The man in the snapshot didn’t answer. History remained unalterable: Albert Norris had stayed in the South and done about as well as a black man could in the town where he was born—until the night he was burned alive. Caitlin’s black hair fell across the photograph. She brushed it back, then slid the photo aside.
The last picture showed four teenage boys playing instruments in what must have been the interior of Norris’s Music Emporium. Two guitarists stood up front: one white, the other black. The pimply white boy was Henry Sexton, staring in awe at the left hand of the black guitarist, who was more pretty than handsome. With his head thrown back and his eyes closed, he looked like a young Jimi Hendrix effortlessly channeling the muses through his fingertips. Jimmy Revels, Caitlin guessed. Behind and between the two guitarists, a shirtless, muscular black man with brilliant white teeth pounded blue-glitter drums. Luther Davis. And to the drummer’s left, almost out of the frame, stood a skinny black boy with a huge Fender bass hanging from one lopsided shoulder.
“Pooky Wilson,” she said aloud. “My God.”
To look at the pure joy captured in this image, and then be forced to associate it with words like flayed and crucified, made her skin clammy with revulsion. This world of music and friendship—an oasis in a desert of hatred and mistrust—had been utterly obliterated by the rage of one man, Brody Royal. Not only had all three black boys in this picture been tortured, murdered, and mutilated, but the building itself had been burned to the ground, and its owner immolated. Why was anyone surprised that Henry Sexton had spent decades in his quest to gain justice for these people?
Reaching into her bottom drawer, she took out the snapshot of Tom Cage in the back of the fishing boat with Brody Royal, Claude Devereux, and Ray Presley. What in God’s name are you doing with these assholes? she wondered. Strangely energized, she snatched up a pen and scrawled a list of leads on her notepad:
The Jericho Hole (Kaiser has monopoly)
The Bone Tree (Start tomorrow?)
Pooky’s “Huggy Bear” (No clue to ID. Publish plea to come forward?)
Albert’s ledgers (No clue to location)
Brody Royal (Too dangerous to approach)
Claude Devereux (Too smart/attorney)
Randall Regan (Brutal rapist, killer)
Katy Royal Regan (Penn would freak. Henry, too.)
One scan of this list made the truth painfully obvious: Only one avenue of investigation was practical in her existing time frame. Katy Royal. But following that avenue could be dangerous, if Randall Regan discovered she’d made contact with his wife. Interviewing Katy today would surely damage Caitlin’s relationship with Penn, and possibly with Henry as well. Could she justify doing that? That’s not the question, she thought. Penn didn’t even lift the phone to tell me he was meeting Lincoln Turner at a juke club out in the boonies. The question is, can I bear to publish this story tomorrow without adding one iota of original information to it? Can I be merely a mouthpiece for Henry Sexton, however noble that might be?
“That’s not even the question,” she said aloud. “The question is, can I get to Katy Royal in the next hour without her husband finding out about it?”
Going back over her conversations with Penn, Caitlin realized that she’d only promised to hold off publishing anything about Brody Royal until midnight tonight. Technically, she wouldn’t be breaking her word by simply investigating him. She knew what Penn would say about this Clintonian parsing of language, but right now, his only interest was saving his father from being shot by police. Caitlin wanted the same thing, of course, but she didn’t want only that. It wasn’t even within her power to help Tom get to safety. And now that the terrifying scope of Brody Royal’s and the Double Eagles’ crimes had been revealed, she couldn’t simply turn away. This was the kind of story she’d originally moved south to cover. Never mind that the old Savage South of her mother’s imagination no longer existed; the Double Eagles were still alive—as was Brody Royal—and they’d already proved they would kill to remain free. A bloody wake of violence trailed back through history behind those old men, and the families they had wounded suffered to this day. If Caitlin had a chance to bring peace and justice to those families by succeeding where Henry had failed, how could Penn expect her to turn away? Besides, she thought with a bracing thrill, Penn will be stuck in that meeting for at least two hours.
As a sop to Penn, she dialed Mercy Hospital and asked for Henry Sexton’s room. A few moments later, Sherry Harden came on the line.
“Sherry, this is Caitlin Masters. Is Henry doing any better?”
“Nobody knows,” Sherry said curtly. “He’s sleeping. He’s been out for most of the day.”
“I’m sorry. I was hoping to verify something about the story he wants me to publish tomorrow. I need to know if he tried to reinterview someone who refused to tell him anything the first time.”
“Are you serious? I can’t wake him up for that. You’ll just have to do the best you can. And please don’t call back. The phone disturbs him.”
Sherry hung up.
Thank you very much, Caitlin thought with perverse satisfaction. Now Penn couldn’t argue that she’d tried to circumvent Henry.