6 #3
He was everywhere in the document. Incomplete sentences would pop up for seemingly no reason—in the middle of River’s impressions about the town of Roosevelt, for example, the kind of text she might use to set the scene while narrating a podcast, there was this line: Kai – water polo?
And then that was it. Nothing more about water polo in the whole document.
It was like the thought had popped up, stream-of-consciousness style, and she had jotted it down in the middle of her observations of the town so that she wouldn’t forget it.
It was going to make working his way through the notes difficult, to say the least.
After a moment, though, Tean opened a fresh document and created several sections.
He created one on the pack—he hated calling the group of killers by that name, but it had cemented itself in his head.
He created one for each of the members: Kai, Zeb, Reed, and Tess.
He created one for the campground, in case something interesting came up.
And one for the Uinta Basin more broadly.
He considered it for a moment. He could always add sections later, but he felt like it was a good start.
He went back to the document, copied the water polo line, and put it under Kai’s name in the new document. It had been a long time since grad school, but one thing Tean had always been good at was taking notes.
A thought came to mind—probably one that should have been obvious earlier.
He scrolled down in the original document.
If he was correct that River had been taking her notes in a more or less stream-of-consciousness fashion, then it made sense that the end of the document would represent whatever she had been working on, or thinking about, before she’d been killed.
And River had believed she had identified the information that the pack wanted to hide.
The final entry in the notes document said, Diane Winfield, Uintah High – Tuesday.
Behind him, the apartment door opened. He locked his phone.
It was Seth, thank goodness. He’d pulled his coat on, and when he saw Tean looking at him, he gave a smile somewhere between rueful and chagrined. “Hey.”
Tean nodded.
“Kind of chilly out here,” Seth said.
“Are they still being forced to share their testimonies?”
Seth rolled his eyes, but he said, “He’s in a weird place.”
“No, his behavior has gotten worse because Mom’s not around to make him act like a human being.”
Seth held his hands up in surrender.
“Sorry,” Tean said. Frustration made him want to say, He knows how uncomfortable that makes me. He knows, and he does it anyway. But he swallowed the words.
“Are you doing okay?” Seth asked.
“I’m fine. Are you?”
With a shrug, Seth said, “It’s sad. But he was old, and the last few times I saw him, he didn’t know who I was.”
“He didn’t reminisce with you about all your wonderful childhood memories of him?”
A smile flashed on Seth’s face. “Do you know he’s the only person ever to spank me?”
“That’s because you’re the youngest boy.”
Laughing, Seth said, “And he was so mean about it too.”
“He was mean about everything. He wanted nothing to do with me after I came out, and before I came out, I was either a sissy, or a crier, or I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut, or alternatively, I was too quiet.
He drank. He swore. He smoked those disgusting cigarillos.
He treated everyone terribly. And now they’re all sitting in there, acting like he was a saint. ”
“You don’t have any good memories of him?”
Tean shook his head, but he said, “It’s complicated.”
“What about when he took us camping and he got sick from that weird gas station beef jerky?”
The memory surprised Tean; he had forgotten it, and a laugh escaped him. “He just lay on his cot moaning.”
“My gut, my gut,” Seth parroted.
More of that laughter welled up, and when it faded, Tean was still smiling. “I think he’s incidental to that memory. What I enjoyed about that trip was swimming in that creek—which, in hindsight, we definitely shouldn’t have done without an adult to supervise.”
“You are such an oldest child.”
“Are we going to plan a funeral today?” Tean asked. “Or are we going to sit around and play church and pretend that Dad didn’t not talk to Grandpa for close to twenty years?”
With a wince, Seth said, “Ouch.”
“It’s the truth. Or does he think somehow Mom will do this for him, like she did everything else his whole life?”
Seth winced again, but all he said was “I think I saw Dad pulling out some General Conference talks he wants to read. And who knows where he got them, but he also has Grandma’s journals.”
“I’ve got things to do. If you text me the name of the funeral home, I’ll start making arrangements.”
“You have to go?”
Tean nodded. “He won’t miss me. I’m half-convinced he started that whole production because he was looking for a way to get me to leave.”
“I know he’s…I don’t know. Weird. Difficult to get along with. But this is hard for him.”
What Tean wanted to say was that it was difficult to tell, because it seemed like his dad was having a great time. But he only nodded. Seth gave him a quick hug, and Tean headed down the stairs. As he went, he unlocked his phone and placed a call to Jem.