by Gregory Ashe
Hazard followed the line of prints back to the heaters, but at that point they became so muddled with the melting snow and with other sets of prints that it was impossible to tell anything else. Somers was right, though; an identical set of prints led to the side of the house where the heaters had originally been plugged in.
Hands on hips, Hazard studied the porch. “So the killer came out here at some point during the party, and while he was here, he unplugged the heaters and switched them to the other plug. Not too long before Stillwell started shooting—we’ve been out here, what? Half an hour?”
“Maybe forty minutes.”
“And that was long enough for the circuit to trip and for the house to go dark. The killer would have had to be very precise. Or very lucky.”
“This wasn’t luck.” Somers paused, as though about to add something else, and then he stooped. He raked his fingers through the softened, trampled snow, and when he stood, something glittered across his palm. Wordlessly, he stepped towards Hazard and held out his hand.
Laced between his fingers, a silver chain blazed like fire in the sunlight. At its end, flat in the center of Somers’s palm, was a broken piece of a heart.
OF THE SILVER HEART AND CHAIN, Hazard could make nothing. It bore no insignia or initials, and it was hard to tell if the break in the heart had been manufactured or accidental. Together with Somers, he scoured the patio for any other sign of who had been out here the night before, but they found nothing.
Inside, the power was still off, and Hazard used his phone as a flashlight to navigate downstairs to the circuit breaker panel. He studied the breakers in the silvery light. The main breaker had tripped, but so had the one marked exterior two.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Somers said. “Overloading that circuit should have tripped the breaker, but it shouldn’t have knocked out the power to the whole house. That’s the whole purpose of having different circuits.”
Hazard nodded. He raised a hand and touched the main breaker.
“It’s warm.”
“What?”
Hazard shifted out of the way, and Somers touched the box.
“Jesus, what the hell does that mean?” Somers didn’t wait for an answer; his hand moved to the switch marked exterior two. “This one too.”
Without thinking, Hazard reached out to see for himself. His thumb brushed the back of Somers’s hand, and goosebumps prickled Hazard’s neck. He pushed the feeling aside. Somers was right; exterior two was also warm. That meant something, Hazard was sure of it, but it was very hard to focus. Somers still hadn’t moved his hand away from Hazard’s touch.
“Look,” Somers said. “Exterior two is the top switch on the right. It’s under the main breaker. The killer either knew that overloading exterior two would trip the main breaker, or he tampered with the panel so that it would work that way.” He was silent for another moment. “That means the killer was also the one who turned on the power. He left the exterior lights off. If he’d turned them back on again, the power would have gone out when the heaters tripped the exterior two breaker. By leaving the exterior lights off, he delayed that. If we hadn’t decided to investigate, it might have been a long time before someone came down here to see why the Christmas lights weren’t turning on.”
Hazard nodded. Somers still hadn’t moved his hand. What the hell did that mean?
“Should we take the panel off?” Somers was asking. “See if the wiring is messed up?”
“Do you know what to look for?” Damn it; Hazard’s voice sounded like old shoe leather.
“No.” Somers flashed a grin and, seemingly without noticing, shifted his weight so that he was leaning against Hazard, both of them still facing the circuit breakers. “I picked up a few things doing odd jobs around the house, but mostly because Cora made me. What about you?”
The smell. The smell of his sweat mixing with that sun and salt smell. And the heat of his body like a line branded on Hazard’s shoulder. He barely heard Somers’s words. “What?”
“You. Do you know anything about electrical work?”
“What? No. I mean, a little. From doing things around the house. You know. When—” His mind went blank. “When—”
“Billy?”
“Yeah. When Billy needed me to do something.”
“Like me.”
“Huh?”
“Where’s your head, Ree?” Somers pulled away, practically peeled himself away, and Hazard drew in a breath. “I guess I’ll call an electrician and have him look at this.”
Hazard nodded, still trying to collect himself. It wasn’t until they were halfway up the stairs that his thoughts began turning again. “The killer knew that overloading the circuit would turn off the power in the house. That’s not how a breaker box usually works, so either he’s spent time at this house, or he managed to get access to the breakers recently. Either way, that might help narrow our list.”
“And it has to be someone who knows more than average about electrical work. I doubt our killer would be stupid enough to hire an electrician for something like this. That narrows it even further.”
When they reached the kitchen, Hazard retrieved a lime-flavored water from the fridge. He twisted off the top and slumped over the counter, elbows on the granite, trying to think.
Somers found a stool and perched opposite him, a bottled water in hand. “Well?”
Hazard took a long pull of the water; it was better than most of the flavored ones he had tried, and doubtless it was God-awful expensive. “The same three things as always.”
“Opportunity, we already know: eight people had access to the kitchen and to Stillwell.”
