Tonight I learned that Reverend Baldwin personally salvaged those ledgers from Albert’s floor safe on the night he was burned out. Baldwin had served with Albert in the Deacons for Defense, and he knew his friend wouldn’t have wanted those records to fall into the wrong hands—especially those of the KKK or the Double Eagles, where knowledge of interracial relationships would likely have resulted in reprisal murders. For this reason, too, Baldwin did not risk bringing the journals to my house, but only two photocopied pages.

“We’ve been attending the trial, you see,” the elder Reverend Baldwin explained. “And it’s pretty clear to me that Judge Elder is biased toward the prosecution.”

“Quentin Avery believes the same thing.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s fair to your father. And I don’t think it’s accidental.”

“What makes you say that?”

That was when Baldwin brought out the photocopied pages. And what they showed was that in 1954, a black woman named Fannie Elder had been secretly meeting a white man with whom she was sexually involved. Most times she met him in his office, but a few times she met him in the back of Albert’s store. When I saw the man’s name, I was speechless for a few seconds. When I finally found my voice, I said:

“That son of a bitch?”

Reverend Baldwin nodded and said, “Is Judge Joe Elder’s real father.”

The man whose name was written in Albert Norris’s book was Claude Devereux. Claude Devereux, the Cajun lawyer who had defended both Ku Klux Klansmen and Double Eagles during the worst years of the 1960s. Claude Devereux, the lawyer to whom Albert Norris’s doctor had confided Albert’s dying accusation against Brody Royal, and who had then betrayed that information to Royal, resulting in the murder of that doctor by Snake Knox. Claude Devereux, the lawyer in a photograph with my father, Brody Royal, and Ray Presley during a deep-sea fishing excursion with a Frenchman who likely had been involved in the assassination of John Kennedy. The lawyer who three months ago fled the country to escape RICO charges stemming from his illegal business activities with Brody Royal, and for criminal acts committed on behalf of the Knox family.

“Does Judge Elder know this?” I asked.

“He does,” said Reverend Baldwin. “And I believe that’s the reason for his bias against your father. When he thinks about your father and Viola, he sees Claude Devereux and his mother.”

I thanked both men profusely, as did Serenity, and then we led them back to their car. I found that I was shaking with excitement, if only because the revelation that those ledgers still exist would have been such a triumph for both Henry and Caitlin.

“What do you want to do with this?” Serenity asked.

“We have to take it to Quentin. Joe Elder clerked for him. He’ll know how to handle it.”