“Not so much that. It was the little things. Hell, they misspelled my name. How the hell can you misspell Jones? By God, that takes some doing.”

When we top the hill that runs down to the cut in the bluff, I remember that there are two bridges spanning the Mississippi now. Throughout my childhood there was only one, and I can’t seem to keep the new one in my mind. As the Trans-Am ramps onto the main span of the westbound bridge, the mile-wide tide of brown river opens seventy feet below us. The vistas to the north and south look much as they did to Sam Clemens a hundred years ago: muddy water swollen into the forest and sandbars on both banks, pale blue sky blanked out at the center by a relentless sun. Ahead of us, Vidalia, Louisiana, is laid out like a toy town behind its levee, some buildings no higher than the river itself, the personification of provisional existence.

“You want to ask me about that killing, don’t you? Hell, I’ve told the story a thousand times. A dozen times a day since that article ran.”

“Did the police question you a lot about what you saw?”

Jones squints, his rather dull version of a cagey look. “Everybody questioned me a lot. I was the only person who saw that Fairlane blow.”

This isn’t the time to contradict him. “Did you get the feeling the police really wanted to solve the case?”

“What do you mean?”

I let the silence speak for me.

He licks his lips and looks out his window. “You writing a book about this?”

“No.”

“Well, if you was . . . it seems like my story might be pretty valuable to you.”

“I’m not. I just want to know about the police. Do you remember who investigated the case?”

“Henry Creel and Ronnie Temple. And you’re goddamn right they tried to solve it. Those guys had a hundred-percent clearance rate back then.”

“They must be the only detectives in the world with that record.”

“These days maybe. Back then they didn’t have the goddamn ACLU breathing down their necks.”

“But they didn’t solve the case.”

Jones rolls down the window and spits into the wind. “Somebody killed a nigger. Case closed.”

“What do you know about Ray Presley?”

“Enough not to say a word about him.”

I turn onto Deer Park Road, which follows the river south on the Louisiana side. Soon we’re driving past cotton and soybean fields, the levee on our left, the monotony broken only by shotgun churches, house trailers, and tar-paper shacks.

“You seem to know a lot about Creel and Temple.”

“Creel was my wife’s cousin.”

“Was?”

“Lou Gehrig’s disease, over to Shreveport. Temple’s dead too. Heart attack.”