She tried to move past Dwight, but he held his ground in front of the opening. “Sorry, ma’am.” To Reid, he said, “I saw a couple of town officers around here earlier. Run see if you can find them.”

While my cousin for once went off to do as he was told without asking why, Tally protested. “Officers? Hey, wait a minute, Mister. You got a problem with Braz or this store, you talk to me, okay? I’m the owner. And if I can’t fix it, I’m sure our patch—”

“Wassup, Tail?” asked a man who was working the duck pond next door, an idle pond now since all his little customers seemed to have gone home to bed.

She turned to him gratefully. “Is Dennis still on the lot, Skee?”

“Yeah, I saw him up at the gate a few minutes ago. Want me to get him?”

“Would you? And if you see Braz, tell him to get his tail back here right now, or he can just keep on going, okay?”

She swung back to me and said, “Look, Judge, can’t you tell your friend here—”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ames.” I was almost positive that it was her older, missing son who lay just beyond the hinged flap, and even though Dwight was shaking his head at me, I couldn’t not start preparing her for the worst. “There’s been an accident. And this is Dwight Bryant of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Accident? Sheriff’s department?” She glared at us suspiciously. “What sort of accident?”

The African American couple who’d been feeding quarters into the machine next to Reid started to edge away, and Dwight said sharply, “You two! Wait right there, please.”

“Hey, this ain’t nothing to do with us,” said the man.

“Woods, isn’t it?” asked Dwight. “Vernon Woods?”

I couldn’t quite remember the charges—DWI? Possession of an illegal substance?—but I was pretty sure that he’d stood before me in a courtroom in the last year or so. From the way he was scowling, he seemed to remember me, too. The woman tugged at his sleeve, and he subsided.

Not Tally Ames, though. She was getting more and more upset, yet, curiously, the vibes I was getting were not because she feared something had happened to her son, but more as if she feared he’d instigated whatever it was that required the law.

Happily, Reid soon returned with two of Dobbs’s finest close at his heels, one black officer, one white. And from the opposite direction came help for Mrs. Ames in the form of a good-looking white man in jeans and a short-sleeved white polo shirt. A little shorter than Dwight, he was slender, with a small gray moustache that was as neatly trimmed as the salt-and-pepper hair beneath his gimme ball cap. Without the least hesitation, he instantly deduced who was in charge here and held out his hand to Dwight.

“Dennis Koffer, Officer. I’m the show’s patch. They tell me there’s a problem?”

At the time, I’d never heard the term “patch,” but Dwight clearly had. He shook the man’s hand and said, “I’m afraid so. Someone’s been hurt here.”