Transposition

by Gregory Ashe

  From nearby, new footsteps beat a rapid path towards Somers and Meryl. Adaline had heard the broken branch. An instant later, something moved overhead. For one heart-stopping moment, Somers was sure had been another gunshot. Then he heard the fans, and he realized that a particularly strong gust had rattled the branches together. It was the kind of shocked overreaction that, under other circumstances, would have been funny.

  Then he remembered the macaw.

  Somers didn’t stop to think. He burst free of the bushes and charged towards Meryl. At the rustle and snap of the leaves, Meryl shrank, as though she were trying to disappear without moving. She didn’t seem to recognize Somers until he had almost reached her, and then emotion blotched her face and she took a stumbling step towards him. Clutching at his jacket, she said, “She’s coming. She’s going to kill us, oh God, she’s coming.”

  “Meryl, we can get out of here, but you’ve got to do what I say. Meryl!” Her sobs broke, and she stood there trembling, as white as if someone had been spooling snow and ended up with something shaped like a woman. Her eyes were terrified, but they were clear too. “Down there. The bird feeder. As soon as you reach it, get as much seed as you can and start throwing it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Go.” Somers shoved her onto the paving stones, and Meryl took a few coltish leaps in the direction Somers had indicated. Her steps slowed, but she didn’t look back. After one more agonizing moment, she seemed to orient herself, and she took off running.

  That was when the gun went off again. The bullet thumped into the ground inches from Somers’s feet. Soil exploded into the air, pebbling Somers’s face, and he lurched backward. Another shot clipped the banana tree next to him, and the enormous purple flower exploded. Stringy fibers pasted themselves to Somers’s chin and neck. He dug his heels into the loam, spun, and launched himself at the boiler room. There was another shot—and an echoing ching—and then Somers had reached the door. He sprinted through it, leaving it propped open, and plunged into the boiler room.

  It was hot. And dark. Sweat burst out across his throat and forehead. The air, superheated, was too thick to breathe. Or maybe that was just all the damn adrenaline that was making his brain funny. Aside from the ancient, massive boiler, the room was cluttered with mop buckets and push brooms and rakes and old-fashioned signs that had, at some point, been used to close the greenhouse path when it was being serviced. Somers kicked a bucket out of his way and put his back to the wall, just inside the door, where he could grab Adaline as she came into the room. Please, God. Please, please, please, God. All she had to do was make one mistake. That was it. One mistake and this whole nightmare would be over. He could smell his own sweat, smell his fear, and it choked him. The heat, the stink, the noise of the boiler—it all crowded him, suffocated him.

  Then, as it had happened a hundred times before, a switch flipped inside Somers. He never knew why or how it happened. He only knew that it did: that one moment, he could barely draw breath because of all the fear, and the next he felt centered, balanced, in control. The fear was still there, but somehow he had wadded it up and shoved it to the back of his mind. Footsteps sounded outside the boiler room. This was it; Adaline had reached the door.

  Her shadow darkened a patch of ground just past Somers, and then the blunt muzzle of her pistol poked through the doorway. She took a slow step forward. The muzzle of the gun bobbed. Now, a part of Somers’s brain was shouting. Now, now, now. But he stayed where he was because the gun swung in his direction. His life was now measured in fractions of seconds. In a moment, Adaline would be able to see around the wall, and she would fire and kill him. If he lunged and grappled with her, she might very well get off a shot before he could get the gun away from her. Time was running out; where the hell was Meryl?

  Somers never heard the click of gears turning. He never heard the soft shush of seed pouring into Meryl’s hands. But in that instant, blue and yellow feathers exploded up from behind the boiler. Wind from the macaw’s wings brushed Somers’s fever-hot cheeks as the bird flew through the open door.

