her chambers, I feel a little better about the situation than I did walking in. Judge Franklin owes Marston some favors, but Leo’s attempt to destroy evidence has made her angry. Under the blaze of scrutiny this trial will draw, Eunice may stiffen her backbone and run a relatively impartial court.
The media frenzy is already underway. Tying men like John Portman and Leo Marston to a dead black man is like waving a red cape in front of a herd of bulls. Twenty-four hours after my accusations hit the paper, Mississippi resumed its role as whipping boy for the nation on race. Celebrated authors and academics weighed in with windy and self-righteous op-ed pieces in every major paper from New York to Los Angeles. At the close of last night’s newscast, a somber-faced Dan Rather recalled his days covering civil rights in Mississippi. Black media stars roundly condemned the state, speaking as though the lynchings of the distant past were still daily occurrences.
Contrary opinions were few, and the battle was becoming embarrassingly one-sided until this morning, when into the fray charged my old friend Sam Jacobs, the self-styled Mississippi Jew, who in a half-humorous letter to the New York Times pointed out that while Mississippi might seem behind the times to outsiders, it actually had its collective finger on the pulse of America. The Magnolia State, Sam opined, had given the world William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, and Tennessee Williams. And while this holy trinity of American culture ought to be enough for anybody, for skeptics there were also Robert Johnson, Richard Wright, Jimmy Rodgers, and Muddy Waters; Leontyne Price, Charley Pride, Tammy Wynette, and John Grisham; Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, four Miss Americas, and Oprah Winfrey. And while boneheaded nuisances like the Ku Klux Klan had committed atrocities to shame the South Africans, and slavery had come near to breaking an entire people, you couldn’t by God refine gold without a fire. The state of Israel was created from the ashes of the Holocaust, and Mississippi was on its way to redemption. Why, the legacy of blues music alone, declared Sam, which was jazz and rock ’n’ roll, had done more to end the Cold War than all the thin-blooded diplomats ever minted at Harvard and Yale.
How the Times selected Sam’s letter I’ll never know, but it prompted my editor to telephone and read it aloud to me over breakfast, claiming that the list of artists only bolstered his theory that great suffering produces great art, and since I’d had my share of the former, I should now move north to more civilized environs. I declared myself a loyal Southerner to the last and headed out for Judge Franklin’s office. I forgot the article during our conference, but after I loaded Marston’s charred file boxes into my trunk, I heard a Jackson disc jockey reading Sam’s letter on the air as I drove to the Natchez Examiner building. Sam Jacobs will be a household name throughout the South by nightfall.
Caitlin has offered me her glass-walled conference room as a work space, plus staff volunteers to help me wade through the files. After I lug Marston’s boxes into the conference room, she gathers her reporters, photographers, and interns for a brief orientation. The Examiner is used as a training ground for the Masters media group; thus the staff hails from all points of the compass. Not one among them is over thirty, and all are rabid liberals. I view this as a positive, for when the Marston camp discovers I’m using these kids against them, they’ll almost certainly try to bribe a few for inside information. Youth and left-wing politics may give my team an immunity to filthy lucre that I couldn’t hope to find elsewhere.
Caitlin’s speech is modeled on those given by army officers requesting volunteers for particularly dirty missions. She succinctly summarizes my reasons for provoking the slander suit, then in broad strokes describes what we’ll be looking for in the mountain of paper that will arrive later in the day.
“This is an unusual situation,” she concludes. “Some of you may think I’m stepping over an ethical line by involving the paper in a legal proceeding that we’ll be reporting on. That’s true enough. But I stepped over a harder line when I printed Mr. Cage’s charges. We’ll be reporting this story the way papers reported stories in the good old bad old days. We’re throwing the full weight of our media group behind a cause.”
A buzz of approval runs through her audience.
“We are seeking the truth about a terrible crime, and I’ll publish the truth as I find it, whether it conforms to my preconceptions or not. I think that lives up to the truest spirit of objectivity.”
A burst of applause follows this. Two of the male reporters, whose goatees make them look like anarchists in a Sergei Eisenstein film, pump their fists in the air.
Caitlin brushes an errant strand of hair from her eyes and goes on. “Anyone who feels uncomfortable about this, see me in my office. You’ll be excused with no questions asked and no negative consequences.”
A blond guy in the back says, “And go back to covering board of supervisors meetings?”
“At least there’s comedy at the supervisor meetings,” squawks a dark-haired girl with a Brooklyn accent. “Try covering the flower shows.”
Caitlin holds up her hands. “Before we disperse, I want Mr. Cage to say a few words.”
Facing the ring of expectant young faces, I feel as I did addressing new assistant district attorneys in Houston, smart kids who concealed their idealism behind shells of aggressive cynicism. “First of all, everyone here calls me Penn. No exceptions. Second, when I made those charges against Leo Marston, I had no intention of setting foot in a courtroom. But Marston is a powerful man, and there is going to be a trial. That trial is five days from now. I have five days to prove Leo Marston guilty of murder.”
Skeptical sighs blow through the conference room.
“The good news is, he’s guilty. The bad news is, the people who know that won’t testify. Your job is to wade through documentary evidence. You’re looking for several things. First, illegal activity. You’re not lawyers, but if it looks or smells dirty to you, it probably is. Second, any correspondence mentioning Ray Presley or the Triton Battery Company. Third, any reference to or correspondence with the federal government, particularly with FBI Director John Portman or former director J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Whoa,” says one of the anarchists. “This is like X-Files, man.”
A ripple of laughter sweeps through the group.
“This case may be more like the X-Files than any of us wants to believe,” I tell him. “Just remember that none of you are Fox Mulder or Agent Scully, okay? People are dying in this town, and they’re dying because of this case. I don’t want anybody in this room trying to win a Pulitzer by going after Ray Presley. He’s killed before, and he probably set the fire that killed Ruby Flowers. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill any of you if he felt you were a threat to him. Is that clear?”
Grim nods around the room.
“Are there any questions?”
One of the goateed reporters raises his hand. “This murder happened thirty years ago. It’s gone unsolved all that time. Do we have a hope in hell of solving it in a week?”
“You’re assuming that someone has been trying to solve it. This is a small town. In small towns there are sometimes truths that everyone knows but no one mentions. Open secrets, if you will. No one really wants to probe the details, because it forces us to face too many uncomfortable realities. We’d rather turn away than acknowledge the primitive forces working beneath the surface of society.”
“Amen,” someone murmurs.
“In the case of Del Payton, no one knew exactly who planted the bomb that killed him, but everyone believed they understood what had
