Page 85 of The Bright Lands

“Now the briefs.”

“Please, sir—”

“Now.”

Joel pulled down his briefs. A cold breeze ran through his bare legs.

“Pull them loose.” Grissom moved his free hand from his gun to the front of his pants. He squeezed.Flash.

Joel tugged down his frigid balls.

“If you start crying you’re a dead man. Get it hard. Christ, boy, look like you want it.”

Joel wondered if there was something in store for him tonight that might be worse than death. In his head he could still hear Troy’s truck, rumbling away.

“Turn around. Hands on the wall. Bend over.”

Flash. Flash. Flash.Grissom approached and lowered himself on his haunches. Joel could feel the man’s wet breath on the cheeks of his ass. He shuddered when he felt Grissom’s thumb rest, briefly, in their cleft.

“That one’s a beauty,” Grissom said, his voice trembling with something like awe. “Like the button on a navel orange.”

Joel heard something spatter across the leaves between his feet.

Grissom stayed crouched behind him a long time. Joel stood perfectly still. He didn’t dare to breathe.

Finally Grissom cleared his throat, rose, zipped up his fly.

“Hands behind your back, son.”

Joel didn’t move.

“I said give me your fucking hands.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a goldarn arrest to make, that’s why. Lordy, just look at the sight of you.” Grissom laughed. He leaned his bulky frame against Joel’s bare back to grab the boy’s wrists.

“We had a deal!”

“A what?” The cuffs bit Joel’s skin. Grissom gave them a tug. “Let’s get you to the station—are you gonna walk or do I need to drag you?”

Joel stumbled on the way up the stairs—had the ground quaked or had his mind just departed his body?—and nearly fell back into the dark. He couldn’t help it. He was crying so hard he could hardly see.

His tears all but choked him when he was pressed naked into the squad car, when the door was slammed, when Grissom lowered his bulk into the seat ahead of him with a spicy burp. Joel couldn’t stop shaking on the cold vinyl seat. He saw eyes in the trees, watching him with a smile.

His mind shorted out.

Was it any wonder that Joel forgot what Grissom said next? That it had taken him ten years and a blow to the head to finally see what his vaunted fucking intuition had been trying to show him all this time? To recall the way Grissompops loose the camera’s memory card and tucks it into the shirt pocket of his uniform shakes his head shifts his cruiser into Reverse speaks with a tenderness that’s almost worse than all he’s said before:

“Cheer up, son. I weren’t ever invited out there, either.”

By the time Clark arrived Wesley was long gone. The fight for Joel’s phone (and the recording of Wesley’s confession that rested on it) had been brief. Wesley had heaved the heavy glass of bourbon. Joel had already reached his phone by the time the glass exploded against the wall. Wesley took a second too long to cross the cavernous living room: Joel had his phone jammed into his pocket by the time Wesley threw his first punch. Joel stumbled back, dodged it.

He wasn’t so lucky a second time. Wesley’s fist (and the force of all his old football muscle) had crashed into Joel’s jaw, sent his head into the little wooden end table beside the couch. Joel’s brain had flickered, his mind struggled to process the complex task of breathing, blinking, pulling loose the knife at his ankle.

But then there it was, in his hand, the blade’s tip shaking in the air.

A moment later and Wesley was heading for the hall with a sob in his throat. Joel, crouched on all fours, vomit in his mouth, watched as Wesley stumbled out the front door a minute later with his keys and a green backpack.