Chapter 14
He was alive.
That was something.
The thought was blurred, sometimes he meaning Jem, sometimes he meaning Daniel.
All of Jem’s thoughts were blurred. As he sat in the back of the ambulance, he trembled, part exhaustion, part pain, part adrenaline.
But he felt awake, too. Eyes bright. Like he hadn’t felt in a long time.
And that feeling kept coming back to him, like he’d shaken off sleep, as he leaned forward, jacket across his knees and shirt rucked up, while a paramedic with the personality of a dog trainer poked him in the back.
“You’re going to have one hell of a bruise,” she said.
“I figured.”
“Might want to have an X-ray.” The paramedic tugged his shirt down. “We can give you a ride.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Across the parking lot, Trevino was speaking to her partner, Van Cleave.
The man was White, probably in his late thirties, and big.
His head was shaved, and maybe to compensate, he had a chin puff of brown hair.
Earlier that night—Christ, had it really only been a few hours before?
—Van Cleave had put Jem through the wringer at the South Jordan police station, while Trevino worked on Tean.
Right then, Van Cleave was shaking his head at whatever Trevino was saying.
In spite of the livid marks of fingers on his neck, Daniel had still been breathing when the first ambulance arrived.
The paramedics had whisked him away as soon as they’d gotten him on a stretcher.
The other men in the park had fled at the sound of sirens, which left Jem alone with a pair of South Jordan city cops, one of them scratching the heavy stubble on his neck, the other fortysomething and looking like he was either going to shit himself or shoot Jem if he moved too fast. They put Jem in one of the pavilions, where he sat in the dark.
More cops had come.
Then SBI.
And now, the pulse of cop lights, making the shadows purple.
Van Cleave waved a hand, cutting off whatever Trevino was saying, and came across the parking lot. He walked like a guy who wanted to take up more space, and Jem curled his hands in his pockets. The paracord was around his neck now, like some sort of gearhead jewelry.
“He’s all right,” the paramedic said before Van Cleave could ask. “Needs an X-ray.”
“I’m fine,” Jem said. “And I want to go.”
“You can go when I’m done with you.” Van Cleave shot the paramedic a look, and the woman snapped off a pair of disposable gloves and climbed down out of the ambulance.
The SBI agent waited until she was gone before putting one hand on the door.
Jem was too tired to smile, and maybe there wasn’t anything funny about it, but sometimes it seemed funny, how every asshole acted like they were all from the same family tree—the same way they carried themselves, the same look, even the same moves.
This move, for example, putting his arm out like that.
Boxing Jem in. In a few seconds, he’d lean in, start to crowd him.
Jem said the magic words. “Am I under arrest?”
“What were you doing out here?”
“I was going for a walk.”
“Cut the bullshit. What were you doing out here?”
“Doctors say you’re supposed to take a walk after dinner. Helps with your blood sugar or something.” At least, that was what Tean said, and Tean counted as a doctor.
Right on cue, Van Cleave leaned in. Jem didn’t have anywhere to go, and the movement brought Van Cleave uncomfortably close—which was the whole point.
A lot of people—most people—would have shrunk back, tried to get away, their animal brains telling them that Van Cleave was close enough to hurt them.
Close enough to bite. Jem stayed where he was.
He kept his body loose: joints unlocked, muscles slack.
He pictured grabbing Van Cleave by the ears and bringing his knee up into his nose.
“You are fucking around with stuff you don’t want to fuck around with,” Van Cleave said.
Jem pulled a face. “Do you take the sacrament with that mouth?”
Van Cleave slapped the door. The sound cracked the air; out across the lot, a handful of the uniformed officers snapped to attention and pivoted, scanning for the source of trouble. “You dumb fuck. What were you doing out here?”
Jem raised his eyebrows. “I went for a walk.”
Red-faced, Van Cleave made a sound like he was trying to laugh. “All right. We’ll try this again in a few hours. Stand up and turn around.”
As Van Cleave took a step back, giving Jem room to rise, a familiar voice called, “Jem?”
Tean hurried across the lot. Instead of his usual button-up and khakis, he wore a sweatshirt and jeans—whatever he’d grabbed first, Jem suspected, after Jem had called him. The orange light from the sodium lamps danced in the lenses of his glasses like little flames.
When he reached them, Tean seemed to size up the situation in a quick glance. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m being arrested,” Jem said. “Did I get that right?”
“On what charges?” Tean asked.
“Let’s start with trespass,” Van Cleave jerked a thumb at the sign near the park entrance. “Your buddy here was ‘taking a walk’ after the park closed.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Tean said. “He just saved a boy from being killed—a boy who’s been missing for more than a day, and a boy who might be a valuable witness in an ongoing murder investigation—and you’re going to arrest him with a trumped-up charge like trespassing?”
“Go back to your vehicle, sir.” Van Cleave managed to make the words sound like a longer version of fuck off. “Unless you want to be arrested for trespassing as well.”
Instead, Tean took out his phone and placed a call.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Lucy,” Tean said. “Jem found Daniel, and the police are arresting him. Can you get a hold of that reporter—”
“Hey!” Van Cleave barked and reached for the phone.
