by Gregory Ashe
“You stay on that side of the cordon,” Somers said, his voice sounding loud even in his own ears, “until you’re not bleeding anymore. We don’t want any contamination.”
Redgie—big, old, state-wrestling Redgie—stared up at Somers in shock.
Somers flashed him a smile. “You ever talk about my partner like that again, I’ll do more than twist your nose. You tell every other fucking redneck the same thing, all right?”
By now, Redgie’s face was coloring, and he looked ready to charge.
“If you try to get up,” Somers said, “I’ll put you back down. Understand me?”
Redgie didn’t answer, but he stayed down.
“Well?”
“I heard you.”
“What are you going to tell all the other jerk-offs?”
It took a moment, but finally Redgie said, “He’s your partner.”
“All right, Redgie. We’ll give you the clipboard after we sign out. Stay here, right? Until you get yourself cleaned up.”
Somers didn’t wait for an answer; he headed back to Hazard, took the clipboard, and scribbled his name and time in.
Hazard was staring at him.
“What?”
“Don’t do that.”
Tucking the clipboard under one arm, Somers crossed the lot towards the trailer. A set of portable metal steps had been erected by the fire department, and Somers climbed to where he could see into the burnt wreckage.
Hazard was only a step behind him, and he grabbed Somers arm and turned him. “I’m serious. Don’t do that. I don’t need anyone fighting my battles for me.”
Somers snorted. “Fighting your battles? Trust me. I’m not fighting any battles for you—you look like you can take care of yourself just fine.”
“What you just did—”
“What I just did was what any good partner would have done. That’s what this is, right? We’re partners?”
“Yeah,” Hazard said. “But—”
“Then that’s all there is to it.”
For a moment, Somers waited for Hazard to say something else, to object or protest or complain or, more likely, to take a swing. Instead, something passed under Hazard’s icy mask—a ripple, or maybe a tremor, like something coming just before an earthquake. And then it was gone.
“Can I have that back?” Somers said, glancing at his arm.
“Oh.” Hazard flinched and peeled back his fingers. Then, in a voice so muffled Somers barely heard, “Sorry.”
Holy hell, Somers wanted to shout. An apology from Emery Hazard? But all he did was shrug and turn his attention back to the burnt-out trailer.
After a moment, Hazard stepped up next to him, their shoulders rubbing together. Somers thought back to the threat of an hour before—if you so much as bump me in the hallway, wasn’t that it?—and fought a smile. Well, maybe he was making a little progress.
When Hazard spoke, it was with the same crisp, cool detachment he had shown in the mortuary. “The barrel,” he said, pointing to a circle of twisted metal at the center of the trailer. “That’s where the accelerant was stored. It must have had a lot of it—what did McClinckie say they used?”
“Paint thinner, I think. Mineral spirits?”
Hazard nodded. “It kept the fire going even when they tried to put it out. Kept it hot, too.”
“Hot enough to make sure the body was destroyed.”
“Exactly what the killer wanted.” Hazard pointed. “What’s that?”
On one of the remaining scorched floorboards, melted plastic made an irregular puddle.
Somers shrugged. “A kid’s toy? I don’t know. Look at all the shit in there: the stove, the microwave—that looks like it’s from the eighties, can’t believe I can still recognize it—that was the sofa, you can see some of the springs.”
“But that’s close to the barrel.”
“You think that’s where it started?”
Hazard shrugged. “It just seems strange.”
With a nod, Somers took another look at their crime scene. Once the fire department gave them clearance, they’d begin processing it for fingerprints and any other trace material evidence; until then, the best they could hope for was that it didn’t rain.
They stood there for a few more minutes. The day was already hot, and the sweltering air stuck to Somers’s skin, pasted his shirt under his arms, and made him wish for a cold beer. The smell of burned meat and overheated metal lingered near the wreckage, and Somers’s stomach turned queasy. Then, on an eddy of fresh air, he smelled Hazard’s sweat and the clean, shampoo-smell of his hair.
“Ready?” Somers asked.