  In reaction to the sudden noise and movement, Adaline jerked her arm sideways, and she fired the pistol. The noise in the enclosed space was deafening, but Somers kept moving. Now that the gun was no longer pointed at him, he lunged forward and seized her arm. It took him two blows—one to her wrist, and another to her neck—to incapacitate Adaline. The pistol toppled from her hand, and she drooped towards the ground, wheezing for breath. Somers kicked the pistol deep into the boiler room, flipped Adaline onto her stomach, and snapped his cuffs around her wrists. Then he wrenched away the other two guns that she had tucked into her pants: the pistol Columbia had held, and Somers’s own Glock.

  The greenhouse was silent, in part from the deafness caused by the gunshot, and in part because of the roar of blood in Somers’s ears. He stared out at the tropical bubble, at the browning yellow of overripe bananas, at the purple coronas of magnolia blossoms, and outside, a sky the color of powdered milk. The blizzard still whirled. Snow chittered against the glass. But inside, it was warm.

  At that moment, Meryl emerged from among the trees, her face painted with fear.

  “It’s all right,” Somers said. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. He turned his face up, half-unbelieving that the glass roof could keep the snow from pebbling his face, and suddenly so tired that he could barely stand.

  He wasn’t even really aware that he’d spoken until Meryl asked, “What was that?”

  Somers cleared his throat. “Fuck the ice age.”

  HAZARD HAD WOKEN SEVERAL TIMES IN THE HOSPITAL, but each time he had been disoriented, barely able to keep his eyes open. He woke now to a cottony puffiness in his mouth and the need for a drink. Water first. Then something a hell of a lot harder.

  He knew he was in a hospital. He remembered that much. He remembered, too, bits and pieces of the end of their time at Windsor: the smothering heat of the stable apartment, the whine of a small motor, and then an eternity of chill snow spraying into his face. After that, nothing but periods of sleep in this room.

  With a grunt, Hazard raised himself in bed and took in his surroundings. It was a standard hospital room, and he guessed that he was at Wahredua Regional. The walls were the color of good curry, and someone had tried to stencil a border of bluebirds that looked rather sickly against the yellow paint. The only smell, as far as Hazard could discern, was his own skin and hair: a baby-shampoo smell that made him think someone had cleaned him while he was unconscious.

  “Five minutes,” Somers said from the doorway. He was holding a paper cup of coffee, and he looked as beautiful as ever. Aside from a long scratch near his mouth, he might have come from a weekend at the spa instead of a weekend of murder and endless cold. Unprompted, a vision of Somers’s muscled, tattooed torso appeared in Hazard’s memory, and a question rose in the dark corners of Hazard’s brain: what had the words said?

  “I leave you alone for five minutes,” Somers continued, “and you decide to wake up. That’s a lot of gratitude. I’ve spent the last two days in that damn chair so I’d be here when you wake up, and you decide to do it when I step out for five minutes. That’s gratitude.”

  “Coffee.”

  “Yeah, right.” Somers poured water into a plastic cup and handed it to him. Hazard decided not to press the issue; he drank the water and then drank more when Somers poured again.

  After a third glass, Hazard’s stomach gave a queasy flop, so he put his hand over the cup to keep Somers from filling it again. “What happened?”

  Somers told him. It was hard to believe; much of that last day at Windsor, especially after heading out into the storm, had become a blur in Hazard’s memories. He trusted Somers’s account of events: discovering Gene Bequette’s body on the hidden beach, the revelation of Columbia’s blackmail attempt, and the game of cat-and-mouse with Adaline in the greenhouse.

  “Is she dead?”

  “What? No. She’s in the co
unty jail for now. They’ve got her charged with all the murders. Also, a couple counts of attempted murder, assault, battery, on and on. Columbia pulled through the surgery, but she’s got a long recovery ahead of her. Meryl isn’t hurt, not physically, but God knows what her therapist’s bill will look like.”

  “She’s tough.”

  “Leza got through the whole thing smelling like roses. I get the feeling that’s her MO. After making her statement, she got out of the station as fast as she could. She’ll probably be out of town as soon as she can get a town car.”

  “What happened after you handcuffed Adaline?”

  “I put her in the boiler room and made sure I was the only one with any guns. Then I found Columbia and did what I could for her. It’s a gut shot.” Somers made a face. “Like I said, she’s got a long recovery.”

