“Nope,” I said. “No one goes in that room until the state examiner gets here.”

Arch shook his head with great disgust. “You RBA people won’t rest until you turn this whole thing into a goddamn clusterfuck.”

His right hand flexed and clinched. I didn’t say anything, just watched his face turn a bright crimson as he held his breath. “Y’all just want to be heroes,” Arch said. “But I think it’s a little too late for that.”

He turned and walked away.

I stayed there for hours, as everyone in town and every newsman in the state turned up at Homer C. Cobb Memorial. The flashbulbs were endless; twice, I had to stop newspapermen from entering the room with Mr. Patterson’s body.

Hugh Britton, who installed carpet by day but did counterintelligence for the RBA at night, stayed with me, not uttering a word, until the state medical examiner arrived. Later, we sat outside by the fountain, smoking cigarettes.

That’s when I saw John Patterson, wandering in and out of the cars parked along the hill. I found him, sweated through a casual yellow shirt, and he looked up to me from the hot asphalt as if seeing a man he’d never met.

“You okay?”

“I can’t find my car.”

He steadied himself against the hood of a red DeSoto Deluxe, finding purchase on the hood ornament, a likeness of DeSoto himself.

A Russell County sheriff’s car slowed, Bert Fuller leaning out the driver’s window and asking, “You need a ride?”

John nodded, stepping through Fuller’s headlights and climbing in the passenger’s seat. Fuller looked at me standing there and gave a slight grin before turning back to John and saying, “If I find the sonofabitch, I’ll bring him right to you. You got my word on that, partner.”

Fuller checked the tilt of his cowboy hat in the rearview before knocking the car in gear and moving out slow and steady down the hill.

THE FIRST LIGHT ON THE RIVER WASHED OVER THE CRIME scene and over the tired faces of men standing in that narrow shot of alley taking pictures and measuring Mr.