Turning Angel. Greg Iles

tone. Look, things are breaking fast on this. I’ll call you tonight and give you a better idea of where I stand, okay?”

      Her sigh told me she was far from happy with this arrangement. “Did Drew kill her, Penn? I’m asking as your lover, not a journalist.”

      “You know I can’t answer that. Even if I knew the answer.”

      “But he was involved with her?”

      “You won’t report my answer?”

      “No.”

      “Yes. He was in love with her. But I don’t think he killed her.”

      “Classic midlife crisis?”

      “I don’t think it’s that simple. Drew says he and Ellen have been living a charade for ten years. He was starved for affection, and he finally found exactly what he was missing. And now here we are.”

      “What about the two semen samples—”

      “No more,” I cut in. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”

      “I love you,” Caitlin said after an awkward silence.

      “You too.”

      When Annie gets into the car, I set my phone on silent. I also keep quiet about the fact that I’ve spoken to Caitlin. Annie would want to call her back immediately, and I don’t want to deal with that right now. Annie says she needs to go to Walgreen’s for some school supplies, so we make a run to the drugstore, one of my few sources in town for iced green tea. By the time we get home, my phone shows eight missed calls. While I scroll through the list, an incoming call pops up. It’s from Sonny Cross, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Sonny has two young boys at St. Stephen’s, and through me, he’s spoken to the board a few times about Marko Bakic, our Croatian exchange student. Sonny suspects that Marko has gotten involved in the local drug trade, but so far he’s been unable to prove it.

      “Sonny,” I say. “What’s up?”

      “I’m calling to give you a heads-up,” Cross says in his laid-back, urban-cowboy voice.

      “Marko Bakic again?”

      “Among other things. Last night there was a big party out at Lake St. John. A rave. There was a lot of X there, and a lot of St. Stephen’s kids, too.”

      Lake St. John is a horseshoe lake about thirty miles up the Mississippi River, on the Louisiana side. It’s thronged with Natchez natives in the summer, but this time of year, most of the lake houses are deserted.

      “Was it only St. Stephen’s kids?”

      “No, thank God. The Catholic school and the Baptist boys were well represented.”

      “Did you bust the party?”

      “No. We didn’t find out about it until it was over. Whoever organized it did just what they do in the cities. The kids get word over their cell phones to go to such and such a place. When they get there, they find a sheet of paper taped to a pole with a coded message, a rhyme only the kids will understand. After they get led around to four or five different spots, they know where the rave is, and they know whether they’re being followed or not.”

      “I know the routine.”

      “Word is, these raves have been going on for a couple of months now. Different location every time. And I’m hearing our boy Marko is behind them.”

      “Great.”

      “Yeah. You know, most of the X in Mississippi gets brought up from the Gulf Coast. The Asian gangs down there control the trade. And Marko’s been down to Gulfport and Biloxi a couple of times that I know about. I wanted you to know we’re going to be stepping up surveillance on him.”

      “I appreciate it.”

      “I just want to try to minimize the damage to St. Stephen’s if we have to take Marko down. You know, once you get X into a community, you usually get LSD, too. It tends to be cooked and sold by the same crews. One of my sources said some kids may have been doing acid last night at the lake party. And check this, Marko bought out a roadside fireworks stand and put on a psychedelic show at the end of the night. Sailed out on a party barge and let off five grand worth of rockets.”

      “Sorry I missed it. But where does a poor exchange student get the money to do that?”

      “That’s no mystery, bubba. It’s proving it that’s the bitch.”

      “Hey, do you know where Marko was yesterday between three and five-thirty?”

      Sonny Cross laughs darkly. “Already thought of that, my man. Checked it out, too. Marko was with Coach Anders from three until nearly six.”

      “At the school?”

      “No, at Anders’s house. Wade has just about wangled the kid a football scholarship at Delta State. Just what the world needs, right? One more soccer-style kicker. Anyway, I called Wade, and he told me he worked the phone for the kid about an hour. Marko was right there with him, doing homework. Then Wade tried to help Marko with his chemistry.” Cross laughs again. “The blind leading the blind. Anyway, no luck there.”

      “Thanks, Sonny. I really appreciate the information.”

      “Sometimes I think you’re the only one. You ask me, some of those people on the board have their heads most of the way up their asses.”

      “To be honest with you, I’m resigning from the board tomorrow. But I’ll do all I can to help with the Marko situation.”

      Silence. “Can you tell me why you’re resigning?”

      “It’s the Drew Elliott thing.”

      “Huh. I don’t see why you’d have to resign because of that. But you know more about it than I do. I hate to see you go, man.”

      “Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.”

      “You ask me, Drew Elliott is a stand-up guy. Like the old-time docs. He actually gives a shit how you’re doing.”

      “I think you’re right. Look, I hate to go, but—”

      “One last thing, Penn. That Townsend girl wasn’t the all-American, lily-white virgin some people are making her out to be.”

      Suddenly my haste is gone. “What do you mean?”

      “I’ve done a lot of surveillance in this town. And I’ve seen Kate Townsend in some places good girls just don’t go, if you get my drift.”

      “I’m not sure I do.”

      “She hung with some pretty bad company sometimes. And she’s no stranger to drugs.”

      “Weed? Or worse?”

      “Worse, I think.”

      “This might be really important, Sonny. Important to Drew. Where exactly have you seen Kate?”

      “Brightside Manor.”

      This is the last thing I expected to hear. The Brightside Manor Apartments are a dilapidated group of buildings on the north side of town, the closest thing to a slum inside the city limits. Its occupants are poor and black, and the complex is named frequently in the newspaper as the site of crimes from domestic abuse to shootings. “What the hell was Kate Townsend doing there?”

      “I’m not sure. But I’ve spotted her there several times over the last few months. I’ve even got videotape of her going in and out. About once a month, now that I think about it.”

      “You think she was buying drugs?”

      “Maybe. I wasn’t going to bust her to find out, being who she was. But the thing is, girls like Kate Townsend get their drugs from friends, not dealers. And looking like she did, Kate wouldn’t have to buy drugs at all, you know?”

      “I’m