Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  Davey grunted something that might have been a no.

  “Could you tell me who gave you directions to this place? Leonard said it’s the first time he’s been here.”

  “First time for him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I say,” Davey said, dropping into a camp chair and plunging his arm elbow-deep in the cooler. “First time for him. I been here plenty of times. Come up here regular.”

  “How often is regular?”

  “Pretty often.”

  “How often is that?”

  Davey ignored the question and focused on luring a Pabst out of the cooler.

  “The detective asked you a question,” Hazard said. He said it the way Hazard said pretty much everything when he was acting as a detective: a flat, dead tone that made the hairs stand up on the back of Somers’s neck.

  “What’d you say?” Davey asked, his gaze drifting towards Hazard.

  “He said I’m asking some questions,” Somers said. “And we’d sure appreciate you gentlemen’s help. Can you tell me who else is up here?”

  Davey grunted and cracked open his beer.

  “Davey’s pretty sour,” Leonard said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “on account he forgot the eggs. Don’t mind him. You know, Detective, I’m a man who’s never minded helping the police. I’m a great believer in civic duty. In helping one’s fellow man. It’s the Christian thing to do. I was just telling Davey this last night. Davey, I said, helping our local authorities, that’s the Christian thing to do.”

  “Uh-huh,” Somers said, trying to mask his concern about where this was leading.

  “And I figure each good citizen will do another good citizen a turn in the same way it’s done to him. Don’t you think, Detective?”

  “I’d say that’s as may be, Leonard. A helpful citizen who finds it expedient to undress and climb the statues in Worburn Park, peeing all over the playground in the process, that kind of helpful citizen might find himself with a warning instead of another trip to the county jail.”

  “This is a fucking joke,” Hazard said.

  “You’re a man after my own heart,” Bint said, tipping the beer towards Somers. “You sure you don’t want something? It’s hot as hell today.”

  “No thanks, Leonard. Just some information.”

  “Well, tell him, Davey.”

  Davey grunted, shifted in his seat, and stared at Somers through a curtain of greasy yellow hair.

  “Davey comes up here about once a week,” Bint said, undisturbed by his friend’s silence. “Real regular. Clockwork. And first thing Davey said last night was someone had been up here, messing up a goddamn perfect spot to do some—well, Detective, to do some camping. And we’ve got Cliff Treadway up here and Shawn Coy and Roy Lows. Those boys are doing what you might call a nature walk right now.”

  “A nature walk with a few rifles between them.”

  “That’s right, Detective. Just for safety’s sake.”

  “What was messed up? About the site, I mean.”

  “Some fool broke through the trees on the far side. Damn near snapped every branch in his path. Plenty of good trails up here, and Davey knows all of them, but this fellow didn’t bother with any of them. Just barged off like he’d been drinking since Sunday and had to take a piss right goddamn now.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there.” Bint gestured magnanimously with his Pabst. “You want Davey to show you?”

  Davey, in Somers’s opinion, looked more likely to sprout wings than show them anything helpful, so Somers shook his head. “You boys enjoy your camping trip. A real quiet camping trip, with real quiet walks in the woods.”

  “That’s right, John-Henry. Quiet as angels’ wings.” To Somers’s surprise, Bint turned to Hazard. “Emery, welcome back, boy. Bet your daddy would be pretty high on his horse if he saw you now.”

  Hazard ignored the comment and marched past the tents towards the line of trees and brush that Bint had indicated.

  “Touchy,” Bint said. “Touchy as a boy too, but real touchy now.”

  “You have a good day, Leonard. Nice to meet you, Davey.”

  Somers left the men to their beer and followed Hazard to the brush line. True to Bint’s words, a trampled section of grass revealed where someone had struggled into the line of trees. Several branches had been broken, while flattened weeds showed where someone had moved deeper into the woods.

  “Where the hell was Chendo going?”

  “It was night,” Hazard said, his scarecrow eyes darting around the clearing and then back to the brush line. “After midnight. He left before dawn. Unless he had a decent flashlight and took time to explore, he wouldn’t have known there were trails here.”

