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  He’d figured once Stagg and ole Larry Cobb got caught bleeding out the county till, they could take a backhoe to the old Booby Trap and shovel the remains into the county landfill. So many good men in Tibbehah County had gone into that place for the smell of liquor and the devil’s grip of a woman’s clawed hand. Skinner had no doubt at all Satan was real and that he walked in the form of a redheaded, big-busted woman named Fannie Hathcock, arriving through the sulfur and smoke.

  The road twisted and curved through the rolling hills of Tibbehah County, the tires of his big truck rolling slow over crushed rock and dirt.

  Skinner had his talk with Vardaman prepped and ready. The bed of his truck was filled with yard signs for the senator, VARDAMAN FOR OUR MISSISSIPPI VALUES, him never missing an opportunity to shake a hand and tell folks about the fella who was going to stand tall for their state.

  “I’ve served you well, sir,” Skinner would say. “And now I’ve come asking for a favor.”

  A man like J. K. Vardaman wouldn’t take a request like that lightly. He’d take Skinner into his great room at the lodge under all the wild beasts Vardaman had shot and killed over the years: boars, African kudu, rhinos, and wildcats. The man once telling Skinner he’d been born with steel in his hands. God had given man dominion over the animals and nature. Skinner knew it, too, logging nearly a third of Tibbehah County, making money on the ancient tall oaks and knotty old cypress in the swamps.

  Skinner had faith. But he also knew a man had to make compromises. And Senator Vardaman had brokered the peace between those gambling people down on the Coast, one of them who held the leash on that hellcat Fannie Hathcock.

  “I want her gone, Senator,” he’d say. “That woman’s time has come. Not in my county. No way. No how. Not anymore.”

  And Vardaman, being a man of the world, might ask for a favor in return.

  Skinner drove into the bright sunlight, his truck turning off the main road onto a long stretch of gravel up into the hills. He knew just the right offering. The great house made of stone and thick logs came into view, like some kind of medieval fortress. Skinner still thinking how the conversation would go that morning.

  Skinner would nod, holding his tongue and being slow to speak, clutching his pearl white Stetson in his hands, and then say, “That ole boy Quinn Colson sure has been a thorn in your side, Senator. I might just know a way we can push him right out of the way.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “I brought you lunch,” Maggie said.

  “I had lunch,” Quinn said. “But I appreciate it.”

  “Fried chicken from Miss Annie’s?” Maggie asked. “Field peas and cabbage cooked with neck bones.”

  Sitting behind his desk, Quinn looked down at his watch. “OK. Maybe an early supper, then?”

  “Works for me,” Maggie said. “Might be the only chance to see me. The hospital has me working late the next two nights. I’m sorry for just barging in, Quinn. But I had to see you. We need to talk in a bad way.”

  He stood up and walked around the desk and reached around her waist. As he pulled her in and kissed her neck, Maggie felt a little tight, even rigid, against his side. She let him kiss her neck and smiled back but pushed against his chest with the flat of her hand, bracelets jingling on her wrist.

  “You all right?”

  Maggie had on her street clothes that morning, faded blue jeans and a gray V-neck tee, her reddish hair up in a bun, pale freckled face looking even more pale and serious. Her green eyes wandered around the office and to the old door with its frosted-glass pane adorned with a large black star. Quinn walked over and closed the door.

  “Guess you didn’t come to fool around.”

  She reached into her purse and dug out an envelope. She closed her eyes for a moment and passed it over Quinn’s desk. He picked it up and pulled out a letter. “There’ve been others,” Maggie said, looking a little rattled, playing with the bracelets on her wrist. Her mouth twisted into a little knot. “But not like this. I couldn’t keep this from you.”

  BRANDON DIDN’T DIE ALONE. LOOK AT THE FAR WEST CORNER OF WHAT USED TO BE THE PENNINGTON PROPERTY. THERE’S AN OPEN FIELD OF BRAMBLES AND PINE TREES. FIFTY FEET FROM THE SARTER CREEK YOU’LL FIND A FLAT STONE AS LARGE AS A TABLETOP. THEY BURIED HER TEN FEET DOWN.

