The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  “Dulac, wake up.”

  Dulac’s breathing altered, and his eyes fluttered and closed again.

  “Dulac, wake up, God damn it. Wake up. Gray, wake up and open your eyes!”

  When Dulac’s eyes opened, they were liquid and dopey. “Hey,” he croaked. “Emery. Man, it’s so good to see you.” He licked his lips and made a face.

  While Dulac propped himself into a sitting position, Hazard found a pitcher of water and poured some into a plastic cup. Dulac drank unassisted, but his eyes still looked soft and unfocused, like he was looking through Hazard or past him.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful?” Dulac asked. “You’re like this big, black thundercloud that rolls in. Fucking beautiful.”

  “What the fuck are you on?” Hazard said.

  “Lightning,” Dulac said, wiggling his fingers as though demonstrating the bolts.

  “Hey, focus.”

  “Pop-pop-pop,” Dulac said, dissolving into giggles.

  “Jesus Christ. Gray, you have got to focus. What do you remember about Rasmussen taking you? Was she alone? Did she talk to anyone on the phone? How did she approach you?”

  “Oh my God,” Dulac said between bursts of giggles, kicking down his blankets and swinging his legs off the bed. “We have got to tell John-Henry about this.” And then he froze, his face manic, and his fingers danced again as he said, “Pop-pop-pop,” and collapsed into hysterical laughter.

  “For the love of Jesus fucking Christ,” Hazard growled, pressing Dulac back into the bed and pinning the blankets up under his arms. “Gray, what do you remember?”

  “Hey, man, ouch. Get off me!”

  “John is gone. And the Keeper is still out there. Will you please, for once in your fucking life, try to get a handle on your shit?”

  Dulac eyes went wide; he rubbed his chest, and he said in a thick voice, “Bro, I feel really messed up. Am I tripping?”

  “Apparently. What do you remember?”

  “I don’t know, man. I—” He frowned. “Do I still have arms?”

  “Jesus,” Hazard said, unable to help how he drew the word out. “Yes. Now please talk about what happened with Rasmussen. She’s the woman who took you. Where did she approach you? How did she abduct you?”

  “Oh man, I don’t remember anything.”

  “Her voice? A stranger approaching you? Two strangers? Or someone who was with you, someone you trusted?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know, honest to God. I don’t remember anything. Just . . . floating. And dark.” He smirked. “Kind of like a very sexy thundercloud I know.”

  “The last thing you remember, then. Whatever it was.”

  Dulac’s face twisted with effort. “I was getting ready for the move. I had a couple of boxes of breakable things, and I carried them downstairs. I was putting the boxes in my trunk, and—” His eyes got huge. “Holy shit. I think someone kidnapped me.”

  “That’s all?” Hazard said. He surged out of the chair. “That’s what you can give me? You were putting boxes in your trunk, and then it was lights out? Fucking bullshit dick-slit ball humping gaping raw asshole shit!”

  Dulac had shrunk down in the bed, pulling the blanket up to his neck, and he whispered, “Pop-pop-pop.”

  As quickly as the anger had come, it was gone. Hazard was exhausted. He moved over to the window, unwilling to sit, afraid he might fall asleep. Or, worse, afraid he might have to start talking to Dulac again. He parted the blinds. He looked out at the dirty light feathering the parking lot. He looked beyond it to the sky, where hills made a broken-backed serpent against the horizon. Dawn was almost here, and the thought of facing another day like this, without Somers, made Hazard think about the long drop to the pavement below.

  He tried to run through the facts again. He tried to make his brain work. What did he know about the killer? He was a planner. He had some sort of interest in Hazard. He was smart and educated. He had a range of skills—he had planted the recording device in Hazard’s office, he had circumvented Mitchell’s security, he had even had the technical savvy to erase the videos from Mitchell’s security cameras that should have been safely stored in the cloud. Having Rasmussen as his accomplice explained some of his ability to evade the police—effectively, the Keeper had been able to be in two places at once. But what Hazard didn’t understand was how the Keeper had managed to convince Mitchell to let him inside. Mitchell knew not to let anyone inside, not anyone that he didn’t trust with his life. And Hazard could only think of a handful of people who met that criteria—and they were his friends. He felt himself coming up against the same dead ends again and again. For some reason, staring at his glassy reflection in the window, he thought of John McClane crawling through air ducts. Always another way around. Always a way nobody else had seen before.

