by Gregory Ashe
The third shot came as Tean rounded the back of the cabin. His breath burned in his chest. His heart pounded inside his head. He had to fight his way through the next thicket, branches slapping him in the face, leaves in his mouth, then the tang of blood. It seemed to go on forever, and then he was clear, stumbling into the powdery starlight that coated everything in the canyon without really letting him see. The sound of the Dolores guided him, and after a few more yards, gravel crunched underfoot. Either Kristine was still shooting, or the fireworks were reaching a crescendo; maybe both. Jem had already gotten the raft into the water, and he hunched there, the river already up to his ankles.
“Get in,” Tean called, trying to keep his voice as quiet as possible.
Grimacing, Jem swung one leg into the raft, still holding it in place.
“Just get in!”
With a bewildered look, Jem climbed onto the raft. Even over the water’s rushing noise, Tean could hear Jem swearing in pain. The raft wobbled, turned, and began to float. Tean splashed into the Dolores, the water at his ankles, then at his shins, the force of his movement throwing droplets up to sprinkle his chest and face and glasses. The water made his jump awkward, but he landed halfway in the raft. The rubber side threatened to fold under him.
Then a hand caught the waist of his tech pants and hauled him in. Jem was still swearing as he dragged Tean down next to him, where they lay in the silty, chilly water at the bottom of the raft, keeping flat in hopes that either Kristine wouldn’t see them or, at worst, wouldn’t be able to hit them.
Jem’s swearing reached a muttering crescendo when he finally managed to ask, “And just what the fuck was that?”
“We needed to move, and I figured I was close enough to catch up.”
“You figured?”
“Plus it looked like something those dumb, butch het guys always do in the movies you like.”
The sound of the water against stone made counterpoint with the sound of water against the raft.
“Oh my God,” Jem whispered. “What have I created?”
They shifted around until Tean was snuggled up against Jem, who was pleasantly warm in contrast to the water puddled on the bottom of the raft. Jem held him close, although he winced whenever Tean moved abruptly.
After a while, the rush of adrenaline faded, and Tean started to shake. Jem grunted as he reached across to stroke Tean’s hair. The feel of the gun bucking in his hands was very real. That instant of seeing the raw, torn edges of Tanner’s throat. The blood, and the sound of their footsteps splashing, and the way it dripped between the boards. He remembered being very young, the smell of his grandfather’s cognac-dipped cigarillos, the bright, stiff November morning they had gone out to hunt.
Jem didn’t try to quiet him. He held him, and he ran his fingers through Tean’s hair as the sobs grew more and more intense, shaking Tean until water sloshed over the raft’s side. Eventually, the crying stopped, and Tean wiped his hot, puffy eyes against Jem’s chest.
Overhead, the stars were a river too, channeled by the high stone walls of the canyon. Maybe heaven was a place, Tean thought. A planet. A star. Enough rocket fuel and enough time, and anybody could get there. Maybe it was like the ocean, and all rivers flowed to it, carrying souls along. Maybe it was the end of a flat world, and when you reached it, you dropped off into nothing and nowhere.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jem asked quietly.
Tean shook his head, his eyes stinging again. “No.”
Jem tightened his hold around Tean, and they floated. A nighthawk floated too, above them, drifting on the river of stars. Jerusalem crickets made soft, hissing noises when the raft disturbed them: the sound of pages rustling in a great book. Where seeps opened in the high walls, garlands of columbine and borage and maidenhair ferns hung down, living tapestries with their colors muted by night. Once, where a thin strip of muddy bank allowed sedge and a sad cattail to grow, a firefly winked at them.
Then the sound of the water changed, and ahead, a ravine cut up and away toward the canyon’s rim. A man stood there, shoulders slumped, but he held up one hand when he saw them. Farther back, huddled figures cut silhouettes out of the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
“Fuck me,” Jem groaned.
When they drew even with the rocky shore at the bottom of the ravine, Tean climbed out of the raft, and Ammon helped him pull it to shore.
