The road turned from paved to gravel to something more like dust. It was late afternoon, the kind of heat that sticks in your teeth. State Fire Marshal Royce Harlan eased his Crown Vic off the main drag and into a pocket of pine and oak, where the trees leaned close like they had secrets.
The diner was a single-story slab of cinderblock and metal siding with a rust-streaked sign that read: Mable’s. No last name, no hours, no welcome. Just a screen door and a flickering "OPEN" in the window. He stepped inside, the door thudding behind him like a final note.
She was already pouring coffee. Young, maybe thirty, MOWA by the look of her—mahogany skin, thick black hair in a braid down her back, silver hoops in each ear. She didn’t smile.
"You must be the Fire Marshal," she said, sliding the mug across the counter without asking.
Royce blinked. He wasn’t wearing a badge, not even a state logo.
"You get that from the badge I’m not wearing?"
She shrugged. "Ain't no one comes this far in Washington County 'less they lookin' for a fire or lookin' to start one. And you don’t look like a matchstick man."
Royce sipped. The coffee was burnt but strong.
"You know about the fire then?"
"Everybody knows. You ain't gonna get much, though. Not from folks around here."
She wiped the counter with slow, practiced strokes. "A girl died. Her people already done what they needed to do."
He studied her. "What do you mean by that?"
She looked at him like a schoolteacher might look at a 'slow boy'.
"What I mean is, folks down here got long memories. Justice don’t always wait on Montgomery."
The sheriff’s office sat in a low brick building that might have once been a post office. Inside, a box fan buzzed in the corner. Sheriff Wallace leaned against a desk like it owed him money. Behind him, two MOWA deputies stood like carved cypress.
"We picked up a boy last night," Wallace said, spitting into a paper cup. "Wasn’t hard to find. Word is he was sniffin' round that girl before she burned. Married man. Trouble all over him."
"You get a confession?"
"Not yet."
The door opened. Two deputies came in, half-dragging a wiry man whose face looked like it had been worked over with a toolbox. His lip hung open like a ripped envelope.
Royce looked at the blood, then at the deputies.
"What the hell is this?"
"Resistin' arrest," one said flatly.
The suspect moaned, low and wet.
Wallace sighed. "We was just about to call you."
The house was the last stop on Royce's list. It sat at the end of a long dirt lane lined with moss-choked pecan trees. Once, it had been a fine estate. Now, the porch sagged, and kudzu crawled up the chimney like a noose.
The door was open.
Inside, in a high-backed velvet chair, sat a woman in a faded lilac dress with gloves on her hands and pearls at her throat. Her hair was white, piled high, and her eyes were sharp as flint.
"You must be Mr. Harlan," she said. "Do come in."
He sat, notebook out. "Mrs. Devareaux?"
"Great-grandmother Devareaux," she corrected. "The girl who died was my baby’s baby’s baby. I’ve seen five generations in this house."
She told him the story like a scripture. About her grandfather, a Creole man from Mobile who married his daughters to MOWA men with strong backs and sharp minds. About the way blood mixed here like river silt. About a girl with fire in her eyes and a taste for risk. And a man who didn’t belong.
"Jealousy burns quicker than pine pitch," she said. "And twice as hot."
When she was done, Royce offered the statement form and a pen.
"I need your signature."
She looked at her gloved hand.
"Can’t sign, Officer. Broke my hand."
"How?"
She smiled, slow and sweet, and removed her glove. Her knuckles were swollen, bruised.
"Why, Officer, I broke my hand on the face of that man."
It hit him all at once. The bruised suspect. The tight-lipped deputies. The small-town silence. The justice already rendered.
She patted his knee.
"You can file your report, son. Say what you need to say. But know this: we already found him. We already judged him. And if the Lord sees fit, he won't wake up in that cell tomorrow."
Royce drove out under a sky the color of old bruises. Behind him, the trees whispered. In his rearview mirror, the house disappeared into the green.
Some fires burn fast. Some smolder. And some, down in Washington County, never need a match.
