by Gregory Ashe
“Columbia’s, of course.”
“Why, of course?”
“I told you the morning after Thomas was killed, didn’t I? I told you that Columbia had done it.”
Somers said nothing.
“The text. You remember, don’t you?”
“You’re talking about the text from Thomas.”
“Yes. He sent it the night he was killed. He asked me to check in first thing in the morning because he knew he was going to have a blow-up fight with Columbia and most likely she’d be terminated.”
“I remember.”
“Well, there you have it. That’s what happened. They met. They fought. When Thomas confronted Columbia, she killed him.” A tiny smirk tugged at the corner of Leza’s mouth. “Poor Thomas. He always thought Columbia was limp-wristed.”
“I assume there’s something on the recorder that corroborates your theory?”
“Oh yes,” Leza said, and this time the smirk appeared in full force. “You’re very intelligent, Detective. And very handsome. I was a bit surprised when you didn’t show any interest in my advances, but after what Meryl told me, it makes sense. I suppose a man like you—or, for that matter, like your partner—is just too good to be true.”
“The recorder, please.”
Leza passed it to him. Somers turned it over in his hands, but there was nothing quite so obvious as a nametag or something that said, Property of Columbia Squire. When he pressed the play button, an unfamiliar man’s voice was speaking.
“What did you just say?”
The next voice, Somers recognized: husky, artificially coy. It was Columbia. “You’re going to double my salary. You’re going to add a substantial number of your shares to my next annual bonus. And Thomas, sweetheart, the most important thing is that you’re going to keep your fucking mouth shut for the rest of the time I work at Strong, Matley, Gross. I don’t know how long that will be, but I imagine it will be a very long time.”
“You little faggot—”
“That’s right, Thomas. Call me names. Go on: pull the noose a little tighter. All this time, all the sideways glances, all the cutting remarks that you pretended to whisper but that you knew I’d hear, all the ways,” Columbia’s voice deepened, and it sounded like she was struggling to draw a deep breath, “all the ways you made me hate myself, all the ways you found to humiliate me. You’ve given me so much rope that I could hang you at high noon if I wanted to, and nobody would stop me.”
“You bitch.” Thomas’s voice was ragged. “You dirty little half-cunt.”
“Go on,” Columbia screamed. “Say it. Say what you’ve been saying behind closed doors all these years. But when you’re finished, I’ll walk out of here, and you—” Columbia’s voice broke, and when she spoke again, her voice had returned to its familiar husky tone. “Thomas, you’re done. I’ve got your silver bullet.”
There was an inarticulate cry of rage, and then the recording ended.
Leza raised a delicately plucked eyebrow.
“It’s very interesting,” Somers said. He pocketed the device.
“It’s more than interesting. It’s a confession. Did you hear what she said? I’ve got your silver bullet.”
“I don’t think Mr. Strong was shot with a silver bullet.”
Waving a hand, Leza leaned forward. “But she said it: the bullet. Don’t you see? She must have been holding a gun on him, threatening him to make those changes to her compensation. As soon as Thomas acquiesced, she shot him. I bet when I get back to the office, I’ll have emails from Thomas waiting for me, instructing me to change Columbia’s pay and bonus.”
“You believe Ms. Squire threatened Thomas Strong into changing her pay and then, as soon as he agreed, killed him?”
Leza flushed; red, angry blotches covered her cheeks. “She might have been so angry that she acted irrationally. That’s just one possibility. Or Thomas may have ignored her threats and fired her, and that’s when Columbia shot him. He might even have attacked her; Thomas was unstable.”
Somers said nothing.
“She was blackmailing him,” Leza said. “You heard her. One way or the other, it ended badly.”
Still, Somers remained silent.
Crimson still blotched Leza’s cheeks, but her voice was calm when she said, “Adaline and Meryl recognized the truth when they heard it. You don’t know Columbia well enough, and you don’t know Thomas at all.”
“Where is Columbia?”
“She ran,” Leza said, flipping a hand towards the snow battering the windows. “Practically dragged Adaline by the hair.”
“How long have you had this?”
“Oh, not long. After you left, Adaline and Columbia had a terrific fight, and when it was over, Adaline came to me. She was sobbing. She said that yesterday when you and the other detective went to the shooting range, she had lost Columbia for a while.”
“That’s not quite how she put it. She told me she had stayed downstairs while Columbia went upstairs.”
