by Gregory Ashe
“If he’s not doing anything and if he doesn’t mind. Otherwise, I don’t want anybody sticking their noses in my business.”
Cravens must have figured that was the best she was going to get, and Nico had shown up Saturday afternoon. He had left only to bathe, change clothes, and pick up new stacks of DVDs.
“What do you like?” Nico had asked. “Sitcoms? Drama?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was the last thing you watched? Something you liked.”
“A documentary on nineteenth-century glue manufacturing.”
Nico had just sighed. “I’ll see what the library has.”
The Wahredua library, it turned out, had a lot of documentaries. Nico, it turned out, did a lot of napping while the documentaries were playing. He looked particularly sweet—and painfully young—with his long frame sprawled over a pair of hospital chairs and his eyes closed. Hazard did a lot of stewing. Until now, Nico had kept things strictly friendly: he laughed a lot, and he sat close to the hospital bed, and his big, dark eyes seemed to drink up Hazard, but he hadn’t made a move. What would Hazard do when Nico wanted more? And that wasn’t the only thing that was wearing on Hazard’s nerve, hour by hour, like fine-grade sandpaper.
Where the hell was Somers?
He pushed the question away again and again, but it kept coming back. Even in the middle of the most fascinating shows: the history of Canadian buttons, for example, with three hours of additional commentary. Right in the middle, when they were touring a World War I-era button factory in south-central Winnipeg, the damn question had popped up again. Where was Somers?
By Sunday, it was bothering Hazard so much that he was picking fights with Nico. By Monday afternoon, Nico had moved his chairs into the hall and was taking his naps there.
It was during one of Nico’s naps, while Hazard was wrapping up the director’s cut of a film on the textual afterlives of twelfth-century lay Christian breviaries—gripping, really gripping, but it just couldn’t hold his attention—when a shadow fell across the linoleum.
Naomi Malsho stood in the doorway. Hazard wasn’t sure if she had timed her entrance—he wouldn’t put it past her—but the sun hit her at just the right angle, highlighting the delicate bone structure in her wrists and ankles and face. Today she wore a herringbone skirt with a white blouse and pearl buttons. She’d pulled her hair into a dark bun, exposing the lines of her neck and shoulders. The message, for Hazard, was clear: today, Naomi Malsho meant business. It didn’t mean, however, that she didn’t still look damn good.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come any earlier,” Naomi said.
“Bullshit.”
Her mouth tightened and then, with obvious effort, went smooth. “A friend?” she asked, tilting her head to the hallway where Nico slept.
“Yes.”
“Young. Even for you and your . . . predilections.”
“Naomi, if I wanted to fence with you, if I wanted to hear whatever homophobic shit you’re ready to babble, then this conversation would already be a real treat. But I don’t.” Hazard studied the woman. “What have you been up to? Let me guess. You went to the Bridal Veil Motor Court. You went through my stuff. You might have even paid someone to go through my desk at work. You’ve been trying to find something to blackmail me. You’ve been trying to figure out if I really knew something. How am I doing so far?”
Naomi settled into a chair next to the bed, looking perfectly at ease in the molded plastic as though it were, instead, some chic confection of steel and leather. She folded her hands neatly in her lap. “Your captain’s son. That’s . . . unfortunate.”
In spite of himself, Hazard felt the old pain. “He was young and stupid. His pride got hurt and he wanted to teach me a lesson. That’s the end of it. You can’t blackmail me with something everyone knows.”
“Not everyone knows.”
It took a moment for comprehension to set in. “Somers? Tell him. I don’t care.”
“We’ll see.” Naomi shifted her weight, as though she were about to rise.
In spite of himself, Hazard laughed. “You really do have ice in your veins, don’t you? You’re not even going to ask. I call you, I tell you I know about you and Upchurch, and you still look like you’re the one holding all the aces. All right.”
