“You told them to keep me locked up?”

  “Aw, now, don’t let your pride get in the way. I figger I did you a favor considering you was caught wet, hungover, and standing over a dead woman with a brick of coke and some illegal guns.”

  “That woman had a name.”

  “You remembering their names now?” Hoss paused, and he could practically see the old man frowning down the line. “Tell me, Slick. Ain’t you gettin’ a little old for this kind of behavior?”

  “The thought had occurred to me earlier in the day.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with settlin’ down.” Hoss sounded disappointed, which was far worse than him sounding angry. “ ‘Course, what’ll happen is, you’ll meet some knockout gal, much smarter than you—which ain’t hard—and you’ll fall head over heels until you get her pinned down, then your eye will start wandering again and you’ll fuck it all up.” Hoss stopped to cough, which is what forty years of smoking cigars made you do. “On the plus side, she’ll be a good excuse not to settle down with every other girl who comes after her. The one that got away. Your little redheaded girl, to put it into Charlie Brown parlance.”

  He leaned his head back against the bars. “I get the lesson, Hoss. Are you gonna let me out of here or not?”

  “Chief Eustace DuPree is the man’s name. Nice fella. Worked three murder cases in his thirty-two-year career, all of them domestics, which means he arrested the husband and that was that.”

  “Will he take my help?”

  “Last I heard the DEA was sending some boys down from Cleveland to give DuPree a hand, but you know nobody likes that kind of help.”

  DEA meant federal. They wouldn’t want help any more than the locals. Still, he lowered his voice. “There’s a few things I can follow up on.”

  “Just try not to get arrested again.”

  He heard the phone click as Hoss hung up. For Sergeant A. Fuller’s sake, he said, “I appreciate your confidence in me, sir. Thank you.” He handed the phone back through the bars, but A. Fuller was already sitting at her desk.

  She nodded to the phone base.

  “Hang it up yourself, Slick. The door’s not locked.”

  Jeffrey tentatively pushed at the cell door. It swung open. He shoe-socked to the desk and hung up the phone. “Did you find those two guys in the blue truck?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you find the black guy from the hotel?”

  “You mean Homey D. Clown? Yeah, they got him locked up in the other jail.”

  Jeffrey ignored the sarcasm and looked down at his shoes so she couldn’t see the hate in his eyes. “Does the chief want to talk to me?”

  “I’d say that falls under the headline of ‘When Hell Freezes Over.’ ”

  “I want to help.”

  “I’m sure you do, Auburn, but we got it covered.” A. Fuller pulled a large brown paper evidence bag from a drawer. She took out his left shoe and offered it to Jeffrey. He put it on. She handed him a sock. He took off his right shoe and donned the sock. She handed him his jeans.

  “Really?”

  He grabbed them, slid off his shoes, slipped on the jeans, then shoved his feet back into his sneakers.

  “No wallet?” he asked. “Pager? Keys? ChapStick?”

  She dug around in the bag, a blank expression on her face. Just when he was about to give up, she tossed him his keys.

  “You’re free to go, Mr. Tolliver.”

  He should’ve let it slide, but he couldn’t. “Detective Tolliver. Good thing I didn’t bring my Sugar Bowl ring on this trip to your beautiful town.”

  “You mean from back when you tied with Syracuse?” She snorted. “Weren’t we the only team that beat you that year?”

  “I don’t remember seeing you on the bench, Sergeant.”

  She rested her hand on the butt of her gun. “I can put your ass back in that cell and nobody’ll think to look for you till Monday.”

  He let it go and walked into what turned out to be an empty squad room. Two desks, each with a phone and stacks of papers. He guessed the nice leather chair belonged to the chief, and the Kmart special lowered about an inch from the ground belonged to Paulson. The kid wouldn’t be able to stick his knees under the desk otherwise.

  He gave the front door one push and it was immediately snatched out of his hand by a strong gust of wind. His T-shirt rattled against his chest. He squinted his eyes against the stinging wind. Of course the trek back to the hotel was straight into the wind tunnel. The gust came down off the mountains like a scythe. He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets, bent his knees, and forced himself forward.