  “Or unless he’d been here before. Why else would he come to this spot?”

  Hazard shook his head and didn’t answer. “This is too wide,” he said, pointing at the trampled path.

  Somers squinted. “You’re right. He wasn’t just going himself. He was dragging something.”

  “Or someone.”

  Somers pushed into the broken line of growth, fought through a tangle of prickers, and scrambled onto a bare patch of dirt. He heard Hazard following him, although the bigger man was obviously having more difficulty—and doing a great deal more swearing. It was easy to follow the trail that Chendo had forced through the woods. It curved down and around the slope of the bluff. Dirt crumbled under Somers’s leather soles, and more than once he slipped and had to catch himself.

  “This would have been a hell of a thing to do in the middle of the night,” Somers called over his shoulder.

  No answer from Hazard except more swearing.

  The smell of the humid summer was mixed now with a cool, earthy scent, and the occasional burst of the moldering dead leaves from last autumn. As Somers hugged the bluff and continued down, though, a caught a whiff of something else. A reek of decay. And then the whisper of the leaves was replaced by a steady buzzing.

  Somers knew what they were going to find; he’d smelled that smell before, he’d heard that horrible buzzing. And around the next curve of the hill, he found it. The body was swollen and, under the black, writhing masses of the flies, it was a bluish-gray color. The stink of rot poured off the corpse. Somers stood there for a moment, studying the scene.

  When Hazard reached him a moment later, he uttered a single word: “Fuck.”

  Yes, Somers thought. They were fucked. Because the body in front of them was missing its head and hands, and that was going to make identifying it a hell of a lot harder.

  HAZARD STUDIED THE SCENE in front of him. The body—headless and handless—lay at the end of the trail of broken branches, obviously there by someone in a hurry. But not in so much of a hurry, Hazard corrected, that he didn’t have time to eliminate the easiest ways of identifying the dead man. Flies buzzed, lifting and settling in waves as Somers stalked around the corpse, and then two gunshots rang out in quick succession. Hazard had his .38 in hand before he realized that no one was in sight.

  “Cliff Treadway,” Somers said, his hand sliding down from his back, his gun still holstered—had he been too slow, or had he judged the sounds as harmless? “And the rest of Bint’s poachers.”

  Hazard ignored the comment. As he slid the .38 back into its holster, he dropped to his knees. Waving away the flies, he leaned towards the corpse for a better look.

  The smell made him want to pull back, but he pushed away that impulse. White male, average height, paunchy. Before being decapitated, he might have stood anywhere between five-ten and six feet. Dusty, kinky brown hair curled along his belly into a dense mat around his crotch.

  Somers copied Hazard, squatting and waving away the flies to study the body from his side. Hazard found himself glaring at the other man, trying to assemble the different versions of Somers into a cohesive unit: there was Somers who just wanted to be everybody’s buddy—Leonard Bint included; there was Somers who was a surprisingly good cop; and there was th
e Somers who had tortured Jeff to suicide. How did those three fit together? Any two of them might work as sides of a coin, but all three—Hazard shook his head.

  He regretted the action because Somers glanced up at him questioningly. “Going to be difficult to ID this one,” Hazard said. “That’s two now.”

  “Chendo Cervantes has a pattern. That’s two vics that we can’t put a name to.”

  Hazard grunted. “We don’t know this is connected to Chendo.”

  Somers cocked his head at the body. “Get a look at this.”

  When Hazard saw the blue swastika tattoo on the dead man’s neck, just below the raggedly cut flesh, he swore.

  “Yep,” Somers said. “That fits Lady Mabbe’s description. Two men with swastika tattoos. Here’s one of them. So what the hell does that mean?”

  Hazard shook his head. “Let’s call it in.”

  Everything after that took time: time for the sheriff’s deputies to arrive, time for them to take pictures, time for them to pack up the corpse, time for them to interview Hazard, Somers, and Leonard Bint and his crew—who, miraculously, managed to steer clear of any question of poaching. This was Hazard’s first encounter with the deputies that covered most of Dore County, and they did about as well as he could have hoped. There wasn’t much, frankly, that they could do.

