Page 65 of The Bright Lands

The one-way glass gave the interview room a strange silver sheen, as if Clark were watching not an interrogation but a scene in some classic movie. Itallfelt too classic, clichéd even, watching the two big cops sweat the young black kid: smacking the table, pacing, sneering like bad actors overplaying their parts.“Clichés have to come from someplace,”Mayfield had told her coolly this morning when they’d returned to the station with Jamal, the only words the investigator had directed her way since the school’s parking lot. She’d caught the little flicker of hesitation in his eye, however. This mysterious sock was incriminating—it was enough for an arrest warrant, at least—but it wasn’t enough for an easy conviction in court. Mayfield and Lopez needed Jamal to crack and confess.

Clark only prayed the boy could hold out.

“Is that condom how Dylan learned you and Bethany were sleeping together?” Lopez’s voice dipped and warbled through the speakers. “Dylan got angry, didn’t he? He tried to stop you from meeting her.”

“It was his idea in the first place!”

Through the glass, Mayfield and Lopez shared a bemused silence, like this was too absurd to even credit.

“And why would he do that?” said Mayfield.

After a long silence, Jamal said with a scowl, “You wouldn’t believe...” The volume fell so low Clark had to watch his lips to understand him.

If Jamal knew that Dylan was gay, he had just declined a golden opportunity to out his dead friend and possibly help his own case. Clark tucked this away to chew on later.

Mr. Boone, standing in the little anteroom with Clark, was fussing with his bolo tie.

“We can subpoena Russ Tanner’s security company, can’t we?” Clark asked the county attorney. “We can see if Jamal really was at Bethany’s house all weekend like he said.”

“Hypothetically we can, yes.”

“Just like we can subpoena Facebook and Apple and all of them. Snapchat. That’s where the proof will be, you know—in all the messages these kids send.”

“I imagine you’re right.”

“We haven’t heard back about none of the subpoenas you’ve already filed?”

“You’re as dedicated as my wife.” He chuckled. “That’s a compliment, truly.”

Clark said nothing.

“It’s a complicated matter, Deputy. The legal departments at those technology companies are quite qualified.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, hell, that’s what you’re here for.”

“There’s a question of budget as well. Processing fees. Court fees. You wouldn’t believe the fees they charge in the California courts.”

She felt a thread of assumptions snap.

“You haven’t filed those subpoenas.”

The county attorney turned back to the glass. “Yet, Officer. Not yet. It’ll be easy when we have a fuller picture of what to request. Those judges are butchers. They prefer you file in bulk.”

Clark didn’t bother to mask her disgust. Fine. She would be happy to write Boone off—the man was, at very best, useless to her. If she and Joel were going to get to the bottom of this case, they would have do it without the help of a legal department.

Mayfield and Lopez stood. Mayfield pushed a legal pad toward Jamal, a pen riding atop the paper. “Just write the truth, son. Make it easier.”

Jamal made no move to pick up the pen. Good. The two older men left the room with somber faces, letting the door latch behind them, but by the time they made it to the anteroom Mayfield had grown affable, almost giddy. He ignored Clark.

“Just a few more hours,” the investigator said. “It’s simple, really. We were looking at this the wrong way all along. We thought Dylan had a girl on the side but it was Bethany who had a boy. She and Jamal were carrying on. Dylan got wind of it, tried to stop them, the end. Jamal’s gonna crack by sundown.”

“If he doesn’t get a lawyer soon,” said Boone.

“He won’t ask for a lawyer—he’s too afraid of looking guilty,” Lopez said. “He’s got balls, though. He might just lock down on us.”

Clark wasn’t certain she agreed with Joel: closed-minded as she knew Bentley was, she struggled to believe that the simple fact Dylan Whitley was queer would motivate the sheriff’s department to drop an investigation of his murder in exactly the same way it had abandoned its investigation into Joel’s very public shaming.

But there were more factors at play here than simply Jamal’s race (though that, she knew, was no small consideration). She had no doubt that Investigator Mayfield had scuttled the investigation into her brother’s disappearance and he seemed more than ready to ruin another.