Chapter 26
The drive back to Salt Lake was long and silent, Jem at the wheel, Tean slumped against the window.
They stopped at Burger King because Jem couldn’t find a McDonald’s.
The food helped, a little. Tean drank some Coke, and he drank more water, but he played with his double cheeseburger, lifting the bun, moving the pickles around, the kind of busy activity that he sometimes seemed to think would fool Jem into believing that he was, you know, actually eating some fucking food.
Jem took it away from him before they hit Strawberry Reservoir.
“Did they tell you about that Rydel guy?” Jem asked.
The silence went on so long that he thought Tean might not answer, but then he said, “They asked me if I knew the name. They showed me a picture.”
“He’s Zeb’s brother. Or Zed. Whatever his name was, from the campground.”
Tean didn’t say anything.
“And there’s some kind of connection to that ranch. They thought we knew something about it.”
Tean’s head dipped, but that might have been the start-and-stop motion of the traffic.
“So,” Jem said, fighting to put some energy in his voice, “the way I see it, we were on the right track: we went to the campground, and when we started asking too many questions, that guy, Zeb, realized we were on to his brother. As soon as we left the campground with Katie, he must have known where we were going. He called Rydel, who was just getting back with that guy he killed, and Rydel drove over to the gully to get rid of us. Only he didn’t, and we found him.
Well, we found the—” Jem almost said body. “—ranch.”
Tean took off his glasses and folded them in his hand.
“And Daniel must have tracked him back there somehow,” Jem said.
“Remember how I told you I thought Daniel wasn’t telling us something?
I bet this guy, Rydel, he has something on his van that helped Daniel figure out where he lived.
Maybe he even had something for the UFO place or the ranch. And that’s how Daniel found him.”
“Can we not talk about this right now?”
“Tean, we’re really close.”
The doc shook his head.
Jem tried to keep his voice up. “Trevino said this guy, Zeb, gave up his brother. Well, Van Cleave said it, actually, but you know what I mean. And that can’t mean that Zeb turned him in or helped them find him, because they’re still looking for him.
But I think if we talk to Zeb, put a little more pressure on him, we might get some better answers.
He’s got to have some idea of where his brother is hiding. ”
A horn brayed, long and loud.
“Daniel’s okay—” Jem began.
“Daniel is not okay!” Tean drew in a sharp breath as though he might shout again, but then he shivered, and when he spoke again, his voice was measured.
“That man, whoever he is, has Daniel. We don’t know if Daniel is alive.
We don’t know if he’s already at the bottom of a mine.
We don’t know if he’s being tortured. He’s helpless, Jem.
And he’s afraid.” In spite of Tean’s attempts at control, his voice slipped when he said, “For all we know, that man might be using those teeth on him.”
They inched forward. The sun hung ahead of them, so bright Jem had to drop the visor.
“Sorry,” Tean mumbled.
“Yeah, no, I—” Jem stopped. He propped his elbow on the door and rested his head in his hand. “I hope he’s okay.”
“Me too.” Tean didn’t say anything for long seconds as the traffic crawled forward. And then he said, “I thought if I could just—”
But he stopped.
And he didn’t finish.
They swung by Hannah’s house to pick up Scipio, who acted like he hadn’t seen them in years—jumping, whining, doing extra big wiggles.
He wanted to ride on Jem’s lap when they got in the car, and nothing Jem could do or say, laughing and trying to lift the Lab and squirming as Scipio took advantage of the position to give extra licks, made any difference.
It wasn’t until Tean snapped, “Scipio, move,” that the Lab hunkered down and slunk into the back seat.
When they got home, Tean went into the spare bedroom they’d turned into an office—and started making phone calls.
The first one was to work, from what Jem could overhear, as Tean explained why he’d been out that day and why he hadn’t called in until now.
The next one was to Lucy. That one was shorter.
Tean started to apologize, but the words cut off before he was halfway through, and he didn’t speak again.
Jem took Scipio into the backyard to play fetch. When the Lab finally collapsed onto the lawn, panting happily, Jem sat on the porch and took out his phone and bounced it on his palm a few times.
What did they know?
Someone—maybe someone named Rydel Welker—was killing people. Men. Probably gay men.
Rydel Welker was Zeb Welker’s brother.
Zeb had called Rydel, or warned him somehow, when he’d overheard Jem and Tean at the campground.
But Zeb had also, according to Van Cleave, given up his brother when the SBI started investigating.
That seemed like a contradiction, but it wasn’t, not really.
People were complicated. It wasn’t hard to imagine Zeb panicking when he first heard someone was looking for his brother and then, after he’d learned what his brother had been doing, cooperating with the police.
On the other hand, contradiction or not, something about it felt off to Jem. He just didn’t know what.
And the last, most important fact: Daniel was gone. The boy had gone looking for a killer, and he had found one.
The question now was: what did they do about it?
Jem placed a call to Tinajas.
“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said. “I’m tired. My feet hurt. I got two calls from the school today—two.”
“But you answered the phone,” Jem pointed out. “So, maybe you do want to hear about it?”
Tinajas disconnected.
Jem placed the call again.
“What do you want?” she snapped when she answered again.
“Are you still at work?”
“Oh no. This better not be that kind of call.”
“It’ll be so fast. It’ll be so easy and quick and, uh, not a problem that you won’t even remember it happened.”
“Is that what you tell Tean?”
“Ouch,” Jem said, but he couldn’t put any heart into it.
Tinajas must have noticed something, because her voice changed. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really. I don’t know. This is kind of a long shot anyway.”
“What do you got?”
Tinajas worked for the DMV, which was convenient if you needed to find where someone lived, or what kind of cars they had registered in their name, or a few other interesting tidbits.
