“I do,” Greg said with mild indignation that Darren didn’t know him better. “But you know who does not have the capacity for that kind of nuance? Your next president,” Greg said, his face screwed up with frustration. “This is the dilemma we’re in. If we don’t prosecute hate crimes against whites—if that’s what this is,” he said, just to get Darren to hear him out, “if we don’t prosecute crimes against white lives to the degree that we do those against black lives—”

Darren laughed so hard the bourbon nearly choked him, burning at his throat. Greg put a hand on Darren’s forearm and looked his friend in the eye, an expression of bafflement and pain on his face. “I’m serious, D. You see who’s about to walk into the White House? You see where this country’s at? We’re in trouble, man. There’s a point to what I’m trying to do. A case like this would make it easier for the new Justice Department to know that hate crimes aren’t some kind of liberal hocus-pocus. They’re real and deadly and unacceptable in American life. They need to see the FBI taking every hate crime seriously. The hope is that a case like this makes them more committed to prosecuting when the tables are turned, when it’s a black man killed, that this could change the game.”

“So this is the Jackie Robinson of federal hate-crime cases?” Darren was a little bit drunk; his tolerance over the past couple of months had dried up, a muscle atrophying when he needed it most. He would drink his weight in bourbon right now if he could, would do anything to avoid talk of Leroy Page killing a child, the nag of truth in what Greg was saying.

“No,” he said, pushing back on this whole thing. “Page sold everything. He’s moving in a matter of weeks. It’s over. And we’re talking about a nine-year-old. He knew the boy’s grandfather, for God’s sake—”

“Yes, the man he blamed for turning a once idyllic black community into a haven for white supremacists and Brotherhood sympathizers.”

Darren shook his head at the logic. “They were friends, the old men.”

But Greg kept pressing his case.

He asked Darren to imagine he was the descendant of slaves, to which Darren rolled his eyes and said, “I’ll try.”