Chapter 8 #2
The whiplash change of topic cost Tean a moment to recalibrate. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think so.”
“If someone hurt my child like that, I’d kill them,” Hannah said. The words were delivered with a chilling matter-of-factness.
Tean nodded. “I think— I don’t know what to think, I guess. She was angry at Brennon; that much came through clearly. But the rest of it is confusing.”
“To say the least. Why go to her mother’s?”
“Because she and Ammon fought.”
“Tean, that’s not a thing. Not a normal thing, anyway.
She’d just found out her son had been abused for months by a man their family trusted.
And that same night, she leaves the house—leaves her son?
Maybe if she’d taken the kids with her, but I can’t wrap my head around leaving her child after something like that. ”
Nodding slowly, Tean said, “You think she was setting up an alibi?”
“Why not? She can probably count on her mom to say that she was with her the whole time. Maybe she wanted Ammon to take the fall for this. Maybe that was part of the plan too.”
“The problem is I don’t think she could have killed him. You don’t know her, Hannah. That’s just not Lucy.”
“If it’s not her,” Hannah asked, “who was it?”
Tean shook his head.
“Could it have been Ammon?”
Tean fiddled with a pen on his desk before blowing out a breath. “Objectively? Yes.”
“He’s capable.”
Tean nodded.
“And crazy enough,” Hannah said.
“He’s…he does what he thinks is necessary.
And he doesn’t always care who it hurts.
It took me a while to see that about him.
” Tean gave the pen a flick that sent it rolling across the desk.
“But Jem’s the one who doesn’t think it was Ammon.
And if Jem is willing to believe that, then I think I have to believe it too. ”
Hannah glanced away for a moment, her hand rising to adjust the collar of her shirt, and for a moment, in profile, something like pain winged its way across her face. When she spoke, though, her voice was even. “What about Daniel?”
“Daniel?”
The question was disbelief, but as soon as it was out of Tean’s mouth, he could see it: the victim who was finally pushed too far.
Then he thought of the photo Lucy had produced for the search the night before.
The boy had tousled hair that wasn’t quite Ammon’s blond, full lips, a jawline still soft with baby fat.
He was starting to broaden across the shoulders, but he still had that adolescent wiriness, a body he hadn’t grown into yet.
He was a beautiful man-child; Tean felt a flicker of guilt at the thought, as though he’d done something wrong, but the statement was objective.
Daniel had two attractive parents, and it was clear he’d inherited a striking blend of their best features.
In the photo, taken two months before, he’d offered a close-lipped smile, but happiness had radiated off him.
Two months ago, when he’d been Brennon’s victim.
“I don’t know,” Tean said.
“It’s not likely,” Hannah said. “I know that. Groomers and abusers tend to pick victims who are already isolated, people they can isolate further, to make sure nobody learns what’s going on.”
And Daniel fit that profile.
Although, did he?
It depended on whether Daniel had been telling Lucy the truth.
Had he been going to friends’ houses? Had he been going to church activities?
Had he joined a basketball team? Those behaviors were not consistent with a victim being slowly and systematically cut off from his support system.
Lucy might doubt herself now, in the middle of a crisis, but Tean knew that both she and Ammon were active, involved parents.
It seemed unbelievable that Daniel, at fifteen years old, could have so successfully and thoroughly lied about his whereabouts for months.
Hannah’s words broke through his thoughts. “I know you said you have to be physically strong. Do you think he could have done it?”
“Maybe. I’m more worried about why.”
“Brennon was abusing him.”
“Right, I know. But—” But he didn’t want his dad to find the phone. He fought back. What had Lucy said? Like he went crazy. “I don’t know. Why not let the police handle it? I mean, he wouldn’t even talk to them.”
“Because he wanted to kill him himself,” Hannah said.
Tean nodded again, but he was even less sure of this theory. Victims often carried immense rage directed at their abusers—understandably and justifiably so. But that rage was rarely pure and uncomplicated, and also rarely manifested in violence or resistance.
When Hannah spoke again, Tean realized he’d lost track of time, and he wasn’t sure how long had passed. “I’m sorry.”
“I said, how are you doing with all this?”
“Me?”
Hannah’s gaze was direct and uncompromising.
“Not…well?” Tean said with an unsteady laugh. “I feel awful for Ammon. I’m worried about him. He’s in jail, which is bad enough in the first place—”
Hannah didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. But Tean remembered, too late, her own experience in the county jail. When she, for her own reasons, had refused to defend herself against a murder charge.
“He’ll be fine,” Hannah said drily. “I survived, didn’t I?”
“Hannah, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” She waved a hand. “And we’re talking about you, so don’t try to change the subject.”
He didn’t want to say anything, but the words were there, and they came boiling up.
“I know this isn’t about me. I know Daniel’s situation is different from mine, and I shouldn’t project.
I’m talking about being gay, not the assault.
I know his situation isn’t the same as mine was.
But I look at him, I can’t help remembering what it felt like, to be a teenager, to start feeling things that you know make you different from the people around you, but you don’t know how yet, you don’t know why.
You just know it’s bad.” Tean cleared his throat.
“It might be bad. And so you’re careful.
And you start hiding parts of yourself. And the longer it goes on, the clearer the differences are, and you start to figure it out, and then you have this whole new set of things you have to hide, things you didn’t even realize you were doing until someone said something, or—” He stopped and shook his head.
“I’m not making any sense. It’s hard, that’s all.
Hiding that stuff. And realizing there’s this person inside you that everyone hates, and you’re supposed to hate too, and every week you go to church and hear how you’re supposed to hate this person, and how wrong they are, and how evil they are, and how selfish and—and that person is you.
There isn’t some other person you’re hiding.
It’s all you. And you can either deal with it, or—or not. ”
The low-level background noise of an empty building registered as a white hiss at the edge of hearing.
