Clark paced behind the interview room’s one-way glass, straining to hear the conversation piped through the shitty speakers on the wall above her head.
“What did you need the condom for, Jamal?” Mayfield’s voice came through as a whisper, half his words lost to the pop and hiss of the department’s ancient wiring.
“I didn’t say shit about that...”
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. It all felt 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.
“I got more good news today, actually,” Mayfield said. “Old Deputy Grissom’s recovered enough to start talking again.”
An odd look crossed Lopez’s face.
“Is that right?” Mr. Boone said. “I thought the doctors told us that with the horse breaking his spine—”
“They did. But he is.” Mayfield smiled. “His day nurse called saying she couldn’t believe her ears.”
A piercing chime rang through the speakers when Jamal adjusted the handcuff on his wrist. The men flinched. An idea struck Clark.
“Can I speak to Jamal?” she said, hoping to God she sounded nervous, harmless, female. “Maybe he’d open up to someone a little closer to his own age.”
Mr. Boone frowned. “Does she even have interviewing experience?” he asked Lopez.
But Mayfield grinned to her, smug as a cat. “I don’t see it could do any harm.”
Clark thanked him. She’d see about that.
She stepped into the interview room a few minutes later with two bottles of water, a handful of mints stuffed in her pocket, a gentle smile. Jamal hardly looked at her. The room was thick with silence. No air-conditioning. No vents. Clark sat across from him, her back to the one-way glass.
“If nothing else you should have a drink.”
Jamal stared at the blank pad of paper in front of him.
She retrieved a mint and took her time pulling the candy from its plastic.
“Do you love Bethany, Jamal?”
He stared at the table. “It weren’t like that.”
She sucked at the mint. She pulled another from her pocket and passed it to him.
She shot a quick glance at the dusty microphone bolted to the side of the table. After a moment she set his mint on the pad of paper, making sure it rustled. Clark propped her arm casually on the table’s edge. She held her mint’s empty plastic wrapper a few inches from the microphone.
Feeling the eyes of the men in the other room burning against the back of her head, Clark crinkled the plastic wrapper a few times between her fingers and prayed that the sound washed out their speakers. She said softly through the noise, “Then tell me how it really was.”
Jamal didn’t seem to understand. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”
“Do you feel you need a lawyer?” She shot an urgent look at the microphone. Crinkle crinkle.
Please God, she thought, make this boy understand. “Or would you rather talk to me first?”
Jamal’s eyes lit up. To Clark’s relief he covered it fast. He pulled on a scowl, shook his head, said, “D had his own thing going on.”
“You mean on the weekends with KT?” Clark said loudly, hoping to throw the men off the scent.
“I don’t know what the fuck those two were doing.”
She crushed the wrapper, said softly, “Something with drugs?”
“Maybe you should figure out why D hung out with that guy.”
The skeptical tone returned to Clark’s voice. “You’re saying KT wasn’t a good influence?”
“None of those guys were.”
“Which other guys?”
“KT, Garrett, Mitchell, all those fuckers. They weren’t never my friends.”
They sat in silence a moment. Clark strained to hear anything from the little room behind her.
Jamal held her eye. He took a water bottle, unscrewed it clumsily with his free hand and drained it in one long gulp. Bringing the bottle down he crushed it loudly. “On their phones,” he murmured.
Clark cocked her head. “What?”
He squeezed the bottle tighter. “Something on their phones. At halftime.”
Clark heard the sound of a door slamming, the click of shoes in the hall. Shit. It had been worth a shot.
She leaned forward, whispered fast, “What was it, Jamal?”
“I don’t fucking know. I think something bad. Garrett almost killed me when I asked—”
The door to the interview room swung open and a small black man in a baggy blazer and brilliant shoes strode inside, bringing with him a sudden scent of cinnamon. Clark recognized the man (and his cologne) with a mixture of resignation and relief. At least Jamal finally had a lawyer.
“Not another word, son.” Mr. Irons spoke with a voice far deeper than his little frame looked capable of containing. The man ran an eye over the blank pad of paper Mayfield had left on the table, the empty bottle of water. “Did you drink from that?”
Jamal nodded.
County Attorney Boone appeared at last, followed by the sheriff. They both gave Clark a dubious look—she prayed they only thought her incompetent, not complicit—and a moment later Boone and Jamal’s new attorney were embroiled in dense legal talk. She knew she’d never get another unguarded word with Jamal now.
She thought about what sort of secrets players could pass around on their phones at halftime. A halftime a few hours before one of those players turned up dead.
She’d need help from someone else at that school. Rising from the table she gave Jamal a curt nod. He stared through her, the way you would a stranger.