by Gregory Ashe
“Give a speech, probably. I was supposed to be recording the whole thing. It was going to be his next big piece of ‘research.’” She drew the quotes with one hand. “I was the only one who knew. Besides Jesse, of course. I was Jim’s research assistant. And he needed help. Like I said: he handed it to me.”
“So Jesse stabbed him. Everybody was supposed to see it, except Carl had switched the DVDs, and everyone was focused on that. We only had two witnesses. One, really: Lena. And she saw exactly what you wanted her to see. Jesse stabbed Fabbri; Fabbri activated the bladder. That was the popping noise Carl heard, what he said was a gun.” Somers frowned. “Did he not know the plan? Or was he trying to lead us in the wrong direction?”
“He didn’t know,” Cynthia said. “He just thought he was supposed to switch the DVDs. He just thought it was a prank.”
Nodding, Somers continued, “Then Fabbri collapsed on the sofa, where everyone could see him—”
“That’s why the sofa was out of place,” Hazard muttered. “It was a fucking stage.”
“—and then people panicked. They started to run. But you stayed to help Fabbri. You knelt down in front of him. You took the real knife out of your purse. And you stabbed him, right there. That’s why the murder weapon had a mixture of Fabbri’s blood and fake blood; he was covered in fake blood.”
Cynthia nodded. Her eyes were a dreamland. “He was starting to laugh. He thought he was so funny. So smart.”
“So you killed him, while everyone thought Jesse was the one who had put a knife in him. And then, after everyone had left, you opened the window. You weren’t looking for the killer; you already knew who Jesse was and where he was supposed to be hiding until Fabbri’s performance was over. But you needed a place to stash the real knife and the bladder of fake blood.”
“And the tape,” she said, mostly to herself. “He bought such cheap tape.”
“You were the one who entered the crime scene again,” Hazard said. “You got there before me to retrieve the knife and the bladder. Then you led me on a trail towards Carl and planted the knife for me to find.” Hazard frowned. “Did you know Carl would kill himself?”
“I didn’t know, but I suspected. He’s been unstable for a long time. And desperately in love with me. I told him the police suspected me, I told him it was his fault because he’d switched the DVDs, I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him. I gave him the rope; I told him I wished he were dead instead of Jim.” She shrugged. “He was too fat for me to hang myself, so I had to find a way to get him to do it. If he chickened out, I’d find another way to take care of him.”
“And after you planted the knife near Carl’s apartment,” Somers said, “you went back to the theater, found Jesse, and killed him.”
“I had a stack of twenties. When he looked down and started counting them, I pushed him. I didn’t get it right the first time; he knocked over a piece of the set, and somehow that brought a light down. On the second shove, I sent him right through the trap.”
“When did Lena start to suspect?” Hazard asked.
“At the celebration of life, I think. I had too much to drink. I saw her with Kory. I got . . . physical.” Cynthia shrugged; it was hard to tell under the gauze and bruising but Somers thought she was blushing. “I wanted to tell her I did it for her, which is silly. I did it because it was the right thing to do. But instead, I pushed her. I pushed Kory. Then, later, Lena called me; she told me to leave her alone or she’d go to the police and have them take care of me. I figured she was bluffing, but then I didn’t want to risk it.”
“She wasn’t bluffing,” Somers said. “We searched her apartment before we came here. She found the collapsible knife Jesse used; we think she must have started looking after your confrontation and lucked onto it. They’re taking prints from it right now at the station.”
Cynthia made a small, understanding noise, as though a piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. “She always wanted to handle things herself, never trusted the police. And she must not have been certain, not even then.”
“I still don’t get it,” Hazard said. “What did Rory and Phil and Mitchell have to do with this? Why are you lying about them? You’ve told us the rest, so finish it. Where are they?”
Shaking her head, Cynthia said, “I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to do with that. Could you hand me my water?”
Somers spotted the plastic cup on the rolling overbed table; he passed it, felt the warmth of the water, the slight crinkle as the cup compressed in his hand. Some of the water slopped over Cynthia’s hand as she took the cup; she was shaking.
