Orly clears his throat, says, “I think we can get the boys on it. They got that program for troubled kids, kids who are lawbreakers. ‘Scared Straight,’ they call it. This is like that except far more literal. They’ll scare him straight, all right. Beat those improper feelings right out of him. Throw the devil out the window and leave room for the goodness of God. We can do that, right?”

A few moments of silence. Orly’s asking someone other than Bill Coyne. Petry. It has to be Petry. He doesn’t speak on the recording—trademark silence. Probably just nodding.

Orly again: “It’ll cost you a little something. Not much. Since it’s for the cause and all.”

Bill: “I can do that. I can pay. I’m happy to pay.”

“Then thy will be done.” Orly laughs. Then the sound of a drawer opening. Glass against glass. Maybe a bottle pouring—glug glug glug—sharing a drink. “Hail victory.”

Bill: “Hail victory.”

Another clink of glass. A toast.

Then the recording stops.

Petry again says nothing. He just removes the MP3 player from the cage.

“I know all that already,” she says. She can barely keep from yelling. “You’re not telling me anything new.”

“Oh, but I am,” Petry says. “I played that for him. For Chris. So he could hear. I took him from his home. I drove him up to Gallows Hill, to the pear tree as it bloomed, and I gave him rope—already tied like it needed to be tied—and I played that recording so that Chris knew what his father had done.”

The air, robbed from her lungs. A gut punch. A horse kick. She plays through it in her head. What that must’ve been like for Chris. To learn your own father had orchestrated the worst and most humiliating moment of your life. Thinking you were broken. Thinking you could be fixed through pain and humiliation.

“You made him do it,” she says. Voice quiet. Again Whitey growls.

“Not really. I just marched him to the door and gave him a reason to walk through it.”

“You forced him,” she seethes. Tears wet her cheeks. “You pointed a gun at him. Made him listen. Made him climb up there and hang himself.”

“The gun was just to get him in the car and to the tree. Then the recording became my weapon and so I holstered my piece. I was right. It was enough. I didn’t make him do it. I just gave him a reason.”

“That’s the same thing. I’ll get you for this.”

“You’re missing the big picture, Atlanta. You’re not thinking straight. Why am I telling you this? Why play that recording?”

“To torture me like you tortured him.”