Chapter 6

The county board meeting was three nights later, in the same hall, with the same folding tables and the same paper tablecloths, but a different banner. The plastic department banner was gone. In its place, taped to the wall, was a sheet of white paper with COUNTY BOARD MEETING — SPECIAL SESSION written across it in Ruth Ann Covington's neat cursive.

Ruth Ann had brought the photocopy. Marta had brought the bank statement from First County, confirming seven thousand two hundred dollars in a savings account under Dwayne Kohler's name. Owen Pace had driven four hours again, and he was sitting in the second row with his black three-ring binder closed on his lap, not opening it, not needing to open it, just being there, a witness with a binder and thirty-one years of carbon copies.

Jenna hadn't dressed up. She wore the same forest-green button-down, dark jeans, work boots. Her satchel was hooked on the chair beside her, and she'd brought a notepad, in case there was something she needed to take notes on. She didn't take notes.

The county board was five people in maroon polo shirts, sitting behind a folding table they'd set up where the head table usually went. The chairman, a man named Harold Sikes who ran the feed store in town, opened the meeting and read the agenda in a flat voice, and then he read the reports.

Dwayne Kohler was there. He sat in the front row, in his slate-blue jacket with the gold collar pins on his dress shirt beneath, and he didn't look at anybody. His hands were in his lap, and he was turning his wedding band, one rotation after another, a small repetitive motion that Jenna watched from across the room.