Dolores shakes her head in amazement.
“What else do you remember?”
“There was a blond man who howled scripture during the assault. I saw the hair underneath his hood. He quoted scripture even while he raped me. It terrified me that he blasphemed like that while he was . . . doing what he was doing. But it almost seemed he was doing it to mock someone.”
“If that was who I think it was,” I tell her, “his father was a lay preacher, and a completely evil man.”
“What other details do you remember?” Serenity asks.
“The blond man had scars on his stomach. On his lower abdomen. They looked serious. Like something you’d get in a war.”
“Most of the Double Eagles were combat veterans,” I temporize, trying to mask my excitement. “Can you describe the scars?”
“I don’t . . . they were darker than the other skin. Raised. They didn’t look like bullet holes. They looked like . . . like little pieces of hot metal, maybe?”
“Shrapnel,” said Serenity, touching the scar in front of her left ear.
“That’s it.”
“What else?” I ask softly as my pulse races.
“One of them was just a boy. A teenager, but barely. He was quiet through most of it, and I thought he was just going to watch. But then the leader told him to take his turn. He was darker than the rest, far darker than me. Two of the men were dark-skinned for white men, but this one especially. I noticed because the ones watching were holding up lanterns beside me, all throughout.”
“I’ll bet anything that the young one was Forrest Knox. And the older dark one was his father, Frank.”
Dolores’s face remains impassive.
“Did you read any of the stories about the Double Eagles in the Times-Picayune?” I ask. “Last December? Forrest Knox was a ranking officer in the state police.”
“I can’t bear to read about crime and violence.”
Serenity and I share a look. This woman is very fragile, and pushing her too hard might well silence her forever. Looking down, I see her hands quivering.
“That dark young man you remember was Forrest Knox. He was killed in December.”
“Really?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How did he die?”
I glance at Serenity, who raises her eyebrows, giving me the choice.
“Violently, Dolores. He murdered my fiancée. And he died with a spear through his throat.”
Dolores St. Denis studies me in silence for half a minute. Then she says, “I see.”
“His father was almost certainly the other dark man you remember. He was the founder of the Double Eagle group. Frank Knox. He was killed in 1968, only a couple of years after your husband was murdered.”
Dolores goes pale at this. “Really?” she whispers.
If I had to guess, she is thinking about decades of nightmares she might have been spared had she known that the demon in them was dead. “Yes, ma’am,” I say again. “He died on the floor of my father’s medical office. His chest was crushed in an industrial accident.”
Relief shines from Dolores’s eyes.
“Would you be willing to look at some photographs?” I finally ask.
She instantly draws back from me. “I’d rather not. Do you really think any of those men are still alive?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Which ones? Not the blond man.”
I dread answering her, but I have no choice. “He might be, yes. He might be just the man we’re after.”
She closes her eyes once more. “Oh, God. I knew it.”
“What?” asks Serenity, leaning closer. “What is it?”
“They were all bad . . . but in some way, he was the worst. Not the most brutal, but . . . the most twisted. It was him who turned me over, who—”
“It’s all right,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to tell us that right now.”
“I’d rather get it out. I never thought I would, you see. But now . . . maybe because of what you’ve told me, I feel I can.”
“What did the blond man do?” Serenity asks softly.
“He sodomized me. Several did, after that. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The blond one used a stick on me. A piece of bamboo. He said something about the Japanese doing the same thing in China. He called them ‘Japs,’ of course. I—”
Dolores’s voice dies suddenly, as if her air has simply run out.
“Are you all right?” asks Serenity, starting to her feet.
“I thought I was going to die that night,” she whispers. “They tore me up so badly. That’s why I have no children. I couldn’t conceive after that.”
“That had to be Snake Knox,” I say with conviction. “He’s the missing piece in that scene. Frank and his buddies took trophies off the Japanese during the war. Snake probably did the same in Korea. They were obsessed with that kind of thing.” And Snake used a bottle on Viola during the machine-shop rape . . .
Serenity has reached out and taken hold of Dolores’s hand. “I’m right here with you,” she almost croons. “They can’t hurt you now.”
“I need to find out if Snake Knox was wounded in Korea,” I think aloud. “Or if he had any sort of abdominal scars at that time.”
“No, you don’t,” says Dolores.
I look up in surprise. Did I go too far? “I’m sorry, Dolores. I’ve just been hunting this guy for so long. You don’t want me to pursue this?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t need to worry about the scars. Because I saw his face.”
This revelation hits me like a lightning flash. “You saw the blond man’s face?”
“Yes. While the others were raping me, he and the older dark one shared a bottle of whiskey off to the side. They didn’t think I could see them, I guess. Or they weren’t planning on letting me live, maybe.”
“May I show you some photographs?”
Dolores takes a deep breath, then nods.
I take out the folded page from the Examiner that I showed her mother-in-law in Athens Point. On it are headshots of most of the Knoxes, Glenn Morehouse, Sonny Thornfield, and several other Double Eagles. Dolores scans the page for about ten seconds, then reaches out and lays the nail of her right forefinger on the face of Snake Knox.
“That’s him. That’s the blond man with the scars. He and the dark man killed my husband.”
I close my eyes with enervating relief. “Jesus God.”
“Thank you,” Serenity tells her. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Getting slowly to my feet, I look down at Dolores. “I promise you this, Mrs. St. Denis. That man is going to die in Angola Prison.”
She glances over at Serenity, then back at me. “Even without me testifying in court?”
I force myself to take a deep breath, then sit back down in front of her. I came to this fork in the road a thousand times as a prosecutor. Nobody wants to sit in open court and point their finger at a violent killer.
“Dolores—”
“I can’t do it,” she says quickly. “I know what you want, and I wish I could help you. But I can’t sit in the same room with him. I can’t.”
Serenity nods with understanding, but I know she’s going to try to bring the woman around. “Dolores—”
“Can’t you just use what I’ve told you?” she cuts in, her voice high and unsteady. “Like an anonymous tip?”