by Gregory Ashe
“Jem!”
“No, it’s fine, he’s got a right to ask. The simple answer is that you’re already involved. You got Antonio to open up about a lead, and you followed that lead here. I don’t like the thought of either of you being in danger, but I’d be stupid not to get any information I possibly can out of you. If that means sharing, well, I’m ok with that.”
“Jem, this would be a good time to, you know.” Tean tapped the menu.
Jem kept his gaze on Ammon. “So this isn’t about helping us find Tanner. This is about giving us the absolute bare minimum of information you can in exchange for us telling you everything we know.”
“Well, that’s one of the things we need to figure out—if the remains recovered last night belong to Tanner Kimball.”
“They don’t. That was not Tanner. He’s not dead.”
“Interesting. His ID was found—”
“His ID doesn’t mean shit.”
The words rang out in the restaurant; half-log pine paneling apparently had excellent acoustics.
“Let’s order,” Tean said. “Jem—”
“I’m just getting a burger.” He shoved the menu away from him.
“This would really be a good opportunity to—”
“No. I’m fine.” Jem’s face was warm. “I know what I want.”
Tean nodded, but Ammon spoke first. “We could take turns reading the menu. Would that help?”
It was like being doused in gasoline and touched with a match.
“Ammon,” Tean said quietly, “I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but I’m not sure now is a good time for you to get involved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine; I know you were trying to help.”
“No, that’s a great idea,” Jem said, grabbing the menu blindly and opening it against the tabletop. “Let’s do that.”
“Will you take a breath? He didn’t mean anything by it.”
Maybe. Ammon’s face was smooth, maybe faintly worried, a crease between his eyebrows like he realized his mistake. But his eyes, his eyes were a whole other story.
Jem smoothed the menu with the heel of his hand. “Sou—sou—sou—”
“Southwest,” Ammon prompted.
Jem threw the menu. He meant—he thought he meant—to toss it. Instead, it flew across the table. It struck Tean in the chest and fell into his lap. Shooting to his feet, Jem knocked back the chair. He caught it before it could fall.
“Ammon, just stop. Jem, he didn’t mean anything—will you come back here?”
“I need to use the restroom.”
Jem didn’t look back. He couldn’t find a restroom, so he had to settle for the business center, which was a cubbyhole on the main floor that held a single, ancient PC, an inkjet printer covered with a fine layer of dust, and a thick braid of cables that looked perfect for making a noose. Jem figured that would be as good a way to go as any. He shut the door, leaned against it, and pressed his hands against his eyes.
It shouldn’t have mattered; his whole life had been like this. But it was Tean sitting across the table, with that familiar mixture of worry and hope on his face. And it was Ammon pulling out the chair. And it was another sleepless night, and the pills, and Tanner and Antonio and Blake, and all those times in Decker.
A soft knock came at the door.
Jem wiped his face and cleared his throat. “I just need to finish printing my pornography.”
“Oh.” Then, “Can I help?”
“Are you a printing machine disguised as a human?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t help. I’ll see you back at the table.”
“I could three-hole punch it and put it in a binder. Or I could laminate it. Or I could collate it.”
One last check, face dry, no snot bubbles, nothing to do for red eyes or the color in his cheeks. Jem stepped away from the door and opened it.
“I’m sorry,” Tean said. His hair was wilder than ever, which meant he’d been pushing it back with his hands, and his glasses were on the tip of his nose. “I shouldn’t have said anything; I knew it wasn’t the right time, but I had reading on my brain, and I didn’t think about what I was doing, putting you on the spot like that. That was very stupid of me. And I’m sorry about Ammon too. I know you won’t believe me, but he was honestly trying to help. He’s not—he’s not very sensitive sometimes, but his heart is in the right place.”
“Jesus God,” Jem said, and he was surprised to find himself smiling as he slid the glasses back up Tean’s nose. “Are you even real?”
