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“What’s wrong? Is it too hard? Can you open it?”
“Is it too hard,” Jem said scornfully. “I could open this thing with my wiener. Hey, that’s actually an idea—”
He opened his mouth in exaggerated pain when Tean poked him. Then he gave the door handle another considering look. He grabbed it, leaned into the door, and yanked. For a moment, the effort defined the muscles under hisAlft-shirt. Then the latch popped free from the frame, and the door swung open.
“Is it too hard,” Jem said again.
“How was I supposed to know?”
“Also, I should get husband points for not saying ‘that’s what he said.’”
“There’s no such thing as husband points.”
“Like earlier, when I was doing that thing you like with my tongue—”
“Minus a hundred husband points,” Tean whispered furiously and elbowed him out of the way.
The office could only have belonged to Rod. The space itself, even the furnishings, were all typical: the filing cabinets Jem would have described as jankety, the mismatched chairs, the particleboard desk. But the clues Tean expected were there. The size of the desk, for one, meant to dominate the room, meant to impress. And what covered the desk: the pelt of an ocelot, a scatter of big cat claws in a silver dish, the resin—Tean hoped it was resin—skull of a sabretooth tiger. Tean was sure Rod had an explanation. These were teaching devices, most likely. But the truth was, these were trophies. Rod might not use that word. He might not even think it. But that’s what they were. Trophies like the photograph of Rod shaking hands with President Trump, circaHome Alone 2. Trophies like the photos of C- and D-list celebrities, of scantily clothed women and cars and regional superstars—one appeared to be a weatherman—lining the shelves behind the desk.
“Jesus Christ,” Jem said. “Is this guy a nut-tugger or what?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what a nut-tugger is.”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like.”
Tean shushed him and moved into the office to begin his search. Jem drifted over to the filing cabinets. The whole point of this visit—now, tonight—was to find the murder weapon. Tean was convinced—Jem, less so—that the killing had happened here, at the cat sanctuary. And the most likely place for that killing was in Rod’s office.
In the first drawer, Tean found a letter opener as long as his hand. He held it up, trying to rake the light across it to catch any hint of dried blood. There were ways to detect blood even if it had been cleaned, but that wasn’t an option right now, so he’d have to do the best—
“Put that back, son.” Rod stood in the doorway. The Pantera tee still had its sleeves, and it was baggy on his whipcord frame, but Tean thought he detected a bulge on Rod’s hip. Rod nodded at the letter opener in Tean’s hand. “We don’t want to have some kind of misunderstanding, do we?”
Tean laid down the letter opener. Jem rolled one of the filing cabinet drawers shut. The cabinet made a soft, metal boom. He glanced at Tean.
“What are you boys doing here?” Rod asked. “The sanctuary’s closed. You’re trespassing.”
“Call the police,” Jem said. “Chief Cassidy would love that.”
A dry crook of a smile appeared on Rod’s face and was gone. “I asked you a question.”
“We’re here because you killed Yesenia,” Tean said. “And we’re going to prove it.”
Rod didn’t laugh. His posture didn’t change. The air conditioning came on again, and the tail of his mullet drifted on an invisible current.
“You killed her,” Tean said again.
“That’s something to say, all right.”
“How’d you know we were here?” Jem asked suddenly.
At this, Rod tipped him the same dry smile. He spoke to Tean, though, saying, “I already told you. The new park would have been good for both of us. I didn’t particularly like her, but I liked what she would have done for the sanctuary.”
“Maybe,” Tean said. “That’s a reasonable explanation. But there wasn’t anything reasonable about why you killed her. You killed her because this is your territory, and she was intruding.”
In the silence, the whisper of air in the vents might have been Tean’s imagination.
“That’s what happened,” Tean said. “Isn’t it? It was one thing for her to build a park in Osage Beach. That’s sixty, seventy miles away. But she changed her mind. She realized she could get Heather’s land for practically nothing. She’d be right here, butting up to your sanctuary. She’d get all the Santaland traffic, all the business the resort does. For a long time, you’ve been the only option. And now she was here, and she wasn’t going away. Not even after you terrorized her, breaking into her room, marking your territory. She wasn’t the kind of woman to back down. That’s why people wanted her as president of IHCPA.”
“I pissed on her bed,” Rod said. “That’s what you’re saying? And that means I killed her? Boy, you’d better come up with something better than that.”
