Chester took another nip from his cup, watching all that steam rising from the big ole piles of cut timber, the lights as bright as a Friday night football game. He let down his window, his Mercedes parked in shadow, and lit up a cigarette. He could figure this out. He could get Stagg paid and get that bald-headed monkey off his ass. But first, he needed to find out what in the fuck was going on with Gina. That was a special brand of crazy that he sure as hell didn’t need now. Every single one of his wives had been batshit crazy. Chester Pratt sure knew how to pick ’em. If that body they found over in Parsham was really Gina, he’d been right smart to go to the police from the get-go when she up and disappeared. Now they were thinking of him as the concerned citizen and worried boyfriend. He told that Sheriff Lovemaiden the exact damn truth he’d been thinking. If any harm had come to Gina, they better be looking right at her daughter. She’d hurt her momma plenty of times before.

Pratt’s car soon filled with light and he looked into his rearview to see headlights coming up slow and easy behind him. Pratt tapped his cigarette out the cracked window and watched two men get out of a truck, the one on the passenger’s side seeming to have some kind of trouble walking. The driver reached behind the other man, propping him up, and half-carried him over to Pratt’s open window. The men were short as hell and wiry. Pratt could detect their scent from ten feet off.

“What’s the matter with him?” Pratt asked.

“Just a little corrective activity with a fat boy at the pool hall,” said the one called Dusty Nix. “You know he don’t take no lip.”

“Anybody follow you out?”

“We ain’t no mental defects,” Dusty said.

“Just try and stay out of trouble,” Pratt said. “Can y’all just do that for a few weeks?”

The older man, the one called Flem, who was either Dusty’s older brother, uncle, or daddy, didn’t look well at all. His face was as white as a sheet and he kept on holding at his side as if he’d been gut-kicked by a mule.

“He’s hurt.”

“It ain’t nothing,” the older man said.

“How bad was the fight?” Pratt asked.

“I don’t mean no disrespect, Mr. Pratt,” Dusty Nix said. “But did you bring us what you done promised?”

Pratt was expecting this, finishing off the cigarette and flicking it into the weeds beyond the Nix boys. He’d already paid them enough for the job with a little extra promised, and he’d offered to find them some more roofing work with some of his rich friends in Tibbehah. It was a fine and friendly arrangement.

“It’s coming.”