Quinn Ferris grew up in West Texas, and she looks more like a Westerner than a Southerner. She wears almost no makeup, even when I’ve seen her out at night, and she has the sun-parched look of a woman who spent much of her life exposed to a dry climate. Mississippi girls grow up in nearly 100 percent humidity, and they’re reared from infancy to baby their skin. They get softer as they get older. Quinn has grown leaner and harder with age. Her pale eyes have an avian intensity, her arms and hands a whipcord toughness. She makes me think of long hours riding pillion on a motorcycle, her sun-bleached hair flying behind her from beneath the helmet.
Four days ago, when I met Buck at the Indian Village to interview him about his find, Quinn took care of the tourists who showed up, keeping watch for anyone who seemed more interested in her husband than the archaeological exhibits. Today she looks as though the shock of Buck’s death has burned through whatever reserves of fortitude she possessed. She’s standing at her stove, making tea with shaking hands. I’m sitting at their kitchen table, a Formica-topped relic from the 1950s. I ate at this table many times during high school and sat around it playing guitar with Buck deep into the night.
“What does a private autopsy cost?” Quinn asks. “An outside autopsy?”
“Three to five thousand. Unless you want a superstar pathologist.”
She takes this in without comment.
“You saw Buck’s body?” I ask.
“The sheriff told me not to go to the hospital, but I went anyway. They weren’t going to let me see him. I made a ruckus. The security guard came. I think they were going to call the police, but an older doctor heard the noise and came. He made them let me in to see him. Dr. Kirby. Jack Kirby.”
“He’s my father’s doctor. A great guy.”
“Well, God bless him. But I saw the wound.”
“I’m sorry, Quinn.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “You asked me about the break-in.”
“It’s okay, take your time.”
As she makes the tea, she gives me a straightforward account. She’d gone to the Ruhlmann Funeral Home and spent a frustrating half hour on the phone with the sheriff, trying to learn when her husband’s body might be returned to her after the autopsy. The sheriff was evasive and made no promises. Then she learned from the funeral director that the autopsy was going to be performed at the local hospital. After finally getting in to see Buck’s body, and then recovering herself, she arrived home to find her front door standing open, cold air streaming through the screen door into the yard. Two steps inside, she realized that the house had been trashed. While she waited for a deputy to show up, she spent forty-five minutes “picking the place up.” After seeing her husband’s body so profoundly insulted, she couldn’t abide having her house in disarray.
The deputy who responded to her call pushed Quinn into a state of fury. No matter what she told him, he insisted that the break-in had been carried out by “crackheads looking for something to sell.” In his estimation (and obviously that of his boss), Buck’s “drowning” had been a regrettable accident, but one that had nothing to do with a simple B&E near the county line, twenty miles away. Quinn pointed out that the offenders had taken great pains to go through her husband’s papers; they’d even fanned through every book in his library, as though searching for something specific. “Addicts hoping y’all keep cash stashed in your books,” the deputy declared, “like some country people do.” I told Quinn I’d expected nothing better.
“You’re right about Lafitte’s Den,” she says, fanning our cups with the flat of her hand. “Buck wouldn’t have gone out there, not even if they were handing out free barbecue. If he did go, it wouldn’t be to dig.”
“Could he have gone there to meet somebody?”
“I don’t think so. I think the killer caught Buck digging out at the mill site, and that was it.” She brings our cups to the table and sets hers opposite me, but remains standing. “I can’t believe they’d kill him over a few bones. Why not just warn him off? Threaten him? Tell him how far they were willing to go if he didn’t back off.”
“They knew Buck wasn’t the type to be cowed by any of that.”
“You think the killer knew him?”
“This is a small town. And Buck was one of its most colorful characters. I know you think the Poker Club is behind this, but I talked to Paul Matheson about that. He said the Poker Club would have bought Buck off, not killed him.”
“Buck couldn’t be bought!” she snaps. “You know that, Marshall.”
I let the silence drag. “If the offer was big enough, Buck might have worried that you’d press him to take it. I’m talking about real money, Quinn. Five hundred grand. Maybe even a million. What would you have said if they’d offered him that?”
This gets her attention. “I’m not sure. We’ve scraped by for most of our lives. I hope he would have told me. Given me some input. But I can’t be sure.”
“It really doesn’t matter now. Hard evidence is the only thing that can help us.”
Quinn shakes her head helplessly. “They hate him now. All those people he did so much for at one time or another . . . they stopped caring about him. They all wished he’d just disappear. They won’t care that he’s dead. They’ll be glad. All because of that goddamned paper mill.” Her lips curl in disgust. “Have you talked to Jet about the Poker Club?”
“I’m talking to her at three o’clock,” I reply. “But nobody else needs to know that.”
“How does that work, Marshall? Her husband’s father is one of the richest members of the Poker Club, yet she’s fought their corruption for years.”
“I’m not sure it works, actually. I think their marriage is pretty strained.”
She nods as if this only makes sense. “She’s a firecracker, that girl.” Quinn finally pulls out her chair and sits, her eyes settling on mine with what feels like maternal concern. “You still have feelings for Jet.”
I force myself to hold eye contact. “I probably always will. First love and all that.”
A wistful smile touches Quinn’s mouth. “Buck used to think you two would end up together.”
“But not you?”
She shrugs. “Jet’s special, no question. But she had issues. From her father leaving like that.”
“And I didn’t?”
“Different issues.” Quinn reaches out and touches my hand. “You’re not thinking you might still wind up with her?”
Am I that easy to read? “What makes you ask that?”
“Your eyes still change when her name comes up. Your voice goes up a half-step in pitch.”
“Really? Well. We went through a lot together. What matters today is that if we try to halt construction of the mill to search for evidence, it’ll be Jet who files the papers.”
Quinn knows I’m trying to change the subject. Graciously, she allows me this. “I know who to call at the state level,” she says, “if that’s the way you want to go.”
“Does Archives and History have the stroke to override pressure from the governor? Even national pressure?”
“In theory? Sure. William Winter fought off serious pressure during the casino boom. In reality, I don’t know. That’s why Buck went back looking for bones.”
I take a long sip of my tea, which has already started to cool. “Why did he risk going last night, if he knew there were guards posted?”
“No, no. He went in to dig because there weren’t any guards. He called and told me that.”
This is new information. “What?”
“He drove out and parked well south of the site, then walked up the riverbank. The whole way he watched for lights. He didn’t see a single guard.”
“That doesn’t mean there weren’t any. They could have been using night vision.”
“To guard a small-town paper mill site?”