by Gregory Ashe
“I need to talk to Billy.”
“Look, Em.” Tom’s voice. That same condescending, upper-crust voice: good manners, good breeding, and a good deal of patience with slow, stupid Emery Hazard. “Billy doesn’t want to talk to you, all right?”
“I need to talk to Billy.”
“Well, he’s not talking to you. I am. Listen, Em, you had to see this coming, right? We all saw it coming. The move was a good thing. You guys can go your separate ways, nobody gets hurt, right? C’mon, let’s do this like adults.”
Hazard’s head was shooting up. Past the stratosphere. Past everything, into a vacuum. He hadn’t felt this way since the last night Alec had slapped him around the apartment, the night Hazard had finally decided that enough was enough, that it was time to leave.
“I need to talk to—”
“Well, what are you? Fucking stupid? He’s not talking to you, Em.”
In the background, Hazard could hear Billy’s voice: “Tom, cool it, here, let me—”
“He wants this thing over,” Tom continued. “No, Billy, you don’t have to deal with him anymore. You’ve done enough intimidating, Em. You’ve scared Billy enough. You want to talk to somebody about this, you can talk to me. A clean break, right, Em? That’s what’s best for everybody. Listen, you take a few days, think about this, think about what you were doing to Billy, how you were treating him, what’s best, what’s really the best, and cool off. I’m blocking you from Billy’s phone, all right? You need something, you can call me. You got my number, right?”
It felt like a joke, but like a joke that was happening ten thousand feet below eye-level, where Hazard could understand the humor without finding it funny.
“I scared Billy? I was treating Billy badly?” Hazard’s throat was dry. The words had a crunchy, crumbling sound. “I was the one, when he was out fucking you whenever he had five free minutes—”
The call disconnected.
Hazard swore and punched in Billy’s number again, but the call went straight to voicemail. A blistering message was on Hazard’s lips. He was ready to tell Billy what he thought of him. He was ready to tell him what he thought of both of them. And then the voicemail dinged, and Hazard opened his mouth—and he suddenly felt himself plummeting, crashing back to earth. He thumbed the disconnect button and dropped his head to the steering wheel.
The hurt was coming. It was only milliseconds behind the crash, and Hazard knew it was coming, knew it was going to turn him inside out. But he still had those milliseconds, time when he wasn’t hurting—just tired, just really, really tired. Enough time for him to dial another number and, when the call picked up, to say, “I need to see you.”
THE PENCIL IN SOMERS'S HAND snapped. He tossed it onto the growing pile—if he kept it up, there wouldn’t be a whole pencil left in the station. Eyes fixed on the monitor at his desk, Somers waited, waited, waited, and then the clock changed. 8:46. Where the fuck was Hazard?
For what felt like the millionth time, Somers glanced at Cravens’s office. In spite of his words to Hazard earlier, Somers hadn’t gone straight to the chief. He’d gone home, instead, and he’d showered and managed to find a shirt with only one major wrinkle and trousers that could pass for clean at moderate range. And as he’d showered and dressed and stared out the window, he wasn’t seeing the bar of soap or the club tie or the brick snake of Market Street. He was seeing Emery Hazard’s face, at the very end of their last conversation, after Somers’s parting shot about Billy: the look of a man who’d been fatally wounded and who was, frankly, a little relieved, like death might be easier than even five more minutes of whatever passed for life.
So, take John-Henry Somerset for the world’s biggest sucker, but he hadn’t talked to Cravens. He wanted to talk to Hazard first. He had it all planned out: Somers would go to the station, and he was sure he’d find Hazard there. Hazard was always there before him. Somers would insist that they talk. He’d take Hazard to Caribou Coffee. They’d find a booth, and they’d talk this out. All of it. Not just the trouble that Hazard had been brewing—for Christ’s sake, had he really believed Mikey Grames?—but everything about this case too. They’d hash it out, and Somers knew that once they talked, once they really got it all out there, things would get better.
