Chapter 23
They passed a long night in their makeshift shelter. A long, cold night.
Not as bad as things could have been, of course.
There had been enough branches to assemble a rudimentary lean-to, and Tean and Jem had been dressed for the cold.
Not, perhaps, dressed to spend the night outdoors.
But although there was no way to pretend the experience had been comfortable, their little shelter had trapped enough heat that they’d never been in danger.
In spite of the less-than-ideal circumstances, though, the night had also been strangely grounding for Tean.
As the edge wore off his terror, familiar sounds and smells started to register again: the dead leaves of the mahogany, and warm bodies and perspiration on a cold day, even the fresh-scraped earth beneath them.
And as the violence of the gunfire faded, the gulley returned to something like its usual ecological rhythm: the rustle of something small—a lizard, a chipmunk—scampering through the grass; the sudden, startling crackle of dry brush; the nasal cry of a nighthawk.
How long had it been since he’d spent a night in nature? No exhaust from buses. No glaring security lights. None of that disorienting sense of suspension, as though they were all floating in an artificial haze that was neither day nor night but some third time where nothing moved but machines.
Not that Tean was going to tell Jem that, since Jem spent the first two hours imagining—and then trying to kill—spiders.
When gray finally lightened the sky, the sound of an engine broke the stillness. It was close, reverberating down the narrow span of the gully. Then it began to move away, fading until it was gone.
Jem’s breathing was still slow and deep, but his eyes were open to slits.
“Is he gone?” Tean whispered.
“One way to find out.”
“Does that way involve possibly getting yourself shot?”
With a grumpiness that probably had something to do with a distinct lack of McDonald’s coffee, Jem said, “Unless you have a better idea.”
“Maybe. Hold on.”
Tean wriggled free of the lean-to and moved down the length of the fallen mahogany.
He’d spent enough time camping and hiking that he avoided the sticks that would snap underfoot, and he slowed when he had to pass through the growth of tall grass, trying to minimize the sound.
His grandfather had wanted him to be a hunter.
But the best way to hunt was to sit somewhere safe and warm and wait for something to be stupid enough to stick its neck out—a position Tean now had a new sympathy for.
On the far side of the gully, still hidden behind the fallen tree, he stripped off his jacket.
Morning air coiled around him, pressing against his T-shirt.
He found a good size stick, hung the jacket from the end, and then lifted it.
Held at just the right angle, the jacket and stick might pass, from a distance, for a person who was crouched over and trying to climb the hill.
Tean inched forward. The ground felt frozen under his palm. The knees of his khakis immediately got wet. He bobbed the stick ahead of him, trying to simulate movement.
Nothing.
Maybe if he angled it a little higher.
He braced himself for the gunshot—a part of him imagined the bullet ripping through his jacket, tearing the stick from his hand.
The wind rose. Pine needles rustled, and the wind itself had a note to it, like the gully was an oversized recorder. The jacket swayed on the end of the stick.
Tean jiggled it.
Then, again. Harder.
And still nothing.
When he turned around, Jem was standing there, hands on hips.
“Jem, what are you— Get down!”
“It’s a good idea,” Jem said, considering the jacket. “But why did you make him dance?”
“What?”
“At the end. Like, was he nervous? What was going on inside his head? Did he have to pee?”
At that point, it became clear that no one—perhaps unfortunately—was going to shoot Jem. And, furthermore, that Tean was still on his knees, holding a stick.
Tean got to his feet, gave a single, dispirited attempt at brushing away the wet that had soaked his khakis around the knees, and yanked on his jacket. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Well—” Jem stopped. Scratched his beard. Gave one of his absolutely guiltiest smiles—the ones that, for everybody else, somehow still seemed so innocent and charming. “Thirty seconds?”
Tean huffed and pushed past him.
“In my defense, I was learning,” Jem said. “I didn’t know you could give a stick man personality! Dreams! Aspirations!”
“Someone still might be out there,” Tean said. “Maybe you should be quiet.”
Jem did. But he grinned as he climbed up onto a rock next to the tree.
“What are you doing?” Tean asked.
“Someone tried to kill us,” Jem said, making a face as he readied himself. “I’d like to know why.”
Tean followed. Because he had to. Because with Jem, that was what always happened anyway.
“Whoever it was,” Tean said as they picked their way up the gully again, “they didn’t want us looking around out here.”
