The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles

yell. ‘What happened?’

      There’s a rattle that sounds like Libby’s cell phone skating across a tile floor. I hear confused shouts, several slaps, then a shriek followed by a bellow of rage and anguish. The phone rattles again, and then I hear sobbing. Libby has the phone. After twenty seconds of gulping air, she begs me in a torrent of words to come to the station. I wait until she runs out of air, then ask again what happened.

      ‘They’re beating him up! They maced him.’

      I try to picture this scene, but I can’t see the Natchez police beating a nineteen-year-old kid without some physical provocation. ‘Did Soren do something first?’

      ‘He hit one of the cops,’ she whispers. ‘They were dragging him back to the cell, really being rough, and he lashed out at somebody. It was just a reflex! Penn, help me. Please! I’m so scared they’re going to do something terrible to him, or put him back there with somebody horrible. If you ever cared for me at all, please, come now.’

      A minute ago, I would have said nothing could keep me from meeting Tim at the stroke of midnight, but guilt is a powerful motivator. With a silent Goddamn it, I wrench the wheel right on Madison Street and speed northward to the police station.

      It’s thirteen minutes after twelve when I finally squeal out of the police station parking lot, my hands shaking with anger and fear. Libby is shouting after me, but not as loudly as her son is screaming mindless profanity in the drunk tank. The police found half a pound of grass in the trunk of the car Soren was driving, but I’m almost positive he was high on crystal meth. Soren is essentially a gentle kid, not prone to violence, but when he drinks or ingests any drug but marijuana, his anger at his father surfaces, and he gets unpredictable.

      A passenger in the car that he T-boned had to be evacuated by helicopter from St Catherine’s Hospital to University Medical Center in Jackson. Worse than that–for Soren, at least–was the poke he took at the cop who was trying to drag him from the booking area to the cellblock. That blow placed Soren Jensen on the wrong side of a stark line for the Natchez Police Department. The cop required three stitches for the blow to his cheek, and Soren went to the cell with a faceful of pepper spray; but this is merely prologue for what will happen when Shad Johnson gets hold of the case.

      All this minutiae drains quickly away as I race westward toward the cemetery. Even if a patrol car doesn’t stop me for speeding, I’ll be nearly half an hour late for my rendezvous with Tim.

      Flying up Cemetery Road, past the prepossessing silhouette of Weymouth Hall, I realize why Tim chose Jewish Hill for our meetings. The cemetery’s front lower level, which houses the Turning Angel, is bathed in a yellow-orange glow from the sodium streetlights on Cemetery Road. But because of its height, the tabletop of Jewish Hill remains shrouded in darkness.

      Is Tim still here? I see no car parked along the cemetery wall, but then I saw none last night either. I still don’t know how Tim approached me from the back of the cemetery, since the only entrances I know about face Cemetery Road. But an old dopehead like Jessup probably knows a lot of things I don’t about the deserted areas of the city.

      An hour ago I planned to park more secretively than I did last night, but there’s no time for that now. I stop at the foot of Jewish Hill, take my pistol from my briefcase, shove it into my waistband, and leave the car. A quick push takes me through the hedge behind the wall, and then I’m climbing the steep face of the hill, toward the wire bench and the flagpole.

      As feared, I find no one waiting at the top. No one was waiting for me last night either, but tonight feels different somehow. There’s a different silence among the stones. The air doesn’t seem quite still, as though it’s recently been stirred, and the insects are silent. That could be the result of someone approaching, but my instinct says no. I feel a dreadful certainty that Tim has already been here and gone. Turning my back to the river and the moon, I walk deeper into the marble necropolis, scanning the darkness for signs of movement.

      Out of the pulse beat of my blood comes a deep, subsurface rumble, almost too low for my ears to detect. It seems to vibrate up from the very ground. Thirty seconds later, I realize I’m hearing the engine of a push boat driving a great string of barges upriver, its massive cylinders propelling an unimaginable weight against the current. Turning, I see the red and green lights on the bow of the foremost barge, a third of a mile forward of the push boat’s stern. The pitch of the engine changes as the boat moves northward, then out of its steady drone a higher hum rises. A blue halogen wash fills the near sky, dimming the bow light on the barge, and I realize a vehicle is passing below me on Cemetery Road. It’s coming from out in the county, from the direction of the Devil’s Punchbowl, heading toward town.

      I’m too deep inside the cemetery to see the vehicle. On impulse, I run back along the top of Jewish Hill, but too late. All I see are vertical taillights winking through the leaves of the ancient oaks in the low-lying part of the cemetery where Sarah is buried. The taillights look as if they belong to a truck or an SUV, not Tim’s Sentra.

      My watch reads 12:37. The pistol feels awkward in my waistband but not completely unfamiliar. As a prosecutor of major felony cases in Houston, I was sometimes forced to carry a weapon for extended periods. Even after retiring from that position and taking up writing, certain circumstances have required me to carry a gun for protection, and on several occasions I’ve been forced to use it, sometimes with fatal results.

      I feel an almost unbearable compulsion to call Tim’s cell phone, but I resist it. Tim might simply be later than I am. Certainly, more things could have delayed him, or so I’d guess. After jogging in place for half a minute to relieve my anxiety, I sit on a low grave wall that commands a good view of Cemetery Road. With my mother watching Annie, I can afford to give Tim an hour of my time. I only wish I had a cup of coffee to keep me warm and alert. I’d like to lay my cell phone on the wall beside me, but I’m afraid its light will betray my position if anyone is watching.

      My body has just begun to gear down when the Razr in my pocket vibrates, bringing me to my feet. I dig the phone from my pocket and cup it to my chest like a man trying to light a cigarette in a strong wind. I didn’t expect to recognize the number, and I don’t, but it has a Mississippi area code and a Natchez prefix.

      ‘Hello?’ I say in a stilted tone.

      ‘Is this Penn Cage?’ asks a voice both familiar and unfamiliar.

      My heart rises into my throat, and for some reason I glance at my watch. Nine minutes have passed since I saw the taillights on Cemetery Road. ‘Who is this?’

      ‘Don Logan, chief of police. Is this the mayor?’

      A dozen reasons the chief might be calling me after midnight come to mind, none of them good. The most likely is something to do with Soren Jensen–the last thing I want to talk about right now.

      ‘Yeah, Don, this is Penn. Don’t tell me the kid’s done something else.’

      There’s a brief silence, then Logan speaks with the gravity I heard too often from homicide cops in Houston. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m down by Silver Street on the bluff–well, underneath it really–forty feet underneath it. I’m in that drainage ditch that runs along the foot of the retaining wall.’

      ‘Uh-huh,’ I reply, my throat tightening.

      ‘We’ve got a situation down here, Penn. Bad.’

      ‘Okay.’ I look desperately around the cemetery for a sight of Tim.

      ‘We got what looks to me like a homicide. Or a suicide, I’m not sure which yet. Guy went over the fence and hit the cement’–Logan says ‘ see-ment’–‘and I was wondering if you might come down here and look at the scene.’

      This request is unusual, but I have a lot of experience with homicide cases. Maybe the chief wants my opinion on some evidence. ‘What do you think I can do for you, Don?’

      ‘Couple of things, I figure. I don’t really want to say on a cell phone. But you knew the victim.’

      As the chief finishes speaking,