As I stand frozen in the doorway, another voice rises in my mind. It’s not mine, or my father’s, or any other that I’ve heard in a long time. This voice is soft and feminine, yet filled with conviction. It belongs to my wife, Sarah, dead seven years now. She has spoken to me only in times of great travail, and then almost too softly to hear. But tonight her words come clear to me: If you want the truth … you know what to do.

“I don’t,” I say to the empty street, wondering if I’m going mad.

Do what you do best, she says.

“What’s that?” I mutter.

Solve the crime.

AROUND THE BLOCK FROM Shad’s office, in the City Hall parking lot, I climb into my Audi and start the engine, my heart pounding from the run from Shad’s office. All the way around the block, my wife’s voice echoed like a mantra in my head: Solve the crime, solve the crime …

The preliminary autopsy report Jewel Washington passed to me (in violation of the law) lies on the passenger seat beside me. I analyzed hundreds of such documents during my years as an assistant DA, but right now I can’t bring myself to wade through a pathologist’s report. That work is more suited to the deep of the night, when no interruptions will break my concentration. Besides, that report can only tell me so much. Without access to the crime scene evidence—all of it—I can only make deductions based on part of the picture, and that’s asking for trouble. Beyond this, all my instinct tells me that Viola’s murder won’t be solved by deconstructing the crime, Sherlock Holmes–style. In fact, I believe I already know who actually robbed Viola of her last few days of life. According to Henry Sexton, Glenn Morehouse believed that his Double Eagle comrades murdered Viola, to bury her knowledge about the murders of her brother and Luther Davis. But the murder of Jimmy Revels was actually ordered by Brody Royal, in an effort carry out the will of Carlos Marcello, who wanted Bobby Kennedy dead before he could be elected president. Though that plot was ultimately aborted—due to the accidental death of Frank Knox—Jimmy and Luther were killed and “disappeared” to obliterate all trace of the plan. How much could Viola have known about any of that? According to Morehouse, Viola was held prisoner in the machine shop where and while her brother and Luther were tortured, but by then the RFK hit had been canceled. Is it possible that Snake Knox and his buddies—knowing they were about to kill Jimmy, Luther, and Viola—spoke freely about Royal and Marcello’s planned operation in front of their prisoners?

No. If they had, they’d never have let Viola live, no matter what my father promised them in return.