“Why?”
The question left Tean grasping for an answer. Finally, he settled on “Because they killed someone and buried the body out here.”
Jem didn’t respond. He trailed a hand through the tall grass, the seed heads filling his palm and then sliding away.
“But,” Tean said slowly, “that doesn’t matter because the police have already been out here.
Okay. Maybe they don’t want someone to see something.
But that doesn’t make any sense either because, as I said, the police have already been out here.
It’s because we were asking questions at the campground.
Because we talked to Katie. Oh my gosh, no, that’s so stupid.
The police would have interviewed everyone there. ”
“Hey, you two be nice to each other.”
And then a stone dropped in Tean’s gut. “I asked about the scar.”
Near the depression that sloped down to the cave, Jem recovered his phone. He bent to examine something and then dropped into a squat. “Do you have a pen?”
Tean didn’t have a pen, but he did have a pocket knife.
Jem used the flathead attachment to turn over a piece of metal. It was small and copper-colored except where the tip flowered out to expose a lead core—a hollow-point.
“They use that kind for hunting,” Tean said quietly.
“Do we take it?” Jem said, but the question seemed mostly for himself. “Or leave it here?”
“It’s because I asked about the scar, isn’t it?” Tean said.
Jem stood and folded the screwdriver back into the pocket knife. “I think whatever we did, it made someone worried in a way that they weren’t when the police came poking around.”
“But that’s—” Tean almost said, That’s crazy. But it wasn’t crazy. It had happened, hadn’t it?
Jem started up the gully again.
The cast-iron sky was still getting lighter, and the shadows continued to shrink. A stone turned unevenly under Jem’s foot, almost sending the blond man off-balance. He recovered, and the stone thunked down, and off in the distance, a bird startled from a clump of snowberries.
“Someone killed Brennon and brought him here,” Tean said. “Fact one. And the same person tried to kill Daniel.”
“We think it was the same person.”
“It has to be. The attempted strangulation. The knife. The victimology. The odds of two killers with the same MO operating at the same time and in the same geographic area are extremely low.”
“Unless one is a copycat.”
“I guess we can hold on to that theory.”
Something in Tean’s voice, though, must have caught Jem’s attention, because he directed a frown over his shoulder. “What?”
Tean tried to think of a way to phrase the idea without sounding crazy. But he was too tired and cold. “What if we’re dealing with a serial killer?”
Jem stopped. Put his hands on his hips. And then said, “Shit.”
“That’s ridiculous, right? I mean, serial killers— Most murder victims are killed by people they know. The odds of a serial killer—” He tried to repeat the phrase are extremely low, but this time, it wouldn’t come.
“Talk me through it.”
“Well, the first point seems to be that no one can establish a connection between Brennon and the killer.”
“Unless it was Kazen, or Ammon, or hell, I don’t know, Lucy.”
“Right. Those would be possibilities, except none of them have a scar on their arm. And why bring his body here? It can’t be just to dump him, Jem.
Because when we came around asking questions, someone tried to kill us.
That means there’s someone here, in the area, with something to hide, and that brings us back to the first point: what’s the connection? ”
“Maybe they hired someone to do it. Do you know how freaky Craigslist can get?”
Tean chose to ignore that last part. “I suppose that’s a possibility, just like it’s a possibility that the attack on Daniel was some kind of copycat killer.”
“Or they didn’t have to hire them,” Jem said. “It could have been a relative. A new boyfriend.”
“But nothing the police have sussed out.”
“Okay. What’s the next part?”
“Why strangle them?”
“Well, the whole point is to kill them, right?”
“Right.”
Jem stopped near the wall of the gully, where shards of rock littered the ground.
He pushed back weeds, cast around, and then let out a small sound of triumph.
The second bullet had gotten caught at the base of a thistle.
He leaned closer to examine it, but when he spoke, he continued their conversation from before.
“It makes sense with the hookup aspect. Some guys like to be choked. It starts off as play. And then, before you know it, boom.”
“Except that’s not how it works,” Tean said. “Choking someone to death takes longer than most people think. It’s hard, and it takes a lot of physical strength, and unless you know what you’re doing, your victim isn’t going to black out quickly. They’re going to fight back. Like Daniel did.”
“And like Brennon.” Jem braced his hands on his knees and stood. “He was going to get away. That’s why the killer stabbed him.”