Chapter 15
Sunday morning, Tean let himself into the empty DWR building.
The world had a gritty clarity that was a combination of the sleepless night and—and something.
Something Tean couldn’t put his finger on, something from when he’d woken to that terse call from Jem, and the flash of panic at not knowing what was happening, not knowing if Jem was okay, and the terror of seeing Jem cornered by that SBI agent.
Something that Tean kept trying to suffocate, and then, when he forgot about it, flared back up again.
He wasn’t angry.
In the locker room attached to the necropsy suite, Tean changed into a pair of spare clothes he kept for this kind of work.
And anyway, anger was a secondary emotion, so that wasn’t even the point.
He pulled on a pair of coveralls and a rubber apron, found his eye protection and gloves, and grabbed a mask and face shield.
He set up the camera and the voice recorder.
It didn’t matter if Tean was angry.
The necropsy lab was a hard, bright place, and it seemed like an inside-out version of his mind that morning: stainless steel, tile, glass, light.
From the refrigerator, he retrieved the carcass that Neff had sent for examination.
He stared at hundreds of pounds of dead muscle and bone on a rolling cart, and for a moment, it was like all that tile and steel became mirrors, and the light bounced back and forth until it was shining on the back of Tean’s eyes.
This was stupid.
The voice was somewhere between his and Jem’s.
This was so fucking stupid. Nobody sent cattle to the state lab to be necropsied—nobody.
If you needed a necropsy, you did it on a concrete slab at the ranch or the farm, and then you disposed of the carcass and disinfected the slab, and everybody went on with their lives.
Every rancher knew how it was done. Hell, for that matter, plenty of ranchers would do most of the work themselves—document the carcass, take samples, and send everything off to the lab rather than wait for somebody from the state to show up.
Neff, on the other hand, sent a whole cow wrapped in poly tarps.
It took some work—and some maneuvering—to get the carcass out of the refrigerator and onto the necropsy table. But it warmed Tean up, and that sense of something shining at the back of his eyes faded as his body settled into familiar rhythms.
First, Tean prelabeled his specimen containers.
The samples wouldn’t be ideal; if Neff had wanted samples to be examined, they should have done the work as soon as possible—another reason plenty of ranchers did it themselves.
But since this was becoming a political stunt rather than a genuine scientific effort, Tean labeled each container neatly, while that voice at the back of his head reminded him, again, that this was so fucking stupid.
After peeling back the tarps, Tean inspected the carcass again.
This time, he set to work documenting everything: the missing eyes and lips, the strips of soft tissue torn from the muzzle, flanks, and anus with ragged edges.
All signs of scavenger feeding by turkey vultures, if Tean had to guess, and coyotes.
He took extra time with the flanks, making sure to record the lack of hemorrhage where the coyotes had bitten into the carcass.
No hemorrhage meant that the wound had occurred post-mortem.
The final point he took time to document was the mud and fecal staining on the tail and hindquarters, indications of diarrhea prior to death. Although it might have been too late, he took swabs and stored them in specimen containers to be tested later.
He made the first cut along the ventral midline, and a sour, fermenting odor wafted up. Even with the lab’s built-in circulation system, it clogged Tean’s nose, and he had to take a moment to adjust his mask.
Tean worked methodically: first, documenting his observations of the abdominal cavity and organs, then opening the carcass further so that he could continue his examination.
He’d done this before—and done enough necropsies before—that the mechanics of it no longer bothered him.
But although it was part of his job, although it was routine, although it was, in the end, a scientific procedure, it was also, at its core, a rather brutal savaging of an animal’s remains, intensely physical, leveraging his own body to cut through muscle and bone, forcing the carcass open.
He sweated inside the coveralls as he worked.
After taking samples from the lungs, the liver, the kidney, and the intestines, Tean began cleaning up.
He closed up the carcass, covered it with one of the tarps, and moved it back into the refrigerator.
Then he set to work cleaning and decontaminating the necropsy suite and his tools.
When he’d finished, he decontaminated himself, and then he stripped and showered.
