“I just don’t want y’all thinking I’d have all that mess around my kids,” she said, running the back of her hand under her nose to wipe a lingering drop of snot. “I never even let Bill keep drugs and guns around the house. There’s safe houses for that stuff. But Gil ain’t been jumped in yet, and he’s an idiot.”

“But surely you knew what Bill was up to back in the day,” Darren said.

“I know a whole hell of a lot,” Marnie said. “I’ll know whatever you want me to know if you find my kid. Please, Ranger Mathews, I am begging you to help me find my kid.” She had the same despairing look her daughter, Dana, had had in the trailer today—she looked at Darren as an unforgiving mirror, saw the wretchedness of her life choices through his eyes. She too needed him to see past all that, to see past the bitten nails, the teeth yellowed with nicotine, the skin pocked with time and poor nutrition. She wanted him to see her as a woman, as somebody’s brokenhearted mother, not trash, as Rosemary King had so crassly put it. “I’ll remember anything you want me to about Bill King, sign anything.”

There it was, Darren thought, his for the taking.

She lowered her head then, her face pinking as the tears started again. “I just want my son back,” she said. “I’m a good mom. Fuck Rosemary.”

Quinn leaned forward, his chair squeaking slightly. “Ma’am, we are doing everything to find out what happened to your son.”

“You think he’s dead.”

Quinn wouldn’t correct her statement, so she turned to Darren. “I can’t explain it, but I just don’t think my baby’s gone.”

“It’s important to have hope,” Quinn said. “But as law enforcement, we have to be pragmatic, ma’am. We can’t let evidence slip by while we’re hoping.”

To Darren, she said, “Please find him. Please.” And then she added, “I’ll give you anything you want on Bill,” like she knew his real reason for being here, as if she didn’t believe an agency as important as the Texas Rangers would actually be worrying over her trailer-park kid.

“You ever heard of a man named Ronnie Malvo?” he said, the words jumping out before he could stop them. “ABT, out of San Jacinto County?”

Marnie looked at him with her swamp-green eyes, searching the brown of his for how much this might get her. “Yeah, yeah, I heard Bill mention him.”

“So I guess you know he’s gone?”

“Gone?”

From his desk, Quinn watched the back-and-forth volley with a frown, trying to follow the turn this interview had taken right under his nose.

“Dead,” Darren said. “Murdered, a couple months back.”

Slowly, Marnie nodded, committing to no more than that.