The adults in the photos aged along with him: a woman with the same dishwater-blond hair, clearly Kai’s mother; and a dark-skinned man Tean thought must have been Latino, who wore a heavy mustache and was built strong, almost stocky.The stepfather, Tean decided, because Kai hadn’t inherited any features from the man.
Jem moved down a short hall and checked a door.“Basement,” he said.“And then back to the kitchen.”
Tean nodded.
“Up or down?”Jem asked.
“Down, I guess.His father’s not in any of the pictures.His biological father, I mean.”
“Huh.”
“I don’t know if it means anything.I just noticed.”
Jem nodded and started down the stairs.
It wasnota torture dungeon.It was, instead, a nicely finished basement: a second family room with an oversized sofa and a massive TV, another full bathroom, and a room that probably couldn’t legally be called a bedroom, but had a bed and dresser and frilly curtains in the windows.Otherwise, the décor tended toward the masculine: foosball table, vintage fishing posters, Uintah High pennants over the couch.Someone had left a Diet Coke on the coffee table, and a wedge of lime was still stuck on the rim of the can.A small utility room also doubled as storage, with a few plastic shelves, the kind you could get at Home Depot and assemble yourself, against one wall.They didn’t hold anything more interesting than extra toilet paper and cleaning supplies.
“Upstairs?”Tean said.
Jem nodded, but his face was dark.
“What?”Tean asked.
“This is such a bummer.Total waste of a basement.”
“Well, I know this was disappointing, but maybe next time it will be a torture dungeon.”
“You always say that.”
It was the kind of conversation that, Tean had learned, you just had to roll with, even if it didn’t make any sense—mostly because it made Jem happy.And he caught himself smiling as they made their way up again.
In the foyer, Jem stopped and considered the stairs going up.“Where she fell?”
“Or going down to the basement, I suppose.”
But Jem shook his head.“No, it was here.”He pointed to the landing, where a dent in the drywall was visible.
“That means she fell from the top of the stairs,” Tean said.
“It means hepushedher from the top of the stairs.”
“We don’t know that.It could have been an accident.”
Jem shrugged, but he then he ticked off on his fingers, “No rack.No iron maiden.No bloody gibbets.It’s like, why even bother?”
“Uh, there there?”
Tean even patted his shoulder.
“Thanks, babe.I know you’re trying, but I’m just going to be super bummed for a while.”And without missing a beat, he said, “Race you to the top.”
It wasn’t much of a race, mostly because Tean didn’t run.But he did make sure to say, “Yes, you made it to the top very fast,” because Jem was clearly expectingsomething.
The first door they tried was some sort of home office.The computer tower had a layer of dust on it, as did the bulky CRT monitor.The desk itself was clear—no papers anywhere, nothing left out.The drawers were equally uninteresting—mostly empty, with a few office supplies that Tean suspected no one had needed in some time.A quick glance inside the wood-veneer filing cabinets revealed only the usual household paperwork—bills, mortgage statements, the title for a 2015 Mini Cooper.There was no sign of a frantic search.No sign that someone had been desperate to remove a key piece of evidence.
The next door opened onto a bedroom, and for the first time since entering the house, Tean felt that low-grade rush of—not excitement, not exactly.But it was like an electric charge, like everything inside him was powered up and on and ready to go.Because this, he knew as soon as they looked, was Kai’s childhood bedroom.
A twin bed with a plaid coverlet.A dresser.A desk with books lined up on top of it.Posters on the walls—a classic ad for a Ford pickup, the Utah Jazz, different species of dinosaurs done in bright colors.One poster was tacked to the ceiling, where Kai would have been able to look at it while lying in bed: a cowboy trying to stay on a horse mid-buck.The photographer had done an excellent job capturing the moment: the wild energy of the horse twisting and kicking, the cowboy’s struggle to stay mounted, the tension as he locked his legs around the horse.His body was bent back as he balanced himself in that frozen moment, and the pose made his shirt ride up to expose his flat stomach.He had the purposefully rough look that Tean had seen on men in related professions: under the cowboy hat, the greased-back hair that curled at his nape, the patchy stubble, the deep tan.Attractive in a rugged, stereotypically masculine way.
