Henry parked his Explorer in the shadow of the incongruously modern sheriff’s department building, retrieved his briefcase from the trunk, and walked across the street toward the DA’s office. Adjacent to City Hall and the courthouse, the DA’s building seemed to crouch under the slit windows of the sheriff’s department and the county jail. As Henry trotted up the stairs, his sense of dread intensified. Shad Johnson was a politician with his eye on the main chance. He would undoubtedly ask Henry some pointed questions, and Henry didn’t want to say any more than the law required. It would be good practice for dealing with the FBI later in the day, as he would almost surely be required to do.
Henry pushed open the door to the DA’s office suite and looked around the anteroom. A slim young black man in a gray suit sat before a modern desk, typing on a notebook computer. The last time Henry visited this office, the secretary had been a woman.
“Can I help you?” the young man asked without a trace of southern accent.
“I’m Henry Sexton.”
“Go in. He’s waiting for you.”
Henry hiked up his khakis with his free hand and walked through the tall door behind the assistant’s desk.
Shad Johnson waited behind an antique desk the size of a tennis court. He didn’t rise to greet Henry, much less make a move to come around the desk. A light-skinned black man, he regarded Henry with the cool superiority the reporter associated with men who wore their past laurels like social armor. Johnson’s dark blue suit probably cost ten times as much as the one Henry wore to church on Sundays. The wall to Henry’s right was covered with photographs of the district attorney with various celebrities and politicians, mostly African-American, who had come to Natchez to campaign for Shad in his unsuccessful 1998 bid for mayor. It took a moment for Henry to notice his video camcorder standing on a tripod in the opposite corner of the DA’s office.
“Were you surprised to hear that Viola Turner died this morning?” Johnson asked without preamble.
“Yes,” Henry admitted.
“Surely you knew she was ill?”
Henry nodded.
“But still you were surprised.”
“I was.”
Shad pointed to the camcorder on the tripod. “Tell me about the video camera. It seems odd for a reporter to leave a video camera in the house of a dying old woman. What was your reason?”
Henry didn’t like the DA’s presumptuous tone, especially since Johnson had given him so little help in pursuing unsolved civil rights cases. “I’ve been a reporter for a long time,” he said grudgingly. “Sometimes I can sense when a person is in torment.” He thought of Glenn Morehouse, sitting in his sickroom across the river, fearfully facing eternity. “A lot of people from the civil rights era are sick or dying now, and a lot of them are carrying secrets. Something was working on Viola Turner. She wanted to tell it, but she hadn’t quite reached the place where she could. That’s why I left the camera with her. You never know when the mood to talk is going to strike somebody, and I sensed that Miss Viola didn’t have long. So I aimed the camera at her, plugged it in, gave her the remote control, and showed her how to use it. Any time she wanted to, she could make a video recording of herself.”
“What do you think she knew, Mr. Sexton?”
Henry had to struggle to bring up the words. “I believe she knew what happened to her brother, Jimmy Revels, back in 1968. And to Luther Davis, of course.”
Shad Johnson made a sour face. Henry figured the DA resented his mention of the case because Henry had pushed him for months to look into it. Johnson claimed he could take no action without new evidence, but Henry had pointed out the catch-22 that there was unlikely to be any new evidence until the investigation was reopened.
“Be that as it may,” said Johnson, “you seem to be the last person outside the family who spoke to Mrs. Turner, other than her doctor. Did she say anything during your interview that might make you think she was contemplating suicide?”
“Suicide?” Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. His preconceptions about Viola’s death went spinning off into space. “No, she didn’t. I interviewed her twice, by the way. And she gave me no reason to think she was contemplating something like that. She seemed like a strong woman, despite her illness. Spiritually, I mean. Physically she was very weak.”
“Did she say anything about her doctor?”
Henry detected a hostile edge in the DA’s voice. “You mean Dr. Cage?”
“Yes, Tom Cage. How did you know Dr. Cage was her doctor?”
“Mrs. Turner reminisced a little about working for him. She seemed very fond of him. She complimented Dr. Cage’s dedication to his patients, regardless of their race. Dr. Cage was making daily visits to her home, I believe, trying to ease Mrs. Turner’s last days as much as possible. She couldn’t breathe very well by the time I interviewed her. Conversation was difficult.”