Michael Wells and I are sitting on a leather couch in the private office of Dr. Tom Cage, a general practitioner in Natchez for more than forty years. Bookshelves line all four walls, some stuffed with medical treatises, others with histories of the Civil War. There’s a stack of medical charts a foot high on Dr. Cage’s desk, the bane of every physician. A half-painted lead soldier holding a musket stands in the shadow of the charts, a bottle of gray paint beside him. Like us, he seems to be waiting for the doctor to appear.

But what holds my attention now, what I’ve hardly been able to take my eyes off since arriving, is the polished white skull being used as a bookend in the shelf behind Dr. Cage’s desk. The empty eye sockets stare at me with what looks like mockery, reminding me yet again that Nathan Malik is dead, that the murders in New Orleans remain unsolved, and that I am still a suspect.

Since finding the Polaroids of the naked children in my father’s bag, I’ve been unable to think clearly. The voices that tormented me long ago have returned, a susurrant undercurrent of vicious commentary that I cannot silence. More disturbing, something deep within me seems to have cracked, leaving me broken in a way I cannot begin to mend. What is broken, I think, is my faith-my desperate hope that despite what Grandpapa told me, my father could not have done such terrible things to me.

But pictures don’t lie.

Michael has done all he can to ease my anxiety. Though he believes it would be a mistake to exhume my father’s body, he telephoned his attorney during the drive over and asked what was required to accomplish such a thing. There’s no law in Mississippi governing the exhumation of bodies; in fact, not even a permit is required. What is required is the presence of a funeral director as a witness. However, when Michael phoned the funeral director, he was told that the funeral home would oversee no exhumation without a court order. Michael’s lawyer believes such an order can be obtained from the chancery judge ex parte-without a hearing-but to do so will require an affidavit stating the reason for the exhumation from the decedent’s next of kin.

My mother.

“Hi, Michael. Sorry to keep you two waiting.” A tall man with white hair and a white beard marches into the room and pumps Michael’s hand. Then he turns to me and smiles. “So, you’re Catherine Ferry?”

I stand and offer Dr. Cage my hand. “Please call me Cat.”

He takes it and squeezes softly with arthritic fingers. “And I’m Tom.”

He moves behind his desk and takes a seat. A big cigar and several tongue depressors protrude from his white lab coat, and a red stethoscope hangs around his neck. It’s clear that Tom Cage practices the kind of medicine my grandfather hasn’t deigned to practice in many years.

Dr. Cage takes a Diet Coke from a minifridge behind his desk, pops it open, and takes a long pull from the can. After a long exhalation of satisfaction, he sets the can on the desk and fixes his eyes on me.

“Luke Ferry. What do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. Everything you remember, I suppose.”

“That’s a lot. I treated Luke as a boy, treated his parents before they died, and I treated the uncle who raised him off and on. What are you most interested in?”

I look at the floor where my father’s green bag rests between my feet. “Vietnam,” I say softly. “The White Tigers.”

Dr. Cage’s eyes flicker. “You already know more than I thought you would. Catyour father learned to shoot to put food on his family’s table. He shot better as a boy than most men could after a lifetime of practice. But in the war they made him use that talent for another purpose. They made him a sniper. Luke had mixed feelings about that job. On one hand, he was proud of his professionalism.” Dr. Cage gestures at his bookshelves. “As you can see, I’m a military history buff. I also served in Korea. Did you know that in Vietnam, the average number of rounds expended per dead enemy soldier was fifty thousand?”

“Fifty thousand!” Michael says beside me. “That can’t be right.”

“It is,” says Dr. Cage. “That’s one reason we lost that war. You want to guess how many rounds were expended by army and marine snipers during Vietnam per dead enemy soldier?”

Michael shakes his head. “One?”

“One point three nine. Those boys were very good at their job. But that kind of killing is much more difficult than returning fire at a man who’s trying to kill you. It’s done in cold blood, looking through a scope at a man ten times life-size. You watch him smoke a cigarette or take a piss, and then you blow his head into ragged chunks of gore and bone. Think of John Kennedy’s head exploding in the Zapruder film. That’s what you see every time you shoot. Once you have pictures like that in your head, they never go away.”

Dr. Cage takes another sip of Diet Coke. “My point is, Luke was under great stress even before he was pressed into the White Tigers. And in that unit, things changed for the worse, and damn quick.

“The Tigers were essentially a terror unit, sent into Cambodia to harry and kill NVA forces hiding in a neutral country. These were covert operations carried out behind the lines, under the command of officers who had cast aside the rules of organized warfare. They took few prisoners. When they did, it was to torture them. Rape was used both as an intimidation tactic against the local populace, and also as a reward for the troops. They rarely distinguished between soldiers and noncombatants. Almost everyone they encountered was considered a target.

“When Luke protested against extreme acts of cruelty, he was ridiculed by his fellow soldiers and looked on with suspicion by his superiors. He soon learned that if he failed to go along with the prevailing authority, he’d wind up as dead as the rest of the people who came in contact with the White Tigers.”

While Dr. Cage pauses to think, I rummage through the bag until I find the wire string of “rotten prunes.” Fighting my revulsion, I hold the string out to the doctor.

“Do you know what this is?”

Dr. Cage takes the string from my hands and lays it on his desk. With a magnifying glass from his pocket, he examines one of the blackened chunks.

“Ears,” he says.

“What?” asks Michael.

Dr. Cage looks up at us. “It’s an ear necklace. Never seen one. Where did you get it?”

“Daddy kept it hidden in a bag with some other things.”

“It’s a war trophy. When some soldiers killed an enemy in Vietnam, they cut off one or both ears and strung them on a necklace, much like Indians taking scalps.”

“I’ve heard of that,” says Michael. “But I guess it never seems real until”

Dr. Cage shrugs. “They did it with foreskins, too, but that’s nothing new. They were taking foreskins as trophies back in the Crusades. War has always been barbaric. Only the tools have changed.”

It’s hard for me to visualize the father I knew living in the world Tom Cage is describing. “So, my father cut the ears off his victims?”

“ Victim isn’t the proper word during wartime,” Dr. Cage says, “though it may be fitting in cases like this. But it’s difficult for me to imagine Luke Ferry stooping to mutilation. There aren’t more than twenty ears on this necklace, and Luke had thirty-six confirmed kills as a sniper alone. He probably killed many more without a spotter present to make it official. No, I’d be very surprised if this necklace belonged to Luke.”

“Why?” asks Michael. “Given all that you’ve told us?”

“Because Luke risked his life to bring the men who’d done this kind of thing to justice. As soon as he got back to Vietnam from Cambodia, he went over the head of his CO and reported what he’d seen. Higher authority did exactly what they always do when someone ignores the chain of command. Within a week, Luke was back in action with the White Tigers. That’s when he was wounded-according to Luke, by his fellow soldiers. It’s a miracle he got aboard a medevac chopper alive. He said that if it hadn’t been for one man, he’d have been left to bleed to death in a rice paddy.”