  Sergeant Neecie Weiss, who was probably past forty and carried her weight with a substantial limp and who kept studying Hazard in sidelong glances, shrugged when she heard about their investigation and about the efforts to track Chendo Cervantes’s cell phone. “Do the best we can to help, but you saw the body. Not much to say for it. As for the phone, we’ll see what we can do.”

  And with those promising words, Weiss led the rest of the deputies out of the unmarked campsite, leaving Hazard sweating in the late summer sun, and leaving Somers perched on the Impala’s hood.

  “Chendo did this,” Somers said, jabbing a finger towards the trampled undergrowth.

  Hazard wiped his forehead and said nothing. He ran through the facts: they had two dead bodies, now. And, depending on who you asked, both Chuckie Armistead and Chendo Cervantes were missing.

  “Or it was Armistead,” Hazard finally said.

  “No way,” Somers said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Nico and Fukuma told us everything we need to know: Chendo was a fanatic. He was obsessed with Fukuma, obsessed with impressing her. He knew about her confrontation with Armistead—”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “—and he had his own encounter with Armistead. Christ, Hazard, we have Chendo’s texts, and he sounds guilty as shit. He snaps, or he cracks, or however you want to say it, and who does he go after? Armistead. It all adds up.”

  “So what’s Armistead doing with the second guy? Why are they at the trailer, filling it with paint thinner or whatever the hell they used? Why does Armistead trust this other guy, when Naomi all but told us that Armistead must have known he wasn’t a real Volunteer? And how does Chendo get the drop on both of them?”

  “Lady Mabbe heard a gunshot.” Somers mimed pulling a trigger twice. “Boom, boom. Two shots, easy, especially if he takes them by surprise.”

  “So why does he burn one and drag the other out here?”

  Somers grimaced. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a pervert.”

  “I think Nico would have mentioned if Chendo were into necrophilia.”

  “Fine. You’re the big-shot, let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fuck that. Let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think Armistead’s alive.”

  “He might be.”

  “You think he killed Chendo Cervantes and burned the body in the trailer.”

  “He might have.”

  “You think he got some help—from a friend, from a wannabe Volunteer, from somebody he knew he could manipulate—with setting up the fire. That’s his plan, to get rid of the body so we don’t know who the victim was. And then what?”

  “I don’t know. This is your theory.”

  “Like hell it is.”

  “All right,” Hazard said, flicking away another handful of sweat. “Maybe Armistead goes cruising again, picks up Chendo again, gets his rocks off and then feels messed up. He kills Chendo. He freaks out. He has to get rid of the body, so he asks his friend to help. Remember, we only have Naomi’s word that the second man wasn’t really a Volunteer. As far as I’m concerned, that’s worth about as much as the breath she used to say it. I think it’s possible Armistead called up a buddy in the Volunteers, convinced him to help dispose of Chendo’s body—”

  “The body of the faggot he just fucked? Pardon my language, but that’s how a Volunteer would see it. There’s no way they would help Armistead.”

  “Nobody would know Armistead’s secret except Chendo, and he’s dead. Armistead just has to make his friends think that this was one more step in what he’s been doing: the vandalism, the assaults, finally escalating to murder. The Volunteers would probably be proud of what he did.”

  Somers’s eyes narrowed. “So, why does Armistead turn on his buddy? Why drag him out here, cut off his head and his hands? Why send fake text messages to Nico? Why keep Chendo’s phone as he tries to escape? Why run away at all—for hell’s sake, if he hadn’t gone missing, nobody would have ever known it was him?”

  “Because he’s got a secret. Not just killing Chendo—all the rest of it. And he’s worried that it will get out, that everyone will find out that Chuckie Armistead is a cocksucker. For a Volunteer, that’s worse than being a murderer. He uses Nico’s phone as a screen, as a way of keeping us thinking that Chendo’s still alive.”

