“Be that as it may—” Clark made a show of turning over a page in her notebook. “You must be worried about KT Staler. We hear he never made it to class today.”

At that, Bethany very clearly frowned. “You should ask Kimbra about him. Staler and I were never close.”

“Was there any particular reason for that?”

Bethany shrugged, glanced at the blinded window. “His family’s garbage.”

“They’ve had their troubles.” Clark arched an eyebrow. “Did you ever get the impression KT took after his siblings?”

“You mean did I think he was on drugs?” Bethany said, meeting Clark’s eye. “No.”

Clark’s mind returned to KT’s insistence yesterday that Dylan had had a girl on the side. Clark wondered how Bethany would react to such a claim. Did this girl with the perfect skin and the sheet of golden hair have it in her to kill her boyfriend and dump his body in a creek?

Watching the way Bethany smoothed the hem of her sleeve with a muted precision, the same precision with which she appeared to smooth down every inch of herself, Clark’s answer was obvious.

Of course.

“It must have been difficult to watch your man get so much attention,” Clark said. “I bet there’s plenty of girls hoping to catch his eye.”

Bethany gave Clark a quizzical look. “They might have hoped. Dylan had his priorities straight.”

“Really? A boy his age? A boy that handsome?”

“Really.” Bethany chuckled, shook her head. “Dylan and I had something real. We—”

“You never had reason to suspect there was another girl in his life?”

Bethany refused to be flustered. “No.”

Mayfield scratched at his cuff. If Bethany knew anything else, she wasn’t going to reveal it today.

Clark smiled, clicked shut her pen, closed her notebook. “Thank you for your time, Miss Tanner.”

Something curious happened as Bethany readied herself to go. A long, painful-looking yawn brought tears to her eyes, a little tremor to her fingers. For the first time since she walked through the door, the girl looked unguarded. Off balance. Scared.

Clark couldn’t have chosen a better moment to ask her final question.

“You said you last saw Dylan leave the game at ten thirty Friday night, yes? What did you do with yourself for the rest of the weekend?”

“Me?”

“Yes. I just need something to put in the notes.”

“I went home by myself.” The girl sounded distracted when she said it, preoccupied by something else in her head—grief? pyramid drills?—but the moment the words were out of her mouth Bethany went very tense. Clark would have sworn she saw a flash of panic across her eyes.

“Your father wasn’t with you?”

A long pause. “No. He had business in Dallas.”

“Did he make it back that night?”

A tight smile. A green nail playing on the table. “No.”

“So you were home all weekend? Alone?” Mayfield said.

“I was sick.”

An idea occurred to Clark. “Your house doesn’t have a security system, does it? Cameras on the fences, maybe watching the doors?”