The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  After a quick scan of the kitchen, not finding anything to indicate that Rasmussen handled her bills and paperwork in the kitchen, the way Hazard’s mother had, Hazard moved deeper into the house. The first door on the left led into a bathroom with shelves running around the top of the walls and, on the shelves, fluffy stuffed cats staring down at you while you did your business. The first door on the right was a coat closet. The next door on the left was a guest bedroom; vinyl letters clung to one wall, spelling out the words DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT LEAVING! in what Hazard guessed was supposed to be a fun, playful script. The next door on the right was a sewing room, although the air smelled closed up, and a fine layer of dust said Rasmussen hadn’t been doing any sewing lately. The door at the end of the hall was the master bedroom with an attached bath. Hazard found a safe in the closet, but it was bolted to the floor and its door was secured, so he left it for later.

  Retracing his steps to the kitchen, Hazard found the stairs that led to the basement and went down. He fumbled for lights at the bottom, and then he found himself in a long, narrow room with vinyl parquet flooring, a piano, and two mammoth, blocky sofas that looked like they’d come out of a European design catalog. More doors opened off of this space: one to an unfinished storage room, the shelves bowing under the weight of pork ‘n beans and pineapple tidbits; another that was apparently a workout room with a rowing machine and a twelve-inch TV hooked up to a VCR; a third that was a bathroom.

  In the fourth, he found Dulac.

  The room was nominally a bedroom, although it had no egress window, so Hazard was fairly sure Rasmussen was violating at least one building code. Two twin beds took up most of the space; Dulac was asleep on one of them.

  Hazard drew the Blackhawk and leveled it at the sleeping man. “Get up.”

  Dulac drew slow, even breaths.

  “Dulac,” Hazard said more loudly. “Get the fuck up!”

  Those same slow breaths were the only sound in the room.

  Hazard could only see one of Dulac’s hands; the other was hidden by the angle of his body. If Dulac were faking, he was doing a fantastic job, but Hazard couldn’t believe the man had slept through his shouting. Hazard moved into the room, sliding along the wall, his gun trained on Dulac. One step. Then another. Then another. If Dulac were faking, would he move now? Would he twist, bringing up a Beretta, and squeeze off a couple of rounds? Or would he wait until Hazard got closer?

  On the next step, Hazard could see Dulac’s other hand. It was empty too.

  “Don’t move,” Hazard said, forcing himself away from the wall and taking the first step toward the bed. “Don’t so much as fucking twitch.”

  Nothing.

  A hot, prickling flush moved into Hazard’s face. He’d never had a perp play this kind of game before. He closed the distance in a few quick steps, ready for Dulac to spring a surprise, but nothing happened. When Hazard reached the bed, he dug the muzzle of the Blackhawk into Dulac’s temple.

  Dulac’s head rolled to the side.

  “For the love of fuck,” Hazard muttered. He studied Dulac for another moment, and then he holstered the Blackhawk and patted Dulac down. No weapons; nothing hidden on him. The younger man was wearing athletic shorts and a tee. Low on his neck, almost where it joined his shoulder, Hazard found a nasty puncture wound.

  Realizations came in like a flood:

  Dulac wasn’t asleep; he was drugged.

  Dulac hadn’t abducted Mitchell and Nico and disappeared; Dulac had been kidnapped himself.

  Dulac wasn’t the Keeper.

  The disappointment was mixed with a shocking amount of relief.

  For a moment, Hazard did the mental equivalent of a doggie paddle, just trying to stay afloat as his assumptions about the case shifted again. He tried to think back to the video footage, tried to remember if there had been any hint that Nico or Mitchell might have been in Rasmussen’s car too. Then he realized he was wasting precious time. He rolled Dulac onto his side, squatted, and dragged Dulac’s weight forward. He was adjusting the younger man over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry when he heard steps upstairs.

