Greg Iles - Turning Angel

”Too far. Know…response time. Tell ’em save the gas.“ With a sudden surge of strength, Sonny Cross raises his other hand, rolls into me, and grips my biceps like a claw. His eyes are straining out of their sockets, like the eyes of a dying martyr exhorting his torturers to have faith. ”It’s yours now, Penn. Cyrus…Marko…you gotta finish it. Do what you have to do…hear me?“

”I can’t do what you did today.“

He falls back on the ground, his eyes half shut now, but his grip still strong. ”Chris Vogel,“ he croaks. ”Mike Pinella…Kate. How many others? Family, man…all family.“

”I hear you, Sonny.“

His next words ride a deep exhalation of the kind I’ve heard too often before. ”Tell Janie I’m sorry, man. Tell her…I never meant-“

This time the silence is absolute. Not even the crickets disturb the transit of Sonny Cross’s troubled soul as it departs for wherever it is bound.

A high-pitched sob sounds behind me. I turn and see the two boys standing six feet away. They look at me, then run to their father and collapse with their heads on his chest. Then the crickets resume, and the high note of a siren wails Sonny Cross’s benediction.

By the time I reach the city jail, I’ve told the story of Sonny Cross’s death three times: first to sheriff’s deputies, then to sheriff’s detectives, and finally to Sheriff Byrd himself. Part of me wanted to hold back what Sonny told me about Kate visiting Cyrus, but I couldn’t in good conscience do that. All I could do was withhold my near certainty that Kate was buying those bottles of Lorcet for Ellen Elliott.

I also gave up the information Sonny tortured out of Marko, and that seemed to go a long way toward convincing Sheriff Byrd that Kate’s death might be more complex than a matter of a jealous older man. The fact that Cyrus had been tracking Kate’s GPS location through her cell phone was particularly convincing. Once Byrd and I were alone, I told him exactly how Sonny had extracted this information, and that this made it unusable in court. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that Marko Bakic was in for a long night.

Sheriff Byrd ordered roadblocks set up on all routes leaving the city, but his dragnet didn’t catch the black Lexus. Either the killers slipped out of town before the roadblocks were set up, or they were still hiding somewhere in the city, waiting for things to cool down. An army of deputies raided Cyrus’s known safe houses and rousted all their drug snitches, but nothing has produced results. Like the Asian killers he probably summoned here, Cyrus White has vanished.

Piled on the shock of watching Sonny die, the ordeal of being grilled for two hours exhausted me, and I was tempted to go home to bed. But I had to know one thing before I could sleep. Was I right about Kate’s errands to Cyrus?

Tonight the bench on the other side of the glass in the visiting cubicle is empty. Drew finally walks in and sits down, no guard visible behind him. His eyes have the empty look of a man in a fugue state.

”Sonny Cross is dead,“ I tell him.

Drew tilts his head to the left as if to say, ”What does that have to do with me?“

”He told me some things before he died. Like why Kate was visiting Cyrus White.“

Now he’s interested.

”Kate was buying Lorcet from him, Drew. A hundred pills at a time.“

Drew’s eyes close.

”Lorcet is hydrocodone, right? The drug Ellen is addicted to?“

He nods slowly, then hangs his head.

”Don’t make me drag it out of you, Drew. I need to know.“

He opens his eyes and lays his forearms on the little window ledge. ”I didn’t know she was getting it from Cyrus. I had no idea.“

I’m stunned by the amount of anger that erupts from within me. ”What did you know, man? Why was Kate buying the drugs at all?“

Drew’s right cheek twitches as though in response to an electric shock. ”I told you how bad Ellen’s addiction was. Four times through rehab, and still she couldn’t kick it. I’d prescribed the absolute limit to keep her out of withdrawal. The DEA was watching me all the time. A lot of doctors are hooked on Lorcet, so they monitor those prescriptions closely. Anyway, Ellen finally stole one of my pads and forged some prescriptions. She got away with it a couple of times, but then she got caught. If Win Simmons at Rite-Aid hadn’t called me instead of the police, she’d have been in deep trouble.“

”How did Kate come into it?“

”We were deeply involved by that time. She saw how upset I was the night of the prescription incident, so I told her what had happened. I was in pretty bad shape myself. I couldn’t concentrate at work. I was afraid to leave the house for fear of what Ellen might do. She refused to go back into rehab. She was drinking heavily to mask the withdrawal, and that made her violent. Then, in the middle of this nightmare, Kate showed up one night with a bottle of Lorcet Plus. One hundred ten-milligram pills in a pharmacist’s bottle.“ Drew shakes his head as though in awe. ”It was like salvation. I asked where she got them, and she just said, ‘From a friend. Don’t worry about it.’ Of course I was worried, but Kate wouldn’t tell me any more. She said it was no big deal to get Lorcet, half the town was popping them. She needed five hundred dollars to cover the cost, but she said she could get whatever I needed, whenever I needed it, no risk at all. I know how terrible this sounds, but…it made life bearable at last. I had the DEA off my back, and Kate was happy that I could relax and pay attention to her.“

”Yeah, it was perfect,“ I say bitterly. ”Except that Kate was risking her freedom every time she made a pickup for you. Jesus, Drew. Do you realize how sleazy this is?“

He bows his head again.

”I can understand you falling in love with Kate, okay? She was a beautiful girl, full of promise, a lot like you when you were eighteen. And I understand the temptation to consummate those feelings. It takes serious effort for me not to just sit and stare at Mia sometimes. But this is different. You risked that girl’s future to make life a little easier on yourself. That’s low, man. That sucks. “

”I know it.“

”Is that all you have to say?“

He turns up his palms. ”What can I say? Do you think words really matter at this point?“

He’s right about that. ”You realize that Cyrus may have killed Kate?“

He nods almost imperceptibly.

”And that Cyrus would never have gotten within a mile of her if-“

”I’ve already gone farther down that road than you ever will,“ Drew says softly. ”The irony is that if Cyrus did kill her, that will free me from jail. But it can’t free me from my own judgment-or yours-or worst of all, my son’s. And whether you believe it or not, those judgments will be harder for me to bear than a life sentence in Parchman prison. If I caused Kate’s death, I will live in hell until the day I die.“

I study him without speaking. I’ve heard many people say this kind of thing over the years. And they do suffer-usually for a month or two. Then they thank the stars for their freedom and happily go back to their old ways. I don’t think Drew is like those people. He is quite capable of torturing himself for years. But that doesn’t make what he did any less reprehensible.

”If Cyrus killed her, that may free you on the murder charge,“ I tell him. ”But you still may do thirty years for sexual battery. And if a jury ever finds out about this little drug arrangement, you can count on it.“

His eyes lock onto mine. ”Did you tell anyone about it?“

I wait before answering, watching him for signs of self-concern. ”Not yet.“