by Gregory Ashe
Grabbing one of the flashlights Yarmark held, Somers headed into the building. He thought he sounded a little too much like Hazard when he muttered, “For fuck’s sake.”
The space immediately inside the building confirmed Somers’s initial impression: it was enormous, and it had obviously been where the final stages of the assembly process were performed. Sexten Motors had been closed for almost a hundred years, though, and in that time, scavengers—both sanctioned and unsanctioned—had stripped away anything that might have been of value. What was left was bleak: a brick shell with narrow, glass-block windows; a cracked cement floor, in places broken by weeds or, where water must have dripped down from the damaged roof, a nest of mushrooms; and trash. Someone had dragged an old mattress near one of the windows; next to the mattress, discarded needles and an empty tin of camp-stove fuel showed at least one unsavory habit that had been practiced within these walls during its century of neglect. A pizza box was propped open on the other side of the room, and next to it lay the broken-down cardboard packaging for a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. When Yarmark stumbled on an uneven patch of cement, something small and dark shot out of the pizza box, and Yarmark let out a cry and stumbled toward Somers.
“Rat,” Somers said quietly.
Yarmark wiped his face with the back of a hand—he didn’t have a choice because he was still carrying the pepper gel in one and the flashlight in another. After a moment, he nodded.
They moved deeper into the abandoned space. On a wooden sawhorse in front of one of the windows, an amateur gunslinger had shot up old bottles of Mad Dog.
“Uh, Detective,” Yarmark said, pointing at the broken shards and then at the starburst cracks in the glass blocks. “Maybe we should tag this. If the killer’s been practicing his shooting, it might tell us something about him.”
Nodding, Somers dropped into a squat and played his flashlight over the debris. “It’s a good thought. Take another look.”
After a moment, Yarmark nodded. “BBs.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, shit. The dust. Even the broken pieces have been here for ages.”
“You had the right idea: check everything.” Then he grinned. “You want to see if the killer likes pizza?”
“Christ on the cross, no fucking way. I gotta change drawers when I get home.”
Somers stood and continued deeper into the building. They were reaching the end of the first large room, where an opening in the wall ahead communicated with the next section of the plant. Outside the building, the vegetation must have been thicker, because less light made it through the narrow windows. Somers hadn’t walked around the building; maybe trees had grown up, and that would explain what was blocking the light. The iron rails in the floor guided them deeper into the plant. Somers wondered why the metal had been left. Perhaps it was simply not worth the effort to rip it up from the floor.
“If, uh, you could not tell anybody,” Yarmark said in a quiet voice, his flashlight jiggling on the floor, his gaze fixed somewhere off in the darkness. “About, you know. The pizza box.”
Another grin broke out, and Somers fought to control it. “I had about six weeks on patrol when I got a call for a domestic. We were short that night, and I was working alone. I worked Smithfield, and—”
“Smithfield?” Yarmark’s head swiveled, and he was looking at Somers now. “Alone?”
“Different times,” Somers said with a shrug. “And, like I said, we were short that night. Anyway, I drove out there. Jesus, it was this little shotgun thing, barely bigger than a matchbox, weeds in the yard up to my waist, a chain-link fence someone had knocked down halfway and left sagging out over the sidewalk. Just shitty, you know. And domestics are so nasty, you never know what’s going to happen. One of them might turn on you. Both of them might. You’re getting into the middle of one of the worst moments of someone’s life; nobody can think rationally during that. Anyway, I was really juiced up, you know. I was young. I was hot shit. I knew I was hot shit.” He toed a can of Bush’s pork and beans toward Yarmark and raised an eyebrow.
“Too old,” Yarmark said, “they’ve changed the label on the can.”
“Good call. Can’t smell it, either. And you can see where it’s been on the ground; it left an outline in all the junk that’s come down around it.” They moved forward again. “Anyway, the lights are on. I knock on the door, announce myself, and the door swings open. Silence. I’m on this adrenaline high. I’m not thinking; remember, I’m hot shit. So I announce myself again and what do I do?”
“You head inside,” Yarmark said.
