The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  Upstairs, a door slammed. Their bedroom. And then, muffled, another door slammed. Their bathroom.

  Somers got the broom and swept up the broken plate. Then he got a Pepsi. He got through half the can before it was too sweet, his teeth starting to ache, and he left it on the counter. Climbing the stairs, he talked himself through all the reasons he loved Emery Hazard: he was kind, smart, strong, passionate. He was good. The list seemed short tonight. The bedroom door was locked, and Somers backtracked to the key they’d hidden on the frame for Evie’s door. It was just a flat piece of metal, designed for the generic privacy locks that weren’t really meant for any serious kind of security. He went into their bedroom and found it dark.

  Something warned Somers to leave the lights off, so he picked his way through the darkness. They’d lived here almost a year, and even after a year, Somers couldn’t find his way through the room without a light. He bumped into the dresser. He hit the bed. He stubbed his toe on something—he had no idea what; maybe Hazard had been ordering enormous bronze urns for their bedroom, because it sure fucking felt like it—and when he swore and hopped up and down, the ragged breathing inside the bathroom cut off. When Somers finally reached the door, he knocked.

  “Go away,” Hazard said, his voice thick. “Please, John.”

  Somers settled down, bracing himself in the doorway, his back against one jamb while he planted his feet against the other. He rested his head against the door. Through the thin paneling, he could feel the vibrations of Hazard’s body where the big man slumped against the other side of the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Hazard said. “I’m really sorry for how I acted. I’ll be down in a few minutes, and I’ll clean everything up.”

  It wasn’t exactly a comfortable spot, but Somers settled in to wait as best he could. He leaned his head back. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shape of the walls, the ceiling, their bed. The dust ruffle was snagged from the last time they’d changed the sheets, and Somers tugged it free. He wondered when the last time was that they’d washed that dust ruffle.

  “John, I’m trying to be really clear about what I need right now. I need you to go back downstairs and let me have a few minutes to myself.”

  “When was the last time we washed the dust ruffle?”

  “Five minutes, John. That’s what I’m asking for.”

  “We change the sheets every week, sometimes more if you’re feeling frisky, but I don’t know if we’ve ever washed the dust ruffle.”

  “This isn’t helpful. Madeleine says I’m supposed to communicate what I’m feeling, communicate with words, I mean, and I’m really trying to communicate that right now, and you’re not listening to me.”

  “Is that a thing? Are you even supposed to wash a dust ruffle?” Somers raised his head and let it thunk back against the jamb. “I’ll ask Cora.”

  The door shifted in its frame as Hazard moved away from it, and Somers heard heavy steps and then running water. For what felt like a long time, but was probably just a minute, splashes interrupted the water’s flow. And then the water shut off. Steps came back. The door opened.

  Arching his back, Somers twisted so he could look up at his boyfriend. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Hazard tried to step over him, but Somers caught him at the ankle. A very big ankle. A very well-developed ankle. A thick fucker of an ankle. Hazard almost dragged him out of the doorway before Somers could stop him.

  “Will you let go?” Hazard kicked once, nothing serious, trying to shake Somers loose. “This is ridiculous.”

  In the shadows, it was hard to make out details, but Somers thought the eyes were puffy, although Hazard had obviously tried to wash away the signs of crying.

  “Let go,” Hazard said again, giving another half-hearted kick.

  “Maybe you’ll be my new means of transportation. I just hold on, and you drag me around.”

  “John.”

  “Please sit down. Just for a minute.”

  For a moment, it looked like Hazard would refuse; he even gave another of those pathetic kicks. Then he slid down, his back against the bed, knees pulled to his chest. Somers crawled toward him, pulling apart Hazard’s legs, squirming between them, twisting around until he sat in the vee of Hazard’s body, his back against Hazard’s chest. He could smell the flop sweat, not particularly pleasant, but he could also smell the coconut hair product that Hazard liked, and he could smell his long, tangled dark hair. He took Hazard’s arms and wrapped them around himself, and after a moment Hazard seemed to realize what he wanted and tightened his hold, hugging Somers against him. Another moment passed, and Hazard’s head lowered, his chin brushing Somers’s shoulder, his cheek to Somers’s cheek.