  Hazard turned that over in his head. “Do you have the recorder that Leza gave you?”

  “The recorder with valuable evidence about attempted blackmail? Yes, Ree. I’ve been carrying it with me day and night. No, dummy. I gave it to Cravens along with everything else I had.”

  Nodding, Hazard swung his feet off the bed, only to have Somers plant a hand on his shoulder. Just the touch sent a wave of pain through Hazard; he was more bruised and battered than he had thought. For the first time, he noticed the clean bandage swathing his injured hand.

  “You had a pretty bad infection and a moderate concussion,” Somers said. “You’re not getting out of bed.”

  Hazard dropped his feet to the ground. When he pushed up, Somers drove him back onto the bed.

  “Get out of my way. There’s work to do.”

  “Geez. You know what? It’s over. They have Adaline. We solved it. So whatever work is left, someone else will do it. Hell, it’s time somebody else did something around here.”

  “It wasn’t Adaline.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Somers said. He stopped and lowered his voice. “For Christ’s sake, Hazard, of course it was. I told you how it all went down.”

  “Yes, I know. She killed Thomas. Fine. But she didn’t kill Ran or Benny or Gene.”

  “Why not? She shot Columbia, didn’t she? Why would she hesitate to kill the others?”

  “How did we get out of Windsor?”

  “What?”

  “How did we get back to town?”

  Somers hesitated, as though sensing a trap. He spoke carefully. “Snowmobiles.”

  Hazard nodded; he had suspected as much from his fragmented memories, but he hadn’t been sure. “And that’s not a problem?”

  “A problem? You were dying. Columbia was dying. I had an insane killer locked in a boiler room. I would have ridden out of there on a dog sled if one had come by.”

  “But one couldn’t come by. That’s the whole point. Windsor was cut off from the rest of the world. The river had flooded, and the storm prevented a chopper from coming in.”

  Somers seemed to be stepping from word to word like a man crossing hot lava. “And Lender told us that the only service road was gone, so overgrown that we’d never even find it. He told us there was no way in or out of Windsor.”

  “You see it.”

  For almost a full minute, Somers was silent. Then he said, “Lender lied.”

  Hazard nodded.

  “The guy who attacked you in the basement,” Somers said. “Swinney ran his prints. His name was Daniel Frerichs, and he has a sheet a mile long: rape, assault, battery, possession. At first, I thought he might have been living at the stables. I thought Adaline had brought him in as backup, just in case. But he wasn’t at the stables—that was Gene. And Frerichs wasn’t staying at the greenhouse; we would have seen some sign of it.”

  Hazard nodded again.

  “Frerichs wasn’t at Windsor the whole time. He arrived after we did.”

  “Most likely, he arrived after I called Cravens and told her that Thomas Strong had been murdered.”

  “Someone who wasn’t at Wahredua wanted everyone dead. So they sent in Frerichs to take care of it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who?”

  But Hazard didn’t answer. He knew he didn’t need to answer. Somers was too smart, too intuitive, and his face revealed that he already knew what Hazard would say.

  “Jesus,” Somers whispered. “The mayor?”

  “Now move out of my way,” Hazard said, “and maybe we can get what we need to prove it.”

  Somers studied him for a moment. Then he gripped Hazard’s forearm and helped him to his feet.

  HAZARD TRIED TO KEEP HIS STEPS STEADY. He tried to walk a straight line. Instead, by the time they’d moved a few yards down the hall, Hazard found himself gripping the rolling IV pole, the veins on his hands popping out across his pale skin with the effort of keeping himself upright.

  “I should get you a wheelchair,” Somers said.

  Hazard shook his head.

  “You can barely stand.”

  A nurse stopped in front of them. She had managed, in some way that Hazard didn’t understand, to curl all of her hair onto the top of her head, giving her an extra six inches of height. Tilting her nose up at him, she said, “You are going straight back to that bed.”

