“Is Dr. Drew going to take care of him?”
I smile and nod, tying to convey confidence. “Drew’s going over there now. If anyone around here can fix Mr. Henry up, he can.”
“What about Papa?”
I considered calling Dad to check on Henry, but it’s been years since he treated trauma cases in the ER. “Papa’s under too much strain to be dealing with a trauma case right now.”
“Do they have a CAT scan machine across the river?”
“Uh … I think so.”
“Do they have a neurologist?”
My eleven-year-old daughter is a huge fan of both Grey’s Anatomy and House, M.D. Initially, I tried to keep her from watching these shows, but after a while I gave up. Annie has an almost morbid interest in cancer, which killed her mother, and she’s told me repeatedly that her ambition is to become an oncologist and cure the disease.
“I don’t think so,” I admit. “But Drew knows how to read a scan. If Henry has bleeding in his brain, they’ll airlift him to Baton Rouge.”
“Why not Jackson?”
“The Louisiana doctors have connections in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, not Jackson.”
“That’s weird, since Natchez and Vidalia are only a mile apart.”
I walk over and lay my hand on her shoulder. “Boo, in a lot of ways, the Mississippi River is like a locked gate.”
The slam of the front door tells me Caitlin must have run right out the door of the Examiner when she got my text. The newspaper office is less than a mile from our houses as the crow flies, but she must have driven fifty or sixty miles an hour through the maze of one-way streets that is downtown Natchez to get here so fast.
“What do you know about Henry?” she asks, almost skidding into the room.
Annie jumps up and hugs Caitlin’s waist.
Before I can answer, the telephone rings. The LED says UNKNOWN NUMBER. I hold up my hand to Caitlin and answer.
“Penn Cage.”
“Mayor, this is Special Agent John Kaiser. What’s happened? Is it Henry Sexton?”
“How did you know?”
“Just a feeling. Is he alive?”
“Right now he is.”
“Thank God.”
CHAPTER 45
AS CONCISELY AS POSSIBLE, I summarize what I know about the attack on Henry for Special Agent Kaiser, while Caitlin memorizes every word. Halfway through my account, I notice Caitlin staring at the preliminary autopsy report for Viola Turner, which lies on the back of the sofa. I was stupid to leave it out.
“What’s Henry’s present condition?” Kaiser asks with military succinctness.
“He’s in and out of consciousness. I’ve sent the best doctor I could get to check him out. I called you because I know you’ve been in contact with Henry about the Jericho Hole bones, and tonight’s assault was probably related to the cases he’s been working.”
“Henry told me you put some security on him last night,” Kaiser says.
“Just an ex-cop. The Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office was watching him today. They were supposed to provide an escort when he finished work, but the wires got crossed. I should have hired somebody to stay with him every second. I guess I didn’t think they’d go for him at the newspaper.”
“I assume the sheriff’s covering Henry at the hospital now?”
“Yes, Sheriff Walker Dennis. He’s hoping to question Henry some more.”
“Do you know Sheriff Dennis personally?”
“Sort of. I played Little League ball with him as a kid.”
“Do you think he could have set Henry up?”
A chill runs along my arms. “My first instinct says no. But I honestly don’t know him well.”
“Well, it’s something to consider. By the way, I’m expediting the DNA analysis on the Jericho Hole bones, and we’ve sent the bullet up to the crime lab in Washington. That was good work going into that lake. Sometimes the shortest route between two points doesn’t involve a search warrant.”
“As long as the guys breaking the rules can be trusted.”
“Amen. Henry told me a little about your father’s case, too.”
“Did he?” I say coolly.
Kaiser is silent for a few seconds. “Would it surprise you to learn that I know quite a bit about you, Mayor?”
“Because of my battle with Director Portman, you mean?”
Kaiser chuckles softly. “No, though I was no fan of that elitist asshole. I’m actually a friend of Dwight Stone.”
This name hurls me back in time. Dwight Stone was one of more than a dozen FBI agents assigned to Natchez during the 1960s. When I was persuaded by distraught family members to look into the murder of civil rights activist Delano Payton, the trail eventually led me to Dwight, who’d retired to the mountains of Colorado. He did more than help me solve the cold case; he ended up saving my life.
“That says a lot for you,” I tell Kaiser. “What are you going to do about Henry? Can you do anything?”
“You bet your ass I can. I’m going to add some men to his guard detail, and I’m coming up there myself, first thing in the morning.”
“First thing” means different things to different people. New Orleans is three hours south of Natchez, but Kaiser sounds like the crack-of-dawn type to me. Before I can ask for clarification, he says, “If Walker Dennis is bent, or he has a mole in his department, the discovery of those bones in the Jericho Hole might have triggered Henry’s beating.”
“Couldn’t it just as easily have been Henry’s interviews with Glenn Morehouse and Viola Turner?”
“Of course. Can you keep something absolutely between us?”
“Absolutely.”
“Morehouse died of an overdose of fentanyl, which he was taking by prescription. But the dose was too high to have come from his patch, or even two of them. He was murdered, no question.”
Kaiser’s openness is startling after years of dealing with closemouthed FBI agents. “I figured as much. One thing strikes me as strange. Henry described his assailants as being between twenty and thirty years old. That doesn’t sound like Double Eagles to me.”