Cover

Dedication

For Betty and Jerry Iles,

who came out of tiny southern towns and climbed books like stairs to rise.

Thank you for everything.

Epigraph

For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is the slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.

—Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

Prologue

Grief is the most solitary emotion; it makes islands of us all.

I’ve spent a lot of time visiting graves over the past few weeks. Sometimes with Annie, but mostly alone. The people who see me there give me a wide berth. I’m not sure why. For thirty miles around, almost everyone knows me. Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, Mississippi. When they avoid me—waving from a distance, if at all, then hurrying on their way—I sometimes wonder if I have taken on the mantle of death. Jewel Washington, the county coroner and a true friend, pulled me aside in City Hall last week and told me I look like living proof that ghosts exist. Maybe they do. Since Caitlin died, I have felt like nothing more than the ghost of myself.

Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time visiting graves.

Henry Sexton is buried in a small churchyard in Ferriday, his tilted stone exposed to the cold wind that blasts over the Louisiana Delta fields. The simple marker displays the usual census information. Below this is his chosen epitaph, discovered in one of his journals:

Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

Typical of Henry to choose a line from a Bob Seger song.

Underneath this lament for lost innocence are six words chiseled by the black folks who attend this saltbox church, and who keep the grave of this white journalist trimmed to perfection.

Wasn’t that a man?

—Muddy Waters

Enough said.

Caitlin’s grave stands in the Natchez City Cemetery, in the flat square below Jewish Hill, not far from the Turning Angel. Her stone is white Alabama marble, tall and thin and strong, just as she was. Her mother wanted her buried up north, but her father persuaded the family that since Caitlin had intended to marry and raise her family in Mississippi, then here she should remain.

I chose her epitaph, a line she often quoted and attributed to Ayn Rand.

The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.

Rand never actually said that; the line seems to be a paraphrase from a conversation Howard Roark had in The Fountainhead. Nevertheless, it sums up Caitlin’s approach to life and work about as well as anything could. A few people have asked me if that epitaph is appropriate, given that Caitlin was murdered as a consequence of her reckless pursuit of a gang of killers. I tell them I was never a fan of Ayn Rand, but the old hypocrite got that one right. And if there was a moral or lesson in Caitlin’s death, I’m too thick to see it. If you want to make sense of this world, don’t come to me for answers.

I’m fresh out.

I stand on the high bluff over the river most every day, trying and failing to piece my life back together as winter changes to spring and my father’s murder trial approaches. Dad’s being held in protective custody in Louisiana by the FBI. He wasn’t allowed to cross into Mississippi to attend Caitlin’s funeral. I’m told he beat his arthritic hands against the bars of his cell when he got word that Sheriff Billy Byrd would jail him in Natchez if he crossed the river—beat them until he broke some bones in his right wrist. I don’t know for sure.

I haven’t spoken to him since Caitlin died.

Forrest Knox is buried on family land, the former Valhalla hunting camp. Last week I parked my car on the shoulder of Highway 61 and hiked in alone, my pistol in my right hand, and searched among deep tire ruts and FBI evidence markers until I found the gravestone. Forrest’s marker bore a chiseled Confederate battle flag, which was a desecration of that banner, and also the words Unflagging devotion. I stood there a while, sick deep in my guts, only then realizing that I’d been hoping to cross paths with Forrest’s uncle—Snake.

After a while I kicked over the stone, dropped to my knees, and used the butt of my gun to smash the chiseled flag as best I could. All I managed to do was chip a few stars off it. Heaving for breath, I got to my feet and fired five bullets against the granite slab, which did the job. Then I pissed on the grave—a good long piss that steamed in the cold and muddied the earth—and walked back out to the highway.

Yeah, well. If you don’t want the whole truth, stop reading now.

