“No.I guess not.I hope not.”
Jem waited.
“I just hate the fact that—” Tean stopped.“It should be black and white.Brennon manipulated this boy.He abused him.Daniel’s a victim.Daniel shouldn’t love him.”
“Black and white isn’t a good look on pretty much anybody,” Jem said.
“No.No, I guess not.But still…” Tean drained the last of his soup and wiped his lower lip.“We have to find him.”
“Okay,” Jem said.“Any suggestions?”
Tean gave a helpless shake of his head.
“He’s looking for the killer,” Jem said.“And I think he held something back.Something he noticed about this guy’s vehicle, maybe.Because he wants to find him before we do.”
“Not that he needs to worry.We don’t have any leads.”
“We could try to track down Kazen.He had Brennon’s wallet, and there’s got to be some sort of explanation for that.”
Tean nodded, but he didn’t say anything.With the possibility of food gone, Scipio yawned and stretched out on the floor, and he gave a final wiggle before starting to snore.
“We still don’t know where Brennon was killed,” Tean said.“We don’t know where his car is.We don’t know anything about this killer except that he can apparently be contacted on Prowler.”He raised his head.“I don’t suppose…”
“Daniel didn’t go into the details.We can try hanging some bait out there, but I think our guy is going to be spooked now.He’ll lie low.”
“Brennon didn’t know him.That’s what I keep coming back to.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
“But that—that doesn’t make any sense.The majority of victims know their killers.Heck, the majority of victims are killed by friends or family.If Brennon was killed by someone he met on Prowler, that means this was all chance.And chance killings are infinitely more difficult to solve because there’s no connection between the victim and the killer.”
“The police do solve them, though,” Jem said.“They might be harder to solve, but that doesn’t mean they’re impossible.”
“But the police have resources we don’t.They have tools and technology that aren’t available to us.And they’re still fixated on Ammon, which means it doesn’t matter.”
“They always start with the crime scene, right?”Jem said.“They find evidence.They look for witnesses.”When Tean only stared morosely into space, Jem said, “Tean?”
“Yes, I suppose.But we don’t have a crime scene because we don’t know where Brennon was killed.”
“No, we don’t.”
“And we’re not going to be given access to any of the medical examiner’s findings.We’ve been lucky in the past, if you want to call it that, because there was an animal component.There’s nothing like that now.”
“But we do have something,” Jem said.
“The attack on Daniel?I thought about that.But he didn’t succeed in killing Daniel, and anyway, the police have already been all over the park.There won’t be anything left for us.”
“Nope,” Jem said.“We know something about the killer.Something important.Something the killer didn’t want us to know.”
“Daniel’s description isn’t exactly what I’d call helpful.The soft voice, the fact that he’s shorter than Daniel—they could describe tens of thousands of men.And the scar?It might be helpful for identification, Jem, but what are we going to do?Put out a statewide alert for anyone with a scar on their arm?”
“Not the description,” Jem said.“The body.”
Tean frowned.“The medical examiner—”
“No.Where he left the body.Where he tried to hide it.”
Tean opened his mouth.Then he shut it again.
