HENRY SEXTON STOOD in the yard of Wilma Deen’s house, watching a sparrow trying to stuff itself into a martin house mounted on a pole. He’d walked out of Glenn Morehouse’s sickroom with every intention of getting into his SUV and driving away, but once the wind hit his face, he’d felt his rage drain away, leaving behind only a sense of failure. For ten years he’d been working to find a source inside the Double Eagle group. But now that he had one, he’d flung a bunch of righteous bullshit in the man’s face and stormed out. What did I expect? he asked himself. A signed confession with a bow on top? Glenn Morehouse had nothing to look forward to but more suffering followed by death, and Henry had only come here to plunder the dark cave of his conscience. What was more natural than for the old man to gain some pleasure at his expense?

Henry wished he still smoked cigarettes. Fifty yards up the gravel road, a fat black Labrador retriever trudged toward the highway. Beyond the dog, Henry saw movement near the house that stood at the highway turn—Wilma Deen’s nearest neighbor. When he focused, though, he lost the impression. After a few seconds of staring, he felt like a deer trying to spot a careful hunter. With four backward steps he carried himself out of sight of the distant house.

What was I thinking? he wondered. Because of his personal obsession with Albert Norris, he’d barely flipped a page in the Eagles’ catalog of crime. He hadn’t asked about Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis, or even Joe Louis Lewis, the busboy who’d disappeared without a trace. Maybe one or more of those boys was who Morehouse had seen flayed or crucified. Above all, Henry had blown his chance to question Morehouse about Viola Turner’s death. Surely he owed his best efforts to Jimmy Revels and Tom Cage, and to all the families who had never learned the fate of their loved ones? He glanced at the clock on his cell phone. Wilma Deen would return in twenty-five minutes, thirty at the outside. Yet if he walked back into the house now, Morehouse was as likely to curse him as tell him anything further.

Stay or go? he wondered, looking back at his Explorer.

As though in answer, his cell phone rang. The caller ID said G. MOREHOUSE. “Hello?”

“You feel better, asshole?” growled the old man.

“Not really.”

“Did you expect me to spill my guts to you the first time we talked? That how it usually goes in your interviews?”

“Not always.”