Henry shakes his head at the absurdity of trying to keep a dead man’s name secret. “Glenn Ed Morehouse.” Rising from his chair, he stabs the heaviest of the men in the group of pictures he tapped only a few minutes ago. In the photo beneath his finger, a man with the corn-fed build and flattop haircut of an offensive lineman from the golden age of Ole Miss football stares out with irrepressible good humor.

“One the four founding Double Eagles,” Henry says. “Frank Knox gave him his gold piece five days after the Neshoba County bodies were found. I saw that coin this morning, Penn. The man was in torment over the things he’d done.”

“Well, he’s at peace now. You need to think about yourself for a change.”

“There was so much I still needed to ask him.”

Don’t go there, either, I say silently, cursing Henry’s failure to record the answers to the questions he did ask.

“Are you sure we can trust Sheriff Dennis?” he asks worriedly. “Ever since Huey Long’s time, the sheriffs have run this parish like a third-world dictatorship. At one point, there were no jury trials for nine years straight. And the Kiwanis types didn’t care, so long as the country club stayed white and blacks moved to the other side of the street when a white man walked down it. Things have changed on the surface, but that Magnolia Queen mess you exposed back in October makes me wonder.”

“You’re being paranoid, Henry. The old sheriff and six deputies have been indicted. Walker Dennis was the one deputy that everybody in this parish agreed was clean. That’s why they appointed him.”

Henry doesn’t look convinced. “But they’re all out on bail right now. And all that dogfighting and prostitution … how could Walker Dennis not have known about that?”

“Maybe he did,” I concede. “A lot of people probably knew about it, on both sides of the river. But it’s pretty hard to fight the current when everybody else is swimming downstream.”

“And the meth stuff?” he asks, looking far from reassured. “How could the Knoxes be moving that much stuff without Sheriff Dennis’s knowledge?”

“I don’t know. Tell me more about their operation.”

“Morehouse said it’s a big-time drug ring. They supply dealers statewide, and possibly in Arkansas and Texas as well. Crystal meth is their main product, but God only knows what else they’re into.”

“Meth trafficking carries heavy mandatory sentences. A DA could pressure the hell out of the Double Eagles by offering immunity on the trafficking charges in exchange for information on the old civil rights crimes—not to mention Viola’s death. We need to keep that in mind as we go forward.”

Henry nods skeptically.

“Who leads the Knox organization now?”

“Morehouse said Billy Knox runs the drug ring.”

“Who’s Billy Knox?”