“You dealt with it,” Hannah said. “Ammon didn’t, and look what happened.”
“I guess. I don’t know if it’s that simple.”
“It is that simple, Tean. Every day, he had a choice to be honest about who he was. He chose to lie to himself, to lie to his family, to lie to the people he’d promised to take care of. And he did it because he was afraid, and he wasn’t brave enough to face that fear. You were.”
Tean shook his head, but he didn’t pursue the argument.
After a moment, Hannah let out a relenting breath.
In a milder voice, she said, “Whatever you want to think about Ammon, he really screwed up his son. Can you imagine growing up like that? Everyone around you telling you how sick and bad and evil you are, how messed up it is for anyone to feel the way you feel, and then one day, your dad—who has been feeding you that BS your whole life—tells everyone he’s gay, and he’s moving out, and best of luck, see you at Christmas. ”
“He didn’t say—” Tean said, but he caught himself. To Hannah’s overly pleased grin, he said, “I don’t think it happened like that.”
“Not really the point.”
Tean shrugged, but when Hannah continued to stare at him, he finally said, “What?”
“I want you to say he’s a piece of shit!”
“Oh my gosh, Hannah.” He wanted to let it go there, but instead, he found himself saying, “You know what I kept thinking, the whole time Lucy was talking to us? I kept thinking Daniel wasn’t sick.
They made him sick, or made him think he was sick, which is the same thing.
He didn’t need Prozac or whatever else they were giving him.
He just needed someone to teach him not to hate himself.
And I kept thinking there should have been something—I should have seen it, or known, or said something.
I mean, Jem says I don’t have much of a gaydar—”
“You don’t.”
“Okay, well, I’m not even sure gaydar is really a thing—”
“It is. And mine is much better than yours. And Jem’s is, like, eerily accurate.”
“The point,” Tean said with extra emphasis, “is that Daniel needed someone. And he found him.”
Hannah sat in the chair across the desk. After a moment, she said, “God. That’s awful.”
For a disorienting moment, Tean felt himself about to speak.
Numbers and statistics floated up. Forty-five-point-three percent of LGBTQ youth between thirteen and eighteen seriously consider suicide.
That was almost one in two. And more than one in five actually attempt it, compared to only seven percent—less than one in ten—of straight teenagers.
And the fact that parental religious beliefs disapproving of homosexuality were associated with double the risk of attempting suicide.
He opened his mouth, the words already forming.
And then, instead, a wave of gray washed over him—not the physical weariness he felt from a sleepless night.
Not even, necessarily, the emotional strain of the last few days.
Something more. The best word for it was exhaustion, in the most literal sense of the word, like some indefinable resource inside him had been used up, and what was left was an empty shell.
He shut his mouth. He wasn’t even sure Hannah noticed.
“You can’t put that on yourself,” Hannah said. “He has parents. I mean, how often did you even see him?”
Tean didn’t bother to respond.
“What would you have said to him?”
Something. Anything. But he didn’t say that either.
With trademark briskness, Hannah straightened in her seat and said, “Well, it’s a moot point anyway, because there’s nothing we can do about it now. The question is what can we do?”
“I don’t know. The police are looking for Daniel, but they’re not exactly convinced he’s in danger—I mean, he’s fifteen, so they’re not going to pretend nothing happened, but there was definitely an undertone of he’s a kid, kids do this kind of thing, he’ll show up at a friend’s house tomorrow.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it’s…worrisome.”
Hannah snorted.
“Ammon didn’t kill that man,” Tean said. “And that means someone else did.”
“And what? You think the killer took Daniel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, Hannah. But there’s a killer out there, and someone connected to the victim just went missing.”
“Maybe Daniel knows who the killer is. Maybe Daniel can identify him.”
“Maybe.”
“But how would he know? Do you think he was there when this guy, Brennon, got killed?”
“That’s the problem. We don’t know anything.
I mean, maybe the police do, but all I’ve been able to piece together is that Ammon and Brennon fought on Saturday, and sometime between Saturday and Tuesday, Brennon was killed.
But I’ve got no idea where he was killed, or when, or what anyone was doing between those two data points. ”
Hannah considered this a moment, her expression distant. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“Literally nothing I’ve ever said or tried has been able to stop you.”
“What if you just said…fuck Ammon?”
She had wide, intelligent eyes, and the beginning of crow’s feet.
After a moment, Tean looked away. “I can’t.”
“I didn’t think you could. But I wasn’t sure if you knew that.” She sighed, and her hands curled around the arms of the chair as though she was about to push herself up. “How’s Jem doing with all this?”
“Jem?” Tean adjusted his glasses. “He’s fine. Why?”
Hannah’s contemplation lasted longer this time, and when she spoke, she seemed to be talking to herself more than him. “I seriously wonder sometimes what is wrong with you.”
“So much. So, so much.”
As she got to her feet, she said, “You know you’ve got a cow downstairs, right?”
“Jeez.” Tean had completely forgotten about the necropsy—probably because it was unnecessary, bogus, and nothing more than Ed’s attempt to placate the wealthy rancher. “Right. Thanks.”
“This is the wolf thing? The livestock depredation?”
“Oh yes.”
“I thought that was standard procedure. Start with the attack, that kind of thing.”
“I already did. For some reason, Ed—or maybe it’s the rancher who’s behind this whole thing—thinks that I’m going to conduct a complete necropsy and somehow find evidence of a wolf attack that was otherwise conspicuously absent.”
Hannah hesitated at the door. “Maybe it’s not hope, Tean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not saying you should—” Hannah stopped. “Look, I’m just saying, maybe you need to understand what Ed’s asking you to do—he’s not hoping you’ll find evidence. He’s suggesting.”