Were it not for the tireless efforts of Carlos Castaverde, this long-ago murder would have remained unsolved, languishing in the cold case file cabinet in the basement of the Putner County Courthouse. But Mr. Castaverde refused to let justice die along with an innocent victim.

That was it: Carlos Castaverde. According to this article and another one in the Greenham Gazette, Carlos Castaverde was a persistent journalist-lawyer who had successfully reopened and solved seven civil rights cold cases. His latest efforts had led to the conviction and imprisonment of an eighty-four-year-old ex-Klansman who had kidnapped and lynched a young man by the name of Jackson Honder for “leering” at a white woman in September 1955. According to law enforcement officials at the time, no one in Jackson Honder’s small town had seen or heard anything, and no arrests were ever made. Until over a half century later, when Carlos Castaverde began investigating. After interviewing Honder’s brother and sisters, along with some neighbors and a sheriff’s deputy, Castaverde determined that contrary to the official record, pretty much everyone in town knew exactly who had committed the murder. A few more months of legwork and two eyewitness accounts later, and Carlos had his man. The Honder family expressed their incredulity and gratitude to the Greenham Gazette:

“When Carlos first came round, I thought, let’s let bygones be bygones and be done with it,” said Honder’s sister Maggie Jayce, aged eighty-two. “But now that Jackson’s killer is behind bars, I feel like somethin’ that was turned upside down in the world just got set right again.”

The killer was someone who’d continued to live right alongside the Honder family for fifty-three years. And they’d all known. All of them. Jiminy couldn’t imagine how that must have felt. How do you greet a man who murdered your brother? How do you stand in line at the post office with him, or pass him in the dairy aisle, or pump gas alongside him, knowing all the while? How did they stand it? And would they just have kept on standing it, day after day, had Carlos not come along?

She Googled Carlos Castaverde and immediately came across several hate websites. One claimed he was an illegal immigrant with a grudge against red-blooded Americans. Another listed his home address and offered a bounty for his head.

A more friendly site called him an unsung hero and thanked him for his service. Carlos himself didn’t have a website and seemed to prefer a low profile, though Jiminy was able to find a bio piece on him in the Greenham Gazette that detailed how, after being raised in Texarkana by a Caucasian mother and Mexican father, Carlos had gotten his degree in journalism and then put himself through law school at night while working for a string of small town newspapers. He’d first made a name for himself seven years ago, when, in the course of covering a disputed school board election, he’d stumbled across an account of an unsolved shooting that had taken place in 1964. His subsequent investigation had eventually led to the conviction and incarceration of the superintendent of schools. The town had been outraged; the victim’s family, grateful.

Since then, Carlos Castaverde had opened and pursued six other cases. He hadn’t won convictions in all of them, but he had forced several towns to confront their unpleasant pasts. Not all of them appreciated the experience, and they’d made their wrath known. In a short interview conducted after the Jackson Honder case was won, the forty-four-year-old Castaverde was asked what made him get up every day and pursue the life he’d chosen. He’d answered, “Consideration of the alternative.”

Abrupt gunshots startled Jiminy out of her admiring reverie. She whirled around, her heart throbbing furiously.

“Dammit, missed again,” Jean muttered as she sauntered in from the backyard, a rifle slung over one shoulder. “Sorry for the noise, I was trying to shoot the geranium-gobblin’ demon deer,” she explained.

Jiminy breathed in deeply, trying to calm herself down. It was only Jean. And everything was still alive.

“Do you hunt often?” she managed to ask.

Jiminy herself had never held a gun.

“Oh, darlin’, that’s not huntin’, that’s gardenin’,” Jean answered.

Jiminy nodded, eyeing the rifle.

“Where do you keep that?”

Jean glanced down at the gun.

“Wherever. In the corner by my bed, in the car occasionally—back when I was allowed to drive—but it’s by the kitchen sink generally. So I can grab it quick when those overgrown rats with antlers come around.”

Jean finally registered the terror in Jiminy’s eyes and left the room to put the gun away somewhere out of sight. When she returned, she was carrying two glasses of iced tea.

“I know you said you didn’t want any, but house rules are you gotta have at least a glass in exchange for computer privileges.”

Jiminy smiled and took the glass Jean offered.

“I should be bringing you things,” Jiminy said. “I really appreciate you letting me come here. I’m happy to get the chance to work on this stuff.”

Jean nodded indulgently.

“And what is it exactly that you’re working on?” she asked.

Willa had told her a little bit, but not much. Jean had initially appreciated being spared the details, but now her curiosity was getting the better of her.

“I want to find out more about who killed Lyn’s husband and daughter,” Jiminy said. “I can’t believe their murders were never solved. You knew them, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Jean answered.

Fayeville was a small place, and it had only been smaller back then. She’d known Edward since they were kids, and Lyn since he’d married her. The same year Jean had married her husband, Floyd the prankster.

Jean suddenly didn’t feel like talking anymore, but Jiminy was looking at her expectantly.

“Do you have any idea who might have killed them?” Jiminy asked.

Jean stared out the window, toward the woods that bordered her lawn. She stared a little too long.

“You do, don’t you?” Jiminy pressed. “You know something.”

Jean closed her eyes, wishing she’d been raised to know how to politely kick a guest out of her house. She felt a migraine coming on.

The river that curved around Fayeville was slow and cold. It was filled with rainbow trout and water moccasins that slithered across the surface and made their home along the bank. Jiminy had never been on or in the river. She’d never fished it, never swam it, never even stuck a hand or toe in it. Now that she knew about Edward and the first Jiminy, it made sense to her that the people who would’ve naturally taken her to do such things avoided the river as a matter of course. Still, you’d think they would’ve provided her with some substitute. You’d think they might have brought her to the pool in town, particularly on the hot summer days that made kids fall into sweaty boredom comas. But Jiminy had never been there, either. Until now.

As she pulled into the parking lot, she wished she wasn’t alone. At least there weren’t any cattle in sight.

The Fayeville Municipal Pool was shaped like a kidney bean and included a waterslide that was slightly the worse for wear, though the kids flinging themselves down it didn’t seem to mind. On the far side of the pool stood a tall lifeguard chair positioned to watch over all. The lifeguard was the one Jiminy had come to see.

Before she could make her way to him, someone called her name.

“Jiminy Davis, is that you?”

An enormously pregnant belly sandwiched by a bikini had asked the question. Technically, the mouth on the head attached to the belly had asked it, but all Jiminy could focus on was the belly. She forced herself to look up from it to acknowledge its owner’s face.

“Suze?” Jiminy asked.

Suze Connors had grown up on the farm across the river from Willa’s.