"He has two weeks. How would you feel if you had two weeks?"
"Guess I'd be praying a lot."
"He's not at that point yet, but it won't be long."
"Is it gonna happen?"
"It's certainly being planned. There's nothing in writing to stop it."
Lettner threw a handful of peanuts into his mouth. "Well, good luck to you. Since you came to see me, I've found myself pulling for you and of Sam."
"Thanks. And you came to Memphis to wish me luck?"
"Not exactly. After you left, I thought a lot about Sam and the Kramer bombing. I looked at my personal files and records - stuff I haven't thought about in years. It brought back a lot of memories. I called. a few of my old buddies and we told war stories about the Klan. Those were the days."
"I'm sorry that I missed them."
"Anyway, I thought of a few things that maybe I should've told you."
"Such as."
"There's more to the Dogan story. You know he died a year after he testified."
"Sam told me."
"He and his wife were killed when their house blew up. Some kind of propane leak in the heater. House filled up with gas, and something ignited it. Went off like a bomb, a huge fireball. Buried them in sandwich bags."
"Sad, but so what?"
"We never believed it was an accident. The crime lab boys down there tried to reconstruct the heater. A lot of it was destroyed, but they were of the opinion it had been rigged to leak."
"How does this affect Sam?"
"It doesn't affect Sam."
"Then why are we talking about it?"
"It might affect you."
"I really don't follow."
"Dogan had a son, a kid who joined the Army in 1979 and was sent to Germany. At some point in the summer of 1980, Dogan and Sam were indicted again by the circuit court in Greenville, and shortly thereafter it became widely known that Dogan had agreed to testify against Sam. It was a big story. In October of 1980, Dogan's son went AWOL in Germany. Vanished." He crunched on some peanuts and tossed the hulls to a covey of pigeons. "Never found him either. Army searched high and low. Months went by. Then a year. Dogan died not knowing what happened to the kid."
"What happened to him?"
"Don't know. To this day, he's never turned
UP."
"He died?"
"Probably. There was no sign of him."
"Who killed him?"
"Maybe the same person who killed his parents."
"And who might that be?"
"We had a theory, but no suspect. We thought at the time that the son was grabbed before the trial as a warning to Dogan. Perhaps Dogan knew secrets."
"Then why kill Dogan after the trial?"
They stopped under a shade tree and sat on a bench in Court Square. Adam finally took some peanuts.
"Who knew the details of the bombing?" Lettner asked. "All the details."
"Sam. Jeremiah Dogan."
"Right. And who was their lawyer in the first two trials?"
"Clovis Brazelton."
"Would it be safe to assume Brazelton knew the details?"
"I suppose. He was active in the Klan, wasn't he?"
"Yep, he was a Klucker. That makes three - Sam, Dogan, and Brazelton. Anybody else?"
Adam thought for a second. "Perhaps the mysterious accomplice."
"Perhaps. Dogan's dead. Sam wouldn't talk. And Brazelton died many years ago."
"How'd he die?"
"Plane crash. The Kramer case made him a hero down there, and he was able to, parlay his fame into a very successful law practice. He liked to fly, so he bought himself a plane and buzzed around everywhere trying lawsuits. A real big shot. He was flying back from the Coast one night when the plane disappeared from radar. They found his body in a tree. The weather was clear. The FAA said there'd been some type of engine failure."
"Another mysterious death."
"Yep. So everybody's dead but Sam, and he's getting close."
"Any link between Dogan's death and Brazelton's?"
"No. They were years apart. But the theory includes the scenario that the deaths were the work of the same person."
"So who's at work here?"