“Are you sure you have to leave so soon?” she said.

Joel brought a cup to the table for himself. “There’s business in the city. No such thing as bad press, I guess.”

“And that’s what you’ll do? Go back and analyze property values?”

He shrugged with his good shoulder. “Maybe if I get absurdly rich I’ll fight crime. The one-armed Batman.”

She sipped her coffee. She tried to smile at the sling suspending his shoulder. “How does it feel?”

“Like I’ve pressed my last bench press. But I can hardly complain.”

Unspoken memories of Dylan’s belated funeral yesterday morning—the end of a long week of such proceedings—hung briefly between the two of them.

Joel said, “Dylan must have known that KT was up to no good on those weekends they were supposed to be at the coast together. Why do you think he didn’t try to stop the tricking and the drugs?”

Clark played with a napkin. “Because KT was too convenient for the narrative. I went and checked—Browder moved back to town on May second. The first trip the boys took to the coast came three weeks later. My guess is that Browder went back to the Bright Lands sometime soon after he arrived and met Dylan there. Apparently there’s phone records showing that your brother and Browder was texting each around the clock by the end of the month. With KT’s help, Dylan and Browder could disappear together. Guess which of our deputies was off-duty for seven of those ten weekends Dylan and KT told people they were in Galveston?”

“Mayfield must be sick that he never put that together.”

“He’s sick about a lot. But to his credit I think he’d had his misgivings ever since the sock was found. If I had to guess, framing Jamal was too much, even for him. He botched the booking paperwork eight different ways. And once Grissom was killed, well—” Clark twirled her mug. “He’ll be sheriff soon enough, I’m sure.”

Clark and Joel regarded the window, the broad copper Flats outside.

Joel said, “They never found Mitchell’s body?”

“No. I don’t know how the department is going to spin the story but I’m sure they’ll find a way.” Clark shook out her damp hair from its bun. “Of course, that pit explains why Troy never turned up.”

“You think he got swallowed by that thing?” Joel said.

“I’d rather not think about it, frankly.”

“But Ranger Mason said Troy left town the night I was arrested.”

“Ranger lied about plenty. It would be the perfect way for him to have Troy killed—just get him dumped in that hole and no one would ever find him. Ranger said it himself, he hated y’all that summer.” She drank. “You’ve seen what happens to jealousy.”

Joel shook his head. He touched her hand. “That doesn’t make sense. Think about it. That thing down there, whatever it was, it started moving when people died. Mayfield said everyone got bad dreams after Broadlock disappeared forty years ago. The dead lady at the bank’ll tell you the same thing happened after Dylan was murdered. But, Clark, back when Troy ran off—” Joel smiled. “There weren’t any dreams. There wasn’t anything.”