"Mrs. Beckham?"

"I'm real busy right now, Mr.-"

"I just wanted to ask you a couple of quick questions."

"I can't help you. I'm sorry."

"You don't know what I'm going to ask you." Or do you?

"I saw the paper the other day." Her voice is so tight that her vocal cords must be near to snapping. "It's about that, isn't it?"

"Mrs. Beckham, I realize this might be a delicate matter. I'd be glad to speak to you in person if you'd feel more comfortable."

"Don't you come around here! Somebody might see you."

"Who are you worried would see me?"

"Anybody! Are you crazy?"

"Mrs. Beckham, I really only have one question. Were you in that parking lot when Del Payton's car exploded?"

"Oh, my God. Oh, dear Jesus___"

"I have absolutely no interest in what you might have been doing there, Mrs. Beckham. I just want to know about the bombing."

How stupid did that sound? If Betty Lou was doing what Mrs. Little suspected she was doing in that parking lot, it might end up on the network news.

"Don't call back," she pleads. "You'll get me in bad trouble. Yourself too. You don't know. You just don't know!"

She's hung up, but the fear in her voice was real enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck. She is afraid of more than memories. She's been living in dread ever since Caitlin's story ran in the paper.

As I turn into my parents' neighborhood, the cell phone rings. It's Althea Payton.

"I tried to call you earlier, Althea, at the hospital. But you were busy."

"I know. I got this number from your father." She sounds out of breath. "I think I've remembered something important."

"Take it easy. I'm not going anywhere. What is it?"

"I was visiting an adult patient this morning, and his TV was tuned to CNN. I really wasn't paying attention, but then I heard your name. They were talking about that execution in Texas. How you were the lawyer who convicted that man."

"Right. ..."

"They showed you walking into the prison. And then, right after that, they showed another man. They said he was the head of the FBI. I didn't hear his name, but I watched again an hour later to see if they'd run the same thing, and they did."

"I don't understand, Althea. What did you remember?"

"I knew that man. Mr. Portman. John Portman."

"You knew him? From where?"

"From here. Right here in Natchez."

"You've seen John Portman in Natchez?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. Remember I told you about Agent Stone? How he was nice and really wanted to help us?"

"Yes."

"And I told you some of them didn't. How Mr. Stone had another man with him, a young Yankee man, who was cold and never said anything?"

My chest feels hollow. "Yes. ..."

"That was him. That John Portman on the TV was him."

"Althea, you must be mistaken. John Portman would have been very young in 1968."

"It's him, I tell you. His hair's a little grayer, but that's the only difference. The second time they ran the story, I watched close. Ain't no doubt about it. It was him. A young Yankee man, cold as February. Chilled me right to the bone."

Somewhere in my mind Dwight Stone is saying, / knew Portman. He came into the Bureau a few years before I got out....

"Don't say anything else, Althea. I'm on a cell phone. I'm going to check on this and get back to you."

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't want to speculate. Don't talk to anyone about this. I'll get back to you."

"I'll be waiting."

I hit End, then turn into my parents' driveway and park, leaving the engine running. Of all the things I could possibly have learned about this case, this is the most astonishing. If John Portman was in Natchez in 1968, a lot of things suddenly make sense. Dwight Stone's personal hatred of him. Stone's unwillingness to talk about the case. Maybe even the national security seal on the Payton file, although this is probably going too far. No one could have known in 1968 that Special Agent John Portman would wind up director of the FBI thirty years later. So that wasn't the reason Hoover sealed the file. But Portman almost certainly knows why the file was sealed, as does Stone. Given Stone's hatred of Portman-and Stone's dismissal from the Bureau while Portman rose through its ranks-that reason must have been something Stone could not stomach but which Portman went along with. He was a good little German, Stone had said of Portman. He followed orders. The question is, what was he ordered to do?

As I get out of the car, a middle-aged black cop in uniform walks around the corner of the house, one hand on the gun at his hip.

"Are you Penn Cage?"

"Yes, sir."

He smiles and nods. He has the sad, drooping eyes of a beagle. "I'm James Ervin. Just keeping an eye on things for you and your daddy."

"I'm glad to see you, Officer Ervin." I reach out and shake his hand. "That gun loaded?"

He taps the automatic on his hip. "You bet."

"Good man."

"You sure got a pretty little girl in there. Reminds me of my girls when they was little."

"Thank you. Do you know what all this is about?"

Ervin sucks in his upper lip and looks at the ground. "You trying to get whoever killed Del Payton, ain't you?"

"That's right. Did you know Del?"

"My daddy knew him." He raises the beagle eyes to mine, and they are full of quiet conviction. "Don't you worry none. You ain't gonna have no trouble. Somebody come messin' 'round here, they on the wrong side."

CHAPTER 24.

It takes less than ten minutes on my mother's computer to verify what Althea Payton told me on the cell phone. The FBI's official web page features a thumbnail biography of its new director. The bio boasts of Portman's first year as a field agent, one which he spent investigating race murders in Mississippi and Alabama. That year was 1968. A Time magazine writer hailed Portman's "year in the trenches" and stated that his "sterling civil rights credentials" were one of the major reasons the President had tapped the Republican federal judge to lead the FBI in a bipartisan gesture that shocked most Democrats. The Bureau had been wracked by racial problems for the past decade, and had been successfully sued by both African-American and Hispanic agents. Portman's Deep South experience sat well with minority political interests.

