Quinn nodded.

“He’s got a list and he’s crossing off names.”

“Who else is on that list?” Quinn asked.

Stagg was quiet. His face was as flat as he’d ever seen Johnny Stagg’s be. He was the kind of man who’d shake your hand and look you in the eye while selling your ass out far and wide. He reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a rubber comb, running it through the pompadour and ducktail. Before speaking, he popped a mint into his mouth and offered one to Quinn.

Ophelia looked over to Quinn after she shut the doors to the Bundren Funeral Home van. He nodded at her and they drove off.

“Me,” Stagg said. “He got no reason to come back to Tibbehah and make trouble unless he thought I was part of the reason he got sent to Brushy Mountain.”

“Were you?” Quinn said.

“You see me working with the goddamn government?”

“I think Bobby Campo might disagree with you,” Quinn said, “if he wasn’t in prison right now.”

Stagg sucked on the peppermint and then began to crush it up between his back teeth. Lillie was knee-deep in the dumpster now, passing bags of trash to Kenny and Deputy Dave Cullison. It would be a long night, as Lillie had specific and methodical ways to handle the crime scene.

“I need to help.”

“Quinn?” Stagg said.

“I want you to nail that son of a bitch to a tree,” Stagg said. “I know’d what you think of me, but he’s Satan’s pecker personified. You understand? You think them boys at Hell’s Creek brought trouble to this county, you wait and see when the clock turns back twenty years.”

“It can’t.”

Stagg snorted and shook his head, Quinn being a young man who didn’t know things back then or even now.

“I didn’t want to say this, but you need to know something,” Stagg said. “You and Lillie had a first-class ticket up Shit Creek. I made some calls, pulled in some favors, maybe knew a few things about that DA in Oxford and his liking of girls who hadn’t seen their eighteenth birthday yet. You understand?”

“God bless you, Johnny.”

“Grand jury come and gone,” Stagg said, “y’all been bothered?”

“They had manufactured evidence and then stepped away.”

“Since when have you ever known for people like that to have some kind of conscience?” Stagg said. “I ain’t got no political aspirations beyond the borders of this here county.”

Quinn nodded, Stagg offered his hand.

Quinn just walked away, put on a pair of rubber gloves, and got in line with the deputies to start sorting through the piles of shit.

•   •   •

“I guess you heard?” E. J. Royce said, just as Diane Tull was about to hang the closed sign in the window of the Farm & Ranch.

“Heard what?”

“Surely you know’d about the commotion out at the Rebel?” Royce said, hands in his back pockets and raising up on his toes. “They just found Hank Stillwell’s body in a trash can.”

“Oh, God.”

“It’s true,” Royce said. “I heard about it at the Fillin’ Station about thirty minutes ago. Figured I needed to let you know.”

Tull had the cash drawer out and was counting money out into a zippered bag for the bank. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Royce said. “Someone shot him right in the head and tossed him like some garbage.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Diane said, counting out the dollar bills and collecting them in bundles. She could count and talk at the same time, finishing the task and starting to gather the checks into a neat pile. She figured at least a couple them would bounce, and she was pretty sure which ones, but she took them anyway. People had to start prepping now for planting season. She placed them in the bag, thinking about that last time she’d seen Hank Stillwell, never thinking of him getting hurt, only hurting himself.

“Damn shame,” Royce said.

“Did you intend on buying something or did you just come in to scare me some more?”

“Lady, I ain’t trying to scare you,” Royce said, running a dirty finger up under his nose. “I intend to protect you. I don’t want something to happen to you when you ain’t looking. I know’d your, you know, passion for trying to help folks out. But to an old lawman, this ain’t looking good.”

“Who sent you?”

“Ain’t nobody sent me,” Royce said. “Are you implying I know the folks who killed Hank Stillwell?”

“Do you want to buy something? I’m closing in . . .” Diane said, looking at her watch, “in thirty seconds.”

Royce shook his head, took off his trucker’s cap, and left it hanging by his side. On his right hip, he wore a gun as if the twenty-first century was just some kind of practical joke on the world. He looked shabby and filthy in the same old Liberty overalls and beaten shoes. Diane had on pressed Levi’s and a tight-fitting white button-down shirt, the handmade pair of leather boots shined and gleaming for another show tonight at the Southern Star. She’d changed at the Farm & Ranch, as there wasn’t much time between closing and happy hour. She was going to do her makeup in the mirror of her truck. But now this. Goddamn Hank Stillwell was dead.

“Shot twice in the back of the head,” Royce said, putting on his trucker hat again. “Lord, I miss them days when we kept the doors unlocked and all know’d each other at church time.”

“Good night, Mr. Royce,” Diane said, reaching to the table for her set of keys.

Royce didn’t move. He walked up close to the counter, placed a liver-spotted hand on Diane’s fingers and the keys. “You ain’t fucking listening,” Royce said. “I don’t want you talking to Quinn Colson or his dyke deputy. This ain’t a request. It’s protection for you. I know’d your daddy. He was a fine, fine man.”

Diane snatched her hand away. “I told you to leave.”

“I need your word,” Royce said. “That’s how things used to be done.”

“Get out.”

“Come on, sugar,” Royce said, stepping back from the counter and then walking around it. “You look like you’re all dressed up for a long riding tonight. Hard being left by a man late in life. I hate to see it.”

The dumb bastard kept walking, a man too sure of himself for too long.

Diane put her hand to the phone but then snatched it away, reaching under the counter for a 12-gauge kept there if they’d ever had a robbery—which they’d never had in the history of the Farm & Ranch. She grabbed the gun, tucked the stock up under her arm, and walked forward quick and hard, pressing the double barrels up under the old man’s chin.

Retired sheriff’s deputy E. J. Royce stopped cold in his tracks.

“I got a singing gig in twenty minutes,” she said, “and I’m tired of you and your shitheel buddies looking in my window. Now, kindly step back, get in your truck or else my delicate finger might slip and I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”

“Holy shit . . .” Royce said, kind of muttering it as his jaw was closed tight.

“Why are you a part of this?”

Royce clenched his jaw tighter.

“Get the hell out of here,” Diane said. “Now.”

Royce turned, slowly at first, and then with some old-man speed, gimpy leg and all, looking to anyone outside like a dissatisfied customer, bell ringing upon exit. Diane watched his truck spin out in the gravel and head for the highway. She put down the gun, grabbed her money, and went to turn out the lights and lock the door.

She thought about opening up that first set with Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City,” feeling about like that.