They signed out of the scene and, as they made their way to the car, Somers waved the clipboard at Redgie and dropped it on the grass. Redgie, who was now holding a wadded napkin to his nose, gave them the finger, but he didn’t cross the cordon. Maybe he was taking seriously the warning about contaminating the crime scene. Or maybe he didn’t want to tangle with both of them.
“What now?” Hazard asked as they approached the Impala.
“Now we look for someone I know.”
They got into the car, and Somers cranked the air condition. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hazard catch a glimpse of himself in the glass. One of Hazard’s hands straightened the fallen lock of hair, and just like that, Hazard was back to his perfectly groomed GQ look.
“What are you smiling about?” Hazard asked, echoing his earlier question with slightly less heat.
“Nothing,” Somers said, no longer trying to hide his amusement, and pulled away from the curb.
THE THING ABOUT JOHN-HENRY SOMERSET, Hazard thought, was that he was confusing as hell. Somers was driving them through Smithfield, his eyes fixed out the windshield as he looked for contacts, his attention finally diverted from Hazard. It was like a weight off Hazard’s shoulders, not having Somers’s attention. There was something about the way Somers looked at him, something about his eyes. Hazard had gone to Cancun last year, a birthday present for Billy, and he’d never seen water like that before—well, never seen it anywhere but the movies. Somers had eyes like that, blue you could dive into, and blue like in the movies. Cancun, yes, that had been fun. The sun shattering against the white sand, the feel of Billy’s skin under his own, the heat everywhere, but especially inside, like someone had shoved his internal thermostat up twenty degrees. Cancun with Billy. Billy, who was Hazard’s boyfriend. So why the hell, Hazard asked himself, am I thinking about that kind of heat, about Cancun and the sun and blue water, when John-Henry Somerset looks at me?
That was the most embarrassing part, the fact that Hazard couldn’t bring himself to hate Somers—not the way he knew he should have. After—
—the locker room—
—everything that had happened in high school, Hazard knew he should have hated Somers. Hell, after the way Somers had talked about Jeff Langham, Hazard knew he should have hated him. And, in a way, Hazard did hate him.
But it was a complicated, mixed-up way because John-Henry Somerset was confusing as hell. He was hot, yes, but more than that, he was . . . sweet. Almost desperately eager to make Hazard happy, except for the times he was trying to piss him off. And then, out of the clear blue, Somers did something like punch Redgie Moseby in the face, and all that work Hazard had done to hate him went up like gunpowder at the first spark. Why the hell, Hazard wanted to know, was coming home so hard?
At that moment, Somers pulled the Impala to the curb and killed the engine. They were sitting opposite the Bordello, that ancient Victorian structure that, when Hazard had been a boy, had held an obscene allure. He remembered, again, the woman who had offered to blow him for twenty cents and he remembered his terror at the offer—terror because she was a stranger and terror, too, because she was a woman and he hadn’t understood, not really, why that made the offer particularly repulsive.
“You ever sneak in there?” Somers asked, tilting his head. “Kids called it the—”
“Bordello.”
<
br /> “So you did sneak in there.” Somers was grinning. “You get caught?”
It took half a moment for Hazard to remember that talking to Somers about anything besides work was a bad idea. He shrugged and said, “You’ve got a contact in there?”
“Maybe. You know, I snuck in there. Just once. You know Patrick Foley?”
Hazard didn’t answer.
Somers went on, apparently undisturbed by the silence. “Well, his older brother, his name’s Conor, he was a few years older than us, and he kept bragging about all the girls he slept with, you know, high school boy stuff, probably never did anything but jerk off in bed, you know? Anyway, he had us convinced that we could come down here and get a girl for five bucks.”
Twenty cents, Hazard thought.
“So Patrick and I came down one night, it was probably nine o’clock but it felt like midnight, like the middle of the night, and we went right up to the door and knocked. Something—well, it sounded like it was running, like something was coming for us, and we ran faster than hell. Patrick screamed, you know, even if you wouldn’t believe it looking at him now. When we got to the other side of the street, we heard laughter. I turned back.”
