by Gregory Ashe
“I never told them I’m going, and I never asked them to book—”
Tightening his grip, Jem gave a little shake that made the glasses slide to the end of Tean’s nose. He caught them with his other hand and pushed them back up, and then he shook Tean again.
“Ok, ok, stop it. You’re going to give me the adult-equivalent of shaken-baby syndrome.”
“Wouldn’t that just be shaken-adult syndrome?”
“I don’t want to give them this. They’re always—they’re always dragging me around like this, always doing things so that they look perfect and I look like the problem. I’m tired of it. And, if I’m being totally honest, I like that they feel bad. I want them to feel bad for a while.”
“All right. Fuck ’em. Let them feel terrible.”
“Well, I don’t want them to feel terrible.”
“Nope, that’s what we’re going with. Awful. Horrible. The human shit-stains on the universe’s nice white panties. We want them to feel ten times worse than they ever made you feel.”
“They’re my family. I don’t want—jeez, I honestly don’t want them to feel whatever you just described. I’m not even sure I understood what you just described, but I don’t want that.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re a good guy, and you’re hurt and upset, and you don’t like people bullying you into things. Sometimes you don’t even like people mildly suggesting you try new things.”
“If I wanted to try Mexican fusion, I’d go to a Mexican-fusion restaurant, Jem. I don’t need you mucking up my recipes.”
“Yes, I learned my lesson. I want to apologize again for my revolutionary idea that we should put cheddar cheese on our nachos and use tortilla chips instead of mushy plantains. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that even though you don’t like how they went about this, they’re still your family, and you still care about them, and maybe you should give them a chance.”
“Hold on. You hate my family.”
“Yes, God. I want to push Hugh or Lou or whatever his name is into one of those machines that make slices of American cheese. A million little plastic-wrapped slices of Hugh. But the point is that they’re not my family. They’re your family. And you’re the one they’re trying to make things right with.”
“Possibly. Or it’s just more of their usual games.”
“My recommendation? Leave your phone off until you decide. They seem annoyingly persistent, like someone else I know.”
Jem whuffed when the doc’s elbow caught him in the gut. The noise drew Scipio’s attention, and when Jem fell onto his bed, trying to get his wind back, the Lab bounded onto the mattress next to him. Apparently Scipio’s primary first-aid strategy was licking every inch of Jem’s face.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Jem said, getting a pillow over his face. “Tean, it’s slimy and sticky at the same time. How is that possible?”
“Saliva’s actually very interesting. It—”
“No, stop, I’m already dying of boredom. Jesus Christ, that was my shin!”
“Oops,” Tean said.
Pulling the pillow away, Jem tried to use it to run interference. Scipio must have thought it was a game because he got a mouthful of pillow and started tugging and growling. The familiar panic started in Jem’s chest, and he released the pillow. Scipio stumbled back, caught himself at the edge of the bed, and then carried the pillow forward to nudge Jem with it.
“Scipio, come here,” Tean said.
“No, he’s fine. I just don’t want to play that game.” Jem glanced over at Tean. “I think I know what we need to do next.”
Tean raised an eyebrow.
“The first question we need to answer is why Tanner wanted to fake his own death. Then we need to know what he was involved in. The drugs, I mean. If we can do that, we can figure out why he’s still in the area and what he’s going to do next. And if we can figure out what he’s going to do next, we can catch the son of a bitch and prove he killed Andi. And that he killed Blake, I guess, or whoever was in that canyon.”
“Maybe, Jem. Catching him isn’t the same as proving he killed Andi.”
“But it’s the first step.”
After a long moment, Tean nodded.
“If I wanted to find someone, I’d learn everything about them that I could. Where they went, what they did, who they spent time with. From their diet to their sleep schedule to their favorite sex positions. Literally every detail I could find, just in case it helped down the road.”
Tean was wearing a curious expression, but he nodded.
“I’m starting to realize that, aside from Decker, I don’t know anything about Tanner. I don’t know what his home life was like before Decker. I don’t know what happened to him after he left. I never tried to find him; I wanted to, but at the same time, I didn’t. Maybe that’s where we need to start: figure out who he is, who he really is.” He raised his chin. “But I can’t do it on my own. It’s going to take me too long, and I’ll—I’ll get frustrated and give up if I try to do it myself.”
Tean nodded again. “Let’s work on it together. It’ll be good—”
Jem groaned.
“—practice.”
16
They read on their phones until dinner, taking one break in the early evening to walk Scipio and let him run and play at a local dog park. The swath of thick grass looked impossible against the red-rock walls to the east. At this hour, with the sun falling toward the horizon, the shadows were lengthening, and the light took on the same colors as the rock: orange and red, fire and gold. It haloed the leaves on a line of cottonwoods and turned them into living torches, the leaves translucently green and strung on a web of fire. Where it touched rock and stone, the colors deepened, red becoming a shade of brick, orange like hammered copper, until the sun’s angle shifted and shadow swallowed a few more inches. Even the river’s muddy-orange waters caught the light, the riffles outlined in slick white needlework. Tean breathed the desert air, clean, sweet with the smell of the Colorado and salt cedar.
