Snake stared back at her without remorse. “All right, well … you’d better go get his gun.”

Wilma shook her head, then turned and walked down the hall toward the bedroom that held what was left of her brother.

CHAPTER 19

HENRY SEXTON AND I sit facing each other in the tight U created by the worktables that line three walls of his “war room.” I feel like I’ve been transported to the hotel room of some obsessed FBI agent in Mississippi circa 1964.

“I’ve been working these cases on and off for twenty years,” Henry says. “Hard for the last ten. Have you read many of my articles?”

“Most of them, I think.”

“Do you feel you have a working knowledge of the facts?”

“I’m a former criminal prosecutor, Henry. Just tell me what you haven’t put in the paper.”

He nods with relief. “I’ve connected the Double Eagle group to at least a dozen murders between 1964 and 1972, but five cases mean more to me than the others.”

“Albert Norris and Pooky Wilson are the top two. Right?”

“They were until this afternoon. Those killings happened in 1964, and I’ve known what happened and why for damn near twenty years. I couldn’t print a lot of it, but everything I’ve learned since has borne out my theory. Proving it all is another matter, of course. Still, I’m a lot closer than I was two weeks ago.”

“And the other three deaths? Is one Dr. Robb? The guy in the picture with my dad, by the airplane?”

“Yes. Five years after Albert died, Robb was murdered because he knew who’d killed Albert and Pooky. Forget everything you ever heard about that midair collision. It’s bullshit.”

“Well, you’ve got me curious, I’ll say that. What about the last two cases? Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis?”

Henry smiled sadly. “Am I that obvious? Well … you know Revels and Davis were kidnapped in 1968 and never found. I’ve always been certain they were murdered, and they were. But I thought I understood the dynamic of that crime as well. This afternoon I found out that I was wrong—so wrong that my mind is still blown by the scope of it.”

Something in Henry’s voice quickens my interest. “Can we skip right to that case?”

“No. We need to start in sixty-four.”

“Which case was my dad most involved in?”

“All of them. All these murders are connected, Penn. First, because the Double Eagles carried them out. Second, because a far more powerful man than any Eagle gave the kill orders in almost every case.”

I start to interrupt him to ask who, but he waves his hand and says, “I’ll give you the name in sixty seconds. Third, your father is connected to all five of those critical homicides in some way.”

“I’ve never seen Dad’s name in any of your articles.”