If you go on, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Chapter 1

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing as a strategy for staying sane. Strange to admit, but there it is. Since Caitlin’s death, I’ve been having trouble with some of the basic principles of existence, like time. Chronology. To be frank, I don’t have it in me to describe the events that constitute the immediate fallout of her death, or of my father’s arrest for murder. You should probably read a couple of articles from the Natchez Examiner, Caitlin’s old newspaper. Caitlin’s older sister, Miriam—a corporate financial officer from New York—has been running the paper since Caitlin died, and she has vowed to stay on until the last of the Knoxes has been jailed and the Double Eagles smashed for all time. I’m not sure Miriam Masters realizes how long that could be.

The two articles below were written by Keisha Harvin, a twenty-five-year-old black reporter from Alabama who’s been hounding the Double Eagles like a Fury incarnate. Caitlin hired Keisha from another Masters paper only two days before she was killed. Fittingly, for the past eight weeks, Keisha has been living across the street from Annie and me, in Caitlin’s old house. I don’t think she sleeps much, nor does she pull any punches, no matter who she’s writing about. My father has suffered in her stories—as he should—and through Keisha’s writing the Knox family has become a national symbol of the most atavistic and depraved instincts in the American character.

More than once I’ve tried to persuade Keisha to pull back a little and think about her safety, but like Caitlin she believes that her work means more than her life. I’m not sure a twenty-five-year-old is qualified to make that decision, but I do know this: where good people stand against evil, sooner or later fate demands a reckoning. When that day comes, I hope I’m close enough to Keisha Harvin to do some good.

NATCHEZ EXAMINER

December 30, 2005

Trial Date Set for Dr. Tom Cage

by Keisha Harvin

Circuit Judge Joseph Elder has set a trial date of March 13 for local physician Thomas J. Cage in the murder of Viola Turner. In a case that has drawn national attention, Dr. Cage is accused of murdering his 65-year-old former nurse in the wake of a pact that would have required him to euthanize the terminally ill woman, who had been his employee thirty-eight years earlier. The fact that Dr. Cage is white and Nurse Turner was black has complicated the situation, since it has been revealed that Mrs. Turner had a child by Dr. Cage in 1968, when Cage was married. Mrs. Turner was a 28-year-old widow at the time, her husband having recently been killed in the Vietnam War.

District Attorney Shadrach Johnson stated: “I don’t want anyone to be confused about this murder charge. This is not a case of euthanasia. If a doctor simply provides the drugs that a patient uses to end his or her life, that is a special class of crime in Mississippi: physician-assisted suicide. But if a physician administers those drugs himself, it’s murder, plain and simple—even if it’s done as a so-called mercy killing. But this is a case where the physician had a personal stake in keeping his patient silent about a fact that could destroy his reputation, and also his marriage. That is why Dr. Cage has been charged with first-degree murder.”

Adams County sheriff Billy Byrd said that his department has been working around the clock to be sure that the DA’s office is fully prepared to give Dr. Cage the speedy trial guaranteed by law. “Some Mississippi counties drag around for a year or more getting ready to prosecute,” Byrd commented. “But this poor woman was dying from cancer when she was murdered, and her family deserves justice. I’ve met extensively with the relatives, and they are really broken up about what happened. I don’t want to bias anybody, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a case where the facts were so clear. But I’ll leave that to DA Johnson to sort out with the jury.”

Jury selection will begin ten weeks from today. At this time Dr. Cage is not confined at the Adams County jail, but at the Federal Correctional Institution at Pollock, Louisiana. Special Agent John Kaiser of the FBI explained: “Dr. Cage is being held in protective custody. He’s a material witness in a major federal investigation, and his life is in danger.” Asked if Dr. Cage would be in danger if held in the Adams County jail, Agent Kaiser declined to comment.

Dr. Cage will be defended at trial by noted African-American civil rights attorney Quentin Avery of Jefferson County, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. To date Dr. Cage has made no statement in his own defense. But in a telephone interview yesterday, Mr. Avery said: “It should not be overlooked that Viola Turner’s brother was murdered by the Double Eagle group in 1968. Events surrounding that crime could very well impact this case.” Natchez mayor Penn Cage, the son of the defendant and a former Houston prosecutor, declined to comment on either the trial date or the statements by District Attorney Johnson, Sheriff Byrd, or Mr. Avery.