“A lie. Adaline told me the truth. She told me that she had looked all over for Columbia and couldn’t find her for at least an hour. Adaline said that when she did find her, Columbia was outside the door to the study. Sweating.”
“And?”
“Adaline said Columbia had been trying to break into Thomas’s office. When Adaline told me this, I decided I needed to know why Columbia was so interested in the murder site. I got the door open and found the recorder under Thomas’s desk. Lost, no doubt, in the heat of the moment. She must have remembered later and tried to get it back, but she ran out of time.”
“That seems unlikely,” Somers said. But his pulse ran faster now, a steady thrum-thrum that made his vision narrow. Something about this still didn’t seem right, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Then another thought reached him.
“Columbia forced Adaline to go with her, so where is Meryl?”
“Oh,” Leza said in a lazy drawl, smiling as she settled back into her seat. “Didn’t I say? She’s gone after Columbia.”
WHEN SOMERS EMERGED into the blizzard, the snow had hardened into icy needles that stung his cheeks. The wind shrieked in his ears, and heavy whorls of snow danced across Windsor’s grounds, hiding everything beyond a few yards. His next steps, he knew, might determine a great deal; his partner was injured, Columbia had kidnapped Adaline, and Meryl had run straight into the worst of the danger. On top of all that, somewhere at Windsor there was a hardened killer.
As the wind stirred the snow, gathering it up and folding it into the wind, Somers knew there wasn’t really a decision to be made. He had a job and a responsibility. He had to find the women and try to stop the situation from growing any worse. His partner would have to fend for himself for the time being. It was a shitty decision, but then, it was a shitty set of options.
If the women attempted to reach the stables, they would find Hazard, who might be able to control the situation. If they went to the conservatory, though, or the shooting range, there was no telling what might happen. The closest building was the greenhouse, and it offered the best likelihood of warmth and shelter. Somers turned his steps north and slogged through the snow.
The storm had obliterated any trace of passage; jagged ice crystals pelted everything, slapping Somers’s arms and head and pelting the snowdrifts. By the time Somers had gone ten yards, the wind and the ice had rubbed out his footprints. On a day like this, a man could die. Somers had heard of a pair of women who had died in a storm like this. It had been early summer, and they had gone high into the mountains. The storm had moved in quickly, taking the women by surprise. They had died from exposure, and then the storm had passed, and when their bodies were found, it had seemed like one of those fabulous locked-room mysteries: the women had died less than ten yards from their car, and most likely, they’d never known how close they’d come. Somers wondered if that had been a mercy.
An ice age. Maybe that’s what this really was. Maybe global warming had—maybe it had triggered something worse, a
nd here it was: not rising oceans, not sweltering heat, not any of that. Ice. White and gray that swallowed the world by inches, refusing to let go. Somers shook his head, trying to jar the thought loose, but it wasn’t easy. Goddamn Hazard had put it in there, and now it was stuck to the inside of Somers’s skull: all the people at Windsor entombed in ice, a few million years of an ice age until some future archaeologist discovered them.
And he’d probably be just as confused as we are, Somers thought, baring his teeth in grim amusement. That would be something, just kicking the whole fucking problem down the road by a few million years. They’d never know, Hazard had said, and the words rattled like ice chips in an empty cup. They’d never know when we died.
Somers stomped through another drift. His eyes had begun to water from the needling snow. This was madness. Plain old everyday crazy. He should go back to the stables. Lock the door. Throw coal on the fire. Wait for the storm to pass, because it wasn’t an ice age. In another week, it would probably be sixty degrees again. He could do his best to make sure Hazard was ok. He could keep them safe until rescue came.
And what the hell would Hazard think about that? What would the big, brooding hulk say when Somers left those women to be killed? Jesus fucking Christ, Somers wanted to shout. That wasn’t even the most important question. The real question, the one that itched so bad it was going to put Somers out of his damn mind, was why he cared so much what Hazard thought. The bastard didn’t even remember Somers’s birthday; he didn’t want anything to do with Somers, that much was certainly obvious.
The wind shifted, pouring snow crystals down the back of Somers’s jacket, and he let out a frustrated howl. The storm swallowed the sound. Somers had never experienced anything like it in his life, to feel the noise building inside him, to feel its tremor as it left him, and to hear nothing but the wind’s shrieking. It left him feeling slightly foolish, like he’d tried walking up a down escalator. That embarrassment broke the worst of his fear and anger, and his thoughts came more clearly.
