Darren shook his head, still thinking of a way to stop this. But it would seem odd now, suspicious even, if Darren didn’t try to look for the cat. Cat. He swallowed a bitter chuckle. What he was looking for under his mother’s trailer would ruin him if it was discovered under the watchful eye of a cop, a member of the very law enforcement agency that would be investigating Darren should Frank Vaughn convene another grand jury to look into the murder of Ronnie Malvo. The deputy watching, Darren ripped back a large corner of the latticework beneath the trailer, got down on his hands and knees, and slithered in the dirt from one end of the structure to the other, clawing at the earth, picking through every mound of soil. He didn’t know if it was relief he felt or a choking dread when he didn’t find a damn thing. There was absolutely no telling what she’d done with it. That gun could be anywhere.

3.

3.

DARREN GOT called in to see his lieutenant first thing Monday morning, a surprise request that had him on edge soon as he walked into the office. Fred Wilson had been diagnosed with an ulcer two weeks after the election despite the fact that he’d voted for the incoming president, or so Darren presumed—though he was basing this hunch on nothing more than the man’s hat and cowboy boots, an ostrich pair of which were on Darren’s own feet right now. Maybe no man wore his heart on his sleeve—or in his boots, for that matter. Judge not and all that.

Wilson had a growing menagerie of home remedies lined up on his desk sandwiched between two towering stacks of files. Like any good Texan, his wife of twenty-five years claimed she was one-eighth Cherokee and insisted that Fred supplement whatever his HMO doctor prescribed with something that grew up out of the ground. These days he was constantly nibbling on boiled cabbage or raw carrots or sipping watery concoctions his wife blended for him. On a good day, his belches smelled of coconut water and banana. Today, it was garlic. There wasn’t a single window in the building that opened, and the air in Wilson’s office smelled canned and sour.

Darren sat in the chair across from Wilson and rested his gray Stetson on his knee. He was in dark blue slacks, which he’d woken at dawn to iron, a white button-down, and a thin burgundy tie. He’d driven in from Camilla this morning, and he hoped the details of his run-in with the sheriff’s department had stayed in San Jacinto County. Wilson had a file sitting on the desk in front of him, a folder thin enough for Darren’s restless imagination to think it resembled his personnel file.