A television was on here also, but it wasn’t as loud as in the other trailer. A woman’s voice said something inside and was responded to by the deeper tones of a male. I couldn’t make out the words but it sounded as though the woman had given an order of some sort and the man had replied in a surly whine.

The sound of the television lowered. Then, rapid footsteps approached, the corner of a curtain in the nearest window was pulled back, and Joree Causey’s face came into view. A look of surprise registered in her eyes when she saw me. Then the curtain fell back into place and the door was thrown open.

“Lordy, Mr. Tanner—Kennesaw,” she cried out. “What are you doing standing there in the rain? Get yourself inside—come in, come in.”

She stepped back and held the door open for me as I took off my coat and hat, and shook them off outside, before stepping in.

“I didn’t hear you pull up, what with this rain a-drummin’ on the roof like all creation,” she said as she closed the door.

She took my coat and hat and placed them on a chair at the nearby dining table. Then, turning, she spoke to a young man slouched in a recliner at the far side of the small room. He looked to be in his early to midtwenties. A scraggly rust-colored beard crawled across his face, with a thin mustache adorning his upper lip. He was dressed in the standard country-boy uniform of hunter camouflage and boots. Medium height, thick and flabby, with a Georgia Bulldogs cap pulled tight on his skull, he was practically indistinguishable from a few million others just like him between here and the Tennessee River.

“Junior, come say hello. This here is Mr. Tanner. You know. He’s the one I told you about. The man that’s gonna help us find out about Tonya.”

Junior did not respond other than to pick up the television remote control, turn the sound up again, and begin flipping through the channels.

“Junior!” Joree called sharply. “Put that damn thing down and say hello! You act like I never taught you a bit of manners!”

Junior looked up in disgust, clicked off the television set, threw the remote control at the nearby sofa, and bounding to his feet, stormed into the next room, slamming the door behind him.

Joree looked at me with a grimace of embarrassment on her face.

“That boy,” she said with a tone of exasperation. “Sometimes, I just don’t know what I’m goin’ to do with him. He don’t pay me no more mind than the man in the moon.”