FOUR

Cleotha handed Quinn a cup of coffee as he entered the sheriff’s office, hot, black with one sugar, in his favorite mug. “Heard that new truck of yours from a mile away,” she said, hands on her sizable hips. “Sounds like a damn monster growling. Shakes the whole damn building, Sheriff. You got to get those pipes fixed.”

“Those pipes cost extra,” he said. “Puts fear in the criminal element in this county.”

“All it do is make a lot of racket, Sheriff,” she said. “Why do boys like them big-ass trucks?”

“Makes us feel important,” Quinn said.

He raised the mug toward her, heading on into his office right beside the entrance to the jail. The SO was pretty much split in half, with the office out front, inmates in the back. As of this morning, they had thirty-six. But he was expecting a thirty-seventh by noon if Lillie Virgil made her schedule checking Wes Taggart out of the Harrison County lockup and heading north. She’d told Quinn she couldn’t wait to make small talk with him on the way up, making a detour into Tibbehah County before getting processed onto his first appearance in federal court in Oxford. He and Quinn had a lot to discuss.

Quinn pulled out the unfinished Liga Privada from his shirt pocket and found a battered old Zippo in his Levi’s. The Zippo had been given to him by his Ranger sergeant who’d gotten it from a Vietnam-era Ranger. He lit the cigar and placed his cowboy boots at the edge of the desk.

His office was as clean and orderly as always, with a polished wooden gun rack on the wall lined with shotguns and rifles. A few framed photographs of his family. His Uncle Hamp. Caddy, his momma. Even a publicity still of his daddy, Jason Colson, as sort of a Southern version of Evel Knievel, wearing a jumpsuit adorned with a rebel flag. He’d written to a young Quinn to Stay in School and Mind Your Teachers . . .

Reaching for a file on his desk, Quinn set about looking through the incident reports since he’d been away. He’d left his second-in-command, Reggie Caruthers, in charge, and Reggie had kept him up to date on the big criminal activity since he left town. Two peckerheads had tried to kill each other outside the Walmart. The fight had started over a Ziploc baggie of assorted pills and a case of Busch Light. The argument got down to the split of the spoils and one of them decided to make his point with the sharp end of a Case pocketknife.

“Sheriff?” Cleotha asked.

Quinn looked up. As always, his door had been wide open.

“Woman here to see you,” she said. “Said her name is Sashy Coles. Or something like that.”

“Did she say what she wanted?”