“Let it go,” Jem said.
Tean twisted to stare at the blond man.
“Bren was sweet,” Kazen said.“I loved him.I wasn’tinlove with him, you know, but I was happy when I was with him.I seriously don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met him.Gone crazy from blue balls, I guess.”
“Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Brennon?”Jem said.“Anyone he’d gotten in a fight with?Anything like that?”
Kazen darted a look at the hall, and then he snapped his attention back to them, color rising in his cheeks.“I thought they arrested someone.I thought it was Brother Young.”
“We’re trying to cover our bases.”
Kazen shrugged.“Not really.Bren was such a great guy; everybody loved him.”
Nodding, Jem rose.“Thanks for talking to us, Kazen.Now, you hang here for a minute.I’ll be right back.”
“What?Why?What are you doing?”
“Going to see what you don’t want us to find.”
“But I talked to you!I told you everything you wanted!”
“Tean, keep an eye on him.Kazen, I’m serious: don’t move, or shit’s going to get real.”
“Hey, you can’t go back there!”Kazen shouted after Jem.But he didn’t try to follow.
From the back of the house came the sounds of drawers opening and shutting, the creak of springs, the squeak of wood against wood.Then Tean heard that grating noise again—and this time, he recognized it: the sound of the lid of the toilet tank scraping into place.Kazen stared down the hallway, breathing rapidly, jaw tight.He sat back in the recliner, rubbed his mouth, and then grabbed his phone.When he looked at the screen, he said, “Oh shit.It’s Bren.”
“What do you mean—” Tean asked, leaning forward to look at the phone.
Kazen threw the phone at his face, and Tean flung himself backward.The phone still hit him, but a glancing blow on his cheekbone instead of striking his nose.For the second time that night, Tean stumbled into the glass-topped furniture.This time, he lost his balance and fell.
As soon as the phone left his hand, Kazen launched himself out of the chair.He sprinted for the front door and threw it open, and it crashed against the wall.A moment later, Kazen was outside, the storm door wobbling shut behind him.
Jem appeared in the hallway as Tean was still getting to his feet.The blond man cast a single glance around the room, threw something at Tean, and barked, “Shit!”He took off after Kazen without a backward glance.
Luck more than skill let Tean catch the object as it flew toward him.It was a man’s wallet—black leather that had worn down to gray at the corners, and dripping wet.Tean flipped it open as he started toward the door.A driver’s license occupied a clear plastic holder, and from it stared back a familiar face: Brennon Lee.
Shouts broke the night outside.
Tean shouldered open the storm door, and the chill night air met him, catching in his throat.A car was pulled across the front of the Shumways’ driveway, and the glow of the headlights picked out the shape of a small figure.A woman, Tean realized a moment later.She was shouting, “Down!Down!Down!”
A familiar form stood with his hands in the air, his back to the woman, maybe thirty yards down the sidewalk—where he must have stopped when she’d started yelling.Slowly, with visible frustration, Jem lowered himself to his knees, and then he lay face down on the sidewalk.
In the silence that followed, the distant pounding of footsteps drew Tean’s attention up the street.At the end of the block, someone passed under a streetlight—bald, big, dressed in dark clothing.The man cut the corner and disappeared.
“Hands where I can see them!”the woman barked.She was looking at Tean now.
Carefully, Tean raised his hands.He was still holding Brennon’s wallet.
11
In the white box of the interview room, Tean measured his breaths and tried to tune his brain to a dead channel.
It was nearly midnight, and after a flurry of questions at Kazen Shumway’s house, Agents Trevino and Van Cleave of the SBI had made him wait: first, placing him in the back of Trevino’s unmarked car while Jem sat on the curb; and then, when South Jordan cruisers began to show up, shipping Tean and Jem back to the station separately.They hadn’t been cuffed.They hadn’t been read their rights.They hadn’t been processed—searched, fingerprinted, all that.Which was why Tean could look at his watch and see that it was now a minute closer to midnight.But all of that felt like a technicality, because he was still here, locked in this white box.
A round table that could have come from an office supply catalogue.Two rolling chairs, the kind he was accustomed to seeing at desks—not the hard, metal, folding chairs that showed up frequently in the cop shows Jem liked to watch, the chairs that someone inevitably threw against a wall.The room had two steel doors set at ninety degrees to each other, and a wired-glass window with blinds that could be lowered from the hallway.Fluorescents filled the room with so much light that Tean thought it should have been hot.Every once in a while, what sounded like a printer cycling interrupted the ambient hum of the building.
The problem was the smell: a hint of body odor, distress, anxiety.Heavy, stale air with a tang like the volatile fatty acids of flop sweat.