The old woman’s eyes seem to deepen with infinite sadness. “You know what men like that do. They had their way with her. That’s what they wanted all along, I think. Sam was just in the way.”

“Why did they let her live?”

The old woman takes some time with this. “I’ve asked that very question for years and years. Maybe they were so arrogant that they didn’t think anything could happen to them. And they were right, weren’t they? Maybe they figured if they let her live, they could take another turn with her on down the road.”

“Did they hang your son?” Serenity asks.

“Yes, ma’am. Right in front of his wife. Lynched him. Happened no more than ten miles from here.”

“What year was this?”

“Nineteen sixty-six.”

The summer of my first-grade year. “Did you report it to the police?”

The old woman stares at me as if I’m crazy. “Baby, like as not, some of the men behind those masks were po-lice.”

“What about the FBI?”

“The FBI got wind of what happened some way, and they sent two men to talk to me. One was very kind. But I couldn’t tell him anything. What he most wanted to know was where to find that Bone Tree, but I didn’t know, and Dolores had no real idea where those devils had taken her. Of course, I heard they found that tree back around Christmas time. A girl died over there, finding it.”

“That was my fiancée,” I say softly.

“Oh, no. Lord Jesus.” The Cat Lady lowers her head. “Now I see. So much pain in this world.”

“But you knew something,” Serenity says in an incisive voice. “Didn’t you? Dolores remembered something about those men, or she saw something, and you kept it from the FBI.”

Mrs. Booker watches Serenity for a while without speaking. Then she says, “The FBI told me they found some of Sam’s bones under that tree. They used DNA to identify them. My pastor’s gonna do a pretty service at the church after they get released to me.”

“Mrs. Booker,” Serenity says insistently. “Miss Cleotha. You know something, don’t you?”

The old woman just stares straight ahead.

I take a folded page from the Examiner from my pocket, then get up and kneel beside her. “Mrs. Booker, there are over a dozen unsolved murders from the 1960s in this area, including your son’s.” I unfold the page, revealing headshots of Snake Knox, Brody Royal, Sonny Thornfield, and half a dozen Double Eagles. “These men are suspected in many of them. I think they might have been behind those masks the night your son was murdered.”

The old woman doesn’t look down at the page.