Snake’s face loomed before him, the familiar flattened smile of the hooded cobra swaying before its prey. “You know the rules, Sonny,” he hissed, his eyes filled with wounded pride. “Damn, but I never figured it’d be you who turned.”

Sonny’s eyelids began to close. He wanted to speak, to tell the rest of the boys to get away from Snake as fast and as far as they could, but whatever they’d wrapped around his neck had sealed his throat shut.

“Next stop, Hell, brother,” Snake whispered. “Say hello to Glenn for me.”

Sonny thought of his grandson, flying toward Louisiana at five hundred miles per hour, hoping to see his grandfather and to get a reprieve from war. He thought of his daughter, who would see his murder as a fitting end for a selfish old man. Then he thought of the eager-eyed FBI agent back in the interrogation room, who longed to tell the world who’d really killed President Kennedy. What could it matter after all this time? America had swerved so far off course since then that nothing would ever bring the country back to what it had been. As the last light winked out in Sonny’s mind, his final thought was a prayer that God had heard Jimmy Revels forgive him in the shadow of the Bone Tree.

CHAPTER 66

CAITLIN HAD INTENDED to approach one of the black patrons of the Crossroads Café without Terry, but in the end, her nerve had failed her. It was the audience of white men that had stopped her. Instead, she’d sat down in the booth farthest from the white men and taken Jordan’s map photo from her pocket. Toby Rambin’s hand-drawn graphic left a lot to be desired, but it was better than anything the FBI had. More even than the Lusahatcha County Sheriff’s Department had—unless they’d known where the Bone Tree was all along.

A waitress walked up to Caitlin’s booth and asked if she needed help. Caitlin explained that her friend was ordering from the counter, but she asked for a cup of coffee and borrowed a pen from the waitress—a clear hexagonal Bic like the ones she’d used in grade school. Just holding it gave her a surprisingly nostalgic feeling. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser on her table and began drawing a map of where they’d found Casey Whelan’s body.

While Terry waited for their order at the counter, Caitlin stole glances at the men who were doing the same to her. In between looks, she would go back to her napkin, her mind on whether or not she might be able to lure Carl Sims away from work to help her locate the X on Rambin’s map.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when a boy of about nineteen walked up to her booth and stared down at her. At least six foot two, he wore the traditional uniform of the gangbanger, with a bright designer sweatshirt and oversized shorts that hung so low that his butt crack had to be on constant display.

“You pretty, baby,” the boy said, shifting his package with his hand. “You got a boyfriend?”

Caitlin glanced over at the men in the booths, but no one seemed inclined to come to her aid.

“I’m married, baby,” she said, holding up her engagement ring.

“ ’Course you is, hot as you are.”

A table of truckers were now watching the interchange, but no one interrupted.

“That’s a big rock,” the boy said. “Your husband rich?”

Caitlin looked up with all the hardness she could muster. “Listen, baby. I work for the DEA, and I’m in town to consult with Sheriff Ellis on the crack trade. Do you really want to sit down and get to know me better?”

The boy gaped at her for a few seconds, then shuffled back toward the glass-fronted beer cases, his ass crack in plain view. The men in the booths went back to their papers. A couple chuckled softly.

The waitress brought Caitlin her coffee. Someone left the café, and two more men walked in. Caitlin sipped the harsh mixture, then jotted some numbers on the napkin, trying to remember exactly how long she’d been off the Pill when she’d conceived. She didn’t care that people were going to realize she’d been pregnant before she was married. She just wanted to know that her body had cleared the artificial hormones before her egg was fertilized.

About the time she’d figured out the relevant math, another young black man decided to hit on her. This one didn’t merely approach the booth, but slid onto the bench seat opposite her as though he belonged there.

Caitlin was so shocked that she didn’t protest immediately. This boy was older than the first one, maybe twenty-five. Not a boy, really, but a young man. He was also dressed in work clothes—reasonably clean jeans and a flannel shirt worn over a red long-john top. His hair was cut close to his scalp, he was clean-shaven, and his eyes were large and bright. The only thing that tweaked her radar was the sharp tang of cigarette smoke that wafted off him when he leaned toward her and whispered so that the men in the booths could not hear him.

“You the lady lookin’ for the Chain Tree?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” she said, a wave of heat coloring her cheeks. “The what?”

The young man turned around far enough to check on the men in the booths. “The Chain Tree. Big cypress with old rusty chains on it, where the Klan killed all them boys back in the old days?”

A couple of the men were watching now, and Terry was staring fearfully from the counter. Caitlin leaned forward and said, “How do you know that?”

The young man smiled faintly, and his eyes twinkled. “My daddy goes to Reverend Sims’s church. Beulah Baptist. He was asking about the Tree, whether anybody knew where it was. He talked about the Cat Lady a little, the one whose son got beat to death out there, and his wife got raped.”

The Cat Lady? Caitlin thought, trying to work through the boy’s words. It struck her then that he was the one who had been watching from the gas pumps when she and Terry first arrived. “How did you recognize me?”

The boy laughed. “You don’t exactly look like you fit in around here, you know? But I’ve seen your picture in the Natchez paper before. I saw you a minute ago, when I was getting gas. I figured you had to be her. Carl Sims said you looked like a movie actress.”

“Do you know Carl?”

“I know his cousins, the Greens.”

Caitlin didn’t bother digging any deeper. “So why did you come over here? Just to chat me up?”

The boy’s smile broadened. “No, ma’am. I came to check if you still want to go see where that tree be at.”

A dozen different thoughts tumbled through Caitlin’s mind. At the counter, Terry looked like she was about to call 911. Caitlin gave her the okay sign, then slid the photo of the map across the table.

“Do you recognize that?”

“Who drew this?”

“A friend.”

The boy chuckled softly. “I know who drew this map. Ol’ Toby Rambin.”

The kid was sharper than he looked. “Do you see that X on it?”

The boy nodded.

“Is it in the right place?”

He pursed his dark lips, then laid his long fingers on the edges of the map and regarded it from different angles. After several seconds, he took Caitlin’s pen and drew an X about an inch from the one that Rambin had drawn.

“Right there looks better to me.”

“What’s there?”

The boy looked up at her, his eyes like dark pools. “A place no black man ever went by choice.”

“Is everything okay?” Terry was standing at Caitlin’s side with a tray in her hand. Her eyes were locked onto Caitlin’s as though she was afraid to make eye contact with the stranger in the booth.

“Everything’s fine,” Caitlin said. “Sit here by me.”

After some hesitation, Terry slid into the booth.

“Terry, this is . . . ?” Caitlin gave the boy an inquisitive look.

“Harold,” he said. “Harold Wallis.”