14
Jem spoke first. “Hi, Scott. My name is Jem Berger. My partner, Tean Leon, is on the phone with me. We’re helping a friend look into some strange stuff that’s been happening lately, and I know this is going to feel like it’s coming out of nowhere, but we think you can help. We only need a couple of minutes.”
“Uh, okay. What do you mean, strange stuff?”
“According to our records,” Tean said, “you’re currently living in Oakland. Is that correct?”
“Yes. What’s this about?”
“Do you know a man named Kai Butler?”
The silence lasted a beat too long.
In the background, another voice—one that sounded male—said something.
“It’s work,” Scott said in response. “Well, I’m sorry, Travis. It just came up.” That voice said something again, and then Scott said into the phone, “What about Kai?”
“Is everything all right?” Tean asked.
“My husband thinks I’m having an affair. And that I’m a workaholic. Yes, I knew Kai. What about him?”
“Did you know the police are looking for Kai in connection with a murder?”
“Oh my God. No, I had no idea. Who did he kill?”
“You haven’t kept in contact him?”
“I haven’t kept in contact with anyone. I left Utah when I was eighteen, and I haven’t been back.
I don’t talk to my family. I don’t talk to anyone from there.
And trust me, none of them want to talk to me.
I’m sorry, but I haven’t had anything to do with Kai in almost ten years.
I don’t know how you think I can help you. ”
“What was the nature of your relationship with Kai?” Tean asked.
Another of those drawn-out silences followed. And then Scott said in a surprisingly wry voice, “I guess we were boyfriends, although I don’t know if you can call it that when you’re both pretending you’re straight.”
“Can you tell us about that?” Jem asked.
“Uh, it’s kind of self-explanatory.”
“We’re trying to get a sense of who Kai is,” Tean said. “And we’re also trying to find him.”
“Are you police officers?”
“No.”
“Someone involved in the investigation has asked us to assist,” Jem said. “And I’m afraid that’s all the information I’m authorized to give out.”
Tean’s bushy eyebrows shot up at this, and Jem flashed him a grin.
“Okay,” Scott said slowly. “Uh, Kai and I spent a lot of time together. As I said, we both were pretending to be straight. I’m not sure how successfully, to be honest, but it seemed important at the time. We were friends. And there was a sexual component.”
“When we talked to one of Kai’s teachers, she didn’t remember Kai having any friends.”
“We didn’t really see much of each other at school.
Part of that was our schedules and the nature of high school; we were two grades apart, and we didn’t cross paths that often.
And when you’re that age, people think it’s strange if you’re hanging out with a kid that much younger.
” He laughed. “Travis is eight years younger, and nobody blinks.”
“What was he like?” Jem asked.
Scott let out a soft breath. “He was…intense.” He paused like he was considering the word.
“That’s the best way I can describe it. Kai was always either on or off.
If he wasn’t interested in you, he was off.
He wouldn’t look at you, talk to you, none of that, not unless he had to, and even then, it was painful.
But if he wanted to be your friend, he could be…
Is charming the right word? He was interested.
He was curious. It was like you were the center of his universe, which was extremely flattering to a teenager who felt deeply misunderstood.
But now, as an adult, I realize that it was a lot.
Too much. And he was intense in other ways, too.
He told you what to do, and you just did it.
If you didn’t, he was done with you—everything turned off, and you’d spend a week or two getting back in his good graces.
” Scott’s silence this time had a different quality, somewhere between brooding and bothered.
“I was two years older, and the whole time, I felt like I was the one he was letting tag along.”
“You said you were boyfriends,” Tean said. “Who initiated that relationship?”
“He did.” Scott laughed, but it had a breathiness to it.
“I never would have been brave enough. We grew up next door to each other—or what passes for next door in that part of the world—so I’d always known him.
Neither of us had many friends at school.
Probably, I suspect, because I wasn’t doing such a great job at passing for straight.
We’d hang out together, not because we had that many shared interests, but because neither of us had anyone else.
Not to be too graphic, but one day, Kai suggested jacking off together.
” He gave that laugh again. “I guess I should have said masturbating.”
