“There were two bodies in that one. I remember that stump,” Peter said, gesturing at a rotting mound of wood that was barely visible. “I don’t remember their names, but the guys were scared. One of them was Tatum’s boyfriend.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to move yet. I can tell you about them right now from here.”
Hanlon nodded quickly. “Just a minute.”
He hopped down and came back, tie flapping as he jogged, with a small video camera and a thick black three-ring folder. “Can you look through this book and see if you can find anyone that might be them? These are all missing-persons cases from that era.”
Peter nodded as he took the folder, and I kissed behind his ear.
“You chime in if you know anything, Greene.” Hanlon stared me dead in the eye.
“Yeah. You know, Rowdy said he had immunity. What about Peter?”
Hanlon’s gaze slid to Peter’s cane, and he scratched at the back of his neck, slapping the spot as his eyes narrowed. A mosquito drifted away from him. “So far it doesn’t sound like he needs it. Do you?” he asked Peter, who only shrugged.
“What the hell do I know about laws?”
“Are you responsible for any of these corpses?” Hanlon pointed toward the holes.
“No.”
Peter flipped open the binder and sucked in a deep breath. On the first page, he tapped at a photo of a boy I didn’t know. “That’s him. The one Tatum used to… well, anyway, he’s the one I always thought of as his boyfriend. I’ll never forget him. He was one of the first murders I ever saw with my own eyes.” Peter’s tone had gone dead and dull, and I held him closer.
Listening to Peter talk had me and Hanlon transfixed. He didn’t have to get up and walk around to try to refresh his memory; he easily told us about each body that was dumped in each hole. The way he spoke, it was as if the murders had happened yesterday, not years ago. The horror rolled off his tongue, sometimes in detailed description, right down to the smells in the room when Tatum Black killed someone, or one of his men did, and sometimes the information came from him in stilted monotones with a bare minimum of language. His body was twisted tighter than a bear trap, and I took to circling my hand on his stomach. As he paged through the binder, Peter pointed out several people to match up with the terrible stories and wide holes, which we soon learned were numbered, one through thirteen.
“But that’s too many,” Peter said and glared out along the ground. “I wasn’t here for three of them. I don’t know who they could be.”
“Maybe Rowdy will,” I said, not thinking. I didn’t want to volunteer him for anything else, but Hanlon nodded and pulled out his phone to text someone.Fuck.
Peter talked until he was hoarse, and then some bottled water was brought over out of a cooler the techs stashed near a tree. Part of me wondered if they’d already searched for old evidence in that spot, or if they would simply move the cooler and dig one of these days. Peter talked through lunchtime and well into the afternoon, and then Hanlon brought out another binder, this one much thicker, and handed it to him.
Peter scowled and opened the front cover. “The AS members. That’s what this is?” He glanced up.
“We’re missing people,” Hanlon said. “I know it. One of the very first cases I ever caught was helping to bring in Tatum Black. I was a beat cop then, fresh out of training, but they needed all hands on deck. I went to one of the AS meetings. I saw how many people could be crowded into that barn he had.”
Peter blanched. “Tatum called it his sanctuary. If you’d said it was a barn, you’d be in a hole now.” Peter nodded as if to confirm what he’d said and flipped through pages. He had a few names Hanlon hadn’t known when he was done, and the detective eagerly jotted them down.
“And a man named Trevor,” Peter said, and the bitterness in his tone caught me by surprise. “I don’t know his real last name, but he was a recruiter. He came to my fights.” And then Peter talked about a boy who ripped his heart out.
As the story took shape, an incandescent rage settled into my bones. I could imagine a young man I’d never met, maybe not sweet, but not quite this Peter, either, walking off to what he hoped was a date. Wishing he’d be ending the night sweaty and satisfied and feelingoh so fucking goodwith his new boyfriend. The horror of that time unfolded, and as he continued, my mind fritzed because I’d heard the details of this night from Rowdy once, and it was slightly different as he told it, but more or less the same. Only Rowdy had killed someone, and Peter….
“So, Black took you in his office. Then what?” Hanlon asked.
Peter stared at him. “What do you fucking think? I told you some of this already. I’m not doing it again.”
I kissed the top of his head, and he sighed back against me. Then Hanlon made him get off the wagon and walk with him. Peter was stiff after all the sitting, and I ended up putting an arm around him while he stretched out his legs, letting him lean against me as he followed after the detective. By the time Hanlon was done walking Peter around to everything he wanted him to verify in person, exhaustion was written on Peter’s face, and he’d been reduced to answering questions in grunts and short phrases.
The sunlight slanted through the tree trunks to hit us in the eyes when we rode out of the woods. Hanlon drove us home not long after that, but when we got there, Peter sat out on the deck and stared at the lake. I was starving as soon as I stepped foot through the front door, but he wouldn’t eat the burgers I grilled. Late that night I got him to eat a piece of cake, which I knew wasn’t good, considering he hadn’t touched a thing since breakfast, but it was better than nothing. We went to bed late that night, and it was like sleeping with a board in my arms. He didn’t unclench, no matter how softly I rubbed at his stiff muscles.
The next day, Peter was just as bad, and I put him in a hot shower after I got him to eat half a bowl of cereal, but he didn’t unwind. He spent the day staring out over the lake and barely grunted when I came outside and put sunscreen on him because he was beginning to pink up. I couldn’t stand to see him that way. I texted Brandon and begged him to hand off his NA meetings to someone else for the night, or cancel, and come see Peter. The only reason he agreed was because I nearly never asked for anything from anyone—plus, Brandon was always a softie.
The rest of my afternoon was spent haunting the doorway between the deck and the dining room, but Peter never moved a muscle, except to get up once or twice and piss off the deck. I didn’t bother telling him he shouldn’t do that because the neighbors might see.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked when I brought out a salad around six o’clock and put it in front of him. He shook his head, but at least he ate after I pressed a fork firmly into his hand. He scowled his way through a cup of mint tea, then refused anything else.
When Brandon turned up, Peter glared at me but didn’t comment. The narrowing of his eyes made me feel guilty, but to hell with that. If he didn’t want me to worry, he at least had to eat food without me forcing it down his throat.
“Hey, everyone,” Brandon said, beaming at us with his friendly smile. His brown hair was combed to the side in a perfect line, and he was in a yellow polo and khakis that made him look like he should be going door to door to convert people. He didn’t let Peter’s attitude dampen his spirits and came over to shake my hand.
Peter grunted.
