Quinn wrote the name down but insisted he had bigger fish to fry and wasn’t prepared to drop everything to find a grown woman no one was looking for save an unpaid notary. “I’m not gon’ let you run over me the way you done the sheriff down to Shelby County.” So word about the arrests in Lark had gotten to Marion County—especially the fact that the sheriff in those parts was damn near arrested for the collusion Darren had unearthed between him and Wally Jefferson over the murder of Geneva Sweet’s husband. Sheriff Quinn looked at Darren with an irritation that was threaded with grudging respect and something else he was fighting against: fear. Darren felt again the particular power that the badge on his chest held and wondered if Quinn was right. Had his asking about Leroy Page in Hopetown put the man’s life in danger?

If Darren ever caught a bullet in Marion County, he hoped that someone would have sense enough to take him over the border to Shreveport or, Jesus, just the few miles south on Highway 59 to Marshall, both towns bigger and better equipped than Jefferson, he would think, to handle a gunshot wound. But Leroy Page was in a double room in a medical facility that did the bulk of its business coaching stubborn diabetics through the lifestyle changes necessary for their survival, all within twenty feet of vending machines that sold Dr Pepper and Twix bars on every floor.