  Rasmussen was home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  JULY 5

  FRIDAY

  3:11 PM

  A FOOTSTEP SOUNDED above Hazard, and then another. Regular, even steps as Rasmussen moved through the house. Then the noises stopped, and he knew she had realized something was wrong. Hazard rolled Dulac back onto the bed, unholstered the Blackhawk, and dragged out his phone. It was still off, so he powered it back on: the dull illumination of the screen, then the manufacturer’s logo, then, finally, the lock screen. From upstairs, he still heard nothing. He called 911, set the call to speaker, and tossed the phone on the bed. When the dispatcher came on the line, Hazard said someone was in the house trying to shoot him, gave Rasmussen’s address, and lowered the volume on the call. He hoped the dispatcher would stay on the line, in case Rasmussen said anything incriminating, but he didn’t want the dispatcher’s voice to give him away.

  Then he moved toward the door. It still stood open, and he strained to hear anything that might give away Rasmussen’s position. The floorboards, which had creaked and groaned every time Hazard moved, were now silent. Another minute ticked by. Then another. Then the clock gonged, and music played softly, just a short snatch of sound marking the half hour.

  From the stairs came the soft click and whiz of someone spinning a revolver’s cylinder. Hazard didn’t bother with quiet; he grabbed the empty twin bed and shoved it in front of the door; it coasted easily over the linoleum, and as soon as it was in place, Hazard grabbed Dulac and dragged the younger man to the floor. Hazard dropped down next to him, both of them lying flat, Hazard on his belly with the Blackhawk aimed at the door.

  The door rattled in its frame; she was jiggling the handle. Then it opened an inch, caught up against the bed, and stopped. A sliver of light showed from the room beyond.

  “Son,” Rasmussen said in the same rough-and-tough voice Hazard remembered from the hospital, “you are fucked.”

  “I’ve already called the police. They’re on their way.”

  Rasmussen sighed. “I bet you’ve got a gun in there with you, don’t you?”

  Hazard settled lower onto the floor, his chin grinding against particles of dust on the linoleum.

  “And what are the police going to think when they get here?” Rasmussen said. “I live here; what’s your excuse?”

  Hazard tried to pin down where she was standing. Directly behind the door? It seemed unlikely she’d make such a poor tactical decision, but then, she was a nurse, not a soldier. Maybe she wasn’t as cool as she sounded. Maybe she was panicked. Her voice sounded like it was coming from directly behind the door, so Hazard lined up the shot and waited.

  “The way I see it,” she said, “you broke in here, you and your buddy looking for dope. You knew I was a nurse, so you thought maybe I’d have something around the house. Your buddy shot up just before I got home, and you lost your mind. Barricaded yourself in here and threatened to kill me. I’m a single woman; I live alone. Of course I’ve got the means to protect myself, officer. I just never thought I’d have to use it. I’ll tell them you were coming out of the room, of course. I’ll tell them I feared for my life.”

  “They’ll be here in ten minutes,” Hazard said. “And I’ve got video footage of you taking Dulac from his apartment.”

  The silence that followed lasted ten seconds, maybe fifteen.

  “Damn it,” Rasmussen said. “You make one wrong choice, and the rest of your life, you’re trying to get out from under it.”

  Then she fired. The muzzle flare was muffled by the door, but it still lit up the room. The clap of the gunshot was deafening in the small space. The bullet punched a hole through the door’s paneling, leaving a hole the size of a grape. Through that hole, Hazard could see the dark shape of a body.

  Hazard had already lined up the shot, and n
ow he took it. The sound of his shot was even louder, and his ears rang. A second hole, this one the size of a nectarine, opened the paneling farther down on the door. He couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears; the smell of gunpowder overrode everything else. For a moment, his finger trembled on the trigger. Then the dark shape on the other side of the door fell away.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Hazard dropped his head until it rested on the Blackhawk’s frame. He took a shuddering breath, breathing in gunpowder, feeling the hot metal of the frame, focusing on the sharp edges that dug into flesh. Then he got to his feet.

