Turning Angel

I don’t want to risk talking about this situation in public. “Tell you what, I’ll grab some food and come back here. We can eat in your office.”

Drew looks dismayed, but then he seems to get it. “Okay. See you in a few minutes. No hamburgers.”

I leave the office and go out to my car, my mind on Susan and her ability to keep quiet. I feel like Thai food, but the only Thai restaurant is downtown, and it would take too long to get there and back to Drew’s office. The only options on this side of town are fast food and Ruby Tuesday’s. I pull into the drive-through lane at Taco Bell and order a couple of zesty chicken bowls, some tacos, and two Mountain Dews, which the restaurant delivers in record time. Then I pull back onto the bypass and get into the turning lane for Jefferson Davis Boulevard, the street that leads to Drew’s office.

While I wait for the light to change, the blare of a police siren pierces my ears. Several vehicles behind me pull onto the grassy median, and then a police car with blue lights flashing screeches to a stop behind me. With nowhere else to go, I shoot across two oncoming lanes of traffic and pull my right wheels onto the curb of Jeff Davis Boulevard. The squad car roars past me.

This kind of thing is pretty unusual in Natchez at midday. Maybe that’s what triggers my intuition, but in any case I hit the accelerator and take off in pursuit of the squad car.

The blue lights swerve into a parking lot on the right side of Jeff Davis Boulevard. Sure enough, it’s Drew’s office. What the hell could have happened so fast? I wonder, skidding into the lot behind the police car.

And then I see.

A muscular man in a blue cap is brandishing a wooden baseball bat at Drew, who stands in a half crouch with his hands held out from his body. Susan Salter is screaming at the man to put down the bat.

Two uniformed cops leap from the squad car. As one draws a can of pepper spray from his belt, I see two other men lying on the ground not far from the man with the bat. One rolls over onto his back, clutching his bloodied face in pain.

“Drop that bat!” yells one of the cops, who’s holding a deadly steel baton called an asp.

The man with the bat jerks his head toward the cop, and at that moment I realize something alarming: the blue cap he’s wearing is a St. Stephen’s Bucks baseball cap, which almost certainly makes him not a man at all, but a boy. From the rear, his size and muscularity gave him the appearance of an adult. But when I read the letters on the back of his jersey—SAYERS—everything clicks. The boy with the bat is Steve Sayers, Kate Townsend’s ex-boyfriend.

“Why are you pointing that at me?” Sayers screams at the cop, his eyes blazing with anger or fear and maybe both. “He’s the one! Look what he did!”

Steve points to the men on the ground, and I recognize one of them as a St. Stephen’s senior. What the hell is going on? As the cop yells again for Sayers to drop the bat, Steve swings the Louisville Slugger in a great roundhouse arc. Drew ducks beneath the whistling wood, and Steve keeps spinning. As the bat comes around a second time, Drew springs forward and snatches it from Steve’s hands.

“Get back, Steve!” he shouts. “I don’t want to fight you!”

But Sayers is beyond rational thought. He lunges for Drew’s throat, his eyes filled with rage. With a lightning motion, Drew thrusts the fat end of the bat into Steve’s midsection. There’s an explosive grunt, and Steve folds over the bat and drops to his knees, sucking for air. In the same moment, a cloud of pepper spray envelops Steve and Drew. Steve screams, and Drew begins clawing at his eyes with his free hand.

“That’s enough!” I yell at the cop. “That’s Dr. Drew Elliott! I’m his attorney. There’s no more danger!”

“Drop the bat, Doctor!” the cop yells at Drew again.

“Drop it, Drew!” I shout.

But Steve Sayers isn’t done. Somehow he gets to his feet and charges Drew like a blind bull. Drew must be blind himself, because he takes the brunt of the charge in his belly. From reflex he pops Steve across the upper back with the bat, and this time the boy drops to the cement and stays there. Drew tosses the bat away and holds up his hands in surrender.

The cop with the pepper spray takes a pair of handcuffs from his belt, rushes up to Drew, and cuffs his hands behind his back.

“I was defending myself!” Drew protests, tears streaming down his face. “Penn, these kids attacked me. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn’t listen!”

“He’s telling the truth!” shouts Drew’s med tech, stepping forward.

