How’d you find me?” Jason Colson asked.

“I asked at the Big Teepee.”

“How’d you know where to start?”

“Mom told me.”

“Didn’t know she knew,” Jason said, sitting down on a railroad tie outside the barn, staring out at the rolling brown pastures, that big, endless lake where ducks and geese gathered. “We hadn’t spoken in a long while.”

“Uncle Van,” Quinn said. “She knew from him. But he never said a word to me.”

“I told him not to,” Jason said, stroking his old-dog goatee and mustache. His cheeks and neck were clean-shaven. His clothes were neat and fit well. He’d grown his hair long, not like some kind of hippie but like a man from another time, the frontier days or something. He was darker than Quinn and weighed a bit more, with something off about his mouth when he spoke, like his teeth had been busted out and replaced. Jason seemed nervous as he talked, careful with all his words, as Quinn stood above him.

“I’m glad to see you, Quinn,” he said. “You may not believe it, but I am.”

Quinn nodded.

“How’s Caddy?” Jason said. “Van’s told me some things. I’ve been real concerned.”

“How about we just talk about why I’m here?”

Jason looked off and shook his head, not being able to think of another reason his son might come to see him. He seemed like he had started to settle in, would maybe give Quinn the speech about why he left, how it’d been better for everyone but he’d kept real good tabs. He’d be real proud of Quinn’s service and all that kind of J.C. bullshit he knew too well from the letters that one day just stopped cold.

“You used to ride with a crew called the Born Losers,” Quinn said, not asking but stating it.

Jason nodded, eyes scrunched up, knees bunched up around his chest, looking up at Quinn. “About a hundred years ago.”

“Well, some bad shit happened about a hundred years ago,” Quinn said, “and you were an eyewitness to it.”

“Can you stay a bit?” Jason said. “We can talk about all this stuff. But can I take you out for a meal?”

“Some barbecue at the Teepee?”

“A steak dinner in Jackson,” Jason said. “Would mean the world to me, son.”

“I don’t have time,” Quinn said. “I’ve spoken to a man named Hank Stillwell. He said you were riding with Chains LeDoux the night a black man was abducted in town, taken out to Jericho Road, and hung from a tree. Nobody has forgotten.”

“You sure don’t waste a lot of time,” Jason said. “Can you at least tell me about your mother? How’s Jean doing?”

“I don’t preach, Jason,” Quinn said, “but I don’t think my family’s welfare is any of your concern. You need to be more worried about your involvement in this lynching.”

“I didn’t lynch that man,” Jason said. “Sure, I remember it. But I didn’t kill someone . . . I’ve fucked up plenty, son.”

“Don’t call me that,” Quinn said. “You don’t have the right.”

“I said I’ve fucked up plenty,” Jason said. “I go to meetings in the basement of a church every Wednesday. I’ve gotten up on the horse again and fallen off. Right now, I’m staying on. But any bad things I’ve done, I’ve done them to myself.”

“That a fact?”

“And my actions have hurt others,” Jason said. “I know that. You really come all this way to ask me about the damn Born Losers? I fooled around with that group maybe a month at most. I left town and never hung out with them again. A buddy of mine wanted me to ride and it was just something to do between films.”

“Raising hell and becoming a star.”

“I wasn’t a star,” Jason said. “I busted up my whole body and head to make other people stars. Broke my back twice and nearly every bone in the body.”

“I figure they don’t give Oscars for that.”

“I know you’re bitter,” Jason said. “I don’t blame you.”

“July fourth, 1977,” Quinn said. “Where were you?”

“Hell, I don’t know.”

“Hell you don’t,” Quinn said. “You were part of that motorcycle gang. I don’t give two shits about the reasoning behind it. I want to know what you saw and where y’all went that night. Uncle Hamp covered the thing because he thought you loved his sister.”

“I did love his sister.”

“He shouldn’t have made this thing OK,” Quinn said. “Y’all fucked up.”

“Some man killed Hank Stillwell’s daughter,” Jason said. “Raped and shot another girl. There was this man lived up in the hills . . .”

“How about you follow me to the Hinds County sheriff’s office,” Quinn said. “You can make your statement there. There will be some complications putting this case together, given our situation.”

“What situation?”

“Running in my own father for murder.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jason said, standing. The lake behind him had turned a hard copper-gold, ducks skimming the water a bit and then landing with a gentle smoothness in small coves and hidden pockets. Quinn stared at Jason Colson. The old man’s forearms stood out, where he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, muscled and corded from plenty of outdoor work.

His face had a plastic quality to it of someone having to fit it back together but not getting the configuration just right. One of the blue eyes was just a little off and Quinn wondered if it might be glass.

“I know I’m not pretty to look at,” Jason said. “I wish I’d taken better care of myself. I wish I’d taken better care of you and Caddy. Why don’t you go have dinner with me and I’ll roll out a list of regrets that will stretch from here to Jericho.”

Quinn nodded.

“Did you see Chains LeDoux, Hank Stillwell, or any of the gang abduct that man?” Quinn said. “Did you take a ride with them out to Jericho Road after Diane Tull was found wandering after she’d been raped and shot?”

“I knew you’d find a reason to come after me,” Jason said, “but I never figured it would be for something I hadn’t done.”

The men stood within maybe five feet of each other up on that hill, sunset leaving everything red and black, clouds scrambled above them in weird colors. “You’re refusing to make a statement or take part in an interview?”

“What the hell we doing now?” Jason said, rubbing his goatee. “God damn.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“No, sir,” he said. “I can’t walk off my job.”

“You’re coming back to Jericho,” Quinn said. “You can do it on your own or in cuffs. I got a D ring in the back of the truck where I can chain you.”

“Damn, you sure hate me.”

Quinn swallowed, hand absently touching the leather pouch on his belt where he kept the cuffs.

Jason bowed and shook his head. “OK.”

“You can notify who you like,” Quinn said. “Bring any stuff you might need. You might be there for a few days.”

“I wasn’t part of this.”

“You got a lot of explaining to do,” Quinn said.

“Nothing to explain.”

“We’ll get that on record,” Quinn said. “And then we’ll talk about the charges.”

•   •   •

Chains LeDoux walked out of prison as he’d come in, the jeans a little tighter but the old T-shirt, flannel shirt, and leather jacket still fit just fine. A deputy sheriff named E. J. Royce he’d known down in Jericho had picked him up from the correctional center, helped with the out-processing and signed some paperwork, then drove him down the Natchez Trace straight out of the hills of Tennessee and down into Tupelo, where they stopped off at a Walmart and let him get some clean underwear, a toothbrush, and deodorant. He took Chains as far as a Super 8 Motel on Highway 45 where Chains’s old lady Debbie was waiting, now a gray-headed grandmother of four but still the kind of woman who opened the door in a nightie and holding a bag of weed and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. They fucked that night like kids.