by Gregory Ashe
“How?”
“I don’t know. He came into my office one day, shouting and waving his arms. He knocked everything off my desk and stood over me, jabbing one finger at me like he was trying to stick it down my throat. I thought he was going to kill me. He told me to lay it all out for him, or I was finished. I’d never work anywhere decent again. So I told him, all of it.”
Somers nodded. He’d seen enough of how Benny Prock operated to guess that Benny had been bluffing—and that Ran, who had as much backbone as old lettuce, had fallen for the bluff. Benny might have had a hunch, he might have even suspected Ran, but it had been Ran, Somers was almost positive, who had given Benny everything he needed to know.
“Let me guess,” Somers said, “Benny promised to keep your secret.”
“He said he’d keep quiet, but he wanted half of whatever Thomas offered me. I was afraid. I knew Benny wouldn’t hesitate to tell Thomas, and I knew that Thomas had worked himself up so much over those bad investments that if he did find out, he might kill me himself.”
“I don’t suppose you can prove any of this,” Somers said drily.
Ran shook his head.
“Too bad.”
“I was scared out of my mind, man. You see Benny when he gets worked up, he’ll put hell into you.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“No, you don’t. He’s crazy. Scary crazy.” Ran fumbled in one pocket and produced a phone, and after tapping on the screen a few times, he held it out towards Somers as an audio clip began to play. The voice in the recording belonged to Benny Prock.
“—and you know what else,” Benny was saying, “I know where Gina lives. And I know where your mom lives. It’s not that far a drive to Columbus Ave, 606, and if you think I can’t break a window and jimmy a door, you’re wrong. A lot of bad things can happen at 606 Columbus. There’s all those stairs. There’s the bathtub. There could be a gas leak. So think about that—” On the recording, a quiet thud broke the conversation before Benny’s voice resumed. “Yeah, that’s right, stay there on your ass and think about that before you ever raise your voice to me again.”
Ran blinked, staring at the phone, with a kind of angry confusion, like he’d managed to get lost on the same street too many times. “He knew I wouldn’t tell anyone. He knew if I did, the truth about the program would come out.”
“Why didn’t you just fix the program?” Somers said. “Then there wouldn’t have been anything to prove.”
“Because after the investments went bad, Thomas started logging everything with the algorithm. Everything, man. And if Thomas even suspected I’d done something like that, he could match the dates with those investments. And—” He wavered for a moment, indecision creasing his lips, and then said, “And Benny had a good plan. We’d keep the program broken until Thomas didn’t want to use it anymore, and then we’d find a way to take it and sell it somewhere else.”
“Wouldn’t Thomas still own it?”
“I don’t know. Benny had the plan. I was just the inside guy. Here, take my phone.” He held it out towards Somers, and after a moment, Somers accepted it. “I’m done with this shit. Thomas is dead, and there’s somebody crazy in this place, and it’s Benny, man, it’s got to be Benny. You heard him, right? You heard the kind of things he can do.”
With a nod, Somers pocketed the phone. “Let’s get back to the house.”
“You’ll keep this quiet, right? Until we get clear of this place?”
“I’ll do my best. You’re going to be all right, Ran. We won’t let Benny do anything to you—or your family.”
Ran nodded. Relief filled his face, and he blinked again, trying to clear his eyes. Somers stood and stretched out a hand.
As Ran started to rise, there was a puff of dust and splinters from the wall behind him. Then there was a hollow whunk, and a hole appeared in Ran’s shirt. An instant later, the cracks from two gunshots split the air, chasing the bullets that had already struck.
Somers dropped, already whipping out the Glock. More bullets thumped into the lane dividers. Splinters blew out of the wood and skittered across Somers’s coat. Somers crawled down a few lanes, rose up, and got a quick impression of the shooter. Outside the range, on a snowy hill, a dark figure was sprinting into the snowstorm. Somers fought the urge to loose a shot; at that distance, he’d have just as much luck hitting the target with a handgun as he would with a throwing dart. After another moment of enraged frustration, Somers dropped the Glock to his side. The figure on the hill kept running, and then snow corkscrewed through the air. When the snow settled, the man—or woman—was gone.
