The Trees

Deputy Sheriff Delroy Digby receives a call to report to Junior Junior Milam’s house in Small Change. Junior Junior’s wife Daisy is outside with her four young children and informs Digby is dead, along with a mysterious Black man. Delroy calls for back-up and searches the house. He finds a gruesome scene. Junior Junior’s head has been bashed in, with barbed wire wrapped around his neck. Laying near Junior Junior’s body is the dead body of a Black man who looks beaten. Delroy’s back-up officer, Brady, refers to the Black man using the n-word. They notice that Junior Junior’s scrotum is severed and in the Black man’s hands.

Sheriff Red Jetty and the coroner, Reverend Cad Fondle, discuss the murder. They don’t know who the Black man is but dismiss him as looking like every other Black man anyway. Delroy suggests dusting the room for prints. The Sheriff, annoyed at the paperwork he’ll have to complete for a murder, allows Delroy to do so.

Reverend Fondle calls Sheriff Jetty to the morgue. He tells the Sheriff that the corpse of the Black man has gone missing from its place in the morgue. Sheriff Jetty questions Dill, the man who works the front desk at the morgue, who insists that he hasn’t left his desk all day. They discover that the back door, which hasn’t been opened in a decade, has a destroyed lock and is wide open.

Daisy drives to Charlene’s house in tears to tell the family about Junior Junior’s death. She is certain that the Black man murdered him. Granny C wants to know what the Black man looked like, but Daisy says he was too beat up to recognize.

After dusting for fingerprints at the morgue’s back door, no evidence of anyone other than Dill and Reverend Fondle is discovered.

The town of Money is shocked by news of the murder and the missing body. The mayor, Philworth Bass, scolds Sheriff Jetty for the scandal of the missing body. The MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) sends officers to help the Money sheriff department with the investigation, certain that Money won’t be able to figure it out themselves.

MBI investigators Ed Morgan and Jim Davis drive together to Money. Ed and Jim aren’t technically partners. Despite being good officers, no one else wants to work with them. Ed and Jim like and respect one another.

Wheat spends too long in the bathroom, so Charlene barges in. She finds Wheat dead and the bathroom bloodied.

Ed and Jim arrive in Money and report to the Sheriff. Ed and Jim are both Black men, which is noted by Jim. They discuss the missing body, and Sheriff Jetty assures them that the man was dead. Sheriff Jetty says that no one has reported a missing Black man, making the identity of the missing body even stranger.

Delroy and Brady report to Charlene’s house to check out the bathroom. They confirm that Wheat is dead and call in Sheriff Jetty, alarmed at what they’ve discovered in the bathroom.

Sheriff Jetty’s secretary tells him about Delroy and Brady’s call. He leaves the MBI detectives on their own while he responds to the call.

Jim and Ed go to a local diner called Dinah. Jim and Ed discuss the stereotypes of Mississippi that make them weary of being Black in Mississippi, such as the prevalence of Trump supporter hats and white people. Jim flirts with the server, a white-passing Black woman named Gertrude.

Sheriff Jetty reports to Charlene’s house. Delroy and Brady are disturbed by the crime scene, so the Sheriff goes into the bathroom to find out why. Wheat has barbed wire around his neck. The body of the missing dead Black man lies in the tub of the bathroom. They check the body of the Black man for a pulse and confirm that he’s dead.

Sheriff Jetty calls Ed and Jim to inform them that the missing body has been found. Ed and Jim want to check out the scene before leaving Money. Jim continues to flirt with Gertrude, and Ed warns him about flirting with her lest she have a dangerous white boyfriend with a gun.

When Reverend Fondle arrives at the crime scene, he prays to God to protect them all against the demon in the form of the dead Black man. Granny C is in catatonic shock.

Ed and Jim meet with Sheriff Jetty. He tells them about the second murder scene and the appearance of the missing dead body. He also tells them that, like in Junior Junior’s death, Wheat’s scrotum has been removed from his body and placed in the dead Black man’s hands. Ed and Jim ask the Sheriff why he’s certain that the dead Black man is the killer. He explains that no one saw anyone enter the house. Jim and Ed insist on inspecting the murder scenes and the evidence collected. Sheriff Jetty warns them that Money is not the city and is barely in the 21st century, implying the danger two Black investigators face in a town like Money. Sheriff Jetty insists on one of his own officers accompanying them. Sheriff Jetty gets a phone call from Reverend Fondle, who tells him that the body of the dead Black man has gone missing from the morgue once again.

Charlene prays for Wheat. In the prayer, she asks God if Wheat was gay and in an affair with the Black man. She prepares to clean the blood in the bathroom with bleach.

Sheriff Jetty and Detectives Ed and Jim meet with Reverend Fondle. Fondle nearly uses the n-word to refer to the dead Black man’s missing body but stops himself around Ed and Jim. He explains that when he and the truck carrying the two dead bodies from Wheat’s house arrived at the morgue, Wheat’s body was in the car but the dead Black man was not. Jethro, the deputy sheriff, proposes a theory. He suggests that they’re all experiencing mass hysteria because the people in his town are so scared of Black people that they’ve all imagined the presence of a Black man at the scene of repulsive murders. Ed and Jim remind him that there are pictures of the dead Black man at both crime scenes. Dill proposes that the dead Black man is actually a ghost.

Ed and Jim go to Daisy’s house. They ask her a few questions about the possibility of her husband having known any Black men, particularly any with whom he had disagreements. When they ask to enter the house to inspect the crime scene, Daisy remarks that she had never had any Black people in her house until these last couple of days. They look around the scene of the crime but find nothing out of the ordinary. The case is bizarre, particularly because Ed and Jim agree that the people of Small Change aren’t lying.