midday, Byron Ellis called to let me know that the locum tenens pathologist had declared Buck’s murder to be death by misadventure—an accident. Most likely a fall, precipitated by digging above a cave mouth. Worse, Sheriff Joe Iverson claims to have found the very brick that Buck’s head impacted when he fell, a brick that Iverson’s deputies supposedly discovered near the river at Lafitte’s Den. This brick supposedly lay directly under the drop from the sandstone shelf above the cave. This scenario is preposterous, of course, and most townspeople will realize that. Few will believe that Buck cracked his skull wide open in a fall, then crawled into the Mississippi River to drown himself.
But no one will protest.
The coroner also informed me that he’d found bone fragments in the soil samples I brought him from the mill site—specifically from the dirt scraped from the wall of the trench beside the factory pier. Better still, he’d detected blood on one of the brick fragments from the other area where Buck had been digging. This discovery left Byron Ellis with a dilemma: Should he make these further findings public and try to weather the political fury that will result? Or keep his head down and let the locum tenens pathologist push the party line?
“The county supervisors are already talking about trying to unseat me,” he told me on the phone. “That’s not easy, because I was elected by the people. But if the past is any guide, they’ll find a way. That damn Arthur Pine can twist the law inside out to screw anybody who bucks them.”
I assured Byron that I understood the danger and admired him for what he’d been willing to do so far.
“Whole town’s up in arms at me already,” he said. “That’s what I hear. If I go on record about the bone and the blood, and the state comes in here and stops construction, folks’ll run me out of town on a rail. Not just white folks, either.”
“I’m not going to pressure you, Byron.”
“Let me get back to you later,” he said. “I’m talking to my lawyer, and also those activists I told you about. They’re about ready to challenge that Poker Club. But they don’t want to risk stopping the mill from coming in here. Too many of my people will get jobs behind that.”
“I understand. Let’s talk later today, or tonight.”
I haven’t heard from the coroner since, but I have hope that he’ll come through. After talking to Byron, I decided to delay handing over the flash drive to law enforcement until after I publish the image it contained. Given the influence of the Poker Club over the police and sheriff’s departments, showing them the photo of Buck Ferris and Dave Cowart together on the murder night would only invite pressure not to run it in the paper. They can’t legally stop me, of course. But if the Poker Club murdered Buck, they might be willing to go to extremes to prevent my pointing a finger at one of their minions.
“Marshall?” says my mother, leaning through the kitchen door. “Jack Kirby just texted me. He’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Thanks, Mom. You need any help in there?”
She gives me a resolute smile. “No, thanks. You greet Dr. Kirby. He usually comes to the side door.”
Blythe McEwan is ten years younger than her husband. She has stood staunchly beside him through fifty years of alcoholism, fifty years of unrelieved grief, and now the long degeneration of his body. What reprieve can she be hoping for today? “Will do, Mom.”
She nods and goes back to my father.
I push all thoughts of Buck Ferris and Sally Matheson out of my mind. If Dr. Kirby has bad news, Dad will not take it well, and if the past is any guide, he might get combative. I’m not the right person to soothe him in that instance; in fact, I usually have the opposite effect. But Mom wants me here, so I will remain, to be of whatever use I can. To an outsider, my attitude toward my father and his plight might seem cold, even cruel. But that attitude would be based upon ignorance.
How deep is the rift between my father and me?
He never met my son. Not once. Adam was born in 2006, two months after one of the most embarrassing experiences our family ever endured. In April of that year, I won the Pulitzer Prize for my book on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the award ceremony was