On it, a live shot of a bank robbery in progress, a siege situation in Forest Hills, Queens. Police vehicles with lights flashing were part of a cordon half a block away from the bank’s entrance. The news camera zoomed in on the door, which was held open by a woman wearing a business suit, the tail of her blouse hanging out, pointing what appeared to be a handgun in the direction of the camera, screaming something at the police.

The chyron read: ACTIVE SHOOTER IN HOSTAGE SITUATION AT QUEENS BANK: BRANCH MANAGER SUSPECTED.

Odessa was emotionally drained. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.

“Branch manager suspected?” she said. “Shooting up her own bank?” Blackwood was standing at her shoulder now, looking up.

“It’s a Hollow.”

Chapter

1962. The Mississippi Delta.

Solomon parked behind some pickups with out-of-state tags from Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee. Outside the corner gas station and auto repair shop, a white station attendant in a dark-blue jumpsuit with his sleeves rolled up leaned on one of the pumps, watching the men in suits, one black and one white, walk past. The station was open but there was no business today.

Solomon approached the ramshackle post office in the center of Gibbston. A crowd of whites, maybe thirty strong, stood on and off the sidewalk, mostly men in short sleeves with two or three women wearing light dresses and sun hats. That’s where Sheriff Ingalls stood with his deputies, his thumbs in his gun belt. On the other side of the street, not far down from there, a smaller crowd of blacks stood out in front of the church, an even number of men and women, staring uneasily at their opposite number.

Organ music played from the church, but it wasn’t Sunday. It was an impromptu weekday morning service. The congregation was mourning the death of Vernon Jamus.

The boy’s corpse had been discovered in an old, unmarked graveyard overnight, not far from the tree where Hack Cawsby had been hanged.

Solomon glanced back at Blackwood, who had slowed a few steps behind him, an I told you so look, but also an accusatory one.

The boy’s death had set the town on edge. And now Blackwood expected Solomon to lie for him.

Macklin, the Jackson special agent in charge, came off the sidewalk in front of the post office, cleaning his eyeglasses with the end of his necktie. “Good Christ, Solomon,” he said, sliding on his spectacles and blinking. “Now what?”

“I know, sir.”

“Lucky piece of work, you finding the boy’s body so quick.”

Solomon cleared his throat, feeling Blackwood a few feet behind him. “The graveyard and the hanging site are not far from the boy’s house as the crow flies. There’s paths through the sugarcane.”