“There was a guy like that stopped by a good while back,” offers the deputy. “When I first came on duty, before lunch.”

“And you didn’t think he was suspicious?” Walker asks in a challenging tone.

The deputy shrugs. “Well … he was black, you know? I figured he was a friend of Henry’s. He sure wasn’t no Double Eagle. But I got his name, boss. It oughta be there on the list.”

Kaiser grabs the list and scans it. At first he says nothing, but then he starts shaking his head, and his mouth shows the hint of a smile.

“What is it?” asks the sheriff.

“Gates Brown,” says Kaiser. “Ever hear that name?”

“Sounds familiar,” says Dennis, cutting his eyes at me. “Who is he?”

Kaiser laughs outright. “Gates Brown was a pinch hitter for the Detroit Tigers in the late sixties and seventies. Batted left-handed but threw right-handed. He won a World Series with the Tigers in 1968. Batted four-fifty.”

“How do you know all that?” asks the deputy, marveling at the FBI agent’s encyclopedic memory.

“I had a radioman from Detroit in my platoon in Vietnam. Black kid. He never stopped talking about Gates Brown. He liked him because Brown had been discovered while playing for a reform school team.”

“Well, what the hell does this mean?” asks Sheriff Dennis, glancing at me every few seconds.

Kaiser looks hard at the frazzled deputy. “Did you ask to see Mr. Brown’s ID, or did you just ask him to sign the book?”

“I looked at his driver’s license.”

“Did the name on the license match the signature?”

The deputy goes red again.

“Goddamn it,” Walker curses.

Kaiser holds up his hand to calm the sheriff. “So—Henry had a visitor who used an assumed name. A man who may have worked for Albert Norris when he was a boy. We’ll have to try to find out what we can about ‘Mr. Brown.’”

Sheriff Dennis gives me yet another sidelong glance, but I look away. As I do, I see Caitlin watching me carefully. She’s come to the same conclusion I have: “Gates Brown” must be “Huggy Bear”—the childhood friend of Pooky Wilson, who visited his mother on her deathbed. Henry’s mystery witness is still in town—or at least he was this morning.

“Agent Kaiser?” says a new FBI agent from the edge of the group.

“Yes?”

“We’ve been grid-searching the grounds on the highway side of the building. We just found a dead raccoon out there. Still warm.”

“So?”

“It was right under the victim’s window.”

“Show me.” Kaiser slips through the knot of bodies and heads toward the exit.

As the FBI men move away, Walker grabs my arm and leans close to my ear. “That’s got to be that same ‘Mr. Brown’ who told me he saw Brody Royal burning the Beacon, right?”

“I imagine so.”

“What the hell is going on, Penn?”