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“Is this Amos Slocomb?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“My name’s Steve. I was hoping to locate Verna Slocomb. Do you happen to know her?”

“Of course I knew Verna,” Amos said impatiently. “She was my first cousin, my uncle Vernon’s daughter.”

“Was?” Steve ventured. “Is she...deceased?”

“She’s dead,” Amos said bluntly. “Murdered by that no good bastard husband of hers. He’s doing twenty-five to life in the Minnesota Men’s Correctional Facility right here in town, and I hope he dies there. I pray that SOB never again sees the light of day. Now who did you say you are again?”

I didn’t say, Steve thought,and I’m not going to. Aloud he said, “Sorry to bother you.” Then he hung up.

After that, he stood in the phone booth for several long minutes, wondering what to do next. Finally, he made up his mind. Since he was already parked at a gas station, he went over and asked the attendant for help. He was told the prison was located on Minnesota Boulevard and was given directions as to how to get there.

Steve’s first glimpse of the massive edifice made ofhand-quarried granite made him think of ancient castles somewhere in Europe. Once there it took lots of talking to worm his way inside, but Stephen Roper had been born with the gift of gab, and he made it work. He came up with a sob story about how his mother had just died, and it wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that she had finally told him the truth about his father.

Gradually he worked his way up the chain of command and his patience paid off. With a visitor badge finally slapped on his chest, he was escorted into a grim interview room deep in the bowels of the gloomy structure. He sat there on the far side of a small stainless-steel-topped table for the better part of half an hour, waiting and listening as noisy iron doors slammed shut in the corridor outside. At last the door in front of him opened and a shackled and handcuffed man, accompanied by a guard and wearing a black-and-white-striped uniform, shuffled inside.

Seeing his father for the first time, Steve was stunned. The resemblance between them was striking—the same blondish hair, the same narrow, elongated face, the same piercing blue eyes.

Jackson stopped for a moment and stared back at Steve in his own moment of recognition. Finally his thin face cracked into a grin.

“I’ll be damned!” he said. “If it isn’t my firstborn son finally come to visit his dear old dad!”

His momentary grin had revealed another similarity. They shared the same crooked teeth. Steve’s mother had been told early on that her son needed braces, but in Fertile, Minnesota, in the fifties, only rich kids wore braces, and Cynthia Roper, waiting tables at the Country Inn, was anything but rich. Later, by the time she could have afforded braces, her son wasn’t interested.

Jackson eased himself down on a chair opposite Steve. After clicking the prisoner’s handcuffs to the metal fastener welded into the tabletop, the guard let himself out of the room, slamming the heavy door behind him.

“To what do I owe the pleasure after all these years?” Jackson wanted to know.

“I just now found out where you were.”

“How’d you do that—your mom tell you?”

“I was doing a family history paper for my health ed class,” Steve answered. “I found Verna Slocomb’s name in the divorce proceedings.”

“I’ll bet your health ed teacher got a big kick out of finding out your family history included a convicted killer.”

“I didn’t find out about that until today—until I came to St. Cloud,” Steve said. “I talked to Verna’s cousin, Amos.”

“Amos, the rat fink,” Jackson muttered. “Me and him used to be good buddies. At least I thought we were, but he turned against me right along with everybody else. They couldn’t get me locked up fast enough. I’m doing flat time. I won’t be eligible for parole until I’m fifty-six years old.”

“But you did it, didn’t you?” Steve insisted. “You really did kill her?”

“Sure, I did.”

“How come?”

“Why do you think? Because she was leaving me, that’s why!”

But Steve was curious. Thinking about his own experience, he wondered if it was possible that he and his father shared far more than just physical appearance. Maybe Jackson Roper also had interior voices speaking to him and urging him to act.

“You could have just let her go,” he countered, “or was there a voice inside you that told you to shoot her instead.”

“Like a little birdie talking to me from inside my head? Good grief no! I may be a cold-blooded killer, but I’m sure as hell no nutcase!”

That remark offended Steve Roper to the very core of his being. Just because someone heard voices didn’t mean he was crazy. As far as Steve was concerned, that was it. He shoved his chair away from the table, stood up, and made for the door.