20
Tean had enough presence of mind to wipe the blood off the gun before putting it in the Subaru’s trunk.
He got Jem back to the car, Jem leaning on him the whole way, and then they had to drive until they had service on their phones.
Jem made him stop after a couple of miles.
He got out, limped to the drainage ditch, and pitched something sidearm into a culvert.
The barrette, of course. The kind of thing you didn’t want a cop to catch you with.
They parked at a gravel pullout at the next intersection, and Tean called in the fire and the attack.
The dispatcher told them to stay where they were.
While they waited, Tean got wipes from the glove box and cleaned up Jem’s hands.
He was careful. He took his time. You had to get all of it, because cops had good eyes, and they noticed things like that.
When he’d finished, he walked to the side of the road and picked up a handful of gravel.
He brought it back. Jem gave him a bemused look, but when Tean motioned with the dirt and stone, he held out his hands.
Tean dumped the gravel into Jem’s hands.
Then he clasped Jem’s hands in his and worked them around the stones.
When Tean thought it was good enough, he carried the stones back to the shoulder and dropped them and kicked them around.
Jem watched him.
“Your hands were too clean,” Tean said. “They’d notice.”
Jem only nodded.
“I’m sorry I didn’t shoot him.”
With a snort, Jem leaned his head back, as though trying to bring Tean into focus. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, I should have done something.”
“Tean, you got the gun. That’s what mattered.”
“You saved our lives. And I let them run away.”
Jem took Tean’s hands in his. The dust and dirt made the touch gritty. Jem squeezed once and met Tean’s eyes. “I don’t want you to shoot anybody, okay? I don’t ever want you to have to do that again. It was just—you know, I was in it, and I wasn’t thinking.”
Tean nodded.
“Plus, you’re already a hardened criminal,” Jem said. “Destroying evidence, concealing the commission of a crime, aiding and abetting.” His head tilted, as though considering the severity of this behavior, Jem added, “Lying to an adult.”
“It would have complicated things,” Tean said. “It’s better if the story is simple: we were looking at the ranch, and they shot at us and trapped us in the barn.”
“It would have complicated things,” Jem said. A hit of the grin slipped out. The crooked front teeth. “Spoken like a criminal mastermind. The dirt on my hands was a nice touch.”
Somehow, despite the exhaustion that was settling over him, Tean managed a smile.
A Vernal police cruiser found them first, the officer a fortysomething man with the kind of mustache Tean had once heard Jem call a taint tickler. Tean told him where the rifle was, and the officer politely—but firmly—asked them to sit in the back of the cruiser.
They sat there a while. And then he drove them—still in the back of the cruiser—to the station in Vernal.
At that point, a heavyset man with salt-and-pepper hair and crumbs on his shirt separated them, and Tean found himself sitting in an interview room.
Over the last few years, he’d gotten more familiar with this kind of space than he would have liked.
Someone had scratched the word ASSMAN into the table.
An EMT checked him out. And then an older woman with hair to the middle of her back brought him a ham-and-mayo sandwich and a cup of water.
Tean asked to speak to an officer, and she said she was sure someone would be with him shortly, but it was another hour before the man with crumbs on his shirt took Tean to the bathroom, and he wouldn’t answer any questions.
Tean called Daniel to let him know they’d be late; the boy didn’t answer, but when Tean followed with a text, Daniel liked the message.
At some point, Tean knew he could insist on being let go. They either had to arrest him or let him walk. In theory. But he wasn’t ready to test that theory yet.
He didn’t see Jem. He didn’t hear him. He was probably fine; he’d weathered worse in his life. He was probably fine. He hated institutional spaces like this. He’d be worried about Tean. He’d be worried about the barrette. Even though it was self-defense.
He was fine. Jem had to be fine.
Better to worry about Jem than think about what he’d seen in the barrel. The dark hair that had looked fake in the harsh light from his phone. The clouded eyes. The burns, and the cuts, and the ripped-off nails—
Jem knew how to take care of himself. Jem was probably talking his way out of there right now, and in a minute, he’d open the door, and they’d leave together.
Tean took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and tried not to see her face again.
He didn’t realize, until he caught himself wondering when they’d let him use the bathroom again, that he hadn’t thought about the gun. Not even once.
A knock came at the door, and then it opened, and Jem stepped into the room.
Following him was a balding man with graying hair buzzed short on the back and sides.
Instead of a suit, this time he was dressed in jeans and a windbreaker.
When he turned to shut the door, the words UTAH SBI were visible on the back.
“Lieutenant Orsino,” Tean said.
“Dr. Leon.”
The last time Tean had seen the man, it had been in a hospital room.
Tean and Jem were being treated for relatively minor injuries after their fight with the wolves.
Orsino had come because two SBI agents had been injured as well.
One of the agents had died, and the other, as far as Tean knew, was still recovering.
Jem came around the table to stand near Tean, and Orsino dropped into a seat opposite them. A gray smear on one shoulder of his windbreaker was, Tean suspected, ash, and the smell of the fire still clung to him.
“You know why I’m here?” Orsino asked.
“You’re trying to find Kai Butler and the others,” Tean said. “Two of them tried to kill us earlier today.”
“Why don’t you tell me about that?”