41
First, the paramedics had to look at them. Then Jem and Tean had to ride in the ambulance to the hospital, with Officer Tebbs accompanying them. The woman Tean remembered from his first visit to the Moab police station, the woman who had looked after Scipio for a few hours, was gone. Exhaustion made her look ill, hollowing out her face, leaching the color from her skin until she looked jaundiced. She didn’t speak until they got to the hospital, and then all she said was, “Detective Young led us straight to her. To Kristine Colin-Bowman.” Then, after swallowing, she added, “Suicide by cop.”
Jem and Tean were separated, and they had to deal with nurses and doctors and paperwork. The worst of the injuries seemed to be the laceration on the side of Jem’s head, which Jager had given him and Haggerty had reopened, and his broken ribs. The doctor who examined him touched the still-healing cut on Jem’s throat, the one that Jager’s knife had opened.
“Who did these sutures?”
“A friend.”
“Looks like your friend actually knew what he was doing; you’re lucky.”
“Lucky doesn’t come close to describing it,” Jem said.
The whole time Jem was being suitably stitched and bandaged and wrapped, his arm fitted in a sling, he was riding a nice little cloud of Vicodin. Then the questions started. Officer Tebbs did most of the talking, but a sheriff’s deputy Jem hadn’t met before was there too, and she asked a few questions as well. With Chief Nobles and Sheriff McEneany gone, both departments were struggling to deal with the slaughter that had unfolded in the canyon outside Moab. Jem ran them through the whole thing: Kristine and Nathaniel’s plan and the fabricated story about the shipment of drugs, Blake’s betrayal, Andi’s murder, Weckesser’s callout and the subsequent killing and coverup that McEneany had assisted with. Jem explained the conspiracy among the three law-enforcement officers that had fractured after McEneany killed Antonio and shot Jager, and how it had dissolved completely when Haggerty took matters into his own hands to clean house. He told them about Jager’s confession in the Vegas hospital, and then about Haggerty’s attack after they had decoded the pickup location.
Tebbs looked punch-drunk through the series of revelations. The deputy, with her frizzy hair and her attempt at a hard face, said, “I don’t get it. There were never any drugs?”
Jem sighed and walked them through it again.
The only hard part was the question at the end.
“And who killed Tanner Kimball?”
“Nathaniel whatever his name. Dayton. They killed each other.”
Tebbs and the deputy exchanged looks.
“You need to work on your tells,” Jem said. “You’re never going to win any money in poker like that.”
“Don’t gamble,” Tebbs said.
“Only bingo nights,” the deputy said. “Now quit bullshitting us and tell us who killed Tanner. We know it wasn’t Dayton; there’s no way that adds up with what you two left behind in that cabin.”
“Nathaniel did,” Jem said.
Another long look was exchanged.
“That’s interesting,” the deputy said. She ought to be wearing a name tag, Jem thought. “Because your buddy tells us he killed Mr. Kimball.”
“He’s not my buddy. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Actually, he told us,” she checked a notepad, “‘If Jem says I’m his boyfriend, remind him that I only said that to make a point in the heat of the moment, and probably a better term would be romantic interest, but the kind where you’ve only been on one Prowler date, and you still have t
o pretend to find everything the other one says really interesting, and you do that weird thing where you both try to kiss each other on the cheek at the end of the night, and immediately after that you think maybe it would be better if you died alone and your dog ate your face before anyone found you.’ Is that about right?”
“He’s like a Valentine’s card,” Jem said. “He can’t turn it off.”
“Who killed Tanner Kimball?”
“Nathaniel did.”
They went at it like that for a while. It was past two in the morning when they finally let him go. Jem asked for directions to wherever they had stashed Tean, and he found himself wandering past examination cubicles, where thin plastic curtains stirred in his wake. Ahead, he heard familiar voices, and he slowed. A row of molded-plastic chairs lined the opposite wall; on one of them, a paper pharmacy bag sat next to a Ziploc holding a familiar-looking watch and wallet. Ammon’s shit. When Jem dug through the pharmacy bag, he found two brown vials with Ammon’s name on them. It took him a minute to decode the labels; he was tired, and he hadn’t been practicing. He didn’t recognize one of them—eszopiclone—but he recognized his old buddy codeine with acetaminophen.
