“Heard you were looking for me, Sheriff,” Ronnie Pratt said, standing at the doorway of Quinn’s office. Hands in his pockets, sunglasses up on top of his gray head. He was a chunkier and shorter version of his younger brother, wearing khaki pants and a blue golf shirt with a Ford emblem. Quinn had left him a message at the dealership as he headed back to town.

“I was about to head your way, Ronnie,” Quinn said, standing and shaking his hand. “Appreciate you coming in.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to call,” Ronnie said. “Chester said you might be checking up on him.”

“He did?”

“Yes, sir,” Ronnie said, taking a seat across from Quinn’s desk. His ass nearly too wide for the arms. “Damn shame what happened to Gina. First woman Chester had ever been seeing that was worth a shit. She was a damn fine-looking gal, too. Makes me sick to my stomach to hear what happened to her. Chopped up into little pieces by her own child. I don’t have to tell you that’s what happens when we take God out of schools. Replace ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with all that rap music.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, sir,” Ronnie said. “You grew up here. Is it like it was back in the old days?”

“Tibbehah County has never had the makings of a Cracker Barrel menu, Mr. Pratt,” Quinn said. “Time has a funny way of twisting your memory.”

Pratt didn’t like the answer, resting his hands over his prosperous stomach. He removed the sunglasses off his head, blew on a lens, and began to polish them with his shirtsleeve.

“Y’all caught ’em yet?” Pratt asked.

“No, sir.”

“How far can a bunch of kids run?” he said. “I saw that girl hooked up with some nigger boy. I guess that’s how it all starts.”

“Mr. Pratt, I came to you for assistance,” Quinn said. “But I don’t care for that kind of talk and if you use that word again, I’ll see to it you leave by the window.”

Pratt snickered at that. Quinn just stared at him from across the table until he stopped. He placed the glasses into the V on his golf shirt and swallowed. “Shoot,” he said. “I guess y’all elected officials got to be all politically correct these days or the media will be coming for your damn nuts.”

Quinn didn’t dignify him with a response. He’d nearly forgotten how much he disliked the whole Pratt family. They kept a well-worn kind of cockiness, like they were too good for Tibbehah County. The kind of people that would brag that they were the descendants of plantation owners and Confederate generals while everyone knew their granddaddy, like most everyone else, had worked the fields and owed the commissary come harvest time.

“Weren’t you and Chester supposed to be partners in that liquor store?”