  Hazard’s eyes refocused; he met his own gaze in the glass. When his phone buzzed, for the second time in the small hours, he felt the universe aligning. He dragged it out of his pocket, saw a text from an unrecognized number, and followed the link it contained.

  It showed a video stream in black and white. The angle was strange, a fish-eyed view set high in a wall; below, a sharp flight of stairs was visible. It took Hazard a moment to recognize the two figures: Somers and Nico, both of them asleep on the steps. A voice, electronically distorted to be unrecognizable, played over the phone’s speakers.

  “Emery, it’s time to finish our game. You have two choices. As you can see, I have John-Henry safely locked away. If you don’t do exactly what I say—” The video stream cut to a grainy image that looked like it had been processed with light-enhancing software, showing a bucket and something small and white suspended above it. “—I’ll press a little button, and chlorine tablets will fall into buckets of ammonia. It’s a horrible way to die, Emery. I hope I’m making myself clear.”

  “Holy shit,” Dulac said, trying to get out of bed. “Holy shit!”

  “It’s clear,” Hazard said, his voice rough, although a part of him knew that the audio only ran in one direction.

  “I want you to meet me at the Empire Fruit building. I’ll be waiting there for you. You can bring your gun, of course. And any other weapons you like. But you have to come alone. This is a showdown. Do you understand? Wahredua’s most brilliant detective pitted against the Keeper of Bees. If you get to me before sunrise, you can do whatever you like. I won’t have any weapons of my own. But if you don’t get here, I’ll press this little button and ride off into the sunset.” A pause, and then the voice added, “And, of course, there’s a chance you might die getting through my obstacle course. If that happens, I’m sorry to say, I’m still going to press this button. Think of it as a mercy; John-Henry wouldn’t want to live without you.”

  The video feed switched back to Somers and Nico asleep on the steps; the location looked familiar, but Hazard’s brain kept short circuiting and rebooting, and he couldn’t place it, couldn’t even narrow down possibilities.

  “If you’re not here by dawn,” the voice said, “he dies. If you enlist anyone to help you, he dies. If you decide you’re going to try to rescue him, he dies. Sunrise is at 5:44 AM today, Emery. The clock is ticking.”

  The video feed froze, and the timer at the bottom stopped ticking.

  Hazard couldn’t explain exactly why he did what he did next: he tapped the voicemail icon on his phone. A little bit of shock, maybe. He needed more information, too, and he hoped that the voicemail might be from Somers or from someone else who could help him. And, of course, the unknown caller had been persistent, trying several times that day to reach him. But mostly, a part of him suspected, he was just committing himself to a delaying action, anything to hold off the reality of the Keeper’s threat.

  An unfamiliar voice played over the speaker: “Emery, this is a friend of John-Henry’s. He wanted me to get a note to you, but you’re not answering your phone. I wasn’t sure if I should leave a voicemail or not, but—but y
ou weren’t home tonight, and I can’t find you, and I think you need to know. I’ll read it to you. ‘Ree, the Keeper went back to Wroxall, back where it all started. I’m going to catch him. Come as soon as you can.’ That’s all. I hope this isn’t too late.”

  “No fucking way,” Dulac said when the message ended; he had gotten to his feet, but he was clinging to the bed’s chrome rail, barely staying upright. “You are not doing this alone.”

  Hazard stared at the frozen image of Somers on the screen and recognized, now, the stairs leading down to the sub-basement of a building on Wroxall’s campus. Despair flooded him.