  “You’re a glutton for cuddles,” he grumbled.

  “Now,” Somers said. “We’re all set. The lights are off. I can’t see your face. You’re holding me, so you get to feel big and macho and in charge.”

  “I don’t need to feel big and macho and in charge. Chauvinism and machismo are forms of ego masturbation for insecure men who—”

  “It’s getting worse, Ree.”

  Hazard’s breathing accelerated. His arms tightened around Somers.

  “I’ve done a lot of reading about it. PTSD—”

  “Don’t. John, let’s not—”

  “Nope. I put up with this nonsense for a while. But I’m not going to put up with you coming home and treating me like shit because you’re scared out of your mind.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I’m really sorry. I love you, and you don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

  “I don’t need you to be sorry about it. I need us to talk about it so you can get better. In a lot of people, if it goes untreated, the symptoms get worse. You’ve been managing the symptoms for almost a year now. It’s time to start taking care of this.” Somers found Hazard’s arm, raking his nails lightly through the scattering of dark hair. “I’m putting my foot down: you’re going to start seeing a therapist.”

  “I’ve been seeing Madeleine—”

  “Emery Hazard, do not lie to me.”

  The silence that followed was a vacuum.

  “How many times?” Somers asked.

  “Twice,” Hazard said quietly. “The intake, and then once more.”

  “And all the other times you left and said you were going to therapy?”

  “John, you don’t understand. She . . . she was full of shit. She wanted to talk about my dad. She wanted to talk about me being gay. She wanted me to cry. She honestly told me that. She said, ‘I’ll know we’re really making progress when I see some tears.’ I mean, it’s quackery. Bullshit pseudoscience. I’m not going to . . . I’m not going to humiliate myself. It wasn’t going to help anything.”

  Reaching back, Somers cupped Hazard’s flushed cheek, felt the heat of it like pins and needles in his hand. “Ree, sweetheart, you are such a dummy sometimes.”

  Hazard’s arms tightened until Somers grunted.

  “Don’t be a brat,” Hazard growled in his ear.

  Laughing, Somers twisted around until he was kneeling astride Hazard’s lap. “I mean, why didn’t you just tell me? We talked about this. You have to take the time to find the right person to help you. Madeleine wasn’t the right person. No big deal. But you can’t just give up. And you certainly cannot lie to me. Not about this. Not anymore. Is that clear?”

  Hazard gave a jerky nod; his eyes cut away.

  “I’m right here,” Somers said.

  After a moment, his eyes shot up to Somers. The next nod was barely a movement at all, but it was there.

  “What happened today?”

  Hazard told him.

  When he’d finished, Somers loosed a low whistle. “Jesus, no wonder you were grumpy. Your body was already totally worn out, and then you went into overdrive again.”

  “That’s still not an excuse. I shouldn’t have treated you like that. When . . . when that
happens, I can’t even really think. I’m just reacting, and the anger is just like this oil slick on top of the fear.”

  Somers considered this; then, leaning forward, he kissed Hazard. “We’ll start looking tomorrow. You want someone who does CBT; from the research I’ve looked at, that’s the only data-driven therapy that helps with PTSD.”

  When Somers tried to get up, though, Hazard’s arms tightened until Somers grunted again.

  “Hey, let go, I’m—oh.”

  The first kiss was on his neck, followed by the scrape and burn of Hazard’s stubble. Then another kiss, higher. Then Hazard’s mouth on his. And Hazard hard under him, rocking up slightly.

  “I made you—” Somers fumbled the words between kisses. “I made you a salad.”

  Growling, Hazard rolled so that Somers was pinned beneath him, and then he began working Somers’s fly. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

  “Oh yeah? You liked that?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  Somers arched his back, hiking up his shirt, letting his hands play over the swirls of ink on his belly. “You like me taking charge? Telling you what to do?”