“You don’t know anything about me and Upchurch because there isn’t anything to know. I helped Upchurch occasionally, yes. He sent you to me. That information would be damaging if people knew, but it wouldn’t be the end of my career—or the end of my position with the Volunteers. Anything else you think you know—”
“Upchurch kept recordings.”
Those words struck the color from Naomi’s face.
Hazard continued, praying that her fear would make her believe the lies he was about to tell: “We found them, Somers and I. That’s why Upchurch was coming back to the house, to recover them. And they’re very interesting. Lots of them with you. There’s even a conversation where you talk about Chuckie Armistead.”
Hazard paused, but Naomi—still pallid, her knuckles pinkish-gray as they popped out along her fists—said nothing.
“I wondered about a few things. Upchurch killed Chendo Cervantes. Upchurch told us as much—that Chendo was pressuring him, intended to blackmail him, and that they fought. I don’t know if the killing was accidental or not. Most likely not, but I suppose we’ll never know. And then—and then Upchurch had a problem. A dead gay boy. Enough to put Upchurch in prison, and that would be a bad place for a cop, especially a gay one.
“But Upchurch was resilient and resourceful and smart, and he came up with a plan. He’d destroy the body, make it difficult to identify—and, on top of that, he’d make it doubly difficult by misleading us and making us think it was a different dead man. That, that was really a stroke of genius because Chuckie Armistead didn’t have dental records, so we couldn’t prove anything either way.”
Still silence from Naomi. She was breathing through her nose. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“But in order to put us on the path of Chuckie Armistead, Upchurch needed two things: he needed Armistead to disappear, and he needed someone to see Armistead go into that trailer. I wondered why Armistead cooperated with someone posing as a Volunteer. Remember, we asked you. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“And at first, the answer seemed obvious: Armistead was one of Upchurch’s contacts, and when Upchurch asked for help, Armistead saw the opportunity for blackmail. He was finally going to have a cop in his pocket. But that didn’t feel quite right. Armistead didn’t seem that smart. It didn’t feel like his style. All the other things Armistead did, the vandalism and the assaults, the hate crimes, they were all hasty, poorly planned. This, on the other hand, required someone with vision. Someone like the Volunteer’s new leader. Someone like Naomi Malsho. Upchurch didn’t call Armistead for help. He called you. What did you tell Armistead? Did you tell him that this was just a job? Or did you give him a preview, get him excited at the possibility of having a cop under your thumb?”
Naomi surged out of her chair and stepped towards the door, but she stopped when Hazard resumed speaking.
“You and Upchurch agreed it would be a mutually beneficial solution. Upchurch would have a victim, Armistead, who couldn’t be identified, not even by dental records. People would think that Chendo Cervantes had done the killings and that his two victims had been members of the Ozark Volunteers. You got what you’ve been looking for: a martyr. Chuckie Armistead killed by a gay fanatic. That would have been political capital for you. And Upchurch would have gotten away with murder. That’s why you agreed to be his source. That’s why you pointed us towards Armistead, so that you could finally show your martyr to the public. And, as a bonus, you’d have Upchurch in your pocket. That’s why he threw the Molotov cocktail at your house, that’s why he broke in: he was looking for whatever you were using to blackmail him.”
“This is insane. I won’t listen to any more of this.”
Sweat prickled along Hazard’s back. Now came the really tough part. Now came the gamble. “I won’t tell anyone, Naomi. I could. I could produce the tapes. I might be able to get a conviction. I might not. It’s harder with Upchurch dead, you know. But I could ruin you either way. The Ozark Volunteers might not mind that you were a police informant—you could spin that to your advantage, convince them you were really looking out for the Volunteers. It’ll be a lot harder to convince them of anything, though, if they think you killed one of their own.”
Naomi was staring at the door, her shoulders hunched almost to her ears, her fingers flexing and tightening. “What do you want?”
“Somers told me the story, you know. About him and the girl he slept with. Kaylee, was that her name? And something about it was strange. I thought it was strange at the time, and I even asked Somers about it, but he didn’t realize what I was asking him. He was too caught up in his own guilt. You see, it seemed impossible for Somers’s wife to find out about the affair so quickly.”
