“Your people sent two men to my jail to murder a man in federal custody,” Quinn said. “And then you come back to Tibbehah wanting to talk about old-time values and turning back the clock in Mississippi?”

“Don’t we all want the same thing?” Vardaman said. “When you first came back to Jericho, it was overrun with meth dealers and crooks. Now folks are shopping on the town square, opening coffee shops, little boutiques. It’s like it used to be.”

“I think you see a South that never existed,” Quinn said. “We don’t want the same things.”

“Funny to hear a military man talk like you, Sheriff Colson,” Vardaman said, still grinning. “We do believe in the same thing. Duty to God and country, putting America above all else. You want to split hairs with me on the way things get done.”

“Next time you come to Jericho, get your goddamn permits straight.”

“We all have to make compromises,” Vardaman said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet, Sheriff?”

Quinn looked at Vardaman, half in the light from the barn and half in the shadow of the woods. The man looking eager, nostrils flared, waiting for Quinn to accept that he’d won.

Quinn just looked at the man in his fancy jeans, with their spangled pockets and brass snaps, and said, “Bullshit.”

*   *   *

Skinner stayed out on his property long after the Good Ole Boy had ended. Vardaman had parked his tour bus along Jericho Road, the side splashed with a good picture of himself looking tough and determined to all the passing cars and trucks. STAND YOUR GROUND, MISSISSIPPI. Skinner spent most of the last hour picking up red Solo cups, disappointed to smell all the liquor brought to the event, paper plates filled with chicken bones and congealed beans, and discarded business cards and church fans with candidates’ names on them. There had been some fine stump speeches but none better than Jimmy Vardaman’s, nearly as good as his namesake, a distant cousin who’d been governor of Mississippi at the start of the twentieth century, back when all was right with the world.

“Can I get you some pie?” Skinner asked.

Vardaman sat in an Adirondack chair out by the fire. Holding a Solo cup in his hands, he leaned back in comfort and took a long sip, before turning down the offer of pie.

“We got plenty,” Skinner said. “My wife made a lemon icebox pie that would break your heart. She saved a thick slice for you in the freezer.”

“Sit down, Skinner,” Vardaman said. “Enjoy this first cool evening by the fire. You can feel fall blowing in. How about a whiskey? The tour bus is filled with some wonderful ole stuff.”