“You bet,” Lillie said. “They found this goddamn crispy critter on Jericho Road about three days after Diane Tull was raped and Lori Stillwell was murdered. You think nobody in this office thought about a connection?”

“Who is it?”

“A man,” Lillie said. “A black man. That’s about all anyone knows about him. You can read about all there is in the report, but it looks like Sheriff Beckett didn’t so much as lift the phone to find out who he was, why he was here, or what happened to him. Seems like your uncle pretty much knew this all was a done deal.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Like I said, call me when you’re done,” Lillie said. “I think it’s about time you had a come-to-Jesus with Diane Tull and find out exactly why she’s getting this thing opened far and wide. And if someone tells me this is about God’s will, I’ll punch ’em in the mouth. God may be strange and mysterious, but this didn’t come out of nowhere.”

•   •   •

Stagg met Craig Houston out on his two-thousand-acre spread out in the county, a good portion of Tibbehah that he’d controlled for decades, including what used to be a World War II airfield and some old hangars and barracks. Before and since the storm, Stagg had his crew out paving back over the tarmac, propping up those old Quonset huts and adding a few more, building up some cinder-block bunkers and then laying out miles and miles of chain-link fencing to keep the nosy out of his business. Stagg had told everyone he was working on his own hunt lodge, the airfield just part of his land, bringing in drinking buddies from Memphis and Jackson. “You like it?” Johnny Stagg said.

“All this shit yours?” asked Houston. “The fucking land? This whole damn compound?”

Stagg grinned and nodded. He stood against his maroon Cadillac, chewing on a toothpick, taking in the possibilities of his own little valley. A cold wind whisking down through the valley and across their faces.

“God damn, man. You ain’t no joke. From here, we do what the fuck we want.”

You didn’t have to tell Houston much about how it would all work, the smart kid in the bright blue satin warm-up stood next to his bright white Escalade just smiling. He talked about their partnership, now a friendship, and how an airfield would get those Burrito Eaters off his back. Those Burrito Eaters now calling the shots from below the border in a town some had never even visited.

“Don’t need no trucks coming in from Texas,” Houston said. “Don’t need no shit from New Orleans. We call it. Deal direct.”

“And you can make it happen?” Stagg said. “You lived with those people down there for how long? Learned their practices and their ways?”

“Four years,” Houston said. “They call my black ass Speedy Gonzales. Understand honor, respect, and that you shoot a motherfucker who don’t. Shit, I didn’t graduate fifth grade and now speak Spanish without no accent. Don’t believe me? How ’bout we go down to the Mex place in Jericho and listen to me talk some shit beyond the chimichangas.”

“Good,” Stagg said. “Good.”

“Who else knows about what you got?”

Stagg shook his head. The bright January wind was a damn knife cutting through that valley, rows and rows of old oaks and second-growth pines, and across the tarmac to where he stood with the black kingpin of Memphis. They both had come by themselves, Stagg leaving Ringold back at the Rebel and Houston leaving his people down in Olive Branch, where he ran things from the back of an all-you-can-eat soul food joint and Chinese buffet.

“When we start?” Houston asked.

“No sense in waiting,” Stagg said. “You say the word, Mr. Houston.”

“They ain’t gonna like this,” Houston said. “There’s a lot of business gonna just be left hanging out there. Ain’t like canceling your subscription to fucking Playboy. People gonna want answers. And if they get them, they gonna come for me and for you, Mr. Stagg.”

“Let ’em come,” Stagg said. “Like I said, those cartel folks been down here before. They know Tibbehah County ain’t open to free trade.”

“You ain’t like the other Dixie Mafia folks I knew.”

“There ain’t no Dixie Mafia, son,” Stagg said.

“But you part of that crew?” Houston said. “All those motherfuckers from around Corinth and down in Biloxi. That’s your world.”

“Dixie Mafia is something the damn Feds made up to cornhole us,” Stagg said. “All those men I used to know, most of ’em dead or in prison, didn’t do business unless we wanted. We don’t have no blood oaths and hierarchy and all that Hollywood shit.”

“But the old crooks?” Houston said. “They wouldn’t been caught dead with no black kid from Orange Mound. You know that?”

“The South ain’t the same,” Stagg said. “Get that shit straight. I ain’t never thought I’d have to worry about crazy-ass Mexicans coming up from Guadalajara with a chain saw, wanting to tell me how to run my business in Tibbehah.”

“They killed eight of my people last year,” Houston said. “One of ’em was my half brother.”

Stagg nodded.

“Don’t need ’em,” Houston said. “Once you cut off the money, they gone.”

“You bet,” Stagg said, swiveling the toothpick in his mouth. “People come before me never saw a challenge coming. You got to think about the future every day of your goddamn life in this business, son. If you don’t, you gonna wake up with a gun in your mouth or a cock up your ass.”

“Damn, old man,” Houston said. “That’s hard shit.”

“The plain ole gospel truth.”

Houston walked across the weeds to the end of the airstrip, the concrete poured as smooth and straight as a griddle. He looked to the rolling Mississippi hills that protected each side of them, the open doors to the empty buildings, and the red wind sock, blowing straight and hard, at the other end of the runway. The morning sun was bright and wide across the valley.

Houston offered Stagg his hand.

•   •   •

“We need to talk,” Diane Tull said.

“OK,” Caddy said.

“Not here,” Diane said. “In private.”

Diane had found Caddy Colson unloading canned goods and fresh vegetables from the back of her old blue Ford pickup. She was stocking the storerooms in a barn that doubled as a church, a place called The River, which served the poor and downtrodden of Greater Jericho and Tibbehah County. Caddy was being helped by Boom Kimbrough, a hell of a strong man even with one arm. He hoisted big boxes and unwieldy gallons of milk up in his one massive arm and supported it all with a prosthetic hook.

Caddy looked to Boom, Boom pretending he hadn’t heard any of the conversation, but he walked away with a flat of canned baked beans. “Come on,” Caddy said. “We can go on inside the sanctuary. All right?”

Diane nodded and followed through the big open barn doors, still strange as hell to her to call an old livestock barn, painted red with a sloping metal roof, a church. The outreach and ministry of the late Jamey Dixon. Diane knew how much Caddy had loved Dixon, worshipped and believed in him, and believed that her turnaround as a human being came through meeting him and forging her belief in a Christ who forgave prostitutes and tax collectors. And who was Diane to judge, Caddy did certainly seem like a changed person.

She was fresh-scrubbed in Levi’s and shit-kicker boots, a long sweatshirt on under a blue barn coat, her boy-short hair ruffling in the wind as she walked Diane into the barn and closed the large doors behind them. The January wind whipped up good around them and whistled through the cracks of the church. Long homemade pews stretched out in three directions from a stage and pulpit, bales of hay and galvanized troughs making the point of no one getting over the humbleness of his surroundings.

“How far can I trust your brother?” Diane said.

“Depends on what it is.”

“I’ve started up something again, Caddy,” Diane said. “I wish to God I’d never done it. I want Quinn to just stop, leave it alone.”