“Sorry, D., but that’s just not true,” Greg said. “We have the old man’s own statements about Levi King and now corroborating stories from the boy’s mother and her boyfriend, also living in the house.” He looked at Darren, wanting some reassurance that things were okay between them. “Don’t worry—we are going to handle this carefully, every rock overturned, before we go anywhere near a grand jury. We know we can’t afford to fuck this up.” Trust me, his eyes were saying. It’s a tactic. The long game is for the greater good. But then he went and ruined it by saying in front of the other federal agent and Sheriff Quinn, two white men: “You know if the races were reversed and some black kid came up dead and his white neighbor had threatened him, that neighbor would be a suspect.” Greg using Darren’s race—and his assumption that he had a right to do so in mixed company to make his point—hurt Darren in a way that nothing else had.

“‘Came up dead’?” Darren said. “There’s no body. There’s no case, Greg.”

“We’ll see,” Quinn said, putting a supportive hand on Greg’s shoulder.

Darren’s time in the box with Gil Thomason was as unproductive and unpleasant as a trip to the bathroom after a hard bender, and his head ached just as much. He was admittedly distracted by the turn this case had taken, by Greg’s cocky assurance that he was doing the right thing, and by Darren’s own doubts about Leroy Page. He believed Dana and her tears for her brother. But why would the old man have lied about seeing Levi the night he disappeared?

Gil wasn’t exactly cooperating. He alternated between stony silence—arms crossed tightly across his chest, wooden chair leaned back on its rear legs—and launching race grenades at Darren, as if he’d grown bored and wanted to see how they would land. Nigger. Coon. Nigger-coon. Roach. Monkey with a badge. “Did you know that on average, black men have IQs twenty points lower than white men? So chances are, badge or no badge, I’m a hell of a lot smarter than you, Ranger.”

“If you tell me you can spell IQ, then I’ll believe it,” Darren said.

Gil actually paused for a second, thinking. The answer was so simple, as was the joke embedded in it, that Gil had to search hard in his brain for the trick, and it left him gape-mouthed and looking as dumb as driftwood. And that only made him madder. Nigger. Coon. Burr-head. Buckwheat motherfucker.