The other cop has cuffed Steve Sayers and is now checking the other boys on the ground.

“What happened here, ma’am?” asks the first cop.

Susan Salter swallows and tries to collect herself. “Dr. Elliott and I were just standing here talking, and these kids drove up and started cursing. They picked the fight. I have no idea why. It was crazy! Dr. Elliott did everything he could to avoid it.”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Susan Salter. I’m Dr. Elliott’s medical technologist.”

The cop turns to me. “You’re Dr. Elliott’s lawyer?”

“Yes, I am, Officer. Penn Cage. As you saw, my client was clearly defending himself. But as serious as this looks, it’s still misdemeanor assault, and I very much doubt that my client will press charges. He knows these boys, and I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding. Isn’t that right, Drew?”

Drew looks in my direction with tears streaming down his face. “Uh … that’s right, Officer. We were just horsing around, and it got out of hand.”

“Bullshit!” yells one of the boys on the ground. “That bastard tried to kill us! He broke my fucking nose!”

The cop points at Steve Sayers. “In that kid’s hands, a baseball bat is a deadly weapon. It looked like aggravated assault to me.”

The cop is right. Steve Sayers is at least six-foot-one, and he has the hyperinflated musculature I associate with the use of anabolic steroids. All three boys do, come to think of it, which makes me think of Marko Bakic and his little drug business at St. Stephen’s.

“Aggravated assault is a felony, Officer,” I say evenly. “Steve’s a good kid. There’s no reason to put a felony arrest on his record.”

“Everybody wait right here,” says the cop, who looks young enough to be a rookie. He’s not going to make decisions involving prominent citizens without some advice from a superior. As he goes back to his squad car to use the radio, I turn to one of the seniors on the ground. “What the hell were you guys doing?”

“Kiss my ass!” he barks. “That bastard needs his ass kicked. Fucking cradle-robber. Pervert.”

Then it hits me: They know about Drew and Kate.

I’d like to question Drew, but the second cop is standing too close to him. I try to catch Drew’s eye, but the pepper spray has rendered those organs useless for the time being.

When the young cop returns from his car, he walks right past me, informs Drew that he’s under arrest for aggravated assault, then begins reading him his Miranda rights. The other cop takes his cue and does the same to Steve Sayers.

“What are you guys doing?” I ask in the calmest voice I can muster. “Dr. Elliott was clearly defending himself. You heard what he said during the fight.”

“Judge’ll decide that,” says the young cop. “Step back, sir.”

“The most you can arrest him for is simple assault.”

“I’m just doing what the chief told me to do.”

“The chief of police told you to do this?”

“That’s right. You got a problem, take it up with him.”

“I’ll do that,” I reply, but what I’m thinking is, Son of a bitch! This situation is becoming more political by the minute. The police chief should have ordered the patrolman to let Drew go, or at most to arrest him for simple assault, then release him on a recognizance bond. An arrest for aggravated assault can only mean one thing: the chief wants Drew and Steve in his custody. And the only reason I can see for that is the long-running turf war between the police department and the sheriff’s office. In the arena of that conflict, the police chief has been handed a gift from the gods. He can now hold Sheriff Byrd’s two main murder suspects in his jail for at least one night.

The boys cuss and spit at Drew as the cops haul them to their feet. One’s face is a mass of blood below the nose; the other’s left eye is already swelling shut. For a man defending himself against three assailants, Drew did a lot of damage.

A second squad car pulls into the lot. As the police herd their charges into the cars, I promise Drew I’ll meet him at the station. Then I pull Susan Salter into the courtyard of Drew’s office building. She’s hyperventilating now, and her tears are flowing nonstop.

“I don’t understand!” she says in a stunned voice. “This morning everything was fine, and now … everything’s upside down! It doesn’t make any sense. How could they think Dr. Elliott could do anything against the law?”

Is she talking about the fight? I wonder. Or about Kate’s murder? I take hold of Susan’s thin wrists and speak in a reassuring voice. “Listen to me, Susan. I don’t know how much Drew told you about his situation, but I do know this: he trusted you with his life. He told me you’d worked for him nine years, and that he had absolute confidence in you. What you just saw will be the talk of the town by tonight. If you add to that talk, it can only hurt Drew. Do you understand?”