Dolores shakes her head in amazement.

“What else do you remember?”

“There was a blond man who howled scripture during the assault. I saw the hair underneath his hood. He quoted scripture even while he raped me. It terrified me that he blasphemed like that while he was . . . doing what he was doing. But it almost seemed he was doing it to mock someone.”

“If that was who I think it was,” I tell her, “his father was a lay preacher, and a completely evil man.”

“What other details do you remember?” Serenity asks.

“The blond man had scars on his stomach. On his lower abdomen. They looked serious. Like something you’d get in a war.”

“Most of the Double Eagles were combat veterans,” I temporize, trying to mask my excitement. “Can you describe the scars?”

“I don’t . . . they were darker than the other skin. Raised. They didn’t look like bullet holes. They looked like . . . like little pieces of hot metal, maybe?”

“Shrapnel,” said Serenity, touching the scar in front of her left ear.

“That’s it.”

“What else?” I ask softly as my pulse races.

“One of them was just a boy. A teenager, but barely. He was quiet through most of it, and I thought he was just going to watch. But then the leader told him to take his turn. He was darker than the rest, far darker than me. Two of the men were dark-skinned for white men, but this one especially. I noticed because the ones watching were holding up lanterns beside me, all throughout.”

“I’ll bet anything that the young one was Forrest Knox. And the older dark one was his father, Frank.”

Dolores’s face remains impassive.

“Did you read any of the stories about the Double Eagles in the Times-Picayune?” I ask. “Last December? Forrest Knox was a ranking officer in the state police.”

“I can’t bear to read about crime and violence.”

Serenity and I share a look. This woman is very fragile, and pushing her too hard might well silence her forever. Looking down, I see her hands quivering.

“That dark young man you remember was Forrest Knox. He was killed in December.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How did he die?”

I glance at Serenity, who raises her eyebrows, giving me the choice.

“Violently, Dolores. He murdered my fiancée. And he died with a spear through his throat.”

Dolores St. Denis studies me in silence for half a minute. Then she says, “I see.”

“His father was almost certainly the other dark man you remember. He was the founder of the Double Eagle group. Frank Knox. He was killed in 1968, only a couple of years after your husband was murdered.”

Dolores goes pale at this. “Really?” she whispers.