“Yes, but unfortunately, I am not a disguised pornography machine.”
A boy who must have been twelve or thirteen was passing by. He froze, and his face turned red, and then he sprinted away.
“You know he’s going to be googling pornography machine for the next five years, right?”
Tean sighed. “I know.”
They went back to the table, where a mound of nachos waited. Ammon was back on his phone, tapping madly, but when they sat, he looked up.
“Hey, man, I’m really sorry—”
“No big deal,” Jem said, dishing himself nachos, refusing to meet Ammon’s look. “Don’t sweat it.”
The girl came back. They ordered—Jem went with a burger, which was almost universally safe—and he plowed through the nachos. Tean ate four chips, but he scraped away the cheese and meat and beans first.
“Is it Mardi Gras?” Jem asked.
“What?”
“Give me that,” he grumbled, piling the discarded deliciousness onto his own plate.
Then the rest of their food came, and Jem was pleased to find that the burger was above average. After his first bite, he said, “Are we going to talk about Tanner or not?”
Ammon finished another of the seemingly endless string of texts and put away his phone. He had some sort of salad, and he forked lettuce and chicken as he said, “Well, as I told you, right now the assumption they’re working on is that this is Tanner Kimball.”
“It’s not.”
“I understand that’s what you think. But you have to look at it from their perspective: a state ID was found with the remains, and a car registered to him was at the scene, and he’s close enough in height, weight, and coloring that it could be him. That goes a fair distance. The remains were severely damaged—”
“We know,” Jem said through a mouthful of burger. “We found them.”
“—which makes visual identification impossible. The damage to the face in particular was extensive, so a dental record match seems unlikely at this point. They may be able to get usable fingerprints from the remains, but that’s not going to be a straightforward process either—they’ll have to try to remove the skin, which was damaged as well. Obviously the best bet would be DNA; they’ve sealed Blake and Tanner’s rooms at the lodge and collected their belongings, so they should be able to find a sample for comparison, but the reality is that that kind of test won’t be completed for months, and then only if we beg, plead, and kick down doors. So that’s the long way of telling you that they’re using the limited information they have and proceeding on an assumption.”
“They’re wrong: it’s not Tanner.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Ammon moved lettuce around with his fork and threw a sidelong look at Tean.
“If Jem says it’s not Tanner,” Tean said, “I believe him. Do you think it’s Blake’s body?”
“Maybe,” Jem said. “Blake and Tanner were similar enough. They were both white, and they had the same kind of coloring—dark hair, dark eyes.”
“Apparently establishing identity with evidence doesn’t matter,” Ammon said. “You’ve got an expert who’s already made up his mind.”
“I’m not saying it was Blake.” Jem ran his hand over the table. “It could be someone else; I really don’t know.”
“But you know the d
ead man isn’t Tanner,” Ammon said.
“It’s not. It’s not him.”
“Ok,” Tean said. “Let’s all take a breath.”
Ammon’s expression was sour, and his eyes slid away.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you,” Jem said, “that the damage to the body was so extensive? Doesn’t it seem convenient that you can’t identify the remains visually?”
“He was trampled by a herd of wild horses,” Ammon said, gesturing to Tean as though asking for backup. “It’s not like they were wearing ballet slippers when they went over him.”
“Why was he out there? Why drive his car out near a herd of wild horses, park by a slot canyon, go in on foot, and then randomly get run down and trampled to death?”
A strange look crossed Tean’s face, but before Jem could ask what it meant, Ammon was talking again.
“Well, I don’t think his plan was to get trampled to death,” Ammon said. “And I don’t know why he was out there. It’s not what most people would do, but I don’t think it’s that unusual either. The BLM has problems every year with people going off designated roads—”
“In a Camaro?”
“—and getting too close to the herds. And I want to remind you that I’m on your side: I think the whole thing is fishy. But I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes things are weird just because they’re weird. We need more information before we can make a decision here.”
