“Nope,” Quinn said. “I’d like to talk to you a little about your relationship with J. K. Vardaman.”

“You mean our next governor?” Taggart said, laughing. “How the hell would I know a fella like that?”

Lillie shook her head and walked out of the room. Quinn watched Taggart’s face, the cocky laugh settling down into a shit-eating grin.

“You’re facing attempted murder charges here in Tibbehah,” Quinn said. “Not to mention what you and your late pal J. B. Hood did to Cody Pritchard. You’re looking at murder for him, too. And that’s long before you sit down with the Feds.”

“Fuck me like a dang mangy dog.”

“All I’m saying is if you know something about Vardaman working with your people on the Coast,” Quinn said, “I’d be interested in hearing you out.”

“Y’all are nuts.”

“Loyalty,” Quinn said. “Sure do admire that. Good luck to you, Wes.”

Quinn walked from the interview room, waiting for the jail guard to buzz him back through the locked doors and into the lobby. Quinn headed outside to the flagpole in the parking lot and worked on taking in deep, even breaths and letting them go slowly. The air was hot and sticky and the sun reflected off the rows of vehicles out in the lot.

“You did good in there, Ranger,” Lillie said. “I didn’t know about the prints.”

Quinn nodded. “Be great if it was true,” he said. “Goddamn prints showed J. B. Hood’s little monkey hands were all over that bat.”

“And the other bat?”

Quinn shook his head. “We never found another.”

Lillie smiled. “And what’d he say about Vardaman?”

“Claims he never met him.”

“How did he look when he said it?” Lillie asked.

“Like a goddamn liar.”

SIX

Tashi picked up Jessica, her producer, researcher, and full-time partner in crime, at the Traveler’s Rest Motel just outside Jericho. This would be the fifth time they’d worked together on an investigative story, starting off together at Columbia as grad students and then coming on as network interns at the same time. They’d both fetched coffee, done grunt work, and brainstormed ideas. Thin Air had actually been Jessica’s baby, after watching one of those crazy Dateline shows about a missing woman in Iowa. Tashi remembered walking into her loft in Red Hook, Jessica already a little stoned, open boxes of Thai food all around her, and telling her to sit down and watch something.

When the segment was over, Jessica turned to Tashi and said, “Don’t you think we could do better?”