JORDAN GLASS KNELT IN some dead weeds beside Caitlin and began shooting the workboat with her motor-drive Nikon. She clicked off nine shots, then pointed her lens back the way they had come and framed a shot of Penn talking to her husband.
“Do you know why this is happening?” she asked, framing yet another image. “The draining of this massive hole?”
“Because your husband pushed for it?” Caitlin guessed.
“No. Katrina guilt.” Jordan pointed at the semi trucks. “See those pumps over there? They’re the biggest mobile pumps in North America. They’ve been sitting down in New Orleans since the hurricane, when they were used to help drain Orleans Parish after the flood. But take my word for it, nobody could have released them to move up here without very high authority. The FBI couldn’t do that.”
“Then who?”
“The Bush administration is taking a huge hit for its poor handling of Katrina, especially from the black community. Ergo, they’re willing to send these pump trucks up here. Why? To win political points by sparing no expense to solve a decades-old civil rights murder they didn’t give a shit about last week.”
Caitlin could tell by the passion in Jordan’s voice that she was the kind of journalist who got personally involved in the stories she covered. “Well, at least they’re here.”
“Oh, I agree. I just think it’s important to understand the context.”
Caitlin could hardly believe she was talking to someone she’d admired since she was thirteen years old. She’d first heard of Jordan Glass when a female reporter at one of her father’s papers started waving some pictures around the newsroom where Caitlin was working after school. The photos had been shot in the bush in El Salvador, and the massacre they showed was entirely inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old girl; but just as indelible as the bloody images was the reporter’s triumphant tone when she boasted that the photos had been shot by a twenty-three-year-old American woman and former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Now, twenty-two years later, Caitlin was walking beside that very photographer, only now Glass was forty-five and had a string of prestigious prizes behind her. Glass had been shot while doing her work, for God’s sake.
“Race politics,” Caitlin said. “Even in Natchez, it’s the subtext of half the stories my paper covers.”
“Sorry if I sound pissy,” Jordan said, loudly enough to be heard over the rumbling of the pump trucks. She straightened up. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend today and tomorrow.”
“No?”
“No. I’m flying to Cuba on Friday to shoot Fidel and Raúl Castro. John and I had planned to spend today and Thursday in our house on Lake Pontchartrain—which we haven’t gotten to do since Katrina. That was until your boyfriend—”
“My fiancé,” Caitlin corrected, a little defensively.
“Oh. Congratulations. When are you getting married?”
“The wedding was scheduled for next week.”
“Was?”
“After this stuff came up with Penn’s father, I decided we’d better postpone it. Do you know about the murder charge?”
“John told me.”
“We’re going to wait until we have a better idea of what’s going to happen. Maybe until after the trial. If there is a trial.”
Glass stopped walking and looked at Caitlin with disconcerting intensity. “You want some free advice? Don’t wait. You never know what’s going to happen. How old are you, thirty-two?”
“Thirty-five.”
Jordan held Caitlin’s eyes for another few seconds, then blinked and looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s fine,” Caitlin said, starting down the shore of the Jericho Hole again. “I just don’t want my wedding tainted by Penn’s father being in trouble. Dr. Cage’s health is pretty fragile.”
A cloud seemed to pass over Glass’s face before she started walking again. “Seriously, I’m sorry I was bitching. I just … John and I have hardly had any time alone since the storm. I sympathize with Henry, believe me. He’s done a lot of work that the Bureau should have done decades ago. But frankly—if you don’t mind a little oversharing—I’ve been trying to get pregnant for the past six months, and this little detour doesn’t help.”
Caitlin instantly flashed back to her morning pregnancy test.
“I know I’m old,” the photographer said, as if to counter silent criticism, “but I was always so—”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Caitlin said. “I say go for it. You deserve a family as much as anybody else.”
Jordan shrugged. “Yeah, well … I’m not home much.”
“I know,” Caitlin said, too loudly. “I see your credit under pictures from all over the world.”
Jordan’s eyes revealed a shocking vulnerability. “Oh, I lead the glamorous life. A month ago, Angelina Jolie asked how I’d feel about her playing me in a film. It’s surreal.” She looked at the ground and shook her head sadly. “Why does a woman who’s adopting babies left and right want to play a childless woman?” The photographer grimaced, then looked up at Caitlin. “I’m so ready to spend some time around joy and innocence instead of pain and death. I let John hire me as a contract photographer for this expedition so we could be together for these two days, but it sucks. He won’t even sleep for the next two days, much less take time for me.”
“Why is he so gung ho about this case?”
Glass panned her gaze across the horizon, as if searching for new perspectives. “John’s very tight with an old-time FBI agent named Dwight Stone. These cold cases from the Ku Klux Klan days are like a holy quest for them.”
“I know Dwight,” Caitlin said with a touch of pride. “I met him on—”