“Well,” the girl said. “He had some unusual requests last time. I’d rather not be his date.”

“What kind of things?”

The girl, short and small-boned, with hair like a pixie doll, leaned in and whispered into Stagg’s ear. She was very direct and specific about the acts.

“Good Lord Almighty,” Stagg said. He shook his head. “Man must’ve been raised in a barn.”

“And then he wanted me to finish it with a . . .” the girl said, then whispering some more.

“I get the idea,” Stagg said, feeling his face burn. “Hot damn. Well, all I can say is, keep a wide berth around that fella. I wouldn’t let him near my dog.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stagg nodded, not listening anymore, standing back and appraising the table’s bounty, the silver and finery that belonged to the absent senator. He watched as Willie James pulled gallon jugs of Southern Comfort and Smirnoff Vodka from boxes and laid them all out in a pretty-straight line. A nut tray with a silver cracker was offered next to the crystal glasses and cocktail napkins.

The girl took a breath, robe hanging open loose and easy, exposing a pink bra-and-panty set. She wore blue Crocs on her little feet.

“I guess we all got to pay them pipers,” the girl said. “My daddy said the only way we’d ever sit at a rich man’s table is to set it for him.”

Staggs’s face colored, with more blood rushing to his weathered old cheeks. He reached for a peppermint in his pocket. “How about you wait with the other ladies, doll?” Stagg said. “The gentlemen will be here right quick.”

•   •   •

“Sure do appreciate y’all coming here this afternoon,” said the DA investigator from Oxford, a man named Dale Childress. “I thought this would be a good spot, New Albany being a good midpoint.”

Quinn and Lillie sat across from him in conference room at a Hampton Inn off Highway 78. As it started to rain on the way over, Lillie had declared the entire journey a big fuck-you. She said Childress didn’t drive to Tibbehah because he knew about Quinn hiring Stevens. Here he could sit down and chew the fat, be pleasant, and make sure they all knew this was routine. Childress opened up a file and smiled across the table at Lillie. He’d offered them some bad coffee and stale muffins.

“So are you going to shit or get off the pot?” Lillie said.

“Excuse me?” Childress asked. He was younger than Quinn had first thought on the phone, maybe five years older than Quinn and Lillie, with thinning brown hair and a short-clipped mustache. He wore a wrinkled polo shirt that read Investigator over the breast pocket and khaki pants nearly two inches too short.

“We been through this already with another investigator,” Quinn said. “Twice.”

“Me and him rotate on the counties,” Childress said. “On account of there’s only two investigators for eight districts. Y’all sure you wouldn’t like some coffee or muffins?”

“What we’d like,” Lillie said, “is knowing how much longer this is going to last. We’re hearing that y’all plan to take this to the grand jury. If this inquiry is trying to put together a case, we need our lawyer here.”

Childress held up a hand and said, “Whoa. No, ma’am. This is just a fact-checking visit, like I said on the phone. I didn’t want to show up in Jericho to make it appear to your constituents that it was anything but. I respect all law enforcement. I consider myself part of that team, and anytime I conduct an inquiry into official affairs, I’m not trying to buck the system. What y’all went through with them convicts sounded like pure hell. But if the DA didn’t cross the t’s and dot the i’s on what happened to Leonard Chappell, people might wonder. He was the chief of police.”

“And so crooked, they had to screw him into the ground,” Lillie said.

Quinn reached under the table and grabbed her knee.

“I’ve met with Mr. Chappell’s family and friends,” Childress said. “They’re still in a state of shock over the allegations and his death.”

Lillie snorted. Quinn took a deep breath.

“That man came to kill me and another man named Jamey Dixon,” Quinn said. “If I hadn’t shot first, I’d be dead. He has a long history of ethics abuse and was out of his jurisdiction.”

“Yes, sir,” Childress said, tapping his pen at the edge of his legal pad. “That part sure is clear to me. What we are trying to figure out is who killed all those other men and why. Why did you, Sheriff, drive a former convict, Jamey Dixon, out to the scene? What benefit was he?”

“He was the goddamn trade,” Lillie said. “Didn’t you read the reports before you had us drive all the way over here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Childress said. “I read the reports several times. But some things aren’t making sense to me. For me to get this gone and for all of us to go back to our lives, we got to make those weird pieces fit. It’s all like a puzzle.”

Lillie laced her fingers, clenched her jaw and leaned into the table. “I’m aware how it works, Mr. Childress.”

“OK,” he said. “OK. Let’s just start off with some basic info. Sheriff Colson, you are former military, serving in the Army for ten years?”

Lillie sighed. Quinn nodded.

“Might I ask what made you retire and return back to Jericho?”

“Oh, hell,” Lillie said. “Here it comes. Quinn, you have Sonny’s ass on speed dial?”

Quinn stared across at Childress. He did not blink and set his jaw.

“There were several men shot out at a place called Hell’s Creek,” Childress said. “That was before you became sheriff. Can you tell me what that was all about?”

Quinn stared across at Childress, the man grinning like the sun was shining and all was right in the state of Mississippi. Quinn took out his cell phone and scrolled through to find Stevens’s number. “I’ll be right back,” Quinn said.

•   •   •

The men came to the hunt lodge, exhausted from a day touring the tornado sites. They’d shaken a lot of hands and given a lot of hugs. There were prayers said, words of appreciation given, and many tears shed. Stagg had heard them all. There was the woman who’d been sucked out of a bathtub and landed five miles away. There was the old man who’d lost his wife of thirty years, his home, and his old black Lab. There was a cute set of orphans who rode it out under a table and an ugly woman who claimed Jesus held her hand while she sat on the shitter. Stagg liked hearing the stories, it gave the town some character and helped sell the forward momentum that Tibbehah County needed. Like the sign on Highway 45 read Gateway to Mississippi’s Future.

“Mr. Stagg?” said the black stripper named Jaquita or Janiqua. “I think I sprained my wrist.”

“Well, darling, I don’t think there’s any workmen’s comp for tossing a man’s pecker.”

“That ain’t what did it,” she said. “I ain’t done that tonight. One of those fools wanted to arm-wrestle and I thought he was joking but he took it real seriously. He was drinking Scotch from the bottle and kept on calling me his Little Hot Chocolate.”

“Go see Willie James in the kitchen,” Stagg said. “Let him get you a bag of ice. How about an extra fifty for the trouble?”

She left where Stagg sat alone at a big poker table facing the open room of the hunt lodge, thick pine beams steepled overhead, six bedroom doors opening out on the second-floor balcony. Every few minutes you could hear a woman’s cry or a man’s loud grunts as he finished his business. The whole party had grown sparse as the men and girls had paired off and left the silver trays of half-eaten chicken and picked-over, hardened cheese. Stagg made himself a ham sandwich to go with a tall glass of Alka-Seltzer and waited for the boys he’d called to show up. He’d deal with that mess and then drive on back to the Rebel, wait for Ringold to drive the van full of girls back to the Booby Trap and pick up eight fresh ones. This shit was going to go on all night or until the Viagra ran out.