“If he won’t, I will,” Darren said before considering how bad that would look. He was talking too fast, making mistake after mistake. Why the hell had he bothered Clayton tonight? “No, no, I can’t do that, but listen to me, Mack, as long as you telling the same story, you’re fine. They don’t have anything new, you understand that, don’t you?” he said, letting Mack know without saying it that he hadn’t turned in the gun. “You just keep denying any involvement.”

“Of course.” And then Darren heard footsteps, Mack coming off the porch and walking away from the house; the background noise went from the hum of a television to the hum of tree frogs in the pines surrounding Mack’s land. “But Darren, see, there’s things in this that you don’t know.”

“Don’t need to.” The less he knew, the better. Mack had never actually confessed. It was a gun on his property, that’s all Darren really knew. And that’s all he wanted to know. Any more, and to protect Mack, he’d have to perjure himself.

“That night, Darren, I had—”

“Don’t,” he said. “Stop. Just stop.”

Mack fell silent on the other end of the phone. His voice came back soft and ashamed. “Don’t mean you no harm.”

“I’m sorry, Mack,” Darren said, not wanting the old man to feel he’d been scolded. “It’s just I’m on this job up here in Jefferson, a missing kid—”

“Aw, no,” Mack said with a feel for the tragedy of it.

“I guess I’m just a little on edge.”

“Understood.”

“But, look, Mack, you do me a favor?” Good Lord, am I really gon’ do this? “Any chance you could run five hundred dollars to Puck who stays up in front of my mama’s house?”

“I don’t have that kind of money on me.”

“Run over what you can,” Darren said. “I’ll fill in the rest later.” He hung up before he felt any more nauseated. He left his truck parked in front of the Cardinal’s front doors and brought in the last of his luggage.

Someone was in his hotel room. He knew it the second he walked in.