Greg Iles - Turning Angel

”Kelly was still in Afghanistan, but twelve hours later, he returned my call. When he heard you were missing, he promised to get back to the U.S. by hook or by crook. It took three days for a replacement to arrive in Kabul, but forty-eight hours ago Kelly arrived in Natchez and started searching for you. He even brought a buddy with him to protect Annie. You may not believe it, but Kelly was planning to search the Triton Battery plant the day after you escaped. I saw it in his daybook.“

”He has good instincts. But I probably would have been dead when he found me.“

Dad shook his head slowly. ”No doubt about it.“

”Is he still in town?“

”Yes. He said to tell you he’s waiting for instructions.“

For some reason, Kelly’s continued presence brings me a blessed feeling of relief.

”Now,“ Dad said, ”there are some people waiting to see you.“

He turned to go, but I said, ”Wait.“

”What is it?“

”What about Cyrus White? Did they bring him into the ER?“

Dad nodded but said nothing.

”Did he make it?“

”No. He died. Bad.“

Dad left me in silence with my memories of Cyrus and Blue. I felt no satisfaction at having killed them. New predators would soon take their places in the local drug hierarchy, and probably already had. Cyrus and Blue had never meant to kill me, but they had been content to watch me die by a process they didn’t understand. Now they are dead, and I am alive, and that is all that matters.

Two minutes after Dad left the ICU, Caitlin led Annie into my room. When Annie stared at me as if unsure I was real, I told her to climb up into my bed. I hugged her tight, and Caitlin hugged us both from behind Annie. We watched an episode of Leave It to Beaver on TV Land, hardly speaking as we did, but words didn’t matter at that point. My mother came into the room during the show. She sat on the edge of my bed for a while with her hand on my knee. She had aged visibly since I last saw her, but I sensed that she was still far from broken. When Leave It to Beaver ended, she kissed me on the forehead, then lifted a sleeping Annie into her arms and left for home.

Finally alone, Caitlin and I simply held each other, both shivering from an emotion we could not name. After a while, she asked to see the damage done to my body by the vasculitis. She cried then, but she knew the outcome could have been much worse. Though I was still suffering from the reaction, at least no more skin had died.

As for Drew’s trial, the news was almost all bad. A few hours before Caitlin’s visit, Shad had stunned the court by providing proof that Kate had been visiting Cyrus to procure drugs for Drew, who had then given them to his addicted wife. To prove this, Shad produced four different witnesses, each of whom knew only part of the story. The most powerful of those witnesses, Caitlin said, was Ellen Elliott herself. Because Ellen was testifying about her drug habit, and not giving direct testimony against her husband, her testimony was allowed. I figured Ellen would be glad to give testimony that might convict Drew, but Caitlin said Ellen had been very hostile to Shad during direct examination, and as she left the witness box, she appeared to have been shattered by the ordeal. This testimony had fulfilled Quentin Avery’s worst fear, and it left me deeply troubled. Cyrus himself had not known whom Kate was buying the Lorcet for, so how had Shad Johnson divined that the hydrocodone was for Ellen? I resolved to discover this as soon as possible.

According to Caitlin, Quentin had been playing catch-up throughout the trial. He had little inside information to work with, and he was saddled with a client who seemed bent on self-destruction. Drew remained firm in his belief that he should tell the whole truth about everything, and he was still demanding to take the stand in his own defense. That might happen as soon as tomorrow.

After Caitlin returned to the newspaper office, I settled back in my bed and tried to rest, but my withdrawal symptoms made it impossible. I was shaking like an epileptic when Daniel Kelly walked into my room.

I hadn’t seen him for five years, but he looked the same: curly blond hair, sea blue eyes, an Irish smile, and a reserved manner. Kelly also sported a desert tan, which somehow added to the aura of centeredness he always projected. Kelly knows how to go unnoticed in a crowd, but when he reveals himself, you know you’re in the presence of a man of supreme competence.

I asked him what he’d been doing in Afghanistan, and he gave me a typical one-word answer: ”Babysitting.“ I thanked him for dumping his contract and playing seventh cavalry on my behalf, but then I told him I was fine and that he could go back to Asia. Kelly gave a small shake of his head and said, ”I’ve been checking things out for a couple of days. Been to the trial, been out in the street. This thing isn’t over, Penn.“

”It is for me.“

Kelly raised his eyebrows. ”That may not be your choice. I went out to Triton Battery and looked at the lab where they held you-what was left of it. And I found two pounds of ninety-eight percent pure heroin.“

” You found it? Not the cops?“

”They took drug dogs out there, but Cyrus had figured a way to beat the dogs. Probably learned it in the air force. I’ve seen most of those tricks in my time, so I knew where to look.“

I’ve learned to expect Kelly to amaze me. ”Two pounds of pure heroin. What’s the street value of that?“

”You could buy a small island. And the people who lost that dope are going to be mighty angry.“

He gave me his cell number and told me he would stay within reach for the next couple of days, at least. Then he squeezed my right hand in both of his and walked to the glass door. ”By the way,“ he said, turning back to me, ”that was a neat trick you pulled. Couldn’t have done better myself.“

I blew out a stream of air, fighting a memory of Blue’s massive body crushing mine. ”Necessity’s the mother of invention, right?“

Kelly smiled. Then his eyes twinkled and he was gone.

Not long afterward, Quentin Avery called me. He apologized for not coming to the hospital, but I understood. A lawyer defending a client on a capital murder charge is one of the busiest people on earth. Quentin let me know he was glad that I’d survived, but then he quickly asked if I had any rabbits I could pull out of my hat for him. Had I learned anything during my captivity that might help Drew in the courtroom? I had to tell him no. When I asked for a summary of Shad Johnson’s strategy, Quentin told a depressing tale.

Though Shad’s case remained circumstantial, he had painted a compelling picture of Marko Bakic as the ”mystery man“ who’d had consensual sex with Kate within seventy-two hours of her death, and then of Drew as the older man who’d discovered this infidelity and killed his underage paramour in a jealous rage. DNA analysis of the fetus in Kate’s womb had proved it to be Drew’s child. But Drew, Shad told the jury, had no way of knowing that. He might have believed the child belonged to Marko (or any other man). Shad’s hypothesis was helped greatly by the fact that no one had seen Marko since the night of the X-rave at Oakfield. Shad had even suggested that Drew had paid to have Marko killed, which would explain the Croatian’s disappearance.

While Don Logan’s police department had been searching frantically for Marko, Sheriff Byrd had taken a more leisurely approach. I wanted to laugh at the irony when Quentin griped about this; he himself had ordered me not to hunt down Cyrus for the same reason. It suited both lawyers’ purposes to work with a myth in court, rather than a flesh-and-blood person who could contradict their theories. I offered to put Daniel Kelly at Quentin’s disposal, but Quentin demurred. He didn’t seem to grasp the value of Kelly’s help-probably because Kelly has no inside knowledge of Natchez.