“Maybe you should just stick to that town,” Skinner said. “Tibbehah won’t be to your liking next year.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’ll leave a donation bucket at the front,” Skinner said, not budging an inch from the best booth in the entire truck stop, a catbird seat’s view of the diesel pumps and of Vienna’s Place off to the side. “I’ll get my folks to check on it next week.”

“Can I get you anything else, Supervisor?”

“Not a thing, ma’am,” he said, reaching in his pocket for a fifty-cent tip. “It’s a fine and glorious morning. I do feel truly blessed. I’ll be praying for you, Miss Fannie.”

“You do that, Skinner,” she said. “Just don’t pray too damn hard and give yourself an aneurysm on the can.”

*   *   *

“Mrs. Taylor?” Quinn asked.

Rhonda Taylor had her door cracked, seeming surprised to see Quinn, although he’d called ahead earlier in the morning. The chain was on the door and a small dog yipped from inside. Somewhere a television was playing the news out of Memphis. Two people shot at a tire dealership in south Memphis. Lots of rain in the future for the Mid-South. Details ahead.

“You mind if I come in?”

The woman didn’t answer, but unchained the door, Quinn stepping onto thick white carpet and following her through a small living room and into a kitchen and family room area, an old-fashioned portable TV playing on a long counter. A little girl turned to him with a spoon in her hand filled with colorful cereal.

“That’s Cassidy,” she said. “Shaina’s daughter. She’s at work and I watch her all day. You want some coffee, Sheriff?”

“If it’s no trouble.” Quinn had removed his hat as any decent man would do inside a building and set it beside the little girl. She stared at him in a curious way, looking down at his polished cowboy boots, Beretta sidearm, and up to his face. She smiled when she got to the face, with its sharp planes and angles, and Quinn winked at her. A commercial played on the TV for a car dealer out of Tupelo featuring a blonde woman named DeLois Price and a Mexican man in a sombrero called Peso Little. The commercials had been on for decades and hadn’t changed a bit. Even the same actors.