  Keeping against the wall, he dragged the bed back a few inches, climbed over it, and got his foot between the door and the frame. He dragged it open. His ears were still ringing, so he couldn’t hear anything, but he did a quick feint, poking the Blackhawk through the opening like he meant to emerge, waiting for the shot, and then risking a look when nothing came.

  Rasmussen, dark-haired and built like a battleship, lay on the linoleum parquet. Blood soaked the BEST IN THE WEST t-shirt she was wearing, and she had both hands over her belly. Her chest rose and fell erratically, her breathing obviously labored, although Hazard couldn’t hear it. A snub-nosed revolver, what looked like a .38, lay near an outstretched hand.

  Hazard closed the distance at a sprint, kicked the gun away, and kept the Blackhawk trained on her. If she noticed him, though, she didn’t give any sign of it. Her eyes were wide and staring fixedly at the ceiling; blood pumped steadily between her fingers. Hazard went back to the bedroom, stripped the sheets, and used his teeth to start a tear. He ripped a length of the bedding free, wadded it, and then knelt next to Rasmussen. She was still taking those uneven breaths, and as the ringing in Hazard’s ears subsided, he could hear the painful, gulping quality.

  Pulling her hands aside, he said, “This is really going to hurt.”

  Then he began packing the gunshot wound with the sheets, forcing it in as deeply as he could. Rasmussen took a deep, startled breath and screamed. She flailed at him, but she didn’t have much strength left, and Hazard ignored her and kept packing the wound. Blood soaked the cotton, and he wadded up more, laid it in place, and compressed it. After a few more moments, Rasmussen gave a soft cry, barely more than a breath, and stopped fighting. Her eyes were half-closed, and her head had rolled to the side. She was still breathing, but either unconscious or in shock.

  Hazard knelt there, blood staining his hands, until he heard the shouts of the police at the front door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  JULY 5

  FRIDAY

  3:28 PM

  IN THE SUB-BASEMENT, Somers pounded on the door and shouted, “Help! Let us out!”

  When he ran out of breath, Nico said, “Gee, I hadn’t tried that.”

  Somers bit back the first response that came to mind. He stood there, already hating the cool damp of the stone as it sank into him, and tried to think.

  “What did you do to your hair?” Nico asked.

  “There has got to be a way out of here,” Somers said.

  “Yeah, there’s another door, but the psycho who brought me here made me promise not to use it. It’s kind of an honor system, you know?”

  Somers spun on Nico, already opening his mouth, and then stopped. Nico’s face was washed out; his eyes were huge, the pupils dilated from long hours in the dark. He was hugging himself, and on one side of his head, the shaggy dark curls were standing up. From sleeping on the ground, Somers thought. He’s been here a day and a half, minimum, and he’s barely holding his shit together.

  “Are you cold?” Somers said, noticing Nico’s jersey shorts and tank for the first time.

  “Toasty,” Nico said. Then, eyeing Somers, he said, “Maybe I should let you borrow something.”

  “Oh this? Just something I had lying around.” Somers maneuvered around Nico, looked as far into the darkness as he could, and asked, “Where’s Mitchell?”

  “What?”

  “Mitchell. Is he here?”

  “Oh.” Nico looked even paler. “Shit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I—I saw some blood when I woke up. It was, you know. Fresh. Still wet.”

  “Shit,” Somers said.

  “He kept him here, didn’t he?” Nico said. “He kept Mitchell here until he was ready to torture him or blow a hole in his head or whatever he wanted to do to him. And then he stuck me in here. This is like his storage place, isn’t it? This is like his fucking refrigerator where he keeps his snacks.”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions.”

  “Mitchell’s dead,” Nico moaned. “And I’m next.”

  “That’s jumping to conclusions,” Somers said. “What else did you see? Have you explored everywhere?”

  “Uh, no. This place is insanely fucking creepy. This is where he . . . where he killed them, right? The first guys, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill us. Oh my God.”

  “Nico, hey. Look at me. Right here. Yep, look me in the eyes. He is not going to kill you, ok?”

