“I don’t know why I keep that old wreck,” Althea says from among the plants. “It makes me sad more than anything. But sometimes it reminds me of the times me and Del went riding out by the river, when we were young. We’d roll down the windows and cruise up the levee road, listening to Nat Cole. Del would have his arm around me, and it was like nobody could touch us. We could do anything we wanted, you know? Go anywhere. It was just a dream, but it was a good one.”

I feel a strange heat at the back of my neck. For the first time I really look at the car I am sitting on. It’s a Ford Fairlane. A white sedan, maybe a ’61. I slide off it slowly.

“Is this . . . ?”

“I thought you recognized it when you first saw it,” Althea says, stepping out of the rows. “From the newspaper picture.”

“I guess it’s the rust,” I say distractedly.

The Fairlane’s hood is lying crossways over the engine compartment. I put my hands under the hot metal and flip the hood off the car. Several dessicated wasp nests cling to the fender wells, but it’s not the wasp nests that send a chill through me. The Ford’s engine is a mass of mangled metal. The bomb that killed Del Payton was set between the engine block and the firewall. The explosion blew the motor forward, breaking the mounts, tore the transmission away from the bell housing, and cut a fissure through the lower part of the firewall. I can’t believe Payton survived two seconds after that blast. Even the engine block shows signs of shearing, and the whole compartment is littered with tiny metal fragments. The exhaust manifold was sliced in two like a length of salami. This image tickles something at the back of my mind.

“It sat rusting behind the jail for a year,” Althea says. “I thought they were keeping it in case they got a clue about the bombing, but they’d just forgot about it. So I had my father tow it out here. Nothing but a home for birds and wasps now.”

As I bend over the wrecked engine, something else strikes me. This car burned. I knew that, of course, from Caitlin’s article, and also from the picture, but it never really registered. Rust has eaten away the charring on the exterior of the car, but the passenger compartment is a nightmare of blackened metal and melted plastic. This too has hidden significance.

“What do you see?” Althea asks.

“I’m not sure.”