Page 36 of The Bright Lands
“I was yesterday,” Bethany replied in her calmest voice.
“I came back as soon as I heard.” He ignored Jasmine completely. “Have you talked to the police yet?”
“They were at school yesterday but I left early. Why?”
Her father dropped a coffee pod into their gleaming new Keurig machine, dug a bottle of bourbon from behind the cereal—it was never too early for Russ Tanner. “You just tell me when the cops come to see you,” he said. “I don’t want you talking to them alone.”
“I wouldn’t have anything to say. I was sick in bed all weekend.”
Her father appraised her. “It took the fried chicken off your legs.”
Bethany felt Jasmine hold in a shudder.
“We’ve got to run,” Bethany said.
Her father spiked his coffee and took a long sip. “You won’t talk to the police alone,” he repeated.
“I’ll call you if they come for me.” She kissed her father on the cheek. “Which they won’t.”
She and Jasmine were halfway up the stairs when he stopped her. “You were in bed all weekend.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I’m just wondering,” he continued. “You had the strength to clean the garage when you were sick?”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
“I told Maria to hose it out yesterday,” Bethany said, praying her voice didn’t betray the panic in her chest. “Some mud got under the door in the storm.”
From the stairs she watched her father take another long slurp of his coffee. He nodded at her, pulled loose his phone. “I heard that rain was wild.”
CLARK
When they’d finally pushed their way through Houston, Mayfield rolled down the windows and soon Clark could smell the sea. Her phone steered them off the interstate and onto a winding highway. The water appeared on the horizon, dull and flat as tin.
“It doesn’t quite square, does it?” she said, glancing through the case file again. “Mrs. Spearson, the wife of the man who found the body, said she was home most of the weekend and didn’t hear any cars on the road outside the house. She said she was quote ‘ninety-seven percent certain that no vehicle was on our road from Friday night to Monday morning’ other than her husband’s rig. Theirs is the only road in that area for miles.”
“Which tells us what?”
The longer Clark sat in this car, the more keenly did she recognize how underqualified she was to handle a murder case. The worry that had gripped her yesterday, in her interview with KT Staler, had only intensified.
“It tells us that either Mrs. Spearson is mistaken or whoever dumped the body didn’t take her road.”
“Or she’s concealing something,” Mayfield said.
Clark scanned the crime scene photos. Something in them was staring her in the face. “Does the lady have any motive for that? She’s not related to any of these boys.”
“Motive matters less than you think,” Mayfield said. “Half the time people don’t even know why they done something once they’ve done it. But. No—I don’t take Mrs. Spearson for a liar.”
“But that means the killer—”
“Killers. Possibly. Plural.”
“Killer or killers—if they murdered Dylan Whitley in Galveston that means they drove three hours with a corpse in their car to deposit it in the middle of absolute nowhere. Why? There’s a thousand places you could leave a body between Bentley and the coast.”
“Why drive the body back from the coast at all and risk its being found by some kid on the Highway Patrol pulling you over to fill up his quota?” asked Mayfield.
“And why would Dylan take off his shirt but still keep on his jacket?” Clark said.