Jem stayed outside the fenced area, reading, while Tean kept one eye on Scipio—the Lab was sprinting up and down the length of the park with a Golden Retriever—and read too. Tean had done the initial search for any materials related to Tanner Kimball, and he’d been surprised by the abundance of results. He’d split the reading up as best he could, sending shorter, more manageable articles about Tanner’s life after the juvenile correction facility to Jem’s phone. Tean saved the longer, more difficult pieces about Tanner’s pre-Decker life for himself. After the park, with Scipio half-snoozing in the back seat, they went back to the lodge. They left Scipio with fresh food and water—the Lab was already napping, paws twisting the sheets as he twitched—and grabbed dinner in the restaurant.
They got a table at the back. The room was crowded tonight, young couples, young families, older couples, older families. A lone woman in Merrells and cargo pants, her hair held back in a kerchief, reminded Tean of Hannah. At the table next to Tean and Jem, a red-faced man was trying to tell a story—something about a stretch of the Colorado he had rafted that day. He was bellowing to be heard over his family’s fragmented conversation. He wore a blond toupee that he kept having to settle back into place.
“For fuck’s sake,” Jem muttered, glancing over at the man before turning back to his phone. “Put a bullet between my eyes if I ever tell you I want to track down my dad.”
“Are you ok?”
It looked like it took serious effort for Jem to tear his gaze away from the screen. He set the phone down and glanced at Tean before his eyes skated away. “Tanner was a real piece of shit. Is a real piece of shit.”
“He is. He really is.” Tean hesitated. “What did you learn about his life after Decker?”
“Not much. Hardly anything, really. He’s got a LinkedIn page that describes him as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and micro-finance ally, whatever the fuck that means. He claims he worked at some of the top t
ech companies in the valley. He’s got a Facebook page and an Instagram that are locked down, but his profile pictures show him climbing mountains and hiking and being a ski bum. You know, in case you couldn’t figure out on your own that he’s loaded. I think it’s mostly horseshit; he’s not as good at this as me.”
Tean nodded. “Did you know he had assault charges on his record? That’s why he ended up in Decker.”
“Big surprise,” Jem said.
“What does that mean?”
Jem shook his head, the slightest hint of a flush coming up as he scratched his beard. “He’s a piece of shit.” His gaze cut away again. “That’s all. If he’s done anything like that since, it hasn’t made the papers. The Daily Herald had a stub about him passing bad checks, but that was almost ten years ago. Shit. What a waste of time.”
“I don’t think it was, actually.”
“If you say it was good practice, I’m going to hulk out and smash this table.”
“Hi!” The young man had an enormous smile, and his waiter’s apron was covered in buttons. It took Tean a moment to realize that all the buttons were mementos from state and national parks. “How are you guys doing tonight?”
“Well, you just eavesdropped on me threatening to smash a table,” Jem said. “How do you think I’m doing?”
“He’s not doing great,” Tean said.
For a moment, the young man’s expression was frozen in a blank smile. Then he started up again. “You guys down here to do some camping?”
“We’re literally staying in a hotel,” Jem said. “What do you think?”
“He’s grumpy,” Tean said. “Don’t let him bother you.”
The young man laughed. “I bet you guys are going to do some great hiking, right? The hiking is great down here. It’s great.”
“Did you hear that, Tean? It’s great. Everything’s great.”
Again that blank, frozen expression. Then more smiling. “You guys are in luck tonight because we’ve got our killer cowboy beans on the fire. We only make them once a week, and we always sell out.”
“Did the cowboy beans kill someone?”
“Stop it,” Tean whispered.
“Or do they have a killer cowboy in them?”
Tean kicked him under the table.
After another of those mini-reboots, the young man whipped out a pad and a pen and said, “What can I get you to drink? What about a couple of lime rickeys after a long, hot day in the saddle?”
“Do the lime rickeys have gin in them?”
Apparently, that was the funniest joke the young man had ever heard.
“Who is this kid?” Jem said, craning his neck to look around. “Are we on Candid Camera?”
“He’ll have a Coke.”
“A beer.”
“And I’ll have a water.”
“A whiskey.”
“I’ve got a Coke and whiskey, oops, I mean a water. Gee, you jokers have got me all turned around. I’ll be right back.”
“Shoot me,” Jem said as the young man trotted away. “Or put me down humanely like I’m a lame horse.”
“Ok, now you really have to tell me what’s up. Why are you being mean to that kid? Usually I’m the one who’s mean.”
“Oh, please. You couldn’t be mean to a waiter if your life depended on it. I’m angry because—I don’t know. I just hate this. I hate all of it. I hate what he did to Andi, and I hate having to learn about everything else he did.”
“Like the assaults,” Tean said softly.
“All of it.” Jem massaged a spot between his eyes.
“But you got upset when I mentioned the assaults.”
“Will you cut it out with that?”
“A Coke and a water. Sorry, fellas, no whiskey today. And I brought you a lime rickey to try, just for funsies.”
Still massaging the spot on his forehead, Jem mouthed, Just for funsies.
“Stop it,” Tean whispered again.
