Transposition

by Gregory Ashe

  “I don’t know yet. But Adaline is the only one who has actually profited from Thomas Strong’s death so far. She and Columbia are also the only ones with an alibi, which seems suspiciously convenient, especially after Thomas texted about having a meeting with Columbia the night he died.”

  “A meeting that she claims never happened.”

  “What motive would Thomas have for lying? And before you say that the text was forged, think about this: it was sent after nine o’clock, and we both know that Thomas was still alive and alone in his room at that time.”

  “You,” Somers said, jabbing a finger at Hazard, “have nothing to back up your theory. It could be any of them. Or none of them. Why would the killer hire someone to blow up the house while they were still in it?”

  “Were they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Aside from Meryl, we didn’t see any of the others that night. They could have safely evacuated. When it was clear that something had gone wrong with the plan, they could have returned to the house and pretended they never left.”

  “Maybe,” Somers said. “But that’s a point in Meryl’s favor.”

  “Not really. She could have seen her man run away and decided to try to salvage the situation.”

  “You’ve got nothing. This is all conjecture.”

  “And you refuse to consider possibilities because you have a good feeling about someone.”

  “What about all that stuff you learned last night? About Mayor Newton and InnovateMidwest?”

  “What about it? You don’t think the mayor is hiding in the house, do you?”

  “You’re being a gaping asshole about this. When Meryl was telling us about Gene taking a shot at Mrs. Ferrell’s house, did you hear Leza? She played it off pretty well, but she wanted Meryl to stop talking.”

  “Leza won’t be happy until we’re all out of this place. She was just picking a fight with Meryl.”

  “No. She wasn’t.” Somers stabbed a finger towards the kitchen. “She didn’t like the way that conversation was going. Why?”

  “I don’t know, Somers. Why?”

  “Who do we know that wants Batsy Ferrell’s land?”

  “Gene Bequette, or whoever has the controlling interest in Windsor.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the expert on Wahredua. Who else wants it?”

  “Just about everybody. She’s sitting on hundreds of acres of prime old-growth forest. The trees alone are probably worth a fortune, and then the land itself will have value as Wahredua continues to expand.”

  “So you do think the mayor is hiding in the house.”

  “What’s going on? Are you really that angry about the sleeping pills?”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “You’re acting like you’re angry.”

  “Trust me: you’ll know when I’m mad at you.”

  What had happened? Somers stared at his partner, trying to figure out when something had gone wrong between them. True, the day before Somers had been angry with Hazard—angry at Hazard’s stingy praise, angry at Hazard for relegating him to menial tasks, angry at his own suspicion that Hazard didn’t respect him. But all of that had changed.

  It had all changed when Emery Hazard had curled up next to Somers, the heat of his body warming the bed, and talked. Something had changed between them: a wall had fallen, or a bridge had been built, or a line of communication had been strung across the gap. Somers had felt it, and he knew that Hazard had felt it. So why the hell was Hazard acting like the last few months had never happened, as though Somers were the same jack-shit John-Henry from high school?

  The answer swam up at Somers out of the darkness: because Hazard still hated him. Nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing Somers could do would ever mend the past. All of the sudden, Somers felt like something vital had leached out of him. His body gained fifty pounds, and a dull ache had settled in his stomach, and it made him think of the time he and Mikey Grimes had heaved a bag of cement into the Walkers’ above-ground pool. That damn cement had just sunk to the bottom and sat there, heavy as shit and not going anywhere. Now it felt like the same ponderous immobility had settled inside him: the past, that fucking wet cement that you couldn’t move with anything less than God’s own jackhammer. What had ever happened to the Walkers’ pool, anyway? Or to that bag of cement? Was it still there, fifteen years later? Jesus, how could he not know something like that?

  Rousing himself from the past, Somers managed to keep his voice calm. “What I’m saying is that there is someone else with a motive for eliminating people at Strong, Matley, Gross. It doesn’t have to be Mayor Newton, but someone at InnovateMidwest might not hesitate. They could kill Batsy Ferrell, kill Thomas Strong, and make a hell of a lot of money in a very short amount of time.”