As Somers turned back, Ran let out a small cry. He had slumped back to the floor, and as Somers watched, he touched the spot with his fingers and pulled them away. Red glistened on the tips. Then Ran let out a gurgling breath and died.
HAZARD KICKED A LUMP OF SNOW—it looked vaguely like a gopher, and he took off its head with his shoe—and clapped his hands over his ears. Five more minutes, and he was going back inside the range whether Somers had finished the interview or not. It was just too damn cold out here.
The gunshots came in several sharp cracks, and they released a surge of adrenaline inside Hazard. He spun, skidded through the snow, and charged into the range. Somers knelt next to Ran’s body—the boy was dead, shot in the chest, the details absorbed in an instant by Hazard’s eyes. Swearing, Hazard darted back outside. To the south, towards the house, a figure in dark clothes ran between the swirling curtains of snow. That didn’t make sense, though; the shots had come from the north, through the open shooting lanes. Hazard watched the retreating figure for another moment, wrestling with the question of whether or not to follow.
Then he sprinted around the side of the range building, sliding an extra yard in his boots. Far to the north, between the static lines of snow that whipped through the sky, another figure ran into the storm. As Hazard watched the figure disappeared.
For another minute, Hazard stood there, doing his best creative swearing. Some of it was for the shooter, but some of it, too, was for himself—he should have followed the first person while he still had a chance. Then his fingers began to stiffen in the cold, and he trudged back to the range, shutting the door behind him—not, he knew, that it would do much good if someone wanted to pick them off again.
Ran was still dead, slumped against the wall, his eyes wide and stunned. Somers stood over him, the Glock low at his side, a mixture of rage and helplessness in his face. Hazard stalked towards his partner.
“Lot of fucking good we are as cops,” Somers said, the words so savage and bitter that they would have surprised Hazard if he hadn’t been focused on something else. Hazard kept advancing, and Somers shook his head. “He’s gone, nothing we can do for him.” Hazard still kept moving, and Somers raised his head. “What?”
Without answering, Hazard gripped his partner’s jaw and angled his head. The bullet had sliced the bottom of Somers’s ear, and now blood dripped onto Somers’s jacket and shirt, staining the cloth rusty brown. Hazard plucked the cat-covered dish towel from where it had fallen on the ground and pressed it against Somers’s ear. Somers jerked away, and Hazard followed, and somehow they ended up with Somers pinned against the wall and Hazard standing very, very close, close enough that he could feel the heat off Somers like he was standing in front of a blast furnace, close enough to smell Somers’s hair and sweat and blood.
“Would you stop it already?” Somers asked in a low voice, trying to pull away again.
“Fine. You hold it.” Hazard stepped away, shoving the towel into Somers’s hand.
“You’re still doing it,” Somers said.
“Doing what?” Hazard snapped.
“Growling.”
Hazard didn’t answer, but as soon as Somers said the word, Hazard became aware of the violent rumble in his chest. He was growling. If he’d had hackles, they would have been standing up straight. His skin was practically vibrating with the need to hurt whoever had d
one this—to hurt them now, hard, bad.
It took willpower, a lot of it, for Hazard to pull himself back from the brink of that furious, murderous cliff. He dropped into a squat, studied Ran’s pale face and the blood spattering the shirt. As Hazard examined the corpse, he managed to find that cold, detached place inside himself, and some semblance of rationality returned. It was a fragile, soap-bubble rationality though, and just outside, ready to pop it, lurked bright red rage.
“This is a different caliber bullet than what Thomas was shot with. And they did it from a lot farther away.”
“All the guns are gone,” Somers said. He was still holding the towel to his ear, but he had moved closer. “The killer has his choice of weapons.”
“His?”
“Benny is my guess.” Somers related the details of his conversation with Ran, and then he produced the cellphone. “Damn kid didn’t tell me his passcode, though, so we won’t be able to get the recording until we’re back at the station and have some tech help.”
