“By busting every Double Eagle still walking this earth. I don’t give a shit how old they are. I want life sentences for every last one of them. And I’m not going to rely on any local juries. I can get them under the conspiracy statutes, and also for domestic terrorism.”

“Don’t sell local juries short. Even Mississippi juries have been doing the right thing on old civil rights murders lately.”

Kaiser takes his cell phone out of his pocket, checks a text message, taps quickly on the keypad, then puts it away. “Almost all of Henry’s computers and records were stolen or destroyed last night,” he says. “I find it hard to believe that he kept no copies, but that’s what he’s telling me.”

Part of me wants to tell Kaiser that Henry did in fact keep backups, but I’m not about to take that step without consulting Caitlin.

“If Henry does have copies,” Kaiser goes on, “I need them. And if you know about files or ledgers or anything like that, please don’t sit on them in the hope that they’ll somehow help your father.”

“I don’t have anything like that,” I tell him, praying that Kaiser hasn’t bugged Henry’s hospital room.

The FBI agent gives me a long look. “You spent nearly two hours alone with Henry in his newspaper office Monday night. He must have confided quite a bit to you.”

“He wanted to help my father, if he could. He told me the Double Eagles had threatened to kill Viola if she ever returned to Natchez. He didn’t know why. That’s mostly what we covered. Then he played his guitar and we talked about old times.”

Kaiser pulls a wry face, but he doesn’t press me.

“Let me ask you something,” I say, as a wild idea strikes me. “If you’re investigating the Double Eagles under the Patriot Act, you must have turned on the Big Ears.”

Kaiser looks disingenuous. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you have the NSA monitoring their phones and e-mail. Right?”

The FBI agent sniffs and looks down the shore. “Is there a motive behind that question?”

“Absolutely,” I reply in a tone that makes him turn back to me. “What do you know about a man named Brody Royal?”

JORDAN GLASS KNELT IN some dead weeds beside Caitlin and began shooting the workboat with her motor-drive Nikon. She clicked off nine shots, then pointed her lens back the way they had come and framed a shot of Penn talking to her husband.

“Do you know why this is happening?” she asked, framing yet another image. “The draining of this massive hole?”

“Because your husband pushed for it?” Caitlin guessed.