By my calculations, Portman was twenty-five when he visited Althea Payton's house with Dwight Stone. Fresh out of Yale Law. Stone was probably ten years older. Beyond this my facts are few. Portman rose swiftly through the Bureau's ranks while Stone was fired five years later. In Crested Butte I sensed that Stone felt his dismissal was related to the Payton case. But if that was true, why would Hoover wait five years to terminate him? Or had whatever happened in 1968 haunted Stone, fueling his alcoholism, until Hoover was finally left no choice but to fire him?

Unable to answer this question, I list the names of main players on the computer and stare at them a while. Payton. Presley. Marston. Stone. Portman. Hinson. One of the first things a writer learns is that the best way to solve a problem is to get out of the way of his subconscious and let it work. Following this dictum, I begin playing with the screen fonts and point sizes, switching from Courier to Bookman, from flowing Gothic to a tortured Algerian. As the fonts swirl and transform themselves before my eyes, it strikes me that men like Leo Marston and John Portman cannot be investigated by normal means, especially by a private citizen. Caitlin's status as a reporter lends us some theoretical authority under the First Amendment, but this means next to nothing in the real world. What is required is some creative thinking.

Kings and presidents can be brought down with the right weapons. The trick is to find their vulnerabilities. Men like Portman and Marston live for power. They hunger for it even as they wield more than most men will ever know. They act with certainty and dispatch, rarely allowing themselves the luxury of doubt. And so long as they operate from this fortress of psychological security, they are untouchable. Perhaps the way to bring them down is to breach that fortress, to turn their worlds upside down and force them into a reactive mode. The way to do that seems obvious enough. Re-introduce them to art emotion they have not felt in a great while.

Fear.

My first thought when my father comes through the pantry door is that he looks ten years older than he did two days ago. He kisses my mother and Annie, then motions for me to follow him into the library. I shrug at my mother and follow.

He sits in his leather recliner and switches on the television, apparently to mask our conversation.

"Somebody just tried to kill Ray Presley."

"What?" I exclaim, dropping onto the sofa to his left.

"His girlfriend was giving him the first few cc's of that Mexican chemotherapy he takes. He started complaining of angina and ripped the catheter out of his wrist. The girl called 911 and gave him CPR until the paramedics got there. He was having a coronary. He just checked himself out of the CCU against my orders."

"What makes you think it was attempted murder?"

"The girl brought in the IV bag, and one of our lab techs ran a few tests. He thinks there's some potassium chloride mixed in with the cocktail."

"Jesus. Did you call the police?"

"Ray told me not to. He was so goddamn mad he wouldn't let anybody but me close to him. He said he'd handle it himself."

"I'll bet he will. How much damage did his heart sustain?"

"I don't have enough enzyme tests back to tell." Dad drums his hands on the arms of the chair. "We've got another problem."

"What?"

"You talked to Betty Lou Beckham today?"

"How do you know that?"

"She showed up at my office at four o'clock, half in the bag. Said she had to talk to me."

I should have expected this. For years my father has acted as a confessor to countless souls, particularly women, who have no outlet for their sorrows and anxieties other than their ministers or local psychologists, as Natchez has attracted only one or two psychiatrists over the past two decades, and none has stayed. In this vacuum, a compassionate M.D. fills the void as no one else can.

"Was she in that parking lot when Del Payton died?"

"Yes. She and Frank Jones were having sex in his car when the bomb went off, if you can believe it. She saw Payton walk out to his car. She actually saw the damned thing explode."

"Christ. What else did she see?"

"When the bomb went off, Jones panicked. He started to take off, but Betty Lou reminded him that he was supposed to be working inside the plant. She was off that day, so she got into her VW to leave. When she was almost out of the lot, she looked up and saw somebody watching her from a pickup truck."

"Who?"

"Ray Presley."

A fist closes around my heart. "Presley was there when the bomb went off?"

Dad nods once, very slowly.

"So ... he was involved in the actual murder."

"It looks that way."

"Did Betty Lou tell anybody she'd seen him there?"

"Not at first. Presley came to see her and explained that might not be good for her health."

This scene is all too easy to imagine.

"Then Frank Jones's wife found Betty Lou's stockings in his car and kicked Jones out of the house. I gather that Mrs. Jones then told the police her husband had lied about why he was in the parking lot, because Presley came to see Betty Lou again. Gave her a harsher warning."

"But she told the FBI, didn't she? Special Agent Dwight Stone."

"Not at first. When Agent Stone found out Jones's wife had kicked him out the morning after the murder, he talked to the wife, and she led him to Betty Lou. Stone offered her money, but Betty Lou wouldn't talk. She was too scared of Ray. Then somebody shot at those FBI agents on the highway. Stone came back and told Betty that if she withheld evidence, he'd make sure she did time in federal prison. He convinced her. She's basically a good girl. She wanted to tell the truth all along."

"She gave up Presley to Stone."

"Yes."

"Then what happened?"

"Nothing. Betty Lou kept waiting for Presley to be arrested, but he never was. Then the FBI pulled Stone out of town. Presley showed up again, beat the hell out of her, forced her to give him oral sex . . . she was a basket case. She was about to skip town when Presley was arrested on the drug-trafficking charges that sent him to Parchman."

I sit back on the sofa, trying to process it all.

"She's still scared to death of Ray. She's been working herself toward a nervous breakdown since Caitlin Masters's article came out. When you called this afternoon, she lost it. I gave her a shot of Ativan and drove her home."