“Hold on,” Tean said. “You think he’s right?”
“I think it’s a possibility,” Ammon said grudgingly. “The two men do look alike. A car registered to Blake Bigney was still in the lodge’s parking lot; they’ve towed it, and the techs will go over it.”
Eyebrows shooting up, Jem said, “He didn’t take Blake’s car?”
“No.” Then, after some sort of internal struggling faintly visible on his face, Ammon added, “And there have been no reported stolen vehicles. No missing people either, for that matter.”
“He’s still in the area.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Holy shit,” Jem breathed, “Tanner’s still here.”
“What information do we have?” Tean asked.
“Hardly anything. The deputy medical examiner isn’t willing to shoulder this one, so all he would say is that the most likely cause of death probably, going out on a limb without a full and properly executed autopsy, might have been, could be blunt force trauma to the head.”
“Gee,” Jem said. “And he got a college degree and everything.”
“Elvira is an excellent forensic pathologist,” Tean said, frowning, “but I’m not sure even she’ll be able to tell exactly what killed this man. If she can, it’ll take time, maybe a lot. The reality is that, for the moment, we have to leave at least three possibilities open: homicide, suicide, and accident.”
“He accidentally put his head under a herd of horses,” Jem said. When Ammon opened his mouth, Jem added, “That was a joke.”
“He could have decided to conduct his own personal tour of Onion Creek and the herd,” Ammon said. “Some white trash idiot is out there shooting a gun, and it startles the herd and forces them into a stampede. He gets trampled.”
“I said it was a joke.”
“Even in that scenario,” Tean said, “we’re looking for someone sadistic. One of the horses was killed; I’m sure several others were wounded. It takes a certain kind of person to shoot at a wild animal like that, especially when we’re not talking about hunting. Have they recovered the bullets from the dead horse?”
Ammon’s hand stopped, the Coke halfway to his mouth, and he said, “I’ll check on that.”
“Suicide seems unlikely for the same reason. It’s entirely possible that someone jumped from the canyon’s rim, intending to kill himself. Under other conditions, a stampede up the slot canyon could have just been bad luck, although it’s an unnatural direction for panicked horses to go. But the gunshot wounds to the horses make the coincidence much less likely.”
“But not impossible,” Ammon said.
Tean looked like he wanted to argue, but then he shrugged. “Not impossible. As you said, it could have been someone who was shooting the horses for fun, spooked them, and intentionally or not drove them toward the slot. Did they estimate time of death?”
“You should have seen the deputy ME try to hotfoot it on that one. His best guess under these unusual circumstances, blah blah blah, is that he’d been dead for more than twenty-four hours. He suggested Wednesday or Thursday, so, again, first-class forensics.”
“At this rate, they should be hiring out-of-work veterinarians,” Jem said. “Tean could do a better job than whoever this jerkoff is.”
“No,” Tean said, “I couldn’t. I’m a vet, not a pathologist.”
“Frankly,” Ammon said, “they’d do better hiring you, Jem. You’re a better investigator than anybody in the sheriff’s department, from what I can tell.”
Jem had no idea how to respond to that. He settled for: “We haven’t talked about the thing that makes this not an accident or a suicide. That dead guy has Tanner’s car and Tanner’s ID. Antonio claimed Tanner killed his girlfriend on Thursday and sent us down here to look for him. He told us Tanner was wrapped up in something with drugs. Then we get down here, and it looks like Tanner has met a tragic end, although we conveniently can’t identify the body. There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“Except it could be,” Ammon said. “I’m sorry, but it could. There’s a lot of weird ways to die in this part of the world, and people keep finding new ones. Tean, tell him.”
“That’s true,” Tean said slowly, his eyes darting to Jem and then back to Ammon. “But I think the point here is that we don’t lose anything by treating it as a murder and, possibly, as a way for Tanner to fake his own death in order to avoid prosecution for Andi’s death. Jem doesn’t think that was Tanner in the canyon; that’s good enough for me. If we decide to wait on cause of death, positive ID, all of that, we’re going to lose weeks. Maybe months.”