Inside the small hospital room, something changed. The air became electric.
Cynthia looked past Somers, focusing on Hazard. The big man stopped his pacing; one hand was tangled in his long hair, frozen halfway in shoving it back. Scarecrow eyes burned back at Cynthia.
“Your friend says, ‘I’m very disappointed. I left you a map.’”
“What?” Hazard glanced at Somers and back at Cynthia. “What does that mean?”
“Your friend says, ‘Next time, you’ll have to be faster.’”
She put the straw to her mouth, sucking hard.
Somers realized at the same time that Hazard shouted, “The water, get the fucking water.” Springing out of his seat, Somers slapped the cup out of Cynthia’s hand. It spilled across the floor.
“Aristaios,” Cynthia said, her head already starting to roll. “The Keeper of Bees.”
Somers jammed the emergency call button. It didn’t matter; he was too late. Cynthia was already convulsing, and a machine was beeping frantically. The door burst open, and the charge nurse rushed in. She was shouting something over her shoulder, directing the crew behind her. She paused just long enough to shout for Hazard and Somers to get out, and then the crowd surrounded the bed. Cynthia was still seizing, thrashing in the hospital bed, her body seeming somehow larger. A horrible red flush filled her face.
That was the last Somers saw of her before he and Hazard were forced into the hall. Hazard charged toward the door, but Somers caught him and pulled him back. The rest of the drama played out for them in audio: short, sharp communication between nurses and doctors, the rustle of the papery bedding, the wail of the machines. And then silence.
Some of the staff slunk past Somers and Hazard, as though somehow ashamed of not being able to save Cynthia. Others watched the two men openly, some of the looks curious, some accusatory. The charge nurse lingered, wiping her eyes. Somers wouldn’t have pegged her for a cryer, but that big old battleship face was wet with tears.
“I’m sorry.” That was all she managed to say before bursting into tears again and staggering away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
NOVEMBER 8
THURSDAY
3:13 PM
HAZARD’S INTERNAL CHAOS HAD grown all night. It had started out with Cynthia’s final words. Your friend. I left you a map. You’ll have to be faster. The words had gone through Hazard like a tornado. F-4. Maybe F-5. The kind of winds that ripped houses off foundations and juggled trailer homes like matchbox cars. He kept seeing Cynthia’s head rolling, the onset of acute cyanide poisoning already beginning as she said, Aristaios, the Keeper of Bees.
Then the police had come, and for the first time in his life, Hazard had faced them not on equal ground. He had been investigated before, but always as a fellow police officer, with the appropriate consideration. He’d always had standing. Now he saw it all from the other side. Like stepping through the looking glass, he thought when he found himself facing into the one-way mirror of an interrogation room. He’d stepped all the way through. That was the only way to explain how insane the last day had been.
He spent almost twenty hours being searched, questioned, shuffled between officers, and questioned again. He knew the men and women at the station. Most of them, anyway. Not the really pregnant woman, the one called Carlson, but most of the others. He sai
d hello. But they didn’t respond with hello. They said sir. They said Mr. Hazard.
And they didn’t look at him like they knew him. They looked at him the way Hazard had looked at dozens of men and women during his own career in law enforcement. They looked at him like he was a killer, and they were just waiting to have all the pieces in place.
It was a disorienting experience, especially since Hazard was separated from Somers. That internal chaos amplified. At first, it fed Hazard’s anger, and the fire was a familiar comfort. He snapped pens and scrubbed blue ink onto the tables until his hands were dry. He walked circles in the cramped room, kicking his chair along the wall. One poor kid, probably twenty years old, still fighting acne and losing, brought him coffee, and Hazard yelled for fifteen minutes.
But at some point in the early morning hours, the fire went out.
