I turn into the parking lot, which is full of old junkers and trucks. As depressed as the economy is over here, I suspect most of the workers don’t receive much more than minimum wage. Some of these people are obviously skilled butchers, but I doubt if old Willie had much of a profit-sharing plan.

Inside the plant office I ask a white male, who looks like Willie Nelson with a full white beard, for Eddie Ting. Apparently, neither Dick nor the sheriff has arrived.

“Darla, is Eddie in the can?” he says, scowling at a woman who must be Darla Tate, the woman who claims she overheard Class. A tall, big-framed woman in her late forties toiling behind a computer screen, Darla smiles, making up for her colleague’s lack of candle power. There is something familiar about her, but I can’t place her.

“Either that or he’s vanished into thin air,” she says to me.

“He’ll be out in a minute.”

Her questioner frowns. If this is actually Willie Nelson hiding out in a meat-packing plant in east Arkansas, he doesn’t look very happy about it.

Yet, in my coat and tie, I probably look like I’m from the IRS. I glance around the room. If this is the entire front office of Southern Pride Meats, no one can accuse Eddie of wasting the profits on furnishings. Three scarred desks, beat-up chairs, metal filing cabinets, and a hat tree constitute the furniture. They all look as if they were stolen from a Goodwill warehouse. None of the desks is separated from the other by more than a couple of feet. The five essentials of modern office life-coffee maker, copier, calculator, computer, and fax machine-give the room a busy look. Maybe Eddie has an office somewhere in the back. Then I notice the desk directly across from the woman.

I realize I am looking at the exact place where Willie Ting was murdered.