Knox had canvassed the archives looking for one item in particular. After an hours-long search, but aided by his knowing the week span he was looking for, he found it. An obscure item in the local Brunswick paper detailed the disappearance of a local couple and their two-year-old daughter. A grainy photo of a woman was identified as Claire Michaels. Her husband, John, and their daughter, Elizabeth, had also vanished. John Michaels had been employed as an instructor at FLETC, the article said. There were rumors that some local federal cop-haters might have been involved and had targeted the Michaelses because of John’s occupation. Knox searched for additional stories or any possible break in the case, but found none. The CIA had effectively buried it all, deflecting suspicion onto a logical if bogus source.

Knox stared at the old black-and-white image of Claire Michaels that he had taken a copy of from the archives. He wondered if the fragments of another picture of the woman currently resided inside the ballistics entry in the chest of a senator from Alabama. If he were a betting man, he would’ve laid down a stack of hundred-dollar chips that the photo taped to Senator Simpson’s newspaper the morning he died was of Claire, John Carr’s wife.

Okay, Finn had been telling the truth. They’d killed the man’s family because he wanted out. Knox didn’t want to believe that his government would treat a man who’d served them faithfully for many years in such a way, but the reality was it certainly could’ve gone down like that.

Knox walked to his book-lined study. He was chasing a man who’d been betrayed by his own government. True, the evidence was compelling that Carr had killed Gray and Simpson. Knox stared over at a photo of his wife on one wall. Yet what would he have done if he’d found out the two men had killed Patty? He sat down in a chair and stared at the floor. He couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the very same thing.

And if that wasn’t enough, Carr had been screwed in Vietnam by the very man Knox was working for. The war hero had never gotten his just due. The military man in Knox took great umbrage at that. It was hard enough to fight. It was hard enough to survive without some prick denying you something you’d earned fair and square. And Knox still didn’t know why Hayes had cheated Carr out of his medal. Yet if he had to guess, he would have concluded that the fault rested with Hayes and not the heroic enlisted man.