“Damn, Skinner,” Royce said. “We done worked all this shit already. They run out on me the first time. But I said my piece the second go-round. And they sure as shit listened. You trying to screw me over what I’m owed?”

“No, sir,” Skinner said, swallowing, stepping back from the sunlight filling the sanctuary from the skylights and filtering through the stained-glass windows. “I don’t doubt you do as you’re told. You’ve always been a faithful servant to this county.”

“Servant?” Royce said. “Christ Almighty. Where’s the fucking money?”

Skinner reached into the square pocket of his short-sleeved dress shirt and pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. He counted out the cash, lifting his eyes to Royce halfway through, the rangy old man licking his lips. “Wait until five minutes after I leave,” Skinner said. “And then you can go, too.”

“Wouldn’t want no one to see us together,” Royce said. “It’d really make those other Baptists shit their drawers.”

Skinner took a long breath and turned toward the skinny little staircase, his tall frame having to bend down to get through the low opening. As he left, he heard the pop of a match and looked back to see the bright flame against Royce’s whiskered old face.

Royce winked at him and began to laugh.

*   *   *

“How dumb would you have to be not to know you’re the sheriff?” Maggie asked. “It says it right there on your sleeve.”

“I ran Bradley Wayne Guthrie’s record after I arrested him,” Quinn said. “Not too bright. The .44 he carried in his saggy-ass pants was stolen from a chicken hauler over in Yalobusha County. He had warrants on him in Lafayette and Union counties for check fraud and stealing propane. Looks like his only means of income was what Dana Ray brought home in her panties every night from Vienna’s.”

“I hate that place,” Maggie said. “I wish y’all would just tear it down.”

They sat across from each other in a booth at the El Dorado Mexican restaurant, Brandon beside Maggie still dressed in his football pants and cleats. Under his pads, he’d worn a T-shirt adorned with a T. rex trying to pick up a hamburger with its short arms. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL.

“That place, in some form or another, has been around for more than twenty years,” Quinn said. “I don’t think they’ll ever get rid of it. No matter what the supervisors say, it just brings in too much money to the county.”

“Can’t you shut it down?” Maggie asked.

“All I can do is enforce the laws,” Quinn said. “Dancers have to answer to a certain dress code or else Fannie loses her liquor license. Sometimes we check to make sure the dancers have on their G-strings.”

“What’s a G-string?” Brandon asked, his blond hair wild and his face flushed from being outside in the sun all morning.