KT’s house seemed to blacken in the late morning sun. Haggard Mrs. Staler took an age to open the front door. “I don’t allow nobody in this house,” the woman said, twice, before Joel produced a pair of twenties and a small light came into her eye.
“Sorry, sir.” The woman gestured to her wild hair, the dried spit on her chin. As if it explained everything she said, “Oxycodone the only way I sleep these days.”
They found KT in a small bedroom on the second floor, seated atop his bedcovers, an ancient laptop unfolded in his lap.
“Kyler Thomas,” Clark said gently, noticing the vivid bruise on his face. “May we come inside?”
The glow of the computer screen was the only light in the room. Heavy curtains covered the windows. The floor was buried under unwashed clothes, bags of chips.
They came to stand at the edge of the bed.
“That’s an ugly bruise,” Joel said. Under the purple and brown spread across his cheeks, KT was still strikingly handsome, more so than Joel remembered from the game—all cheekbones and full lips and soft lashes—yet the sly light Joel had seen in the boy’s eyes on Friday night had gone out.
“Garrett Mason’s got a bruise just like it on his hand.” Clark smiled. “You two make quite a pair.”
KT’s eyes widened, briefly, at Garrett’s name.
“Whose idea was it to meet at the marina in July?” Joel said.
Nothing.
“Jason Ovelle was out of town for a time,” Clark said. “And then he turned up Friday looking for something in your truck. Where’d he go once our deputy turned him loose after the game, KT?”
Nothing.
Clark leaned forward, hardened her voice. She was good at this. “You got arrested again this week. They found a quarter ounce of meth on you in Dallas, KT. Did you buy it from Jason or did you have another source?”
Nothing.
“Garrett stopped by last night to make sure you stayed quiet about the drugs, didn’t he?” Clark indicated the bruise on KT’s cheek. “The two of you’s been in the business since you figured out you could get away with anything in this town.”
KT turned to her finally. “It weren’t my idea. It was Garrett’s brother. The one who lives out on 270 past the water towers, has all the signs in his yard. He was the one introduced us to Jason. I didn’t do shit.”
Clark glanced back at Joel. Ranger Mason. Of course.
“And how did Dylan get involved?” Clark said.
KT scowled at her. “Dylan was too busy for us.”
“Too busy working in the cities?”
The boy squirmed beneath the laptop before setting it beside him on the bed and letting its screen rest against the wall. He stared at the door and said nothing.
Joel looked at the light the computer threw across his lap. It was enough.
He opened his phone and found the photograph he wanted, passed the phone to Clark.
After a long moment she nodded and passed the phone back.
“Those are your naked photos on Dylan’s ad, aren’t they?” Joel said.
The boy didn’t answer. He only let his head fall into his hands. Of course.
It would have been obvious from the start if Joel had only made himself study the ad with a cool head. There was a door just barely visible in the murky background of the nude pictures. In Dylan’s room that door was nowhere near the bed.
Joel hadn’t put it together until he saw the way KT’s laptop, its lid propped against the wall, threw its light across the boy’s lap. No doubt KT rested the laptop there often, a habit, and had done so the night he took the pictures of himself, the screen’s light throwing his cock’s shadow straight to the left of the frame.
“It was easy to do,” Joel said. “Make a fake profile on the site, pull a few pictures from Dylan’s Instagram and mix it with a few nudes of your own. Type it up to make him sound as pathetic as possible. Send it out.”
KT tightened a hand over his eyes.
“So if Dylan wasn’t escorting or doing drugs,” Clark said, “why did he have two thousand dollars in cash this summer?”
“It were mine. I made it working with Garrett. I made Dylan hold it for me awhile—my mom stole my whole stash right after school let out and I had to keep the new shit somewhere. After that Darren guy saw him with it Dylan made me take it back.”
Joel nodded. It made a kind of sense, though he wondered why his brother would agree to something so shady. Loyalty, maybe? Or had a threat been involved?
Clark said, “Does your girlfriend know you were dealing drugs?”
“She thinks I drive.”
“For what? Uber?” Joel asked.
“Dylan didn’t have to do shit, of course,” KT said, ignoring him. “D just got to run off with his boy every weekend.”
“You mean you and Dylan weren’t an item?” Joel said.
“I’m not fucking gay, you idiot.” KT scoffed.
“If you weren’t sleeping with Dylan then who was?”
A look of sudden, palpable fear crossed KT’s face. He said nothing.
“So you faked the escorting ad,” said Clark. “Then what? Who did you send it to? Garrett?”
KT shook his head. He was slipping away from them again.
“Why do it, KT?” Clark said. “Why go to all the fucking trouble to make it look like Dylan was turning tricks?”
KT began to rock forward and back. “D never should have took me.”
“Took you where?” Clark said.
Joel stepped forward. He felt something else struggling to click into place. “To the Bright Lands?”
The boy groaned. He pushed himself into the corner where the bed met the wall. His body began to shake. He raised his voice. “Get the fuck out.”
A baby—how in the world was there a baby in this house?—began to squall down the hall. KT’s mother shouted something.
Joel felt a new theory forming in his mind. He thought of Wesley’s untouchables, the fear Joel used to see in Troy’s eyes whenever the two of them used to pass the football field ten years ago, Garrett Mason’s sneer at the diner.
“Was Dylan sleeping with one of the Bright Lands boys, KT?” Joel said, raising his voice above the din.
But KT hardly seemed to hear him. He was muttering rapidly, shaking his head like a wild man arguing with a bus seat.
“Kyler Thomas,” Clark said, putting a hand on his arm. “The Bright Lands boys. The ones you mentioned to your girlfriend. Who are they? What did they do?”
“I did not Bosheth did not say a word did not—”
Bosheth. Bosheth. Clark and Joel exchanged glances. How did he know that word?
“It’s not my fault he’s awake now,” KT said. And then he started to laugh.