Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“What for? Is it about the shooting?”

“No. I’'ve had your girlfriend here threatening me with lawsuits till Judgment Day if I don'’t let her kid out of jail.”

“Chief, I can’t deal with Libby Jensen’s problems right now.”

Logan voice changes suddenly; all the official tone goes out of it. “We need to talk, Penn. And not on a cell phone. I'm at headquarters for another half hour. Find a way.”

I sigh in resignation. “Okay. I'm on my way.”

I'm only six feet from the roof door, but I feel it’s a mile away. The

thought of making my way to the ground floor of the hospital seems beyond me. I don'’t know if it’s sleep deprivation or the crash. I am gathering my last reserves of energy to stand when I look to my left.

Facing me like a giant blue dragonfly is the Athens Point helicopter, its rotors turning as though they could go on for eternity. Danny McDavitt sits at the controls like a waiting chauffeur, his eyes on me.

There is my ride.

CHAPTER

20

Police headquarters is on the north side of town, far from the most recent residential and commercial development, closer to the predominantly black part of town. The low-slung, one-story structure looks like a cross between a 1970s office suite and a federal prison minus the barbed wire. Wedged between a Pizza Hut and the Entergy building, it’s surrounded by car dealerships, auto parts shops, cheap motels, and a cash-for-your-car-title place. Across the street, amid this haphazard sprawl, stands Devereaux, one of the most beautiful Greek Revival mansions in the South, now dwarfed by the massive Baptist church that has become its neighbor, the only new construction on this side of town.

Inside the glass-walled entry area of the station, I announce myself to the officer behind her bulletproof glass window. After a show of finishing some paperwork, she buzzes me through the door and points to the chief’s door.

Don Logan and I have been through more than one scrape together. A year and a half ago, we were both shot at by gang members in the lobby of the city’s finest hotel. As I told Tim the night before he died, I find it almost impossible to believe that Logan could be on the pad, no matter what the temptation. On the other hand, the chief might have guilty knowledge about one or more cops under his command. Situations like that have put honorable men in

difficult positions before, so I must tread carefully with Logan, honest though he may be.

The chief is waiting behind a desk that’s the picture of order, a compulsive engineer’s desk. He wears a starched blue uniform and a silver badge, but in his wire-rimmed glasses he still looks like a high school science teacher.

“What’s going on, Don?” I ask, hoping to get past titles immediately. “You sounded pretty upset on the phone.”

“I'm not sure where to start.”

“What’s the status on Soren Jensen?” This question gives me time to read the chief’s mood. What I'm picking up is serious tension.

“Jensen’s being charged with possession with intent to distribute.”

Seeing the shock on my face, Logan hurries on, “It’s not my call, Penn. The DA’s filing those charges. Shad even came down here this morning to make sure I understood his position. I don'’t know what you did to step on his toes, but he’s out for this kid’s blood.”

“I hear you. What about the MVA?”

“The kid’s being charged with DWI as well. He was drunk on the Breathalyzer, but I think he was full of meth too. His mother told him not to take a blood test, but Shad’s going to get a court order.”

I absorb this in silence. Libby is probably close to a nervous breakdown by now.

“I know he’s basically a good kid,” Logan says. “But he hit a cop. You know he wouldn'’t have done that unless he was high.”

“Probably not. He needs help, though, not time in the pen.”

“So do all the poor black kids who come through here, and a lot of them don'’t get it. So it’s easy for Shad to throw the book at Jensen and look like he’s being impartial. But let’s move on. We’'ve got more serious problems to deal with.”

“Like?”

“Tim Jessup.”

Here we go.

“Are you treating his death as a homicide?”

Logan lifts a stainless steel pen from a holder and glances away, temporizing. “The autopsy results aren'’t back. Let’s move to some specifics before we start drawing conclusions.”

“I saw the story in this morning’s paper. Who found the dope in Jessup’s house?”

“The two patrolmen who saw you leaving there called in a K9 unit. Dog found it behind some Sheetrock in the closet. Typical hidey-hole.”

“Don, somebody tore the place apart before I got there. They would have found the drugs and taken them.”

Logan shrugs as if he can do nothing about the facts.

“How did Caitlin Masters find out about the meth so fast?”

“Come on,” he says. “You know that woman better than anybody. She’s got sources all over town, from the courthouse to Lawyers’ Row to this department.”

I concede this with a nod. “What concerns me is that to the best of my knowledge, Tim Jessup has been clean for a year.”

“There’s no way to know that.”

“Julia Stanton turned that boy around. I tend to be cynical where drugs are concerned, but I don'’t think Julia would have stayed with him if he was using again.”

Logan taps the pen on his desk, looks toward his partially open window blinds. Then he reaches into his drawer and pulls out a manila envelope. From it he takes four photographs and lays them out for me to examine. They’re printed on ink-jet photo paper, and all four show a nude or partly nude woman with a stunning body posed in various erotic positions. Unlike the teenage girl in the cell phone shots Tim showed me, this woman is in her midthirties and looks confident of her sexuality.

“What am I supposed to get from these?”

“We found these in Jessup’s house. Something tells me Julia didn't know about this either.”

I am at a loss for words.

“Nobody leaked these to Ms. Masters, by the way,” he adds.

Thank God for small favors.

“Were these stashed with the dope?”

“No.” Logan can’t suppress a small smirk. “Folded inside

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

”

“Have you ID’d the woman? She looks vaguely familiar.”

“Linda Church. Hostess at the Devil’s Punchbowl, one of the bars on the

Magnolia Queen.

Born right here in Natchez.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Who ID’d her?”

“One of the patrolmen recognized her. I did too, when I saw the

pictures. She grew up out in Morgantown, like me. She wasn'’t that far behind me in school. I'm eight years younger than you, remember, even if I'm losing my hair faster.”

I smile and nod.

“You never saw Linda on the boat?” he asks.

“I don'’t gamble.”

“Me either. But I go down there and eat with the wife sometimes. Food’s good, and not too expensive.”

“What do you know about her?”

“She stripped in Vegas. A lot of people don'’t know that. She went to a juco in Oklahoma, married a guy there. That lasted about ten years. No kids. He left her. She got short of money, started stripping in Oklahoma City, then moved on to Vegas. Not sure why she left, but she came back here and started working the boats. I do remember her from school, though. They called her Butterface.”

“Butterface?”

“You know, everything about her was hot but her face.”

I lean forward and examine the pictures more closely. Aside from her high, full breasts and tight bottom, Linda Church has large eyes and good bone structure. “She looks pretty enough in these pictures.”

“Yeah. It was acne. She had it bad in high school. She’s scarred more than these pictures show. But Linda’s like a lot of country girls, a ten-plus when you see them from behind, a five from the front.”