Chapter 32
Mid-morning, with a clear sky, the campground looked different from the last time Jem had been there.
Loose stones turned and crunched under the borrowed Subaru’s tires as they turned into the lot.
The buildings and layout were all the same.
But now, light hammered on the red rock, bounced off the windows of the office, and made the tips of the tall grass turn white like lightbulb filaments.
The woman, Tess, was lounging on the porch again, painting her nails. She looked up as they approached, frowned, and said, “Sorry, guys. Campground is closed.”
“That’s all right,” Jem said. “Maybe you don’t remember us. Jem. And this is Tean. We were here the other night to talk to Katie.”
“Oh my God! You’re the ones that got shot at!” She sat up, almost upsetting the nail polish balanced on her thigh. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, we’re okay. How about Katie?”
“She feels terrible. She feels just terrible. She said she should have gone with you to make sure you were okay.” Leaning forward with the little brush again, she resumed work on her nails, adding absently, “She’s one of our best customers. I hope she comes back.”
“Is Zeb here?” Jem asked. “We wanted to ask him some questions.”
“You want to talk to Zeb?” But then she looked up again. Those over-plucked eyebrows stiffened to peaks. “Oh. You want to ask him about Rydel. What are you, police?”
Tean shook his head. Jem said, “Investigators. A family friend asked us to look into the murder.”
She made a considering noise. “Poor Zeb. That whole family’s a mess.”
“That’s actually what we wanted to talk about,” Tean said. “I’m sure the police have already asked, but by any chance do you know where Rydel might be?”
“They asked,” Tess said. “And no. We don’t.”
“Not even Zeb?”
Tess snorted as she inspected her next toe.
“Were they close?” Jem asked.
That made her look up again, and a note of disbelief rang in her question. “Zeb and Rydel?”
“I guess not,” Jem said, “otherwise Zeb wouldn’t have turned him in.”
“Turned him in. Rydel’s lucky Zeb didn’t kill him.”
She went to work with the nail polish, applying it in smooth strokes, all her attention seemingly fixed on the task. And obviously dying for them to ask another question.
“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Jem said. “Zeb called him to warn him we were asking around. Why turn him over to the police?”
Tean kept his gaze on the door to the office. Just in case.
“He didn’t call him to warn him,” Tess said. “He called him to tear him a new asshole. Whoops. Excuse the language.”
“He was angry with him?”
“He was going to kill him.” The color dropped from her face, and she shot them a glance and said, “That’s just an expression. He was mad at him, that’s all.”
“Why?” Tean asked. He was still watching the office door.
“I don’t know,” Tess said. “I’ve got to finish up these nails and get back to work.”
Jem gave it a few seconds to clear the air. And then he said, “That’s one fucked-up house up there. You ever been inside?”
Tess’s shudder didn’t look feigned. “Momma wouldn’t ever let me. Thank God.”
“They grew up there?”
“If you want to call it that.”
Jem let the moment hang, as though considering something, and then in a low voice he said, “There was a chair in there. Not really a chair, kind of like a frame. Super old. Super creepy. And it had these straps, like they used to tie somebody down.”
Tess looked up at him, and she even gave a little jab in his direction with the nail polish brush.
“Okay, now I knew they had that chair, because this girl, Sarah, she saw it one time when Zeb tried to get in her panties, and he thought he could do it in the basement. But I asked Zeb, and he lied straight to my face. Can you believe that?”
“And locks on all the bedroom doors.”
“Everybody knows about that.”
“You knew the parents?”
“I knew who they were. Their mom grew up here. She was all right. Sick, you know? Couldn’t ever seem to do anything for herself.
I guess today people would say she needed to see a therapist. I saw one once after I hit a girl at school.
You know what she told me? The therapist lady?
She said if you get real angry, you’re supposed to breathe through your nose.
” She demonstrated for them, inhaling deeply through her nostrils, even going so far as to close her eyes.
Then she opened them again, beamed, and said, “Calms you right down.”
“What kind of sick?” Jem asked.
“Like I said, couldn’t do anything. Lay in bed all day. Read books. She had so many books you couldn’t walk in there—that’s what Sarah said.”
“What about the dad?”
“Oh, he was something else. He was a veterinarian.”
For a moment, Jem was standing in the barn again. The thick musk. The black bulk of the kennels.
“Is that how Rydel got those scars on his arm?” Tean asked. “An animal?”
“Oh that was a dog. Up and down his arm. Got him bad.”
And then Jem was in that stinking basement, Antony out of his head and trying to bite. He took a deep breath. He breathed through his nose. He fought a wave of laughter that made him feel like he was unraveling.
“You better believe he thought he hit the jackpot when he married her. Once he was living on that ranch, it was like he was the king of England.” The words had a rote quality, and they sounded older, as though Tess had heard them from someone else.
