TWENTY-SEVEN

      When the Examiner hit the driveways at four this morning, it polarized the town. Caitlin’s words entered the public consciousness like electrodes dipped into water, ionizing opinion to positive or negative with no neutral between, the opinions predictable in most cases by the simple indicator of skin color. The process took about three hours: from the time the insomniacs, farmers, and shift workers walked outside to read the front page by street lamp until the last Washington Street matrons toddled downstairs to read what the maid had laid out beside their morning coffee. By seven a.m. telephones were ringing all over town, and by eight every conversation from the sewer ditches and oil fields to the paper mill and the hospitals was centered on two men: Leo Marston and Penn Cage.

      My only contributions to Caitlin’s story were the actual accusations against Marston, slander per se if I ever heard it. Of course, my slanderous charges became libel per se—meaning that the libeled party would not have to prove damages—the moment Caitlin printed and distributed them. My phrases, preserved for the ages, ran as follows:

       There is no doubt that Delano Payton was murdered on May 14, 1968. It is just as certain that former State Attorney General Leo Marston, known locally as “Judge” Marston because of his stint on the state supreme court, was the man behind the conspiracy that resulted in Payton’s murder. Under Mississippi law, that makes Marston as guilty of murder as the man who planted the bomb. Murder by explosive device is a capital crime in this state, and there is no statute of limitations. I urge the local district attorney to reopen the Payton case. If he does, he will quickly find enough proof to send Leo Marston to death row at Parchman.

      Asked by “the publisher” to describe the evidence on which I based my accusations, I stated:

       I am in contact with certain members of the Justice Department who have long known of Marston’s involvement in the crime. Conscientious citizens and law enforcement officers have also come forward with previously unknown facts about the Payton murder. I believe we would already have seen a prosecution of Judge Marston but for the fact that John Portman, the present director of the FBI and a former federal judge, was involved in the original Payton investigation in 1968. Some former FBI agents believe the Bureau itself may have been involved in a cover-up of certain facts of Payton’s death, but this will be difficult to prove without the original FBI file on the Payton case, which is sealed until the year 2007, ostensibly for reasons of national security.

      I was purposefully vague about Marston’s possible motives for the crime, but on Caitlin’s advice I hinted that Marston, heretofore considered a moderate on race, might secretly have been working in concert with members of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to prevent black workers from rising into “white jobs.”

      Because of my reference to John Portman, the wire services picked up the story before noon, and just before one Caitlin received a call from CNN in Atlanta. There were already two network stringers in town to cover the “black-white” mayoral election, and they spent the morning outside my family’s motel rooms, pleading for comment on the story.

      But the morning paper had far more tragic consequences. Caitlin had written a separate piece about the fire and kidnapping. In it she vividly described the rescues of Ruby Flowers and Officer Ervin, and also Ruby’s death in the ER. She quoted several citizens on Ruby’s character, in particular the pastor of the Mandamus Baptist Church, of which Ruby had been a devoted member. She also quoted the fire chief, who pronounced the fire arson, based on the discovery of an incendiary device in the collapsed attic of our house. Caitlin concluded by saying that the arson and kidnapping were clearly attempts to stop my investigation into the Delano Payton murder. It was yellow journalism at its finest, and the consequences were immediate.

      At a little after one, a seventy-four-year-old white man named Billy Earl Whitestone walked down his sidewalk to get his mail from the box. He got both barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun instead, fired from a red Monte Carlo driven by two unidentified black youths. The gunmen stopped long enough to drop a copy of the Examiner on Mr. Whitestone’s shattered skull, but even if they hadn’t, the shooting would have been recognized as a reprisal for Ruby’s death. In his younger days Billy Earl Whitestone had achieved national notoriety as a Grand Wizard of the White Knights of the Imperial Ku Klux Klan. He had also enjoyed a brief renaissance of fame during the 1980s when, Wallace-like, he marched at the head of some black civil rights parades, but apparently this belated conversion had not sufficiently impressed certain members of the African-American community. At least not the two young men in the Monte Carlo.

      A drive-by shooting in Natchez is the equivalent of a race riot in Los Angeles. Within the hour Mayor Warren went on the local country radio station to appeal for calm and to condemn the “reckless and irresponsible charges” made against “one of the city’s finest citizens” by former Natchezian Penn Cage. He also blasted the “Yankee editor” of the local newspaper. Shad Johnson also took to the airwaves—the black AM station—to urge restraint in the face of “the deteriorating racial situation.” Unlike Wiley Warren, Shad urged the city authorities look into the charges printed in the morning paper and, if they were found to be substantive, to reopen the investigation into Del Payton’s murder. Despite his wish that the Payton murder remain a non-issue, Shad could not in the aftermath of the fire and shooting afford to be seen as anything but a champion of the black community, his core of electoral support.

      Three hours after Whitestone’s death, I was invited to the police station to discuss the statements I’d made in the newspaper, particularly my reference to “local law enforcement officers.” The police chief conducted the interview, and he seemed to labor under the misapprehension that I was subject to arrest if I didn’t answer his questions. I calmly and courteously enumerated my rights under the Constitution, then explained that I had first contacted the district attorney about my suspicions and found him apathetic. I refused to answer any questions, and suggested that the chief talk to Austin Mackey instead. As I departed, he told me he considered the death of Billy Earl Whitestone my responsibility, and I didn’t argue. He was mostly right.

      I left my bodyguard outside during this interview. He and his three associates from Argus Security had arrived from Houston just after midnight, flying into Baton Rouge via Argus’s Gulfstream V and driving up to Natchez in four separate rental cars. They checked into the Prentiss Motel, and by two a.m. my family was being protected by some of the finest bodyguards in the world. The total cost of this protection was staggering, but my memory of Annie’s quivering chin was enough to make me ashamed for even thinking of money.

      Three of the four guards were former FBI agents, and fit exactly the mental image I’d had before they arrived. Lean and tight-lipped. Late forties. Economical movements. Nine-hundred-dollar business suits specially tailored to conceal the bulges of various firearms. The fact that they were former FBI agents concerned me a little, but their boss had assured me that none of his men