“Althea, you must be mistaken. John Portman would have been very young in 1968.”

“It’s him, I tell you. His hair’s a little grayer, but that’s the only difference. The second time they ran the story, I watched close. Ain’t no doubt about it. It was him. A young Yankee man, cold as February. Chilled me right to the bone.”

Somewhere in my mind Dwight Stone is saying, I knew Portman. He came into the Bureau a few years before I got out. . . .

“Don’t say anything else, Althea. I’m on a cell phone. I’m going to check on this and get back to you.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t want to speculate. Don’t talk to anyone about this. I’ll get back to you.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

I hit End, then turn into my parents’ driveway and park, leaving the engine running. Of all the things I could possibly have learned about this case, this is the most astonishing. If John Portman was in Natchez in 1968, a lot of things suddenly make sense. Dwight Stone’s personal hatred of him. Stone’s unwillingness to talk about the case. Maybe even the national security seal on the Payton file, although this is probably going too far. No one could have known in 1968 that Special Agent John Portman would wind up director of the FBI thirty years later. So that wasn’t the reason Hoover sealed the file. But Portman almost certainly knows why the file was sealed, as does Stone. Given Stone’s hatred of Portman—and Stone’s dismissal from the Bureau while Portman rose through its ranks—that reason must have been something Stone could not stomach but which Portman went along with. He was a good little German, Stone had said of Portman. He followed orders. The question is, what was he ordered to do?

As I get out of the car, a middle-aged black cop in uniform walks around the corner of the house, one hand on the gun at his hip.

“Are you Penn Cage?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiles and nods. He has the sad, drooping eyes of a beagle. “I’m James Ervin. Just keeping an eye on things for you and your daddy.”

“I’m glad to see you, Officer Ervin.” I reach out and shake his hand. “That gun loaded?”

He taps the automatic on his hip. “You bet.”

“Good man.”

“You sure got a pretty little girl in there. Reminds me of my girls when they was little.”

“Thank you. Do you know what all this is about?”

Ervin sucks in his upper lip and looks at the ground. “You trying to get whoever killed Del Payton, ain’t you?”

“That’s right. Did you know Del?”