A parent, maybe. Or someone in town. “All that money didn’t do him any good, though, did it?
He was driving that fancy car way too fast, went off the road, and rolled.
Wouldn’t have happened to him if he’d been driving a truck. ”
“How long ago was that?” Tean asked.
“I don’t know. Ten, fifteen years.”
“The kids weren’t grown?”
“Oh no. Zeb and Rydel were in high school, I think. Maybe a little younger.”
“How close are they in age?”
“Three or four years. Rydel’s older. Nobody could stand him when we were in school.
He wouldn’t talk to anybody. He was always picking at himself.
And when he did talk, he was so weird. Mean.
And Zeb didn’t get big until a lot later.
You’d better believe Rydel took advantage of that, but you look at him now, and he’s a little guy. Zeb’s the big one.”
It was such a strange comment that it hooked Jem’s attention. “What do you mean, Rydel took advantage of it?”
The light in Tess’s face had everything to do with the lure of good gossip. “Oh, it was terrible. I shouldn’t even tell you.”
“That bad?”
“Honey, Rydel is sick. Why do you think he’s running around killing all these homosexuals?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“He’s just a little guy now,” she said again, “but when they were growing up, he was bigger than Zeb until they were almost done with high school.”
“Did he pick on Zeb?” Tean asked.
“I shouldn’t tell you,” Tess said. “I’m not even supposed to know. He told Kai, because everybody tells Kai everything, and one day, I was asking Kai what Zeb’s tattoo meant. Did you ever see it?” She touched her neck.
“We saw it,” Tean said. “Old things are done away, and all things have become new.”
“Kai and Zeb are real spiritual, you know? Anyway, Kai took him to get it. And when they came back, I asked him, what does it mean? Why’d he get that? I said he should get one of those nice ones that look like a lion or a river or sometimes it can be the lines from a song.”
This apparently deserved a response, because Jem said, “Yeah, those would be better. What did Kai say?”
“He told me all about it. How Zeb had—” For the first time, genuine embarrassment crept into Tess’s voice, and a hint of color rose in her cheeks.
Her voice shrank. “He had thoughts, you know. But it wasn’t his fault.
It was because of what Rydel did to him.
Rydel put that in his brain. That’s what happens to kids.
It’s how they become homosexuals. It was after his dad died, so there wasn’t anybody to make Rydel stop, and Zeb was too little.
” With a half-suppressed thrill, she added, “Zeb said Rydel used to choke him.”
And now Jem was back in Decker, with Blake and Antonio holding him while Tanner pulled down his pants.
“That’s what the tattoo means, see? He’s got a good new life here. He’s a new person. Doesn’t have to be that way anymore.”
“Right,” Jem said. His mouth felt chalky. “Sure.”
“Is Kai here?” Tean asked. “Maybe we should talk to him.”
“No, honey. He and Zeb left a couple of hours ago.”
“That’s why Zeb called Rydel,” Jem said. He could see the shape of it now. “He heard us asking about a man with those scars. He knew it was Rydel.”
“Zeb—” Tess broke off. “He wasn’t thinking clearly that night.” With a forced laugh, Tess said, “Afterwards, Kai said we all should have known. Rydel was always coming up with excuses to disappear. His battery died, or he lost his wallet, or he had to work late.”
Jem barely heard her; he had to sit with the realization for a moment.
The fact that Zeb hadn’t been trying to help Rydel or warn him changed a lot of things.
Jem tried to run out the sequence of events for the rest of that night.
What had Zeb been doing while Rydel had been taking potshots at Jem and Tean in the canyon?
And what had happened after, when Rydel had gone back to the house?
Had Zeb gotten there first and found Daniel?
There were too many unknowns.
In a strange voice, Tean said, “The dad treated Rydel differently than the others, didn’t he?”
Jem’s head snapped up.
Tess froze mid-stroke, coral nail polish glistening on her small toe. “Yeah. He did. How’d you know that?”
“He was harder on him.”
Tess looked like she might not answer. And then she said, “He hit him. He’d come to school with bruises on his face. On his neck. One time, he broke his arm. They said he fell off a horse.”
The anatomy model placed in the center of the dresser.
The scars on Rydel’s arm.
“He made Rydel work with him,” Tean said. “With the animals.”
“How’d you know that?” Tess asked, with a note of real wonder this time. But she didn’t wait for Tean to respond. “He said Rydel had to earn his keep. He’d tell anybody who would listen.”
“They weren’t brothers,” Tean said. “They were—what? Stepbrothers?”
Tess thought about it. “Cousins, I guess. They made Rydel call them mom and dad, but I think he came from a sister who couldn’t keep him anymore.”
“Fuck me,” Jem said. “He has a different last name.”