“Means is a little more complicated. Where’d that gun come from? We need to find out if that was the same gun that Stillwell arrived with, where your father stored it, and who could have retrieved it to give it to Stillwell. We also need to figure out who ur_gurl_wants_it99 is.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Somers ran his index finger around the mouth of his bottle. The golden skin gleamed with collected water. His eyes were looking at something he didn’t much like, and he was looking at it like someone watching a car shooting down a highway: small, but getting bigger, a hell of a lot bigger, getting bigger fast.
“All right,” Somers finally said. “Motive. That’s always the bitch, right? That’s when all the dirty laundry comes out. You start looking and you realize, Christ’s sake, everybody had a good reason to kill this guy, you realize the motherfucker deserved to be shot. That’s how it always is, right? That’s just the job.”
“Not always.”
“That’s how it always is.” Somers was silent again. His finger glided so quickly around the rim of the bottle that it produced a faint fluting sound, like somebody playing the water glasses. “He’s my father, Ree. He’s a bastard. I know he’s a bastard. If you’d asked me yesterday, if you’d asked me at dinner, I would have said he’s a bastard. For a million different things. Last night, just take last night for an example, the way he talked to you. The way he’s always treated you. I’m not an idiot; I know he’s a bastard. But—” He drew in a breath and let it out; his shoulders looked like they fell about halfway to China.
“You don’t have to do this. I’ll keep looking. I’ll keep digging. You’re right: he’s your father. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. It’s a—”
“If you say it’s a conflict of interest, or some bullshit like that, I’ll—I don’t know. I’ll tell Nico you want a collection of Adam Sandler films for Christmas.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Damn right I would. I’m not saying I can’t handle this. I’m just saying—” Another pause. “I’m just saying it’s going to be shitty.”
There was nothing to say to that, nothing at all, and so Hazard just nodded.
Tilting back his head, Somers pounded down the last of the water and flipped the bottle into the sink. “All right. Motive. Let’s talk abo
ut motive. Who would want to kill my dad?” A wavy grin parted his lips. “Besides you. And me. And half the city.”
Hazard hesitated.
“Ree, just say it. I’m a big boy.”
“Your mother. Bing. Mayor Newton.”
Somers said nothing.
“You want my opinion, those three are the ones to look at. Starting with your mother. I’m sorry, Somers, but that’s what I think.”
“Because she’s the spouse?”
“Because she was looking at him last night like she wanted to cut his throat. Slowly. Because today she’s going to a charity luncheon. Because she—” He paused, barely fighting back a shiver. Because she scares me. That was what Hazard had been about to say. Something about Grace Elaine frightened him. Something tied up in the way she looked at him and in the past and in the Hazard’s own tangled feelings for Somers, as though Grace Elaine could see through the fog, as though some part of her understood, with laser insight, Hazard’s ancient, hopeless love.
But he couldn’t say that. Parts of it he couldn’t even say to himself, not fully. So he trailed off, letting the words fall into silence.
“She didn’t do it, Ree.”
“You wanted me to tell you what I think.”
For a time, maybe a full minute, Somers said nothing. He just looked at Hazard with those ocean-deep eyes, and then he shrugged and said, “Let’s see if there’s anything in my father’s study that could give us an idea.”
Glenn Somerset’s study was located in a portion of the house Hazard hadn’t visited. Seated at the front of the house, with mullioned windows opening two walls onto a winterscape of stark blue and radiant white, the study looked like something off the set of a movie: bookshelves built into the walls, leather club chairs, a fireplace, and a desk the size of a Central American dictatorship. The smell of cigars that Hazard had noticed downstairs was stronger here but softened by the aroma of cedar. Hazard moved to the desk, which was covered in papers—Somers apparently shared his sense of organization with his father—but Somers ignored the desk and crossed to the sideboard that stood behind it.
“He wouldn’t leave anything valuable out,” Somers said in answer to Hazard’s questioning look. Somers knelt, opened the sideboard’s double doors, and tapped the safe that sat inside. The sound was dull and impressively solid. “He always kept anything really important here.”
“Not in a safe-deposit box?”
Without answering, Somers thumbed back a sliding cover and revealed a digital interface for the lock. He pressed his index finger to the reader, and a moment later a green light flashed. A motor spun inside the safe, and there was a heavy clunk as the lock released. Somers gripped the door and swung it open. Papers filled the safe, neatly organized in folders, as well as a collection of CDs and flash drives.
“He programmed the safe to recognize you? Why?”
“I’m his son. Why wouldn’t he?”
Hazard didn’t answer.
Shaking his head, Somers said, “He’s a bastard, Ree, but we’re family. That’s always been the bottom line.” Somers paused, and he closed the safe door a few inches. “Ree, I don’t want to sound like an ass, but my father wouldn’t want you to see what he has in here.”
“This is a murder investigation.”
“But it’s not an official one, and we don’t have a warrant. You don’t have a warrant. The stuff he has in here, it’s private.”