Tean twisted to keep the phone out of reach. Van Cleave caught his arm instead and yanked Tean toward him.
Jem moved without thinking, sliding out of the ambulance, sneakers hitting the pavement—he balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to move.
“What the hell is going on over there?” Trevino shouted.
“Give me that fucking phone,” Van Cleave growled, dragging Tean another step toward him.
“Let go of him,” Jem said.
“Call the reporter,” Tean was saying.
“Give me that!”
Jem felt like he was moving through water—slow, weightless, one hand coming out to grab Van Cleave’s windbreaker, stance shifting to hook the big man’s ankle.
But Trevino was there first, shoving her way between them. One hand forced Van Cleave back. The other, upraised, warded off Jem as she shouldered Tean to one side.
“Agent Van Cleave,” she said, “take a walk.”
“This little fuck—”
“Take a walk.”
“He’s calling a fucking reporter!”
Trevino, probably half a foot shorter than the other agent, met his gaze without answering. Van Cleave muttered something, turned, and stalked toward an unmarked car.
To Tean, Trevino said, “Dr. Leon, talking to a reporter is a bad idea right now. For a lot of reasons.”
With a slightly embarrassed shrug, Tean lowered his phone. Now that it wasn’t pressed against his ear, the sound of a soft voice filled the air: “—call will be answered in the order in which it was received. Thank you for holding.” Music followed—Jem thought might have been “The Entertainers.”
Trevino looked like she wanted to close her eyes. Instead, though, she said, “Where were you tonight, Dr. Leon?”
“After you held me for over an hour at the police station and interrogated me?” Trevino didn’t rise to the bait, so Tean continued, “At home. In bed.” He cut his eyes toward Jem and added, “Until Jem called me.”
“I see. Is there anyone who can confirm that?”
“Why would I need someone to confirm that?”
Trevino’s response was a flat-eyed gaze. She waited long enough to make her point, and then she said, “Mr. Berger, do you have anything you want to add to your statement?”
Jem shook his head.
“All right. We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions.”
Without waiting for a response, she headed for Van Cleave, who was pacing next to the unmarked car. When she reached him, he said something low but forceful enough for the tone to carry on the air, and Trevino sliced a hand through the air.
Tean was watching them, so Jem touched his arm and said, “Let’s go.”
They walked together to Jem’s motorcycle.
“What’s going on?” Tean asked.
“She thinks we’re involved in this.”
“We are involved in this.”
“No, she thinks we did it. Or we set it up. They both do; Trevino’s just smarter about it.”
Tean twisted to get a look at the cops. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would we want to hurt Daniel? Why call them and report an attack?”
“Because they think you’re trying to get Ammon off the hook.” Jem couldn’t help adding, “Which, you know, you are.”
“But I’m not—” Tean stopped.
They walked the last stretch in silence. When they reached the motorcycle, Jem grabbed his helmet. A fresh scratch showed where the knife had scored the plastic.
“So, according to them, we set this whole thing up,” Tean said.
“And then tomorrow, I call Ammon’s lawyer, and I tell him that we found Brennon’s wallet at Kazen’s house and Daniel was attacked.
And now there’s enough reasonable doubt that the defense lawyer demands Ammon be released.
He says the confession was stress or confusion or that the police coerced him. ”
“Pretty much,” Jem said.
“But it’s all the truth,” Tean said, voice tangled with frustration.
He pushed both hands through his hair, which was wilder than usual from the doc’s restless sleep and what must have been a frantic drive down here.
He shook his head. “I am going to call the lawyer tomorrow. Of course I’m going to tell him what’s happened. ”
Jem nodded.
For a moment, Tean’s gaze softened, like he was seeing something else. Finally, his attention fixed on Jem again, and he said, “Do you think this was Kazen?”
“I don’t know.”
“The person who—the person you saw, could he have been Kazen?”
“Maybe. It was dark, and everything happened fast; I didn’t really get a good look at him.” Frustration tightened Tean’s expression, and Jem reluctantly added, “He was small.”
“That could be Kazen. Or—” Tean broke off.
But Jem heard what he hadn’t said, and he finished the thought. “Or a woman. Shit, I didn’t think of that. Yeah. But—” He paused, tried to think of a way to say it, and finally settled on, “I mean, a woman? Who? Lucy?”
“No,” Tean said—but too quickly. “I don’t know.”
The sounds of the river rippled through the dark.
“I guess you were right,” Jem said. “It wasn’t Ammon.”
Tean gave him a considering look, but he didn’t respond.
“Any idea what Daniel was doing out here?” Jem asked.
A patrol car radio squawked, the words indistinguishable.
“I guess we’ll have to ask him,” Tean said.
Jem nodded. He swung a leg over the bike and settled himself.
“Jem,” Tean said. But then he stopped. His hands opened and closed at his sides, and then he smoothed them down the front of his jeans like he was drying them.
When he spoke, his voice had an uncertainty that Jem remembered from what felt like a long time ago.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? ”
He hesitated. “I was just going to take a look. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
Distant sounds of highway traffic made the air vibrate.
Jem looked away first. He started the bike, pulled on the helmet, and left Tean behind him in the lot.