by Gregory Ashe
But most of his mind had already raced ahead, towards Somers. In their time together as partners, Hazard and Somers had passed through some difficult and dangerous times. Nothing had ever made Somers act this way. Hazard wasn’t given to premonition; he wasn’t particularly good at reading the emotions of the men and women around him. Even he could tell, though, that something had deeply upset Somers, and Hazard wondered what it could possibly be.
SOMERS SLAMMED DOWN THE ACCELERATOR, and the Ford Interceptor leaped forward. It was a new car, purchased by the department to replace the Impala that Somers had destroyed by driving it—albeit unintentionally—into a flooded river. Under other circumstances, an act like that might have cost Somers his job; at the least, it should have planted him firmly behind a desk. Instead, Somers had cracked a string of grisly murders, and in addition to winning him public acclaim, it had diverted the worst of the administration’s anger.
The Interceptor, a black SUV with buttery leather seats and the lingering aroma of new car, plowed through Wahredua’s snow-choked streets without a problem. Thank God for that; Somers was driving like a madman, and as he took the corners of the cramped riverside streets, only the Interceptor’s excellent tires kept them from skidding into the cars parked along the side of the road. Without taking his eyes from the road, Somers punched at the radio, cranking the dial. Static pounded through the car, along with squelched bursts of country music, until Somers settled on a station. Heavy metallic music rattled the windows; Hazard’s head rang from the noise.
With a flick of his hand, Hazard silenced the stereo. “What’s going on?”
“I was listening to that.”
“No, you were trying to blow out your eardrums. And mine too. What happened?”
“You turned off my fucking music. That’s what happened.”
“Was it something with Cora? Did I say something? Did Nico—”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“Somers, either tell me what’s going on or stop the car.”
In answer, Somers dropped his foot on the accelerator. Gray snow sailed up on either side of the car, the slush hissing and slapping at the Interceptor’s frame.
This was unusual. No, beyond unusual: it was out of this world strange. Somers never acted like this. Somers was always the cheerful one, the optimistic one, the positive one. He was always, definitely, the kind one. And here he was, acting like a prime cut of asshole, which meant that something had gone topsy-turvy in Hazard’s world.
Hazard, to his own surprise, found himself reaching out to lay a hand on Somers’s shoulder. “Hey. What’s going on? Is someone hurt? Is it your dad? Your mom?”
Somers barked a laugh, but some of the iron had left his voice when he spoke. “I know I’m acting like an asshole. I want to be an asshole right now. Can you give me five minutes? Five minutes that I get to be an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Hazard said, dropping his hand. “Five minutes.”
“Nico’s a little bitch.”
“Whoa.”
“Who the hell does he think he is, sneaking into that dinner, nosing around Cora like he—like he knows her. Talking to her like that. I brought Cora there so she’d talk to you, not to the overgrown baby that you’re dating. And instead, what does she do? She spends a fucking half hour talking to Nico like whatever he does is the most interesting thing in the whole goddamn universe. You know what he is? He’s not a baby. A baby is something you care about. He’s—he’s irrelevant. He’s totally irrelevant to you. You think that’s who you’re supposed to be with? A horny grad student who can’t pick up his own dirty socks? Come on, Ree. I’m sick of you dicking around like this.”
“When your five minutes are up,” Hazard said, cracking his knuckles, “we’re going to talk about this.”
“And you: why won’t you admit that your hair is different? What the hell is going on with you? Tonight, what was that about? You haven’t seen Cora in, how long? Twenty years? Twenty years, and you can’t do more than say hello, shake her hand like it’s wet fish, and then pretend like she’s not there the rest of the evening?”
Hazard dropped back into his seat, watching the dashboard clock. The Interceptor launched out of Wahredua, rattled across the old MP tracks, and plunged into the darkness beyond. At this time of year, when darkness came early, Warhedua looked like the last place of light and warmth in a burned-out world. Ahead of them, the sodium lights dropped away until the only thing illuminating the asphalt was the Interceptor’s headlights, bluish-white, the color of fresh snow if it had somehow transformed into light.
“You know,” Somers continued, his voice still biting and low, “I thought maybe things had changed. I thought my life was going to be different. All this press from the Windsor case. Cora. But then my father calls, and it’s like the world stopped turning twenty years ago, like I’m just this kid who won’t take out the trash or do my homework. Like he’s going to say jump, and I better damn well jump high enough to impress him, and that’s a joke because he’s never been impressed in his whole life. Not by me, anyway.”
“Your time’s up. Either apologize about Nico or get ready for a broken jaw.”
Somers blinked rapidly into the blue luminescence from the dash. The muscles along his jaw tightened, relaxed, tightened, relaxed. He probably could have bitten through an engine block like it was cream cheese.
“I shouldn’t have said that about you. You were really kind to Cora. She was so sure that you were going to—”
“I don’t give a fuck about that. Apologize about Nico.”
The muscles in Somers’s jaw flexed and released, again and again. His fingers fanned out along the steering wheel. “Look, I’m pissed about my dad, and I took it out on you. I hate feeling like this, you know? And I hate the way I just acted. I hate that I said those things—”
“Somers, you better goddamn apologize about Nico right now, or you won’t be able to apologize until they unwire your teeth in about six months.”
