Turning Angel

I nod again. “Right now. Don’t wait five minutes.”

He cuts the Honda’s engine. “If I do that, the first thing they’ll do is ask me for a DNA sample.”

“It’s still better than the alternative. You tell them first, they see you as trying to help. You don’t … you’re guilty as hell.”

Drew ponders this. “If I were going to tell them, who would I call? The sheriff or the chief of police? Not Shad Johnson, right?”

Like many communities, Natchez has suffered from a long-running rivalry between city and county law enforcement. And Kate’s body was found right at the border of the city limits, which could cause serious jurisdictional problems.

“Whoever you tell, it’s going to get to Shad eventually. You might as well tell him first. The only way to play this kind of thing is get out ahead of it and stay there. If you volunteer the information, people can get angry, but they can’t paint you as a liar. Think of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Tell it now, Drew, before anyone beats you to the punch.”

“Everything? Even that I found Kate’s body?”

“I didn’t hear that question, brother.”

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“We have a saying in the legal profession. Every client tells his story once.”

“Meaning?”

“The first and only time you tell your story is on the witness stand. That way—until that day—you have time to adjust the truth to emerging facts.”

Disgust wrinkles his face.

“A cynical view, I admit,” I tell him, “but experience is a hard teacher. If I hear you tell me one story tonight, I can’t put you on the stand and let you tell a different one later.”

“But I’m innocent,” he says. “I told you that.”

Drew’s handsome face is a study in the complexity of human emotion. “Yes, you did. But you’re not acting like a man with nothing to hide.”

SIX (#ulink_093f5a48-b6ac-57af-8378-01a65d005c32)

Mia Burke’s eyes go wide when I walk into the living room of my town house.

“God, what happened to you?” she asks.

“I got a little wet.”

She rises from her chair and drops The Sheltering Sky onto an ottoman. “You’re bleeding!”

“Am I?”

“Yeah.”

She walks into the hall and motions for me to follow her to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, I see abrasions all over my neck and arms, and one long scrape on my left arm. The burn on my right forearm is red and throbbing.

“Shit,” she says softly. “Yuck.”

“What?”

“Your back is worse than your front. It looks like you’ve got a bad cut under your shirt.”

“Great.”

“You’d better let me look.”

I feel a little awkward in the bathroom with Mia. Two days ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but now … “Just pull it up and see if I need stitches.”

She laughs at my cautiousness, then slowly lifts my shirt, which is stuck to my back. “It’s a slash, really. It doesn’t look too deep, but it’s dirty. Are you about to get in the shower?”

“Yes.”

“If I rub some soap into it, you can rinse it out in the shower. That should take care of it.”

She slips around me and turns on the hot water tap, then rubs soap into a blue washcloth until she has a thick lather. “Are you going to cry?” she asks, holding up the cloth and stepping behind me again.

“Let’s find out.”

The soap stings like sulfuric acid, but Mia has shamed me into silence.

“Are you crying?” she asks, scrubbing like a hospital nurse. I can feel her pulling apart the skin to clean inside the cut.

“Thinking about it. What’s Lifehouse?” I ask, remembering her T-shirt.

“A band, old man. You’d like them. I’ll make you a disk.” The humor disappears from her voice. “Did whatever you went to do work out all right?”

“Not as well as I hoped. But at least nobody got killed.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Right.”

At last she removes the burning cloth from my back. “I’m going to leave the soap in there. If you want it to stop hurting, go take your shower.”

“Thanks. I can handle it from here.”

She laughs, her eyes flickering with humor despite the day’s events. “Can you? Do you need me tomorrow?”

“After school, if you can make it.”

“Okay. See you then.”

She starts down the hall, but I call after her, “Have you heard anything else about Kate’s death?”

Mia walks back to the bathroom door. “Steve Sayers and his dad are down at the sheriff’s office right now, answering questions.”

“Steve was Kate’s boyfriend?”