Vaughn paused long enough to give Darren a bit of hope. Vaughn knew less than he was letting on. Darren knew where the anonymous tip had come from; now he needed to know what exactly his mother had said. Vaughn tried to recapture the heavy note of danger in his voice, the threat he wanted Darren to feel.

He smiled, showing his teeth again, and said, “Not yet.”

She was not in her trailer.

Nothing was.

The whole thing had been completely emptied out. The kitchen cupboards were bare; there was no more than a single plastic fork and a packet of hot sauce in all of the kitchen drawers. The TV, the one Darren had paid for with hush money, was gone, as was the box that connected it to the cable service he’d paid to have installed. She’d left the bed frame and the mattress, but all of her clothes and shoes were gone. Even the small sticky bottles of hotel shampoo she stole from work were no longer lined up along the edge of the plastic bathtub.

Bell Callis had taken the money and run.

She’d abandoned him a second time, he thought as he walked on wobbly legs down the trailer’s front steps, the midday sun pressing down on the top of his head. He fell to his knees in the dirt and crabgrass in front of his mother’s trailer, took off his hat, and buried his face in it, the only shade he could find. He hid his shame in it, screamed all his rage into it, begged for God’s help in it, and then he cried. For what she’d done to him and for the shit he’d done that had put her in a position to hurt him again in this lifetime. He’d lied and abused the power of his badge—for noble reasons, sure, but reasons that might now send him to prison. He thought of his uncle William in his hat and badge riding high in the cab of his old Ford truck, how when Darren was even a little too old for it, he’d let the boy sit right next to him in the cab, close enough that Darren could lay his head on the man’s shoulder, could feel safe against the impenetrable wall of his goodness. Mack had been William’s friend too. Maybe his uncle would understand what Darren had tried to do. Or maybe he’d call him the worst kind of fool.