When Darren parked his truck behind Deputy Briggs’s white cruiser in the tiny hamlet of Hopetown, Marnie King and Gil Thomason were sitting out front of their trailer, which was painted a weepy blue with white trim, one end propped up on bricks. Nearly seventy-two hours after they’d reported Levi King missing, they were still refusing to let anyone in law enforcement inside without a warrant. Gil Thomason knew his rights, he said, and was listing them loudly when Darren climbed out of his truck. “I mean, goddamn, if the boy was in the house, we wouldn’t have called y’all in the first place,” he said. Gil looked at his girlfriend, the boy’s mother, wanting another person to bear witness to this insanity. But Marnie was staring into the distance, looking at neither Gil nor the sheriff’s men gathered in a front yard that was littered with rusted boat parts and strewn trash. She rolled an unlit cigarette between her palms like a worry stone. Finally, she reached into the waistband of her leggings and pulled out a lighter. She lit the cigarette and told Gil to shut the fuck up. Her voice was husky, like aged molasses that had crystallized and developed sharp edges. And she was tiny, her feet the size of a child’s. She was wearing a pale pink tank top, and Darren could see the outline of her ribs through the fabric.

Everything in Hopetown looked as mean and underfed as Marnie King.

Her and Gil’s trailer was situated in the middle row of a grid of dirt lanes, each populated by mobile housing of some kind: trailers, a couple of vans, and one houseboat that had been dragged off the water and made over for cabin living. Someone had affixed a satellite to its roof, had built a grand walkway to its front door using crushed oyster shells. There were two black lawn jockeys flanking the entrance. Someone with a warped sense of history—and humor—had placed tiny confederate flags in their painted black hands. Darren found himself scanning for signs of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, which included checking Gil Thomason’s skin for ABT tattoos. Marnie King’s boyfriend was wearing a long-sleeved BIG PINES LODGE T-shirt, and the only thing visible from where Darren was standing was the look of indignation on his face. “The fuck is he doing here?” Gil barked.

He was nodding at the black man with the badge and the hat.