“Tell me how you know.”
“Shape of the wound, for one thing. Blunt force trauma by an object with linear edges, not something irregular like a rock. Second, I found dust down in the wound, in both the skin and the brain matter. All I had was my magnifying glass, now.”
“What kind of dust? Not sandstone?”
“Not sandstone. Brick dust, I’m pretty sure. Those old Natchez bricks. Reddish orange.”
I think about this. “You don’t think Buck could have fallen from a height onto one of those bricks?”
“Oh, he could have. Thing is, they ain’t got any bricks like that at that pirate cave. No bricks at all. Nothing ever got built out there. It’s just loess soil and Catahoula sandstone.”
“I guess there could be bricks out there, right? Taken out there by somebody? To bank a campfire or something?”
“Sure. But what are the odds that Buck would fall from a height onto one of the only couple of bricks at that whole place?”
“You’re right. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
Staticky silence stretches as I drive down the narrow asphalt line, which cuts like a cable through trees rising eighty feet on both sides of the road. “What are you thinking, Byron?”
“I been thinkin’ ’bout places where they do got them bricks. Lots of ’em.”
“I know one,” I tell him, remembering my childhood.
“The old electroplating factory, right? The paper mill site where Buck found that Indian pot you wrote about.”
“Yep. Have you told anybody about the brick dust?”
“Not yet. Autopsy’s not my job. That’s s’posed to be done in Jackson.”
“I hear something in your voice, Byron. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know if you know, but sometimes autopsies get done right here in Bienville, if the hospital has a pathologist on staff. That’s on and off in this town, but right now we got one. ‘Locum tenens,’ they call it. Temporary. I just got told he’s gonna do the autopsy.”
My pulse quickens. “Who told you that?”
“President of the county supervisors. I got the first call as I was driving the body up from the river. But I just got confirmation.”
“Jesus, Byron. You think they’re going to dictate the result they want? Or buy it?”
“Why else change regular procedure? They sure ain’t in no hurry to get the real result. So if they’re rushing it, they must already know what the report’s gonna say.”
“The fix is in.”
“Yeah. And I don’t know what I can do to stop it.”
“Nothing, if you want to keep your job. We’re going to need an independent autopsy. I just spoke to the widow. I don’t think it will be a problem, except for the cost. But I’ll cover that. The only problem is time. They’re moving fast.”
“Man, I hate to say this,” Byron says in a portentous tone, “but I been thinking ’bout something else.”
“Yeah?”
“This job means a lot to me. I’m the first black coroner in Tenisaw County. But it’s not just that. I like the work. The science of it, figuring things out. And I treat the dead with respect. Especially these kids that kill each other like it’s Sierra Leone. They deserve respect, even if it’s the only respect they’ll ever get.”
“I understand, Byron. You do great work. I’ve seen it.”
“Lemme finish. If I see things like this here today, and I don’t speak up—what does that say about me?”
“It says you need your job.”
“Yeah. But I’m a deacon in the church. That ain’t just a title to me. It means something. And what them fellas do, that Poker Club . . . it galls me. I been watching them rich white men run this town since I was a boy. In the old days we had to take it. Didn’t have no choice. But now . . . I don’t know.”
I feel my heart beating in my chest. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Spell it out.”
“I’m thinking you run a newspaper. And I got some news.”
A bracing burst of adrenaline shoots through my system. Men of integrity and courage are rare these days. I’ve known a few, but it’s been a long time since I ran into a genuine Christian, one who makes difficult choices based on his faith and then follows through. “Are you talking about anonymous information? Or being named as the source?”
“If I say something, I put my name to it.”
Even though I’m driving, I close my eyes in gratitude. “Okay, brother. I’m ready. Tell me what you want to say.”
When Byron Ellis starts talking, I feel the rush I used to feel in Washington when a whistle-blower started giving me a world-class story. The rush is no less intense because I’m in the small town in which I grew up. The coroner’s words are going to ruin tomorrow morning for a lot of powerful men, and that, in the end, is what I got into this business to do.
Buck Ferris’s rental house stands in a neighborhood built in the 1940s for the workers employed at the Bienville fiberboard plant. The small frame houses were modest even for that period, but the carpenters back then were such craftsmen that the homes are considered desirable now and sell for about a hundred grand apiece. There’s no car in the driveway of 325 Dogwood, but I drive the length of the street anyway, checking for signs of surveillance. After satisfying myself that I’m clean, I park in front of a mailbox two houses down from 325. Then I walk fifty yards up the street, cut around back, and try the key Quinn gave me in the patio door.
After a couple of jiggles, it works.
The interior of 325 looks like the abode of a single man, and the books and records on the shelves tell me he’s over seventy. I move to a small hall that leads off the den. The house has only two bedrooms, and the one on the right contains a drafting table. Other than the table, the room holds two filing cabinets and some map tubes. Tacked on the wall above the drafting table is an enlargement of what looks to me like B. L. C. Wailes’s hand-drawn map of what is now the paper mill site. Scotch-taped to the drafting table is a smaller map labeled poverty point site.
Kneeling before the file cabinets, I find they’re only a quarter full, but along with papers they contain several small boxes of pottery fragments, beads, tiny figurines, and what appear to be spear points about three inches long. Rather than try to skim through everything, I transfer the papers into the file drawer with the artifacts, then remove the drawer from the cabinet. If I’m going to meet Jet at three, I can’t sit around here for an hour. The map tubes present a problem. In the end, I tape them together and get them under my left arm, then pick up the file drawer and make for the back door.
Crossing the open space between the rental house and the Flex, I notice a woman watching me from the carport of a house across the street. She’s holding a cell phone to her cheek. Should that worry me? Half the people I see these days are on their phones. As nonchalantly as possible, I load the file drawer and tubes into the cargo area of the Flex, then head back to Highway 61.
I should stop by the Watchman office before I head home. But if I go to the rooftop party at the Aurora tonight with Nadine, I can stop by the newspaper afterward, while they’re finalizing tomorrow’s issue. Instead of going downtown, I point the Flex east and take out my iPhone. As I drive, I dictate a draft story about the coroner’s findings, then email it to Ben Tate. I tell Ben not to post it on our web edition until I’ve had time to ask some Poker Club members for comment.
Less than five minutes later, Ben calls me to complain. I let him vent his frustration, but when he finally takes a long breath, I say, “Don’t post it till midnight, Ben. End of discussion. I’ve got something else for you to do. Call the locum tenens pathologist at the hospital and ask him twenty questions about Buck Ferris’s autopsy. Why the rush? Why break from procedure and do it locally? You know the drill. I want you to scare him. Tell him we’re going to be all over the cause of death in that case. And let him know you’ve already heard the family intends to pay for a private autopsy.”