Tean went through the story as clearly as he could, beginning with Amy approaching them for help, through their investigation, and ending with escaping from Direwolf Ranch in the Subaru. Orsino asked clarifying questions from time to time, but mostly he listened, rubbing his head every so often.
“We did call the detectives handling the case to let them know about the ranch,” Tean said.
“And they did what they’ve done the whole time with this case,” Jem said. “They shoved their heads up their asses and waited for it to go away again.”
“Believe it or not, Mr. Berger, the real world doesn’t sit down and wait for us to wrap everything up. And twelve hours isn’t exactly a big window of time—did you expect them to drop everything and drive out there as soon as you made that call?”
“I expect them not to act like we’re a couple of tin-hats who won’t stop bothering them. They haven’t believed us from the beginning.”
“I understand that they have other investigations,” Tean said, “but it also seemed like time might be of the essence. Kai has already killed at least three people. Four, if you count his stepfather, which I think is likely, and if he’s trying to get Amy—”
“This man, or his friends, or however it’s happening,” Orsino said over him, “has already killed twelve people. And that’s not counting his stepdad.
” When neither Tean nor Jem said anything, Orsino continued, “After the fire department got things under control, we had a look around. We found where they’ve been staying on the property.
There’s a system of caves, and one of them opens up a few hundred yards from the barn.
One of our guys almost fell down there, that’s how he found it. ”
That explained why Tean and Jem hadn’t seen any evidence of the wolves living at the ranch—they’d been hiding.
“It was about what you’d expect,” Orsino continued. “Sleeping bags, lanterns, MREs. Weird shit, too.” He paused. “Antlers. Wolf skins. Marks on the walls. Like they were painting, I guess. It looks like blood. Does the phrase ‘I have walked through fire’ mean anything to you?”
Tean shook his head. Jem followed suit a moment later.
Orsino said, “You wouldn’t believe the smell. We also found property belonging to several people who have been reported missing or who can’t currently be located.”
“Holy shit,” Jem said.
“Who are they?” Tean said.
“We’re not releasing the identities of the victims.” Orsino rubbed his head again.
“They’ve been reported missing,” Tean said, “but these weren’t people who made the news. I haven’t seen any stories about missing people lately. What does that mean?”
“It means no one was looking for them,” Jem said.
“We’re still trying to figure out who these people are and why they were targeted. The fact is, we’re not going to be sure these items belong to the victims until we can identify the remains—”
Orsino cut off.
Tean saw her face again. The burns stippled across her cheeks. “No one cared that they disappeared,” he made himself say. Made himself think. “They weren’t even all reported missing. Who were they? Young men? Young gay men who ran away from home? Were they transient?”
“Dr. Leon, I understand that you and Mr. Berger had a horrific experience today. I’m going to ask you to go home and try to forget about this and move on with your lives.
Someone from the bureau will be in contact with Ms. Graham, and we’ll make sure that she has police protection until we can figure out what’s going on.
” His expression softened, but his voice was hard. “Understand?”
“No,” Tean said, but he was answering himself. “They weren’t young gay men. That was Rydel. And Kai killed Rydel. Then it was someone else. But no one too established in the community. No one important enough to raise an outcry if they went missing.”
“I think we’re done.”
But it was like Tean could see it, like it was a report on predation rates, and the numbers could tell you what was going on—if prey populations were increasing, or if different predators were competing, or if one subset of prey was unusually vulnerable.
“They’re killing people they think are gay.
They’re not targeting a…a type, necessarily.
Not like Rydel, acting out his own abuse.
But they’re killing anyone queer, anyone they think they can hurt and get away with it. ”
Orsino sat back. “A trans woman. A man with an intellectual disability. A man accused by neighbors of being a pedophile. An unmarried older woman.” After a moment, he said, “This is all preliminary. And there’s no evidence that any of these people, aside from the trans woman, identified as LGBTQ.”
“But they don’t have to,” Tean said. “That’s not the point. The point is that this is how Kai got them to go along with it. It started with Rydel. He told them they were going to kill someone who had molested a child. Who had lied to them. Who was secretly gay. And they went along with him.”
“They think they’re doing something good,” Jem said. “God. That’s messed up.”
“Yes, exactly, they think—” Tean hesitated. “They think it’s their mission.”
“We’ll take that into consideration,” Orsino said.
“Now, I meant what I said: you two need to go home. We’ll be in touch again over the next few days.
I’ll need you to give me the contact information for this man, Scott Taylor, and help us get in touch with Ms. Graham.
Aside from that, though, you need to stay away from this investigation. ”
“I think you’re trying to say thank you,” Jem said. “But it’s not coming through clearly.”
“If you continue to involve yourselves, I’ll arrest you and charge you with obstruction.”
“We’re doing your job for you,” Jem said. “Those assholes you put on this couldn’t find the tips of their dicks. We did all the work. We found Kai.”
“You bumbled through this investigation and screwed up everything you touched,” Orsino snapped.
“Do you have any idea how difficult this is going to be to prosecute? You burned down a barn full of evidence. How do you think we explain that to a jury?” Orsino shook his head as he got to his feet.
“Write down that contact information, and then I’ll have an officer escort you out. You’re done.”