Edge

were also a number of images of the young Henry laughing. One or two showed him with a girl, presumably on a date, though there was little physical contact between them.
    Young Henry’s sports were track and archery. There were no pictures of him with teammates. He seemed to enjoy solitary pursuits.
    I went back even earlier. I opened one page and stared down at it. Beneath a piece of yellowed Scotch tape was a tuft of clipped brown hair. I readthe careful script below. The hair was Henry’s, at one year of age. I started to reach out and touch it. Then withdrew my hand when Freddy walked into the room.
    “Whatcha think, son?” Freddy asked. “Anything helpful here? You’re looking like you found Bernie Madoff’s stash.”
    I shook my head. “Nothing pointing to his next move. But everything pointing to him. ”
    “That helpful?”
    “Not immediately. But ultimately, I hope so. Only there’s a lot here to go through. We’ll collect it all, take it in. You folks have evidence bags?”
    “In the cars.”
    I then noticed something against the opposite wall: another shelf on which a dozen shoe boxes sat. I picked one up. Inside were stacks of photographs. I supposed the family had stored them here temporarily until somebody got around to pasting them into a scrapbook. I realized, to my surprise, that there was a dust-free rectangle at the end. The last shoe box had been removed—today, if not within the last hour or so.
    Had he sped back here from his cousin’s for the purpose of grabbing this one box?
    What was there about it that Loving wanted?
    Did it reveal something about his past that he wished to keep secret?
    Or was there something sentimental connected to it?
    I mentioned this to Freddy, who noted it without much interest. I flipped through the others. Like the scrapbooks, they revealed nothing immediately helpful, though we’d have forensic teams prowlthrough them for clues to summer houses or family members we hadn’t been able to locate earlier.
    “Corte?” Freddy asked. He was getting impatient, I supposed.
    “Okay,” I told him.
    “Got something here,” a tactical officer called from the hallway that led to the kitchen in the back of the house. Freddy and I joined him.
    “Looks like bills, sir.”
    Sitting on the floor beside the kitchen table was a stack of envelopes, bound with a rubber band.
    “He must’ve dropped them and not noticed.”
    Trembling hand . . .
    The agent picked them up but then froze. They only came halfway and tugged to a stop.
    “Fuck,” he muttered and we all stared at the thin strand of fishing line that vanished through the hole in the floor.
    Freddy grabbed his radio. “Clear the house, IED, IED!”
    From the basement I heard the bang of the booby trap—softer than I expected—and saw on the foliage and trees a brief flare as the flash radiated through the basement windows.
    The room was eerily silent. For a moment I thought the device might be a dud and I’d have ample time to collect the scrapbooks and shoe boxes.
    But I’d taken only one step toward the repository of Henry Loving’s history when the nearby basement door blew outward and a vortex of orange and yellow flame shot into the hall, while simultaneously the fire raging in the basement erupted from every floorboard vent and crevice on the first floor.

Chapter 35
    THE DEVICE MUST have been made up of a grenade or small plastic explosive charge attached to a large container of gasoline. I could smell the distinct, astringent odor of burning fuel. In seconds, the fire was racing up the walls and consuming the rugs. I kicked the basement door closed but the flames and heat muscled it back open, as the fire spiraled outward and up.
    “Freddy, anybody down there?” I shouted.
    He called, “No. After they cleared it they came upstairs.”
    I started forward again toward the den. Yet every time I edged a few feet through the smoke, there’d be another flare-up and I’d have to spin backward to keep from losing eyebrows and skin. I looked around for water or a fire extinguisher or even a blanket I could use to protect myself to get to the scrapbooks and shoe boxes and save as many as I could.
    I supposed that Freddy wasn’t as convinced of the importance of the memorabilia as I was but he knew that this was my expertise—dealing with lifters and hitters from a strategic, rather than tactical, position—and he helped me push furniture against the vents and fling rugs over the flames