It takes me a second to remember to breathe. “To assassinate him?”

Henry nods, his eyes bright with excitement. “That was the template for the later attempt with Kennedy. Only King didn’t come here. If he had, he’d have died three years earlier than he did.”

“Shit, Henry. Run the timeline on the RFK operation.”

“It’s early sixty-eight. Jimmy and Luther brawl with the Eagles on February seventh. They go into hiding at Freewoods. Kennedy announces for president on March sixteenth. Jimmy and Luther start crisscrossing the state in secret, speaking to blacks in their homes and churches. Kennedy calls Jimmy to thank him on the twenty-fifth. When Frank Knox hears about this, he picks Jimmy as their victim. Viola is gang-raped the night of March twenty-sixth. The rumor starts to spread. Within twenty-four hours, Jimmy and Luther were seen in Natchez and Concordia Parish, cruising the parking lots of joints like Mildred’s and the Emerald Isle. This was a Wednesday night. That night they vanished for good—just like Pooky Wilson and Joe Louis Lewis before them.”

“If the goal was to lure RFK to Mississippi,” I reason, “I’d expect some kind of semi-public atrocity, like a lynching or a bombing.”

Henry nods, his face taut. “I think that was the plan. They were probably surprised to have gotten Jimmy and Luther so fast. I’ll bet Frank meant to hold them over the weekend, then kill them Sunday, so that the murders would make the network news on Monday. But fate dealt a joker out of the deck. The day after Jimmy and Luther disappeared was the day a pallet of batteries fell on Frank Knox. I think he was probably drunk when it happened. Jimmy and Luther were being held captive at a machine shop out in the county. Frank had only gone in to work to keep up appearances. Coworkers took him to your father’s office, and that’s where he died.”

A tingling sensation runs along my forearms, then settles in my palms.

Henry’s eyes radiate almost electric energy. “Instant karma, man. Frank Knox died while being treated by your father and Viola Turner—a woman he’d raped only two days earlier. What are the odds of that?”

“A billion to one. Are you positive about this? Dad’s never mentioned any of it to me.”

Henry’s ominous look returns. “Viola was your father’s trauma nurse. She always assisted him in his surgery. And get this: nobody can remember seeing Viola in Natchez after the day Frank died. They figured she split town with her brother and Luther, or else split after they were killed. Weeks later, Viola was found in Chicago, alone. Jimmy and Luther were never seen again.”

“Where had she been in the meantime?”