She was also the closest thing Jem had to a sister; they’d been in some of the same foster homes together, and now that Benny was dead, she was really the only one Jem still stayed in touch with from that part of his life.
He gave her Rydel Welker and Zeb Welker.
“Nothing for Rydel Welker,” she said. “Let me see about the other.”
“Nothing?”
But she didn’t answer. When she spoke again, she said, “He’s got a black Dodge Ram. Address is a place in Roosevelt.”
“Is it a campground?”
“Why would it be a campground?” But she was silent again as she did the search, and then she said, “Strange Lights. Does that sound familiar?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, fuck. Who are these guys? What did they do?”
“Can I tell you later?”
“Sure. When you buy me something nice to make this worth my time.”
“You’re the best.”
“You want me to send this stuff to you?”
“Yeah. Nothing on Rydel? Did you try—”
“I tried different spellings. I tried just going with the letter R. I just pulled up all the Welkers in the state and sorted by name. He’s never had a driver’s license. He’s never registered a vehicle.” Her voice softened slightly. “I’m sorry, honey.”
They disconnected, and a moment later, messages came through with screenshots of the information Tinajas had acquired.
Jem glanced at them, but the print was small, and he was tired, and he wasn’t going to see anything that Tinajas hadn’t already told him.
Whistling for Scipio, he got to his feet and went inside.
The water in the shower was running, which meant Tean was cleaning up.
Jem heeled off his ROOS, dropped onto the sofa, and waited for his turn.
Scipio had long ago decided that a sofa or bed of any size was always meant for two, and so he climbed up, hip-checked Jem, and created a spot for himself through sheer force of will.
The Lab was warm, still breathing quickly, and he rested his head on Jem’s leg.
Tean still kept his Xanax in the medicine cabinet. Because he trusted Jem. Because it was a way of showing he trusted Jem. Not that they’d ever talked about it.
No, nope, no thanks. And he closed his eyes, like somehow that made it final.
He was in the farmhouse again, only it was LouElla’s house, too. And it was an apartment he barely remembered. He was running, throwing open the doors. And everyone was gone.
When Jem opened his eyes again, the room was dark, and Scipio was whining.
“Not right now,” Tean was saying. Whispering, really. Because, a muzzy part of Jem realized, he was trying not to wake Jem. “I’ll be back soon, boy.”
Scipio’s whining intensified. As Jem’s brain came online, more facts made their way in: he had fallen asleep; he had lost time—hours, to judge by the light—and the Lab was no longer pressed against him on the sofa. Jem flopped over so he could get a look at the front door.
Dressed for the cold, Tean was easing the door open, ignoring Scipio’s whimpers as the Lab tried to convince Tean to take him with him.
“Hey,” Jem said. His voice was fuzzy. “What’s going on?”
The slight pause in Tean’s movements was the only hint of a reaction. When Tean answered, his voice was low and even. “Just a walk. Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?” Jem grabbed for his phone and couldn’t find it. “What do you mean, you’re going on a walk?”
“I can’t sleep,” Tean said. He got the door open and had to use one leg to prevent Scipio from pressing through the opening. His elbow thunked against the storm door. “I just need to take a walk.”
“Yeah,” Jem said. He pushed himself upright. “Okay. Just a second.”
“No, you don’t have to come.”
Jem glanced around. Shoes. Where were his shoes?
“I won’t be gone long,” Tean said. “Scipio, no.”
“I just need to find my shoes,” Jem said.
“It’s fine—”
“It’s not fine!” The words came out more loudly than Jem intended.
He got to his feet. There, in the kitchen, his ROOS.
His body felt stiff as he moved toward them.
His clothes felt stiff, too. When Jem thought he could sound like a rational human being, he said, “Somebody tried to kill us last night. It’s not safe for you to go out there by yourself. ”
“You think this Rydel guy is still looking for us? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Fine, it doesn’t make any sense. I’ll still feel better if I go with you.”
“Jem—” Frustration twisted Tean’s voice. Whatever he’d been about to say, he changed it to “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Good. We’ll have a nice walk then.”
Tean wrapped his arms around himself. “No.”
“How cold is it?”
“Jem, I just want to take a walk by myself.”
One of the ROOS’ laces was knotted, and no matter how Jem picked at it, he couldn’t get it undone. Probably because he wasn’t awake all the way, not yet. Probably because his eyes were still bleary.
“Fine. Go take a walk. Scipio and I will be ten yards behind, or fifty, or whatever.”
Tean hugged himself more tightly and said, “No.”
Jem gave up on the lace and shoved his foot into the shoe.
For several long moments, the only sounds in the house were Scipio’s accelerated breathing and the whisper of Jem’s socks scrunching, canvas folding, the end of a lace clicking against the floorboards—the whole fucking process of jamming your foot into a shoe.
When Jem was done, Tean was staring at him, huddled inside his jacket, open defiance on his face.
“What’s going on?” Jem asked.
“Nothing—”
“Bullshit. You sneak out of the house every fucking night. What’s going on?”
“I don’t sneak!”
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t sleep!”
Jem shook his head, and he heard himself do a weird not-laugh. “For fuck’s sake.”
Tean turned to ice. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but I’m leaving now. To take a walk. By myself.”
“No, you’re not. It’s not safe—”
“I’ll be fine. I’m always fine. I’m not worried about it.”
“I know you’re not worried about it! You know who’s worried about it? Me! Every time I wake up and have no fucking idea where you are, I’m the one who has to freak out, I’m the one who doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, I’m the one who can’t breathe!”
Tean adjusted his arms around himself. The fabric of his jacket rustled. Scipio hunched, head down, gaze moving back and forth from Jem to Tean.
“Go take your fucking walk,” Jem said, and he kicked off his shoes.
Tean swallowed. And then he let himself out of the house.