  “What the hell’s this?”

  “The letters started right before you and I met,” Maggie said. “I didn’t want to tell you because I figured you’d think I was crazy as hell. Getting letters from a dead kid. Most of them were kind and sweet, talking about how much he loved me.”

  “From Brandon Taylor?”

  Maggie nodded and swallowed. “At first,” she said. “They were definitely in his handwriting. I believed they were something lost in the mail. Like those stories about a family getting a lost letter from some GI who died in World War Two. I really treasured them. They were intimate and private. Like a special secret when we were kids.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Two that I know Brandon wrote,” she said. “These others, six of them, were different. Most of them were about finding his killer. Whoever wrote them kept on telling me to push you on this thing. And with everything between us, Rick and all his mess, I just couldn’t risk it. We were planning a wedding and moving in together at the farm.”

  “Will you show them to me?”

  Maggie nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Quinn, I’m so damn sorry. I didn’t mean to keep this from you.”

  Quinn read the letter again and set it aside on his desk. “Crazy folks sure love to stir up trouble,” he said. “Cleotha hears from Jesus Christ Himself at least twice a day. Two months ago, Kenny got a call for a UFO sighting over Choctaw Lake. Turned out to be some kid flying a drone.”

  “The first letters were real,” she said. “I know that much.”

  Quinn nodded, really feeling for Maggie, not wanting to make her feel crazy or that she couldn’t share things with him. Looking at her right now, he was damn sure she believed whoever was playing with her mind. He reached out and grabbed her hand, holding it tight.

  “This is some real sick stuff,” Quinn said. “Messing with you. How many people do you think knew about you and Brandon?”

  “Every story about his disappearance and death mentions me,” she said, looking down at their hands in her lap and then looking back at Quinn. “Every website. Every Facebook page. I was one of the first people they reached out to when he was gone. You know his momma and daddy thought maybe he’d run away to be with me down in Mobile?”

  “You told me,” Quinn said. “Next time you get one of these letters, bring it to me. Promise me. Where’d they send this last one?”

  “To the farm.”

  Quinn let go of her hand and shook his head. He walked over to the window and looked out on the jail yard at a few inmates playing basketball. In the parking lot, two trusties were washing and waxing his truck. Quinn looked back down at his watch again.

  “Son of a bitch,” Quinn said. “Damn, this is dirty.”

  “But what if it’s true?” Maggie said.

  “Someone’s using you to get to me,” Quinn said. “Don’t you fall for it. None of it. You start getting letters from Brandon twenty years after his death? Now they want me to go dig up some field?”

  Maggie walked over to him and took his hand. She lifted it and pressed it to her face. “Maybe it’s nothing,” she said. “But don’t you want to find out?”

  “You want me to go call up a judge for a warrant and find a backhoe to dig?” he said. “Right this very minute?”

  “What could it hurt?”

  “I don’t like it,” Quinn said. “We don’t know a thing about who or where this is coming from. Damn crazy.”

  “So damn crazy it might be true,” Maggie said. “I know you loved and respected your uncle. But Brandon deserved a lot better
than this county gave him. Do you really believe your uncle did a solid and thorough investigation?”

  Quinn didn’t say anything. One of the inmates playing basketball jabbed a hard elbow into another man, turning and jumping to make a shot. The shot hit with a hard thud on the rim and bounced back onto the court, the inmates scrambling for the ball.

  “OK.”

  “You promise?” Maggie asked.

  “Looking for a body buried ten feet deep?” Quinn said. “I can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.”

  “Maybe it’s not crazy at all,” Maggie said. “Maybe this person actually knows something.”

  “Guess we’ll soon find out,” Quinn said.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I hear you loud and clear,” Ray said, holding the cell to his ear. “But it might be a good idea to limit our conversations. Those Feds have had a big hard-on for me and the boys for a good long while and I find it’s in my best interests they don’t get satisfied and cornhole me till kingdom come.”