His spare clothes would be washed separately; he dressed again in the clothes he’d worn from home and went upstairs to his office.
When he settled into his chair, he felt a fluttering something that was kind of like exhaustion.
It was at the edge of his awareness, a systemic feedback that made him want to close his eyes.
When was the last time he’d slept, really slept?
Instead, he forced himself to sit up straight.
He opened the depredation report he’d been working on, but instead of immediately adding his initial findings from the necropsy, he switched to his email and composed a message.
Dear Mr. Neff,
In order to complete this depredation report, I require additional information. At your convenience, please provide the following:
A written record of the animal’s age, sex, production cycle, breed, clinical signs prior to death, and history of trauma and disease.
The location of the animal’s death.
Details of any other animals in your herds suffering from signs of bloat, diarrhea, or hemorrhagic bowel syndrome, or similar digestive disorders. Along with this information, please provide age, sex, production cycle, etc. (See above.)
A feed analysis.
Photographic documentation of all the above.
Thank you for your assistance. Your quick response is necessary in order to move forward with this investigation.
He signed the email and sent it before he could think about it.
As soon as the message left his outbox, that fluttering sensation went through him again—the world curling up at the corners. He took a deep breath and put his hands on his desk until everything seemed solid again. Then he made himself some tea.
The hot liquid pushed back the worst of the fatigue—whether that was because of something in the nettles, or the simple fact of nearly burning his mouth every time he took a sip.
Mug at his elbow, he went back to work on the depredation report, documenting his findings from the necropsy.
Documenting them, if he was being fair, extensively. Maybe excessively.
Every fucking detail, said that voice in his head, the one that sounded like Jem sometimes. Make them choke on all those details.
Because it was the same conclusion he’d reached back at Neff’s ranch: the cow had died of some sort of digestive disorder, probably what ranchers called the scours.
Not depredation. Not a wolf attack. And instead of being allowed to do his job—instead of doing work that actually mattered—Tean was stuck here, typing up a longer version of the report he’d already done, because a rich man wanted permission to go wolf hunting.
But at least, said that voice inside his head, you’re being a petty-ass bitch about it.
The thought was so clear that it hurt, like cutting himself on a piece of glass. And suddenly Tean had to take a deep breath, hands falling away from the keyboard, elbow clipping the mug so that he barely saved it from overturning. His eyes stung. The world grayed out.
He managed to place the call while still trying to blink his eyes clear.
“Hey,” Jem said warily.
“Hi,” Tean said. And then, because he was a coward: “You’re awake.”
Silence. And then, a little less guarded, Jem said, “Scipio wanted breakfast.”
“I fed him before I left.”
“He wanted a good breakfast.”
Tean laughed in spite of himself. “Did you try taking him inside McDonald’s again?”
“Drive-thru. But in our defense, Scipio is a service animal! Legally, they have to let him inside.”
“Well, he’s not a service animal in any, you know, official way. He’s not trained, he’s not registered, we don’t have any documentation—”
“Oh my God, Tean, he can hear you!”
“Plus I think he gives himself away when he keeps trying to climb up on everyone’s lap.”
“He’s checking on them. He’s making sure they’re not choking. Besides, that manager is such a dick. We’re going to sue him.”
Tean’s laughter lasted longer this time. He rubbed his eyes. He wondered why he felt like he was about to start crying again.
“You left pretty early today,” Jem said.
“Work.”
“Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. Yes. I guess. It’s just a lot of bullshit.”
“Swear jar,” Jem said. But he waited a beat before he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, it’s fine.” Tean let out a slow breath. “I was really scared last night. And I’m not happy about how I acted.”
“You were upset. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I just—Jem, I would have gone with you. I want to be with you if you’re going to do something that might be dangerous. It doesn’t matter if I’m asleep.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. I just—I just want you to hear me say it, I guess. That no matter what’s going on, I want to be there with you. When I woke up and I didn’t know where you were—”
He stopped because he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
Jem finally spoke into the silence, his voice small. “I didn’t really think about it, I guess. You know I do that sometimes.”
