“Got you a nice new roof on this place,” Quinn said. “I didn’t notice it until I drove out today. Some real heavy-duty tin up there. Kind of job that will last a lifetime.”

The coffee maker started to beep, signaling it was ready. Quinn poured Chester a hot cup, the same as he’d poured for Holly Harkins earlier that morning. This stuff smelled a hell of a lot stronger as Quinn had doubled the dose.

Chester took the coffee mug. “I think I’m gonna be sick, Sheriff.”

“I heard you used the Nix family on the job?” Quinn said. “Nix & Nix Roofing and Remodeling. My deputy Reggie Caruthers said you also used them to build out the liquor store. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s that got to do with nothin’?”

“Plenty,” Quinn said. “Guess you don’t check out your workers. Or just happen to be a good Christian who puts his faith in the power of forgiveness.”

“They’re just a couple roofers,” Chester said. “I don’t ask my roofers about their goddamn life history.”

“Flem Nix did a ten-year stretch at Parchman for manslaughter,” Quinn said. “Killed a man with a screwdriver on a job site. Poked him full of more than a dozen holes, including both his eye sockets. His son seems cut from the same cloth. Aggravated assault. Meth running. He’s been a suspect in two killings over in Parsham County. He was once accused of dousing a man with kerosene and setting him on fire. They’d gotten into some kind of property dispute and the man tried to run him off his land. On the other, they couldn’t make a case because they never found the body.”

Chester nodded, dead-eyed and silent, while he ambled over to the kitchen counter, looking like he’d lost something, opening cabinets and rifling through drawers. “I need to call Sonny Stevens,” he said. “You can’t do this. You can’t try and cornhole me just as easy as you please.”

Quinn leaned against the kitchen doorframe. He picked up a half-burned cigar and started to light up. “You don’t mind?” he said. “Do you, Chester?”

“ ’Course not.”

“I think you set something in motion that you couldn’t control,” Quinn said. “Whatever happened is eating you alive. Sonny Stevens can complain all he wants. But that phone call you left me is enough to go to a grand jury.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You said Gina’s kids were in trouble,” Quinn said. “And that it was all your fault.”

Quinn lied about the last part, but Chester Pratt didn’t look to be in any condition to contradict anyone about anything. He stopped shuffling around on his skinny white legs and just stared at Quinn from across the kitchen counter.

“What do you want?” he said. “What are you saying to me?”