  “I promise this won’t take long,” Vardaman said. “Just hear me out.”

  Ray didn’t answer, standing at the edge of the casino parking lot, looking out into the endless cotton fields. It still was several weeks until harvest, when those plants would explode into thick white bolls as big as your fist, giant tractors cutting them down at all hours, bright lights shining into the darkness. Farmers with mud on their boots coming into the casino to blow their damn load.

  “There’s been some concern from the good people in Jericho about the action out at Fannie Hathcock’s place.”

  “OK,” Ray said, setting his left hand in his pocket. Sweating like a damn pig in a black suit as the sun was going down across the river. Nearly a hundred fucking degrees today. “People have complained about that place since Johnny Stagg started selling titties and chicken-fried steak in the eighties.”

  “But this is different.”

  “How so?”

  “The Hathcock woman ain’t Johnny T. Stagg.”

  “Besides lacking a crooked peter,” Ray said, “just what does that mean?”

  There was a long pause and what sounded like Vardaman crunching candy or a breath mint with his teeth. After a moment, Vardaman said, “Folks have asked that I do everything in my power to shut the place down. We can make sure that woman answers to the law, forcing her. But I figured it was honorable for me to call you first. Let her leave town without a whole lot of mess.”

  Ray jangled the casino keys in his pocket. The sun heading down across the flat land looked like something out of an old biblical movie. Wide and dramatic, with insects sputtering and clicking deep into the cotton. Maybe Yul Brynner would appear at the far edge of his vision, a shadow before a big orange ball, head coated in a goddamn Egyptian headdress.

  “Well, goddamn, Senator,” Ray said. “I didn’t know I was Fannie’s daddy. She’s a grown-ass woman. Talk to her.”

  “I don’t speak to the hired help,” Vardaman said. “And I sure don’t really blame these people. They’re simple, churchgoing folk. Jericho isn’t Tunica. These people aren’t Delta folks. This is the twenty-first century in the hill country. You can’t operate some whorehouse on the edge of town like it’s Dodge City.”

  “Have you considered Fannie Hathcock operates a hell of a lot more than just some highway titty bar?”

  “That’s y’all’s business,” Vardaman said. “Not mine. I don’t really give a goddamn what that woman does for you and Buster White. I want her gone from north Mississippi. I plan on speaking about it at my rally in Jericho. A new day in Tibbehah County. Family, character, morals.”

  “This isn’t about morals,” Ray said, fishing out the cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Is it? This is about that old cretin in the cowboy hat. Skinner. Just why do you give two shits about some Bible-thumping hick who wants women back in poodle skirts and saddle oxford shoes? Come on, now, Jimmy. How long have we known each other? I know just what you like. And how you operate.”

  “That was a long time back,” Vardaman said. “No more leases. Or underhanded deals. I want that woman gone from my district. She causes too much trouble. She’s dangerous as a copperhead snake.”

  “You never seemed to have trouble with those women before,” Ray said. “I recall them being a great help to your dealmaking over the years.”

  “It’s reckless as hell,” Vardaman said. “You hear me? The goddamn party is over.”

  Ray lit the cigarette and blew out the smoke, the wind carrying it to the edge of the field, toward the sun. The big marquee for the casino flashing TONIGHT / COUNTRY PRIDE / CHARLEY PRIDE and FUNNY MAN JEFF DUNHAM COMING SOON / MENTALLY UNBALANCED TOUR. Ray had two hours to get the floor ready and make sure the doors opened on time, the bar stocked with booze, for when Charley Pride took the stage. “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” Fannie sure loved that song.

  “Can I ask you something?” Ray said.

  Vardaman didn’t answer. A long, white-hot silence between them.

  “Are you starting to believe the bullshit you’re dishing out?”