  Hazard yanked, and Somers’s trousers shot down to his ankles. Then Hazard snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Now say that stuff again. The part about research. And data-driven. Definitely say data-driven again.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  JULY 2

  TUESDAY

  1:06 AM

  HAZARD WOKE TO A buzz-buzz-buzz.

  “John,” he mumbled, poking his fiancé in the ribs. “Phone.”

  Somers made a noise that sounded like gargherrrr and rolled away. Hazard poked him again, and this time, Somers shot upright. His face was blank, his blond hair wilder than usual. He stared out into the darkness and said, “Stay away from that calendar, Emery Hazard.”

  Groaning, Hazard shoved Somers toward the nightstand and burrowed under the pillow.

  After a few more buzzes, Somers answered the phone with a groggy, “Somers. Yes, Ehlers. This is Somers. That’s why I answered the phone by saying Somers. For fuck’s sake. For fuck’s sake, why the fuck didn’t you say something?”

  The clatter of the phone hitting the nightstand was followed by the bed shifting, Somers’s bare feet hitting the floor. Hazard squashed the pillow, peeking out, and said, “Bad?”

  “Bad,” Somers said, dragging on jeans. “Get up. You’re coming too.”

  Hazard rolled out of bed and started digging through the clothes he’d left by the side of the bed. The denim rasped against his legs. His fingers fumbled the button on the waistband, failing to secure it once, then twice, and then he abandoned it with a disgusted breath and yanked the zipper up. A buzzing sound had filled his head.

  “Is it . . .”

  Somers grunted once and might have nodded as he wriggled into a tee.

  “John?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It looks like it, anyway. The Keeper of Bees.”

  Hazard sat to pull on socks. “At the college again?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “Sexten Industrial Park.”

  “Do they know—I mean, who . . .” Hazard couldn’t finish; his mind flashed to Mitchell, and the locks, the alarms, the cameras.

  “Susan.”

  “Who?”

  “Ree, sweetheart: socks. Hurry.” Somers was belting on the holster with his Glock. “Susan Morrison.”

  “Wesley’s girlfriend?”

  Somers shoved his feet into sneakers and came to stand in front of Hazard. He brushed the dark hair out of Hazard’s eyes and said, “Is this too much for you? There’s no judgment, but I need you to be honest.”

  “No,” Hazard said, dragging on the socks. “No, it’s not too much.”

  “Would you tell me?”

  “Of course.”

  “God, you’re an awful liar.”

  Hazard asked more questions as they drove across town in the Mustang, but Somers didn’t have any answers. Between questions, Hazard could only stare out of the car. At this hour, so much of the city was dark that the few remaining lights seemed spread out across enormous distances—dim, yellow sodium lamps; harsh, brilliantly white specks of halogen; a wink of red at a traffic blinker. The smell of fast food lingered in the Mustang, something Somers must have picked up during a long day of work, and Hazard’s stomach turned. He leaned into the window; the glass was cool under his skin.

  Sexten Industrial Park was located out past the Tegula plant, which was a manufacturer of ceramic tiles near the city limits. The approach was disorienting; they first had to pass the Tegula plant, which was ablaze with lights and activity, the third shift in full swing. For a moment, as they drew even with the factory, it was like something out of a bleak future: a world of steel and incandescence and shadows. And then they were past it, tumbling into real darkness, with the bulking outlines of older buildings ahead of them like bones from another epoch. They drove past a plant that, for the first ten years of Hazard’s life, had made cardboard boxes. Then they drove past an abandoned kitty litter factory. Then a cabinetry shop that had, for six months of Hazard’s time in high school, been appropriated by the senior class as a spot to drink and have sex, and which had ended when Mary Bead had cut herself and demanded a tetanus shot, and word had finally gotten out about what was happening. Sexten Park was an industrial graveyard; there was even an ancient automotive factory, Sexten Motors, that had opened at the turn of the century and shuttered in the Great Depression.

