“What is it, Penn?” Mom asks, reaching the wall at last. “Not trouble, I hope?”
“No, I just need to talk to somebody. I’ll be home soon,” I promise. “Let Mia take some time for herself, if she will.”
Mom nods, but she can’t manage a smile.
Rusty looks back with an inquisitive arch of the eyebrows.
“This is chaos,” I tell him. “Find Tim and his guys, and don’t leave Mom’s side until you do. Tell Tim I’m fine alone for a half hour.”
“I’ve got her, buddy. Who you meeting?”
“Jewel,” I whisper.
Rusty’s eyes widen, but he says nothing, and I jog down the steps to Washington Street, ignoring the reporters and texting Serenity as I run.
hav 2 meet somebody. tlk2 u soon as i can.
At the corner of Washington and Wall stands a house that was built in 1735. When I was a boy, it was owned by a man who operated a rare bookstore out of it. My father would spend hours browsing through the dusty shelves or digging through boxes of the latest acquisitions while I toyed with more esoteric merchandise. The book dealer owned a gold-headed cane that had belonged to George Washington Cable when the writer lived in New Orleans. I often pretended that the cane had a sword tip concealed in it, and the dealer would play the role of villain for me. When he died, the old man left that cane to my father. Now it lies in a treasured place on one of the bookshelves in my father’s study.
Jewel chose this house for its proximity to both the courthouse and her office. She had to walk only one block to reach it. Behind the two-story colonial is a courtyard bounded by a high, ivy-covered wall of crumbling brick. One gate opens onto the street, and it’s this that I slip through, into a fragrant, verdant world of flower beds and hanging plants.
The county coroner sits at a wrought-iron table in the corner of the courtyard, smoking a cigarette with intense concentration. I walk over and sit far enough away that I don’t have to breathe the smoke as she exhales it.
“Mrs. Petros would kill you if she saw you smoking out here.”
“She’s on a bicycle trip in France. I don’t think her eyes are that good.”
“What’s going on, Jewel?”
“I’m not sure, but something’s rotten in the sheriff’s department. And you need to know about it.”
“That’s not exactly news with Billy Byrd wearing the star.”
“How about tampering with evidence?”
“Talk to me.”
Jewel takes one last drag, then stubs out the cigarette, stands, and throws the butt over the high wall behind her. “About an hour ago, I ran into a deputy down at the convenience store. A black deputy.”
“Okay.”
“He’s kind of been giving me the eye for a while, so when he pulled me aside, I figured he was trying to flirt with me. He wasn’t. He told me he had overheard two white deputies talking about your father’s case in the locker room. They were laughing about how slick they had done something.”
“What?”
“He didn’t hear enough to be sure. But they were joking about hair and fiber. He thinks they were joking about ‘losing’ some potential evidence. That, and maybe substituting random hair and fiber for some left by a potential perp.”
“Shit. That’s serious, but pretty vague. Would the guy be willing to talk to me?”
Jewel moves her head slowly from side to side. “He’s scared of losing his job already. And don’t tell me you can get him on at the police department, because the benefits over there suck.”
“I hear you. Would he try to find out more than what he has already?”
“I told him to. We might get lucky, but he’s not going to risk his career for me. I’m still hot for my age, but not that hot.”
I take a good minute to think this over, and Jewel doesn’t interrupt me.
“If they’re screwing with evidence,” I think aloud, “that means they know Dad’s innocent.”
“Not necessarily. They may just be piling on, trying to make sure he doesn’t skate thanks to Quentin’s courtroom tricks.”
“What tricks? I’m not sure he has any left.”
Jewel gives me a sharp look. “Don’t be too quick to judge him. He’s a sly old fox, is Quentin.”
When her smile turns wistful, my eyes widen. “Don’t tell me . . . you and Quentin?”
She laughs softly. “Ol’ Q got around in the old days. When I was a nurse, I was a witness in a malpractice case he was handling. I caught his eye, just like every other pretty young thing. He took a couple of depositions from me. No assistants present.”
I shake my head in wonder, amazed by the connections we go through life without seeing.
“Jewel, Dad’s hair and fiber were all over Cora Revels’s house. From what you’ve said, those deputies must have destroyed evidence that would incriminate someone else—someone who stands a reasonable chance of being accused of the crime. Because otherwise, even if we had whatever hair and fiber they destroyed, we wouldn’t know whose hair to compare it to.”
Jewel gives me a slow nod.
“What kind of hair would stand out in that house?” I ask.
“Caucasian, baby.”
“Exactly. Apart from Henry Sexton and my father, how many white people visited that house in the past few weeks, or even months?”
“Not many. And the most likely in my book would be Snake Knox and his buddies.”
“Goddamn it,” I mutter, surprised to feel a blossom of hope in my heart. Despite all my anger and resentment at my father, some part of me still desperately longs for him to be innocent. “I think Cora Revels knows they were there, and she’s flat-out lying about it.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“But why should she lie about that?”
Jewel shrugs. “Fear of the Knoxes?”
“Maybe. Jewel, if your deputy would go on the record, I could—”
“Forget it, Penn. He won’t do that unless he’s got harder evidence than he has now. A lot harder. So don’t be jumping the gun and telling anybody about this.”
“Then what the hell can I do with it?”
“Use your head. I figure maybe you’ve got some connections of your own inside that sheriff’s department. Somebody who owes you a favor. Or your daddy. He’s bound to have patients on Byrd’s payroll. Maybe they can find out what went down with the evidence.”
“Okay . . . I hear you.”
Jewel stands and lays her hand on my shoulder. “There’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“My friend says Billy Byrd is better friends with Billy Knox than he ought to be.”
“Billy Byrd and Billy Knox know each other?”
“Are you kidding me? Byrd’s daddy worked at the Triton plant with Frank Knox back in the day. And the sheriff goes on vacations over to Billy Knox’s fishing camp in Texas. Strange bedfellows, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, it makes sense.”
The look in Jewel’s eyes tells me she hasn’t confided everything that’s worrying her.
“Come on, Jewel, give me the rest. And don’t sugarcoat it.”
“I’m worried about your daddy. He’s segregated in his own cell over there, but that don’t mean he doesn’t come into contact with other inmates at times. Or that the guards aren’t with him out of sight of the cameras now and then.”