Instead he said, “Vic was the one who had mentored me from the time I was an altar boy. He encouraged me to do part of my pastoral training at the prison. And he counseled me through the whole process of discovering whether my destiny lay with the priesthood.”

I allowed him the truce for now. “Did he try to get you to stay in the church?”

“Not at all. He told me to follow my gut rather than my intellect. And I did. That sketch became a symbol of how much he honored my decision.”

The mention of the sketch swung my attention back to Hickock’s letter and its promise of more. “Is this all he gave you?”

“I’m not sure. I have so much garbage that I’ve never thrown out, and here you’ve just found the letter I never knew I had. So many years had gone by, with no one from Hickock’s family contacting him, Santangelo probably forgot it was even there.”

“You’re telling me Santangelo didn’t get the full import of what he had? Truman Capote made Hickock and Smith famous.”

“Now we can say that. You take a parish priest from Kansas in the late fifties and there was a good chance he never heard of Truman Capote.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You come on. The country didn’t use to be as small as it is now. Vic would likely have known about In Cold Blood at some point, and that might have been what made him think the sketch had some value, but that could be as far as it went. I didn’t even think it was a big deal until now. Not all of us are true-crime aficionados like you are. And new confession or not, I think you’ll agree it’s a moot point that Hickock and Smith killed the Clutters.”

I thought of all the stuff crammed into the closet in Carlo’s library. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t have the confession?”

“I don’t. Or at least I don’t think I have it.”

Conflict forgotten for the moment, we both stood up at the same time and went to the library closet. He pulled out four large plastic tubs, spread them on the floor, and we sat down to go through them. I was glad I had shoved the photo of Jane way down on the side of the top bin, and hoped it wouldn’t emerge. Though driven by wanting to see if Carlo had Hickock’s confession, I didn’t think I could bear to see Jane just now. Out of sight, out of mind, Mom would have said.

We pulled out stack after stack of articles typed on manual typewriters, and Xeroxes of sections of books he had been reading for one project or another, and syllabi of courses he had taught over the years …