Without a word, Mayfield tossed her the bag in his hand.

It was an evidence bag, she saw. Her first thought was of protocol: why was there evidence floating out here in the wild and not locked up, logged and tagged, in the station? Then she saw what was inside.

A sock, so stained with blood Clark thought at first the fabric had been brown when it was bought. Only the upper hem of the sock remained white. Written along the hem in black marker were the initials DW.

JOEL

He’d fallen asleep—no, that wasn’t the word for it, in sleep you got rest—sitting in a stiff chair in his old bedroom. He awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. His back hurt and his neck hurt and his nose was filled with the smell of clay, blood, decay.

“Joel,” Clark said when he answered the phone. “They’ve arrested Jamal.”

Joel struggled to his feet. His body was weak, his mind sluggish. “What? How?”

“Reynolds’s Explorer has had alternator trouble. It’s been in the shop since Monday. Early this morning one of the mechanics started to clean it as a courtesy for keeping the car so long and they found a bloody sock wedged in the fold of the back seat.” Clark hesitated. “It had your brother’s initials.”

Clark had told him last night that Dylan’s body had been found without a shirt or socks. It didn’t matter. Joel tasted bullshit.

“One sock? It’s just been sitting there this entire time?”

“Exactly. They were in such a rush to arrest the kid they didn’t even bother to log the evidence at the station before they cuffed him. They’re only now typing the arrest warrant. It’s fucked, Joel. It’s fucked.”

Joel fumbled with his bottle of Adderall, fished out a pill and chewed it. He’d never taken one this early but he knew a cup of coffee could do nothing to fight the fog that still floated in his head. After a second’s hesitation he chewed another.

“A wound like Dylan’s must have drained blood for ages, right?” Joel said. “If Jamal transported the body in the back of his car, would he even be able to clean it all up?”

“That much blood would have got into the carpet’s padding. A car in a hot mechanic’s bay would have started to stink something awful. They’d have noticed it days ago.”

“And why the hell would he take off a dead person’s socks? It’s the perfect piece of evidence to incriminate you.”

Clark whistled. “Exactly. Portable. Blood soaked. Easily identifiable. Whoever was smart enough to unlock Dylan’s phone with his thumb on the night of the murder planning to contact you the next day...is it a stretch to think that same person would have taken the bloody socks off the boy’s corpse in the hopes of pinning the murder on someone?”

Joel paced his room. “I take it this hasn’t been a topic of conversation at the station.”

Clark hesitated. “Mayfield says Jamal must have been in a hurry, panicked and realized he had the sock still in his possession after he dumped the body so he stuffed it in the seat and forgot it. But shit, Joel—why would he even leave it in his car at all? Why not burn the fucking thing?”