The last picture showed four teenage boys playing instruments in what must have been the interior of Norris’s Music Emporium. Two guitarists stood up front: one white, the other black. The pimply white boy was Henry Sexton, staring in awe at the left hand of the black guitarist, who was more pretty than handsome. With his head thrown back and his eyes closed, he looked like a young Jimi Hendrix effortlessly channeling the muses through his fingertips. Jimmy Revels, Caitlin guessed. Behind and between the two guitarists, a shirtless, muscular black man with brilliant white teeth pounded blue-glitter drums. Luther Davis. And to the drummer’s left, almost out of the frame, stood a skinny black boy with a huge Fender bass hanging from one lopsided shoulder.

“Pooky Wilson,” she said aloud. “My God.”

To look at the pure joy captured in this image, and then be forced to associate it with words like flayed and crucified, made her skin clammy with revulsion. This world of music and friendship—an oasis in a desert of hatred and mistrust—had been utterly obliterated by the rage of one man, Brody Royal. Not only had all three black boys in this picture been tortured, murdered, and mutilated, but the building itself had been burned to the ground, and its owner immolated. Why was anyone surprised that Henry Sexton had spent decades in his quest to gain justice for these people?

Reaching into her bottom drawer, she took out the snapshot of Tom Cage in the back of the fishing boat with Brody Royal, Claude Devereux, and Ray Presley. What in God’s name are you doing with these assholes? she wondered. Strangely energized, she snatched up a pen and scrawled a list of leads on her notepad:

• The Jericho Hole (Kaiser has monopoly)
• The Bone Tree (Start tomorrow?)
• Pooky’s “Huggy Bear” (No clue to ID. Publish plea to come forward?)
• Albert’s ledgers (No clue to location)
• Brody Royal (Too dangerous to approach)
• Claude Devereux (Too smart/attorney)
• Randall Regan (Brutal rapist, killer)
• Katy Royal Regan (Penn would freak. Henry, too.)

One scan of this list made the truth painfully obvious: Only one avenue of investigation was practical in her existing time frame. Katy Royal. But following that avenue could be dangerous, if Randall Regan discovered she’d made contact with his wife. Interviewing Katy today would surely damage Caitlin’s relationship with Penn, and possibly with Henry as well. Could she justify doing that? That’s not the question, she thought. Penn didn’t even lift the phone to tell me he was meeting Lincoln Turner at a juke club out in the boonies. The question is, can I bear to publish this story tomorrow without adding one iota of original information to it? Can I be merely a mouthpiece for Henry Sexton, however noble that might be?