“Ovelle’s got holes in his brain from all the tweak he’s cooked. Funny you mention him, though. Browder swung by his old room in that rat’s nest motel down the highway and apparently nobody’s seen Ovelle since Friday. God willing, we never will again.” Mayfield studied a printout from a stack of folders.

“Go back. Nobody’s seen Ovelle since Friday night? The night Whitley was murdered?”

“No, they haven’t, but before you ask I already have the APBs filed for him too. Like I said, you chase one bird at a time.” Mayfield studied the field. “And when you have it in your hand, you squeeze it till it chirps.”

Clark followed his eyes, noted the tall Turner twins and pale little Tomas Hernandez studying Jamal as their new quarterback struggled again to his feet. They shook their heads and turned away.

She said, “What if we’re looking at killers. Plural. Like you said yesterday. I’m thinking about the phone.”

“The phone?”

“Dylan died in a nasty fight—look at these bruises. If you’ve just beat a boy black-and-blue and cut his throat deep enough to slice the vocal cords then you’re going to be high as a kite on adrenaline. You ain’t going to have the sense to take the boy’s phone and unlock it with his thumb so you can start covering your tracks the next day. You need a cool head for that sort of forward planning. Someone to look at what you’ve done and see a way out.”

“Hence why we wait for Jamal to crack. If he and Staler were in it together, he’ll lead us to him, one way or the other. Dead or alive.”

Clark spotted something in one of the autopsy photographs. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

A thin, pale mark ran straight across the back of Dylan’s left thigh. It looked like an old scar, but Clark couldn’t imagine what sort of accident could produce such a clean, even line.

Mayfield studied the photo. “Any record of a surgery?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“A play of the light,” the investigator said, sounding unconvinced. They were hitting a wall.

“Have you ever investigated a murder before?” Clark asked.

“Open-and-shuts.” Mayfield shrugged. “An ugly bar fight. A man beat his wife with her own iron for burning his shirt. Only a few real mysteries. A disappearance. As you remember.”

Mayfield let the word hang in the car’s hot air. She knew perfectly well what he meant.

Clark watched as the players on the field lined up to throw themselves at each other again. Big Coach Parter himself stood at the thirty yard line, bellowing something to Jamal—“No strength in your goddamn legs, Reynolds!”—his mouth inches from the boy’s helmet grill. Clark wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the school’s athletic director actually coach. With a player like Dylan on the team, he’d probably never had to.

“You must have wanted to ask,” Mayfield said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t print off your brother’s case the first day you had a password to the computers here.”