About a month ago—ages before the assassination—Flip Whalen, the Hanovers’ unofficial ambassador to back-home, had called from New Orleans. McGreer was traveling with President Hanover in Asia, so Whalen asked for Addis, who was recovering from a sinus infection and unable to fly.

“Want to give you all a heads-up,” Whalen told him.

An itinerant laborer had been arrested in Opelousas. He had come home drunk and hacked his wife to death with a machete. He then sliced their nine-month-old daughter nearly in half and tossed the child’s body out the window of their second-floor apartment. When the police arrived at his apartment he was sitting in front of a stove with the gas running. All the windows were now closed. In one hand was an unlit match. He was poised to strike it. The police officers held their fire, fearing a misaimed shot might spark an explosion. They tried to talk to him but he was mumbling gibberish. Then he moved to light the match.

It did not ignite. The matchbook cover was wet with blood and sweat. The man was apprehended.

As he had listened, Addis wondered why Whalen considered this a White House concern.

At the police station, Whalen continued, the fellow confessed—not only to the murder of the woman and the child, but also to three other murders in the past ten years. A drunk in a bar. A fellow day laborer who had chiseled him out of thirty-five dollars. An owner of a convenience store outside New Roads, shot dead during a botched robbery attempt.

“Flip, so what?” Addis asked.

“That’s the same fellow Donny Lee Mondreau killed.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit, double-shit, and triple-shit.”

Mondreau had been executed for this murder. The case against Mondreau was mostly circumstantial. A trucker had testified that he saw Mondreau running from the store at the time of the killing. Mondreau, whose mental abilities were diminished, had told the police different stories pertaining to his whereabouts. A jury found him guilty; an appeals court validated the sentence rendered. Hanover had flown to Baton Rouge to sign the execution order. And a far-off consequence was a fight between Addis and Rudd in a New Orleans hotel room.

“So what do we know for sure?” Addis had asked Whalen. He reached for a pad and a pen. Then he caught himself and pushed both away.

“Not much. He’s a doper. A lot of mumbo jumbo so far. But they’ve got to check it out.”

“Any indication he knew that someone had been arrested for the New Roads killing?”

“Don’t know,” Whalen replied.

“Does his story match the details of the killing?”

“Don’t know yet, either.”

“Can we get some answers?”

“Yeah, I’m on it. The sheriff is a cousin of the parish chairman. He’s a good man.”

Good in what way?

“And who else knows?”

“Just the cops, as far as I know—and the sheriff’s cousin.”