Tean wasn’t sure about that, but he was slowly learning that maybe this kind of conversation wasn’t the time to press the point.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Jem said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was doing.”
“I’m sorry I was an asshole.”
“Double swear jar! And you owe Scipio five belly rubs.”
Tean smiled against the phone.
“So,” Jem said, “I might have been doing some, uh, networking—”
“Jem.”
“Just a few phone calls! And Daniel is still in the hospital down in Provo.” When Tean didn’t say anything, Jem said, “Tean, he had Brennon’s phone. And someone tried to kill him. There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
A steady thudding started in Tean’s head.
He rubbed one eye. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should stop.
I shouldn’t have gotten us involved in the first place.
Jem, you got hurt last night. You could have been—” His throat closed around the word he couldn’t say.
“That’s my fault. I made a mistake, and I should have listened to you from the beginning. ”
“God, I get such a boner when you tell me I’m right.”
“Jem!” Tean was laughing as he said it, but he also glanced around—he was alone in his office, sure, but there was still that sense that someone might have overheard.
“Come home. I love you, and I hate when we fight, and I want to do lots of naughty stuff to your body.”
“I love you too.”
“What about smushing bits?”
“We can talk about that when I get home.” But Tean felt obliged to add, “It is technically a work night.”
For some reason, Jem burst out laughing at that. But when he spoke again, his voice was serious. “I know last night things got…real. But I think we need to talk to Daniel.”
“But we never should have gotten involved—”
“It’s too late for that, Tean. We are involved. I don’t know what’s going on, but somebody is out there, and whoever they are, they’re dangerous.”
“The police will interview Daniel,” Tean said. “It’ll take some time, but they’ll release Ammon.”
“I don’t care about Ammon. I care about the fact that there’s someone out there killing people, and those dumbasses from the SBI think we’re involved.”
“But Daniel will tell them—”
“Tean, they already think they know what’s going on. Whatever Daniel tells them, they’ll either twist it around until it fits what they believe, or they’ll ignore it because it’s not convenient.”
“Maybe not,” Tean said. “They’re professionals. They might realize they’ve made a mistake.”
“Cops don’t make mistakes. Not until somebody proves they did.
Tean, Daniel saw the killer. He was face to face with them.
Daniel’s the only person we know who might be able to give us an ID.
And the killer knows that too. While Trevino and Van Cleave are climbing up our asses, the killer’s going to find a way to make sure Daniel can’t tell anybody anything useful. ”
Tean let the conversation drop into silence.
“I want to talk to him,” Jem said.
Tean’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. “My boss is calling.”
“I just want to make sure you heard me: I want to talk to Daniel.”
“I heard you. Can we talk about this when I get home from work?”
Jem grunted. “It needs to be today, Tean. This is moving fast.”
“I’ve got to go. I love you.” Tean switched calls. “Hi, Ed—”
“Dr. Leon, what is this email I’m looking at?”
“I’m not sure. What email are you talking about—”
“This email from you to Mr. Neff about—about cattle records.” Ed’s voice rose. “I had to step out in the middle of sacrament meeting to deal with this. Do you want to explain yourself?”
“There’s nothing to explain. It’s standard procedure—”
“It’s a waste of that man’s time! This is a simple job, Dr. Leon. We have a citizen whose livestock is being attacked by a pack of wolves—”
“Oh,” Tean said, “it’s a pack now?”
“It’s whatever he says it is!” Ed broke off, but when he spoke again, his voice stayed at a shrill peak. “You are making this way more difficult than it needs to be. I want that report finished and in my inbox by Monday morning. Livestock depredation, Dr. Leon. By a wolf.”
“I thought it was a pack.”
“Wolves, then! I want that report tomorrow, do you understand?”
“I understand. You’ll have my report tomorrow.”
Ed disconnected.
For several moments, Tean stared at the monitor. Then he saved the report, submitted it, and shut down the computer. He grabbed his phone and texted Jem.
Leaving work. Let’s go talk to Daniel.