Once I began to believe we were in the clear, I started to reflect on what I’d done after leaving Keisha in the ER. As potentially self-destructive as that confrontation was, it broke something loose in my congested soul, a dense impaction of hate, shame, and impotent rage that only action could remedy. This brought fresh clarity to my mind, and I found myself pondering the most puzzling mystery of the past three months—the location of Snake Knox. Unlike Kaiser, who seems willing to accept the proposition that Snake has fled these parts for a life of expatriate comfort, I’m convinced that, like any predator, the old Double Eagle could not bear to be away from his home territory for long.

Despite the hour, I picked up the house phone and called Carl Sims, my good friend and a deputy for the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department. I asked him to keep his eyes and ears open for the slightest sign of unusual activity down his way. The Knox family, while Louisiana natives, had become deeply embedded in Lusahatcha County, Mississippi, over the years, and I had no doubt there were dozens of people down there who would gladly shelter Snake from the FBI. More disturbing still, Carl’s boss, Sheriff Billy Ray Ellis, had been a frequent guest at the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, and he wouldn’t be particularly zealous in following up tips about Snake Knox sightings. Carl said he’d been thinking the same thing, but so far he’d had no luck along that line.

While I had him on the phone, I told the former marine sniper that my father had known a woman from Athens Point who lost her son to a lynching in Lusahatcha County in the mid-1960s. I didn’t know her name, but her daughter-in-law had supposedly been raped the same night. She had ultimately committed suicide, but I hoped that if we could locate the mother, she might remember something damning about the Double Eagles—in particular Snake Knox. Carl told me he’d put his father on it. Reverend Sims knew everybody in Lusahatcha County, and if the woman was still around, he would know her. The question was, would he reveal what he knew?

I thanked Carl and hung up.

I was about to switch off the lights and go upstairs when my cell phone rang. When I looked at the LCD, I was surprised to see the name of my literary agent displayed there.

“Peter?” I said, after pressing send. “What in the world?”

“I’m sorry it’s so late, Penn. I called to ask you a favor, and for someone else, if you can believe it.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He laughed. “I know, right? I assume you know who Serenity Butler is?”

Serenity Butler. “She’s a black Mississippi writer. Nonfiction. Just won the National Book Award, right? For a memoir?”