For a moment—a long moment, maybe thirty seconds—Hazard was sure that Somers wouldn’t apologize. There was so much anger in his face, so much tension. Then he braced the heels of his hands on the steering wheel, forcing himself back into the seat as though bracing for a collision. He sucked in a breath, shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry I said that he was—”
“No. Don’t fucking qualify it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do that again.”
“What I said about you—”
“Jesus, Somers. Don’t you get it? I don’t care. I have never given so much as a goddamn second to caring what you say about me, what you think about me, any of it. Drop it and tell me what’s going on.”
“But you care what I say about Nico?”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. All right? That’s the thing that pisses me off. I don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what I know: I haven’t talked to my father in six months. And you know how I know that it’s been six months? Because that was the last time my father got pulled over for speeding, and he just about ripped out Miranda Carmichael’s throat when she pulled him over. I had to dance like a cat with its tail on fire to keep her from dragging him to jail. You know Miranda; she’s a rock, and she wasn’t going to put up with that behavior.
“And when I’ve finally got it all sorted out, when I’ve promised Cravens that I’ll pull doubles and when I’ve promised Carmichael a month of lunches and when I’ve finally put the whole damn mess to bed, what happens? I’ll tell you what: nothing. Nada. Silence. My father might as well be on the moon. Until tonight, that is. He calls me up. He tells me to get over to the house. ‘We have a disturbance.’ Those were his words. And then he told me, again, to get over to the house. I said he should call the police. He said—” Somers broke off, taking a shuddering breath.
“He said what?”
“Never mind. The important part is that he’s got me by the balls. Again. And here I am, ru
nning across town to put out one of my father’s little fires. I don’t know what the problem is, but here I go.”
“Here we go,” Hazard amended.
“Yeah,” Somers said, his voice softening. “Thanks.”
“Why didn’t he call the police?”
“Because as usual, my father prefers to handle things like a gentleman, which means not involving the authorities.”
“He doesn’t know you’re a cop?”
“I’m family. I’m expected to keep my mouth shut and make problems disappear. Another cop wouldn’t do that. And don’t give me that look. I’m not crooked, Hazard. But I sure as hell have pulled every string I can pull. I’ve pulled them until they’ve just about snapped off in my hands. Tonight’s just going to be one more time.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Hazard said, “so let’s not do this. Let’s go back to the restaurant. I’ll call Nico. They might still be there; God knows they were having enough fun without either of us.”
Somers shook his head. The anger in his face had dissipated. His eyes, a deep blue, like tide pools, looked darker than ever, like the water at the bottom of the ocean, where blue became black. Those eyes looked bruised. Haunted.
“Somers, what did he—”
“I’m sorry I was such an asshole.”
Hazard tried to think of the best response to this. For all his openness and cheer, Somers still had boundaries—narrower than most, perhaps, but still strong. Finally, Hazard settled for a copy of the smirk he normally saw on Somers’s face. “You got your five minutes. Now how do you explain the rest of your life?”
A very small grin cracked the corners of Somers’s mouth.
They turned off the state highway and onto a private drive. It carried them around a low hill, and then the Somerset home appeared. In the darkness, after all these years, the place was nothing like what Hazard remembered. He had never been invited to Somers’s house; the school’s golden boy and the town faggot had crossed paths only—
—in the locker room, with Hazard’s skin prickling under Somers’s caress—
—when Somers and his friends had decided to make Hazard’s life hell. But Hazard had seen the house: an impressive, sprawling brick construction that, in hindsight he realized, had been meant to look Victorian. That memory of ruddy brick and black shutters could not have prepared him for the blaze of light that awaited on the other side of the hill. The Somerset home glowed like a fallen star: white tinged with blue and green and red, the bulbs pulsing and flickering in time to some unheard music. Somehow, though, it managed to remain tasteful; anyone else, Hazard guessed, would have ended up with something that looked like glowing Yuletide vomit.
Expensive cars lined the circular drive, a series of darkly-colored BMWs and Mercedes that wore snow like ermine, the cars of rich, old men who had gathered to enjoy the company of other rich, old men. Somers slammed the brakes as they got to the middle of the drive, directly in front of the house, and he swung the Interceptor at an angle across the slush-covered asphalt.
“Do you want me to handle this?” Hazard asked.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
Somers had already come around the Interceptor by the time Hazard got his feet on the ground. Even outside the house, the air was full of the smells of pine and cinnamon and rum. Hazard hurried to catch up to Somers; his footsteps made squelching noises in the softening snow, and the sound made an odd counterpoint to the muffled music that came from inside the house. By the time Hazard had reached the porch, though, Somers had stopped.
He had stopped dead, in fact, and his face had hardened. Then Hazard saw what had made his partner stop.
The door was open, and shouts echoed inside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks go out to the following people:
Monique Ferrell, for her outstanding insights into all things legal. Any mistakes in the book are mine; anything I got right is due to her diligent research and gentle corrections. I'll never use cornstarch for latent prints again!
Austin Gwin and Troy, for their perceptive readings of the unpolished manuscript, especially with regard to the ending and how everything ties together.
And, as always, the weekenders group, for many pleasant hours of gaming, snacks, and listening to me complain about books I haven't even written yet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Learn more about Gregory Ashe and forthcoming works at www.gregoryashe.com.