My father looks out over the dark water. Already the ranks of cypress trunks screen us from anyone on shore. “I know what I said yesterday. About how justice needs to be done. God knows black people have had a shitty deal for a long time. I saw things growing up in Louisiana that I’d never want to say out loud. I understand why your blood is up. You and Althea Payton have experienced one of the worst tragedies there is. Losing a spouse, I mean. But I don’t think you fully appreciate the danger of what you’re doing.”

“I think I do. Everybody I talk to tells me to watch my back.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m going to be candid, son. You’re not my main concern here. If a man wants to risk his life for something noble, that’s his lookout. But Annie’s life is something else.”

The undercurrent of fear in his voice gives me pause. “Do you really think whoever killed Payton would hurt Annie or Mom?”

“Anybody who’ll hide in the shadows and bomb a man is capable of anything. They’re scum. Dogs. And they have the dog’s pack mentality.” He gives me the cold eye. “You’ve already been shot at. You put these people at risk for the death house at Parchman, they’ll come for you the way they’re surest to get you. And that’s through your family.”

“Who is this ‘they’ you’re talking about? Do you have any idea?”

My father sighs and looks at the bottom of the boat, then picks up a red and white plastic fishing bob and starts working the line mechanism with his thumb. “Natchez is a good town. I’ve practiced here thirty-five years, and I know. But towns are like people. Even the best of us has dark places in his soul. Fears, prejudices, appetites. The capacity for sin, I suppose. Whoever’s behind this Payton business is an expression of that. It could be some white-trash asshole, or our next-door neighbor. The point is, you’ll never see them coming.”

“Dad, if you’ll listen to me for one minute, I think you’ll understand why I have to do this.”

“Nothing to do out here but listen.”

“Do you know a deputy named Ike Ransom?”

“Sure. Ike the Spike. I treated his mother for years.”

“He followed me home last night after the party. He wants Payton’s killer punished. And he knows who it is.”

“Why doesn’t he do something about it, then? He was a cop for twenty years.”

“He’s scared.”

Dad shakes his head wearily. “Over the years at least three men I know of have claimed they killed Delano Payton. Drunk rednecks like to take credit for that kind of thing. Ransom probably overheard something like that and believed it. Who does he say did it?”

“Leo Marston.”