  “And in this conspiracy theory,” Hazard said, “who killed Thomas Strong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t. Listen, Somers: I’ll grant that there’s something strange going on. The man who came here last night, he was tough. Tougher than most people. He meant to kill me, kill all of us. But this has nothing to do with the mayor or InnovateMidwest. One of those women killed Thomas Strong, and she brought along some muscle. That’s all. It’s standard detective work, Somers—keep it simple, stupid.”

  Hazard delivered the last word with stinging intensity. Somers sucked in a breath, ready to respond, and then stopped. All over, his body felt stiff, tense, like ligament and cartilage had been replaced by wire. In his center mass, that weight of shitty old cement dragged him down. “All right. I’m on edge. You’re on edge. This whole thing is one big mess. Let’s cool down.”

  “Or what? You’ll drug me again?”

  Somers didn’t answer, but he had enough time to wonder how it could hurt so much, and why he had let this man have so much power over him.

  “Here are a few things we should think about if it’s not too much trouble,” Hazard said. “One: Gene couldn’t have fired the shot at the same time as the fake gunshot that was part of the game. He was too busy playing dead by the river. That means at some point, Gene fired a gun and nobody heard it—nobody except Batsy Ferrell.”

  “So?”

  “So Mrs. Ferrell said she’d been hearing a lot of shots. She heard every shot fired at the range, and she doesn’t even live on the property. That doesn’t line up with what people have told us here: everyone has told us there was only one gunshot, the one that was fired during the game. Windsor isn’t that big; if someone took a shot, you’d hear it.”

  “Unless he had a suppressor.” Somers didn’t like admitting Hazard’s logic, but he nodded. “Maybe the killer had a suppressor for the gun that killed Strong too. That would explain why no one woke up.”

  “And there’s something about Meryl’s story that doesn’t make sense. Even if we believe she’s telling the truth—an unnecessarily naive assumption—”

  “Gee,” Somers said, “thanks.”

  “Why would Gene have turned around so fast?”

  “What?”

  “Meryl said that Gene left, which was what everyone expected him to do, but that he came back.”

  “She called him, maybe. Made him an offer good enough to bring him back. Even you have to admit she’s a beautiful woman.”

  Hazard was already shaking his head. “You saw the car. You saw how far off the road he’d gone. Someone called him and said something that scared Gene. Scared him bad enough that he was willing to make a very dangerous turn at a high speed on a snowy road.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. But I know Gene Bequette wasn’t the man who attacked me last night. He was too small; whoever attacked me was much bigger.”

  “So we’ve got a potentially murderous thespian wandering the grounds as well as a definitely murderous giant.” Somers twisted his mouth; he wanted to spit. “That’s just great.”

  “I’ll call Swinney and see what she can
dig up on Bequette.” Without waiting for a response, Hazard turned towards the door.

  “Hold up. How’s your hand?”

  Hazard hesitated, and then he plunged into the hallway without an answer.

  Somers did some creative swearing before he followed his partner into the hall. They had no lead on the killer, they had lost their best bet at shelter, and another man was dead. To top it all, Emery Hazard had become a royal ass overnight. Things were turning out perfect.

  THE SNOWSTORM CONTINUED TO RAGE. Hazard was grateful for the cold, though. He felt hot, flushed. Sweat prickled along his scalp, and when the wind shifted, he could smell his day-old clothes and, even more irritating, he could smell Somers’s skin. Hazard had damn near scrubbed his face to the bone in the bathroom that morning, trying to get rid of the scent, and he could still smell Somers. The cold helped with that, too. It made it more difficult to think. It made it easier for Hazard to forget, for a few moments, the hurt in Somers’s face.

