Page 24 of The Bright Lands

“It weren’t nothing but luck,” Spearson shouted over the whining motor. “All this here is Evers land these last few years. Mrs. Evers, she bought it out from me when the stocks went all to shit in oh-eight. But she kept me on as a groundskeeper, see.”

Clark bounced in her seat. She gripped the cool metal bar of the ATV’s frame to steady herself.

“I drives around once a week for her, the Evers lady, to look see has any vagrants set up camp, any of them tweakers cooking up that meth crank out here. I drives armed—I won’t make no secret of that.”

Spearson gunned the gas and soon the little house was only a fleck of black on the gold horizon behind them. Ahead of them, as far as Clark could see, was nothing.

“I got in from my haul late last night, maybe near past midnight, but I couldn’t sleep for shit—pardon, Officer, ma’am—on accounts I got the cedar allergies something bad, so rights around four thirty I say to hell with it, I’ll just make my rounds in the dark. This little guy’s got him the new lights on him, after all, and it were a clear morning.”

They bounced over a nest of small stones. In the very far distance Clark could make out a few spindly trees cutting a ragged lateral line across the country ahead of them.

“Now, normally, I start by heading out down to the south, at the property line, thens I cut across and head north up along Balton Creek till I hit the other line and come back around home. The creek is the eastern dividing line, see, between here and the far property.”

The ground sloped softly downward. Clark caught a faint tang of water in the air. Spearson banked to the left.

“But see, this morning, I thought I heard me a cayote up there northaways so when I set out I started off that direction first. I didn’t find no cayote but I still set off to the east till I ran up on the creek. And if I hadn’t gone that way I would have drove right past it.” A pause. “I would have drove right past it.”

The ATV began to slow. Clark’s feet had gone numb on the quaking metal floor. Spearson brought them to within twenty yards of a creek bed and stopped. Under the whiny click of the motor, Clark could hear the faint babble of slow water.

She saw a teeming cloud of flies.

Spearson nodded past the hood of the ATV. “It’s just there.”

Dry grass crunched under Clark’s boots. Cicadas droned. The iron smell of water grew stronger. The mass of flies pitched and reared. They didn’t disperse when the officers reached the edge of the creek.

The boy was stretched out on his belly, his feet bare, one arm flung out, the other folded beneath him. One side of his face was sunk in the shallow water. The other was turned up to greet them.

His cheeks were battered blue. His hands were a stark, cold white. He wore only a pair of dark jeans and a green Bison leather jacket. The jacket rode up around his hips. He wore no shirt underneath. On the side of his ridged stomach Clark saw the unmistakable dash of a knife wound. She noted, with a sudden irrational relief, that both of his arms were attached to his body. Instead, something horrible spread open on the boy’s throat.

And, of course, Clark saw the name branded across the back of the jacket, stitched just above the leaping Bison logo.

WHITLEY.

Only the best years of my life.

They stood in silence, watching the shallow water skitter over Dylan’s open eye. Finally Lopez stepped back, turned to Spearson and said, “Who have you told about this, Jack?”

“Just y’all. Not even my wife.”

Lopez nodded. In a low voice he said to Mayfield, “Get to that school. The boy’s friends, the ones he went to the coast with, did they make it back last night?”

Mayfield gave a careful shrug.

“Find out. Shake them a bit. I’ll wait here for the pathologist. Tell Jones to notify the family. Now. No sense waiting till we’ve got the body at the funeral parlor—we won’t be able to keep the lid on this long anyhow.”

Mayfield turned to Clark. “Did you bring the change of clothes I asked you to?”

“They’re in my truck, sir.”

“You can change at the school, then.”

“The school, sir?”

Mayfield headed back to the ATV. “You think I’d trust Browder to assist with this?”

Clark looked to Lopez. The sheriff nodded. “Talk to the kids. Get their confidence before they button up each other’s stories. Someone on that team knows something.”

She thought of Joel. “Everyone’s a suspect right now, aren’t they?”