DAVID BALDACCI

  A Calamity of Souls

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Travis Devine series

  Amos Decker series

  Aloysius Archer series

  Atlee Pine series

  To librarians and teachers: The shining stars of my universe

  Some of the language used in this novel is a reflection of the author’s intention to recreate a very specific time and period in American history. We want to alert readers that there are harmful phrases and terminology in the work that were prevalent at the time this novel is set. The terms used in the novel are deliberately chosen but used sparingly, as David Baldacci says in his author’s note. They do not represent the opinions of the author or the publisher and their inclusion in this work of fiction does not constitute an endorsement of the characterization, content or language used.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I started writing this novel well over a decade ago, by hand, in a journal like the one my mother gave me as a child to jot down my stories. Then I set the manuscript aside to work on other projects, but something kept pulling me back to the story, and it has to do with my past.

  I grew up in the sixties and seventies in Richmond, Virginia, the old capital of the Confederacy, home to all those statues of rebel elites on Monument Avenue. I was not born into economic privilege, and I grew up with an ethnic surname in a world steeped in the history of the Old South, where the names Lee, Jackson, Stuart, and Davis were revered by many. Thinking back, I believe I would not have become a writer had I not been born in that place and at that time.

  I was observant and curious, and I remember much from my youth. Where I grew up, the Black-white divide was so ingrained that despite the efforts of the Civil Rights movement and the Warren Court, life was not so very different from many decades before. The old ways were intractable, and accepted to such an extent that most people never even thought about it, at least people who looked like me. And while I was the observer of racial bigotry and hatred, I was never the target. To borrow a line from Mark Twain, that is truly the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

  There are many autobiographical elements in this story, from how Jack Lee grew up—although decades earlier than I did—to the thoughts, questions, and misgivings he had about the world in which he lived, how books played an important role in forming his outlook on life, the sometimes confusing and conflicting relationships with family and friends, and the uneasy coexistence of Black and white worlds, for they were distinct, separate entities. Like Jack, I delivered the morning paper, and I grew up to be a trial lawyer. My mechanic father fixed up an old Fiat that I drove for a period of time. And there is a Tuxedo Boulevard in Richmond, and, yes, to the best of my recollection, the county dump was at the end of the all-Black neighborhood.

  My sixth-grade class was one of the first in Virginia to be bused to a Black school, finally realizing Brown v. Board’s ruling, albeit nearly twenty years late. It was an emotionally and mentally bewildering time for all the students, which I looked back on for quite a while as traumatizing. However, as I grew older, I came to understand that it had been necessary to allow children from different walks of life to finally be together after having been separated for centuries for purely toxic reasons.

  When writing a novel dealing with race in America, the subject of the N-word usually comes up. I cannot think of another term that even approaches the heinous connotations of hatred and evil that stand next to it. However, to create a story set in 1968 that takes on issues of race and fails to use it in some form would be criticized, and justly so, as inauthentic at best, cowardly at worst. Thus, I have deployed it sparingly and in a hybrid form that may not satisfy some, but was the one I chose after much deliberation.

  Though distinct elements of self-governance date back as far as ancient Greece if not further, democracies were a thoroughly unproven and unpopular form of governance when America came into being. At that time, the most powerful nations were organized under autocratic systems, usually monarchies, and “individual freedom” was an oxymoron. Although there are other legitimate claimants to the title, the United States of America is arguably the world’s oldest nation with a continuously surviving democratic government; it is certainly the best-known example. However, having only been around for less than 250 years, we are an infant in the annals of history, and our existence has been, at times, uncomfortably turbulent.

  There were multiple instances in our past when we were at each other’s throats, and where a decisive breakup seemed imminent. We ultimately fought a costly civil war to end slavery and keep the union intact. Clearly, enough people believed the American experiment of freedom and self-governance was worth the blood shed on all those battlefields. However, none of us should ever take that sentiment for granted, lest our system of elected representation disappears from under our distracted gaze, taking our hard-won rights along with it.

  Finally, I wanted to make this a story of two people from divergent life experiences who come together to tackle a problem as difficult as any America has ever confronted. I wanted it to be an unwieldy, fractious partnership, like the one experienced by those sixth graders decades ago. I wanted each to learn from the other, and for them to eventually find mutual respect and empathy for one another.

  In the end, what can we strive for that is more vital, for all of us?

  Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,

  Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!

  But in the very world, which is the world

  Of all of us,—the place where in the end

  We find our happiness, or not at all!