Ammon’s voice rose sharply on the other side of the curtain. “I’m not trying to talk about us. I’m saying I want to take care of you. Please let me take care of you right now. Why won’t you listen to me? Can you even hear what I’m saying?”
“I am listening,” Tean said. “Everything you say is about us. That’s the only thing we can talk about anymore, and I don’t want to talk right now.”
“Everything I say is about us? Bullcrap. We’re talking about you right now.”
Tean sighed.
“You’re scaring me, and I’m worried about you. I want to help you—”
“You can’t!”
Jem opened the first vial and shook out a handful of pills. He stashed them in his pocket.
“You can’t, Ammon,” Tean said more softly. “Go away, please.”
Jem replaced the first vial and drew out the second. He helped himself to a generous pour of his old buddies.
“Please go away. Please. I can’t do this right now. I can’t do any of this right now.”
Jem replaced the second vial.
He was pocketing the pills when the curtain was flung back and Ammon stormed into the hall. His gaze settled on Jem. His eyes were red, his cheeks flushed, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He drew the back of a hand across his face and cleared his throat. Then he took two steps and grabbed Jem’s good arm.
“Let go of me.”
“We’re going to have a talk,” Ammon said. “Give me one second of trouble about it, and I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands. Understand?”
Before Jem could answer, he was being dragged down the hall, his ribs screaming as he stumbled to keep up.
They stopped at the next intersection, where Ammon released him with a shove that sent Jem back into the opposite wall. The thrum of the fluorescents filled Jem’s ears. Down the hall, an older man wheeled a squeaky mop bucket along the linoleum. He wore ancient headphones, the foam pads covering his ears, and his gaze was fixed on the arc of his mop. So much for a witness.
“We’re doing this right now?” Jem said, one hand sliding into the pocket where he kept the length of paracord with the hex nut. “Right here? All right. Tell me about how he belongs to you. Tell me about that trip to Vegas you want me to take, how you’re going to make sure I never show up in his life again. How’d that go for you last time?”
Ammon’s fingers curled into fists, and he held his arms stiff at his sides. “Do you know what that did to him? What it’s still doing to him?”
“Of course I—”
“Shut your goddamn mouth!”
The shout echoed up and down the hall. The old man paused, slid the foam pad off one ear, and glanced around. The tinny sound of rock played through the headphones. The Ramones, Jem thought. I’m going to kill a man or possibly be killed myself, and I’ve got The Ramones as my fucking killtrack.
“This is on you,” Ammon said, stabbing a finger at Jem. “You dragged him into this. You ruined his life. And now you let him get hurt, and he’s not going to get better from it. Not by himself. He can’t. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Jem gave a jerky nod.
“If I ever run into you, just the two of us, I’m going to do something I’ll regret. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Another jerk of his head.
Ammon loosed a shuddering breath, the tension melting out of him, and he looked tired and empty. “Go clean up your fucking mess.”
42
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. After a period of unrelenting clarity, juggling the broken-glass memories as they cut deeper and deeper, Tean felt something give way inside him. His daily life became a blur of half-sleeping and half-waking, liminal spaces that he could barely distinguish. He went to work. He came home. He walked Scipio. He talked to his parents and his siblings—short, fractured calls that left Tean relieved for the silence that came after them. Ammon had vanished from the apartment building. Once, Tean made the mistake of checking Facebook and saw a picture of Ammon with Lucy and the kids; the caption described their family trip to Lake Powell.