“Not necessarily. Once the jurisdictional pissing contest is over, law enforcement will get to work. You’d be surprised how many times there’s a witness, or someone heard something, or an obvious answer works itself out when the investigation really gets going.”
“Yep,” Jem said. “I’d be extremely surprised.”
“Look, this was fine, talking this out,” Ammon said. “And I appreciate your input. You’re both smart, and you’ve made good points that need to be considered. I’m going to take those points and communicate them to the police chief and the sheriff. But I’m not even in the running for who’s going to carry this case. The best thing you two can do is step back and let the professionals handle it.”
“Do you think the sheriff can handle a case like this?” Tean asked. “Because of his age, I mean.”
“Do not try to change the subject.”
“I’m just asking—”
“I know what you’re asking. I’ve known you since you were a scrawny kid without any hair under his arms, and I know what you’re doing.”
To Jem’s surprise, Tean smiled. “Ok, fair. I heard what you said about staying out of this.”
“And?”
“And I’m acknowledging it. I appreciate your concern. It means a lot to me.”
“Not good enough.”
Tean nodded. He scraped the tines of the fork across his plate, set the fork down, and asked, “Are you going to answer my question?”
Ammon stood, pushing back his chair so that the legs squeaked across the polished pine boards. He took out his wallet and began counting out bills.
“Ammon,” Tean said.
“For fuck’s sake, Teancum. What I went through today, that doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“I’m sorry that—”
“Don’t talk. I can’t fucking listen to you right now.”
He threw the money on the table and left.
“He’s such a—”
“Don’t!” The word was savagely sharp. Tean covered his face with his hands and repeated more softly, “Don’t.”
They finished the meal in silence. Well, Jem finished both their meals in silence. Tean sat with his head in his hands. After the girl had cleared the table, Jem paid with cash. Touching Tean’s arm, he said, “You can either sit here and feel awful, or you can come back to the room and feel awful while Scipio licks your ear.”
“What did you find in their rooms today?”
“I didn’t—” The look on Tean’s face made him stop. “Nothing, unfortunately. The police were still there, dusting for prints, looking incredibly proud of themselves. How did you know?”
“Because you’re you.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“It’s a bad thing. Ninety percent bad, ten percent McDonald’s. Eighty-five percent bad, ten percent McDonald’s, five percent sweet. Seven percent sweet. Seven-point-five.” Tean scowled. “I need a piece of paper. There’s something in there about Vanilla Ice too, but I think that requires differential calculus to figure out.”
“Tean,” Jem said, words slipping out from under him like he was trying to cross an ice floe. “I can do this by myself. You know, if it’s too much with Ammon and—”
“God damn it.”
“Swear jar,” Jem whispered.
“Of course you can’t do it by yourself.” Tean pushed back from the table. He headed past Jem and out of the restaurant.
“Where are you going?”
“To feel awful and have a dog lick my ear!”
The hostess near the front was staring at Tean, her eyes wide.
“It’s not a sex thing,” Jem told her. “Um, I don’t think, anyway.”
Up ahead, Tean muttered, “Oh my gosh,” and walked faster.
14
A couple of hours later, Tean’s original plan of self-pity and Scipio’s commiseration hadn’t panned out. Scipio had been much more interested in climbing all over Jem, and Tean had only managed a few minutes of outrage before he fell asleep.
When he woke, the sun had shifted, and Jem was awake again too—if he’d slept at all. The blond man’s eyes were glued to the TV, which was playing some sort of cartoon with giant robots. Tean made his way to the bathroom, washed up, and then returned to the bed. Scipio immediately crawled onto his lap, crushing his thighs. In less than thirty seconds, the Lab’s whole body was shaking with the force of his snores. The smell of sun-hot dog and commercial bath soap filled the small room.