Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

“So do all the poor black kids who come through here, and a lot of them don'’t get it. So it’s easy for Shad to throw the book at Jensen and look like he’s being impartial. But let’s move on. We’'ve got more serious problems to deal with.”

“Like?”

“Tim Jessup.”

Here we go.

“Are you treating his death as a homicide?”

Logan lifts a stainless steel pen from a holder and glances away, temporizing. “The autopsy results aren'’t back. Let’s move to some specifics before we start drawing conclusions.”

“I saw the story in this morning’s paper. Who found the dope in Jessup’s house?”

“The two patrolmen who saw you leaving there called in a K9 unit. Dog found it behind some Sheetrock in the closet. Typical hidey-hole.”

“Don, somebody tore the place apart before I got there. They would have found the drugs and taken them.”

Logan shrugs as if he can do nothing about the facts.

“How did Caitlin Masters find out about the meth so fast?”

“Come on,” he says. “You know that woman better than anybody. She’s got sources all over town, from the courthouse to Lawyers’ Row to this department.”

I concede this with a nod. “What concerns me is that to the best of my knowledge, Tim Jessup has been clean for a year.”

“There’s no way to know that.”

“Julia Stanton turned that boy around. I tend to be cynical where drugs are concerned, but I don'’t think Julia would have stayed with him if he was using again.”

Logan taps the pen on his desk, looks toward his partially open window blinds. Then he reaches into his drawer and pulls out a manila envelope. From it he takes four photographs and lays them out for me to examine. They’re printed on ink-jet photo paper, and all four show a nude or partly nude woman with a stunning body posed in various erotic positions. Unlike the teenage girl in the cell phone shots Tim showed me, this woman is in her midthirties and looks confident of her sexuality.

“What am I supposed to get from these?”

“We found these in Jessup’s house. Something tells me Julia didn't know about this either.”

I am at a loss for words.

“Nobody leaked these to Ms. Masters, by the way,” he adds.

Thank God for small favors.

“Were these stashed with the dope?”

“No.” Logan can’t suppress a small smirk. “Folded inside

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

”

“Have you ID’d the woman? She looks vaguely familiar.”

“Linda Church. Hostess at the Devil’s Punchbowl, one of the bars on the

Magnolia Queen.

Born right here in Natchez.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Who ID’d her?”

“One of the patrolmen recognized her. I did too, when I saw the

pictures. She grew up out in Morgantown, like me. She wasn'’t that far behind me in school. I'm eight years younger than you, remember, even if I'm losing my hair faster.”

I smile and nod.

“You never saw Linda on the boat?” he asks.

“I don'’t gamble.”

“Me either. But I go down there and eat with the wife sometimes. Food’s good, and not too expensive.”

“What do you know about her?”

“She stripped in Vegas. A lot of people don'’t know that. She went to a juco in Oklahoma, married a guy there. That lasted about ten years. No kids. He left her. She got short of money, started stripping in Oklahoma City, then moved on to Vegas. Not sure why she left, but she came back here and started working the boats. I do remember her from school, though. They called her Butterface.”

“Butterface?”

“You know, everything about her was hot but her face.”

I lean forward and examine the pictures more closely. Aside from her high, full breasts and tight bottom, Linda Church has large eyes and good bone structure. “She looks pretty enough in these pictures.”

“Yeah. It was acne. She had it bad in high school. She’s scarred more than these pictures show. But Linda’s like a lot of country girls, a ten-plus when you see them from behind, a five from the front.”

“So based on these pictures, you think Tim was having an affair with her.”

“Sure looks that way.”

“Jessup’s not in any of the pictures.”

“Would you be, if you were going to keep these around your house?”

“I wouldn'’t keep them around my house. And neither would Tim. Julia would castrate him if she found them.”

“No offense, but Jessup has a history of self-destructive behavior.”

“Have you questioned this woman yet?”

Logan sighs heavily. “We can’t find her.”

The moment he says this, I suspect that Linda Church may never be found alive. “Was she supposed to report for work today?”

“Not for another hour yet. We already questioned her coworkers, though. One said she’s positive Jessup and Linda were hooking up on the sly. They kept it secret because of workplace rules.”

If Tim was having an affair with her—or if she was helping him with his plan to steal evidence—why didn't he tell me about her? As soon as I ask myself, I know the answer: Tim didn't want me to judge him for cheating on Julia, if in fact he was doing so.

“Jessup never told you about this girl?” Logan asks.

“Me? We weren’t that close, Don. Not since we were nine years old.”

“Right. But you’re positive he wasn'’t doing drugs.”

Frustrated by the need to conceal my relationship with Tim, I say, “I'm just telling you what I think.”

“Well, here’s what

I

think. To an objective investigator, it looks like an old dopehead slid back to his old ways. He was banging a waitress at work and selling meth to keep up his two women.”

“That'’s what it’s supposed to look like. Did you find any meth precursors in Jessup’s house? Any cooking equipment?”

Logan shakes his head.

“It’s bullshit, Don. Staged. Every bit of it.”

