“I don’t like Royce any better than you do,” Tashi said. “Being in his presence makes me sick to my stomach. But I’ve learned details and leads can come from unlikely sources. Like you said, you didn’t know Quinn then. And you really can’t know what he was capable of doing.”

“Rumor is not fact,” Maggie said. “Lies will never become truth. Y’all are no damn better than Sheriff Beckett, looking for an easy answer to something really horrible.”

“Did Quinn and Brandon ever argue over the Hawkins land?”

“That never happened.”

“Who is the girl they found?” Tashi asked. “Has he even mentioned her to you? A woman wrapped in a blue tarp buried on the Pennington property.”

“God,” she said. “You people are like damn scavengers.” Maggie Colson slammed the door so hard the windows shook, leaving Tashi alone on the front porch.

She pressed stop on her recording and walked back to her car.

*   *   *

“Royce,” Quinn said, calling out at the man’s back. “Stop right there.”

“Goddamn it,” Royce said, turning around in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly. His brown-and-yellow-striped dress shirt ruffling loose and open around his undershirt. “Can’t a white man buy him some damn groceries without being harassed? My dogs ain’t et in two days and I ain’t et in one. The church quit delivering meals to me on account of me patting the backside of Mrs. Sorrows. Didn’t mean a damn thing by it. Hell, the woman must weigh two-fifty. I was just trying to thank her for being so kindly. Fat women love to get attention.”

“I heard it wasn’t her backside you patted.”

“That woman’s so big it’s hard to tell the front from the back.”

Royce lifted a bag of Butcher’s Best dog food and tossed it into the bed of his truck. Quinn could smell the rank whiskey on his breath from six feet away. He had on an old white undershirt, stained down the front, and a pair of threadbare jeans. The MAGA hat crooked on his head as he stared at Quinn through a pair of dirty eyeglasses. Maggie had just called Quinn, told him Tashi Coleman had shown up at their farm, asking more questions about what Royce had whispered in their ear.

“You told those two reporters from New York I took shots at Brandon Taylor out at the Hawkins place. Where in the world did you come up with a lie like that?”

“What the hell are you talking about, boy?”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Quinn said. “Always have been.”