  “Get out of my way,” Hazard said. Then he mustered enough strength to barrel forward, and the nurse squawked and darted out of his path.

  “You’ve got to get tired of it,” Somers said. Hazard knew what the other man was doing: he was walking just slow enough and close enough that he could catch Hazard if he fell. It was damn irritating.

  Hazard didn’t bother replying.

  “Being charming all the time. Getting people to eat right out of your hand. It must be exhausting.”

  Hazard paused his limping long enough to throw the finger.

  “Like that,” Somers said. “See, you can’t help it.”

  Hazard started to growl something—some small indication of what he thought Somers could do with his opinions—but stopped when he saw a pair of twin girls staring at them.

  Somers started to laugh.

  The small mercy was that Columbia’s room was in the same hallway as Hazard’s. Wahredua Regional wasn’t a big hospital, and the step-down ICU didn’t hold many patients. Patrick Foley sat outside the room, playing on his phone. The big Irish police officer hadn’t noticed them, but it would have been hard not to notice him: aside from enough muscles to strain his uniform to the point of popping, his carrot-colored hair drew every eye on the floor.

  “We’re going in,” Hazard announced.

  Foley looked up. His mouth hardened into a line, and he shoved the phone into his pocket. “No visitors—”

  “Foley,” Somers said.

  Once again, Hazard was mystified. That was all Somers said—that, and a small jerk of his head towards Hazard. Foley’s Irish complexion colored almost as red as his hair, and he looked like he was choking on something, but he nodded. Without another word, he yanked the phone out and went back to his game.

  Hazard studied Foley for a moment and then looked at Somers. “Do you have your phone?”

  Somers nodded.

  “Let’s see if we can’t learn something from Adaline.”

  For a moment, Somers looked confused. Then he nodded.

  This hospital room looked very much like Hazard’s, only the walls were the color of yellow playground chalk, all except for a pink-and-white paper border that showed a girl playing with a puppy. The border might have come from 1955. Everything else in the room might have been from the 1990s, which made it seem surprisingly modern in contrast.

  Columbia, propped up in bed, had fixed her attention on a TV hanging in one corner. A bandage showed under her hospital gown, swathing her waist where she had been shot. She looked much the worse for the wear: her triangular face was drawn, the skin stretched tight over bone so that she looked more like a skull than a fox. Her dark hair lay limp and flat against the pillow; the curls, Hazard realized, had been one more part of Columbia’s facade. To his o
wn surprise, he felt sorry for her. Not because she was trans, but because she had led a hard life and made bad choices because of it.

  On the TV, a daytime talk show was running. A banner streamed across the bottom of the screen, informing viewers that, She stole his man!!! and She turned them both straight!!! Hazard threw a glance at the chairs and then at the rolling IV pole. His knuckles were white as he clenched the metal. With a grimace, he lowered himself into the seat; he’d lose the advantage of standing, but in his state, sitting was probably better than collapsing halfway through an interrogation.

  “Ms. Squire,” Somers said.

  Columbia’s attention never wavered from the TV. Her eyes, glassy and dilated, remained fixed on the screen.

  “Ms. Squire,” Somers said. “We need to talk to you about what happened at Windsor.”

  Still nothing.

  “You were very clever,” Hazard said.

  She flinched.

  “I couldn’t figure out your angle,” Hazard continued. “You hated Thomas. You hated him enough to kill him, I believe.”

  “I didn’t kill him.” The words emerged from her mouth in a rasp. Her eyes were locked on the TV.

  “I know. My partner told me all about the recording. Adaline was much cleverer than you, which is unfortunate for you. She’ll be prosecuted for the murders, but you’ll still go down for blackmail, extortion, attempted theft, attempted kidnapping, assault, battery, menacing an officer with a firearm. The list really goes on and on.”

  Columbia shrank in on herself as Hazard recited the charges. Her dark eyes flashed towards him at the end and then back towards the screen.

  “Of course, when the rest comes out, you’ll wind up in the same place as Adaline. Death row. They won’t let you share a cell, but it will be nice to have a familiar face.”