I didn’t question Will Devine—the probable owner of the Darlington Academy truck—right away. But the day after visiting my father, I called Keisha Harvin and begged for everything she could tell me about Devine and his family. The young reporter came through for me within hours. Like most original Double Eagles, Devine had spent his working life employed by the Triton Battery Corporation, just south of Natchez, on the Mississippi River. In age, Devine fell between Frank and Snake Knox. For the past five years he’d been suffering from a chronic lung disease and didn’t leave the house much. According to Keisha, Henry Sexton’s journals didn’t supply much detail on Devine regarding the Eagles’ modern-day criminal activities, but Henry had believed the man played a major role in some of the 1960s murders.

According to Dad, Walt Garrity had visited Devine at home. A retired Texas Ranger, Walt can be pretty persuasive with white guys from his own generation, but Devine had slammed the door in Walt’s face more than once. John Kaiser’s FBI agents must have gotten the same treatment, because if Devine came close to turning state’s evidence back in December, John wouldn’t have let up the pressure on the old Double Eagle.

I first tried Devine at his house on a Sunday morning, thinking maybe he’d be in a Christian frame of mind. From behind a screen door, he told me that if I didn’t get off his property, he’d give me a blast from the double-barreled shotgun he was aiming at my belly. The fat old bastard was huffing while he threatened me, and he looked like he could barely hold himself on his feet. But he also looked like he would shoot if I provoked him further. The bug eyes behind big plastic glasses held a mixture of outrage and fear. It was then I realized that to Will Devine I probably appeared to be an incarnation of the retribution he had dreaded since his violent youth.

An old woman was talking low in the shadows behind him. I couldn’t make out her words, but her tone seemed less bellicose than that of her husband. I considered asking Devine about the pickup truck with the Darlington Academy sticker—which was parked in a driveway thirty feet to my left—but then I thought better of it. As I drove away from the house, I started going down the list of the man’s children and grandchildren.