Pratt didn’t even think about heading back to Bluebird Liquors that bright and shiny morning, and instead drove right across the street to the Rebel Truck Stop. It was a busy day at the Rebel, the pumps jammed up with eighteen-wheelers waiting to get filled up with diesel and plenty of pickup trucks and cars pulled tight near the diner to feed on the “Best Chicken Fried Steak in Mississippi.” Pratt had eaten the chicken-fried steak. It wasn’t anything to write home to Momma about.

He parked and walked through the main shop with aisles filled with beef jerky, soda pop, candy bars, NoDoz, and Red Bull. They sold cowboy boots and samurai swords and had a walk-in cooler with the coldest beer within fifty miles. He was nearly back to the toilets when he saw the big black dude who worked for Johnny Stagg, Midnight Man, coming out of an unmarked back door. He had an apron stretched tight over his denim utility suit, blackened and stained with barbecue sauce and soot. The man must’ve weighed four hundred pounds.

“Is he in?” Pratt asked.

Midnight Man grunted. He turned around to the door and knocked twice, Midnight Man telling the man inside that someone wanted to see him. Someone? Midnight Man knew damn well who he was. Chester Pratt was Somebody in Tibbehah County.

“Come in,” the familiar gravelly and countrified voice said.

Johnny T. Stagg sat behind his desk, talking on an old tan landline phone and smiling. His hair had grown back into the familiar gray pompadour he’d worn before spending the last five years in a federal facility in Montgomery, Alabama. He was little older, a little craggier, but with the same odd-shaped skeletal head and ruddy cheeks and nose that made his face appear like an old wooden puppet.

He winked at Chester and motioned for him to take a seat.

Stagg’s desk was cluttered with paperwork and framed photographs, a silver bowl filled to the brim with peppermint candies.