Hazard sat in the interrogation room, hands in his lap. The anger was gone, and in its absence he felt himself disconnecting from reality. None of it seemed real. Not the flutter of the fluorescent lights. Not the background hum of the tubes. Not the shriek of the fax machine. Not the smell of burned coffee, turning his stomach. A series of impossibilities drifted through Hazard’s mind, suddenly seeming very possible. He thought maybe this was all an elaborate prank, some kind of trick to shock him out of his self-absorption. Or maybe it was a trip. Maybe somebody had slipped acid into a beer, and Hazard was tripping bad. He thought he could reach out and push his hand through the table, see it melt right through the surface.
And as the hours dragged by, that sense of unreality got worse, until Hazard’s thigh was bouncing and he kept dragging his hands up and down his jeans. Part of him knew this was all exhaustion and disorientation. Part of him knew the police did this on purpose, hours of silence as exhaustion built, until people said things they hadn’t meant to say. Until, sometimes, people said things that weren’t true.
Part of him knew, too, that he felt this way was because of those words: You’ll have to be faster. He tried to focus on those words, on all the rest that Cynthia had said at the end. Tried to work out the meaning. Your friend says. But he’d been awake for over thirty hours, and his internal world had been tilted on its side. Disorientation was a pretty poor fucking synonym for all that.
The door opened; Hazard’s knee cracked against the underside of the table. Johnny Moraes and Miranda Carmichael had been uniformed officers when Hazard worked for the Wahredua PD. Now, they wore suits: Moraes, a cheap number that had probably come off the separates rack at Walmart, and Carmichael, something that might have cost a hundred and fifty bucks after all the coupons. Moraes had a hint of his old smile as he nodded at Hazard, but Carmichael, under her short, shaggy hair, had a cop’s stare.
“Thanks, Mr. Hazard,” Moraes said. “We’ll get back in touch if we have any more questions.”
Hazard stared in shock. That was all. A wave of relief ran through him that was completely irrational, and suddenly he wanted to thank them, thank them for realizing he couldn’t have poisoned Cynthia, thank them for seeing that.
But he was still Emery Hazard, even under the haze of exhaustion. He shook his head, stood, and said, “Took you fucking long enough.”
“Maybe you want to sit back down,” Carmichael said. “Maybe you want to spend a few more hours thinking about your statement. Just in case you forgot anything.”
“Fuck off,” Hazard said, charging for the door.
At the last minute, the two detectives parted, and Carmichael got off a last shot: “Good collar, Hazard. You keep catching the dead ones. We’ll stay busy trying to keep people alive.”
Hazard clenched his hands and kept going. He emerged into the bullpen. Somers was at his desk; sitting opposite him was Dulac, his freckled, boyish complexion set in anger.
“Hey,” Somers said. “I’ve got to stick around and finish a few things. Take the car; I’ll get someone to drive me home.”
Hazard shook his head. “I’ll walk.”
“Right.” Somers wiped his face; he didn’t look at Dulac. His whole body was fixed with the effort. “Ree, don’t get yourself in knots over what she said, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Can you wait? Can we talk about it when I get home?”
“Sure. I’d hate to get arrested again.”
“You didn’t get arrested, Ree. Come on. You know as well as I do that—”
But Hazard turned and started for the door, and Somers didn’t come after him.
When Hazard got home, he undressed and lay on top of the bed, waiting for sleep to claim him. He did sleep—at least, he was gone for a while, and when he came back the clock said it was almost nine. The darkness was disorienting, and for a few moments, Hazard could only deal with pieces and moments. The cotton under his hands. The ache in his chest. You’ll have to be faster.
From downstairs came the clang of cookware.
In the kitchen, Somers was making grilled cheese; a pot bubbled with tomato soup. Somers glanced over his shoulder, gave a ragged smile, and plated the sandwich. He held it out for Hazard.
“Why didn’t you come to bed?”
“I was hungry.”
Hazard was hungry too, he realized. He took the sandwich, ladled out a bowl of soup for himself and another for Somers, and devoured the sandwich. He made himself two more while Somers took a turn eating.
“Ree, they didn’t really think you killed Cynthia.”
