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“I’ve got no earthly idea. Be right back.”

I followed Hoyt to the prowler. The car’s lights were still going, and the radio squawked like an angry chicken. The smell of the cedar trees that lined both sides of the highway reminded me of the trunk where Mom kept my service awards and medals. It was a strange thought to have just then, but the whole situation was strange.

Hoyt put his foot up on the bumper. “You need to keep out of police business.”

“What business would that be?”

“Don’t act stupid, son, ‘cause you’re not. I know your granddaddy’s been sticking his nose where it don’t belong, and you’ve been helping him.”

I held out my hands, palms up. “What is it you think we’re doing?”

“There’s a lot of things I can tolerate,” Hoyt said. “Vigilantes ain’t one of them.”

“How do Dewayne and Eugene Loach and his boys fit into that equation? You say you don’t tolerate vigilantes, but they’re attacking anybody with brown skin they find. Or does the law only extend to white people?”

“Boone, if me and Lamar wasn’t friends, I knock you upside the head.” He stood ramrod straight, put a palm on the Glock, and stuck out his chin. “You’re just a college student now, so you better act like one. Go to class, study hard, and all that bullshit. But that’s it. I expect you to keep your nose clean and your ass wiped. Got that?”

I saluted. “Yes sir.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy.”

“No sir," I said. "I’ll remain ignorant."

As I walked back to the Volkswagen, I could hear Hoyt saying, don’t get smart with me, boy.

Deputy Mercer had used the very same phrase. How much difference, I wondered, was there between the two men?

4

The yard around the Tin City property looked like Stumpy had been searching for buried treasure. The path between his Airstream and the tobacco barns was pocked with dozens of deep holes and mounds of reddish dirt.

Cedar parked near the Airstream. “Somebody’s been busy.”

“You have a gift for understatement.” I spotted Stumpy’s Airstream through the trees. “I didn’t think Stumpy had enough motivation for digging.”

Cedar clipped the leash to Chigger’s collar. He ran beside her up the path, panting with excitement, savoring the luscious new smells on the wind.

I knocked on the trailer. “Stumpy!”

The only answer was the echo of my voice.

“Nobody’s home.” Cedar popped down the steps of the small, rickety deck. “Let’s go.”

“You’re not getting off that easy.”

“Watch me.”

“Then you can call Abner and explain to him that we didn’t get the finger.”

“Chigger, bite Boone. He’s a bad boyfriend.”

Chigger yawned, then took a great interest in the sole of her sneakers.

“Not me, you stupid dog. Him.”

“Good dog.” I rubbed his ears. “Come on, Vicious, let’s take a look around.”

“Hey, don’t call my dog vicious. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Who said I was talking to the dog?”

Cedar swatted at me, but I danced away.

“Coward!” Cedar said. “Stand still so I can hit you!”

“Can’t hit what you can’t catch,” I said, right before I fell backward into a deep, narrow hole. “Oof!” The impact knocked the wind clean out of my chest and made my ribs scream bloody murder. “Shit on a stick! That freaking hurt!”

Cedar’s head appeared above me. “Are you okay down there?”

Her hair clung to her face, and she would have looked angelic if she had not been so worried. Chigger whimpered loudly. His paws knocked loose dirt on my face.

“My ribs are killing me," I said. “But I’ll live.”

“You sure?”

I waved the hand. “Truly, I’m fine.”

Cedar started laughing. “I’m so sorry. You lo-looked so funny falling into th-that h-hole. Bloop!”

“Thanks for your sympathy.” While she was laughing and Chigger was barking, I tried to find a way out of the pit. The walls all had the same markings, as if a mouth with ragged teeth had scraped them clean.

Stumpy hadn’t dug these holes.

Not by hand, anyway.

“When you’re done with your fit of giggles,” I called up, “could you get something to pull me out?”

“Okay,” she said. “Be right back.”

While she was gone, I took several photos with my cellphone. The depth of the cuts came up to the second knuckle of my index finger. Whatever Stumpy was looking for, he was using some heavy machinery. There were probably over a hundred holes on the property. That was a lot of work for one man.

Maybe Stumpy wasn’t involved in the digging at all.

Cedar dropped a coil of hose down the hole. “It’s Stumpy’s water hose. I left it screwed into the spigot so it would hold your weight.”

“You sure?”

“If you want out, you’ll have to trust my judgment.”

I braced my back against the dirt wall, and using the cuts in the clay, pulled myself out of the hole. My ribs weren’t happy with me when I rolled onto the grass.

“See?” Cedar said. “My calculations were correct.”

“What calculations?”

She held up her thumb. “The ones I made with this.”

“Glad you were right.” I dusted my pants off and kicked clay from my boots. “Let’s go.”

“You’re speaking my language.”

“After we get the finger.”

“But you said—“

“Look around. Stumpy may have left before he expected to, and a dismembered finger’s not something he’d pack.”

“I'm not going into his house. It smells like pig crap."

"You'll be fine out here." I opened the door. “Be right back.”

“Wait for me.” She tied Chigger’s leash to a post on the rickety porch and followed me inside.

The trailer smelled like Stumpy had been making soup with old shoes, and the air was thick with the scent of body odor and mold. Cedar pulled her shirt over her nose as I hit the lights.

“Ugh,” she said. “I’m not strong enough for this. My stomach can’t hack the stench.”

“Fish sticks,” I said as I opened the freezer door.

“So the freezer’s empty?”

“No.” I pulled out a package of cod fillets. “It’s a box of fish sticks.”

I shook the contents onto the counter, which also held several opened packets of ketchup, breadcrumbs, and an empty package of wieners. Three sticks fell out, followed by the finger.

Cedar gagged. “He put someone’s body part in with food? That’s just so wrong.”

“Yeah, it’s a terrible way to preserve evidence.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I slipped the frozen digit into an evidence bag. “At least he wrapped it in plastic.”

“Boone!”

 “What?”

“You don’t think this is really, I don’t know, ghoulish? I mean, I’m okay with scientific inquiry and all of that, but the finger you just stuck in your pocket was once attached to somebody’s hand. How can you not be totally disgusted?”

“Abner raised me in his lab,” I said. “I’m used to it.”

It wasn’t that death didn’t bother me. It did. But it was the ending of a life that ate through my gut, not the corpse that was left behind. It was something you couldn’t explain in the middle of a deserted, completely trashed trailer.

Clothes were strewn everywhere. The closest had been tossed, the side table drawers emptied onto the floor. Broke glass lay at the edge of Stumpy’s favorite sleeping post, the couch. It was hard to tell because of Stumpy’s underwhelming housekeeping skills, but the more I looked around, the more I was convinced that someone else had helped Stumpy redecorate.

“They were looking for something,” I said.

“Who?”

I started down the paneled hallway. “The people who tossed this trailer. Look at this toilet.”

“How did we go from talking about human dignity to examining toilets?” She followed me to the bathroom. “Oh, that’s how.”