Caddy looked up from where she’d been rolling the cold Coke can between her hands. “I thought y’all wanted to talk about Brandon and my uncle?”

Something in Caddy’s face, a fierce look, made her know it was better to keep to Brandon. “Can you give us an overall impression of Brandon at the time?”

“I think he was fifteen, sixteen,” Caddy said. “A little bit older than me. We were in a few of the same classes but never really hung out. I know he was close to a girl named Maggie Powers who visited during the summers. After he died, she didn’t come back. Until a few years ago.”

“And then married your brother?” Jessica said. “She’s Maggie Colson now.”

“Two days and y’all already know a lot.”

Tashi smiled. “We do our best.”

“As far as Brandon goes,” Caddy said, “damn, I don’t know. What was he like? What made him tick and all? I know he was really into music. He played country songs on his guitar. I remember one night on the Square. Y’all know it’s where most of the kids meet up on the weekends? He played ‘Friends in Low Places’ and ‘Shameless’ exactly like the record. That and he was real into working for the school newspaper. He took yearbook pictures for Mr. Phillips. I think he was serious about photography. I was a cheerleader back then, if you can believe that. He was always on the sidelines at the JV games.”

“What about his personality?” Jessica said. “How would you describe him?”

“Goofy,” Caddy said. “He was funny, but really goofy, too. I mean when you’d see him in the halls, you just had to smile and laugh. He always had kind of a silly look on his face, kind of a smirk, like he knew all this was some kind of cosmic joke.”

“What was the joke?” Tashi said.

“High school,” Caddy said. “Life. Church and ballgame grind down in Tibbehah County. I think he was like most of us, couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.”

“Did he ever seem depressed?” Jessica asked. “Like a kid who might wander off one day into the deep woods and kill himself?”

Caddy shook her head. “I knew him and didn’t really know him,” she said. “Jericho is a small town, but, believe it or not, we don’t all know each other’s business. We didn’t run in the same crowds.”

“Did your uncle ever mention his death?” Jessica asked. “Or about finding him in the woods?”

Tashi lifted her eyes to Jessica, who was watching the readers on the recorder, sliding the mic slightly to the left, closer to Caddy. Tashi took a deep breath and swallowed. The inside of the trailer smelled like an old classroom, all musty books and disinfectant. “I understand you were close to your Uncle Hamp.”

“True.”