Patrick was eager to get started, and Liam brought the mysterious box hidden beneath his mother’s bed into the main room. It was a battered old shipping box, tattered on the edges and carrying a musty smell. Inside was an explosion of papers and documents.

It was soon apparent why Liam hadn’t been able to make much sense of them. Most were legal forms from Crocket Malone’s various arrests and court appearances, but there were family papers too. Liam had two older brothers, both of whom had died within a week of being born, and the box contained plenty of evidence for both boys. There were birth certificates from a hospital and baptismal certificates from the church. The local union had paid a stipend for the birth of both boys. The baptism certificates were clipped together with a Saint Philomena prayer card, the patron saint for infants and newborns.

“Were you ever baptized?” Patrick asked.

Liam looked momentarily taken aback. “Probably. My mother always made me go to church.”

“There’s no certificate of baptism for you, but both your brothers were baptized.”

“That’s because they were blue babies and a priest showed up the day they were born to get the job done. Not me. According to Mom, I had lungs that could shake the rafters, and they didn’t need to drag a priest out of bed for a rush job.”

Patrick continued sorting the papers. The largest stack was lawsuits filed by Crocket Malone suing neighbors, his employers, and even the local newspaper that wrote articles critical of his labor union. The second-largest stack was Crocket’s arrests. Patrick held up a legal filing for when Crocket was charged with smashing windows at a mill.

“How come your dad got arrested so much?”

Liam snorted. “Because Crocket Malone liked busting heads and causing trouble.” He nodded to the document with a grin. “I was with him that day. It was kind of fun, until a swarm of cops showed up and beat us both into a bloody pulp, but we probably deserved it.”

Patrick looked at the date on the paper. “You must have only been a kid.”

“I was fifteen, and the mill was owned by Andrew Carnegie. My dad said that Andrew Carnegie was the devil and all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled up into one person, and he deserved whatever trouble we gave him. Besides, if I didn’t help, my dad would have busted my head in.”

Patrick asked the question that had been plaguing him for days. “There was a $100,000 reward for the return of the Blackstone child. Did your dad hate the Blackstones enough to forgo a reward that big just to seek revenge?”

A muscle bunched in Liam’s jaw, and his eyes were dark as he considered the question. “Yeah. He hated them that much.”