NATCHEZ EXAMINER

January 3, 2006

Knox Likely to Be Removed from FBI’s Most Wanted

by Keisha Harvin

Last week’s apparent suicide by a former member of the infamous Double Eagle group may lead the FBI to remove the name of Chester “Snake” Knox from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Sources close to the investigation report that evidence found at the scene of former Ku Klux Klansman Silas Groom’s death links him to several felonies, including the bombing of an FBI plane carrying evidence from the Vidalia airport to the FBI crime lab in Washington on December 17.

Groom was discovered in his home last Thursday, shot through the head, a revolver still in his hand. Sources say a suicide note and additional evidence discovered at the scene may link Groom to several murders, including those of Natchez Examiner publisher Caitlin Masters, who was killed on December 16, 2005, in Lusahatcha County, and also of Double Eagle founding member Sonny Thornfield, who supposedly committed suicide in the Concordia Parish jail eighteen days ago.

Local supervising FBI special agent John Kaiser declined to comment on this new evidence, but FBI spokesman Eric Templeton in Washington said: “While Snake Knox may be guilty of kidnapping and even other murders, it was the bombing of the Bureau jet that placed him on our most wanted list. We are generally satisfied that Groom was the culprit in that case, and the list will probably be altered accordingly.” When asked how a seventy-eight-year-old man could have planted a complex explosive device on an FBI jet, Agent Templeton stated: “The Double Eagles were mostly military veterans with explosives experience. Silas Groom had more weapons expertise than your average Al Qaeda terrorist, and you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to sabotage a small plane.”

At least one local law enforcement official, Concordia Parish sheriff Walker Dennis, has raised doubts as to whether Groom actually committed suicide. Sheriff Dennis said, “I’m going to wait for the medical examiner to release his findings, but anybody would have to concede that there’s been an awful suspicious rash of suicides recently. And Groom’s death could take a lot of heat off Snake Knox, which, if you ask me, is where the heat belongs. My department won’t let up in our hunt for Knox, even though the FBI seems to think he’s lit out for a nonextradition country.”

The contents of Silas Groom’s suicide note remain undisclosed. But in a macabre touch, the Examiner has learned that a rare twenty-dollar “Double Eagle” gold piece that served as the group’s membership badge was found atop the bloody note that reportedly confessed some of Groom’s crimes. Like all authentic Double Eagle badges, that gold piece was minted in the year of the holder’s birth, in Groom’s case 1933. According to the diary of journalist Henry Sexton, the only exceptions to this practice were that Double Eagle members born after the gold piece was no longer minted carried original JFK half-dollars minted in 1964. This is supposedly the badge still carried by Snake Knox.

Rumors linking the Double Eagle group to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy remain unverified. All efforts to identify the evidence being carried from Vidalia to the Washington crime lab on the downed Bureau plane have been stymied by the FBI. The Bureau has said only that this evidence pertained to its recent investigation into the Double Eagle murders that occurred in the Natchez-Vidalia area in the 1960s. The aircraft involved was a Cessna Citation II, and it burned before fire and rescue personnel could reach it. The Bureau has not disclosed whether all or part of the evidence on board survived the crash.

Thirty-six years ago, a different small plane crashed at the Concordia Parish Airport after supposedly colliding with another aircraft flown by Snake Knox. Four people died in that incident, but Knox, an experienced crop duster, walked away unharmed. This alleged midair collision occurred while Concordia was still an unattended airfield and was witnessed only by the young nephew, now deceased, of Snake Knox. The diaries of Henry Sexton have cast doubt on the FAA report made at the time, but unless Knox is apprehended and alters his original story, this earlier crash will remain a closed investigation.

As for the downing of the FBI jet, a local Vidalia man who requested anonymity said: “Nobody in this area knows more about small planes than Snake Knox. Nobody knows more about bombs, either. But that’s all I’ve got to say about that. Snake Knox ain’t somebody you want to get on the wrong side of, even if he has run off to Costa Rica or wherever. Sooner or later, he’ll be back. You watch and see.”

