Jimmy Ray snorted, took a hit off the beer bottle dangling from his fingers, and then pointed at his eye. “This? Courtesy of your brother. Came in here all fired up a few nights ago. I let him have his shot, because he’s a cop and who needs the aggravation.” On anyone else it would have smacked of face-saving bravado. On Jimmy Ray, I knew it was the truth. Cal’s badge was the only thing that had spared him from a bullet in the head. And now I knew why Sam had worried Jimmy Ray might not want to see me.

“Cal?” I said. “Why?” But I remembered Land’s questions about Jimmy Ray the day Junie died. That would have been all Cal needed. He stayed within the letter of the law most of the time now that he was tasked with enforcing it, but he’d learned at my mama’s knee. No one messed with Cal’s family. We protected each other with bared teeth and claws. No excuses and no forgiveness. And no amount of civilizing, no years of carrying a badge, could ever completely tame that impulse.

Jimmy Ray slammed his beer bottle onto the bar top. “He wanted to see if I was eager to start talking.”

“Were you?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. It would take more than a couple of punches for Jimmy Ray to spill his guts if keeping silent was in his best interest.

Jimmy Ray smirked at me. “What do you think?”

I slid off my bar stool and moved closer to him. He threw a look over the bar at Matt, a laugh working its way onto his lips. He always did think women fighting back was funny. He’d usually let you get a few swats in, like a kitten squaring off against a pit bull, before he squashed you. But when I reached out and poked him in the chest, he grabbed my fingers, the smile wiped off his face in an instant. He didn’t bend my fingers backward, not yet. But I felt the threat hovering there, tendons poised to snap. “Watch yourself, girl,” he said under his breath.

“Do you know anything about it?” I said. “About what happened to Junie?”

He released my hand and gave me a shove backward. “I don’t hurt kids,” he said. His mouth twisted up, offended. “Jesus.”

“I think you’d hurt your own mother, Jimmy Ray, if you stood to gain something by doing it.”

Jimmy Ray snorted out a laugh. “Shit, I’d kill that worthless bitch for free. But that’s beside the point. There ain’t nothin’ a couple of twelve-year-old girls could do to or for me that would make killing ’em worth my while.”

“Look me in the eye,” I said. “Look me in the eye and swear you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I knew that girl when she was in diapers. You really think I could have killed her that way?”