Page 66 of The Bright Lands
“I got more good news today, actually,” Mayfield said. “Old Deputy Grissom’s recovered enough to start talking again.”
An odd look crossed Lopez’s face.
“Is that right?” Mr. Boone said. “I thought the doctors told us that with the horse breaking his spine—”
“They did. But he is.” Mayfield smiled. “His day nurse called saying she couldn’t believe her ears.”
A piercing chime rang through the speakers when Jamal adjusted the handcuff on his wrist. The men flinched. An idea struck Clark.
“Can I speak to Jamal?” she said, hoping to God she sounded nervous, harmless, female. “Maybe he’d open up to someone a little closer to his own age.”
Mr. Boone frowned. “Does she even have interviewing experience?” he asked Lopez.
But Mayfield grinned to her, smug as a cat. “I don’t see it could do any harm.”
Clark thanked him. She’d see about that.
She stepped into the interview room a few minutes later with two bottles of water, a handful of mints stuffed in her pocket, a gentle smile. Jamal hardly looked at her. The room was thick with silence. No air-conditioning. No vents. Clark sat across from him, her back to the one-way glass.
“If nothing else you should have a drink.”
Jamal stared at the blank pad of paper in front of him.
She retrieved a mint and took her time pulling the candy from its plastic.
“Do you love Bethany, Jamal?”
He stared at the table. “It weren’t like that.”
She sucked at the mint. She pulled another from her pocket and passed it to him.
She shot a quick glance at the dusty microphone bolted to the side of the table. After a moment she set his mint on the pad of paper, making sure it rustled. Clark propped her arm casually on the table’s edge. She held her mint’s empty plastic wrapper a few inches from the microphone.
Feeling the eyes of the men in the other room burning against the back of her head, Clark crinkled the plastic wrapper a few times between her fingers and prayed that the sound washed out their speakers. She said softly through the noise, “Then tell me how it really was.”
Jamal didn’t seem to understand. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”
“Do you feel you need a lawyer?” She shot an urgent look at the microphone.Crinkle crinkle.
Please God, she thought,make this boy understand. “Or would you rather talk to me first?”
Jamal’s eyes lit up. To Clark’s relief he covered it fast. He pulled on a scowl, shook his head, said, “D had his own thing going on.”
“You mean on the weekends with KT?” Clark said loudly, hoping to throw the men off the scent.
“I don’t knowwhatthe fuck those two were doing.”
She crushed the wrapper, said softly, “Something with drugs?”
“Maybe you should figure out why D hung out with that guy.”
The skeptical tone returned to Clark’s voice. “You’re saying KT wasn’t a good influence?”
“None of those guys were.”
“Which other guys?”
“KT, Garrett, Mitchell, all those fuckers. They weren’t never my friends.”
