When I don’t reply, Lincoln sighs and looks into his lap. “That tape doesn’t prove he’s innocent. Not by a long shot. Not to me, and probably not to a lot of jurors. But does it sound like reasonable doubt? I’d say so. You need to decide what that’s worth, and you don’t have much time.”

Staring through the windshield, I can no longer discern the tape on the water rolling southward. Without further discussion, Lincoln cranks the truck, backs carefully up the boat ramp, then executes a three-point turn and drives over the levee. Soon we’re on the westbound bridge, and as we follow its arc over the river, I finally ask the question he wants to hear.

“What’s the magic number?”

He lets the truck roll all the way down to the Mississippi shore before answering. The tires thunk onto asphalt with good dirt under it, and Lincoln switches the heater on full blast, fogging the lower half of the windshield. While I watch in confusion, he reaches out and writes some numbers in the moisture on the glass. Leaning sideways to change the angle of the light, I see a one followed by six zeros.

A million dollars? For that tape?

The empty feeling in the pit of my belly tells me how serious he is. I already put fifty thousand dollars into the grubby little hands of Nita Devine this morning—or the hands of her sister—through my friend Kirk Boisseau. Lincoln’s request proves just how bush league the Devines are when it comes to larceny.

“One hour,” Lincoln says, driving past the Natchez Welcome Center and pulling into the turn lane for Canal Street.

“That’s impossible,” I tell him, switching off the heater. “Even if the answer was yes.”

“Don’t insult me. I know you’ve got the money.”

He turns left, heading back into the heart of downtown.

“Did you have someone call in that bomb threat so you could make this offer?”

He chuckles softly. “Don’t get paranoid, man.”

“You’re the one who’s scared. Quentin Avery is about to crawl right up your ass, isn’t he? You can feel him warming up the proctoscope, and you don’t like it. That’s why you’re going to plan B. You want to split town with a sackful of money. What’s he got on you? Did you really destroy a second will?”

“That’s got nothing to do with the price of freedom in Mississippi, brother.” Lincoln rolls right past the turn for the jail and the courthouse, but he speaks before I can question his driving. “Look at it this way, Mayor. If Daddy was lying in an intensive care unit, about to die—”

“Last October, he was.”