Jamal was still in the interview room, speaking to his lawyer. Clark was seated in the sheriff’s department bull pen. Mayfield was seated at the desk across from her, filling out paperwork, treating her just as he had all day: as if she weren’t there at all.

Mayfield’s phone began to ring. Clark’s curiosity was piqued when she heard the way the investigator said, “You’re shitting me? On I-35?”

Still listening to Mayfield’s conversation, Clark began running searches through the department’s system. She pressed Enter and discovered there was no official record of any kind regarding KT Staler, whom Wesley Mores had told Joel “got into some kind of trouble” over the summer. No arrests, no tickets, not even a citation.

She discovered a moment later that there was no record of any investigation into the distribution of those dirty photographs of Joel ten years ago, the investigation the Whitley family had been promised was still ongoing.

Out of curiosity (Clark was long past caring that all of these searches were tracked), she pulled the record of Joel’s arrest in 2007 and discovered it was so thinly written it was almost laughable. Old Officer Grissom had written:

Two men interrupted at Milam Municipal park in midst of sexual act...unidentified man between 5'8 and 6'2 (really?) fled the scene... Whitley, nude, produced wallet from pants on the ground stating quote “we can figure something out” end quote but...

Clark found all of this doubtful. She struggled to imagine Joel Whitley, aged seventeen (and no doubt terrified), possessing the wherewithal to offer a uniformed sheriff’s deputy a bribe to avoid arrest. For that matter, she struggled to imagine fat, fidgety Officer Grissom turning the money down: before his accident this past summer, Grissom had possessed a reputation for being almost endearingly corrupt.

But it begged the question: why would dirty Officer Grissom write a false report? To cover for the other man, the one who had allegedly escaped unidentified?

“That was the Dallas PD,” Mayfield said, hanging up the phone at his desk. “They arrested KT Staler for drug possession at a traffic stop on Tuesday night. Apparently they received some new APB this morning describing his Tacoma as ‘aquamarine’ and it flagged him in the system.” Mayfield raised an eyebrow. “I’d have thought ‘green’ would have covered all our bases.”

Clark’s heart fluttered. That had been her APB.

“They say KT’s ours for the taking if we want him. The new mayor up there put in a catch-and-release policy for the possession charges. They was about to cut him loose again.”

Clark reached for her keys. “Are we going now?”

“You’re going over to South Street,” said Sheriff Lopez. Clark spun in her chair. She hadn’t heard him stepping up behind her.

“But, sir—”

“But nothing. A car just drove into the bank and cracked open the vault.”

Clark stood. “Sir, with all due respect, we have a suspect in custody in—”

“Indeed we do. In our station.” Lopez narrowed his eyes at her computer screen. “If Mayfield wants to be a good Samaritan and bring Mr. Staler home, that’s his prerogative. We’re considering the Whitley case as good as closed, Deputy. And you’re out of line.”