Greg Iles - The Devil’s Punchbowl

The instant Julia’s house comes into sight, I know something’s wrong. The front door stands wide-open, but there’s no car in the driveway and no one in sight. The doorway appears as a rectangle of faint yellow light coming from deep within the house, though deep is not exactly accurate in terms of a house that small. I reach under my seat for the pistol Tim told me to bring to the cemetery meeting. The cold metal is my only comfort as I leave the relative safety of my car and walk through the shallow yard toward the house. I should call Logan for police backup, but Tim’s words from last night keep sounding in my head: You can’t trust anybody. Not even the police .

The neighborhood is relatively quiet. I hear the thrum of a few air-conditioning units, still laboring hard in mid-October. A couple of TV soundtracks drift through the air, coming from the houses that have opened their windows to the damp, cooling night. I press my back to the wall outside Jessup’s door, then crash through in a crouch, the way a Houston police detective taught me. The last thing I thought I’d be doing tonight was clearing a house, but at this juncture, there’s no point in analyzing my instincts.

As I move from room to room, it becomes obvious that the house has been thoroughly searched. Every drawer and cabinet has been opened, the books pulled from the shelves and rifled, and the mattresses slit to pieces. Even the baby’s mattress was yanked from the crib and slit open.

The house has only six rooms, all clustered around a central bathroom. I call out Julia’s name, half-hoping she might be hiding somewhere. But I’ll be happier if she’s not. I hope she’s miles away from this place, safely hidden or running for her life. For the state of this house tells me one thing: Whatever evidence of crime Tim was looking for today, he found it. And that discovery cost him his life. The only questions remaining are what did he find, and where is it now?

I lean out the back door, but all I see in the backyard is a plastic playhouse bought from Wal-Mart, looking forlorn and abandoned. I’m raising my cell phone to call Chief Logan when it buzzes in my hand. I jump as though shocked by a wall socket, and this makes me realize how tense I was while I searched the house. The number has a Natchez prefix, a cellular one.

‘Penn Cage,’ I answer, wondering who might be calling me after 1:00 a.m.

The first sound I hear is something between sobbing and choking, and I know before the first coherent word that Julia Jessup already knows that her husband is dead. She is so hysterically anguished that speech is almost physiologically impossible. Yet still she tries.

‘Ih–ih–ih—’ The vocalization catches repeatedly in her throat, like an engine trying to start in cold weather. And after a couple of gulps and stutters, the full sentence emerges. ‘Is Tim dead?’

‘Julia—’

‘Huh–he-he told me not to kuh-kuh-call you. Unless something hah- hap pened. But Nancy Barrett called me from Bowie’s. She said…Tim feh-fell. Off the bluff. I don’t understand. Tell me the truth, Penn. Tell me right this minute!’

More than anything I want to ask where Julia is, but there’s no way I’m going to do that over a cell phone. Whoever killed Tim may be searching for his wife at this moment, believing she’s in possession of whatever evidence Tim found.

‘It’s true,’ I say as gently as I can, walking quickly back to my car. ‘I’m sorry, Julia, but Tim died tonight.’

A scream worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama greets this news, then the words pour out in a senseless flood. ‘ OhmiGodohmiGodoh–oh–oh— I knew it! I knew something was going to happen. He knew it too. Goddamn it!’ Another wail. ‘Oh my God. After everything I’ve done to get him clean…. No. No, no, no. It’s not–no, I can’t go there. What am I supposed to do, Penn? Tell me that! How am I supposed to raise this baby?’

‘Are you with somebody, Julia?’

‘ With somebody? I’m at—’

‘Stop! Don’t tell me where you are. Just tell me if you’re with somebody.’

Even before she answers, I realize I need to get Julia off the phone. Anyone with direction-finding equipment or good hacking skills could triangulate her position. She’s sobbing again, so I speak with as much firmness as I can. ‘Julia, are you with someone ? Answer me.’

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘Listen to me now. If you’re in a building–a house or a hotel or whatever–I want you to lock the doors. Keep your cell phone with you, but switch it off. Then switch it back on again exactly thirty minutes from now.’

‘What? Why thirty minutes?’

‘Because I’m going to call you back and give you some instructions. I have to make some arrangements first. Don’t forget to switch off your phone. The people who–who hurt Tim–can use that phone to track you down.’

‘Oh, God. Oh…I knew it. I told him not to do anything.’

‘Julia! Don’t say anything else. Don’t trust anyone Tim didn’t mention specifically. And don’t come home. Don’t even think about it. I’m there now, and the place has been torn to pieces.’ I glance at my watch as Julia whimpers incomprehensibly. ‘I’ll call you back at one thirty-five. I’m hanging up now.’

It’s hard to do, but I press END and run for my car. My hand is on the doorknob when two police cars roar around the bend of Maplewood and screech to a stop behind me. A blue-white spotlight hits my face and a harsh voice speaks over the car’s PA system.

‘Stop right there! Put your hands up and step away from the vehicle!’

I feel no fear at this order, only anger and impatience. And curiosity. I haven’t had time to call the chief and tell him that Jessup’s house was broken into. It might make sense that Logan would send someone to make sure I’d informed the widow–or even to search Jessup’s house–but to see a brace of squad cars wheeling around Maplewood as though responding to a home invasion is more than a little surprising. Yet all I can think about as two cops approach is how I’m going to get Julia to safety.

‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ barks the first cop.

‘I’m Mayor Penn Cage. I came here to inform Julia Jessup that her husband was killed tonight. Chief Logan can confirm that, and you’d better call him right now. I don’t have all night to stand out here talking.’

The cop on my left looks closer at me, then taps his partner on the upper arm. ‘It’s okay. He’s the mayor.’

‘You sure?’ asks the second guy.

‘What the fuck, am I sure ? My dad went to school with the guy, dude.’

On another night I would ask the young cop who his father is, but not this time. ‘Guys, I’ve got to go. Somebody took that house apart. You need to lock it down. Don’t let anybody inside.’

‘The wife’s not here?’ asks the young cop.

I answer him while climbing in to my car. ‘Still trying to find her. I’ll update the chief later.’

I jerk the Saab into gear and head back to Highway 61. I can be at my house on Washington Street in less than five minutes, and I need a plan of action by the time I get there. Julia could come apart in less time than that, and a wrong move on her part could be fatal. But my options are almost nonexistent. All the resources I would normally use in this kind of situation have been placed out of bounds by Tim’s warnings. Last night I wasn’t sure his caution was warranted, but after seeing the condition of his body and the state of his house, I have no intention of risking the lives of his wife and son on assumptions.

I’ve called on other, private resources in extraordinary situations, but none are ready to hand tonight. The man I trust most to help me in a crisis is in Afghanistan, working for a security contractor based in Houston. His company may have some operators Stateside who could help protect Julia, but none would be any closer than Houston–seven hours away by car.