“Tough times, bud.”

Sheriff Dennis hangs up.

The sound of Annie’s footsteps comes through the ceiling. As I walk back into the den, television voices float down from the upstairs. Then my TracFone rings as I’m walking to the garage door to be sure it’s locked.

This time it’s Jewel Washington, the coroner. For a second I wonder if the final toxicology report has come in on Viola Turner, but that process usually takes weeks.

“Hey, Jewel,” I answer. “What’s up?”

“Are you close to a radio?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know. Hang on. What’s happening?”

“Just tune in to WMPR in Jackson. 90.1 on the FM dial.”

Walking back into the kitchen, I find no radio. But in the den stands an ancient console sound system, the kind where you lift the heavy wooden lid and find a turntable and radio. I switch on the system and wait for the tubes to warm up.

“I’ll have it in a few seconds, Jewel. Won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

A crazy thought hits me. “It’s not Dad, is it?”

“God, no. The opposite.”

Turning the big dial to 90.1, I hear a disc jockey’s voice, rich with the rhythms of black Mississippi.

“. . . folks will tell you times have changed down here, but no sooner do the movers and shakers get that out of their mouths than something happens to give the lie to their words. To illustrate my point, we’ve got Mr. Lincoln Turner with us. Mr. Turner is the son of the victim in that doctor murder down in Natchez. He was born in Chicago, but his family goes way back in this town. And it’s a good thing he came back home to Mississippi when he did, because otherwise the powers that be would have swept his mother’s death right under the rug. Yes, sir, that big white rug they spread out to cover anything they don’t want the world to see. Well, it’s out again, my brothers and sisters. So let’s hear firsthand what’s going on down there in the old slave capital of the Magnolia State. . . .”

“Has Lincoln been on the air yet?” I ask Jewel.

“Oh, yeah, baby. They’re running it in a continuous loop. I just caught the end of it, but they said they were going to run it again.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not good. He’s saying there’s a huge cover-up to protect your father, and he aims a lot of his anger at your better half.”

“Great. Does Caitlin know?”

“I texted her a minute ago.”

Lincoln Turner’s voice rises from the old speakers.

“The problem down here,” he says, “is that the accused, Dr. Tom Cage, is the father of the mayor. And the mayor is set to marry the publisher of the newspaper. So even though the Natchez DA is supporting this prosecution, the citizens know almost nothing about it.”

“I’ve read their online edition,” says the disc jockey. “There’s a lot of stuff in there about old civil rights cases, which is admirable. The publisher seems to support getting justice for the cold cases worked by that reporter that got killed across the river, Henry Sexton.”

“Yes,” says Lincoln, “but those crimes are forty years old. And to Caitlin Masters, the hero of all those cases is the dead white reporter. There’s hardly anything in there about Sleepy Johnston, who came all the way from Detroit to nail Brody Royal for killing his friend. And there’s no story focusing on my murdered mother, or the case against Dr. Cage, or any more than a passing mention that he’s jumped bail and remains on the run from the law.”

“Amen,” says the disc jockey. “She treats that like a minor detail.”

As I listen, a female arm slips around me and switches off the console.

“That’s enough of that,” says my mother.

“Who was that talking?” asks Annie from behind us.

“A disc jockey in Jackson,” I tell her. Then I say to Jewel, “I’ll talk to you later. Thanks for the heads-up,” and disconnect my call.

“Was he talking about Papa?”

“Yes,” Mom says. “But it’s all lies. And we don’t listen to lies.”

Mom’s response does little to reassure Annie. “This is the kind of thing that goes on during big legal cases,” I explain. “People try to use the media to sway people who might become jury members down the road.”

Annie nods but says nothing.

“Did you find a good bedroom up there?”

She nods. “The bedrooms smell like old people, too, but they’re nice. Gram gave me the one with the TV. Do you want to come watch a show with me?”

“Sure. What about your schoolwork, though? Are you keeping up?”

Annie smiles. “Piece of cake. I’ve never had this much free time before.”

I wonder how long the story of a vacation with my mother is going to hold the St. Stephen’s administration at bay.

“Come on, Dad,” Annie says, taking my hand. “Let me give you a tour.”

Mom says, “I’ll get the groceries from the car and make some sandwiches.”

“I’ll get the groceries,” I tell her, but she shakes her head and pushes me after Annie.

“I’m not so old I can’t carry two grocery bags.”

By the time Annie and I reach the top of the stairs, Lincoln’s voice has faded from my mind. In its place I hear Walker Dennis telling me that another of his deputies has died. By the time Annie gets the TV tuned to a documentary on the Discovery Channel, my eyelids are at half-mast. Instead of penguins marching across the Arctic tundra, I see John Kaiser and Dwight Stone on their knees, scrabbling through the ashes of Brody Royal’s house, searching for scorched artifacts from the fall of Camelot.

“Are you that sleepy, Dad?” Annie asks, poking my shoulder.

“Um . . . I haven’t been sleeping at night.”

“You’re going to miss your sandwich.”

“Sandwich? Oh, yeah. I’ll eat it when I get up.”

In less than a minute I’m sinking into oblivion again, but something startles me back to alertness. It’s my internal body clock. Kaiser told me that Dwight Stone, my old savior, would be in town by six, and I promised I’d meet them at Stone’s hotel.

“Boo,” I mumble, “I need to wake up at six.”

“Tonight?”

“Mm.”

“That’s only like an hour and a half from now.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

She groans in frustration and disappointment, but after a moment she says, “Okay. I’ll get you up.”

I feel myself sinking again. “Don’t forget.”

“Don’t worry. You sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

CHAPTER 31

TOM’S HEART THUDDED when he heard the car engine outside Quentin’s house, but two short blasts on a horn told him his visitor was probably Melba. A minute later, the same pattern was repeated from behind the house. It took Tom longer than that to reach the back door, but the more he moved, the more his stiff muscles relaxed. By the time he looked through the peephole and saw his nurse, he felt half human again, and when he opened the door, he hugged her as if he were a prisoner being visited on death row. The upwelling of emotion surprised him, but Melba was squeezing him as tightly as he was her. After they separated, he wiped his eyes and led her back to the living room sofa that had become his home.

“Is Quentin here?” Melba asked.

Tom could tell she’d hoped to find the lawyer at home. He shook his head. “If the police found him here, he’d lose his law license. I can’t let that happen, especially now.” Tom eyed the Walmart bag in her hand. “Did you get the phones?”

“I bought four.”

“Thank god. Let’s get one activated. I need to let Walt know where I am. He gave me a kind of code, and I can text him where we are using that.”

“How did Captain Garrity’s meeting go?” Melba asked. “With that state police man?”

“I don’t know yet. Apparently, that fellow’s got his own problems, and with the same people who are trying to kill Walt and me.”