of anguish, the voice sounded only faintly like his: Gunshot…gunshot. “Goddamn!”

Wright had recently moved to the Atlanta suburbs, but he was in Memphis on this day, as he often was. His hometown had a gravitational pull. Most of his friends lived there and most of his family, including his six kids—four sons and two daughters—then ages four to 15. This time he’d gone back to attend his sister’s baby shower.

It was July 19, 2010 and the summer was in full swing. This was at odds with Wright’s pro basketball career, which was winding down. Wright was 34 and hadn’t played an NBA game in more than a year, his body and skills eroding in tandem. The dance was down to its last few shakes. But Wright was, characteristically,athlete, there is no suspect, no motive and no answer.

Memphis is a city of ghosts and spirits. They haunt Graceland, and the Lorraine Hotel, where in 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood outside room 306. They move through long-closed music studios and abandoned streetcars. They walk the cemeteries throughout town, the legacy of the city’s infamous murder rate.

Early on, Lorenzen Wright knew of Memphis’s spectral qualities. He was seven when his father, Herb—a mountain of a man who once had an NBA tryout with the Jazz—was shot. Herb was working for the Memphis Parks Department. On a stinking hot summer day he kicked a few mouthy kids out of the gym. One of them returned with a gun and shot Herb in the back.