Quinn had known Boom since they were kids. They’d fished, hunted, fought, and raised hell all the way through high school until graduation, when Quinn signed up with the Army and Boom a couple years later with the Mississippi National Guard. Boom was a big, hulking black man who’d come back from Iraq with only one arm and a headful of PTSD. His water tanker had been blasted to hell and back when it hit an IED, and it had taken Boom a while to achieve what folks called the new normal. But he’d found what that meant, learning to work with a prosthetic, and even getting work tuning up the sheriff’s vehicles at the county barn, with screwdrivers as fingers.

The long-haired and long-bearded bartender, a fella named Chip, poured them both some more coffee. Except for the Skynyrd tee, he looked like an authentic mountain man.

“Damn, Quinn,” Boom said. “Why don’t y’all just move in together? Let your momma and Caddy have the farm, just find a place for you and Ophelia.”

“You know who you sound like?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Lillie Virgil.”

“God damn it all to hell.”

The Southern Star was a long shot, narrow brick bar right off the Jericho Square, not too old since legal bars were something new to Tibbehah County. The bar ran along the left side of the room, the walls decorated with stuffed ducks, deer heads, and SEC and NASCAR memorabilia. A framed rebel flag adorned the wall in back of the bar, behind all the whiskey bottles. But Quinn’s favorite thing in the Southern Star was that crazy stuffed wildcat, hissing and reared back, ready to bite. It was indigenous to Tibbehah County and the high school mascot.

There was a stage at the far end of the bar where J.T., the local muffler man, was plugging in his bass to the motherboard, and a drummer Quinn didn’t know was setting up his kit. He turned to the door and saw Diane Tull walking in, proud and strong, holding a battered guitar case, wearing black jeans and a low-cut black top, turquoise necklace, and feather earrings. She was a good deal older than Quinn but still a very attractive woman. Quinn nodded to her.

Her face flushed as she passed and set down her guitar on the stage. She seemed to pause and hang there for a few moments and then clomped back to Quinn in her pointed rose-inlay cowboy boots and came up nose to nose. “OK,” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“Caddy said we could talk.”

“She did.”

“How about now?”

Quinn nodded. He introduced Boom.

“You think I don’t know Boom Kimbrough? His daddy worked at the Farm & Ranch for twenty years before my stepdaddy died.”

“Ole Mr. Castle,” Boom said. “How’s your momma and them?”

“Doing fine,” Diane said. “Appreciate you asking. And your daddy?”

“Working security at the mall in Tupelo.”

And then there was a little bit of silence, enough silence that Boom was confident to excuse himself and say hello to J.T., who was readying the stage. Diane sat up with Quinn and motioned to Chip for two fingers of Jack Daniel’s and a Coors chaser.

“That’s pretty outlaw.”

“Helps with the nerves,” Diane said. “Whenever I have to sing, doesn’t matter if there are two people or two hundred, I get a little shaky inside. A couple drinks stokes some confidence. Makes my voice sound smoother.”

Quinn smiled, took a sip of coffee, and then checked the time. He needed to be back to the farm by 1900 to meet up with Ophelia and have dinner with the family.

“I really don’t know very much,” Quinn said. “Caddy said it would have to come from you.”

“I think,” Diane said, pushing back her black hair with her fingers, one silver streak hanging loose. “I think. Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know where to begin. You ever think something is as important in the dark of the night and then you wake up and find yourself trying to get some meaning out of it?”

“I do.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said. “You bet.”

“Please don’t call me ma’am,” Diane said, leaning into the bar. “Makes me feel old as hell.”

“Miss Tull?”

“Shit . . .”

“Diane?”

“Better.”

“And so Caddy says you and me need to talk.”

“That all she said?”

“Yep.”

Chip laid down the whiskey and the beer. Diane threw it back and chased it with the Coors. She took another sip and stayed there all silent as J.T. hit some runs on his bass, the unknown drummer banging his kit, testing things for the show. Diane Tull’s guitar set still in the case, waiting for her to come up and lead them through that Outlaw Country set, talking about raising hell, drinking, heartache, and love with such an absolute truth that Quinn wished he could stay for a while.

“Me and you haven’t spoken that much,” Diane said.

Quinn nodded.

“But you know who I am?”

Quinn nodded, studied her face a bit, and waited.

“I don’t mean me the crazy lady at the feed store but the me you know for what happened when I was a teenager?”

Quinn took a breath. He slowly nodded.

“I never wanted to bring that up again.”

“I understand.”

“But all of this, what happened to the town, and other things that have come to light, have made me want to talk about it,” Diane said. “Now I don’t give a shit what you do. I don’t care if you file a report or investigate or whatever it is you do. I just want to tell the sheriff, someone different than those men I told—no offense because I know Hamp Beckett was your uncle—but just to make sure there’s some kind of memory, facts, to what Lori and I went through that night. It should be remembered.”

“Lori was the girl who was murdered?”

Diane nodded. She breathed, licked her lips, and swallowed.

“I don’t want to talk about it now . . . or here,” she said. “Can I come by the sheriff’s office tomorrow? I can take you out and show you where it happened. You know it’s your sister who wants me to do this.”

“Caddy has her way.”

“Caddy gives me a shit ton of strength,” Diane said. “What she did, taking on things after that tornado, helping out so many, despite her personal grief. Caddy Colson is my hero.”

“Mine, too,” Quinn said. “She’s got a tough streak. I’m proud of her.”

“Come by tomorrow?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Appreciate you, Sheriff,” Diane said. “But if you call me ma’am again, I’ll try and break your fingers.”

Diane Tull marched up to the stage and within five minutes, as Boom and Quinn were leaving the Southern Star, she launched into an old favorite called “The Healing Hands of Time.”

•   •   •

Johnny Stagg ran most of Tibbehah County from a sprawling truck stop off Highway 45, not far from Tupelo, called the Rebel. The Rebel had a restaurant, a western-wear shop, convenience store, and place for truckers to shower, get some rest, and continue on to Atlanta or Oklahoma City or parts unknown. Lots of truckers made it the stop of choice in north Mississippi not only because of the fine facilities and the famous chicken-fried steak, but because of a smaller establishment behind the Rebel, also owned by Johnny Stagg, a concrete-bunker strip club called the Booby Trap. Tonight Stagg had on eight of his finest young girls, ranging in age from eighteen to forty-two, working the pole in spinning colored light to rap music that Johnny didn’t understand or care to understand. But Johnny would’ve played “God Bless America” if it made the girls get their asses off the couches and shake their tails two inches from those bone-tired truckers.

Stagg had dinner at the Rebel with Ringold, as was his nightly custom, and walked over to the Booby Trap, toothpick swiveling in mouth, where he kept his real office, not the one for the Rotarians or his constituents from the Tibbehah County Board of Supervisors. This office, away from the bar and the stage, and down a long hallway of ten-inch-thick concrete blocks and rebar, was where he kept a safe full of cash from running drugs and whores all over north Mississippi and Memphis.