  —William Wordsworth

  CHAPTER 1

  ON ANY OTHER DAY THE dead quiet coming from this room would have concerned no one, because the elderly couple usually napped peacefully, sat stationary as cats, or read their twin King James Bibles in silence, aged fingers turning pages replete with wisdom, tranquility, and violence.

  The latter was on embellished display, for the man was sprawled on the floor on his back, while the woman was draped across a finely upholstered chair. Life had been rent from them with a grim certainty of purpose.

  They were not remarkable in any way that mattered to most. What was memorable was the grand upheaval that would define and qualify the full measure of their deaths. It would fuel a calamitous surge of energy, like that of a sawed-off shotgun randomly discharged into an unsuspecting crowd.

  Their violent end would be gossiped about in Freeman County, Virginia, for decades.

  “You got the right to remain silent. You hear me, boy?” the first lawman said to the only suspect in the room.

  That suspect was on his knees, his hands shackled behind him, the cuffs cutting deeply into flesh. The only signs of his granular fear were the trembling of fingers, and the quick exhalations of breath.

  “This coon don’t look like he can talk even if he wanted to,” countered the second deputy. He was six feet, cattail-lea
n, with a soft jaw and eyes that resembled creased bullet holes. A policeman’s hat was tipped far back on his head.

  The debilitating humidity, wicked off the nearby McHenry River, spread everywhere, like mustard gas weaving through the war trenches. The sweat dripped off the deputies’ faces, darkened their starched shirts, and, like gnats flitting around nostrils and eyes, added annoyance to their rage.

  The first deputy continued to read off the little white card he’d drawn from his pocket. He was short, and squat as a tree stump. He had just arrived at the part about an attorney being provided if the accused couldn’t afford one, when his partner, clearly troubled by these new legal rights, interrupted once more.

  “You tell me what lawyer in his right mind would represent this here colored boy, LeRoy. ’Cause I sure as hell would like to know the answer.”

  Raymond LeRoy ignored this and continued to read off the card, because he hadn’t yet memorized the words. He actually doubted he ever would; the will was just not in him. He had no idea who this Miranda fellow was, but LeRoy knew that the legalese upon the paper was designed to help those people, who had committed crimes, usually against white folks. And that transformed every word, which he was compelled to read by the decision of nine robed men hundreds of miles away, into bleach on his tongue.

  “You understand what I just read to you?” said LeRoy. “I apparently got to hear your answer accordin’ to those sonsabitches in Washington, DC.”

  His partner gripped the butt of his holstered .38 Smith & Wesson. “Why don’t you just take off them iron cufflinks and tell him to run for it? Save the good folks of this fine county payin’ for his trip down to Richmond and the chair.”

  “They ain’t doin’ executions no more, Gene. Say it’s cruel and unusual.”

  Gene Taliaferro bristled. “And what the hell has he just done to them, LeRoy?”

  In one corner an overturned table had upset the items that had long rested upon it, chiefly, a photograph taken over fifty years ago of the couple in their courting days. He with his slouch hat in hand, along with a pair of brooding eyes, she with a bonnet resting on her small, delicate head, the hair parted in the middle, making her resemble a child. They were framed by an arch of fragrant honeysuckle and jasmine that was hosting both bees and butterflies, tiny, whirring apparitions trapped by the flash pop and shutterbug.

  Now the photo lay on the floor, its front glass shattered, a cut across the picture bisecting the woman’s face and reaching to the man’s left eye.

  LeRoy said, “We ain’t gonna shoot him, Gene. Boy’s in custody.”

  “He’s only a g-d n——!” exclaimed Gene.

  “I know,” bellowed an out-of-his-depth LeRoy. “Do I got me two eyes or what?”

  “Well then?” demanded Gene. “Ain’t be the first time we done it.”

  “Well, it’s not like that no more, is it?” countered a disappointed LeRoy.

  “A hundred years ago where was the capital of the Confederacy?” Gene pointed to the floor. “It was right chere in Virginia. And nuthin’ can change that. Granddaddy four times removed owned boys just like this one.” He stabbed his finger in the direction of the kneeling man. “Owned ’em! I got me a picture! They ought ’a fry his ass.”

  “Then let ’em,” muttered LeRoy. “But I ain’t havin’ a bunch ’a Negro lawyers comin’ after me. And now that that Dr. King got hisself killed down in Tennessee, coloreds are riotin’ all over the damn country.”

  Gene snorted. “He weren’t no real doctor!”

  “Gonna let my son take up the cause. We got to keep fightin’. Hundred years, thousand years, it don’t matter.”

