The nurse wasn’t sure what to do. She looked at the patrol officer, and he held up the flat of his hand and nodded. The nurse left in a huff.

Lillie settled back in the chair as the officer left. She forked some scrambled eggs and held it to Ladarius’s face. “Open up,” Lillie said. “Here comes the airplane. But I got to warn you, kid. By the time you go to trial, you’ll be eighteen. Folks over at Parchman got a whole different program for pretty mouths.”

“Hell with you, lady.”

“Why’d you run?”

“Shit.”

“Did you do it?” Lillie said. “Did y’all stab and cut up TJ’s momma and stick her in that pickle barrel over in Parsham County? Sure would love to know.”

“Hell no,” Ladarius said. His voice hoarse and pleading. “That ain’t my style. I never hurt no one.”

“Whose idea was it?”

Ladarius shook his head. He dead-eyed the dark television screen, thumping his fingers on the rails of his bed, looking like a man who sure wanted to bolt but knew his legs wouldn’t take him far.

“I don’t have much time,” Lillie said. “Help me out. How can I get in touch with TJ? Maybe we can have a heart-to-heart, real woman-to-woman shit, talk about boys and manicures and running from the law on a homicide beef. You know, all the good pillow fight bullshit.”

“We didn’t do it.”

“I’m beginning to see the light.”

“You are?”

“Y’all got a hell of a friend in Sheriff Colson,” she said. “Isn’t my job one way or another. But I thought you kids were guilty as hell.”

Ladarius was quiet. She lifted up a piece of bacon and he shook his head again, making a stink face. With all the marks on his cheeks and lips, it looked like it might hurt the kid to chew gum. Lillie put down the bacon and stood up. She heard a voice in the hall, someone arguing with the plainclothes about access to the patient.

“I can get cleared to take you back tomorrow,” Lillie said. “But I’d prefer getting a head start to TJ and that girl y’all kidnapped.”

Ladarius snorted and turned his head away from Lillie. Lillie circled the bed and came over to the other side, watching the kid, looking at his sly little smile. Kid ate up that damn canary, feathers all over his mouth.

“Kidnapping isn’t funny,” Lillie said. “Y’all just upped the goddamn ante five hundred percent for some Barney Fife fucknuts to get an itchy trigger finger.”

“Shit,” Ladarius said. “That girl Chastity kidnapped her own damn self. She talked TJ into going along, said it would make folks listen up about Chester Pratt.”

“Well,” Lillie said. “That was dumber than shit, now, wasn’t it?”

“Sure seems so.”