It was smaller in real life. He’d walked down a small hill of grass, past a plaque that identified the spot under the rusted railroad bridge as the Jefferson Turn Basin, the place on Big Cypress where ships could turn during the heyday of Jefferson’s days as a port city. The “steamboat” docked before him—essentially an oversize double-decker pontoon boat in elaborate disguise, the smokestacks and paddle wheel in back tacked on as decoration—certainly called to mind the era when Jefferson was the crown jewel in Texas trade, a time of local wealth and glamour when steamboat travel was considered the height of sophistication and comfort, the way to get to Texas from New Orleans or St. Louis or anywhere else along the Mississippi River. There were candlelit dining halls and elegant ballrooms, smoking salons and rooms for men to wager money on card games. And there was danger too. Only a few hundred yards behind Darren was the faded mural of the Mittie Stephens, homage to a ghost ship.

It was one of the deadliest steamboat crash-and-burns in history, some sixty souls perishing on a cold night in the middle of Caddo Lake nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, after the vessel caught fire and then grounded in shallow water. Though the wreck of the Mittie Stephens was the one everyone remembered, there’d been crashes before that, and there were crashes after, until steamboat travel through Caddo Lake dried up for good in the 1870s. Why Sandler Gaines was trying to build a new entertainment industry on such rusted history was beyond Darren. And there’d be no time to dissect the business venture now or even take a peek inside. He heard footsteps coming fast behind him, and then Deputy Briggs’s voice. “There you are.” Darren turned and saw the young deputy gnawing on a piece of white sandwich bread wrapped around a link sausage with dill pickle chips hanging out of it. “Was waiting out front of the Cardinal from six this morning,” he said. The sun was still on its climb to the east on the other side of Big Cypress Bayou, the light sprinkling gold across the greenish surface of the water. It was only a little after seven, but Briggs was hyped. “Guess you musta slipped past me somehow. The news came down just fifteen minutes ago,” he said, nodding toward the yellow brick courthouse.

Darren took a last look at the Jeffersonian, then turned and started away from the water and up the hill toward town. “Warrant come through?” he said.

“Big time.”