seat with a frantic motion. Jet’s texted reply reads: You’re right. Paul and I just had a fight. He’s suspicious. Focused on Josh but he did mention you. Don’t know where this is coming from. I’m still planning to come this aft but won’t if I’m not certain I’m clean. I love you. Stay calm and deny everything if confronted. If it all blows up, I know that’s not what we planned, but all we can do is deal with it. For the time being, deny. See you soon I hope!
I feel like that burner phone is wired to my limbic brain. My autonomic nervous system is firing nonstop, and it’s all I can do not to piss my pants. For three months we’ve been gliding under the radar, knowing there was danger yet somehow feeling invulnerable. That changed today.
Three o’clock is forty minutes away. I fight the urge to speed and force myself to pay attention to the traffic. The last thing I need is a fender bender to prevent me from seeing Jet in private during this crisis. Who knows when we’ll get another chance?
Her text made it clear that she has no more idea than I do about what triggered Paul’s sudden suspicion. We may never find out. The “six degrees of separation” principle applies on a global scale. In a town like Bienville, few people are even one degree removed from everyone else. A huge percentage of residents know each other directly, and not only by name, but by entire family histories. My mama went to school with her daddy, and my grandfather hunted with his, and I’ve heard tell that four generations back, we might even have come from the same Civil War colonel. The idea that two well-known citizens could carry on an illicit affair in this kind of matrix without being discovered is preposterous.
Yet people try it every day.
What strikes me as I drive out Highway 36 is that Paul and I have always been rivals for Jet’s affection. There’s no mystery about that. Even after he married her, he knew I still lived within her heart, the way she lived in mine after my marriage to Molly. But something has made him fear a physical manifestation of our feelings. A present-day resurrection of the sexual relationship that he knows far too much about to sleep easily. And if he truly fears that, then what will he do about it?
Paul Matheson is capable of extreme behavior. No one knows that better than I. I made him famous by writing about his courage, skill, and daring, but also by omitting the truth about his terrifying lack of restraint when under threat. Had I told the truth about all I have seen, Paul would be viewed as a different man today. Celebrated by some, surely, but reviled by others. Most of us are never tested the way Paul has been. A few unlucky civilians endure horrific experiences, violent crimes, or terrorist acts. But apart from survivors of sexual assault, almost no one faces the stress levels present in that soul-killing zone of conflict called war. And the relationship between Paul and me cannot be understood without knowing what we went through under fire together.