Nothing from Naomi.
“You set up Somers. You knew he was going to drink, and you found a girl who would be able to get him into bed. Kaylee came back to you, reported on a job well done, and you called up Cora. I bet Kaylee even provided you with proof that you could show your dear sister. That was your plan all along, to have someone seduce—”
Naomi’s laugh was cold and short. “Seduce?” She spun to stare at Hazard. “Have you met John-Henry? His pants are always halfway around his ankles. All that girl had to do was bend over.”
“You’re going to tell Cora.”
Now color rushed into Naomi’s face: dark red mottling her cheeks. “You son of a bitch.”
“You’re going to tell her that you set the whole thing up. You can spin it however you want—tell her you were just trying to test Somers’s loyalty, tell her whatever you think of—but make sure she knows that it wasn’t Somers’s fault.”
“It was his fault,” Naomi hissed. “He’s the one who slipped his dick into that whore. It’s not anyone else’s fault.”
“You’re going to tell Cora. And you’re going to do it so well that Cora’s going to soften her heart. She doesn’t have to take Somers back. But she’s going to talk to him. She’s going to let him see his daughter. You’re going to make sure she does, Naomi, because otherwise, well, I’ll have to start talking.”
By now, Naomi was trembling, and the red splotches under her tan had spread across her throat and chest. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You don’t know the kind of hell you’re stepping into.”
“Get out of my room,” Hazard said, his voice cold and even, “you hateful bitch.”
Naomi left, and after a few tense minutes, waiting for her to return, Hazard slumped back into the bed. He was shaking, surprised at the physical exhaustion sweeping over him. His last thought, as he slipped into sleep, was that he hoped he hadn’t fucked things up again.
HAZARD WAS STARTING TO THINK HE'D MADE A MISTAKE.
“It’s great,” Nico was saying. The younger man sat cross-legged on Hazard’s bed, knees loose against his chest, shorts sliding down to expose surprisingly muscled thighs. He was studying his phone as he spoke. “It’s got Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler, and they drive each other crazy at first, but by the end they’re in love, and it’s really, really sweet.”
Hazard was having difficulty buttoning his shirt; his shoulder was killing him, and he couldn’t manage with one hand. He was not, however, going to ask Nico to help him. Nico had already tried tying Hazard’s shoes, and Hazard had bitten his head off. It seemed Nico was steering the wiser course this time because he had not offered to help with the buttons.
Instead, even worse, he was trying to get Hazard to go to a movie.
“Aren’t you getting a PhD?” Hazard asked.
“Yeah.”
“In theology?”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you a little too smart for a romantic comedy?”
Nico blinked. God, those eyes. Hazard thought he could dive into those eyes and never touch bottom. “Um, I’m not sure if I should be insulted or not.”
“I’m not trying to be insulting—”
With a laugh, Nico waved the words away. “I know you weren’t. I don’t know. I like those movies. I know they’re dumb. I still enjoy them. And I’d like to see one with you.”
Hazard grunted.
“So?” Nico asked.
Not trusting himself to answer, Hazard grunted again.
“We can get dinner—there’s a great Korean barbeque food truck that hits the South Quad in the evening. And then the movie. And if I don’t take you to the Pretty Pretty, I might literally get killed, since they’re all dying to see you—”
“What?”
“The Pretty Pretty. The club, the one—”
“I know what the Pretty Pretty is.”
A smirk curled Nico’s lips. “You’re going to have every gay man in the county trying to buy you drinks. And, not incidentally, trying to get you in bed.”
“Jesus.”
“No, I don’t think he’ll be there. I could probably make you see him, though, if you give me a chance.”
Hazard made a noise that, even to himself, sounded dangerously close to a whimper.
Nico burst out laughing again. “I’m kidding. Well, partly. You will have to fend off the gay men since you’re kind of a local celebrity now, but to be honest, you probably would have had to fend them off anyway.”
