At first I don’t think Mrs. Devine is going to deign to speak to the black interloper in her Winnebago. But at length she says, “Because he finally knows what I been telling him all along is true. Snake Knox don’t give a damn about Will or any of the others, except to the degree he can use them. Him and Sonny killed Glenn Morehouse, their childhood friend. Then Snake killed Sonny—his best friend—in the Concordia jail. Strangled him with a towel while they all held him still. Then he ordered Silas Groom killed to frame him for bombing that FBI plane, when we all know Snake done that.”

“You know that for a fact?” I ask.

“Will does.”

“What else does he know? Does he know anything about Viola Turner?”

Nita grimaced and blew out smoke. “He knows everything, I told you. Most all the Double Eagles raped that woman, you know. Two different times. The first time it was just a small group, at her house. Snake and Frank and Forrest, a couple more. But that second time, in the machine shop . . . Lord, they tore that girl up. If Ray Presley hadn’t got her out and back to Dr. Cage, she’d have died up in there.”

I feel as though Serenity’s body temperature has dropped ten degrees. I don’t risk turning to look at her. I need to hold Nita Devine’s gaze to my own. If she feels Serenity’s fury, she might clam up.

“Will said that himself?”

“The machine shop? Oh, yeah. He took his turn like all the rest. Cheatin’ bastard.”

“What else do you know about Viola?”

“Dr. Cage got her out of town somehow, but Snake and Sonny found her in Chicago later. They wanted to kill her, but the big boss said no.”

“The big boss?”

“Carlos Marcello. The mob boss of New Orleans. I think he had some kind of understanding with Dr. Cage. Marcello said they couldn’t kill Viola unless she broke the deal she’d made and came back to Natchez.”

My heart begins to pound. “Will told you that?”

She nods, then takes a long drag from her cigarette. Smoke floats slowly from her mouth as she continues speaking. “They told her then they’d kill her if she ever came back.”

“What about later?” Tee asks. “After she got back here? Did they threaten her then?”

“He doesn’t know that for sure. He says they went to see her at least once, during the day, he thought. He doesn’t know what they said. But they borrowed his pickup on the night she died, and he didn’t have no option to say no, if you get my meaning.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I mean, they wanted it because they was going out to do something illegal. And they didn’t want to use their own vehicle.”