“I don’t plan to need it.” I push open the screen door and walk quickly down the steps. “I’ll drop the original back tomorrow.”

“Keep it. I don’t want no part of that no more.”

“I never saw you.” I put one leg into the BMW. “Hey . . . if you really gave up on the case, why’d you steal the file when you left?”

Pinder stands motionless in the open doorway. “Get a little of my own back, I guess. I knew I’d be the last black chief for a long time.” He smiles oddly, as though he has just seen something in a new light. “Maybe that file’s been waiting here for you all this time. Mysterious ways, right? Maybe the bastards won’t get you after all.”

I give Pinder a salute. “Hope they’re biting today, Chief.”

He winks at me. “They biting every day, if you know where to look.”

CHAPTER 16

The Payton house is a typical rural home, built with cheap materials on concrete blocks, but better maintained than most. Lovingly tended flower beds border the front, concealing the dark crawl space beneath the structure. The cars in the driveway are probably worth more than the house, but at least the nearest neighbor is fifty yards up the road.

Georgia Payton sits beneath a large pin oak, rocking slowly in a white cotton dress. She lifts a hand as I pull into the driveway, but she does not get up.

I walk over to say hello before going to the front door. “Hot one, isn’t it?”

She cackles at me. “I lived three-quarters of my life without no air conditioning. The Lord’s breeze be good enough for me.”

“Mr. Cage?”

Althea Payton is beckoning to me from the door. She wears navy shorts and a red blouse tied at the waist. She looks like she’s been gardening.

“Come in out of that heat!” she calls. “Georgia’s fine out there.”

I smile at the old woman, then cross the drive and follow Althea into the house.

“Georgia’s like an old loggerhead turtle sunning itself on a rock,” she says. “I asked her to stay outside while we talk. She can be a little hard to handle. Have a seat.”

I sit on a flame-print love seat, and Althea takes a cloth-covered easy chair to my right. The living room holds old but clean furniture, all of it arranged around a new television set. Dozens of framed family photos hang on the wall behind the TV. I look away when I realize I’m staring at a wedding photo of Del and Althea. They look young and happy, destined for anything but what happened to them in the spring of 1968.

“On the phone,” she says hesitantly, “you said it was about my husband.”