Leland stretched big and slumped back in the chair, legs sprawled wide. “You look good, little man. Real good.” He smiled. A single teardrop branded in jailhouse ink crinkled at the corner of his eye. He put his hand on the table and curled his fingers and drummed them in a hoofbeat rhythm. “How’s your ma? How’s she doin’?”

“She’s not so good.”

“Why’s that?”

Jack leaned forward. He spoke low, so the officer couldn’t hear. “She wrapped your belt around her neck and hanged herself from the ceiling fan.”

Leland’s hand froze on the table. His eyes blinked. Except for that, he didn’t move a twitch. “You’re lyin’.”

“No.”

“Who knows?”

“Nobody. Not yet.”

“You buried her?”

Jack nodded.

“Where?”

“Does it really matter?”

Leland stared at him. His muscles coiled. He looked like something crouched and ready to bite. “Don’t you, or don’t nobody, come in here sayin’ my wife is dead.”

Jack’s pulse began to beat at his temple. “Well, she is. But Matty and me ain’t.”

All this time, Jack had watched the officer, who now stepped nearer the table. Jack watched the movement of the man’s eyes, how they scuttled to him and away. At the desk the officer had looked relaxed, but he didn’t look that way anymore. He was still too far off to hear much, but a few more steps and he’d be close enough. Jack felt doom spread through him. Coming here was a dangerous thing. He knew it.

Leland said, “Where’s Matt?”

“With me. But we’re gonna lose the house. There’s bills.”

Leland sat with his arms outstretched, palms flat on the table. His chest moving with his breath. He made a fist with his right hand and put it in his left, rubbed his fist, rubbed hard so the veins popped up purple on his knuckles. He put his hand to his mouth. “I can’t do nothin’ for you.”

“We need money.”

“I can’t do nothin’.”

“We’ve got nowhere to go.”

“You gotta leave.”

“No.”

Leland looked away. In the yellow light, his face glistened with sweat. He jerked his fist from his mouth and shifted his weight forward and rapped his knuckles on the table. He didn’t look back at the officer. He muttered to Jack, “Get outta here.”

“Please.”

“I don’t want you involved in this.”

“We’re already involved.”

There was anguish and, at the same time, a kind of loathing remorse in Leland’s eyes. “Go,” Leland said. “I won’t say it twice.”

“Did you even try to get parole?”

“Boy. You talk of stuff you don’t understand.”

The officer took a step closer.

“You could help,” Jack said.

“Go. Dammit.”

Jack blurted, “I saw the briefcase.”