This was my own test, and I understood the man better now. I’d seen a number of Ohio State shirts recently on folks in the area. Justin Fields, our backup quarterback at Georgia, had transferred there, under those new rules that let kids leave one school with no penalty and go to another.

“You a Fields fan?” I asked.

“Pride of Kennesaw,” he said. “Four thousand yards of passing in high school.”

Fields was a local kid from northwest of Marietta, and some fans thought he should’ve started at Georgia instead of the current QB, Jake Fromm. Now heading into week three of the 2019 season, it was too early to tell.

I walked closer to the man. “Help us out, will ya? These guys are in the morgue.”

The man motioned for Remy’s phone again, and she handed it to him. A pile of wooden pallets was stacked twenty high against the building that housed the bar.

“From what we heard, there were three guys,” Remy said, breaking the silence of the barkeep’s inspection of the photos. “The two you see here—plus another buddy. A shorter fella.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They were in here together a few nights ago. Tuesday night. Maybe again Wednesday. Then last night it was just the one guy.”

“The shorter guy?” Remy confirmed.

“Yeah, he came in last night,” the man said. “’Round ten p.m. One shot of tequila. Two Dos Equis. Tipped me a twenty and said he’d see me tonight.”

“What’s he look like?” Remy asked.

“Think he’s Puerto Rican. Curly dark hair. Probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Real short. He had a thing on his hand. Not a cast. It’s more like gauze. Messy, like he taped it up himself.”

“Right or left hand?” my partner asked.

The man cocked his head, picturing the customer from his vantage point. “My right, at the bar, so his left.”

“And he said he’d be back tonight?” I asked.

The man nodded, but slower now.

“What’s your name, sir?” I asked.

“Isaac McGulden.”

“You’re gonna have a police presence in your bar tonight, Mr. McGulden,” I said.

“And what if I don’t want one?” He stepped close to me, his body a similar frame to mine, even if thirty years older. “Friday’s my best night.”

“Well, we won’t be in the way,” I said. “But if the register runs short, I can always talk to my chief. See if we can help out. A night out here with patrol.” I shrugged. “Drinking parties with cops tend to run up the tape pretty well.”

He hesitated, not sure what to make of the offer.

“I think it’s a fair guess that this man is armed and dangerous, Mr. McGulden,” Remy said. “We’ll be in plainclothes, so no one’ll notice. But we’ll park some black and whites nearby.”

“All right,” the old guy said, even though we weren’t asking his permission.

We followed him inside the bar then, and arranged where the best place was for us to wait and what time we’d be back. Made sure he didn’t alert any customers.