Logan leans back in his chair and cradles his hands behind his head, his eyes regarding me coolly. “Were you and Jessup working on something together?”

I thought I was ready for this kind of question, but the directness of it takes me by surprise. “I'm the mayor. He was a blackjack dealer. What could we be working on?”

Logan’s eyes remain steady. “You’re also a novelist. And a lawyer. A former prosecutor.”

“And?”

“And a couple of nights ago, one of my patrolmen saw your car out at the cemetery. After midnight. That'’s not far from where Jessup worked. And his shift ended at twelve a.m. this week.”

I shrug as casually as I can. “I was feeling down, Don. I went out to visit my wife’s grave. I do that sometimes.”

Logan looks as if he’s trying to give me the benefit of the doubt—and failing. “That'’s what my man said you said. I can respect that. But if anything else happened while you were out there, I’d sure like to know about it.”

I shake my head slowly. “Nothing. Me and the ghosts, that’s it.”

Logan watches me awhile longer, then says, “There’s a couple of other things you should know. One, Jessup’s wife is missing.”

“Meaning what? Someone filed a missing persons’ report? Or you just can’t find her?”

“We can’t find her or her son.”

I shrug again. “I don'’t know where she is, if that’s what you’re asking. Do you have Tim’s car?”

“That'’s the other thing. It’s missing too. Thing is, I’'ve got Linda Church’s cell phone records, and she received a pretty disturbing text message last night shortly before midnight.”

“What did it say?”

Logan reaches back into the manila envelope, takes out a small piece of paper, and slides it across his desk. Written on it in pencil are the letters:

Thiefwww kllmmommy. Sqrttoo.

“What do you make of this?” Logan asks.

“Tim sent this?”

“It was sent from the cell phone of a man whose phone was stolen while he was on the

Magnolia Queen

last night. I think Jessup’s been doing a lot of that lately.”

Logan’s inquisitive eyes probe mine, but I say nothing. At length he says, “In my experience, strippers have been exposed to pretty much everything. Getting mixed up in a murder for hire wouldn'’t be that big a step for some of them. An objective investigator might look at that text message and see an order to kill Jessup’s wife and child.”

I can’t believe the chief is serious. “Tim was planning to murder his wife? The woman who saved his life? That'’s ridiculous. You know it is.”

“Brother, two years ago I’d have said it was ridiculous if you told me Dr. Drew Elliot was porking a high school girl. If this job has taught me anything, it’s that you have no idea what people are capable of, not even the people you think you know best.”

“Fair enough. But I'm telling you, Julia Stanton was Tim Jessup’s salvation.”

Logan taps one of the photos on his desk, his finger coming to rest on Linda Church’s shapely derriere. “Maybe Tim thought

this

was his salvation.”

“That'’s sure what somebody wants you to think. You and everybody else in town.”

“You really believe he’s being framed? After his death? Who has a motive to frame Tim Jessup?”

“Cui bono, my friend.”

“What?”

“Who benefits?”

“From his death?”

“Yes. And from smearing what remained of his good name. It’s pretty clear that someone wants Tim’s death to look like a run-of-the-mill drug murder. Guaranteed to go in the ‘unsolved’ file.”

Logan looks uncomfortable.

“Which is exactly how Shad Johnson seemed to be reading it last night at the crime scene,” I remind him. “Before any such evidence had been discovered. By the way, when Shad was here to make sure you threw the book at Soren Jensen, did he give you any sense of urgency about solving Jessup’s murder?”

The chief can’t meet my eyes now. “Not exactly.”

“Uh-huh. I’d say the situation’s pretty self-explanatory, Don.”

Logan gets up from his desk and walks to the window, toys with the blinds. “Let me ask you a question. You know a lot about this town. You were raised here, you'’ve written about it.”

“What do you want to know?”

He turns and looks me squarely in the eyes. “Who actually runs this place?”

This is a question I’'ve asked myself since I was a boy.

“You’re the mayor. Do you run it?”

“Far from it. In fact, our kind of city government is literally defined as the ‘weak mayor’ form of government.”

Logan gives me a guarded look. “You’ve got the power to fire me.”

“I’d happily trade that for the power to fire the district attorney.”

The chief grunts as if he agrees. “My folks always told me Natchez was run by the garden clubs. Maybe that was true once, but that idea’s a laugh and a half now.”

“They never really did, Don. This town was always run by a few big men behind the scenes. Men like Leo Marston. Judges, bankers, lawyers, oilmen. But things have changed. The big money’s mostly gone or spread among the heirs. There’s not that much power here

anymore. It’s a free-for-all. White or black, everybody’s chasing whatever money they can find. We’re just like the rest of the country that way.”

Logan nods dejectedly, but something else seems to be eating at him. “I tell you, I'm starting to feel like the marshal in a company town. Mining town, lumber town, whatever.”

“Gambling town?” I suggest quietly.

A quick, worried glance. “You said that, not me. Look, gambling is gambling, and everybody knows what comes with it. But it’s legal now, and given that, I have to say the casinos have been good partners.”

“You sound like a lot of people when they talk about casinos.”