A murderer asking me to give my word? Henry held up the Moleskine notebook in his hand. Viola Turner had been equally adamant about not recording anything, but she had good reason to fear a reprisal. He wondered who Glenn Morehouse feared during this last stage of his journey to the grave.

“First off,” Henry said, consciously dropping into the syntax of his youth, “I’ll ask you to provide me some bona fides. How do I know you were really a member of the Double Eagles?”

“Ain’t no were to it,” the old man said. “Once in, never out—that’s the rule. Just like the IRA.” He lifted the comforter and held out a shaking arm to Henry. When Morehouse opened his hand, Henry saw the dull gleam of gold. The still-huge palm held a twenty-dollar gold piece, minted in 1927. A hole had been drilled or shot through the upper half of Lady Liberty and a leather strap wound through the hole, so that the coin could be worn around the neck.

Henry had heard the legend of the Double Eagle gold pieces long ago, but this was his first glimpse of one. “When did you get that?”

“Frank Knox give it to me in August of sixty-four, the day he founded the Double Eagles. Five days after the FBI found them three bodies up in Neshoba County. Frank’s long dead, so tellin’ that don’t hurt nothin’.”

Henry felt his heart skip. He’d always heard that Frank Knox had created the Double Eagles, and now an actual member had given him the exact date: just twenty-two days after the firebombing of the man that Henry had cared most about in the world. Henry wanted the truth about Albert Norris’s murder more than anything else Morehouse could give him, but he couldn’t let his subject know that. Like all good hunters, Henry would have to be patient. “Will you name the other members of the Double Eagle group?”

Morehouse hacked up some phlegm and spat into his puke bucket. “Not today, I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Most of those men have families, for one thing. Wouldn’t be right for me to ruin their lives just to ease my conscience. Second, our vow was a rough one, with a specified penalty. I wouldn’t want to put my family through that.”

“What’s a ‘rough’ vow?”

“Kind of like the Masons’ oath, but simpler. We all swore that if we betrayed a brother, our firstborn child would be killed. Whatever else you got was up to Frank. And that weren’t no Tom Sawyer bullshit, neither. You ever hear of Earl Hodges, up toward Eddiceton?”

Henry nodded. “A Klan informant. He was beaten to death in Franklin County. The flesh was ripped off him by a strap with roofing tacks in it.”