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Buford didn't see how he could when he worked so much, so of course he blamed Beatrice for not being firm enough.
      Marshall saw his father stay out later and later. Not wanting to fight with his wife, Buford just spent more time away from his family. He didn't see how this only made matters worse.
      Then one night, Buford didn't come home. Marshall tried to get to sleep but had stayed awake. Lately, he couldn't sleep until he heard his father's voice booming as he came through the door. Hearing them argue was better than what he heard that night: silence.
      The police came the next morning. He remembered his mother wail as she fell to her knees at the doorway. Buford had gone to a card game, where a fight had broken out, and Buford had been shot. The other men had all denied that they were the shooter and no gun was found.
      Murder. Marshall had heard about it and saw it touch people he knew, but it didn't seem like something that could ever happen to his father, who was more than human. But he was gone.
      Marshall blamed his brother. Somehow, this was all Moses' fault. If he had just not been so foolish, his father might have been home that night. He wanted to tell himself that it was the random violence of life that caused it, but it felt better to blame Moses. He was something that Marshall could see, talk to, hit if he wanted.
      Beatrice ended up in the hospital, shaking violently and unable to speak. Marshall sat in the waiting room, fighting off the urge to kill his brother.
      They had a funeral for Buford in a ceremony that Marshall thought would surely kill his mother. She survived the ordeal physically, but something in her had been buried with Buford, something that she had never gotten back.
      The murder investigation went on for three weeks after the funeral. A cop named Robert Cavanaugh was assigned to the case. Cavanaugh was a former autoworker and a good friend of Buford. He broke the silence of the suspects and arrested a man named Percy Vane as the shooter.
      Marshall remembered the day he came into their house with two plainclothes detectives, who seemed nervous to be in a black household. But Cavanaugh lived just a few streets over, and so he did most of the talking. He and Beatrice talked for over three hours about the case. Percy had killed Buford, but he'd try to get out of it by pleading self-defense.
      A week later, Cavanaugh came over with his son, a quiet little boy named Danny. Marshall and Danny hit it off right away. But Moses didn't like the strange boy and stayed away from him. Cavanaugh told Beatrice that he wanted to help the family as much as he could. He also wanted his son to have friends in their neighborhood. He was skinny, weak, and always the only white kid around.
      Buford had actually helped Cavanaugh get a job at the Chrysler plant before Cavanaugh had become a cop. Before then, Robert Cavanaugh's life had been crumbling. His wife was leaving him, and he wrestled with alcohol. The Chrysler job stabilized him, and saved his family.
      Robert Cavanaugh had bright red hair, twinkling green eyes and a thin Irish brogue. He eventually quit the plant and became a cop like his father before him.
      Marshall and the family anguished as the trial dragged on, and Percy's lawyer, a brilliant young attorney named Frank D'Estenne, almost got Percy acquitted. Marshall watched in stony silence as the lawyers worked, manipulating the truth and bending lies to look like truth. All through the ordeal, he stared with hatred at Moses, who seemed unaffected by the trial.
      Marshall knew then that he wanted to be a lawyer, to help present the truth in the public forum. Percy was convicted and sent to prison for thirty years. The family had cheered the verdict of guilty of manslaughter. Cavanaugh and his family had sat through the entire trial with the Jacksons and seemed just as happy.
      The conviction brought closure to the family. It was the end of a nightmare.