  His first stop was not at the Schussel Mountain Lodge but at the trash can on the sidewalk outside the building. He had seen the Mustang stop here for a second, and sure enough, Nora had taken the opportunity to dump his wallet. What a break it was still there. His cash and cards were gone, but Nora had left his driver’s license and his key card to his hotel room. Next, he headed downwind to his Mustang. He unlocked the trunk, holding his breath until he found his badge and spare gun in the wheel well. He stuck the badge in his back pocket. The gun went into the waist of his jeans.

  He felt whole again.

  The lobby desk inside the Schussel was unmanned. Instead of waiting for the elevator, he used the stairs. His room was on the second floor, which happened to overlook the alleyway between the Schussel and the Linderhof. Once inside he pushed open the window overlooking the alley, his teeth chattering before he even had a chance to look down. The Mustang was two stories below, abandoned but for the police tape warning people away.

  He saw flecks of white floating in front of his eyes. He blinked, thinking his brain was so tired it was throwing up hallucinations, but no—he really was seeing snow. In March. In Georgia. It was falling steady like you saw in movies, thick white flakes that looked like they had no intention of stopping.

  He closed the window and rifled through his suitcase until he found some clean, nonnovelty underwear. He slipped on a new T-shirt and a flannel button-down that he almost hadn’t packed because he was afraid the weather would be too warm. He stepped into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Then washed his face, combed his hair, and looked at himself in the mirror.

  His reflection in the mirror revealed a man who appeared even more hungover than he had this morning.

  Hoss’s earlier admonishments rang in his ears, but there was nothing he could do about changing his entire life right now. He left his room and took the steps down two at a time. When he opened the door to the lobby he found the front desk occupied by a teenager sporting a Chia-like goatee and a V-neck T-shirt that showed the top of a tattoo that probably read Damn Skippy.

  The kid was reading Catcher in the Rye, because it wasn’t disaffected enough to have a tattoo and a goatee. He looked up as Jeffrey approached. “You’re the underwear guy.”

  He let the comment slide. “Where’s the woman who was working here this morning?”

  “Corinna?” The kid laid down his book. “At the funeral home. Nora was her daughter.”

  He scratched his chin. He’d forgotten to shave. “Did you know Nora?”

  A derisive noise came out of the back of the kid’s nose. “Not like you did.”

  He leaned over the desk.

  Like a switch being hit, his hangover evaporated and his cop brain took over. The kid seemed to get that things were different now. He cowered away, quickly understanding that Jeffrey was ready to punch him in the throat if he didn’t start talking.

  “Nora was two years ahead of me in school, but I knew her.”

  He felt the color drain out of his face. The kid looked around fifteen. “How old was she?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  He allowed some air out of his lungs. “Did she do this a lot?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The kid scratched at his hairless chest peeking out of the V-neck. A vein throbbed in his pimpled forehead. His visible fear heightened Jeffrey’s aggression. He leaned farther across the counter and turned on the dead in his eyes.

  “What I mean, you stupid piece of shit, is that they were working a scam. Corrina gets the signal from the bartender that he’s got a live one. She sends in Nora. Nora gets the mark drunk, takes him up to an empty room, and pours more liquor down his throat until he passes out. Then she robs him, steals his car, and he wakes up the next morning thinking his only option is to lie to cops about how his car got stolen and get the hell out of town before his wife finds out he cheated on her.”

  “Don’t sound like you passed out.”

  “Lucky for me,” Jeffrey said, uneasy with his role in the situation. “Do the local cops know what you’re running here?”

  “No, sir.” He held up his hands. “And I got no part in it. I promise on a stack of bibles.”

  He knew that was a lie, but didn’t care. He glanced around the lobby. “Where did those missionaries go? I didn’t see their bus in the parking lot.”

  “Left this morning before the storm came in. They had a long way to go.”

  “Where?”

  “Michigan?”

  At least he hadn’t said Cleveland.