“No. They thought we killed her. Together.”
“They didn’t think that either.”
“What do I care what they think?” Hazard said, jamming the last piece of buttered, grilled bread into his mouth. He spoke through the food. “Fuck what they think.”
Somers just sighed and shook his head. “Right. I know. But they were just doing their job. The circumstances—”
“Then they should learn how to do their fucking jobs a little fucking better, shouldn’t they?” Hazard snatched up the dishes and carried them to the sink.
Behind him, Somers said, “Boy, I’m glad you’re not mad.”
A few hours of sleep had helped bring some clarity back to Hazard’s world, and he was smart enough not to respond to that one.
“What Cynthia said—” Somers began.
“I already figured it out.”
“What? You did?”
Hazard stared into the glass, where the night made a mirror: himself, Somers, the kitchen. A bubble in the darkness, easy to pop. “Either she was lying, or she was telling the truth.”
Somers groaned. “I’m too tired for this.”
“If she was lying, then we need to work backward through the last week, track her movements, and figure out where she might have hidden Rory, Phil, and Mitchell.”
“If they’re even together,” Somers said. “And keep in mind, none of that fits her pattern. She didn’t hide any of the other bodies.”
“If she’s telling the truth,” Hazard said, “then someone helped her commit suicide. Someone else is responsible for the disappearances.”
“This is insane,” Somers said. “This is Silence of the Lambs, shit. You know that, right? The Keeper of Bees? What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like a book.”
“It means something. Everything means something.”
“Why do we even think they’re together?” Somers was still talking about it, in spite of his earlier claim that he was too tired. In his voice, Hazard could hear the argument building. “I mean, Rory and Phil disappear. And then, separately, Mitchell disappears. But why do we think they disappeared together?”
“Because we don’t know it’s separate, and it would be too much of a coincidence. And we saw signs that Mitchell might have been at the Pretty Pretty the same night as Rory and Phil. If this person took all three of them—”
“But why those three? They’re not a threesome. They’re not a throuple.”
“So what else do they have in common?” Hazard said. “Rory and Mitc
hell are close in age. People do a lot of crazy things. Sometimes the pattern is perfectly clear to a killer, even though it might not make sense to anyone else.”
“I think we’re looking for something that’s not there.” The legs of Somers’s chair squealed. “I think we’re exhausted and upset and grabbing at straws that Cynthia dangled just to drive us crazy.” In the thin reflection, Hazard saw Somers stand. Then Somers froze halfway out of his seat and look slowly toward Hazard. When he spoke, he sounded shaken. “Do you like puzzles?”
A chill ran through Hazard. He turned off the hot water and spun to look at his boyfriend.
“The skeleton, Ree. And the creepy note on the door. Do you like puzzles? That wasn’t Cynthia. It wasn’t. And if I had to put money on it, I’d say she wasn’t lying. In the hospital, I mean. She was terrified. She was delivering a message. She wasn’t lying.”
Hazard shook his head.
“Do you like puzzles?” Somers repeated. “Jesus Christ, this really is serial killer shit. This asshole, whoever he is, is playing with you. That’s why he took Rory and Phil and Mitchell. Because you’ve been in contact with them. Rory and Phil came to town just to meet you.”
“To meet us.”
“And Mitchell is your first client.”
“But whoever this person is, they couldn’t have known all that.”
“Don’t be stupid, Ree. You’re not stupid, so don’t even pretend. How hard would it be for this guy to identify a few people connected to you?”
It took Hazard a moment not to yell. “Not hard. He’d just have to follow me.”
“Right.”
Hazard drilled a finger into the countertop. “So why didn’t he take you? Or Evie? Or my parents?”
“Because right now, it’s a puzzle. A game. He wants to see how you do. He’s probably got some twisted fantasy of escalating this.” A smile turned Somers’s features bleak. “Besides, he said he’s your friend. Maybe he’s picking people he doesn’t think you’ll care about too much. Maybe he wants your interest, but he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.”