Thank you, Walt. A low-grade panic has begun to build in my chest. To distract Kaiser, I say, “You know you’re about forty years late, if you’re here to solve the murders of Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis.”

“Better late than never.”

“According to Henry, the Bureau hasn’t even classified their disappearances as murders.”

Kaiser’s eyes look somber. “Henry’s been holding back a lot from the Bureau. I don’t blame him. We didn’t give these victims much respect back in the day. Some shine got burned to death in Armpit, Louisiana? If Bobby Kennedy wasn’t calling Hoover about it every day, he didn’t want to know.”

The mention of Bobby Kennedy makes me think of Brody Royal. “Your agency has had a lot of years to make up for that, and it chose not to.”

“I know it.” Kaiser reaches into his inside coat pocket and takes out a yellowed piece of paper. It looks like an old typed letter, folded twice to fit into an envelope, then once again to fit into a pocket. He hands it to me, and on its face I find three typed sentences:

To Mr. J. Edgar Hover,

It was July 18, 1964 on a hot night about eleven o’clock the KKK burned down Albert Norris store and him with it, as of now we have not hear what happen to the hill. Is it possible these men are going to get away with this act without being exposed, even though the police was apart of the gang that permitted this terrible thing to happen. Your office is our only hope so don’t fail us.

The Colored People of Concordia Parish

“That came in to Bureau headquarters in Washington five months after Norris was murdered,” Kaiser informs me. “I still haven’t found out who wrote it. Did you see the bottom of the page?”

Beneath my thumb, scrawled in blue ink, are the letters: J. E. Hoover.

“Hoover read that letter,” Kaiser says. “He initialed it himself. But he didn’t give those people what they deserved. He poured his resources into Neshoba County, the case that would make the Bureau’s reputation against the Klan. But I intend to make up for that failure. I’m going to finish what Dwight Stone started back in sixty-eight. We owe it to the families. Not only the families of the victims, but also of the agents who served down here. A lot of them have died already, but there are some left.”

No one could deny the fierce resolve in John Kaiser’s eyes. “How do you plan to do that?” I ask, passing the letter back to him.