On impulse, he turned to the shelf behind his desk and picked up a framed family photo. A neighbor had taken it in 1988, before Jenny left for her teaching job in England. In it, Tom, Peggy, Jenny, Penn, and Sarah stood before their old house—the one the kids had grown up in, the one that had held Tom’s beloved library. That library was gone now, up in smoke, just like Penn’s first wife. Annie had not yet been conceived when this picture was shot; nor had the first malfunctioning cell in Sarah’s breast begun to fulfill its terrible destiny. Tom closed his eyes and thought of his daughter-in-law for a few moments, a penance for the relief he’d felt when Penn finally proposed to Caitlin Masters.

For some years, Tom had worried that part of his son had died with Sarah, the way part of Tom had perished when Viola left for Chicago. But Caitlin had not only proved stronger than Penn’s grief; she’d also brought some light back into Tom’s life. The medical books on Tom’s shelves described no clinically measurable “life-force,” but after more than forty years of practicing medicine, he was certain that some people were born with an extra ration of it. Caitlin certainly had been, as had Viola Turner. A few boys in Korea had possessed this special quality, the ones who’d survived wounds that would have killed any ordinary soldier. Viola’s thirty-seven years in Chicago had all but killed her unique vitality, and Tom knew now that he’d had more to do with that premature death than he ever suspected.

Taking a wooden tongue depressor from a jar, he pried the back off the picture frame, then slipped the family portrait into The Killer Angels alongside the snapshot of Viola. All that remained on his desktop now was a Sony videotape cartridge, the tape he’d removed from Henry Sexton’s camcorder on the morning Viola died. Tom stared down at the tape but did not touch it. After some reflection, he walked to the window and looked out at the office parking lot. For the past quarter hour he’d been watching for a tall, silver conversion van called a Roadtrek. The only silver vehicle in the back lot now was a Natchez city police car. The cruiser appeared to be empty, but Tom’s heart began laboring every time he looked out at it.

Returning to his desk, he fixed his gaze on the tape, an artifact of one of the stupidest decisions he’d ever made. Rubbing his eyes hard, he turned to another framed photo on his shelf. This one showed two shirtless young men of eighteen standing in front of a snow-covered mountain. Both men wore army fatigues, both held cigarettes, and both were grinning despite the fact that dried blood covered their hands and forearms.