“I don’t think your son knows,” she says.

He’s cagey. “Knows what?”

“Don’t be coy, Bill. You’re a member of that gun club. I saw you in one of the pictures on the wall.” She’s lying about that. She didn’t see that picture. But she knows it’s true just the same, and the look on his face confirms it.

“I am,” he finally admits. “So’s a lot of people.”

“I heard some things. Saw some things. See? I can be coy, too.”

He keeps eyeing that shotgun. As if it might leap up off the ground and bite him. And it just might.

“Get to the point,” he says.

“Back at your house. On the wall in your garage I saw this . . . license plate with the number eighty-eight on it.”

Bill Coyne shifts from foot to foot. “Doesn’t mean anything. It’s Dale Jr.’s number. In NASCAR.”

“Except that’s not a NASCAR plate. Plus, you got that other one, too, like the one I saw in Orly Erickson’s office. The one that says 14WORDS?”

“I said, get to the point.”

“You’re a neo-Nazi white-power asshole like the others. The number eighty-eight? I can Google. Learned how to from my smart little Venezuelan friend. Turns out, the eighth letter of the alphabet is H. Eighty-eight thereby corresponds with HH. And HH corresponds to ‘Heil Hitler.’ Same way that 14WORDS is some blah-blah Nazi bullshit about securing a future for white kids.”

“You don’t know what I’d do for my children.”

“I think I do know. I think I know that you’d hire the children of some of your white-power dickhole fuckface buddies to try to scare your son into going straight. Not straight like, ‘Don’t end up in jail,’ but straight as in, ‘Stop liking the look of other men and start getting down with the lady-parts.’” He doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “They burned him with cigarettes, Bill. They took hot peppers and . . .” The words die in her mouth.

“Unless you got proof of something, you best leave this alone.”

“I got all the proof I need. It’s right there in your face.” She picks up the shotgun. Doesn’t point it at him. Not yet.

“He’s a good kid,” Bill says. His voice has a ragged edge to it, like rusted saw teeth. His hands are shaking. He licks his lips. “Just needs guidance is all.”

“You gave him guidance, all right. Now it’s time for you to get some guidance, Bill.”

She pulls a crumpled pack of cheap-ass Natural American Spirit cigarettes out of her pocket. The ones with the peace-pipe-smoking Indian on the front. She tosses the pack to him. “I bought those. Amazing how easy it is for a kid like me to buy cigarettes. I tucked a lighter in the pack for you.”

“I don’t smoke.”