How long, Somers wondered, had Hazard been hurting about Jeff? Somers didn’t know, but he guessed it had been a long time. He remembered, now that he thought more carefully about it, how Hazard had disappeared after Jeff’s death. For a few weeks. Somers had just assumed that Hazard had been lying low, afraid he’d get the same treatment. In that respect, Hazard had been right: Mikey and Hugo had been rearing to have a go at Hazard. Now, though, Somers wasn’t sure that was the case. Hazard wasn’t a coward; he wouldn’t have hidden just to keep himself safe. And when he’d come back to school, when they’d found each other in the locker room, those hadn’t been the actions of a boy who was scared for his safety. No, Somers realized, Emery Hazard had disappeared after Jeff’s death because he’d been grieving. And Somers guessed that Hazard had been grieving every day since. What had Lady Mabbe said? Hazard was trying to ride a devil, but you can’t ride a devil. A devil’s always riding you. In that, as in many other things, Lady Mabbe had turned out to be right: a devil had been riding Emery Hazard for over fifteen years.
Letting out a breath, Somers sagged in his chair. The plan, Somers’s genius plan, was turning out to be totally worthless because Hazard still wasn’t here, and now it was five to nine. A sliver of worry worked its way into Somers’s thinking. Why wasn’t Hazard here? Had he done something stupid? Not suicide, but had he called Cravens’s and resigned? If so, why hadn’t Cravens said anything? Had he run back to St. Louis to be with Billy? Had he drunk himself into a stupor—that was something that seemed more in Somers’s line than Hazard’s, but it was a possibility.
Somers grabbed a pencil off Hazard’s desk. Five more minutes. He’d give Hazard five more minutes.
The pencil only lasted three.
That was it. Somers wasn’t going to sit here like an idiot. He wasn’t going to drive himself crazy. He was going to get something done. He was going to do some actual police work and see if he couldn’t get another angle on the case. He pulled up the file on his computer, flipped open the murder book on his desk, and began browsing through first one, then the other. He had the feeling that he was missing something, something that was right there in front of him.
“You look like shit.”
Somers glanced up as Swinney perched on the edge of his desk. She held a steaming cup of coffee, and she looked tired. In the morning light, the wrinkles around her eyes were deeper. Swinney was losing a battle—everyone lost that battle—but she was losing it pretty damn hard.
“Thanks,” Somers said.
“Where’s he at?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“Because you sound like there’s something wrong.”
“God, Swinney, no. Nothing’s wrong. Can I have my desk back? I’m trying to work.”
“This the arson murder?”
Somers didn’t answer.
“Where are you at on it?”
“Nowhere. Our suspect skipped town, we found the accomplice dead—and conveniently dismembered so we can’t identify him. We’ve got absolutely nothing, that’s where we’re at.”
“Another dead guy? Christ, this really is a mess.”
“The county picked it up, but they’ll toss it on our plate. As soon as they saw me and Hazard there, they started wagging their little dog tails. They can’t wait to clean their plate.”
“So why does he kill his accomplice?”
“Because he’s a psychopath. Because he’s covering his tracks. Because the other guy farted in the car. How should I know?”
“Geez, you really are pissy today. You need a coffee?”
“I’m waiting for Hazard.”
“Might be waiting a long time.”
“Goodbye, Swinney.”
Swinney flashed her teeth at him and took an inordinately long time getting off the desk and moving across the bullpen. Somers turned back to the murder book. He was missing something, and he’d probably been close to figuring it out when Swinney interrupted. Now he was back at the beginning.
The attack on Naomi, the night before. That should have told him something. It did tell him a few things. It told him that someone wanted Naomi dead. No, Somers thought. He could almost hear Hazard correcting him. It didn’t necessarily mean that. Someone had attacked Naomi’s house. Thrown a Molotov cocktail through the kitchen window. It had started a fire—but if this was the killer, he could have done a lot more to ensure Naomi didn’t survive the night.