“Sure, why the hell not?” He paused, passing the light over a sleeping bag that had been wrapped with a length of electrical cord; then he jagged the light up, tracing the words HANK JORDAN EATS ASS and below it, smaller, SNATCH COUNT IIIIIIIIII.
“Dumbfuck never learned how to write a tally,” Yarmark said. “Never even learned a fucking Roman numeral.”
“Welcome to public service,” Somers said.
“So you went inside,” Yarmark said. Then, in what he probably assumed was a suitably serious voice, a cop voice, he asked, “Did you have to put the guy down? Was that the first time?”
“I go inside. These people are squatters; no furniture in the house, just some trash, shit like this,” he waved the light, taking in their surroundings. “It’s a shotgun-style house, right, so I clear the first room, follow the hall, get to the bathroom, and stop. Light’s on. Fan’s on. I’m smart, so I stand to the side and knock. Announce myself. I’m a badass, so I’m really going at it—hammering on the door, screaming like a motherfucker.”
“Did that fucktool shoot at you?”
“Nothing. Silence. Not a word. Jesus Christ, my balls pulled up to my throat. I do it again. I mean, I bet they can hear me in the next county. I’m thinking he killed his girlfriend, and now he’s hiding in the bathroom. I push open the door, and—hey, radio back. Tell Norman and Gross we’re still checking this place out.”
“Dude, finish the story.”
Somers rolled a finger, and Yarmark pulled a face and radioed back.
“He’s in there, right? That son of bitch was doing some kind of hostage situation; that’s what I think.”
With a one-shoulder shrug, Somers said, “Finally, I try the door. It’s unlocked, but after a few inches, it’s stuck. I wait. I listen. Still nothing. I take a look, and holy shit, blood on the floor, and I can see a woman’s leg. Ok, so he killed her, I’m pretty sure about that, and he dragged her into the bathroom. I’m just about to force the door open—maybe she’s just hurt really bad, maybe she needs help right now—when I see somebody standing behind the shower curtain. And I might be a hotshot son of a bitch, but there’s no way I’m taking on a guy with a shotgun hiding behind a shower curtain by myself. I tell him police are on the way. I move down the hall, take up position. I radio for backup. Foley—the one on desk duty in the jail—he’s the first one there. He was just a kid too, and his partner, Robinson, was the biggest, dumbest fucker you’ve ever seen. He’d spent twenty-five years on patrol. Probably weighed three hundred, and a lot of it was muscle. They get there. I’m shaky by then, still trying to ride that high, and I’m telling them everything, and Robinson tells me it was my call so I’m the one breaching the door, which part of me knew was totally against protocol but, hell, he’s here, he’s been doing this job almost as long as I’ve been alive, and if he says breach the door, I’m going to breach that fucking door better than anybody’s ever done it in the whole history of cops.”
“Holy shit,” Yarmark breathed. “That’s some crazy fucking shit. Why the hell would he tell you to do that?”
“I’m psyching myself up, just about to do it, when Robinson starts laughing. The fat fuck laughs so hard he turns purple, and he honest to God falls down, and Foley’s laughing, and then Peterson and his partner, this woman named Liebowitz, they’re there, and they’re laughing, and . . . hell.” Somers grinned an
d held up three fingers. “Blowup doll with a plastic gun behind the shower curtain; mannequin; fake blood.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not.”
“You are. You’re shitting me.”
Ahead of them, another opening connected this room to the next. Here, though, a hallway also broke off to the right and left; when Somers shined the flashlight down the hall, he could see doorways. Some had doors rotting in the frame, while others were completely open.
“What happened?” Yarmark asked as Somers waved for him to follow to the right.
They checked doorways as they went, and their flashlights provided the only light. This section had obviously been built after the original structure; Somers wasn’t sure of the history, but looking at the framing and the drywall and the ancient wallpaper, he guessed that maybe another company had briefly occupied the Sexten Motors building. They may have needed more office space, or something like that. When they got to the end of the hall, Somers turned and glanced back. It all had definitely been built before employee satisfaction had ever been a concern; they hadn’t installed a single window.