“I’m not going to the Pretty Pretty.”
Nico shrugged.
“I’m not.”
“We’ll see.”
“Nico, listen to me very clearly, I’m not—Somers?”
Somers stood in the doorway. As was usually the case, he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed: his short blond hair in messy spikes, his t-shirt rumpled, his nylon shorts barely reaching his knees. He also looked—unusually—reserved. No smile. No glint in his eyes. Almost—
—afraid—
—worried.
“What’s up?” Hazard said, hearing his own voice and wishing it weren’t quite so . . . crackly. “Everything ok?”
“I should be asking you that,” Somers said.
“I’ll go,” Nico said, flat and hard, jumping off the bed.
“You don’t have to—” Hazard began.
“I’ll wait in the car.” Nico’s shoulder caught Somers as he left.
Somers, rubbing his arm, glanced after the younger man.
“Sorry,” Hazard said, “I don’t know what got into him.”
For a moment, Somers seemed to consider this statement. Then a smile softened his face. “You don’t, huh?”
Hazard shrugged and winced at the flash of pain.
Still smiling—a soft, careful smile—Somers crossed the room. Without meeting Hazard’s eyes, he began to do up the buttons on Hazard’s shirt. “You know he likes you, right?”
Hazard heard the words at a distance; his immediate attention was locked on the feel of Somers’s hands as they did up the buttons, brushing Hazard’s chest and striking a line of sparks. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, I don’t know.”
“He spent four days with you at the hospital. He’s head over heels about you.”
“He barely knows me.”
Somers did the last button, and his eyes flashed up Hazard’s. “He’s jealous.”
“Of . . . you?”
An ironic smile twisted Somers’s lips. “Hard to believe, Hazard, but some people would find me a catch. Not everyone, I’m not saying that, but a few select people. Nico thinks I’m a threat.”
Hazard wanted to say the obvious thing: that Somers wasn’t a threat, that Somers was straight, that Somers had a wife and child. But the words caught in his throat. For twenty years, give or take, Hazard had been attracted to John-Henry Somerset. He wasn’t going to try to deny it now.
“We’ve been talking, Lender, Swinney, Cravens, and I,” Somers said. “About U
pchurch. We looked at the picture that Nico showed you, the one taken from the back of the patrol car. We’re pretty sure Upchurch is the one who arrested Chendo at the march. We’re also pretty sure that’s how they met. You can guess what that was like, sitting in that goddamn meeting, and me not knowing a thing about my own partner.”
“You told me you guys split up at the march. You couldn’t have known.”
“That’s what Cravens and the rest said, but I should have known. I should have figured it out.”
“You did.”
“Too late. Anyway, Upchurch must have managed to turn Chendo loose without processing the arrest, and that’s why he never showed up in our paperwork. We’re also pretty sure Chendo Cervantes died a few days before the fire.”
“Because of the texts,” Hazard said. “I’ve been thinking about it too. The really hateful texts to Nico on Friday. Those were Upchurch. Then, on Monday, Upchurch changed the tone. He wanted to push the date back and make us think the murder happened later than it did. He started the fire that night, and we thought that was the same night as the murder.”
Somers nodded. “He planned the whole thing. You told me you weren’t sure about Upchurch, though. What did you mean?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Nico showed me a picture, and it had you and Upchurch in it. Nico was convinced that one of you was in a relationship with Chendo. When I saw Upchurch with a gun on you, I figured you weren’t the killer, but—but I wondered.”
“You thought maybe I was the killer?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Somers made a soft noise in his throat. “What about the stairs?”
“Huh?”
“The stairs. High school. You brought up the stairs when you wanted me to shove you. Why?”
“It was a way to tell you without telling Upchurch. You remembered, didn’t you? You understood what I meant.”
Somers didn’t answer; he stood there, waiting.
“I . . . I think I realized what that was about,” Hazard finally said. “When you shoved me.”