One thing, at least, was obvious: ice age or no ice age, if he died out in this storm, he was going to kill Emery Hazard for being so goddamn stubborn. It took a few moments for the ridiculous nature of the thought to penetrate Somers’s exhausted, frozen brain, and then his bared teeth transformed into a smile. A hard smile, but a real one.
Ahead, the wind ripped away a swirling sheet of snow, and for a moment the greenhouse stood exposed. In contrast to the muted, underwater light of the storm, the greenhouse blazed, a beacon of light and warmth and life. Through the glass, glittering with snow-melt, banana trees mixed green and purple and yellow, while the taller palms bristled under the dome. There was no sign of movement within. It was, Somers realized, an inverted snow globe: whirling chips of white paper surrounding a fragile play-world.
As Somers approached the building, he was grateful for the expanse of glass that sheltered him from the worst of the snow and wind. His breath came easier, not burning in his throat anymore, and he blinked his eyes clear.
And then he saw it, staining the greenhouse door and the steps black in the storm’s muddled light: blood.
SOMERS STOPPED INSIDE THE CONSERVATORY. He had told Hazard, when they had come here the day before, that Windsor’s conservatory no longer meant much to him. That had been a lie. It had been true, in a sense—how could one place mean very much after all those years, after all those other places—but it had still been a lie because some places did matter more than others. Some places mattered more than almost all the others.
The air, sweet with the smell of bruised coconut leaves and lemongrass and magnolia blossoms, clutched at his throat. For one moment, that smell ripped Somers backward through time, and all he could think was that Cora had been very beautiful in white, and he had never smelled lemongrass in his life until she had broken a stalk and rubbed her finger along the raw green wound and held it up to him. It had been their wedding day, and Somers had wondered about her finger, and about the smell of lemongrass, and about her dress and if she worried about a stain—I’m only going to wear it once, she had answered teasingly—and then, that night, he had tasted the lemongrass on her hand, even after all those hours.
For another instant, his mind was in two places: a part of him was cataloguing everything he could see from the greenhouse’s entrance, searching for any sign of Columbia or the man who had attacked Hazard; the other part of him, though, was dwelling on the night before, on his phone call with Cora, listening to the old anger in her voice, an anger that was almost Biblical, built on a thousand broken tenets and ripened over the decades they had known each other. That kind of anger, it didn’t exist outside marriage, and the thought had made Somers shiver while he was on the phone. That’s why they were always talking about it in the Bible. The people you loved were the only ones who could make you truly angry.
Then the moment passed, and Somers drew the Glock from its holster. He kept the weapon low, still scanning the brush for signs of passage.
Nothing.
After another moment of straining to listen, Somers crept deeper into the greenhouse. The path formed an extended oval, and he knew that if he followed it, it would eventually bring him back to these doors. But he also knew that the conservatory was larger than the area he had seen. His steps were quiet, but after the first few minutes, every noise began to sound loud: the scrape of his boots on stone, branches crackling as they caught on his coat, the rattle of his zipper as he shifted his weight. The heat and humidity, initially welcome, now brought sweat beading on his forehead.
It was silent, still, but there had been so much blood on the steps. Frozen, yes, which made it difficult to tell how long the blood had been there. A few minutes? An hour? A day? Somers shivered in spite of the heat. His hand wrapped around the Glock; the oiled metal was warm, close to the same temperature as his skin, and the sensation of holding the gun had begun to disappear. Was it like this for Hazard, this slow fade of everything until only the most vital details remained?
Before Somers could chase away the thought, voices shattered the stillness. The words, indistinct, rose and fell in agitated tones. Then there was silence again. Then shouting. Terrified shouts.
Somers broke into a run. The voices had come from ahead of him, but the path curved to his right. He leaped the border, and when he came down, his heels dug into the rich, black soil. A thin branch, invisible from a distance, whipped across his mouth, and Somers tasted blood. The sting of the cut, though, drifted high above him, like ice floating on a frozen lake. Someone, a woman, was still shouting. Meryl? Adaline? It wasn’t Columbia, that much was certain. Meryl. It had to be Meryl. It was—
As Somers crashed through a line of glossy bushes, he skidded to a halt. Before him, a small clearing opened in the tropical growth. The black dirt was furrowed, as though some routine agricultural maintenance were being performed, and in places, footsteps marred the neat lines. At the center of the clearing, an enormous man lay very still. It was obvious from his color and from the faint smell of loose bowels that the man was dead. Somers had no doubt it was the man Hazard had fought in Windsor’s basement.