“Nothing happened,” Somers said. “I mean, besides almost having to take that dumb fuck Robinson to the hospital because we thought he was having a heart attack, he was laughing so hard.”
“But, like, didn’t you report it or—”
“Nah,” Somers said, shaking his head. Stabbing ahead with the flashlight, he took a step, then stopped. He could smell the hot, humid air from outside. He even thought he could smell honeysuckle. All of it was very faint, but in contrast to the smell of moldering wood and dank brick, it was noticeable. He turned back.
With every step he took toward the end of the hall, the smell got stronger. The wall was simple: lath and plaster, wood trim, paint flecked with sand to hide imperfections. Something was wrong, though. On one side of the wall, the plaster had chipped, exposing ancient laths behind it. Had they walled off a window behind here? Why?
“Earlier today,” Yarmark said, his voice subdued. “In the jail.”
Somers leaned closer; the smell—sun-warmed brick and gravel dust and honeysuckle—was definitely stronger. If there wasn’t a window behind this wall, there was an opening of some kind. But was it just a structural crack? Something animals might have widened?
“I just want you to know that’s not me,” Yarmark said. “I fucked up, and I’ll own that. But that’s not me.”
Somers glanced back at him; Yarmark’s skinny face looked sallow in the weak light, but he met Somers’s gaze.
“Then don’t be that guy again,” Somers said. “I need good police I can work with. Now, help me with this.”
He motioned for Yarmark to take hold at the bottom, where more plaster had broken away, and he gripped the top. Together, they pulled. The whole wall came free, and both men stumbled. Somers hit the wall behind him. Yarmark landed on his ass. Extending a hand, Somers helped Yarmark up, and they examined the piece of wall. It had only been supported, Somers could see now, by the walls on either side—there was no framing behind it, nothing to which the laths had been nailed. Whoever had put this here, it hadn’t been intended as a real wall. It had been a temporary measure. Like the door that had led them into the factory, it had been a decoy. No, Somers thought, his heart picking up. No, not a decoy. It had been a blind. Like hunters use.
The hallway extended another three feet before terminating at a broken window, where sunlight poked through honeysuckle branches. Somers motioned for Yarmark to stay where he was. Studying the floor, Somers pointed. Then again. Then again.
“Piece of shrink wrap,” Yarmark said. “Cheap stuff. Brittle. And that’s, what, a piece of cardboard?”
“The back of some packaging. I’m guessing for batteries.”
“Batteries? Why batteries?”
“Because this monster decided to include a light show in his most recent performance.” Somers stood. “That’s the same kind of wire he used to suspend her body, see it? Just a snipping, but it’s there. This was where he prepped everything. We wondered how he staged it so quickly; here’s the answer. He had it all ready. Less than a hundred yards from where he wanted to set her up. For the love of God.” Somers wiped his hands on his jeans. “Go get Norman and Gross; we’re going to have to process this whole damn building.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
JULY 3
WEDNESDAY
8:16 PM
PROCESSING THE SCENE with Norman and Gross, though, wasn’t quite as straightforward as Somers had hoped. Someone—he wanted to point the finger at Russell, although the scrawny asshole hadn’t done anything where Somers could see it—had notified Park, and within twenty minutes of finding the fake wall, the FBI agent and her team were back at work, shunting Somers and the rest of his team to one side. Somers had hung around, unwilling to relinquish his find, but he hadn’t been able to do much besides pace and swear and demand updates. Finally, hours after she’d arrived, Park grilled him, making him run through the whole chain of events. Then she did it again. And then again. And then she stared at him, a candy cigarette drooping between her lips, and told him to go home. That, she added, was an order.
It had taken a lot of self-control not to remind her that she didn’t give Somers orders.
By the time Somers got home, the sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving nothing but a band of ocher at the edge of the world. Everything else was dropping into a blue haze, the blue deepening to purple, the purple thickening to black. He parked in the garage, spotted trash cans that needed taken down to the road, and hauled them toward the curb. He was wheeling them into place when a gunshot cracked.
