The old man grinned as he watched his dog stand up and place his paws on Jessica’s chest. “Damn, old Cooter’s nearly tall as you. Don’t you turn your back on him, though. He can get romantic real fast. He ain’t a true gentleman like me.”

“You said ’93,” Tashi said, writing down the dates and a few questions on her mind. “Brandon Taylor disappeared in ’97.”

“Oh, I know. I know. I remember all that shit like it was yesterday,” he said. “Hold up.”

The old man snatched back the lever on the La-Z-Boy and sprang to his feet, walking into a little cove that served as a kitchen, an old farm sink sitting up on concrete blocks. He found a couple of dusty jelly jars and took them back to where they’d gathered, placing them onto a table fashioned from plywood set atop more blocks. “How about a drink?”

“No thank you,” Tashi said. She leaned into where he sat, waiting for the old man to get to the damn point, but having the sinking feeling he was just lonely.

“Y’all met Miss Mary at the Fillin’ Station,” Royce said. “The old woman told me y’all was OK. That maybe you were getting some bad information about Sheriff Beckett and I could set y’all straight on the whole matter.”

“Mary,” Tashi said, crossing her legs, studying the old man’s hollow face and crooked yellow teeth. “That’s why you decided to see us?”

“Well,” Royce said, face splitting with delight. “Didn’t hurt I’d heard some fellas on the Square say y’all were a couple damn New York hellcats, pretty as could be.”

Tashi looked over to Jessica, Jessica looking like she just might puke. But both of them having to take it, sit there and watch this old creeper drool over them, sucking on a Lucky Strike, as he unscrewed the top of the whiskey. He poured it out in all three dusty glasses.

“You heard Hamp was a crook?” Royce said. “Didn’t you?”

Tashi didn’t answer, studying the blank page of her notebook, tapping her pen on it.

“Maybe heard it from his own flesh and blood?”

Again, nothing from Tashi or Jessica, both of them trained to let those long, sweet silences sit and hang there, knowing a source, especially a lonely old bastard like E. J. Royce, would just fill the silence.