  The candy clicked in Vardaman’s teeth and the line went dead. Ray sucked on the cigarette until it burned down to the filter tip and he tossed it out into the weeds.

  TWELVE

  I didn’t think that old guy wanted to talk to us,” Tashi Coleman said.

  “He didn’t,” Jessica said, driving their Toyota rental way out in the great wilds of Tibbehah County, looking down at the GPS on her phone, searching for their next turn. As Jessica drove, Tashi flipped through the notes she’d collected the day before. “I called him personally five times before we left Brooklyn. One time he started yelling at me, calling me a goddamn Communist Mexican.”

  “Sweet man,” Tashi said. “I guess it wouldn’t have made a difference if he knew your parents were from Colombia.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Once I mentioned the name Brandon Taylor, he got pissed. On the first call, he remembered the case. By the third call, he couldn’t remember me calling and said he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Actually, he said ‘fuck,’ which took me aback because I didn’t think an old Southern man talked like that.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” Jessica said, finding the turn, a road called Turkey Trot Landing, with a sign pointing the way to a community called CARTHAGE. Tashi held on to the door handle as the Toyota cut hard, a plume of dust behind them. “When he called the motel, he said he’d be OK with taking a visit from two real lovely little girls.”

  “Ick.”

  “I know,” Jessica said. “I know.”

  Tashi stared out the passenger window, the sun filtering through the oak branches overhead as they passed long stretches of pastureland dotted with black cows and a few horses. She saw goats, a miniature donkey or two. A hand-painted sign read FRESH EGGS & RABBITS FOR SALE. She wondered if this meant pets or meat.

  “E. J. Royce,” Jessica said. “When I asked if he went by his initials, he said sure or we could just call him Sweet Daddy.”

  “You bring your pepper spray?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How are you doing with all of this?” Tashi said, now on to the list of potential witnesses in the file, marking Royce’s name with a check. “Settling down South in Tibbehah County, Mississippi?”

  “To be honest, I think I’d go crazy without the Southern Star,” she said. “They told me the place only opened up in ’09. You couldn’t buy beer in Jericho. But get this. Apparently, you could buy liquor. Isn’t this town crazy?”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Tashi said. “If we don’t get somewhere fast on this story, we’re going to have to pay for everything ourselves.”

  “We’ve done it before,” Jessica said, glancing back down at her GPS, nothing on the screen but a long road h
eading into what looked like Nowheresville USA. Tashi turned back to the road, thinking about why the hell E. J. Royce would want to talk to them now. “Nobody said we do this for the money. That’s not the life we wanted.”

  “At least we meet some nice people,” Tashi said, smiling. “Right? You seemed to be doing just fine with those boys the other night. You were into a friendly game of pool when I left. If you don’t mind me asking, which one did you choose?”

  “The biggest and the dumbest of the bunch,” she said. “When I asked what he did for a living, he said he worked a skidder.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Some kind of logging equipment,” Jessica said. “He tried to tell me as I was unbuckling his pants, but I really wasn’t listening. Damn, he had a big buckle.”

  Tashi put her hands over her ears and laughed. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  “Don’t you want to know about his tattoos?” she said. “His hunting club. And what happened to his momma?”

  “Nope,” Tashi said. “Not at all. There’s our turn. It’s Carthage. Right?”

  “Just like Hannibal and his goddamn elephants,” Jessica said. “And yet, we haven’t had time to visit Burnt Oak. Blackjack. Driver’s Flat. Sugar Ditch. You got to hand it to this county, they sure have some colorful names. It reminds me of something from an old Western. The Bandits of Burnt Oak. Shoot-out in Blackjack.”

  They turned down another long dirt road and just drove for a while, the farms thinning out, becoming big parcels of woods and then acreage scraped clean of trees, with big ugly piles of burned stumps, the land eroded. Tashi stared out the window, seeing her reflection in the glass, her face turning into a grin. Damn, she was far away from home. Born and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. College at Michigan and then on to Columbia. Grad school and then the podcast. “How was he?”