His hand went to the Glock, and he had it out and low as he spun around, looking for the source of the noise.
“Oh my God. Stop, stop, stop!”
Rebeca’s voice came from an upstairs window in the house next door. Somers followed the sound of it and found himself staring up at a harried-looking Rebeca and a very worried-looking Roman, who would be starting first grade in the fall—if, that was, his mother didn’t kill him, which looked like it might be a possibility. A pellet gun drooped in Roman’s arms, and Rebeca caught it as it slid out of the window.
“Uh,” Rebeca was staring at Somers. “Uh.”
Somers holstered the Glock and held up both hands. “Ceasefire?”
The smile that crossed her face was thin and pasty. “John-Henry, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all good.”
“No, he—he shot out one of your windows.” She ducked her head back inside the house, shouted for Noah, and then gave Roman a push away from the window. “He’s coming right down to apologize, and we’re going to call somebody to replace the window right now, and—”
“Ok, hey, slow down. How about we don’t do this Romeo and Juliet style?”
Rebeca gave another of those too-thin smiles, nodded, and disappeared from the window. A minute later, the front door opened, and Noah, looking decidedly less goofy at that particular moment, marched a sobbing Roman out onto the front lawn. What followed was an incoherent apology broken up by huge, choking sobs, and it mostly consisted of Somers giving the boy a hug and patting his back and telling him it was ok, while Noah muttered, “It is definitely not ok, Roman, it is definitely not ok,” in the background.
“A couple of these places aren’t answering,” Rebeca said, stepping out onto the porch as she tapped at her phone. “But I’m sure—”
“Everybody take a breath,” Somers said, trying to smile, because the window was just one more thing, just the cherry on top. “Everybody calm down. Even if you do find someone tonight, they’re going to charge you an arm and a leg. Just stop, Rebeca. I’ll put some plywood over the window tonight, and then tomorrow, I’ll get the glass and reglaze it myself.”
“Absolutely not,” Noah said. “We’re paying for that window. Roman is paying for that window, even if it means I’m sending him to the a
cid mines in Kuala Lumpur for the rest of his life.”
Roman repeated, “Acid mines,” and started wailing.
“Sweet Lord,” Rebeca said to Noah, “do you see what you did?”
And then Noah had to take Roman back inside, carrying him, and as the screen door clattered shut, he was explaining that Roman didn’t really have to go to the acid mines.
“Please,” Rebeca said, “let me do this. You’re exhausted; I don’t know the details, but I know things are crazy for you at work right now.”
“It’s five minutes with a drill and a piece of plywood,” Somers said, gently forcing her phone down. “Go back inside. Before Noah makes Roman pack a bag to go live with the trolls or something like that.”
It took a little longer to convince her, but eventually she left. When Somers stepped into the house, he could smell garlic and tomato and sausage; a red sauce was boiling on the stove, huge drops spattering the range. Somers turned off the heat.
“Ree? I think the sauce is ready.” No answer. “I’m going to take care of the window; be right back.”
After grabbing the drill and a box of exterior-use screws, Somers found a sheet of plywood in the garage that was roughly the right size and carried it around the side of the house. He fastened the temporary covering in place, and then he returned the drill and the screws. When he got back to the kitchen, though, the sauce was still sitting on the stove.
“Ree?”
Somers checked the living room; the TV was tuned to an episode of The Bravest Knight. He checked the dining room—lights off—and the sitting room, at the front of the house, thinking maybe Hazard was cleaning up the glass. But the shards of glass lay where they had fallen, spangling the sofa and a crescent of floor.
He walked a little faster.
Upstairs, he checked their bedroom—lights off—and their bathroom—lights off. Quick glances. Then he was walking again. One of his sneakers squeaked against the floorboards like Somers was in a race with invisible clowns. He checked the hall bathroom; the light was on, the door was open, Evie’s stool near the sink, the hand soap moved where she could reach it. From where he stood, he could see the light on in Evie’s bedroom, but he couldn’t hear anything. The silence buzzed in his ears, the acoustic equivalent of spindrift. His sneaker squeak-squeak-squeaked down the hall.