Somers fought a wave of frustration. All right, so what did the attack tell him? What were the possibilities? Someone wanted to scare Naomi; that was a definite possibility, but if they wanted to scare her, why break into the house? Someone wanted to kill her—that seemed less likely, especially considering the two missed shots and the Molotov cocktail. A serious killer wouldn’t have waited for Naomi to put out the fire. A serious killer would have either burned the house to the ground and shot Naomi if she tried to escape, or he would have taken the time to put a bullet in her and finished the job. No, it was important that the Molotov cocktail was a distraction. And it was important that the man had gone inside the house, into Naomi’s bedroom, and slashed up the furniture.
Ok, Somers thought with a rush of excitement. He straightened in his chair, fingers blind on the murder book. Ok, now that was something. Someone had wanted to get into Naomi’s house while Naomi was distracted. Someone had wanted to find something that Naomi had hidden. Who? Well, the most likely answer was the murderer. Why? Because, Somers thought, Naomi had something. Something that made her a threat. Naomi, though, wasn’t going to say a word to Somers. Or, for that matter, to any other police officer. So, that left it up to Somers to figure out what Naomi had—or what she knew.
The strange thing, though, was that—as far as Somers knew—no one had threatened Lady Mabbe. He was pretty sure that if anyone had gone near the old woman, she would have raised hell so that you could have smelled it across the state line. Lady Mabbe had insisted, though, that the two men had seen her. She had even claimed that one had taken a shot at her. If the killer was looking at cleaning up loose ends, why hadn’t he gone after Lady Mabbe?
And there it was again, Somers thought, that irritating feeling that he was missing something. What? Something to do with Lady Mabbe? He’d only had the one conversation with her, and since then, he hadn’t heard a word from her. That was a good sign; if Lady Mabbe showed up, it meant she wanted something, and usually that meant money.
But the feeling persisted. Was it something she had said? She had told him about working the corner, and about her view of the trailer. She had told him about the men, about rolling the barrel into the trailer, about the men seeing her, pointing at her. She had run. The shot from the gun.
Somers growled, his fingers knotting around the edge of the desk. He could almost put his finger on it. What else? At the end, she had drawn a swastika in the dust. She had told him the men wore that sign on their—
Now wait. Wait just a minute. They had the devil’s sign, that’s what Lady Mabbe had said. And one man had the tattoo on his arm. The other had it on his neck. That’s what Lady Mabbe had said. Somers fumbled through the murder book until he found the page he was looking for. It was towards the back, one of the more recent photographs they’d acquired. The quality wasn’t great, but the important details were visible: it was a photograph of an arm with a dark—a very dark—swastika tattoo. That was the picture from Lynn Fukuma’s phone, the picture that Chendo Cervantes had texted her, the proof of his sexual conquest of an Ozark Volunteer.
But—Somers shivered like he’d clamped his teeth around a hundred and twenty volts—but the body, the one they’d found at the unmarked campsite, that body had a swastika tattoo on his neck.
Somers flipped through the murder book again, back to the beginning, to one of the earliest images they’d collected. It had originally been a small picture, now blown up and grainy, from Chuckie Armistead’s license. It showed a bald man, a bit overweight, with a hard, unpleasant face. Just visible on the side of his neck was something that might—might—have been a blue tattoo.
It wasn’t confirmation. Not yet, not a hundred percent. But Somers’s heart was pounding. He was onto something. He couldn’t prove it without a better picture, but his gut told him he was right: the dead man they had found in the woods, with his head and hands cut off, was Chuckie Armistead.
That left two important questions: who was the dead man in the trailer? And who was the other man that Lady Mabbe had seen, the man with the swastika tattoo on his arm, the man in the picture that Chendo Cervantes had sent to Fukuma? Somers didn’t know, but he knew where he wanted to start: with the cop who knew the Volunteers better than anyone else.
On the third ring, Upchurch picked up. “Somers?”
“I need a favor.”
“I might need one too,” Upchurch said drily. “I was having a pretty good conversation with your partner last night before he upped and vanished on me. He was telling me about a restaurant he liked in Jeff City.” Upchurch hesitated, and nervousness crept into his voice. “Any chance you’d give me his number so I could ask him?”
