“But what if it’s true?” Maggie said.

“Someone’s using you to get to me,” Quinn said. “Don’t you fall for it. None of it. You start getting letters from Brandon twenty years after his death? Now they want me to go dig up some field?”

Maggie walked over to him and took his hand. She lifted it and pressed it to her face. “Maybe it’s nothing,” she said. “But don’t you want to find out?”

“You want me to go call up a judge for a warrant and find a backhoe to dig?” he said. “Right this very minute?”

“What could it hurt?”

“I don’t like it,” Quinn said. “We don’t know a thing about who or where this is coming from. Damn crazy.”

“So damn crazy it might be true,” Maggie said. “I know you loved and respected your uncle. But Brandon deserved a lot better than this county gave him. Do you really believe your uncle did a solid and thorough investigation?”

Quinn didn’t say anything. One of the inmates playing basketball jabbed a hard elbow into another man, turning and jumping to make a shot. The shot hit with a hard thud on the rim and bounced back onto the court, the inmates scrambling for the ball.

“OK.”

“You promise?” Maggie asked.

“Looking for a body buried ten feet deep?” Quinn said. “I can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.”

“Maybe it’s not crazy at all,” Maggie said. “Maybe this person actually knows something.”

“Guess we’ll soon find out,” Quinn said.

*   *   *

“I hear you loud and clear,” Ray said, holding the cell to his ear. “But it might be a good idea to limit our conversations. Those Feds have had a big hard-on for me and the boys for a good long while and I find it’s in my best interests they don’t get satisfied and cornhole me till kingdom come.”

“I promise this won’t take long,” Vardaman said. “Just hear me out.”

Ray didn’t answer, standing at the edge of the casino parking lot, looking out into the endless cotton fields. It still was several weeks until harvest, when those plants would explode into thick white bolls as big as your fist, giant tractors cutting them down at all hours, bright lights shining into the darkness. Farmers with mud on their boots coming into the casino to blow their damn load.

“There’s been some concern from the good people in Jericho about the action out at Fannie Hathcock’s place.”

“OK,” Ray said, setting his left hand in his pocket. Sweating like a damn pig in a black suit as the sun was going down across the river. Nearly a hundred fucking degrees today. “People have complained about that place since Johnny Stagg started selling titties and chicken-fried steak in the eighties.”

“But this is different.”

“How so?”

“The Hathcock woman ain’t Johnny T. Stagg.”