“The Department of Criminal Justice has been trying to reach you,” Wilson said. “We got you in to see Bill King, but it has to be today. Don’t know why they’re making this so difficult, but that was the deal we cut. You have to get up to Telford Unit in Bowie County by three o’clock.”

“That’s an hour from now.”

“Don’t mess this up, Mathews. We may not get this chance again.”

19.

19.

HE BADE an abrupt goodbye to Marcus, grabbing his copy of the book and the photo of Penelope Deschamps, but not knowing what to do with either once he got in his truck. He tossed them behind the front bench seat and quickly decided on a route to the Telford Unit prison in New Boston, damn near to the Arkansas border. He hadn’t eaten anything all day and so chanced a swing through a catfish place. He gorged himself on the road as he headed north.

He was nervous in a way that shocked him: His hands shook if he lifted them off the steering wheel. He felt a sour damp coming up out of his shirt collar. And the fried fish turned on him before he got twenty miles outside of Jefferson. He’d sat across from killers before, but this was different. Bill King’s crimes felt personal. He let out a rancid wet burp as his phone rang again.

It was his mother.

Seething was too soft a word for the blue-black tone of her voice, the hum of rage that Darren could feel vibrating through his cell phone as he exited Highway 59 on the outskirts of Texarkana and headed west to the prison town of New Boston. “So you sent your uncle after me?” Bell asked. “Damn it, Darren, why you gotta make your mama hurt you? I thought we had an understanding.”

Darren was confused. “Mama,” he said, reminding her of his newfound filial devotion.

“Naw, it’s too late for all that. I don’t know if I can trust you anymore, which means I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I thought we had a deal.”

“Mama, what are you talking about? Did Clayton call you?”

“Call me? That uppity nigger showed up at my home. Time I returned from Lake Charles, who’s in my yard warning me about taking money from you? He knew about the gun, Darren. He knew about all of it and threatened to make it look like I’m the one tangled up in this murder somehow. I swear, Darren—”

“No,” he said, his truck swerving a little too close to the car in the next lane. He was flushed from his sternum up through his neck, and his damp funk filled the truck’s cab, fogging the driver’s-side window. “I didn’t send Clayton to you.”

Never told him about the gun either, he thought.

Then he remembered. Lisa. Jesus.