“Said she come down from New York City to ask you some questions,” Cleotha said. “Real serious-looking, with some big-ass Urkel glasses and carrying some kind of tape recorder. I don’t know. Says she’s some kind of reporter.”

Quinn said to send her on in and kept on going through the narrative on the Walmart throwdown. Banks Ellard was apparently treated and released with fourteen stab wounds in his stomach. The man had been lucky the blade had been short and didn’t hit any vital organs. Ellard was quoted in the report from Deputy Cullison as saying, “All I tried to do was chill the damn beer and the boy went off on me.”

There was a knock on the door and Quinn looked up to see a young white woman, somewhere in her mid-twenties, with black hair up in a bun and heavy black-framed glasses on her delicate face. She was wearing a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt and wide-leg jeans hitting her high on the calves.

“I’m Tashi Coleman,” she said, holding a small microphone, a recording device dangling from her shoulder on a strap.

Quinn stood and offered his hand. The office felt a little stuffy that morning, and Quinn walked over to raise the window. Outside, you could hear two of the inmates working on a new table for the break room, the saws making a high buzzing sound every few minutes. Some light hammering.

“I’m hoping you might help answer a few questions,” Tashi said. She looked pleasant and eager.

“Just a few?”

Tashi smiled. “Maybe more than that.”

“OK,” Quinn said, nodding. “Take a seat, Miss Coleman.”

“Wow,” she said. “I figured I might have to call several times. Bug you until you’d agree to talk with me.”

“Don’t you know Tibbehah County is the hospitality capital of the South?” Quinn asked.

“I thought the motto was ‘Native American name but All-American values’?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “But I kind of like my slogan better.”

The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a notebook and pen. She sat up straighter in the wooden chair and said, “I’m looking into an old case worked by your uncle. This was from more than twenty years ago. A boy named . . .”

“Brandon Taylor.”

“How’d you know?”

“Miss Mary at the Fillin’ Station,” Quinn said. “Didn’t she warn you news travels fast on the town square?”

Tashi smiled again. “Can you pull those files for me?”

“If I had them, I’d be glad to share them,” Quinn said. “But it seems like those files were lost long before I took over here. I tried to pull them for a friend of Brandon Taylor’s earlier this year.”

“Was there a fire or something?” Tashi said. “I always hear about these famous fires that just happen to hit sensitive files.”