  As they turned into the industrial park, a constellation of lights met them, and Hazard thought of the senior class having bonfires and smashing bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill in the rusted-out shells of metal barrels. Then he saw the patrol cars, the men and women in uniform, the halogen flood lights on tripods. Farther out, a figure was illuminated like a dancer on stage, turning away from the gathering of law enforcement, one foot raised as though taking a step. Hazard had seen this pose before; Phil Camerata had been staged this way when Hazard had found him in the sub-basement of Wroxall College.

  “That fucking son of a bitch,” Hazard said.

  As Somers pulled to a stop, he reached over and squeezed Hazard’s hand.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Hazard asked, counting to three before he pulled away from Somers’s touch.

  “Oh,” Somers said, following Hazard’s gaze out the window.

  “Where’s Cravens? Is she too fucking busy to show up to a fucking serial killer investigation?”

  “I meant to tell you, but things kind of . . . took off when I got home.”

  And then Somers did tell him, and Hazard studied Riggle, the new police chief, through the windshield. Riggle was snapping orders, pointing, shouting. His posture was ramrod straight, and he held himself like a guy who had thought of himself as a cop, and only as a cop, for most of his life.

  “Fine,” Hazard said when Somers finished, and then he pushed open the door and got out of the car.

  “Ree,” Somers said, “hold on.”

  But Hazard was already moving toward the barrier of police tape. A pimply kid in an ill-fitting uniform was stringing the tape between stakes, but when he saw Hazard, he dropped the roll and put his hand on his service weapon.

  “Hey, asshole, stop right there!”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Hazard said, passing him without breaking his stride.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Behind him, Hazard could hear Somers smoothing the situation over, the way he always did. Hazard just kept going.

  He stopped at the edge of the gravel lot; the staged body—he assumed, for now, that Somers’s information was right and that the victim was Susan Morrison—was probably still a hundred yards away, and two figures in Tyvek suits were moving around her in slow motion, one of them snapping photographs, the other filming with a video camera. Norman and Gross, Hazard guessed, who processed most of the crime scen
es for the Wahredua PD. This was only the start, though. The FBI would most likely come in, state law enforcement definitely would, and then, barring something unforeseen like World War III, the media jackals would show up. In a matter of days, possibly in a matter of hours, the case would be neatly wrested away from the Wahredua PD. A good thing, probably, except for the fact that Emery Hazard would also be sidelined. And Hazard had no interest in being sidelined. He needed to find this fucker. And he needed to do it soon.

  Familiar footsteps came behind him. Hazard spoke without looking over his shoulder. “As soon as they’re done documenting the scene, I want to get in there and look around.”

  “Ree, we need to talk.”

  “Like most serial killers, his technique is evolving between kills,” Hazard said. “He’s still in the initial phases. He’s still figuring out what works for him—what gets him the high or the release or whatever he needs out of this. The ritual, some of the elements are the same—he’s posed her just as he did Phil. Did he use wires again? Or some kind of fixing agent, maybe some sort of plasticizing compound? Was the cause of death the same? Any word on bees?” Hazard turned his head, moderating his breathing, to listen for buzzing.

  “Ree—”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Ree, for Christ’s sake, you have to go.”

  Hazard thought he caught a faint buzzing sound.

  A hand on his arm interrupted.

  Hazard shook it off.

  “Mr. Hazard,” another voice said. Firm. Clipped. “Either you leave this crime scene right now, or I arrest you for interfering and have you taken to the city jail.”

  Shaking off another touch from Somers, Hazard turned around. Riggle was taller than Hazard had realized, although still not as tall as Hazard; the new chief had moved into Hazard’s space, crowding him so that Hazard’s first inclination was to retreat.

  “How fucking stupid are you?” Hazard said.

  “Ok,” Somers said. “This isn’t going to be productive.”

  “Is your boyfriend always combative with law enforcement, Detective Somerset?” Riggle asked. “Does he have trouble understanding direct orders?”