“Conor?” Hazard said in spite of himself.
“And his buddies. They just about peed themselves they were laughing so hard. They got up, they were pointing at us, calling us pussies, you know. Same old shit. But the best part was when a big old owl flew down from that window,” Somers pointed to the Bordello’s upper floor, “and just about landed in Conor’s hair. Conor and his buddies took off running like they had the devil after them. By the time we caught up to them, Conor really had peed himself. He was that goddamn scared. Served the bastard right.”
To his own surprise, Hazard barked a laugh. Then, with a rush of anger at himself and at Somers—Hazard had the vague feeling that Somers had somehow tricked him into laughing—Hazard said, “All right. Are we here to do some work or tell stories?”
“We can do both,” Somers said with that same smile, with that same goddamn cool. “Come on.”
The day had only grown hotter while they were driving around, but at least the air here was relatively fresher. Instead of the burnt meat smell from the trailer, this portion of Smithfield carried only the odor of hot asphalt and the dusty pollen of the overgrown weeds. Down the street, voices were raised in excitement, and Hazard saw a group of young men clustered around young women—the young women, he could tell even from a distance, had a definite advantage—and further down the block, an elderly woman sat in a folding chair under a maple tree. In the late morning, the only signs of Smithfield’s violence and poverty were the crumbling buildings, the sparkle of broken glass, and the overgrown, abandoned lots.
“Why the Bordello?” Hazard asked as they crossed the street.
“The lady’s home.”
“What?”
With one hand, Somers indicated an enormous straw hat, the kind with huge ribbons that hung down on either side and were meant to be tied under the wearer’s chin. Right then, the ribbons were tied around the porchlight, and the straw hat drifted gently in the breeze.
“You’re telling me someone wears that?”
“Oh God, yes. You can spot the lady from a mile away, most days.”
“Who is this lady?”
Somers pushed open the Bordello’s door, and for one heart-stopping moment, Hazard was a small boy again, thin, weak, vulnerable. In that moment, fear washed up over him, black and icy-cold, and it took everything in him to remember that the past was past, and that he was a grown man, and that this was just an old house.
“You coming?” Somers asked, concern in his voice.
Hazard growled something—even he wasn’t sure what he said—and pushed past him.
“Be careful,” Somers called after him. “The floor’s rotted through in parts.”
But Hazard barely heard him. The Bordello had all the faded opulence that he had imagined as a child, although stripped to its bones by time and squatters. Where brass light fixtures had once hung, jagged holes marred the lath and plaster walls, and the flooring had been scraped and scoured. Doors had been pried from their hinges—some of the doors lay on the floor, others had disappeared. Charred rings marked where fires had been built, some of them many times. But underneath all of it, noticeable in spite of the smell of dust and old wood and dry-rot, was the house’s original beauty.
It’s just a house, Hazard told himself. Just an old house like any other. But his pulse had accelerated, and he remembered what it had felt like to cross the street while Hollace Walker watched from safety, what it had felt like to approach the Bordello, and the grotesque horror of seeing the woman—she had seemed so old, so dirty, so wrung-out by life. And God damn it, Hazard told himself again, it’s just a goddamn house, but that didn’t slow his pulse, it didn’t slow it at all.
“Lady,” Somers called. “Hey-o, Lady.”
The only answer was the echoes that bounced back from the empty rooms.
“This is a bad place to go into without backup,” Hazard said, pausing halfway down the hall. “Lots of open doors. Lots of places for people to jump out. Can’t secure a goddamn inch of it.”
“We’re not breaking into a Mafia fortress,” Somers said with his lazy, lolling grin. “We’re walking through an old whorehouse. Jesus, you look wired. Are you all right?”
