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Rod sneered. He put a hand on the wall, gave Jem a wary look, and got to his feet. He gazed past them, and Tean fought the urge to look. The sneer faded slowly from Rod’s face. When he spoke, his voice was hard but even. “It’s not a business; it’s a sanctuary.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Jem said. “I’ve even run that game before, a version of it.”
But Rod only raised his eyebrows. “It’s the truth. You know how I got this land?” He only waited a beat before answering his own question. “It was my dad’s land. His dad’s land. He—my grandpa—did a little of everything. Some corn. Some sheep. Horses. Then they built the reservoir, and bang, half his land was underwater. Sure, they paid him, but he didn’t care about the money. It killed him. Heart attack.”
Jem and Tean traded a look.
“Dad, on the other hand. Well, Dad did care about the money. He had big plans for that money. Was going to drink it all away or die trying. You’ve never seen such a hoosier piece of trash. When he wasn’t ass-up, sleeping off a drunk, he was buying every redneck toy you can imagine. Four-wheelers. A boat, of course, never mind Grandpa would have died before he went out on the lake. Jet skis.” A hint of an unpleasant, self-conscious smile curled the corner of Rod’s mouth.
“A tiger,” Tean said.
“Oh yeah. Not that hard to get, believe it or not. Dumbasses do it all the time. They get a cub, and for a while, it’s fun. Then the cat gets too big, and it gets dangerous, and they’ve got no idea what to do with it. They chain it up. Or they shoot it, and half the time, they do a shit-poor job at that like they did everything else. Dad thought it was fun to let that cub chase me. Got the scars still. On my back. On my legs. Cub didn’t know any better, of course; thought we were playing. But boy, that gave Dad something to laugh about.”
In the silence that followed, the hub of voices from the party seemed miles off. The shadows were deeper, dancing where the flames from the tiki torches bent in the breeze. The smell of Jem’s cologne and the beer mixed now with a sour body smell from Rod.
“I read about your sanctuary,” Tean said. “You’ve got all the appropriate certifications and authorizations. You pass every inspection with flying colors. You take good care of these cats—as good as anyone can while keeping them in captivity.”
“You read about that, huh?” Rod gave a tiny, screwed-down laugh. “You got me in your sights, I guess. Gonna prove I killed Yesenia.” He was silent again, and when he spoke next, his voice had a planed-down quality. “I got smarter than that dumb cat, and after a while, Dad lost interest in the game. He had other things to make him feel better about his fucked-up life. He’d drink. And when he drank enough, it was everybody else’s fault. And everybody else was me and my mom. And if it was somebody else’s fault, somebody else needed to be punished.”
“Lots of people grow up with pieces of shit for parents,” Jem said. “You’re going to have to come up with a better sob story.”
Rod cocked him a look that Tean couldn’t decipher. Then he smiled—that little curling one, like a devil’s tail. “He whaled on us for years,” Rod said. “And the first time he went after the cat, I shot him. How’s that?”
Off in the dark, one of the big cats yowled, the sound old and ancient, like the world’s first heartbreak.
Jem’s eyes cut to Tean, but he spoke to Rod. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just this: I take care of my cats. I take care of my land. I take care of what’s mine. It’s a sanctuary first, not a business. You’ve got to understand that.” He waited, letting the lull drive the words home. “As for the rest of it, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“What did we get wrong?” Tean asked.
“Yesenia. The safari park. Yeah, she was talking about building one. She came to me, told me about it. I said fine, do whatever you want. You know why?”
“Because you’re running a sanctuary,” Jem said, “not a business.”
Rod gave a short laugh. “Because she would have been good for business.”
“What do you mean?” Tean asked. “She would have been competition.”
“Competition. Do you know what kind of animals she had? Birds, giraffes, antelopes. Cats are a whole different beast, pardon the pun.”
“So, what?” Jem asked. “You think people are more interested in cats than a wildlife safari? Or you think you’re going to draw a different crowd?”
“I think the same people who will pay a hundred bucks per car to drive through one of her parks, they’d be thrilled to get a two-for-one deal, pay a little bit extra, and come see the big cats when they were done.” Rod watched them and shook out his mullet. “Her park would have made things better, understand? More visitors. More volunteers. If she’s dead, well, I got fucked too.”
Tean tried to analyze that, to probe it for an inconsistency or inaccuracy. When he checked Jem, his husband gave a tiny shake of his head.
“Can I go now?” Rod said, slapping dust from his jeans. “I’ve got a party I’m supposed to be at.”
“You don’t think that’s in bad taste?” Jem asked, nodding at the t-shirt.
Rod pulled at the Death Angel tee, and a smile split his face. “Well, we don’t know she’s dead, do we?”
Together, Tean and Jem took a step back, giving Rod room to leave. He ambled away, his stride almost a swagger, like he was the one who’d knocked them on their asses instead of the other way around.
“Whatever was going on with Kristin,” Jem said, “it didn’t sound like he was mad at her for wandering around his welcome center.”
“No,” Tean said. “It didn’t.”
