“I saw you crying over Debby’s grave. You want to tell me about that?”

Danny’s head snapped up. “Nothing to tell. I was sorry she was dead. And I knew Willie was all busted up about it.”

“You know who killed her, don’t you?”

“If I did I would’ve told Tyree, wouldn’t I?”

“Would you?”

“I’m tired, man. Going to sleep.”

“You sure you don’t want to tell me?”

“Sure as I’m lying here doing nothing.”

Stone returned to his room but did not get back in the bed. Something was gnawing at him. Something he’d seen, heard or maybe both. Something that just did not add up.

He absently pulled out Danny’s phone. He went through the contact list again, to see if anyone on there would provide him with a clue and explain why Danny refused to tell him what had happened. Yet nothing stuck out.

He continued pressing buttons, pushing the phone’s memory into advanced fields of content. Then he stopped as the screen came up with only one name and phone number on it. Tyree. Yet the phone number next to the name was not the one Stone knew for the lawman. He punched it in. A few rings later a voice answered.

“Danny?” the man said.

Stone immediately clicked off. It was Tyree. He’d recognized the voice. Why would Danny have the man’s name and a different phone number hidden in his phone’s memory? And if this number was to be a secret, why not just memorize it? Why input it where someone like Stone could find it? He looked back at the regular contact list. Even on here he saw the numbers for Abby’s house, the restaurant, numbers Danny should have easily remembered. On impulse he called Abby and told her about his conversation with Danny, though he didn’t tell her about finding Tyree’s number on her son’s phone.

“Abby, does Danny have trouble remembering numbers?”

“Ever since high school. Doctors said it was from the concussions he got playing ball. I told him to stop playing but he loved it too much. Killed him when his knee wouldn’t let him play for Tech. Why do you want to know?”

“Just sitting here with too much time on my hands. Thanks.”

He clicked off and then heard a rumbling sound coming from down the hall and glanced over in time to see an orderly passing by with a load of boxes. That ordinary sight produced an extraordinary reaction in Stone.

It came together in a neat little box all its own.

Sixty, not eighty boxes. Black dirt instead of the normal red clay. And miners who left town to get their methadone pop long before the crack of dawn.