Free The Quiet Game by Greg Iles Page A

disparaging his hometown.”
    Beneath the author photo is a montage of smaller shots, like a family album: me as a lanky kid with Dad’s arm around my shoulders, printed in a Father’s Day issue in 1968; as a high school baseball player; as the flag runner in the annual Confederate pageant; my Ole Miss graduation photo. I quickly scan the columns, recognizing most of what I said yesterday, laid out in surprisingly faithful prose.
    â€œI don’t get it,” I say. “What’s wrong with this?”
    â€œHave you been in Houston so long you’ve forgotten how things are here? Bill Humphreys said you set back thirty years of good race relations.”
    â€œI didn’t say anything you haven’t said a hundred times in our kitchen.”
    â€œThe newspaper isn’t our kitchen!”
    â€œCome on, Dad. This is nothing.”
    He shakes his head in amazement. “Turn the page, hotshot. You’ll see something.”
    When I turn the page, my breath catches in my throat.
    The banner headline reads: 30 YEARS LATER “ RACIST COWARDS ” STILL WALK STREETS . My stomach flips over. Underneath the headline is a photo of a scorched Ford Fairlane with a blackened corpse seated behind the wheel. That picture never ran in the Natchez Examiner in 1968. Caitlin Masters must have dug up an old crime-scene photo somewhere.
    â€œJesus,” I whisper.
    â€œHarvey Byrd at the Chamber of Commerce thinks you may have single-handedly sabotaged the chemical-plant deal.”
    â€œLet me read the thing, okay?”
    Dad plants himself in the corner, his arms folded. The story opens like a true-crime novel.
On May 14, 1968, Frank Jones, a scheduling clerk at the Triton Battery plant, walked out to his car in the middle of the third shift to run an errand. Before he could start his engine, he heard a boom “like an artillery piece,” and a black-wall tire slammed into his windshield. Thirty yards away, a black man named Delano Payton sat burning to death. Jones was the sole eyewitness to the worst race crime in the history of this city, in which a combat veteran of the Korean War was murdered to prevent his being promoted to a “white-only” job. No one was ever arrested for the crime, and many in the black community believe that law enforcement officials of the period gave less than their full efforts to the case. Best-selling author and Natchez native Penn Cage characterized the killers of Delano Payton as “racist cowards,” and stated that justice should be better served than it was in Natchez in 1968.
    Former police chief Hiram Wilkes contended that leads were nonexistent at the time, and said that despite exhaustive efforts by law enforcement, and a $15,000 reward offered by Payton’s national labor union, no suspects were turned up. The FBI was called in to work the case but had no more success than local police. Former Natchez police officer Ray Presley, who assisted on the case in the spring of 1968, stated, “It was a tough murder case, and the FBI got in the way more than they helped, which was par for them in those days—”
    I reread the last sentence, my heartbeat accelerating. I had no idea Ray Presley was involved in the Payton case. I want to ask my father about him, but with the blackmail issue—and my mother’s suspicions about Presley—hanging like a cloud between us, I don’t.
    â€œYou’ve been dealing with the media for twelve years,” Dad grumbles. “That publisher must have shown you a little leg and puréed your brain. I’ve seen her around town. Face like a model, tits like two puppies in a sack. I know what happened. It took her about five seconds to get Penn Cage at his most sanctimonious.” He grabs the newspaper out of my hands and wads it into a ball. “Did you have to dredge up the goddamn Payton case?”
    â€œI just mentioned it, for God’s sake. I thought we were off the