  Jeffrey let his eyes travel around the empty lobby. Crappy leather couch. Overstuffed chairs. Card table by the door. A sign read COFFEE BAR but the urn was upside down and there were no cups, the same as it had been this morning.

  He asked the kid, “Did Chief DuPree interview you?”

  “Yeah. I told him I ain’t seen nothing. I work the day shift. I was just pulling up when Corinna got the news about Nora.”

  “You were pulling up in your truck?”

  “I wish. Drove in my mama’s Camry this morning. My motorcycle’s in the shop, which is fine by me ’cause the whole witch is cold today. You know what I mean?”

  “Do you know anybody who drives a blue Ford pickup? Late model?”

  He kept scratching his chest, like his brain was in there and could feel the stimulation. “Coupl’a three boys I went to school with. My grandpappy. Pastor Davis. Mrs. Fields who owns the—”

  “Where does Nora live?”

  “With Corinna up the mountain. And her brother, Double. It’s a fur piece, right up near the falls.”

  “Ruby Falls?”

  “Yep, just take Millar Road before you get to the falls. They’re the second trailer on the right, got an American flag outside—but, lookit, mister.” The kid lowered his voice as if inviting him into a confidence. “I wouldn’t mess with Double. He’s the kinda guy who’s always looking for trouble. Worse than his daddy, even, and his daddy’s doing hard time down in Valdosta for a triple murder.” He gave Jeffrey a knowing look. “That’s where ‘Double’ comes from, on account of compared to his daddy, he’s double trouble.”

  He knew the sort, and he wasn’t scared. “Does Double drive an old blue Ford truck?”

  “Black one. Brand-new.”

  That sounded a little too nice for a kid named Double. “He deal drugs?”

  The kid balked.

  “I’m from Alabama, buddy. You can snort your fucking way to the state line and I won’t give a shit.”

  The kid started nodding. “Yeah, he’s a dealer.”

  “Big fish or a little fish?”

  “Medium fish, but he’s always lookin’ to get bigger. Since he was in kindergarten even.” The kid cleared his throat. “I was in his class. He was hateful even then. Like, pull the wings off a butterfly hateful.”

  “Does he run girls?”

  “Just his sisters. And a wall-eyed cousin. And that neighbor girl with the funny name. And sometimes his mama, but that takes a certain type of guy wants an older gal. You know what I mean?”

  Jeffrey let that sink in. “There was a black guy with—”

  “A Cleveland baseball cap?” the kid asked. “Yeah, the chief asked me about him, but I ain’t seen him.”

  “Did Chief DuPree go through your guest register?”

  “Sure did, but he didn’t find nobody matching the description. Even knocked on the doors to double-check.”

  He had no doubt Corinna went off-book with cash-paying guests.

  The kid leaned over, suddenly chatty. “See, I don’t think there was a black guy in a hat. I think ol’ DuPree was testing me, ’cause there’s three black people in town, and Sergeant Ava, that’s the chief’s wife, is one of them, and her father and her mother are the other two, and if there was a fourth black person, she would know that fella, too, right?” He held up his hands. “I’m not being racist, all right? That’s how it is.”

  “I get it,” he said.

  And he did.

  He worked in the Titusville area of Birmingham, a poor African American area. Oftentimes, he was the only white guy on the streets. People knew him by color, not name.

  The kid said, “I told the chief to check next door at the Hof, but Mr. Tucker, he don’t rent to black people. Not that we get that many up here. Everybody knows they don’t like the cold.”

  So much for not being racist.

  “That’s all I got,” the kid said. “I promise.”

  He was still lying, but Jeffrey wasn’t sure about what, or if it even mattered. Everybody lied to the police, even the ones who were trying to help.

  Especially the ones who were trying to help.

  He left the hotel.

  The wind whipped at his clothes. In the twenty minutes he’d been inside, the ground had become thick with snow. He stuck his hands in his pockets, fighting the sensation of his skin being burned off by the wind. For once the weathermen had been right. This storm was going to knock the state on its ass. The sky looked worse than ominous, something stuck between a tornado and Armageddon.

