“Christ Almighty,” Mary said, setting down her pad and sliding into the booth across from her. She pulled a pack of Kools from her apron and set fire to the end of a cigarette with a bright pink Bic. “You want to know how things used to run around here and don’t know Johnny T. Stagg? How much time you got, girlie?”

“Long as you’ll give me,” she said. “I want to know everything.”

“Everything?”

Tashi nodded. “The present, the past, all of it.”

Mary exhaled a long plume of smoke, resting her arm on the back of the booth. “Tomorrow morning there’s a meeting with the supervisors about building the big cross.”

“The what?”

“Some fella from Arkansas just came to town and said Jesus Himself told him to build a sixty-foot cross in Tibbehah County. He’s already got the support of Old Man Skinner and other local wheeler-dealer types. Would it interest you?”

“You bet.”

“It’s what you’d call some real local color.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Building a big cross?” Mary said. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s just Skinner trying to cover up the sign to the titty bar out on the highway. I think it might just class this town up a little. Let people see what we really stand for.”

*   *   *

Wes Taggart wouldn’t open the goddamn door, and after finding it dead-bolted, the locals were more than happy to kick it in. Lillie was inside the little motel room first, moving fast and hard, as she’d learned from Quinn Colson, checking corners, watching for that son of a bitch to come out of the shitter. But instead she saw Bugs Bunny on the television, rumpled sheets under the flowered bedspread, and heard singing coming from the shower. The dumb son of a bitch hadn’t heard a thing, hitting the refrain of Waylon’s “Drinkin’ and Dreamin’.”

She elbowed through the door and slid open the shower curtain just as he got to the part about never seeing Texas, L.A., or ol’ Mexico.

“Nope,” Lillie said. “You sure as hell won’t. Either clean that little pecker or put it away, because I have warrants for your arrest, Wes Taggart.”

Bald-headed and corded with muscle, a damn atlas of shitbirdism inked across his arms and chest, Taggart grinned and placed his right hand over his nuts. He held up the flat of his left. “And who the hell is Wes Taggart?”

“The fella who wouldn’t come clean and got his nuts shot from here to Pass Christian.”

“Are you willing to bet on it?” he asked. “You can get sued busting in here like this.”

Lillie pointed the end of her shotgun at his privates. Taggart dropped both hands to cover his rather disappointing package and gave a big shit-eating grin. “You know me now?”

“If you ain’t the famous Lillie Virgil. Calamity Fucking Jane of the Marshals.”