“The older one is not my kin,” Rosemary said. “Marnie is looser than a circus tent in a windstorm, as my mother used to say. Two hundred is what the judge ordered Bill to pay in the divorce. Child support for Levi. I’m just covering the cost until he gets out of jail.” She shot a glance at Roger. “Soon, we hope.”

“Your son wrote a letter to the governor,” Darren said.

The mention of her son from Darren’s mouth lit a match to Rosemary’s already simmering dislike of him. She again refused to address him directly, telling Roger, “I don’t want to talk about Bill.”

“Bill has been writing to the governor for the past three years,” Roger answered for her, a chivalrous act to keep her from having to talk to Darren, as if he’d gently escorted her by the elbow around a puddle in the road. It gave Darren an odd feeling of dislocation; for a second he actually didn’t trust his visibility. He felt as if he’d wandered onto a movie set. He could see the actors, but Darren was reflected in none of the action around him. “Bill King has changed inside,” Roger said. “He’s gotten right with Christ. He’s renounced his former ways, the ugly things he’s done. We have every belief that the parole board and the governor himself will see fit to consider him for early release.”

“It’s time,” Rosemary said brightly, with the confidence of a woman used to getting her way.

Quinn said, “Ranger Mathews is a part of a joint task force that’s investigating the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Any information your son has that could help authorities might give him a leg up on early release.”

“No,” Roger said quickly. Again, he patted Rosemary on the knee, the gesture this time not so much one of caution but of reassurance, his hand lingering there. Rosemary pressed her coral-painted lips together till the skin around them reddened and then turned purple. Her jaw was clenched so tight, Darren could see the vein in her temple, serpentine and angry. “I’ve instructed my son to make a clean break with that trash,” she said. “He will come home with no burdens. He will not spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for someone aiming to get even with him for telling tales out of church. He will serve his time. Then he will start over. I told him to forget he was ever involved with Nazis.”

Oh, really?