Hazard didn’t bother answering. He strode deeper into the Bordello, past the gaping holes in the plaster, past the curlicues of hanging wire, into the dusty, sunless hall. Drawing his .38, he began clearing the rooms as he passed them: soiled mattress, a pyramid of broken chairs, a tarnished brass gong that captured his wavery reflection, and on and on, past peeling wallpaper printed with lilacs—thick, old, almost clothlike wallpaper, stuff they hadn’t made in a hundred years, and it filled the air with its rotting must—until Hazard passed the broken tiles of the kitchen and saw a rectangle of sunlight and fresh air. He fought the urge to run.
“Nobody here,” he said, jamming the .38 back into his shoulder holster.
“She’s probably upstairs.” Somers studied Hazard, and then he added, “You stay here, all right? Keep this locked down while I go up and look for her.”
Hazard considered the offer. “You think I’m afraid.
“That’s not what I—”
“Screw that.”
Hazard shoved past Somers and started up the back stairs. They didn’t creak under his weight, but they did flex—a rubbery, stretching movement like the wood was on the point of dissolving. Jesus, Hazard thought. Just plain old Jesus, this was ridiculous. He cleared the second floor in the same way, the .38 in his hand, his finger resting outside the guard, past a room with a fireplace that held a single, enameled poker and what looked like the burned remains of a wedding dress, and then a room where a shifting, buzzing mass of flies covered something on the ground—size of cat, Hazard’s brain computed, a scrawny one maybe—and the reek of decay made Hazard’s nose tingle, and on and on, until he reached a closed door at the end of the second floor.
He threw a glance at Somers, who had looked embarrassed for Hazard and who was trying to hide that embarrassment. Well, screw him. Hazard nodded at Somers and raised his gun.
With a sigh, Somers drew a semiautomatic from a holster at the small of his back. He nodded, but he didn’t look happy.
Hazard ignored him; he opened the door and swung easily into the room, the .38 still low, but his hand ready to come up at a moment’s notice. Two steps into the room, though, Hazard stopped. An older woman stood at the window, naked from the waist up, her dark skin shining in the sunlight. She leaned on the sill, the folds of skin at her waist overflowing her skirt, her breasts dangling until they almost touched the glass. After a cool, casual glance over her shoulder at Hazard, she turned her attention back to the street.
“Morning, Lady,” Somers said, already tucking the pistol back into its holster. “You ready for visitors, or you want me to wait outside?
”
“Who’s that drink,” she said, her voice warm and scratchy and thick with a drawl, “of tall, dark, and handsome?”
“This is my new partner. Lady Mabbe, meet Detective Hazard. Hazard, meet Lady Mabbe.”
Lady Mabbe cast another glance at Hazard, and he realized that she was older than he had realized—sixty, maybe seventy. Her short, curly hair was mostly white, and age spots peppered her complexion. She smiled, gave her tush a little shake, and then swung around with no sign of discomfort or embarrassment.
“A lady has a right to privacy, John-Henry.”
“Didn’t mean to barge in on you, Lady. You know how this place is—anything could be going on behind closed doors.”
With a waggle of her eyebrows, Lady Mabbe cackled and said, “You are a wicked boy. Tremendously wicked, making a wicked, lasciviously wicked comment like that.”
“I can’t help it,” Somers said with that smile, that knock-out smile, the one that could level a roomful of debutantes. “You’re just too pretty.”
“Good Lord,” Hazard said, jamming the .38 into its holster. “She’s your source?”
“She’s Lady Mabbe, queen of Smithfield.”
“Shouldn’t she be Queen Mabbe, then?”
Somers winced, but before he could speak, Lady Mabbe snapped, “You know what a queen is? In the old days, that meant a whore. I know all about that. You think I don’t know, nobody thinks I know, but I know all about what words mean. People say things like that to get at you. They say them to put a woman in her place, a word like that.”
“He didn’t know,” Somers said, putting a restraining—or was it protective?—hand on Hazard’s chest. Hazard remembered his earlier threat, what he’d do to Somers if he ever touched Hazard again, and he forced the thought away. “Hazard’s new, he’s—”
“He ain’t new. He’s as old as they come. That’s Frank and Aileen’s boy, isn’t it?”