Chapter 2

I’m blasting across the Louisiana Delta at eighty-five miles an hour, primeval darkness covering the land like a shroud. My xenon high beams bore a tunnel through the night, triggering a riot of eyeshine from startled deer, possums, foxes, raccoons, and the occasional cow resting close to a fence. Our bodyguard’s armored Yukon tracks us from 150 yards back, far enough to spare me a migraine during the hundred-mile drive home from the prison that holds my father, but close enough for Tim Weathers to play Seventh Cavalry should that become necessary. Every now and then there’s a juddering thump as I round a curve and smash over the broken armor of a dead armadillo, yet my daughter, Annie, sleeps on beside me, one hand resting lightly on my forearm, which I’ve left on the console to reassure her.

Another angelic face floats in the rearview mirror. Through the blur of fatigue I see it as Caitlin’s, but it belongs to Mia Burke, Annie’s twenty-year-old caretaker. Mia’s eyes are closed, her mouth slightly open, and susurrant snores pass through her parted lips. Exhaustion keeps both girls sedated through potholes and roadkill, exhaustion plus the drone of the engine and whine of our tires, topped off by the voice of Levon Helm and the Band singing “The Weight,” the live version from The Last Waltz.

As Pops and Mavis Staples begin singing harmony like dark angels floating down from heaven, some semblance of peace washes over me. How much soul and conviction must a white man have to sing lead in front of angels like that? Levon is an Arkansas country boy as rail-thin and tough as the bastards who killed Caitlin, yet he somehow sings with the wounded humanity of a man without a tribe, a man who has known both love and grief and understands that one is the price of the other.

I wish I believed in God, so that I could blame Him for Caitlin’s murder. But as a man without faith, I’m left to blame my father. My mother believes Caitlin brought about her own death and would have done even had my father not turned all our lives upside down. I haven’t the strength to argue the case. Mom simply wants me to forgive Dad enough to visit him in prison. But I can’t bring myself to do that. So I sit outside in the car, or else down the street in a Wendy’s restaurant, while Mom and Annie go through their ritual at the prison, Mia tending to Annie while Mom spends time alone with Dad.

More times than not, I set aside the perpetual pile of crap that comes with being a mayor and sit pondering the chain of events that brought me to this pass. It’s true that Caitlin let her ambition drive her to a cursed place she should never have gone alone, and she died for it. But had my father not hidden the truth of what transpired on the night Viola Turner died, Caitlin would never have become obsessed with Henry Sexton’s quest, or picked up his torch after he martyred himself to save us, or followed a bloody trail to the abomination called the Bone Tree.

She would be alive.

We would be living with Annie in Edelweiss, our dream house overlooking the river, and well on our way to giving Annie a brother. That thought haunts me, probably more than it should. The night before Caitlin was killed, we made love in that house for the first and last time: a desperate attempt on her part to calm me down after a standoff with a corrupt sheriff. I had no idea then that Caitlin was pregnant. Forrest Knox told me later, as a torment, and the autopsy confirmed his revelation. Had I foreseen the doom we were racing toward on that last night, I would have locked the door of Edelweiss and held her inside until . . . what? It’s pointless to speculate. Somehow, I sense, no matter what I did that night, Caitlin would still have died, and Annie and I would still have wound up here. Which is . . . where?

Lost.

When someone you love is murdered, you learn things about yourself you’d give a great deal not to know. If you kill the person who robbed you of that life, you discover that vengeance can’t begin to fill the fulminating void that murder leaves behind. Nothing can, except years of living, and then only if you’re lucky. Annie and I learned that the first time, when cancer took her mother.

Caitlin was our luck.

Nine weeks ago, our luck ran out. Caitlin’s murder hit us like an artillery shell from a clear blue sky. And the first thing blown apart by that kind of shell is time. Day and night lose their meaning. The passage of moments and hours wobbles out of kilter. Clock faces trigger confusion, even panic. In the demi-world of mourning, one’s sense of selfhood begins to unravel. The strong find ways to re-orient themselves to the superimposed temporal structure observed by the rest of the world, but no matter how hard I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to do that.

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