  “That’s insane. You know that, right? No, let me say this. You’re fixated on the Volunteers. I know you hate them. I hate them. They’re a bunch of hate-mongering cowards, and I won’t say I’m sorry that Chendo Cervantes killed two of them. But you’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment.”

  “Fuck you,” Hazard said.

  Somers rolled his shoulders, sighed, and climbed down from the hood. He unlocked the Impala and got in; Hazard chewed on his anger for another minute before following. The drive back towards Wahredua was long and silent.

  “All right, my theory’s got holes,” Somers finally said. “But you got to admit yours does too.”

  Hazard ignored him.

  The next round of silence was broken by Somers’s phone. He answered the call, spoke softly for a few moments, and then disconnected. With a shout, he hurled the phone across the dash.

  It was enough of an opening for Hazard to ask, “What?”

  “They just found Chendo’s phone.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Buried in a logging truck headed west on 44. Driver doesn’t have any idea who Chendo Cervantes is. Never heard of him. Doesn’t know how the phone got there or when. Jesus Christ.”

  “Whoever it was,” Hazard said, fighting the tightness in his jaw, “Armistead or Chendo, he’s gone. We just lost our best chance of finding him.”

  INSTEAD OF DRIVING TO THE STATION, Somers followed Market Street and found parking on the north side of Saint Taffy’s. It was a Thursday, and it was late, and Somers needed a drink. Besides, it was also Upchurch’s going-away party. The more important reason, the more pressing reason, was that John-Henry Somerset needed a drink and he needed it about five hours ago. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but it was—what? Semi-conscious? Lurking at the back of his brain, a half-formed thought of what he needed: booze, enough to black out everything for the past thirty years or so.

  Tonight, though, it wasn’t the regular dose he needed to get to sleep and forget Cora and Evie and all the familiar ways his life had gone to hell. Tonight it was the case: no suspect, no leads, nothing but two dead bodies they couldn’t identify. And if Somers were honest with himself—which he didn’t want to be—it was Hazard. Because somehow everything had gone to shit with Hazard, and Somers couldn’t figure ou
t why.

  Somers climbed out of the Impala. He was thirsty. He was more than thirsty. His throat was dry, and the tips of his fingers were trembling, just a little bit, because he was close now, so close. Hazard, his big shoulders slumped, followed Somers towards Saint Taffy’s.

  When Somers glanced back at him, Hazard’s dark brows came together like storm clouds. “I fucking promised I’d come to this fucking nightmare, so don’t fucking look at me like that.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Same old charming Hazard.

  Inside, nothing had changed, and Somers actually breathed in relief. The smoky mirror behind the bar: that’s where Somers’s gaze went, and the distorted glass pulled Somers towards the wavy reflections of brown and blue and green bottles. He caught impressions of the rest of the bar, the smell of sangria—the Thursday special—and the hum and bump of the music pounding through the speakers. Something pop, something hip, something that people under twenty probably liked, but hell, were they even people when they were that young?

  Somers wasn’t sure if he was an alcoholic. Hazard said he was. Cora said he was. Upchurch said he was. But Somers wasn’t sure. Alcoholics were a breed. They had something in them, something in the wiring, that made alcohol like air or water, a necessity. Somers, though, needed alcohol the way a drowning man needed a life preserver. It was a hell of a nice thing to have when you were in the water, but once you reached land, you could throw it away. And he was going to get to land. He was going to swim across the mother-fucking ocean if he had to, but one way or another, he was going to get to land.

  Tonight, though, he needed his life preserver. Tony was behind the bar. They hadn’t gone to school together—Tony had moved to Wahredua for college, dropped out, and stayed on by hopping around the bar scene—but they were close to the same age, and aside from Somers’s wife, Tony was probably the person that had taken more of Somers’s money, listened to more of his complaints, and shoved him out the door more than anyone else.

  Somers didn’t even need to say anything anymore. He didn’t want to, anyway, so he just nodded at Tony, and Tony got the bottle of Jose Cuervo and the shot glass and started doing what he did best: getting Somers drunk.