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 Grissom pops 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.

“Joel?” Clark was here. A half hour had passed. He thought he had hallucinated calling her.

Rising from the couch, the memory of his arrest still echoing in his brain, Joel recoiled when he saw the state she was in.

Clark was covered in ash. It powdered her hair, smudged her cheeks like theater paint. Her eyes were a violent red. When he told her that Wesley’s house was empty, she brushed glass from the sofa and dropped heavily into the seat beside him. A chalky ghost remained, briefly, suspended in the air above her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, rising to get her a drink before she could tell him otherwise.

“Have you ever seen what an oxygen tank does to someone when it explodes next to their bed?”

Joel handed her a whiskey.

She said nothing. Joel poured himself a drink and considered his approach. Clark was clearly exhausted, but he needed her now more than ever. He needed to move while the memory was still fresh. Joel needed to know what that fat fucker of a cop, like Wesley, had never been invited to.

“I have to speak to Grissom,” Joel said. “Do you know where he lives?”

Clark stared at Joel as if to confirm he wasn’t joking. She exploded with a violent spasm of laughter. Little wisps of ash drifted off her quaking body and rose through the air like she was smoldering herself.