“The house looks empty, but I want to check around back.”
Jem moved off without waiting for a response, and Tean followed him.The old farmhouse.The abandoned barn.The strange, friendless boy.It was like hearing an echo just before it faded, and Tean had the sensation that if he turned his head fast enough, he might catch the sense of it.
But then they were around back, where a concrete slab served as a deck.A stone firepit held ashes so white they could have been snow, and webbed lawn chairs made a crescent around them.Bird droppings marked two of the chairs.One of the birds, it appeared, had recently eaten a mouse.
Jem moved along the back windows, checking each one.At the back door, he tilted his head toward yellow police tape crisscrossing the frame.Then he crouched near the cellar doors, rattled them, and frowned.
“So,” he said, “couple of options.One, I could pick the lock on these doors, and we go in through a super creepy torture dungeon.”
“Why do you think it’s a torture dungeon?”
“Or two, we go in through the back door.”
“Uh, back door?”
Jem stood, but he made a face.“The back door is boring.”
“I don’t know if I’m up to a torture dungeon today.”
“Okay, babe.That’s fine.It’s whatever you want.”Jem went up to the back door and nudged it with his foot.It swung open a few inches and then stopped.“It’s just not very badass, that’s all.”
“Why is the door unlocked?Is someone home?”
“Nah, you can see where they busted it out of the frame to get in.Probably emergency services—see?”
Jem indicated two deep grooves in the wood.They were parallel and close together, and they looked almost identical.
Tean hadn’t seen marks like that before, but his mind made the connection immediately.A couple of months ago, when he and Jem had been snowed in at Kolen Lodge, the wolves had come for River Jordan.Tean had been in the room when they’d forced the door, and he remembered glimpsing the tool they’d used—something like a crowbar, but with a forked end.Later, he’d looked up the name: a Halligan bar.And Jem was correct that it was something used by emergency services.
But.
“What?”Jem asked.
“The wolves used something like this at the lodge,” Tean said.
Jem was only silent for a moment.“So, you’re thinking maybe one of them has ties to police, fire, something like that?Or are you saying they broke in here?”
“Either.Or both.I’m not sure why Kai would have needed to break in.But then, I’m not sure of anything.We don’t know anything about his relationship with his mother.Maybe she wouldn’t let him in the house.”
Jem’s next exhale was slower, more controlled.His hand dipped into his pocket, and it came out with the barrette.“Right.Okay.Good note.”He nodded toward the police tape and, beyond it, what appeared to be a mudroom.“I’m going first.Keep back so I have room to work.”
Room to workwas about as euphemistic as it could get, but Tean only nodded.
Ducking under the tape, Jem passed through the open doorway.His ROOS whispered against the floor, and one board creaked sharply.After a moment, Tean stepped inside.
The mudroom consisted of hooks on one wall, with waterproof jackets and heavier coats hung one on top of the other, and at the base of the wall, shoes and boots kicked off to lie wherever they fell.The other wall was lined with cubbies that were stuffed with junk—a beach ball, a basket of rags, an umbrella, a bottle of sunscreen.
Jem kept moving.
The mudroom connected with the kitchen.The appliances were maybe ten or fifteen years old, when stainless steel had been the look.Granite countertops.Cabinets that were a buttery yellow—not the kind of thing you’d see in a Utah house these days.On one of the counters, a bowl of fruit held blackened bananas, and fruit flies flitted into the air when Tean got too close.
A hallway ran toward the front of the house.What must have been the great room or family room or living room opened on one side—white-upholstered furniture that told Tean the Curtis family didn’t have any indoor dogs, and a maple-topped coffee table with a miniature ficus and a couple of titles Tean had seen in Costco:Where the Crawdads Sing,The Girl with No Name,Anxious People.On the wall hung a mass-produced print of a watercolor of a bridge and a mass-produced print of an ink drawing of Jesus.
“He kind of looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Jem said.Maybe something showed on Tean’s face because Jem laughed.“What?He does!”
They passed through the foyer.The dining room had a table set for eight—place mat, charger, plate, salad plate, the works—and the faintest layer of dust.On the walls hung several family photos, and Tean hesitated for a moment, studying them.
Kai appeared in many of them, although a quick check told Tean that the pictures never showed him as a baby or a toddler.In one photo, he might have been as young as seven, but that was the youngest.In others, he was a pre-teen, then a teen.And then Kai was no longer in the photos.