“Jesus, Upchurch, I’ll buy you both dinner and get you a hotel room if that’s what you want, but I need your help right now.”
Upchurch was laughing, but the laughter was forced and brittle. “Come on, you can’t make jokes like that. I’m a married man—”
“Oh for hell’s sake—listen. I got an ID. This is huge. But I need to talk to you before I take this to Hazard.”
“You got an ID?”
“Yes. Where are you? Can you come to the station?”
“Cripes, Somers, I’m on my way back from dropping Eldora at the new place in Jeff City. Can you meet me at the house? I’ve got a few more boxes to pick up and then I’m gone for good.”
“Yeah, fine. Fifteen minutes?”
“I don’t know, I’m at least twenty—”
“Drop that pedal and get there in fifteen,” Somers said. “I’m leaving now.”
NICO ANSWERED THE DOOR in a white cotton tank-top and running shorts. It was shocking, somehow, seeing him again—as though Hazard hadn’t been prepared for how good-looking the younger man was, and the feeling left Hazard thinking that he’d made a mistake.
“I shouldn’t have come—”
Leaning against the door, the thick waves of dark hair spilling over his forehead, Nico just smiled, grabbed a handful of Hazard’s jacket, and tugged him into the apartment. Hazard had just enough time to spot the signs of bachelor living—plates in the sink, shoes kicked across the room, a laundry basket tipping precariously on the edge of the sofa—before Nico pressed him up against a wall.
“Is this a booty call,” Nico said, a smile pulling at his lips, “at the start of a workday? I thought it was called a nooner. Or afternoon delight.”
“That’s not—this isn’t—”
Something on Hazard’s face must have caught Nico’s notice because the younger man frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a weird morning.”
Nico’s thumb grazed Hazard’s split lip, and Hazard jerked his head away. “Who hit you?”
“Look, this was a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
A frown brought creases around Nico’s eyes, and Hazard had the feeling that not many men had told him that they were making a mistake. But instead of getting angry, Nico said, “You want to talk?”
Hazard did. It was more than wanting. It was need, it was necessity, it was boiling up inside him and about to shoot the lid off the pot and out somewhere past Mars. He’d spent so long not talking, so long not telling anyone anything. A strangely calm part of hi
s brain, at the very back, suggested that he talk to Somers, but that was crazy. He’d burned that bridge and kicked the ruins into the abyss. Somers would never want anything to do with him again.
“How about some tea?” Nico said when Hazard still hadn’t answered. He gave Hazard a light shove, just enough to start him in the right direction, and Hazard stumbled to a seat at the kitchen table. The apartment must have been a one-bedroom; one door led off the bathroom, and the rest of the space, including the kitchen and the living area, was one long room. From the kitchen, metal clattered and water hissed, and then Nico dropped into the chair next to Hazard.
“Couple minutes,” he said. “So, is this something I did? Like, I came on too strong and you’re thinking you need to let me down easy? Or you talked to your boyfriend and he wants to come down and kick my ass?”
“No.” The words sounded crumpled and dusty. Hazard cleared his throat. “Um, no. It’s not really about you. I mean, I wanted to see you because I—I don’t know. Kind of having a fucked up day, if that makes any sense.”
Humming his assent, Nico looked ready to say something. Then he must have changed his mind because he sat very still and looked at Hazard and waited.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Hazard said.
Nico shrugged and folded his hands on the table. Even doing that, somehow he managed to sprawl and take up twice as much room as necessary, all elbows and shoulders.
“Billy broke up with me.” The words burst through the dam Hazard had tried to erect. “He’s been screwing our neighbor for, God, a year? Two? I don’t know. And Somers is pissed at me. And he should be pissed at me, he’s right. I’m the one that was wrong. And it’s—it’s just all gone to hell, ok? Look, these aren’t your problems, and I shouldn’t be bothering you with them. I’ll get going.”
From the kitchen, the kettle whistled. Nico planted a hand on Hazard’s shoulder as he rose. That was all, just his hand on Hazard’s shoulder, but it was enough to keep Hazard rooted. When Nico came back, he was carrying two mugs.