  As though hearing Hazard’s thoughts, Somers turned back to face him. Only his eyes were visible above the scarf. Having taken the time to dress in the heavy winter gear in Windsor’s closets, they were now tramping across Windsor’s snow-covered grounds, although tramping wasn’t really the right word. Plowing came closer. Or burrowing. The snow came to Hazard’s thighs, and its gritty weight shifted treacherously when he took a step. Hazard wavered, arms flailing as he tried to catch his balance. His wounded hand throbbed, as did the still-healing gunshot to his shoulder, as did the cuts and bruises all over him. Then the moment passed, and Hazard steadied himself. For a moment, Somers looked like he might double back and offer assistance. Then, without a word, he resumed his course towards the stables.

  At least, Hazard assumed that was where they were going. After Hazard’s asinine performance in the house—why the hell, Hazard wanted to know, had he been so obstinate about rejecting Somers’s theory? And why had he been so cruel?—Hazard hadn’t been able to bring himself to speak to Somers. He had simply followed his partner mutely into the white madness of the storm.

  Another surge of wind spun snow crystals into Hazard’s eyes, stinging tender flesh, and Hazard blinked tears away. A wind-whipped veil of powder flew up in front of Hazard, and for a moment, Somers disappeared. Hazard lumbered forward. If he lost Somers in this chaos, Hazard might never make it back to Windsor. He could wander out here, forever, until the cold drained the life from him. Then the wind coursed in a new direction, flattening the powdery snow, and exposing Somers’s worried, questing glance. When Somers caught sight of Hazard, a flicker of some emotion showed in his face. Then he turned back into the wind.

  Last night. Hazard wanted to groan. He wanted to grab Somers by the shoulders, he wanted to—

  —kiss him—

  —look him in the eyes and say he was sorry, say he had screwed it all up. Last night had been perfect. Not the part when Hazard had been beaten almost to death. The part after, when Somers had been next to him in bed, when Somers had run fingers through his hair, when Somers had talked in a quiet voice that rumbled through his chest and into Hazard’s touch. It had been magical, the ease with which Hazard had been able to speak, to say the things he’d wanted to say. And it had been those damn drugs.

  That was the problem: the drugs. Because now, in the daylight—or in what passed for daylight in this miserable storm—Hazard saw his mistake, saw the past coming back at him with red teeth. It wasn’t just the past that he had shared with Somers. It wasn’t the torture that Mikey Grames had inflicted on Hazard and which Somers had watched. It was—it was everything. It was Alec LaTourneau, who had hit Hazard when it made him feel good, and it was the fact that Hazard hadn’t left, not until the end, not until he had nothing left to lose. It was Billy Rolker, Hazard’s most recent ex, who had cheated on him for years and who had spent the rest of his time manipulating Hazard, humiliating Hazard, picking fights with Hazard. Hazard was a slow learner, but he wasn’t that slow. The lesson was obvious: people hated whatever was inside Emery Hazard. And last night, Somers had seen that part. It was only a matter of time before Somers realized the truth too, that Hazard was . . . well, Hazard didn’t know what he was. But he knew that once Somers realized, things would change. Things would get worse again.

  And what about Nico? The voice asking that question was small but insistent, and Hazard had a great deal of trouble shoving the question away. Nico was sweet and smart. Nico was kind. Nico was very, very young, and for the moment, he was still dreamy-eyed about a gay boy fantasy come true: a butch cop who was also the town hero. That would fade. The bloom would come off the rose, and Nico, too, would realize the truth about Hazard. And then, Hazard knew, they’d be back in the same place. But at least it would be Nico and not Somers. Hazard didn’t know if he could bear for things to change with Somers.

  Better, instead, to build the walls a little higher. They could work. They could even be friends of a sort. But that openness, that transparency, he’d never allow that again. It wasn’t worth losing whatever he had with Somers.

  A gust of wind sprayed snow across Hazard’s path, and then the snow dropped away, and in its place rose the red paint of the stables. Another flurry of snow hid the building, but it didn’t matter; Hazard had seen their objective. A few more minutes brought him to the stable proper, and he found Somers waiting at the door that led into the stable office.

  “Open,” Somers said, nudging the door with his foot.

  Through the doorway, a line of snow marked the wind’s range. The room beyond was dark; it was nearly noon, but the mixture of thick clouds and snow made the shadows thick, as though evening were almost upon them. Gone were the warmth and heat and light that had marked the stables yesterday. The radio had gone silent, and without the brassy singing from the day before, the only noise was the wind ripping at the shutters, the snow pelting the walls.