Hazard rocked back on his heels, considering everything they had learned. “Benny makes a decent suspect. His leverage over Ran and his interest in the program give him a motive; once Thomas was dead, it would be easy for Benny to leave and take the program with him, especially if the firm fell apart.”
“He was sleeping alone, so that gives him opportunity. All he had to do was sneak into the office. He could have done it anytime after nine-thirty.”
“When Strong sent his last text to Leza.” Hazard nodded.
“And he had means,” Somers said. “He was here at the range in the afternoon.”
“Ran is dead. We still have Benny, Leza, and Meryl. Plus Adaline and Columbia. So let’s think: we saw two people in the snowstorm. And two again right now.”
“Two? I saw one.”
“Another one was running towards the south.”
Somers face mirrored his confusion. “Why?”
“Good question.”
“So who are the two? Adaline and Columbia? Benny and Leza? She sent Ran to wipe off the fingerprints; maybe it was a setup.”
Hazard nodded, but something still troubled him. “What was Meryl lying about?”
“Geez, I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know she was lying.”
“What was it?”
“Something about her shoes. She was wearing those hiking boots, and someone asked her why she was wearing them with her pajamas. Meryl got flustered and said they were the closest thing at hand. I don’t know that she was lying, but it was odd. That’s all.”
“You know she was lying.”
Somers let out a breath. “I literally just told you that I don’t.”
“Stop being modest. You’re good at that, so own it and tell me your read on her.”
Whatever else Hazard might have been expecting, he hadn’t anticipated the ugly slashes of red that appeared in Somers’s cheeks or the way the man’s full lips twisted into a grimace. “I said I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“Drop it, all right?”
“I don’t want to drop it. I want you to use your goddamn abilities to help me solve this case.”
“That’s it? You’re going to tell me I’m good at something as some sort of backhanded compliment? As a way of getting me to do what you want?”
“What the hell is going on? Why are you acting like this? We’ve got a murder on our hands. We don’t have time for you to get pissy because I said something nice about you.”
“And everything’s on your timetable, huh?”
Hazard blinked. “We’re running out of time. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only timetable.”
“God, do you try to be this dense?” Somers tossed the bloody towel overhand, pitching it out into the gun lanes. “Are we leaving him here?”
“That’s best for now.”
“Fine.” Somers marched out of the building.
Hazard stared after his partner, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, and then followed him out into the cold.
THE STORM HAD WORSENED. It struck Hazard’s face in a stinging mixture of sleet and snow, and when he opened his mouth, it tasted stale, like it had gathered too many minerals in the clouds and grown dense and flat. Beyond a few feet, visibility dropped away into white haze, and so Hazard dogged Somers’s footsteps even though he could still feel the anger radiating off the other man.
As the storm crackled and churned, Hazard’s thoughts did the same thing. No matter how much he tried to bring his mind to bear on the case in front of them—a case, he now knew, that had become life or death for them and for everyone else at Windsor—all he could think about was Somers.
The thoughts didn’t have any coherence to them; they darted this way and that, whirling away from Hazard’s grasp whenever he tried to order them. Part of the thoughts revolved around the shooting and that bloody cut to Somers’s ear. The anger was there too. It had popped his soap-bubble of rational thinking, and now the anger was flat and huge and shining like the sea. That someone would hurt Somers, that someone might even kill Somers, just the possibility—Hazard realized he was growling again and that his hands had tightened into fists.
And part of the thinking, Hazard thought as he spat the flat, soiled snowmelt from his lips, had to do with how much, how very much, Hazard would like to kill Somers himself. What in the world had gotten into the other man? What had made him react that way? Hazard had offered a simple compliment—intended, yes, as a way of eliciting Somers’s opinion about Meryl—and Somers had gone crazy. That was the only word for it: crazy. And, Hazard realized in a rare flash of psychological insight, hurt. Somers had been hurt, and the realization stunned Hazard. Why?
