“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “You want me to come down here and stab my own brother in the back. Holy damn hell.”

“No, sir,” Quinn said. “Just need to know why he went at it himself.”

Ronnie Pratt rubbed a hand over his jaw, stubbled with little white hairs. Quinn had heard that every time he sold a car, the manager at the dealership would ring a little bell and Ronnie Pratt would take a nip from a flask inside his coat. Quinn kept waiting for the man to pull it out while they talked privately.

“Chester didn’t need me no more,” he said. “I reckon he got the money somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I figured when Chester came to me, wanting me to throw into the pot, he’d already gone to every dumb son of a bitch in north Mississippi with his hat in his gosh-dang hands.”

“How much money did he need to borrow?”

“That’s a private business matter, Sheriff,” Ronnie said. “I don’t know if I should be saying all this without my attorney present. You do know ole Sonny Stevens?”

“Best lawyer in the county while he’s drunk,” Quinn said. “Second best when he’s sober. Yeah, I know Sonny. He’s my lawyer, too.”

Ronnie Pratt started to chuckle again. “I guess y’all need lawyers these days with all this anti-police stuff. You sometimes got to get a little rough with prisoners. Make sure their heads hit the bars on the way in. Har. Har.”

“Nope,” Quinn said. “I shot three men dead, including a former sheriff’s deputy, out at the old airfield a few years ago. You might’ve read something about it.”

Pratt’s smile dropped. He again pulled out his sunglasses from his shirt and began to study the lenses in the overhead light. Not liking what he saw, Ronnie Pratt blew on them once more and began to polish with the edge of his shirt, flashing his big hairy belly.

“Altogether, Chester said he needed to come up with right around fifty thousand dollars,” Ronnie said. “Give or take a nickel.”

“And you were prepared to give it to him?”

“Had to loot my savings for my part, about twenty-five thousand, but who wouldn’t want to be co-owner of the only liquor store in three counties?” Pratt asked. “Seemed like the kind of thing that even my baby brother couldn’t fuck up.”

“Did Chester tell you where he got the rest?”

“No, sir,” Ronnie said. “He did not. I hadn’t spoken to him since our partnership fell through. His call the other night came out of the blue and I was still sore about him screwing me over. But given the tragedy he’d endured, I didn’t want to bring up an old grievance.”

“Your compassion is overwhelming.”