The judge barely glanced at me. “Through the door behind the clerk,” he said, inclining his head in the right direction. On shaky legs, I made my way to the back of the court and through the door, where I was faced by a phlegmatic woman in khakis and a T-shirt, and an armed Hollis in full uniform. The woman was sitting behind a small table holding a cash box. I guess she needed Hollis to guard the money and make sure someone angry about paying a fine didn’t decide to take it out on her.

“It all came out all right, then?” Hollis asked, looking genuinely relieved.

“Yes,” I said, handing over the papers the clerk had given me, along with one hundred fifty dollars in cash. She filed the money and stamped “PAID” on the papers, handing them right back to me. I wanted to say something else to Hollis, but I couldn’t figure out what, and there was someone right behind me waiting to make her own payment. So I smiled at him, happy for the first time in days, and went back through the courtroom, which looked just as full as it had when the morning began. The lawyer was waiting for me outside in the cavernous hall.

“Thanks, Phyllis,” I said, and I pumped her hand.

Phyllis smiled at me. “All I did was show up and let the court know I was here,” she said. “If you were to ask me what happened, it sounds like someone told Bledsoe to back off, not to make an issue of what he’d done.”

“Maybe he did it on impulse, thinking he’d please someone, and then found out he hadn’t.”

Maybe it was his cousin Paul. Maybe it was his boss, the sheriff. Maybe it was the lady who owned half the town, Sybil. Maybe . . .

“Let’s go over to the jail,” Phyllis said. “I saw the van leave. I’ll wait with you until they process him out, just to make sure.”

We went into the jail again, and I asked the woman behind the counter where to wait. She pointed at the chairs in the same reception area where I’d waited so nervously to see Tolliver the day before.