“No. Katrina guilt.” Jordan pointed at the semi trucks. “See those pumps over there? They’re the biggest mobile pumps in North America. They’ve been sitting down in New Orleans since the hurricane, when they were used to help drain Orleans Parish after the flood. But take my word for it, nobody could have released them to move up here without very high authority. The FBI couldn’t do that.”

“Then who?”

“The Bush administration is taking a huge hit for its poor handling of Katrina, especially from the black community. Ergo, they’re willing to send these pump trucks up here. Why? To win political points by sparing no expense to solve a decades-old civil rights murder they didn’t give a shit about last week.”

Caitlin could tell by the passion in Jordan’s voice that she was the kind of journalist who got personally involved in the stories she covered. “Well, at least they’re here.”

“Oh, I agree. I just think it’s important to understand the context.”

Caitlin could hardly believe she was talking to someone she’d admired since she was thirteen years old. She’d first heard of Jordan Glass when a female reporter at one of her father’s papers started waving some pictures around the newsroom where Caitlin was working after school. The photos had been shot in the bush in El Salvador, and the massacre they showed was entirely inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old girl; but just as indelible as the bloody images was the reporter’s triumphant tone when she boasted that the photos had been shot by a twenty-three-year-old American woman and former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Now, twenty-two years later, Caitlin was walking beside that very photographer, only now Glass was forty-five and had a string of prestigious prizes behind her. Glass had been shot while doing her work, for God’s sake.

“Race politics,” Caitlin said. “Even in Natchez, it’s the subtext of half the stories my paper covers.”

“Sorry if I sound pissy,” Jordan said, loudly enough to be heard over the rumbling of the pump trucks. She straightened up. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend today and tomorrow.”

“No?”

“No. I’m flying to Cuba on Friday to shoot Fidel and Raúl Castro. John and I had planned to spend today and Thursday in our house on Lake Pontchartrain—which we haven’t gotten to do since Katrina. That was until your boyfriend—”

“My fiancé,” Caitlin corrected, a little defensively.

“Oh. Congratulations. When are you getting married?”

“The wedding was scheduled for next week.”

“Was?”

“After this stuff came up with Penn’s father, I decided we’d better postpone it. Do you know about the murder charge?”

“John told me.”

“We’re going to wait until we have a better idea of what’s going to happen. Maybe until after the trial. If there is a trial.”