The special investigator, Bobby Peden, now had a yellow legal pad in front of him, jotting down some notes. She saw a cell phone had been pushed to the center of the table, recording what was being said.

“No, sir.”

“Y’all didn’t get into it the other night?” he asked. “Your momma wanting to send you to that Wings of Faith school up in Missouri? I heard Mr. Pratt even offered to pay your way.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Mr. Pratt can’t even pay his own damn bills.”

“Come on now, TJ,” Lovemaiden said. His voice smooth and reassuring and annoying the hell out of her. “Help us out a little.”

“My friends call me TJ,” she said.

“Okay, TJ,” he said.

“But you can call me Tanya Jane.”

“Okay, Miss Tanya Jane,” Lovemaiden said. “Did you and your momma get in an argument about you going up to that Wings of Faith?”

“Wasn’t no argument,” TJ said. “I told her there was no fucking way I was going up to that school. They got pictures on their site of girls riding horses and playing volleyball. But if you look at the fine print, all they want to do is scrub the makeup off your face, slip you into a flowered dress, and brainwash your ass. The say their mission is to get a young woman to submit. Submit, hell. Submit to who? Would y’all please tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“I’m guessing they want you to submit to Christ,” Lovemaiden said. “That’s what all young women need to do at some time in their lives.”

“And what the hell do you know about being a young woman?”

The question hung there for a few seconds just as TJ caught the mean stares that Sheriff Colson was giving to Bruce Lovemaiden, looking at him across the table like a man telling another man he needed to shut the hell up. But Lovemaiden either didn’t get the message or had no intention of taking advice. He leaned back in a big spinning chair and placed his two fat hands behind his head.

“I got two daughters,” Lovemaiden said. “One’s married with two grandbabies. And for a long while she got herself lost before she finally came to terms with biblical thinking. Woman’s got to get with the program. Get right all the harms she’s done. I don’t have to tell you there’s no salvation without coming clean. How about it, TJ. You ready to lay your burdens down?”

TJ looked to Quinn Colson and back to the fat sheriff and his investigator.

“Lay down my burdens?” she asked. “Where is my goddamn mother?”

“We heard sometimes it got real rough with your momma,” Lovemaiden said, shaking his head. “Real rough.”

“Chester Pratt told you that?” she said. “Chester is a liar. Where’s my fucking mother?”