  Despite the arctic blast, he stood roughly where he had stood in the parking lot earlier that morning. He was pretty sure that the guy in the Cleveland Indian hat had come out of the Linderhof with his cup of coffee. He’d dismissed the event as random at the time, but with a dead body, nothing was random.

  So maybe this is what happened.

  Last night, Cleveland Hat stays at the Schussel Mountain Lodge. He parks his car close to the building, probably so he can see it from his room, which is at the front of the hotel because that’s what he asks for. Cleveland’s got the coke and guns with him in the room, but he wants to make sure no one is snooping around his stolen car—a cop, say, or an idiot kid looking for a joyride.

  Cleveland stays the night.

  Then goes downstairs in the morning to check out of the hotel, finds himself enveloped by cheery blond-haired and blue-eyed Michiganers for Jesus, which is bad, then finds out there’s no coffee, which is worse, so he loads up his car, walks over to the Linderhof, grabs a cup of coffee, and comes out to find his Mustang gone and a half-naked man standing in the parking lot.

  Cleveland had played it cool with Jeffrey. The man’s casual tip of his hat said it all. This wasn’t his first rodeo. You didn’t get to be a black man traveling up the northeastern corridor with a carload of coke and guns without having a pair of brass ones. No wonder the DEA was on this guy’s trail. The murder charge would bring even more resources into what was probably shaping up to be an interstate trafficking investigation, possibly a RICO charge. Cleveland could be either the tip of the iceberg or, better yet, the tip of the spear.

  Jeffrey picked up the pace as he walked toward the alleyway. His sneakers became soaked with snow. His jeans wicked up the cold as he approached the Mustang that was not his Mustang. The police tape was floating in the wind, torn in two and flapping off the side mirrors like flags outside a used car dealership.

  He stopped by the driver’s-side door, took his keys out of his pocket, trying to think how Nora would’ve worked it. He imagined her running out of the Schussel, probably right when Cleveland was going into the Linderhof to score his coffee. She spots the Mustang parked out front, runs toward it, jams the car key into the door lock—

  That wasn’t right.

  The door would’ve been unlocked, because Cleveland had used a slim jim to open the door. He could see where the gasket had been sliced by the flat, hooked piece of metal that had been used to pull up the locking mechanism.

  So she opened the car door.

  He did the same.

  Then she’d climbed in.

  So did he, giving himself a second to enjoy the sensation of not being battered by hurricane-like winds. The car was bright white inside from the snow on all the windows. He found the ignition switch. Dash mounted, the same as his. Some engineer at Ford had had the bright idea to add a little sidebar hole in the face of the ignition switch. You slide the key in the ignition and turned it to Accessory, then bent open a paper clip and shoved it into the hole. Voilà. The cylinder inside the ignition switch popped out.

  You needed a key to do this, of course, but the thing about the ignition switch on a ’68 Mustang is that it’s twenty-five years old. He was twenty-six and wasn’t holding up so well himself. The pins inside the cylinder weakened over time, so all you had to do was jimmy in a flathead screwdriver, or a pocketknife, turn it gently to the left, push in the paper clip, and pop out the cylinder.

  A pro could do this in under ten seconds. A really smart pro, someone who wanted to be able to easily crank the engine again and again, possibly on a trip up from Florida, through Georgia, and onto farther points north with some coke and guns in the trunk, would shave down the tumblers inside the cylinder so that any key would turn on the engine.

  Which he was able to do with the key to his own Mustang.

  The engine coughed and sputtered against the freezing temperature. He pumped the gas to keep it going. While he was at it, he turned up the heater. Cold air blew in his face.

  Now what?

  He sat back in the seat, trying to consider his options. The kid at the hotel needed a second round, but not enough time had passed. Whatever he was lying about needed to fester like a rusted piece of metal inside his intestines.

  Corinna was at the funeral home, but he doubted he’d get much out of the grieving mother, and besides, he wasn’t exactly working with the blessing of the locals. There was a fine line between what Chief DuPree would see as helping and what might come across as hindering.