Aside from a brief impression of the man’s size and of his condition, Somers had no time to study the corpse; his eyes were drawn to Columbia Squire, who stood next to the dead man. She was in the process of raising the dead man’s hand, fumbling with his stiff fingers. In her other hand, she held an enormous pistol. The gun looked big enough to chew through a tank. Across from Columbia, Meryl and Adaline huddled together, faces pale, their expressions a mixture of terror and a blank numbness.
Somers’s started to bring his gun up, but he froze. Either by accident or by design, Columbia stood with her gun aimed exactly at where Somers stood. He wouldn’t have a chance to bring his gun up before she fired. For a moment, neither spoke. Then Somers raised his empty hand, fingers spread.
“Hello, Columbia.”
Her triangular face looked like it had been whitened with—
—chalk, everything except her lips and her eyes robbed of color. She dropped the dead man’s hand and kept the gun pointed at Somers.
“Drop it.” The words were shaky but clear.
“Columbia, I just came here to talk.”
“Drop your gun. Right now.” The enormous pistol wavered in her hands. In that condition, with fear doing the driving, she was more likely to shoot Somers on accident than on purpose. He let out a slow breath, nodded, and lowered his Glock to the floor. When the metal left his hand, it was like letting go of an anchor. He could float, that’s how light he was without the gun. Float up like a clay disc and get popped right between the eyes. Somers took another breath, fighting a surge of laughter.
“All right. I put the gun down. Can we talk now?”
“I didn’t do it.” Columbia’s mouth parted; the tip of her tongue hung against her bottom lip, the expression vaguely doglike as she panted. “Leza, she’s lying. She’s always been a liar.”
“Nobody believes you did it.”
“Of course they do. These two believe it. Adaline believes it, don’t you, dearest?” A shaky laugh escaped from Columbia as she glanced at the mousy secretary. “Sweet little Adaline. That’s all I ever thought. And then I turned around, and she stabbed me in the back.”
“Are you all right?” Somers asked the huddled women.
Adaline buried her face in Meryl’s shoulder; her body was shaking in silent sobs. A red line ran across Meryl’s cheek, and her copper hair had half-escaped its bun, but she met Somers’s gaze and nodded.
“I wouldn’t hurt them. And I didn’t kill Thomas.” Columbia’s dark, enormous eyes roved in the empty spaces between the palm trees. She was looking for Hazard, Somers realized. “Everything I did, I did because I had to protect myself.”
“You’re talking about the blackmail.”
“It wasn’t blackmail.” There was no noise that Somers could hear, but Columbia spun in a circle, the huge gun bobbing along an invisible before coming back to rest on Somers. Columbia’s breath came faster now. Her cheeks were almost purple, and her eyes never stopped moving. When she spoke, her voice had roughened, and it sounded more masculine than ever. “It was what I deserved. What I’d earned for putting up with Thomas. He’d . . . he’d say things that nobody should be allowed to say.” Her voice steadied, although it kept its hoarseness, as her eyes flicked to Somers. “One time, at one of these . . . retreats, Thomas threw a baseball at me. I didn’t catch it. You know what he said? He said I didn’t need to have my cock cut off because I was already a pussy. And for my birthday one year, he bought me this enormous dildo. It was grotesque. And you know, that wasn’t the worst of it. He didn’t just give it to me. He made a whole show of it. He taped it to my chair and then he put candles along the back of the chair and he wheeled the chair through the office, and everybody had to sing happy birthday while Thomas made the same goddamn jokes over and over again. ‘Now let’s see if we can’t plug some of those financial holes.’ ‘Maybe this will be softer than that stick up your ass.’ ‘I call this motivation: nothing keeps Columbia’s attention better than a big dong.’” By now Columbia was crying. Meryl, for her part, had turned away—out of shame or embarrassment or pain, Somers couldn’t tell. “I mean, he was just such an idiot, and I had to put up with it. In the end, I wasn’t going to put up with it. He deserved what he got.” For a moment, Columbia was silent, and the tears dripped from the end of her nose. Then, in a quavering voice, she repeated, “He deserved it. He deserved to die alone, frozen in that chair since that’s all that ever mattered to him.”