“When we told you Kai had killed someone, you were surprised, but you weren’t shocked.”
“I don’t know. No. I guess I wasn’t.” Then Scott waited, but when neither Tean nor Jem spoke, he continued, “He could be scary. I told you he was intense. As he got older, he got bolder. Or more sure of himself. It was like he was figuring out what he could do. What he could get away with. At the beginning, if he didn’t like something, he’d just ice me out.
But he got bolder. He’d come up with punishments.
He didn’t call them that, but I had to ‘make it up to him,’ and it was always me being the one who made it up to him.
It escalated. We got in a fight once near the end, and he slapped me.
I told myself I was done with him, but like I said, he was charming, and a week or so later, I was right back where I started. ”
“Did he hit you again?” Jem asked.
“No. But he didn’t have to. He knew he could.
And I knew he could.” This time, the laugh had a broken-off edge.
“My God, I was in an abusive relationship. I honestly can’t believe this.
I thought—” He stopped, but then words spilled out.
“When I came out to him—when I told him I was moving away for college and I wasn’t coming back because I was gay—he was so angry, I thought he was going to kill me.
I didn’t understand it, because we’d been fooling around for years by that point. ”
For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Tean broke the silence by saying, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not entirely his fault. He had a—a bizarre home life, to put it frankly.”
“Yeah?” Jem asked.
“Did you meet his mom?” But he didn’t wait for a response.
“I’ve never met anyone so clueless in my entire life.
It’s on purpose; she doesn’t want to know anything is wrong.
The house could be burning down around her, and she’d just smile and ask if anybody else was feeling warm.
And Kai’s dad—well, his stepdad, really—was a piece of shit.
I was afraid of him, and Kai— I almost said Kai was terrified of him, but I’m actually not sure that’s true.
I mean, he was terrified of him. But he also wanted to be like him. It was really messed up.”
“Why were you afraid of him?”
“Because he was a bully. He picked on me. He liked picking on me. A lot of the time, it was stuff you could pretend was maybe, possibly, right on the edge of teasing that was still, you know, acceptable. But sometimes it was just outright intimidation and cruelty. He’d make jokes about me being a sissy.
Or he’d ask what I was doing with my spare time that I had such soft hands—and the implication was always sexual.
It got worse as I got older. Had I ever seen a pair of tits.
Had I ever touched a pair of tits. Had I ever fucked a girl.
Had I ever eaten pussy. He asked me if I needed a girlfriend who owned a strap-on.
The only thing I had going for me was church, so I could say I wasn’t going to do anything like that until I was married, that line.
But I mean, way, way, way too sexual stuff for casual conversation with a child. Not that it was really a surprise.”
“In what way?” Tean asked.
“The bullying? Or the sex stuff?”
“Both, I suppose.”
“Well, the bullying wasn’t a surprise because he was twice as hard on Kai.
His name was Dale, and he and Kai’s mom, her name’s Brenda, they got married when Kai was, I don’t know, ten or eleven.
And as soon as they got married, there was no question who was in charge.
Whatever Dale said, that was the law. If you didn’t go along, you got punished.
And I’m not just talking about Kai. I heard him hit her once—Kai’s mom, I mean.
Kai and I were sitting at the table, and Dale came home looking for a reason, and she forgot to get him a beer.
He made her go into the kitchen, and he hit her, and she had to come back right then and sit at the table and eat dinner, trying not to cry, her cheek bright red.
” He let out that breathy laugh again, not humor now but disbelief. “He made her tell him about her day.”
“Fuck me,” Jem said. “Sounds like Kai.”
“Yeah, well, that was part of it too. Dale’s whole thing was that Kai needed to cowboy up.
Like, be more butch. Part of that was the lisp—you know about that?
And part of it was just that in Dale’s opinion, Kai was a sissy or a queer or a fag.
And you’ve got to remember, Kai was ten or eleven or whatever, still a child.
But that was Dale’s mission. And that meant nobody got it harder than Kai.
He used his belt mostly, anytime he thought Kai was being too soft. And—”
But then Scott cut off.
“And?” Tean prompted.
In the front room, Scipio barked.
“Scott?” Jem asked.