Henry shakes his head and answers in a mournful voice: “I’m tired of waiting.” And then he fires.

The deadest click in the world echoes through the tunnel.

Brody reels backward as though hit, then rebounds and cracks his pistol across Henry’s face. The black man starts to go for Brody, but spies Regan covering him with the flamethrower from his left. Henry wobbles on his feet, then falls to the concrete like dead weight and doesn’t move. I jump to the end of my chain, but it’s pointless. Brody and the stranger are at least fifteen yards away from me, and Regan is even farther.

Brody kicks the black man’s gun across the floor to Regan, who aims the jet pipe at the stranger and barks, “Who the fuck are you?”

“You heard the man,” says Brody, covering the newcomer with his pistol.

“Nobody,” says the stranger. “I ain’t nobody.”

Brody knocks the baseball cap off the man’s head, exposing nappy white hair. “Henry?” Brody says with obvious curiosity. “Who’s your pet nigger?”

Henry doesn’t stir. Brody steps hard on the reporter’s shoulder wound, but a muffled groan is the only response.

“Give me your wallet, boy,” Brody says, jerking his pistol.

The stranger stares sullenly into Brody’s eyes, but he obeys.

Royal snatches the outstretched wallet, extracts a driver’s license, and reads aloud from it: “Marshall Johnston, Junior. Detroit, Michigan. Michigan?”

Randall Regan shrugs.

Brody pulls out his cell phone and dials a number. “Claude Devereux knows every family in this parish, black or white.”

One minute later, Royal’s lawyer fulfills his client’s faith. Marshall Johnston Jr. belongs to a black family from Wisner, a one-horse cotton town about fifteen miles away. According to Claude Devereux, folks called the son “Sleepy.”

“Well, well,” Brody says to Johnston. “You’re the friend of that Wilson boy, aren’t you? The one who raped my daughter.”

“Pooky never raped nobody,” says Sleepy Johnston. “Your little girl chased him first. That’s what got them together in the first place.”

A strange tremor goes through Brody. He walks slowly around Johnston. “You know what’s pathetic, boy? You ran away from Louisiana after your friend died. You did whatever you did up north all these years—some factory job, I imagine—but you never really got away. All that time you were circling right back home, like a rabbit to the hunter.”

Brody stares at Johnston for several seconds, then motions for Regan to cover him as he walks back to the gun room. I hear a drawer open and close. When Brody returns, he’s holding something in his hand. All the humanity has drained out of his face, leaving only stony hatred.

“Your daughter loved Pooky Wilson,” Caitlin says suddenly. “I could see it this afternoon, when I spoke to her.”