That was why he couldn’t put it out of his mind, whether or not someone, someday, would link him to the things he had done. It invaded his thoughts every ten minutes or so, the way they say young men think about sex, or old men think about death. Nobody ever talks about how a killer might suffer, thinking about being caught. Not every killer was cold-blooded, or not totally, or at least not for a whole lifetime. He brushed the back of his hand against his eyes. Do one thing and you’re marked for life.

Appetite suddenly lost, he stared down at his fries getting soggy in the ketchup pool on his plate. Stop thinking, he told himself. Be a man, he told himself. He paid his bill and heaved himself out of the booth to go back to the library.

Beaufort spotted a Walgreens down the street from Applebee’s, stopped in there and, after looking again at an enormous number of options on the shelf, with odd names like Zantac, chose a large bottle of Tums and put it in his backpack. Outside the library, he stopped for a smoke, figuring if it wasn’t allowed in a restaurant it sure wouldn’t be allowed in a library.

Spilling a few fruit-flavored tablets into his mouth, with a deep breath and a curse at the Reuben sandwich mixed with the anxiety that had given him gas, he went back to the bank of computers and tried typing Walker again, this time with Murder. There on the screen he saw the possibility of Walker family murders. His heart pounded and his hands went moist. He wondered if the computer could somehow detect what he was thinking. That he was thinking of the nightmares. But not knowing was worse than the nightmares. He accepted the suggestion.

There were a million results, but the ones he saw at the top of the screen were all on target. He chose the second and read. He read things he didn’t know about the Walker family, Cliff and Christine in their midtwenties, and two children, a boy and a girl both under five years of age. This information wasn’t readily accessible in 1959, only in the police reports and whatever the police chose to give to the newspapers. For the first time he read about the neighbor finding the bodies, and about the ton of evidence that had been collected:

Some red cellophane from a cigarette wrapper, supposedly from a brand that Cliff Walker did not smoke.

A bloody boot print that did not match anyone in the family.

Witnesses reporting the presence of a ’57 Chevy in the Walkers’ yard.

Witnesses reporting seeing Hickock with a scratch on his face.

Baby dolls wrapped in Christmas paper that Hickock had sold to a preacher in Louisiana.