“CNN and the other networks have been saying publicly that if Marston and Portman have nothing to hide, they should have no problem with cameras. It’s a PR nightmare for Portman. It’s extortion, basically. I assume you’d have no objection to cameras?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, because I already told a CNN reporter that you didn’t.”

“That’s fine. Listen, if that ‘reporter’ you mentioned shows up, keep him inside the building until I get there.”

“I will.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there before you know it.”

As I hang up the phone, I yell, “You tough old son of a bitch!” Though he is probably a thousand miles away right now, Dwight Stone is almost certainly alive. If he can reach Natchez by tomorrow morning without being killed, my slander trial will provide more fireworks than the city has seen in decades. And Leo Marston will be indicted for murder. Only now that prospect does not offer even a shadow of the satisfaction it would have two days ago. If I’m right about Leo being Jenny Doe’s father, every judgment I ever made about Livy Marston was wrong. In my mind she has already been transformed from a privileged princess into a tragic figure, a lost girl trying to find her way.

I try to keep the Taurus under the speed limit. A state trooper has haunted this stretch of road for years, handing out tickets like confetti. As the hardwood forest drifts past, I lean back in the seat and force myself to ponder one of the connections that came to me last night in the darkness of the Denver motel. Sometime near dawn a remarkable and frightening idea struck me. A possible link between Del Payton and Leo Marston. Dwight Stone believes Ray Presley randomly chose Del Payton to be murdered. But if my theory of paternal incest is true, there could be a secret link joining the Payton and Marston families, one which Dwight Stone would have known nothing about.

Althea Payton.

Althea is a nurse now. She works in the hospital nursery. But where did she work in the 1960s? Could she have worked for a private physician? A pediatrician perhaps? Is it possible that she noticed some physical evidence of sexual abuse while handling Livy Marston and reported it to the doctor? If she had, what would have been the likely result? In the 1960s sexual abuse of children was grossly underreported, and became public only in the most egregious cases. A man as powerful as Leo Marston would have had little to fear from a doctor, especially if the evidence was equivocal. And even if it wasn’t, would the doctor have the nerve to confront Leo? To bring in the police to investigate the district attorney?