As I try to decipher the reality behind Viola’s façade, a sudden association tugs deep in my brain. What is it? Maybe the longer I study her face, the more powerful my childhood memories become, like embers in a breeze being fanned into flame. Yet the harder I focus on her, the more whatever I’m trying to remember recedes. I shouldn’t be surprised. This photograph is only a frozen slice of the past: two-dimensional, opaque, easily deceptive. My visit with Pithy was more penetrating, like a medical history, facts enhanced by a temporal context and by Pithy’s insight—yet still insufficient. What I need now is the psychological equivalent of an MRI, a three-dimensional scan of the relationships between these characters I’m only just coming to know: Viola Turner, Brody Royal, the Knox family, even Lincoln Turner. For only with the deepest knowledge can one diagnose that most elusive of conditions: the truth.

Touching my fingertip to Viola’s face, I realize that one question must be answered before all others: How far did Dad go with you?

Walking to my desk, I lift the phone and dial my parents’ house again. I’d rather speak to Dad in person, and away from my mother, but the only way I could pull that off would be to take Annie with me to distract Mom, and Mom would instantly see through my ploy.

“Penn?” says my mother, her voice surprisingly alert. “Has something happened? Did Henry die?”

“No.” I’d expected the reassuring “Dr. Cage” that usually greets night callers. “I was hoping to talk to Dad, remember?”

A shuffling sound comes through the phone. “He’s still asleep.”

This surprises me. Despite the emotional toll that today’s events must have taken on him, my father is a night owl, and always has been. Almost nothing can force him to sleep during what most people consider reasonable hours. Maybe being arrested and handcuffed in his own yard pushed even Dad past his limit. “I really need to talk to him, Mom.”

“You don’t want me to wake him, up, do you? Not after today.”

Yes, I do. And then I want you to go into the other room and watch television while we talk. “I guess not. But I must speak to him before nine tomorrow morning.”

“Do you think that attack on Henry Sexton had anything to do with your father? Henry’s been writing about the bad old days for years now, and he’s never hesitated to name names. That’s courting disaster if I ever saw it. He probably just pushed somebody too far in his last article.”

“Mom, I think …” I falter, searching for some nonthreatening way to explain my concern. “Dad is somehow caught up in this old Double Eagle mess. He used to treat all those guys from Triton Battery, and he’s refusing to talk about it to the police.”