  “He’s gone,” Hazard said.

  “He might have been gone yesterday.”

  Hazard and Somers made a quick tour of the stables, but they found nothing that they hadn’t seen the day before. When they left the small apartment above the office and returned to the main floor, Hazard paused. His eyes moved towards Somers and then skidded away, fixing on the grimy snow outside.

  “He was here yesterday at least,” Hazard said. “Until the morning. If Meryl’s telling the truth, that is.”

  “Right. And if he was the one who left the footprints in the house, we know he was still moving around Windsor.”

  “Why did he go to Windsor?”

  “Food. Warmth.”

  “He had both those things here.”

  “Meryl.”

  “He’d just seen her. Gene might have a French soul, but I don’t think even he was that passionate. And he had a job to do; why would he risk ruining the game?”

  “He wanted something. A towel, a change of clothes, a cup of sugar. Who knows what he wanted.”

  Hazard rolled his wounded shoulder; the ache was familiar, but the stiffness still bothered him. “He was gone by the time we reached the stables yesterday.”

  “Earlier.” Then, in a sour tone, Somers added, “If Meryl is telling the truth.”

  Why had Gene Bequette gone to the main house at Windsor? There was something that still didn’t add up, something that bothered Hazard, although he couldn’t put a finger on it. He let out a slow breath. “Let’s see where he took a shot at Batsy Ferrell.”

  Somers led them outside into the blowing storm. Again Hazard found his senses turned against him: snow spiraled and fluttered in his vision, the wind shrieked against his ears, and the strongest gusts drove him sideways, forcing him to adjust course to keep from losing Somers. A white madness had consumed Windsor, and now, the third day running, Hazard wondered if that madness had begun to infect him too.

  For years, Hazard’s mind had been his strongest asset. Before dedicated training at the gym had added bulk and strength to his natural height, before hand-to-hand and weapons t
raining had taught him to carry himself, clear thinking and careful analysis had been his only tools. Now, though, he was beginning to doubt himself. Part of it was his injuries; he had never been injured in this way, and on top of the ache of bruised muscles and the tenderness of torn flesh, Hazard was surprised at how weary he felt, as though all his energy had been redirected towards healing. The heat, too, seemed incredible, as though someone had turned on a boiler deep inside Hazard, where nothing could touch it, not even the howling blizzard.

  But most worrisome was that Hazard simply couldn’t make the facts of this case line up. Everyone had been accounted for at Windsor except for the man who had attacked him. Was that man connected to InnovateMidwest and Mayor Newton? Or had he been hired by someone at Strong, Matley, Gross? Were all three murders connected as he and Somers had assumed? Why kill Thomas, Ran, and Benny in three separate incidents and then blow everyone else up? There was no reasoning that Hazard could make fit.

  His steps became staggers. The storm, whistling around him, made it hard to judge his footing, and on his next step, Hazard reached too far. His foot scraped over a skin of ice, and he tumbled into the snow. He was so hot that he waited for the granules to vaporize, for the steam to curl up around him like something out of a cartoon. Instead, though, he just found himself planted face-first in the slush, shaking his head and trying to catch his breath. Hands grabbed him, dragging him out of the drift.

  “What the hell happened?” Somers shouted to be heard over the storm.

  Hazard steadied himself and shook off Somers. “Slipped.”

  Somers waited, his features furrowed, and Hazard shook his head. After another moment, Somers started forward again. They were close to the river now. Even with the blizzard spitting snow at them, Hazard could make out the water. It was the color of old tires, a rubbishy gray with ice skimming the surface. Snowflakes vanished as they touched its surface, but the eddies they left behind revealed how quickly the water was moving. It was even worse than it had been when they’d lost the car, and Hazard wondered if the Grand Rivere had flooded Market Street. If, by some miracle, it hadn’t, then any sign of a thaw would tip the balance. It almost made Hazard wish things would stay frozen. Almost.