  “What choice do I have?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JULY 6

  SATURDAY

  4:52 AM

  HAZARD GOT TO THE Empire Fruit building a few minutes before five. He had his bag of gear in the van, so he had driven across town to Sexten Industrial Park, driven straight up to the gravel lot in front of the Empire Fruit building, and stopped the minivan. Like the rest of the buildings in the industrial park, Empire Fruit had been abandoned for a long time. It was one of the original buildings, and it had gone up at the same time as the Sexten Motors plant, sharing the same design: brick walls; narrow, glass-block windows; heavy metal doors that gave onto the warehouse.

  Dawn had already begun, the sky lightening to steel at the horizon, but the industrial park was dark. No security lights, no sign of a lantern or flashlight inside the buildings. When the minivan’s automatic lights clicked off, the darkness swept in to press against the glass. The only illumination, faint and distant, came from the Tegula Plant back toward town. Undoing the seat belt, Hazard pushed his door open, breathing the cool, humid air of a summer morning, the scent of fresh dew, clover, the dustiness of the gravel. He shut the door; the click ran across the empty lot like a gunshot.

  The duffel with Hazard’s gear could be adjusted into a backpack, and he slung it now over both shoulders, made sure the Blackhawk was clear in its holster, and readied his thumb on the flashlight. He wasn’t ready to turn it on yet; the minivan had already made him visible, but he had wanted the Keeper to know that he had arrived. That was part of the game; unless the Keeper had absolutely no sense of reality, he had to have been experiencing some degree of worry. Psychopaths needed increasing amounts of stimulation in order to feel anything; Hazard guessed that the Keeper had chosen him for this sick game precisely because he thought Hazard was a worthy opponent—a threat, in other words. Hazard was intent on proving him right.

  Jogging across the gravel, Hazard chose the shortest route to the edge of the lot, where an old railroad tie greeted him with a whiff of creosote. The tie separated the gravel from the knee-high weeds that rustled around Hazard as he began moving through them. The stalks, heavy with the morning dew, soaked his sneakers and socks and jeans. His route took him up a short, crumbling hillock, where a thistle ripped out of the ground as he scrambled up the slope, and then he reached the bricks of the Empire Fruit building. He held himself against the wall for a count of ten, listening, and then crept forward.

  He began a full circuit of the building, looking for the best entrance. He found few options. On the warehouse side of the structure, the enormous metal doors were padlocked and rusted shut; a smaller door, obviously intended for employee use, was set into the brick a few yards away. It fit poorly in the frame, and Hazard could see that the bolt wasn’t set. He left it for the moment—it seemed like too easy of an invitation—and continued around the structure. His next choice was an iron fire escape, obviously added much later in response to evolving demands for workplace safety, and now rusted solid. When Hazard gave an experimental tug, the whole thing wobbled and clanged softly. He released it and pranced back a few steps, and then he let out a breath when it didn’t fall. The main entrance to the building featured glass double doors, and that also seemed like too much of an invitation. As Hazard had almost finished his loop, he spotted a coal chute; the door was almost as big as he was, obviously a concession to the vast amounts of fuel Empire Fruit had once needed, and the cast iron was pitted and brittle. He touched the handle and found that it turned easily.

  For a moment, Hazard remembered the Haverford, but not in the panicked constellation of sensory input that he couldn’t integrate. Instead, this was a clear memory. A normal memory. He remembered, when he’d been about to enter the building through an alternate route, that he was going to lose because he was still playing the game that Mikey Grames had set up, and Mikey always cheated.

  Hazard had the same sense now. The Keeper had taken months to plan this; he would have spent much of the time trying to predict Hazard’s movement and counter them. Hazard found himself playing out the possible variations of these mind games. The Keeper, whoever he was, had become active after the Haverford. To Hazard, it seemed impossible that the Keeper wouldn’t know exactly what Hazard had done on that horrible day. Until this point, the Keeper had shown an unnatural interest in Hazard; it only made sense that he would plan his final strategy around what he knew about him. He would expect Hazard to do the same thing again: to refuse to play by the rules, to attempt to level the playing field by changing the game entirely. And, Hazard realized with a thumping wariness, he would have put measures in place to make the result even more horrible.