  Gene sucked in a long breath and let it go. The gesture seemed to sap the core of his fury like cold mist on a candle’s flame. But then the lawman’s expression grew cagey. He squatted down on his haunches next to the only suspect in the room and slipped a wooden billy club from his belt. Along the wood were cut a dozen horizontal notches.

  “I don’t remember tellin’ you to get on your knees, boy. Now stand up.” Before the prisoner could move, Gene struck him full in the gut with the head of the billy club, propelling the man to the floor.

  Gene rose. “I told you to get up, not fall on your damn face. Now get your ass up boy, right now. Now, or you get some more of the wood.”

  Slowly, the prisoner managed to come once more to rest on his haunches.

  Gene knelt next to him and said in a near whisper, “Now who told you to get your ass off that floor?”

  He battered the prisoner on the back of the head with the club, sending him down once more, now bleeding from his scalp.

  Gene stood up and said, “Jesus, you ain’t too smart, and here you wanna be equal to the white man. Now get up. Get up.” He jabbed the prisoner fiercely in the ribs with the club. “I ain’t tellin’ you again, boy. Up!”

  The prisoner, inch by tremulous inch, levered himself back onto his knees.

  Gene knelt down again. “Good, good, boy.” He grinned at his partner. “Who says you can’t teach critters new tricks, LeRoy, huh?” He turned back to the bleeding, woozy prisoner and eyed the band on the man’s finger. “Hey, now, you got yourself a woman?”

  Gene walloped the suspect with the club on the side of his head. “I asked you a question. You ain’t got no choice ’cept to answer me.”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes . . . sir.”

  He leaned in closer. “Good, good. Bet she’s pretty. She pretty, boy?”

  The prisoner nodded, which got him another clubbing to the head.

  “You speak, boy. You don’t never nod at no white man. It’s disrespectful.”

  His eyes closed, the man said, “She real pretty, sir.”

  “Good, good. Now, you got you kids?”

  “Y-yes sir.”

  “Fine, that’s fine. How many babies you got?”

  “Three, sir.”

  “Three!” Gene looked at his partner. “Boy say he got him three colored babies.” He turned back to the prisoner. “Okay, now after they fry your ass over in Richmond I’m gonna go see your pretty wife and your babies with some friends of mine. Now let me tell you what we gonna do to all them after we finish havin’ some fun with her.”

  He leaned close and whispered in the prisoner’s ear.

  The man roared in rage, knocking Gene down with his maddened, gyrating bulk.

  The deputy slid across the floor, grinning. He took off his hat, swiped back his hair, and gripped his billy club extra firm. He rose and headed back to the only suspect in the room, who was now sprawled helplessly on the floor.

  Gene said triumphantly, “Resistin’ arrest plain as day. You seen it, LeRoy.”

  And he raised the club.

  CHAPTER 2

  JOHN ROBERT LEE, WHO WENT by Jack to all but his mother, finished pumping Esso gas into his ancient, four-door Fiat pillarless saloon car. The front doors opened regularly, back to front, but the rear doors opened front to back. It had a long hood terminating in a fancy grille with silver cased headlights that sprouted from the front slim fenders like incandescent daisies. Its four-cylinder engine could hit fifty-three miles an hour with a decent tailwind. He paid over a crisp single and two dull quarters to the attendant, who was studying the funny-looking car with interest.

  “What the hell is that thang?” he asked.

  “It’s a Fiat,” answered Jack.

  “A fee-ought?”

  “It’s Italian made.”

  “I-talian? Ain’t that where the pope’s from?”

  Jack nodded. “That’s right.”

  “You Catholic?”

  “No, I’m agnostic,” said Jack.

  The man screwed up his face. “What’s that? Like Presbyterian or Methodist?”

  “It’s actually a skeptical man’s faith,” replied Jack.

  He climbed into the Fiat that his father had gotten from a car cemetery and resurrected back to the road. It was a gift from his parents when he’d graduated from law school. It was not a prestigious law school, like the mighty University of Virginia, or Richmond’s or William and Mary’s illustrious legal institutions. However, he had passed the Virginia State Bar exam on his first attempt, while he knew some from the glorified universities who had failed to do so. They still got the jobs in the big firms because that was where their daddies labored, too, selling their professional lives in hour increments for handsome compensation, prestigious homes, and golf memberships at the country club. They also married lovely, elegant women with fine pedigrees and firm skin, who ended up drinking too much, or bedding the gardener or the pool boy because of all the extra time on their hands.