It was later that Saturday night. Dark outside, but the lights were bright along the jail corridor. Ray sat on the edge of his concrete bunk staring at the back of the drunk zonked out opposite him. They were in one of ten small cells in a basement area attached to the police station. They shared two concrete bunks with thin pads, a toilet with no seat and a dirty sink. Ray was now wearing a hot baggy jumpsuit. He wondered why his cellmate still had his street clothes.
Ray heard the metal clang of a door down the hallway. A short young man wearing jeans, a polo shirt and dirty sneakers strolled down the jail corridor and straight up to Ray's cell. The guard at the desk near the door didn't even glance up at him.
"I'm Beau Cobb, named for my granddaddy. Chip Goddard told me you might need some stuff."
Ray stared curiously through the bars.
"Local bail bondsman, official and licensed. I'll be around in the morning after you go before the judge."
"I'm not sure I'm even under arrest. You said Chip somebody?"
"The guy who arrested you, Detective Sergeant Ronald Goddard, Jr., son of the former police chief. Chip, like off the old block, get it?"
"Yeah, I get it. I'm back in the South a hundred years ago. Everyone is named Beau, or Chip or Bubba, and everybody with power is related."
"Don't know about that, but he's not related to anybody. I heard about him in high school. Was a few years ahead of me. He was on the football team, went to college and was a Marine officer. I decided not to do any of that, had some other stuff to do. He just made Detective. So, you think you're not under arrest."
"Just holding me overnight."
"Heard that one before." Beau glanced around then stepped confidentially to the bars and whispered, "Hey man, did you really off the senator?"
"What?"
"Senator Towson, you do him, whack him, close him out? They got a tip you were at his place today."
"Towson's dead?" Ray backed up and sat on the end of the bunk. He didn't get it. Something's wrong. Couldn't be.
"Where you been? The whole country's talking about it, all over the TV. Why you think you're down here, and they're upstairs running around like chickens with their heads cut off? I'm not supposed to be talking about it, you know. Like the big deal crime of the century for them. What's your middle name? The National Enquirer wanted to know. They always include the middle name of assassins. Like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. You're gonna be a celebrity."