They ordered their food—after all the questions, Jem ended up getting the killer cowboy beans—and then Jem tried to send the young man away with the promise that Tean would be perfectly satisfied with a few flakes of oatmeal dusted with the crumbs from a rice cracker. The red-faced man at the table next to them had really gotten into it, pounding his fist on the table, shouting about his raft, while a bird-like woman kept patting his arm and saying, “Everyone listen to Harold, everyone please listen to Harold.”
“So it’s another dead end,” Jem said, massaging his temples now. “The research, I mean. I guess we’ll have to wait until Tinajas can give us something on Monday.”
“I’m not sure it’s a dead end. And I don’t think it was wasted. In fact, I think I learned a lot about Tanner. He comes from a well-off family, apparently a devoted family. Reading carefully, I think they made problems go away several times before he was finally prosecuted.”
Jem’s hands froze. The question was on his face, but he said nothing.
“Had you heard something like that before?”
After a moment, Jem gave a tiny shake of his head.
“Well, it’s obvious that Tanner has some sort of personality disorder, although therapists and psychiatrists won’t give an official personality disorder diagnosis until a child reaches the age of eighteen. The behavioral problems come through pretty clearly in the profile pieces that were written around the assaults—the second time he was charged, the Tribune and the Deseret News both dug deeply into his life, and they cobbled together a pretty detailed account of his childhood highlights: bullying, destruction of property, fighting. There’s one story that seems particularly relevant. According to the Tribune article, in eighth grade, Tanner tricked a girl into letting him come over when her parents weren’t home. She was a good girl, not the kind to have a boy over without her parents knowing. Tanner pretended to be gay, if you can believe that—used her gay best friend as a kind of Trojan horse to get him inside. As soon as Tanner was inside, he assaulted the girl. When the gay best friend objected, Tanner turned on him too. He managed to get on top of the boy, held him down, and tried to cut off his ear with a pair of pinking shears. In eighth grade.”
“And he didn’t get in trouble? Nothing?”
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“It sounds like what happened with Andi. A party, a girl rejects him, he freaks out, someone gets hurt.”
“That seems to be a pattern, yes.”
Jem grunted.
“There’s more than just that one incident. He splashed gasoline on a neighbor’s car and lit it on fire, but the accelerant burned out without doing more than cosmetic damage. He—” Tean swallowed. “This one is not pleasant. He stole a nail gun from a construction site. Over the next year, a neighbor who took in strays reported multiple dead animals, their bodies full of nails.”
“He likes hurting things. Animals. People.” Jem’s voice was planed flat, empty of emotion. “He takes his time doing it. If he can fuck with your head while doing it, that’s just icing on the cake.”
“And it sounds like what happened with Andi, right? The dart syringe. He likes his toys, just like Antonio told us.”
“This isn’t telling us anything I didn’t already know. I knew he was a sadistic prick. I knew he liked hurting people.”
“But it’s more than that. These are patterns of behavior that confirm Antonio’s story, which is important. And they tell us that Tanner got away with this kind of behavior for a lot longer than most people. He never got charged with anything until he was sixteen and had his first assault charge, and he walked away from that one. The girl showed signs of sexual violence, but whoever assaulted her had used a condom, and Tanner ended up producing an alibi: a party with friends. People didn’t even talk about this other stuff until the second assault charge, and that’s only because the second girl was lucky enough to have one of those nanny cameras that caught the whole thing. That’s what he went to Decker for. That’s what his
family couldn’t buy his way out of.”
“Ok, so now we know Mommy and Daddy tried to keep him out of trouble, and we know he’s exactly the kind of monster I already knew he was. Great. Big revelations.”
Tean sat back in his seat. The hub of voices washed over him, a surf of white noise that in a strange way made it easier to concentrate. Opposite, Jem was still hunched over the table, head in his hands. No killer cowboy beans yet. No rice-cracker crumbs.
Tean stood and pulled his chair around the table.
“What are you doing?”
“Sitting on this side of the table.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s annoying.”
“Maybe I want to share your killer cowboy beans when they come.”
“No. You can’t. You’ll get all farty and gross.”
“Did you know that plant lectins in undercooked beans can actually cause food poisoning? In theory, if you’re already in a compromised state, they could kill you.”
“Another thing to look forward to.”
“Jem.”
Jem groaned. “Now what?”
“We don’t have to do this if it’s too hard.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t do this on my own. It was your idea to try to learn about Tanner. That’s what we’ve been doing. Now you’ve completely shut down, and I’m trying my best here, but I don’t know how to see what you would see.”
“What, Tean? What is there to see? He’s a monster. I knew that one; check it off the list. He gets away with it. I knew that one too; double check. And he’s got this perfect, amazing life now. Wow, things worked out for Tanner again. What a fucking shock.”
“I don’t understand. We’re here because you wanted to do this; if you changed your mind, then let’s go home. If this is too much for you, which I think—”
“I don’t want to hear what you think. Just shut up for a while.”
The waiter came back with their food. He had a strip of masking tape on the apron now, with Randy written in black marker. “You guys,” he said, laughing as he set down their food. “I didn’t even tell you my name was Randy. I can’t believe how wack I am today.”