As Carl grabs two paper plates to make a stable shelling and eating platform, I notice Serenity watching him with a level gaze.

“Oh, Carl,” I say, “the lovely lady to Mia’s left is Serenity Butler. She’s a writer from Atlanta. But she’s a Mississippi girl at heart.”

“That right?” Carl’s eyes are bright with interest. Clearly he did not fail to notice Serenity when he first came in.

“You two have something in common,” I tell him. “Can you guess what it is?”

He looks at her for a while, and for a moment I think he might guess the truth. But when he finally speaks, he says, “I can’t imagine, I’m sorry to say.”

“Serenity was in the Gulf War. The first one.”

“Embedded reporter?”

Serenity laughs. “Army corporal.”

Carl’s grin loses its levity. “Seriously?”

“Nine months in Iraq.”

“Glad to know you, Serenity.”

“Tee.” She holds her butter-slick hand over the table. “Just Tee.”

Carl takes her hand and shakes it. “Okay, Ms. Tee.”

“Carl was in the second war,” I tell her.

“Army?” she asks.

“Marines.”

“Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Fallujah. First and second battles.”

“Regular grunt?”

“Sniper.”

Serenity looks at Carl with new eyes, as if to say, Okay . . . I see you now. Carl practically glows from her attention.

Annie cuts her eyes at me and squeezes her lips together in a way that tells me she’s noticed the chemistry between them.

“I was in Fallujah,” says one of the younger security guys. “I was glad to get out, too.”

The subtext of that comment was Not everybody did. This makes me want to hear his story, but Tim Weathers silences any elaboration with a single glance that is impossible to misread. There will be no war stories in front of eleven-year-olds.

We attack the steaming red piles of crawfish for another half hour, and then Carl and I go down to my basement office with a couple of beers.

“I’m glad you came in person,” I tell him.

“I didn’t want to call you about this.”

“You still don’t trust everybody in your department?”

“Billy Ray Ellis is still sheriff. That ought to tell you all you need to know.”

I nod dispiritedly. “What have you got?”

“My dad knows the woman you asked about. The one whose son got lynched. His voice had a real funny sound when he told me. He said this lady knew the worst story in the world.”

“The worst story in the world? Coming from your father . . .”

“That means something, brother. I’m not sure I even want to know. You know?”

“Yeah. But to nail Snake, maybe we have to know.”