When various law enforcement branches came back again and again, wanting to hear the details from those days in Moab, he talked through it all again. He shared his bed with Jem, and more than once, in the labyrinth of those threshold places, when he bolted upright because he could feel the gun in his hands and see the hole in Tanner’s throat, he realized Jem was awake too. He knew Jem needed something, and he knew he couldn’t give it to him. He was aware, at the edge of consciousness, of Jem trying very, very hard to fix him.
One November day, it was a food-mat puzzle for Scipio. Tean had come home from another of those featureless days at the DWR office, unable to remember a single specific event, and heard laughter inside the apartment.
“No, no, no,” Jem said. “You’re cheating. You have to wait until I say go.”
Tean pushed through the door. The puzzle was enormous, three feet by five feet, with toys attached to it at a couple dozen locations. Tean had seen this kind of toy before, and the premise was simple: food was hidden in various toys and pockets, and the dog was supposed to spend time searching out the treats. It was supposed to be both a way to keep the dog busy and a form of mental exercise.
Jem was kneeling on the mat, hiding treats and using his shoulder to edge out Scipio. Scipio, undeterred, was trying to get around him to the treats.
“Uh uh,” Jem said. “Sit.”
Scipio sat. Then he licked a long stripe behind Jem’s ear.
“God, now I have to shower. Stay. Good boy.”
As soon as Jem turned to stow more of the treats in their hiding spots, Scipio lay down and began nosing through the hidden pockets, eating the treats Jem had already hidden one by one.
“No,” Jem said, “I told you—” When he caught sight of Tean, his smile faltered and then came back twice as bright. “Hi. How was work?”
“It was good.”
“Your son is a cheater.”
Scipio currently had his nose halfway inside a pocket designed to look like a squirrel. He met Tean’s eyes with a surprisingly guilty expression.
Tean smiled. “He’s just doing what he’s best at.”
It was like watching a cloud move across Jem’s face—the disappointment that whatever he had hoped for, Tean wasn’t giving him. The smile stayed where it was, but it dimmed.
“Show me how this works,” Tean said, bending down to unlace his Keens. “Maybe between the two of us, we can manage to keep him away long enough to set it all up.”
“You’re tired. We’ll do it another time.”
A few months before, Tean would have insisted. Now he just nodded.
“We could go on a walk,” Jem said.
“Twen
ty minutes? I’m just going to lie down.”
“Ok,” Jem said. He didn’t even stir when Scipio ran a tongue over his hand. “Sure.”
Once, it was clothes. Tean came home to voices through the apartment door again.
“For Christ’s sake, your father does not have the coloring for that. Are you out of your damn mind?”
When Tean pushed into the apartment, Jem and Scipio were standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by clothes: t-shirts, button-ups, sweaters, cardigans, crew-neck sweatshirts and zip-up hoodies. Jeans. Tech pants. Sweatpants. Scipio was sitting on an orange tee.
“It looks like a Kohl’s truck got hijacked,” Tean said. “Or a Ross exploded.”
“We’re picking out clothes for you,” Jem said with another of those huge smiles. “How was work?”
“It was good,” Tean said as he unlaced the Keens.
“Your son inherited your sense of style.”
Fondling Scipio’s ears as the Lab pressed into him, Tean smiled and studied the spread of clothes. “Lots of green and blue.”
“You look good in green and blue.”
“More green,” Tean said with a smile.
“That’s right. Come on, you can try on some of this stuff. Don’t listen to Scipio; he’s a bitch when it comes to the runway, but I promise I’ll be honest.”
So Tean tried on a flannel shirt in blue plaid. Jem’s fingers were shaking as he did up the buttons, and Tean had to take over and finish the job himself.
“There,” Jem said, tugging on the shirttail. “You look so handsome. What do you think?”
“I like it.”
And that’s how it was with the sweater, with the corduroys, with the long-sleeved tee.
“That’s enough for right now,” Jem said. He had red spots in his cheeks, and he tried twice to refold the tee before he gave up and dropped it on a pile of more shirts.
“I’m ok. We can keep going.”
“No, no. That’s enough. I know this isn’t your thing.”