Darren knew he had the power to wipe the smug surety off her face, and it thrilled and frightened him how good it felt. He couldn’t believe he was actually entertaining the idea of fabricating evidence, didn’t recognize himself at all in this moment. He had the terrifying thought that the feelings of invisibility and dislocation were coming from his own mind. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” he said. He felt a slow rage building inside of him at the idea that Bill “Big Kill” King could just forget that he’d been a member of a gang whose initiation rite was the obliterating of a black life. He had savagely killed a man and never done any time for it after a Marion County jury had let him walk; it was selling opioids and meth to whites that had crossed a line for the good folks out here. “You talk about the Aryan Brotherhood being trash. Well, some of that trash came out of your house.”

“I did not raise a racist.”

“Says the woman who’s barely spoken to me since I walked in.”

“I have no problems with black people, Ranger Mathews. I have two of them in my home, Mary and Clyde, my driver. I just don’t like strangers in my house, especially ones looking to use my son. Bill has changed. He wants nothing to do with the Aryan Brotherhood, and he won’t say a word to you.” Sensing how that hung in the air, she quickly added, “And not because you’re black.”

Despite himself, Darren smiled. “Now, see, I wasn’t even thinking that.”

Sheriff Quinn groaned as if he’d belched up something sour. “Whoo, boy.”

Roger had his head down, having newly discovered a loose thread in his pants. But Darren did not suffer from the peculiar affliction that felled many a well-meaning white person—an allergic reaction to race talk, emotional hives breaking out and closing the throat completely—so he wasn’t fazed by any of this. “Mrs. King, your son—”