”Some people think Marko’s dangerous, Wade. Capable of serious violence.“

Anders shrugs as though this is unlikely. ”I don’t think so. He hates the Serbs now. That’s who killed his folks. If you asked me would Marko kill a Serb, I’d say don’t get between them.“

”How did Marko feel about the Wilsons?“

Wade laughs. ”He liked them. Hell, they let him do whatever he wanted most of the time. Why wouldn’t he like them? Professor Wilson’s in another world half the time, anyway. Was, I mean.“

”Absentminded, you mean? Head in the clouds?“

”That, too, I guess. But I meant drunk.“

A new thought hits me. ”Paul Wilson didn’t do drugs, did he?“

Wade shrugs again. ”Never thought about it. But I wouldn’t reject the idea out of hand. He spent his whole life teaching college. He’s bound to have smoked some reefer, at least.“

”Hm. What did you think of Kate Townsend?“

Wade swallows hard, shakes his head, and looks at the floor. ”Jesus, Penn. You see a kid like that maybe once every ten years. Gifted on the field and a genius in the classroom. I’ve really never had one like her myself. Tell the truth, I can’t really believe she’s dead.“

”Do you have any idea who killed her?“

Shock blanks Anders’s face. ”Hell, no. Do you?“

”No.“

”I mean, people are saying Dr. Elliott did it. But I don’t really hold with that.“

”Why not?“

”Drew’s not the type. I mean, I’m sure he was in love with her. Hell, you can’t help but love a girl like that. But he wouldn’t have killed her. I mean, not unless he’s got a different side, you know? A jealous side. Some guys are like that. Seem like great guys on the outside, but at home they’re real control freaks. Paranoid, you know?“

”Yeah.“

”You’re his friend, right? Is Drew like that?“

”No.“

”I didn’t think so. You can tell from how a guy deals with his kids. Drew never pressures his son in football practices. He comes out to watch, you know, but he never gets onto Timmy, not even when he makes a mistake. Which surprised me, since Drew played college ball and all. Look, man, what do I know? I’m just a coach.“

”You’ve made some good points, Wade. What do you think about Drew having sex with Kate?“

Anders blinks as though confused. ”What do you mean?“

”Do you condemn him for it?“

Wade looks at his office door, which I realize is open about a half inch. He closes it with his foot. ”You want the party line or the real answer?“

”You know what I want.“

His eyes shine as he shakes his head. ”Penn, these girls…they’re not the girls we went to school with, okay? There’s a group of girls here who have a club called the Bald Eagles. Know why?“

”Do I want to know?“

”They all shave their pussies.“

”Is that a big deal?“

Wade raises his eyebrows. ”They’re in the eighth grade.“

”Jesus.“ Even in our frankest discussions, Mia and I have not gotten to this level of detail.

”And the juniors and seniors? Man, they put it right in your face. Day in and day out. Sex is no big deal to them. I’ll be honest with you, Penn, the hardest thing I’ve ever done is said no to the girls who’ve come on to me in this office. I’ve had ‘em start changing clothes right in front of me, like they forgot I was here, then ask if I want to see more.“

Wade’s honesty surprises me. But is he playing me as well? ”Do you always say no, Wade?“

His jaw tightens. ”Yessir, I do. Know why?“

”Why?“

”My mama taught me one lesson. Don’t shit where you eat.“ He glances at the door again. ”I need this job, Penn. And screwing a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old would eventually lose it for me. Because these girls can’t handle what they’re playing with. They have sex, but they don’t understand what it really is, you know? Hell, adults don’t either, half the time. Maybe that’s what happened to Drew. The truth is, we’ll probably never know what happened to Kate.“

”Yes, we will,“ I promise. ”Because I’m going to find out.“

Wade Anders stands and offers me his hand. ”More power to you, brother. Anything I can do to help, you let me know.“

I shake his hand and turn to leave the office.

”Oh, hey,“ he says. ”I had my baseball team go over the football field and track with a fine-toothed comb, but they never found that pistol you told me you lost.“

I stop and look back at him, searching for hidden meaning in his face. ”Did the crew I sent over get your light control box fixed?“

”Yep, good as new.“ Wade leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on his desk. ”Man, those bullets tore up the inside of that box. Good thing you didn’t hit anybody with them.“

I freeze. ”I never told you it was me who shot the box.“

He looks blank. ”I guess you didn’t. I just assumed…“

”What?“

”That you were down here spotlighting deer or something. That you crossed over from the hunting camp. I didn’t mean nothing by it.“

I keep studying his face, looking for cracks in his composure. ”That’s pretty much what happened. Thanks for the effort, Wade.“

”No problem. You be careful. Lots of crazy shit happening in this town.“

”I will.“

At seven stories the Eola Hotel is the tallest building in Natchez. Built in 1927, the year of the great flood, the Eola has weathered boom and bust to find itself in the National Register of Historic Places. When I was a boy in the 1960s, the lobby of the Eola was a seedy place where old men played chess and smoked cigars while families fresh from church walked through the stale air to eat their Sunday dinners in the hotel restaurant. In that era, uniformed black men operated the elevator and attended the restroom while Yankees like Dan Rather, his CBS news crew, and New York print journalists stood in the café watching robed Klansmen on horseback march down Main Street outside. Quentin Avery remembers that era a lot better than I do. And now he will run Drew Elliott’s legal defense from the penthouse suite of a hotel that wouldn’t have given him a reservation when he was a thirty-year-old lawyer.

Today I operate the elevator myself as I ride up to the seventh floor. When the door opens, I see two young white men carrying computer equipment between rooms. They have the harried look of young lawyers. I nod at them and make my way up the hall to Quentin’s suite. The door is propped open with a heavy law book. I knock and walk inside.

The suite is huge: three separate rooms and two baths, all decorated with obsessive attention to detail. Quentin is standing on the long balcony, which gives a panoramic view of Natchez, the Mississippi River, and the Louisiana delta stretching away for miles to the west. He’s wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt. From the rear, his grayish-white Afro gives him the look of a much younger man.

”Quentin?“ I call. ”It’s Penn Cage.“

Avery turns and smiles, and though I see every one of his seventy-plus years in his face, the light in his eyes tells me he’s excited to be back in the game again.

”What do you know?“ he asks. ”Anything new?“

”I talked to Chief Logan this morning. Marko Bakic has vanished. Ditto Cyrus White.“

Quentin’s smile broadens. ”Good, good. That’s just how we like it.“

”Why’s that?“

”You need to ask me that? Come out here into the sun. Maybe it’ll prod your brain.“

I walk out onto the balcony. There’s a cool breeze blowing off the rust-colored river, which is high for this early in the spring. ”Tell me.“

”This is a murder case, Penn. Our goal is acquittal. To get that, we need one thing: reasonable doubt.“

”And?“

”Cyrus White is our reasonable doubt. Just as he is. If I could stop time right now and go to trial, I would. Because no sane jury can convict Drew Elliott of murder with unidentified sperm in that dead girl and Cyrus White on the loose. Not with proof that Kate and Cyrus knew each other.“