Greg Iles - Turning Angel

I wanted to break down the steel IV stand and shove it up his ass. But I didn’t. I said, ”I’m sure that’s true. And one day, someone a hell of a lot luckier than you is going to spend his life with her. Somebody who earned her.“

He seemed to consider this. Then he said, ”Maybe so. But she’ll always remember me.“

I walked back to him then, fighting the urge to beat him into a puddle of wet bone and tissue. ”You know what you should be asking yourself?“

”What?“

”What your mother and sister would think of you if they’d seen what you did to those Serbian girls. And what you did to Kate.“

Marko’s eyes radiated more hatred than I’d seen in a long time.

And with that I left his room.

Two days after I left that hospital room, Judge Minor released Drew from jail under a JNOV-judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The day after that, a special grand jury indicted Marko Bakic for the murder of Kate Townsend. Just as in Drew’s case, this meant that Marko had to be transferred into state custody. Deputy Tommy Burns and another deputy picked up the prisoner from the city jail and drove him downtown to the sheriff’s department. Billy Byrd himself stood on the steps, waiting to greet his new charge. The deputies dragged Marko from the cruiser and jerked him erect in his irons, whereupon Marko flipped Sheriff Byrd the bird and gave him a glare both scornful and defiant. The sheriff had opened his mouth to reply when a 180-grain deer slug tore through Marko’s heart, showering the sheriff with bright red blood.

The rifle shot was heard all over town. I was standing in my backyard on Washington Street, playing with Annie, when I heard what I thought was an electrical transformer exploding from the direction of the Mississippi River. Two minutes later, my cell phone rang. Caitlin had witnessed the shooting from thirty yards away. She said it looked like the bullet had come from one of the taller buildings near the sheriff’s department.

Both Sheriff Byrd and Chief Logan believe that the Asians murdered Marko to prevent him from ratting out the drug traders to save himself. The joint task force issued a statement supporting this theory, adding a postscript that if the Asians hadn’t done it, then Cyrus White’s crew probably had. That was the story that Caitlin printed in the Examiner. But when I asked Drew where he was when Marko died, he told me he had taken the day off to stay home with Ellen. Mending fences, he said, for Tim’s sake. Tim, of course, was in school at St. Stephen’s. A day later, I managed to ask Ellen the same question, and she backed Drew’s story to the hilt. But as Ellen spoke, I saw a profound disconnect between her mouth and her eyes. And I knew what that disconnect meant. Ellen Elliott will do whatever she has to do to save her family. After all, she has her own guilt to carry. But in her soul, she knows what I know now-that Marko Bakic, the boy who brutally murdered Kate Townsend, died by the hand of the man who loved her above all others.

And that is as it should be.

Three weeks later, on a beautiful evening in May, I mounted a stage set up at the center of the St. Stephen’s football field and took a seat beside Jan Chancellor. Much had happened in the three weeks following Marko’s death, and thanks to Caitlin, most of it happened in public view. As a result of that publicity, Senator Brent Few, the speaker scheduled to appear at St. Stephen’s graduation, begged off, pleading health problems. The senior class asked if I would be willing to speak in his place. I told them I would be proud to do so.

Three hundred chairs have been set up before the stage, and all but a few are filled. This is impressive, as the senior class numbers only twenty-one souls. When I graduated, we had thirty-two, but Natchez was larger then. I know most of the faces in the crowd, students and their families mainly. Two special chairs stand empty in the seniors’ section, symbolic places for Kate Townsend and Chris Vogel. They’ve almost disappeared under the bouquets of flowers left there.

No chair was left empty for Marko Bakic. For the senior class, Marko is like John Lennon’s assassin: He Who Must Not Be Named.

Of the bright faces shining between the royal blue caps and gowns, one shines brighter than the rest for me: Mia Burke. Just after my commencement address, Mia will give the valedictory speech. She was scheduled to speak before me, but I asked Jan to give Mia the last word tonight. On the night we learned that Kate had been murdered, Mia told me she had some things to say to her class and to the parents. Tonight I look forward to hearing them.

Annie is sitting with my parents in the third row. She’s with my parents because Caitlin is not here tonight. Last week, she flew north again, not to Boston this time but to her father’s house in Wilmington, North Carolina. We decided that she’s not ready for the obligations that would come with marrying me. Our parting was difficult, but mostly because of Annie. Caitlin wanted a private conversation with Annie to break the news, but I decided we should speak to her together. I still love Caitlin, and I trust her motives. But I would not take the slightest risk that something might be said which would leave Annie blaming herself for Caitlin’s disappearance from our lives.

As Jan Chancellor begins her welcome remarks, I scan the football field and surrounding bowl. It seems impossible that Drew and I chased Marko across this field on a four-wheeler just a few weeks ago. But much of what happened after that night is hard for me to believe, yet happen it did. And the consequences of those events are still unfolding.

At two this afternoon, a secret meeting was held in the district attorney’s office. Present were Shad Johnson, myself, and Quentin Avery. The atmosphere was tense, for Shad had not behaved gracefully after Judge Minor overturned Drew’s conviction. In fact, Shad made a personal crusade of trying to convict Drew of sexual battery, which could have resulted in a sentence of forty years. For two weeks I sweated blood trying to think of a way to thwart Shad’s mission. I couldn’t do it. Drew’s medical license had already been suspended by the state authorities, but word had leaked down from the board chairman in Jackson that Drew’s future medical career would depend on the disposition of his legal case.

It was during this seemingly hopeless period that Quentin Avery earned his enormous fee. Through the tangled grapevine of the local black community, Quentin somehow learned exactly how Shad had discovered Ellen Elliot’s drug addiction, and also Kate’s part in it. Shad had not done this by brilliant deductive reasoning, or even by lucky accident. Three days after my kidnapping, he had received an express mail package containing the leather portfolio stolen with my car on the night of the attack at the Eola Hotel. The portfolio-which still contained Kate’s flash drives, Marko’s hair, and Kate’s diary-had almost certainly been sent to Shad by the leader of the Asian gang in Biloxi. The gang leader had probably been prompted by Marko to send the package, in an attempt to cement Drew’s conviction for Kate’s murder.

Regardless of who sent the portfolio, the materials inside it gave Shad enough leads to discover not only Kate’s drug activities on Ellen’s behalf but also Cyrus White’s obsession with Kate. Yet Shad never informed Quentin that he had any of this in his possession. Just as Quentin had predicted at the outset of the case, Shad had broken the rules-and the law-in his effort to ensure victory at trial. To withhold such evidence constituted felony obstruction of justice-grounds for disbarment-and Quentin was ready to go to war to accomplish that end. With some considerable anxiety, I sat Quentin down and explained my view of the situation: that Shad’s greed had given us a magic bullet that could keep Drew out of jail. But Quentin did not lightly abandon his persecution of Shad Johnson. It took a campaign of attrition by me and my father to persuade Quentin that serving Drew Elliott to the best of his ability was a higher moral duty than ridding the city of Shadrach Johnson. In the end, Quentin relented.