“Damn,” Ophelia said, reading. “This wasn’t just murder, it was a punishment. What the hell happened?”

“I have some idea of what occurred but no idea of who he was,” Quinn said. “I’m hoping you might be able to tell me what could be done about it now. He had no ID on him, reports say he was homeless, a hitchhiker who’d come to Jericho. He was living like an animal off the Natchez Trace, had some kind of lean-to he’d fashioned out of old scrap wood and tin.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why would someone do this to another human?”

“I can tell you more later,” Quinn said. “Just take the file and let me know what I need to request from Jackson. I guess we start with the dental records.”

“Sure,” Ophelia said. “And you said there might be some DNA?”

Quinn shrugged. “There’s mention of bloody and burned clothes placed in evidence. Maybe a pair of boots. I can’t find any trace of them right now; my uncle had sort of a scattered filing system. But Lillie and I are looking. Also checking with the court archives in Oxford.”

“A black male, late twenties, measured at a little under six feet,” Ophelia said. “That’s it?”

Mary brought them two large sweet teas and blue plate specials. They’d forgotten to ask which sides, but the cook had just ladled on some green beans and fried eggplant. Not bad choices. They started to eat and didn’t talk. Quinn and Ophelia had been together long enough, and during some tough times after the tornado, that they felt solid around each other, no need to say much. They were the only ones in the restaurant, the time getting close to two, way past when normal folks ate lunch.

Ophelia had dark brown eyes and long brown hair with sideswept bangs she’d often push from her eyes as a nervous habit. When she was curious, skeptical, or worried, her mouth would turn into a thick red knot, holding what she had to say until she had chosen her words right. Most folks in Jericho considered her shy, or mousy, but she was more standoffish, slow to reveal herself in the typical Bundren way.

“This may not be the time,” Ophelia said, “but there’s nothing wrong if you were to stay with me in town a few days. I don’t give a good god damn what anyone says about me. And, hell, bring Hondo, too. You need some space of your own. And I’m closer to town.”

“People seem to be talking about me enough.”

“All bullshit.”

“Of course.”

“The ones that matter don’t talk that way.”

Quinn nodded. “I hope not,” he said. “It’s the ones who whisper that give you trouble.”

“How about a toothbrush at my place?” Ophelia said. “We start with a toothbrush . . .”

“Roger that,” Quinn said. “Always liked to travel light. Be prepared for whatever comes my way.”

•   •   •

Quinn rode with Lillie up into the hills around Carthage late that afternoon to find a man named E. J. Royce, who’d worked as a deputy with his late Uncle Hamp. Royce was an odd duck, as anybody in Jericho was guaranteed to echo if asked. How else would you describe a man who’d turned his back on all his people and came to town only for the most basic supplies? He preferred the company of dogs—coon dogs, to be exact—five or six of them meeting Quinn’s truck on the highway and following it on each side, baying and barking, until they got close to Royce’s shack.

The shack was fashioned together with plywood, Visqueen, and spit. Royce telling anyone who’d listen, from his children to his church, “I don’t ask for nothing I don’t need. I tend to my business. I take care of my own damn self.”

The dogs barked and bayed some more. Quinn and Lillie got out of the big F-250, walked to the front porch, and knocked on a little door that sat oddly low even for a short man like E. J. Royce.

The old man opened the little door with a broad grin, wearing Liberty overalls and a trucker cap from Tibbehah County Co-op, the main competition for Diane Tull’s Jericho Farm & Ranch. “Well, shit,” he said.

Royce always greeted Quinn that way.

“And you, too.”

Royce smiled. He almost never could remember Lillie’s name, always referring to her as that big-boned girl with grit.

“Good to see you, Mr. Royce,” Quinn said. “You got some time?”

“Y’all ain’t come to arrest me?”

“You do something wrong?” Lillie asked.

“Stick around a bit, darlin’,” Royce said, grinning, scratching the white whiskers on his chin. “I just might. Damn, you’re a tall drink of water.”

He invited them into his shack, waving to an old sofa covered in stacked clothes and fixed in places with duct tape. A couple of the dogs followed them inside and Royce shooed them away, telling them they knew better and needed an ass-whippin’, they didn’t watch out. But the old man patted them on the heads as he led them out and closed the door. Boxes lined the walls, bundles of clothes that Quinn knew had been dropped off by the Baptist church that he never used. A television set on top of two older television sets played an episode of Gunsmoke.

Quinn nodded to the television. “Always liked Matt Dillon.”

“Didn’t know it was back on the air till the other day,” Royce said. “Good to see something worth a shit on.”

Lillie took a seat on the couch, nodding at Quinn to do the same. Lillie was always getting onto Quinn about his abrupt military manner interfering with real investigations. She often told him to act nice, be friendly, make the other person comfortable. But, then again, a couple weeks ago Lillie promised an abuser that she would kick in his goddamn teeth if she ever again saw a mark on his girlfriend.

“How y’all been?” Royce said. “Your sister brought me a plate of supper the other night. I told her she didn’t need to be gone and doing that. You know, I don’t ask for nothin’ I don’t need. I tend to my business. And I take care of own damn self.”

“I think I may have heard that, sir,” Quinn said.

Royce found an old kitchen chair toppled over under some clothes and brought it near the sofa. He smiled at Lillie and she smiled back. On television, Matt Dillon just killed three men and was walking down the center of the street in Dodge City. No one said jack shit.

“We need to talk to you about a murder that happened some time ago,” Lillie said. “I think you’re the last deputy around from the seventies.”

“Hal Strange is still kicking,” Royce said, “but he moved to Gulfport a few years ago.”

“I heard he died,” Lillie said.

“Nope,” Royce said. “Just got a Christmas card from his wife said they’d taken in some culture travels up in Gatlinburg, seeing some shows and all. Dinner theater and dancing.”

Lillie had brought in the file but didn’t open it. She just took her time, Quinn always letting her take the lead in an investigation. “Do you recall when those two girls were attacked on the Fourth of July? This was in 1977.”

Royce, who’d been smiling, now quit. He rubbed his hands over his old white whiskers, his flannel shirt as threadbare as possible without becoming translucent. “Sure,” he said. “That’s the stuff what’ll stick hard. I don’t know how y’all still work in law enforcement. Seems like them things happen more and more. But back then, that was something not regular. Things like that didn’t happen in Jericho.”

Quinn knew the local history but did not correct the old man.

“You ever catch the man who did it?” Lillie asked, the file placed between her knee and forearm that answered that very question.

“No, ma’am,” he said, “we sure didn’t. Sheriff Beckett took that shame to his grave. I don’t think he ever gave up trying to find that man. The father of the dead girl. What’s his name?”

“Stillwell?”

“Yes, Stillwell,” Royce said. “Sure made a mess of that fella . . . sloppy, crazy-ass drunk.”

Royce nodded with certainty, the mountains of clothes, garbage, and boxes of useless shit reminding Quinn of the state he’d once found his uncle’s farm in. There were a lot of empty bottles of Old Grand-Dad lying about the shack, too, and coffee cans filled with cigarette butts.