The Devils Punchbowl

As Logan grimaces under the burdens of his office, something disturbing strikes me. “Don, we’ve been talking quite a while, and you haven'’t asked me anything about my balloon getting shot down.”

He takes a deep breath, then answers with carefully chosen words. “First off, I can see you weren’t hurt bad. Second, it happened over Louisiana. Not my jurisdiction. Mine ends at the river.”

I sense barely contained anger behind his eyes, but he will not voice it.

“One thing has troubled me since last night,” I tell him. “You said Tim tried to call me several times before his death. I was in one of the highest parts of the city, but I never got those calls. No texts either. How could that be?”

Logan folds his arms and looks at the institutional green carpet.

“May I see Tim’s phone?”

The chief shakes his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Ask the district attorney, not me.”

“Do you

have

the phone? Is it in the evidence room?”

Logan keeps his gaze on the carpet. “You’re outside the bounds of what I can answer.”

“Jesus, man, what

can

you tell me?”

Logan chews on his bottom lip for a while. Then he glances at his door and walks to within a foot of me. “Last night, there were two localized interruptions of cellular service. In two different places, and at two different times.”

I ponder this for a minute. “Let me guess. The first was around midnight, near the cemetery.”

Logan nods almost imperceptibly.

“And the second was right around the time Tim died. When he jumped out of the SUV and was trying to get away from whoever was inside.”

“You get the prize.”

“How widespread was the interruption?”

“From the complaints, the best I can figure was about half a square mile near the cemetery. Up on the bluff it was more widespread, but it had a shorter duration. Generated a lot more complaints, though, with all the people partying up there.”

“Were all carriers interrupted, or just one?”

“All.”

“Shit. Somebody was jamming the radio spectrum.”

Logan licks his lips but says nothing.

“That'’s serious business. Have you talked to the cellular providers?”

“No way. I figured this out from the complaints of witnesses. And a couple of my black officers live out by the cemetery.”

“You know what happened. Whoever killed Tim jammed the cell signals around the cemetery while they were chasing him out there. They stopped it after they had him in the SUV, when they were torturing him. Then they started jamming the lines again when he broke loose and ran for the fence.”

Logan sniffs and looks back toward his door. “Are you prepared to tell me who ‘they’ are?”

Is he asking me this honestly?

I wonder.

Or is he testing me? And if he’s testing me, is it for himself or for Jonathan Sands?

“Do I need to tell you?”

The chief walks back behind his desk. “Six months ago I got an offer to be chief of police in a little town on the Florida coast. Ever since I saw Jessup lying in that ditch, I’'ve been wishing I hadn'’t said no.”

I walk forward and lay a hand on his shoulder. “It’s a sad day when two Mississippi boys can’t trust each other any more than this.”

“Yes, sir, it is. Things have slid a long way out of whack.”

“Maybe we need to try to do something about it.”

Logan’s eyes open a little wider. “Maybe. Let’s see what that autopsy says. You stay in touch, Penn.”

I turn to go, but the chief’s voice stops me at the door.

“How’s that little girl of yours doing?”

“She’s fine,” I reply, my eyes hard and flat. “It was good to see you, Don. Take care of yourself.”

CHAPTER

21

I'm standing before the grave of Florence Irene Ford, who died in 1871 at age ten. Because the child was afraid of storms, Irene’s mother had a glass window installed in the casket, so that during inclement weather she could descend the little stairway behind the gravestone and reassure her child. This tale always fascinated Tim Jessup, so I thought Florence’s stairway might make a good hiding place for the stolen disc. But a locked metal trapdoor protects the stairway now, the price of protecting the cemetery from vandals.

For ninety minutes I’'ve crisscrossed the cemetery in search of Jonathan Sands’s missing disc, following a map that only I could have drawn. Sketched hastily in my Moleskine notebook, it shows the locations of graves of people that Tim and I both knew. If Tim were running for his life and meant to hide evidence with the intent of retrieving it later—or in the worst case for me to retrieve it—I figured he would choose a spot I might think of on my own. A grave we both knew seemed the likeliest place. Had I chosen to include deceased people from my parents’ generation, it would have been a long list indeed, but knowing that time was short, I included only ours, with two exceptions. Still, I could easily think of nine, and they were spread throughout the vast cemetery.

There was Mallory Candler, our Miss Mississippi, who was mur

dered in New Orleans. Tim’s in-laws are also buried here: Julia’s father, a suicide at forty-nine, and her mother, dead from a stroke two years later. Two St. Stephen’s schoolmates who died in accidents also made the list: a boy shot by his brother while hunting, and a girl who broke her neck diving into a pond when she was twelve. Kate Townsend, a St. Stephen’s student who was murdered a year and a half ago, also went on my map, but I found no sign of anything hidden near her—or any other person’s—tomb.

My next step was to include the famous monuments of the cemetery, figuring that in the dark Tim might not have had time to search out the stones of the recently deceased. This trek took longer, for the older sections have no modern grid layout or uniform tombstones. Sweating from the midday heat, I crawled through a world of fantastical sculptures, mausoleums fenced with heavy wrought iron, cracked marble and masonry filled with crannies ideally suited to hide contraband. I probed like an archaeologist beside the graves of the principals in the Goat Castle murder case; of Rosalie Beekman, the only casualty of the Civil War at Natchez; of Louise the Unfortunate, an unknown woman from the North who died in a Natchez brothel; and of Bud Scott, the famed black bandleader many believe to be the father of Louis Armstrong, who spent several summers in Natchez as a boy. Yet none of these mossy monuments concealed the treasure I sought.

While concealed in the shadows between two mausoleums, I used the Blackhawk satellite phone to check on Annie and my mother. They had already reached Houston, and were nearly to the safe house that awaited them. I gave the Blackhawk dispatcher the names of the five percent investors in Golden Parachute and asked if the company could check out the two Chinese investors for me. After promising this would be done, the dispatcher informed me that Daniel Kelly could arrive in Natchez in twelve to fifteen hours, depending on certain variables. This was faster than I’d hoped, and welcome news. During bad times, Kelly makes good things happen, and when he can’t manage that, he at least deters those who would like to make things worse.

Knowing that the missing disc is all that might bring my family safety from Sands—or give me the weapon I need to destroy him—I prepare to continue my search, but the sheer size of the task is

overwhelming. I see why Quinn was so anxious for me to take it on. It would take strangers weeks to search this graveyard.