Other photos were more interesting, though, because they seemed genuinely personal, and Tean found himself wondering where River had found them.Social media again?Family members?Friends?There was one of Zeb and Reed, both men shirtless, sitting in webbed lawn chairs with tackle boxes at their feet.There was one of Kai that had been taken from behind as he looked into a mirror, his face puffy and, in that single moment, unguarded.Another showed Tess at some sort of Halloween party—she wore a non-regulation nurse’s uniform and fishnet stockings, and her hair was a mile high, which meant it had to be a wig that even the drag queens at Rainbow House would have loved.She was surrounded by women in equally ridiculous getups.In another, Zeb flinched as someone stitched up the cut to his cheek that would eventually become his defining scar.In another, Reed was bottom up in the back of a truck, apparently asleep and surrounded by beer cans.
Nothing that told Tean anything.Nothing, as far as he could see, to make someone want to kill River Jordan.
He scanned through the notes, trying to get a sense of any underlying organization or system.As far as he could tell, though, it seemed like a jumble.Some sections of notes were clumped together, focused on a single person from the pack.There was a block of text about Tess, for example.It might have been helpful, except the notes were so disconnected that it was hard to tell what was meaningful and what wasn’t.Attention-seekingwas an interesting insight into her personality, sure.But did he need to know things likefoot surgeryorhelps neighbor – can’t get out much?Maybe that last bitwasmeaningful; it certainly made Tean wonder how a woman who helped a disabled neighbor ended up as part of a pack of murderers.
In other places, the information seemed more useful—the section of notes about Zeb, for example, corroborated Tean’s suspicions that Zeb had been sexually abused by his older stepbrother, Rydel.This, in turn, had led to Zeb and Kai and the others killing Rydel.Tean didn’t know much about Reed.River’s notes suggested he was a skilled hunter and tracker and that he had some sort of military experience, although it seemed even River hadn’t been able to track down where or when.
The notes on Kai were the most extensive—and the most difficult to follow.Kai was the leader.Kai was the one who had convinced Zeb and Reed and Tess to go along with his plans to murder Rydel Owens.More than murder.They had tortured him.And then they had hunted down River and killed her too.They would have killed Tean.They would have killed two children.And all of it was because of Kai.
He was everywhere in the document.Incomplete sentences would pop up for seemingly no reason—in the middle of River’s impressions about the town of Roosevelt, for example, the kind of text she might use to set the scene while narrating a podcast, there was this line:Kai – water polo?And then that was it.Nothing more about water polo in the whole document.It was like the thought had popped up, stream-of-consciousness style, and she had jotted it down in the middle of her observations of the town so that she wouldn’t forget it.
It was going to make working his way through the notes difficult, to say the least.
After a moment, though, Tean opened a fresh document and created several sections.He created one on the pack—he hated calling the group of killers by that name, but it had cemented itself in his head.He created one for each of the members: Kai, Zeb, Reed, and Tess.He created one for the campground, in case something interesting came up.And one for the Uinta Basin more broadly.He considered it for a moment.He could always add sections later, but he felt like it was a good start.
He went back to the document, copied the water polo line, and put it under Kai’s name in the new document.It had been alongtime since grad school, but one thing Tean had always been good at was taking notes.
A thought came to mind—probably one that should have been obvious earlier.He scrolled down in the original document.If he was correct that River had been taking her notes in a more or less stream-of-consciousness fashion, then it made sense that the end of the document would represent whatever she had been working on, or thinking about, before she’d been killed.And River had believed she had identified the information that the pack wanted to hide.
The final entry in the notes document said,Diane Winfield, Uintah High – Tuesday.
Behind him, the apartment door opened.He locked his phone.
It was Seth, thank goodness.He’d pulled his coat on, and when he saw Tean looking at him, he gave a smile somewhere between rueful and chagrined.“Hey.”
Tean nodded.
“Kind of chilly out here,” Seth said.
“Are they still being forced to share their testimonies?”
Seth rolled his eyes, but he said, “He’s in a weird place.”
“No, his behavior has gotten worse because Mom’s not around to make him act like a human being.”
Seth held his hands up in surrender.
“Sorry,” Tean said.Frustration made him want to say,He knows how uncomfortable that makes me.He knows, and he does it anyway.But he swallowed the words.
“Are you doing okay?”Seth asked.
“I’m fine.Are you?”
With a shrug, Seth said, “It’s sad.But he was old, and the last few times I saw him, he didn’t know who I was.”
“He didn’t reminisce with you about all your wonderful childhood memories of him?”
A smile flashed on Seth’s face.“Do you know he’s the only person ever to spank me?”
“That’s because you’re the youngest boy.”
Laughing, Seth said, “And he was so mean about it too.”
“He was mean about everything.He wanted nothing to do with me after I came out, andbeforeI came out, I was either a sissy, or a crier, or I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut, or alternatively, I was too quiet.He drank.He swore.He smoked those disgusting cigarillos.He treated everyone terribly.And now they’re all sitting in there, acting like he was a saint.”
“You don’t have any good memories of him?”
Tean shook his head, but he said, “It’s complicated.”
