“Yes. And that would certainly explain his level of anger, given the situation. I doubt any African-American mother would want to tell her son that he was fathered by a white-trash ex-Klansman who’d raped her. Much less, one of many. Especially since Viola got married soon after she arrived in Chicago—in the time-honored tradition of so many girls ‘in trouble’ during that era. Viola probably told Lincoln he was the son of her husband. At least for most of his life.”

I remember my dad telling me about Viola marrying a con man in Chicago. “Well, somebody needs to tell Lincoln the truth, before he pushes this thing any further.”

“Shad Johnson is the man pushing the murder investigation. Lincoln is just his excuse. It’s no secret Shad hates you, and your father has given him a golden opportunity for revenge.”

Without warning, my view of the entire case makes a tectonic shift. “Holy Christ, Henry. Shad thinks Lincoln is my father’s son. If Lincoln told him that, Shad might easily believe Dad would kill Viola to keep it secret.”

This realization stops Henry cold. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’ve got to talk to Shad.”

Henry holds up a warning hand. “Think hard before you do that. Come back over here and let me show you something.”

He leads me back around the table to the poster advertising the Ku Klux Klan rally near my childhood home.

“That was the biggest Klan rally ever held in the South,” he informs me. “Thirty-seven hundred people attended—men, women, and children.” He turns to his worktable, fishes through a stack of photographs, chooses two, and steps back toward me. “I was looking at these before I called you.”

The photo on top is in color. It shows my father, aged about thirty-five, standing in front of a single-engine airplane in bright sunlight with a man a little older than he. Both men sport the long sideburns fashionable in the seventies.

“Who’s that?” I ask. “He looks familiar.”

“Dr. Leland Robb. He treated Albert Norris for the four days that he lay dying from his burns in 1964. He and your father were friends.”

“I don’t really remember him.”

“You were only nine years old when he died in a midair collision a few miles from here.”

“Wait a minute! I remember that. I went out on a couple of dates with the daughter of the pilot who died in that crash. She never really got over that.”

Henry nods soberly. “I’m not surprised. I believe Dr. Robb was murdered, Penn.”

“What?”