“Were you alone?” Jason said, grinning.

“Just out for a ride.”

“All of you?”

“Yep,” Doug said. “We ride with the club. We live with the club. It’s a brotherhood. Hey, listen, I want you to meet my woman, Sally. We call her Long Tall Sally because . . . you know.”

“She’s built for speed?”

“Hell yeah,” Big Doug said. “Man, you hadn’t changed a bit. You look the same as when we graduated. You said you’d get out and, damn, if you didn’t do it. Working with Burt Reynolds. Holy shit. You’re an A-list L.A. motherfucker now.”

Jason nodded, drank some beer. The jukebox went silent and he heard that click and whir of a new song coming on. Wicked Wilson Pickett. “Mama Told Me Not to Come.” Somebody’s idea of a joke.

Since leaving the set of the last picture, Jason had let his hair grow out some, getting long for him, down over his ears and covering his forehead and eyebrows. He’d even grown a beard, feeling like a wild man and all natural, until being around this bunch made him feel like a clean-cut square. Some pussy businessman from Atlanta.

“How long you here for?” Sally asked. She had roving eyes and wore a man’s tank top hiked up high over her belly. From the looks of her belly, she drank as much beer as Big Doug.

“Few weeks,” Jason said. “Want to help my dad get settled after my mom died. Spend some time with Van. And Jerry is driving his rig in from El Paso. Should be here soon.”

“Jason-Goddamn-Colson,” Big Doug said, a little high and a little drunk. “Man, you were never scared of shit. Me and him did FFA together and he was the only one who’d compete with the men at the State Fair. He’d ride goddamn bulls. You remember that? Riding those big-nutted motherfuckers till they sent you flying.”

“Good times.”

“Good times?” Big Doug said. “You are crazy, you son of a bitch.”

Jason finished the beer and Sally wandered off to get him a new one. His eyes had adjusted in the dim room, with the purple light, the haze of dope smoke, and a makeshift bar with a velvet painting of a nude black woman above it. The big glow of the jukebox shone across a group of three men who hadn’t gotten up, still staring at Jason as he stood in the center of the clubhouse.

“Hey, come on,” Big Doug said, just as Sally handed him the Coors. “I want you to meet the man. Come on.”

Jason walked with him over by the jukebox, the music so loud it was hard to hear a word that was being said. A muscular man with no shirt and a lot of tats reclined in a big leather chair. A young girl was in his lap, arm around his neck, holding a cigarette for him and then taking a drag herself. She checked out Jason as Big Doug leaned in and said something in his ear. The man had wild eyes and long greasy black hair and a long beard. There was a lot about the fella that reminded Jason of goddamn Charles Manson.

Jason nodded at him. The scary fella just stared, took another drag, and then looked to Doug, who was grinning big as shit. Doug leaned over to Jason and yelled in his ear. “Meet Chains LeDoux, club president.”

Jason offered his hand. Chains looked at him as if he’d just picked up a turd. Jason looked up over to Big Doug and shrugged. “Doesn’t look like I’m wanted.”

“Don’t worry, he’s always like that,” Big Doug said as they walked away, Chains’s wild eyes never leaving Jason. “He just is skittish of new people. He’s protective of all of us. Doesn’t like change. Always worried someone is going to be a narc.”

“Do I look like a narc?”

Big Doug smiled and patted Jason’s back so hard, Jason lost his wind for a moment. “You sure do, brother,” Big Doug said. “You sure do.”

“Appreciate the beer.”

“You ain’t going yet,” Big Doug said, grabbing his elbow. “We’re just getting started. And you’re invited to ride with us tomorrow. We’re going up to Shiloh, pay tribute to the boys.”

“That gonna be OK with Chains?”

“He’ll learn to love you as much as I do,” Big Doug said. “Just relax, man. Be cool, brother. You’re among friends.”

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start, Sheriff Colson,” Diane Tull said, “if there is any blame that goes to this, go ahead and blame me. I was the one who wanted to walk home. I was the one who froze up when that man stopped us, when Lori and I should have run like hell.”

“The only blame is on the man who did this,” Quinn said. “You were two kids. The man had a gun and had you both trapped. He was a predator out there hunting for something just like y’all. If it hadn’t been you, he would have attacked someone else.”

Diane was quiet, seated in the passenger side of his big green Ford F-250, the heater blowing, hot coffee in the mug holders, driving on out to the road to Jericho where all this had happened thirty-seven years ago. She said she wanted to make a run out to the old Fisher property before the Farm & Ranch opened at nine. Quinn had rolled on duty at 0600, but he had been up since 0430, running the hills up and around his farm and doing a short routine of pull-ups, push-ups, and flutter kicks, before shaving, dressing, and meeting up.

Hondo rode in the backseat of the cab, wanting to come to work today, his head slid up between the two front seats, panting.

“Your uncle sure loved that dog,” Diane said. “He bought top-shelf food and kept a jar of pig ears for him. Always kept him in flea collars and heartworm protection. He was a good man, Sheriff.”

“How about I don’t call you ma’am and you don’t call me sheriff?”

“You don’t like to talk about him,” she said. “Your uncle. Do you?”

“Nope.”

“Always thought what they said about him were a bunch of dirty lies,” she said. “People can be hateful.”

“You bet.”

“I know you hear things they’re saying about you now, too.”

“I do.”

“And that’s some dirty, shitty lies.”

Quinn didn’t say a word.

“People said things about me after all this, too,” Diane said. “People said me and Lori picked up that man at the carnival and had sex with him. Some people even thought I may have shot Lori myself ’cause I was jealous or didn’t want her telling what we’d done.”

“People have small and idle minds.”

“And you can’t even do your job without people making comments.”

“Of course, bullshit does go with an elected position.”

“And this,” Diane said. “All this I’m about to show you is just for you to know. Your sister wanted us to talk, maybe stoke a cold case and get some kind of air cleared about what happened. Is there still an old report?”

“There is.”

“And you’ve read it?”

“I have.”

A hand-painted sign out on the country road read Dirt For Sale. Quinn followed the rolling ribbon of cracked blacktop, the morning coming up bright and hard in early January. The trailers and small houses, the little farms, and closed gates to hunting lodges passing by. Quinn slowed after a few minutes, Diane telling him to keep driving, it was a ways up, but it was hard to tell anymore since the Fisher house had burned to the ground back in 1992. She pointed a finger a half mile down the road and Quinn slowed and drove off onto the shoulder, the old cedar posts and barbed wire still there, some of the posts replaced with solid metal T-bars. Cattle wandered far in the open pasture, trees dotting the land, cow pies dotting the worn-down grassland.