“How are you doing with all of this?” Tashi said, now on to the list of potential witnesses in the file, marking Royce’s name with a check. “Settling down South in Tibbehah County, Mississippi?”

“To be honest, I think I’d go crazy without the Southern Star,” she said. “They told me the place only opened up in ’09. You couldn’t buy beer in Jericho. But get this. Apparently, you could buy liquor. Isn’t this town crazy?”

“Enjoy it while you can,” Tashi said. “If we don’t get somewhere fast on this story, we’re going to have to pay for everything ourselves.”

“We’ve done it before,” Jessica said, glancing back down at her GPS, nothing on the screen but a long road heading into what looked like Nowheresville USA. Tashi turned back to the road, thinking about why the hell E. J. Royce would want to talk to them now. “Nobody said we do this for the money. That’s not the life we wanted.”

“At least we meet some nice people,” Tashi said, smiling. “Right? You seemed to be doing just fine with those boys the other night. You were into a friendly game of pool when I left. If you don’t mind me asking, which one did you choose?”

“The biggest and the dumbest of the bunch,” she said. “When I asked what he did for a living, he said he worked a skidder.”

“What the hell’s that?”

“Some kind of logging equipment,” Jessica said. “He tried to tell me as I was unbuckling his pants, but I really wasn’t listening. Damn, he had a big buckle.”

Tashi put her hands over her ears and laughed. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Don’t you want to know about his tattoos?” she said. “His hunting club. And what happened to his momma?”

“Nope,” Tashi said. “Not at all. There’s our turn. It’s Carthage. Right?”

“Just like Hannibal and his goddamn elephants,” Jessica said. “And yet, we haven’t had time to visit Burnt Oak. Blackjack. Driver’s Flat. Sugar Ditch. You got to hand it to this county, they sure have some colorful names. It reminds me of something from an old Western. The Bandits of Burnt Oak. Shoot-out in Blackjack.”

They turned down another long dirt road and just drove for a while, the farms thinning out, becoming big parcels of woods and then acreage scraped clean of trees, with big ugly piles of burned stumps, the land eroded. Tashi stared out the window, seeing her reflection in the glass, her face turning into a grin. Damn, she was far away from home. Born and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. College at Michigan and then on to Columbia. Grad school and then the podcast. “How was he?”

“I promised to be diligent down here,” Jessica said. “You know, I’m a damn good researcher. But I never promised to be celibate.”

“Umm,” Tashi said. “That’s not an answer.”