Juror #3(76)

My head was clearing. As the clouds parted, I grasped the reason that I was in a hospital bed. My nerves jangled with delayed fight-or-flight instinct.

“Good Lord, Suzanne. What happened?”

“Do you recall anything? The police tried to take a statement from you, but you were too woozy.”

The scene came back to me. Sitting in Cary Reynolds’s office. Drinking a weak Scotch and water. Getting blind drunk from one drink.

Not drunk. I don’t pass out from one drink.

“Did he drug me?”

She took my hand in a warm grasp. “Slipped you a mickey, honey.”

“Oh, my God.” My frazzled brain struggled to piece it together. He didn’t slip a pill into the glass; I would have seen that. Was it in the Scotch? But Cary drank the Scotch, too. And Potts.

My heart started to hammer in my chest. “Suzanne, that deputy was there. The one from Rosedale. Potts.”

“Yeah—originally from Vicksburg, till he left about six months ago, the police tell me. I’m guessing that the late Detective Guion had caught on to Potts’s employment sideline. He’s in custody. The police got him, running down the highway, holding a big old bag of cash. There was a van running in the back. With the back open. For you, I reckon.”

My head was pounding again. I rubbed my forehead, trying to remember. “Potts was there. Reynolds sent him out back. I had a drink. That’s all I remember.”

“Nothing else?”

A vision floated up: Suzanne in the doorway. Pulling something from her purse. I sat up so fast my head began to spin.

“Suzanne. Did you have a gun?”

“Yes, sugar. It’s all legal. I have a concealed-carry permit.”

My throat was dry, but I tried to swallow before asking, “Did you kill Cary Reynolds?”

She reached out and patted the sheet where it covered my knee. “No, honey. I got him in the chest, but he’s still breathing. Worthless son of a bitch.”

I lay back on the hard mattress as I tried to absorb Suzanne’s revelations. “Was I in danger?”

“What do you think?” Suzanne rummaged in her bag, pulled out a flowered handkerchief, and wiped her glasses with it.

She said, “When I walked in there, you were sliding out of that little chair. Why, I hadn’t left you there for twenty minutes. I knew he’d done a number on you when I set eyes on you. And when I barged in, he reached for a gun in his desk drawer. But I had my Smith and Wesson.”

I was reeling. Reynolds had drugged me. Suzanne came to my rescue and shot him. I was still processing when the metal rings on the blue curtain jingled again. A woman dressed in scrubs gave me a genuine smile. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah. Trying to get my head to wake up.” I pulled the sheet up to my neck, as bashful as if I’d ended up in the ER due to intentional overindulgence.

She ripped the Velcro of a blood pressure cuff and wrapped it around my arm. “I’m going to take your vitals. Then a police officer would like to talk to you. Are you up for that?”

My stomach twisted, but I ignored it. “Sure.”

The nurse slipped a plastic clip onto my fingertip. I lay back, quiet, until Suzanne announced that she was stepping out.

As she hooked her bag over her shoulder, the vision of the prior night returned.

“Suzanne! How do you know what to do with a handgun?”

She returned to my bedside, ignoring the nurse’s warning look, and tucked the sheet around me with a gentle hand. “My daddy taught me how to shoot. It’s a Greene family tradition.”

Giving the sheet a final pat, she added, “He taught me how to drink, too. Always take it neat. You and my nephew could stand to take a lesson from him.”

As she swept through the curtain, my weary brain finally made the connection.

Lee Greene’s memory loss. My incapacity. Monae Prince’s death.

It was in the water.





Chapter 71



AT NOON ON Friday, I was back in the Ben Franklin, poring over reports. I’d received a fortuitous email from Judge Ashley that morning; his wife required follow-up tests, so he informed Isaac Keet and me that the Greene trial would be delayed until Monday morning.

I should have taken the opportunity to sleep, but I was too wired. After I was released from the ER in Vicksburg, Suzanne and I spent the wee hours of Friday morning at the Vicksburg police department, providing witness statements to the detective division. The police indicated that Suzanne’s use of her firearm was justifiable self-defense; moreover, while we were at the PD, the cops were performing a search of Cary Reynolds’s car lot. I was wild to know what the search revealed, and kept my phone near at hand.

An unwrapped Clif Bar sat on my desk. The sight of it made me want to gag. I needed something soft on my stomach. A scrambled egg, maybe. Or grits.

The vision of a dish of grits made me reach for my phone for the umpteenth time. Still no word from Shorty, though I had called and texted repeatedly.

“Some boyfriend,” I muttered, petulant.

I tossed the phone in my bag and left the office. If he wasn’t answering the phone, I’d hunt him down at the diner. I was so intent on my injured feelings that I didn’t notice that the neon bulbs that ordinarily greeted me were turned off.

And when I reached the entrance, I saw that inside the glass door was a sign that was never displayed at noon: SORRY! WE’RE CLOSED!