Greg Iles - Turning Angel

“That call was too strange to ignore. If you were the D.A., you would have handled it just as I did. You’d have called Dr. Elliott into your office. In any case, that anonymous call certainly led somewhere, didn’t it?”

“Damned straight,” agrees Sheriff Byrd.

Shad looks embarrassed to have Byrd’s support. “Second,” Shad goes on, “the preliminary serology on the semen samples. Based on the lab findings, one of those two samples is very likely to be confirmed as belonging to Dr. Elliot when the DNA analysis comes back-which won’t be as long as you think. Third, that particular semen sample wasn’t taken from the Townsend girl’s vagina, but from her rectum.”

The hair along my forearms stands up. When Shad told me yesterday that Kate had semen “in both holes,” I naturally assumed that the unknown sample-the one unknown to me, that is-was the one swabbed from her rectum.

“That rather prurient fact,” Shad says with authority, “bolsters my theory that Dr. Elliot’s intercourse with the victim was an act of vengeance if not outright rape. A ’grudge-fuck,‘ I believe it’s called.”

I can’t even begin to deal with the implications of this new information in this room. “But at our first meeting, you told me the trauma was vaginal, didn’t you?”

“I believe I said ’genital.‘ ” Shad looks down at some papers on his desk. “There was labial swelling, some vaginal abrasions, but also anorectal swelling with small tears inside the anus.”

I take a moment to process this. “Which semen was deposited first? That found in the vagina? Or the anal sample? Even if you assume Drew had anal sex with Kate, he could have deposited that semen up to seventy-two hours before she was swabbed, while the sperm found in her vagina could have been deposited just prior to death.”

Shad shakes his head, and I detect something like smugness in his eyes. “We’ll never know that,” he says. “Since the girl was DOA, she wasn’t swabbed until the next morning during the autopsy in Jackson. The sperm in both samples were dead. One of the disadvantages of investigating crime in a small town.”

“What else do you have?” I ask quietly.

“Fourth,” Shad enumerates. “Fingerprints. Sheriff Byrd’s detectives found Dr. Elliot’s fingerprints all over Kate Townsend’s bedroom and private bathroom.”

Drew, you stupid bastard, I curse silently. “How do you know those prints are Dr. Elliot’s?” I ask the sheriff. “Given your relationship with the PD, I can’t believe you went to the city jail to print him, or even that you asked the police to fax theirs over to you.”

Sheriff Byrd gives me a superior smile. “One of my deputies took some prints from the doc’s private bathroom when they went to his office to collect his blood.”

Now I remember. The short, unpleasant deputy excused himself to “use the restroom” while Susan Salter pulled Drew’s blood. The little son of a bitch.

“What else?” I ask, working hard to hide my dismay.

“Phone records,” Shad says. “We’ve got Kate Townsend’s cell phone records for the past year. The past few months are clean, but if you go back to this past summer, it gives Dr. Elliott some problems.”

“Of course she called Drew,” I say. “She was the family babysitter.”

Shad grins good-naturedly. “You’re going to dig the hole deeper if you don’t keep your mouth shut. Why don’t you listen to what I have to say?”

He’s right. If Drew were a normal client, I’d stand here with my mouth shut. But I feel compelled to defend my friend, even when I don’t know exactly what he has or hasn’t done.

Shad dons a pair of reading glasses and examines a piece of paper with tiny type on it. “I wouldn’t have found it odd if the girl called Dr. Elliott’s home a few times, or even more than a few. But she didn’t do that. She called his medical office and his cell phone almost exclusively. She did it often and at very odd times. Like three o’clock in the morning. And the calls lasted a very long time.” Shad looks at me over the lenses of his glasses. “Hours.”

I struggle to hold my poker face.

“But the real kicker,” Shad says with obvious relish, “is that she didn’t just call him direct. She bought third-party phone cards at Wal-Mart and dialed into an 800-number switchboard before calling his cell phone. That’s a standard method of trying to disguise phone calls-particularly in extramarital affairs.” He glances at Sheriff Byrd. “Computers are a wonderful thing, aren’t they?”

Byrd chuckles.

The only positive I can see is that they seem to have no record of Kate using computers to text-message Drew. Certainly they’ve checked his records by now. Perhaps those digital connections are not so easily traced. “What else?”

Shad removes his reading glasses and meets my gaze. “A classmate of Kate Townsend’s saw her changing cars with Dr. Elliott in a public parking lot.”

“What do you mean, ’changing cars‘?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Both of them parked their cars in a public lot, and when they thought no one was looking, Kate climbed into Dr. Elliot’s car and they drove away. A female St. Stephen’s student told that to the grand jury this afternoon.”

My stomach rolls over.

“This girl also said that it looked like Dr. Elliott and the girl were fighting.”

“How long ago did this supposedly happen? And where?”

Shad shakes his head, his eyes twinkling. “Sorry, Counselor. Can’t tell you everything. That wouldn’t be right.”

Shad’s litany of evidence like this would titillate and possibly sway a jury-until they realized that he was proving the wrong point.

“Fine,” I say. “Drew looks like a dog for carrying on with Kate Townsend. But you’re no closer to murder than you were ten minutes ago. All you’ve given me is evidence of an extramarital affair, most of it circumstantial. This isn’t a divorce case, Shad.”

He nods as if in agreement. “You’re right about that. But you’re wrong about what I’ve shown, and you know it. I’ve presented you with direct evidence of sexual battery, a serious felony.”

Shad’s heading right where I didn’t want him to go.

“Dr. Elliott was Kate Townsend’s personal physician,” he says, “a position of trust defined by statute. Having consensual sex just once with a juvenile female patient will buy him thirty years in the pen. And I figure Dr. Elliott probably repeated that offense a hundred times or more.”

“Open-and-shut case,” says Sheriff Byrd.

I give Shad my coldest stare. “You don’t give a damn about Drew having sex with that girl. If you charge him on that offense, it’s pure politics, and everyone in town will know it.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You’re singing your song about positions of trust and underage sex. You want to go out to the public school with me tomorrow and start questioning seventeen-year-old black girls? You want to ask them if any of their coaches have rubbed their shoulders after practice? Or maybe rubbed some more intimate parts, as defined in the statute on sexual battery?”

Shad has gone still as a bust in a museum.

“You want to go over to the junior high and start asking fifteen-year-old black girls how many of them are sleeping with adult men? That’s statutory rape, open and shut. Hell, you could fill up both jails in an hour. But you won’t do that, will you? You’d lose votes faster than if you put on a KKK sheet and hood. Don’t pretend that public morals or public safety have anything to do with this case, okay? You want to convict a rich white man to further your political ambitions. End of story.”

I turn to Sheriff Byrd. “I don’t know why you’re part of this, but I’m going to find out. And don’t think I’ll hesitate to go to the media with the whole stinking mess. You’ve already ruined my client’s reputation. I’ve got nothing to lose.”