  “We’re here, and we’re trapped, and he’s going to kill us. He’s going to cut my face off and put bees in my head and—”

  Slapping always worked in the movies, and Somers had to admit to a powerful desire, over the last two years, to slap Nico once or twice. Instead, though, he took the younger man by the shoulders and squared their bodies.

  “He is not going to kill you,” Somers said, softly, slowly. “That’s a promise, ok? From me to you. He’s not going to hurt you again. But right now, I need you to hold yourself together for a little bit longer. We need to find a way out of here.”

  Sniffling, Nico wiped his eyes and said, “You can’t promise that. He’s got us here, and he can do whatever he wants to us, and—”

  “I will shoot that motherfucker between the eyes if he so much as pokes his head in here again,” Somers said. “How does that sound?”

  Nico sniffled a few more times. “Pretty good.”

  “Damn right. Now, I need you to talk to me. What happened? How did you get down here?”

  “What day is it?”

  “Friday. Sometime between three and four in the afternoon.”

  “I’ve been down here for two days? What the fuck?”

  “Nico, you’ve got to understand, the police hadn’t even started looking for you. Nobody was sure you were really missing—nobody except Hazard and Marcus, to be fair. By now, Marcus will have filed a missing person’s report. They’ll be taking this seriously; you’ve been gone for too long. Once they start looking, they’ll be able to track you here. I did.”

  “Well, where are they? Why aren’t they here with you?”

  “I, um.” Somers was glad for the darkness as his face heated. “I’m kind of on the run.”

  Nico stared at him for a moment. Then he started to laugh. He laughed so hard and for so long that he had to sit down on the steps, and then he kept laughing until it sounded more like sobs. Somers let him go for a while, watching, and then he turned and moved slowly through the closest area of the sub-basement.

  On his last visit, Somers hadn’t really had time to pay attention to details. He remembered the luminous limestone under the beam of his flashlight. He remembered the moisture beading on top and glowing like exposed bone. He remembered the soft rise and fall of the bees’ murmuring. Now, though, as his eyes adjusted, he began to make out details. New details. Details he was sure hadn’t been here in the weeks and months following their discovery of Phil, Rory, and Mitchell.

  A camera, for one thing. A red light flashed steadily on the front of the camera, which was mounted twenty yards down the main corridor of the sub-basement. Somers tried to inspect it from different angles, but the light was too poor. He tried adjusting the camera, thinking to point it down and away—no reason in giving the Keeper voyeuristic ple
asure or additional information—and was surprised when the camera came free from the wall. He found an adhesive strip on the mounting, tacky and slightly damp from the moisture on the stone.

  “The other one came off just like that,” Nico said, his voice rough. He had to stoop more than Somers to stand in the sub-basement, and the pose exaggerated his lankiness, made him look even more than usual like a kid growing too fast. “I threw it in one of those rooms because I, uh, got mad.”

  “There’s another?”

  “They’re all over the place. Look down there.”

  Somers stared into the darkness. “I guess I see one. My eyes must not be as good as yours.”

  “I can see five.” Nico shifted, still hugging himself, and added, “Sorry. It’s just, I thought of you being a fugitive, and then I thought of your hair, and it got away from me, and then I couldn’t stop it.”

  “It’s ok,” Somers said. “The hair’s really bad, huh?”

  “I don’t want to be around when Emery sees it.”

  In spite of himself, Somers grinned. “If you’re anywhere inside twenty miles, you’ll probably hear him.”

  Nico laughed. “Probably.”

  “I know it’s not going to be easy,” Somers said, “but I need you to tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember anything after leaving my apartment.”

  “When did you leave your apartment?”

  “Wednesday morning. I was going to get Marcus, and then we were going to pick up the moving truck and meet Gray at his apartment.”

  “And then?”

  “I kind of remember going downstairs, bumping into someone.”

  “And after that?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember. I’m not even sure about going downstairs; I feel like I might have imagined that.”