Chester Pratt had told Quinn and the boys from Parsham that Gina Byrd wasn’t happy at all about her daughter dating a young black man who’d been in and out of the Walter Payton Unit at Henley-Young juvie. Pratt said TJ and Gina Byrd had a long, nasty fight that weekend that ended with TJ pulling a .38 and threatening to shoot her own mother if she said another word about Ladarius or Wings of Faith. Chester Pratt admitted, somewhat tearfully, that Gina Byrd was concerned for her life.

“Are you going to lock me up?”

“For what?”

“For killing my mother.”

“We’re not for certain that body is your mother,” Quinn said. “Not yet.”

“But if she’s dead, it looks like you and that fat sheriff have decided I’m the one who done it.”

“No, ma’am,” Quinn said. “I have no idea what happened. But maybe you do?”

“I can tell you one damn thing,” TJ said, wiping away the slightest tear from her left eye. Her voice grown husky. “I’d never kill my own momma. And anyone who said Momma was trying to keep me and Ladarius apart is a damn liar. She loved that boy. The Wings of Faith wasn’t about anything but a new Jesus kick. She would’ve forgotten about it by next Sunday.”

“Who would want to kill your mother, TJ?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about that new boyfriend?” Quinn asked. “Was there really another man she was seeing?”

TJ waited a long beat. She cried a little bit more but then straightened up in the chair and wiped her face with the cuffs of her old sweatshirt. She nodded as she seemed to be thinking about exactly what she wanted to say.

“I don’t know,” TJ said. “There might’ve been.”

“Why’d you lie?”

“Damn it all to hell,” TJ said. “I wasn’t lying for me. I was lying for her. She came home the other night covered in blood. She was scared to death and said two men had attacked her outside the Southern Star. She got hold of the man’s knife and got loose.”

“Why didn’t she call us?”

“She was scared,” she said. “She thinks she killed one of ’em.”

“Sounds like self-defense.”

“I think she knew both of ’em,” TJ said. “You know Momma. You know what kind of taste she’s got in men. I didn’t want to know and didn’t ask questions. I just helped her get packed and get gone.”

“Were those the clothes you burned?”

TJ nodded.

“What did those men want?” Quinn said. “Did she say?”

“I shouldn’t say no more,” TJ said. “I’ve told you more than enough. And I have the sense to shut my mouth with cops.”

“To help you, you gotta help me.”

“I got a kid brother at home,” TJ said. “John Wesley’s alone wondering where his big sister’s at.”