The question prodded Henry like a finger. “No,” he lied. “But I know he spent a lot of time in Albert’s store, just like Pooky Wilson. I’ve wondered whether that connection had something to do with why the Eagles targeted him.”

Morehouse shook his head. “Ferriday was a small town. All the nigras knew each other.”

Henry didn’t buy this. He decided to leap off the cliff he’d been avoiding since the interview started. “Jimmy Revels was also Viola Turner’s brother. The nurse who worked for Dr. Cage?”

Morehouse just kept staring into the fire.

“You must have met her when you worked for Triton Battery,” Henry continued, watching Morehouse in profile. “Wasn’t Tom Cage the company doctor?”

The old man nodded, but he seemed a thousand miles away. Henry kept talking, trying to prod him. “Viola’s husband was killed in Vietnam, just like Frank’s older son. She got real close to her brother after that. She worried about the work Jimmy was doing. In February, Jimmy and Luther were attacked by the Double Eagles outside a drive-in. But then you know about that, don’t you?”

Morehouse gave a sideways inclination of his head, but still he said nothing.

“People thought Jimmy and Luther had been killed that night, because they vanished for so long. But they were actually hiding out at a place called Freewoods, way out in the county.” Henry started to mention the rumor he’d heard about how the Eagles lured Jimmy and Luther out of hiding, but he didn’t want to risk alienating the old man further by bringing up a gang rape. “Six weeks later—one day before Frank was killed in that accident—they returned to Natchez. They were seen cruising the parking lots of the redneck bars, and then they disappeared. Viola’s convinced that both Jimmy and Luther were kidnapped that night—a Wednesday—and murdered by the end of the week, probably out of revenge or rage over Frank’s death. She swore to me that if Jimmy had been alive after that, he’d have contacted her. I believe that.”

Morehouse looked at him, suddenly alert. “You talked to Viola?”

“I did.” Henry thought of the old nurse, somehow retaining her dignity as she lay in her sister’s house with scarcely enough flesh left on her bones to make an indentation on the mattress. “Twice, in fact.”

“You flew up to Chicago?”

This question took Henry aback. Would Morehouse have asked that question if he knew Viola had been in Natchez for the last six weeks? “I didn’t have to,” Henry replied. “Viola was right here in Natchez.”

The old man’s eyes snapped to Henry, looking more alive than they had all day. “Say what?”

“Viola spent the past six weeks in Natchez. Lung cancer.”

Morehouse was staring a hole through him. “Viola Turner came back to Natchez?”