“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m not real good at that part. I mostly just make things worse.” Feels like she’s sinking in a bed of lake mud, and with every struggle she sinks that much deeper.

“Atlanta, I did some research. Newspaper archives and whatever. Local county business? Chris isn’t the only gay kid who killed himself. There’s three more in the area—and one who was beaten to death underneath the water tower just outside Danville.” He pauses. “That one had cigarette burns on him.”

Cigarette burns.

“And there’s been a rash of Hispanic kids killed, too. All of them beaten to death.”

“We don’t know that it’s connected.”

He shrugs. “No. But it makes sense.”

It did. It does. Her insides curdle.

Shane goes home. Atlanta heads inside—the dog again trotting after—and eventually she calls Jenny. She offers only the vaguest of details, explaining that the boys who hurt Jenny’s dog have been hurt in return.

“I don’t know how to get you proof of it, though,” Atlanta says.

Jenny breathes loudly into the phone. “I need proof. I gave you a lot of money.”

“Oh. Okay.” She pauses. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“What happened to them? You said the one’s hand was . . . hurt.”

“A dog chewed it up, actually. Yeah.”

“‘And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.’” Jenny pauses. “That’s from the Bible. From the book of Matthew. One of the gospels.”

“I’ve heard it before.”

“This place you went to. It was a . . .”

“A farm. They had dogfights there.”

“That means they’re going to keep hurting dogs.”

“Well, these two knuckleheads won’t.”

“I can’t . . .” Here Jenny’s voice breaks down a little. Just a hiccup, a croaky stutter where the voice goes high-pitched like a ricocheting bullet. “I can’t think of other dogs getting hurt.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Jenny.”

“Fix it.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Shut it down. I’ll pay you the rest of your money and then some.”

“I can’t. I can’t go back there. It’s dangerous.”

“Imagine what it’s like for the dogs.”

Atlanta tries not to yell, but she does anyway: “I saw what it was like for the dogs, okay? I saw. I saw the fight. I saw the barn where they, they . . . Vick the dogs. I saw blood and heard dogs in pain and there was this raccoon . . .” Her voice trails off, softens again. “I can’t go back. I don’t have good reason to.”

“Then you won’t get the rest of your money.”

Shit. “Fine. It’ll just have to be that way.”

Atlanta hangs up the phone.