Another blast of icy pebbles forced Hazard to blink his eyes clear, and when he could see again, Windsor was rising up in front of them. Somers led them to the front doors, and they slipped inside. Hazard pulled the keys from his pocket and locked the doors behind them.
When Hazard saw the question in Somers’s face, he shrugged. “If someone’s outside, they can knock. Or ring the bell. But I’d like to know who else has been out there besides us.”
“Unless they’ve got another way into the house.”
“One thing at a time,” Hazard said with a shrug.
They found Leza and Benny in the kitchen. Leza had changed into yoga pants and a strapless black workout shirt that skirted the wrong side of being a bra. Her bare feet revealed lime green toenails. Benny, for his part, still wore cotton pajamas and slippers, and his potbelly seemed even more prominent as he slouched on a stool. As Leza peeled plastic wrap from a foil tray of lasagne, Benny leaned close to her, talking.
Hazard considered again the material of the case. Benny made for an interesting suspect: means, motive, and opportunity, and—to judge by what Somers had reported—a nasty personality to match. Leza, as his prospective partner, also seemed like a good fit. The woman had already shown her cunning in more than one way, and there was the very important fact that she had been the one to discover the body, which made her a statistically likely killer.
When Benny saw Hazard and Somers in the door, he straightened and cleared his throat. Leza cast an irritated glance over her shoulder, and her features transformed into simpering delight. “Oh, Detectives. Wonderful. I’m just starting dinner, and we were worried how you were doing out in the cold. Oh,” she turned away from the lasagne, crooning, “your ears are—oh my. Your ear. Detective, what happened?”
“Someone took a shot at us,” Hazard said. “They killed Ran.”
“What?” Benny said. Shock seemed to knock him off the stool, and he wobbled, trying to find his feet. “What the hell does that mean?”
Somers cast Hazard an irritated glance. Then, his face smoothing, he said, “We’re sorry you had to learn this way. Ran was shot in the chest and he died instantly. I know that’s not much comfort, but I’m afraid our situation is much more dangerous now, and we don’t have time to break it gently
.”
“He’s dead?” Benny said. Then his voice firmed up. “What the hell have you been doing? What the hell kind of cops are you?”
“Frozen,” Hazard snapped. “And sick of being yelled at.”
Benny opened his mouth to respond, but he must have seen something in Hazard’s face. He swallowed and shuffled out of the room. Leza still hadn’t spoken. Her face was pale, her dark eyes huge—and, Hazard noticed, made up with eyeshadow and mascara. She held her hands away from her body, her fingers dripping marinara sauce, and then she seemed to come back into herself.
“I didn’t—” She bit off whatever she had been about to say, and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, God damn it.”
Wiping her hands on a towel, she dropped her head and rushed from the room, weeping.
“Great,” Somers said to the empty kitchen.
“We don’t have to coddle them,” Hazard said.
Somers didn’t respond, and that, Hazard was starting to suspect, was a very bad sign. His shoulders slumped, and the blond man looked weary. “All right,” he said, and his voice carried that weariness. “Let’s talk to them.”
“Who?”
“All of them.”
Columbia and Adaline were still in the parlor. They had changed into warm, practical clothes, but otherwise they occupied the same seats. They sat together, laughing quietly, holding hands.
“Excuse me, ladies,” Somers began.
It was that same tone again. That same polite friendliness. It made Hazard want to bite the bad end of a bullet, and he spoke over Somers’s next words, ignoring the flash of frustration in his partner’s face. “Where have you been the last few hours?”
“Here,” Adaline said. Her cheeks flushed, and she plucked at her collar.
“Together?” Hazard asked. “The entire time?”
For a moment, the women shared a look.
“Yes,” Adaline said, but the lie was obvious even to Hazard.
Columbia sighed. “To be honest, Detectives—”.
“No. Don’t.”
“It’s fine, dear heart. You’re wonderful in so many ways, but you can’t tell a lie to save your life. We’ll be honest with them.” Columbia directed the next words to Hazard and Somers. “We haven’t been together the whole time.”