Jamison and McLamb left with the search warrant and Richards said she was going to get on the phone and call Atlanta. “See if I can verify the whereabouts of that Radakovich woman on Friday night.”

As she left, I closed Dwight’s door. “Talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.” His jacket hung on the back of his chair and the collar of his blue shirt was unbuttoned with the red tie loosely knotted. He folded his arms across his chest and remained where he was, leaning against the edge of the desk, motionless, as if bracing himself for something bad. “What’s up?”

I checked my watch. “I need to be back upstairs in four minutes, so just listen, will you? We can talk about this more after I adjourn this evening.”

“You’ve changed your mind,” he said flatly.

“About us? No, why? You having second thoughts?”

He shook his head. I hadn’t realized how tense he was till I saw his jaw unclench and his arms relax, but I didn’t have time to ask him what was wrong. Dwight’s always saying I don’t tell him things, and I didn’t want him to hear about Tally first from one of my brothers or their wives.

“Look, I couldn’t say anything to you about this till I’d talked to Daddy and Andrew and Andrew’d talked to April, only he pulled a drunk this weekend and didn’t, so I had to tell her myself this morning.”

“Hey, whoa, slow down, shug. Tell her what?”

“Just listen!” I said impatiently. “Remember how Andrew got a Hatcher girl pregnant when he was seventeen and her father made them get married and then she ran off after the baby was born?”

“Oh, yeah, I do sort of remember hearing about that somewhere along the way, but I was still a little kid and it—”

“Dwight!”

“Sorry. So?”

“So Tallahassee Ames is that baby. She’s Andrew’s daughter. My niece. They’re going to bury Braz Hartley out at the homeplace tomorrow morning, and I’ve got to run.”

As I hurried down the hall to the elevator, Dwight called after me, “Come on back when you finish court, hear?”

I’d hoped to adjourn early, but it was after five-thirty before I signed the very last order of the very last case on my calendar and called it a day. I’d already told Roger Longmire, our chief district court judge, that I was taking a half day of personal leave tomorrow, and I didn’t want anything on today’s docket to have to be carried over because of me.

When I got back down to Dwight’s office, the door was closed, but I could hear belligerent voices from inside. A woman’s shrill voice floated above angry male tones and both were followed by Dwight’s calm bass rumble.

Sheriff Bo Poole’s door was open down the hall, so I poked my head in. “What’s going on, Bo?”