  The thought froze Hazard. If he played this the same way he had at the Haverford, he would lose. He didn’t know how, not yet—the Keeper would kill Somers, perhaps, as punishment—but he knew it was true. And he also knew that the Keeper was craving this. The Keeper wanted this. He wanted this confrontation because of the tremendous rush of the threat, of the danger, but also because it validated him. Hazard was the best, in the Keeper’s eyes at least, and by going toe to toe with the Keeper, Hazard implied that the Keeper was the best. The Keeper would have made it possible, if only barely, for Hazard to make it to the center of the maze because what the Keeper really wanted was a showdown. The whole thing was theatrical—an elaborate production of self-gratification. And the conclusion, of course, would be when the Keeper killed Hazard face to face, despite his promises.

  He retraced his steps to the service door that led into the warehouse. Standing to one side, he used a fallen branch to hook the door and pull it open. The blast of a gunshot followed; the branch jerked in Hazard’s hand, and then the door fell shut. He studied the metal, which had been ripped open like a tin can by pellets from a shotgun blast. The branch was shredded, strips of bark flayed back where the wood remained. Hazard counted; he had barely gotten to three when a small, popping explosion made his ears ring. The door had been trapped twice. Hazard let out a soft breath.

  When he got back to the coal chute, he repeated the maneuver, using a branch to work open the cast iron door. The process was more difficult this time, mostly because the chute’s door was so much heavier, but Hazard managed it after a few fumbles. No gunshot. He counted sixty seconds, but no secondary explosion followed. Planting the butt of the branch in the soft earth, Hazard wedged it in place with a rock to keep the coal chute open. Then he moved around to look into the darkness.

  A plastic banner—thin and translucent, the cheap kind you might pick up for a child’s party—hung just inside the coal chute. Printed on it in rainbow colors was the word CONGRATULATIONS!

  With an irritated grunt, Hazard tossed in a pair of portable lights, the plastic cases clicking when they hit concrete. He studied the opening, adding his flashlight to the illumination, sweeping the beam back and forth to check for tripwires or pressure sensors or motion detectors. He couldn’t see anything, and he decided he had just learned rule one of the game: stupid choices get punished. Lowering himself onto his belly, he slid into the Empire Fruit building.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  JULY 6

  SATURDAY

  4:58 AM

  THE SOUND OF STEPS dragged Somers out of the half doze. His hand closed on the Glock, and he squirmed upright, bracing himself against the wall. Nico
mumbled something and tried to burrow deeper under Somers’s arm.

  As the steps came closer, their quality made Somers’s heartbeat rise. These weren’t custodians finishing up an overnight shift. The steps were quiet; whoever was making his way down the hall was obviously trying not to be detected, and the steps were coming closer and closer to the sub-basement.

  Somers jogged Nico’s shoulder, and the younger man looked up blearily.

  “Wha—”

  Somers shushed him and pointed at the limestone chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Staring at Somers, Nico blinked a few times. Somers touched his ear, pointed to the hall, and then pointed to the sub-basement again. Nico’s expression changed to panic, and he scrambled down the steps. When he got to the sub-basement proper, he hesitated, still looking at Somers. Somers waved him off, and after a moment, Nico darted out of sight. Somers adjusted his position, kneeling low on the stairs, his body on the side of the stairwell where the door hung in the frame—that way, when the door opened, Somers would have an extra few seconds of cover, possibly giving him the advantage he needed.

  When someone yanked on the door, it rattled in the frame, and Somers’s pulse jumped up a few hundred beats. He was sweating in spite of the cold. He wrapped and rewrapped his left hand around the butt of the Glock. The textured grip felt too slick under his touch. Someone yanked on the door again, and Somers felt a brief, hysterical giggle bubble up in his throat. He clamped down on it, but not before he had a crazy grin at the idea of the Keeper losing the keys to his own dungeon.

  A rapid exchange of whispers came from the other side of the door, and Somers upped his count to at least two. Two people out in that hallway. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised—Hazard had raised the possibility that the Keeper had an accomplice—but he still felt a sickening wave of disappointment. With one, Somers might have gotten lucky. With two—well, a lot could go wrong with two.