“You want to try that again?”
Ruddy heat leached into Somers’s cheeks, but his gaze didn’t waver. “I trust you, Ree. A hundred percent. But this—this isn’t mine, and I don’t have that right.”
“And what kind of help am I supposed to be?”
“If I find something in here that’s important, I’ll share it with you. If not, no harm done.”
“Unless you miss something.”
The heat in Somers’s cheeks darkened to crimson. He let a beat pass, and then, in a firm voice, said, “Why don’t you go look around the rest of the house? See if there’s anything we’ve missed.”
“Or I could go sit in the car. Like your dog.”
This time, Somers didn’t answer. He shook his head, but he didn’t say a word, not a damn word, and finally Hazard turned on his heel and marched out of the study. His footsteps were too loud as he followed the hallway. His shoes rang out against the wood. Someone else might have said he was stomping, but that would have been stupid, a joke, totally off base. He was just walking. Just walking like he wanted to put a hole through the goddamn floor.
Halfway down the hall, though, Hazard realized he had an opportunity. Somers was fixated on Mayor Newton as the killer, and while Hazard knew better than anyone how dangerous Newton was, he wasn’t convinced that the mayor was involved in this—at least, not involved as deeply as Somers suspected. No, this felt like a crime of passion. There was planning, yes. But there was too much that was strange—and whenever things started to seem strange to Emery Hazard, he suspected emotion. Emotion, he’d learned early on, made people—
—stomp like a child at the age of thirty-four—
—do stupid things. Strange things. Like a public murder poorly disguised as a random shooting. Strange things like that.
Upstairs, Hazard found the master bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it was tastefully finished: an enormous bed with the ivory canopy drawn back, sheer curtains filtering the stark brilliance of the winter day, furniture that looked like it had been handmade—and, more importantly, like it had cost a hell of a lot. Like the rest of the house, the only signs of life were incidental. The high-pile carpet had captured a dainty footprint. Perfume, something like gardenia only sweeter, lingered in the air. A ghostly sheen brightened the vanity’s mirror. People lived here; Hazard knew people lived here. But looking at this room, looking at the house, it was still hard to believe it.
He moved through the space carefully, opening drawers, sliding his hands between folded clothing, doing his best to disturb nothing while searching everywhere. In this way, at least, he found himself doing a familiar part of his job in an uncomfortably familiar way. Once before he had searched a house not very different from this one, a house that was too big, a house full of everything money could buy, a house that was painfully, obviously empty in every important way.
Christ, that seemed like a long time ago. How long had it been? Six months? Seven? Seven months since he’d stood in a house like this doing—what had Jonas called it? R and R? Reconnaissance and recovery. Yes, that had been it. And Jonas had stood there, Jonas Cassidy, the captain’s son, grinning like a goddamn idiot. He’d been grinning the whole time, ever since he’d been put with Hazard. He wasn’t a cute kid, not really, but something about that grin, something about the way he said R and R and then spelled it out, like it was the best joke in the world, well, that made up for a lot that was missing in the looks. And when they’d gotten to the garage of that enormous, empty house, when they’d pulled back the shelving, when the smell of cat litter and clay and motor oil overflowed the mid-day shadows, when they’d seen the cache behind the shelves, Jonas had grinned like he’d pulled Jesus Christ out of the hole in the drywall instead of the first kilo of heroin.
A voice spoke from the doorway. “What are you doing?”
Hazard didn’t jump. He didn’t spin around. His hands—buried in Grace Elaine’s panties—twitched, and his knuckles rapped against the inside of the dresser, but he kept his composure. It had been a woman’s voice. Adrenaline was pounding through him, a mixture painful and exhilarating, and his brain had kicked into high gear. Not Grace Elaine’s voice. The maid, Margarita? Or—
“For fuck’s sake,” Hazard said when he turned.
“Nice to see you too.” Cora stood there, one arm across her chest, the other hand raised to her mouth as though covering a smile. Her voice didn’t sound like she was within a half mile of a smile, though. “Are you stealing her underwear?”
Hazard didn’
t bother to answer. He went back to his search.
The silence behind him was almost as prickly as the adrenaline still stinging his veins. Cora’s footsteps were soft and padded as she crossed the room. “Emery, I was just joking. What’s going on?”
He was making a mess of things. That’s what was going on. His hands had changed. He’d lost his normal, rigid control. Shaking, trembling, his hands knocked panties askew, spilling towers of red and black and nude cloth. Five minutes ago, five seconds ago, he’d been like a ghost. Now, he thought, well now just take a damn look.
“Is everything all right?”
“Somers is downstairs.”
“Are you looking for something?” A strange note entered her voice. Amusement, Hazard guessed. Nico would have been able to tell. Somers would have known. Hazard had to settle for a guess, and he guessed she was hiding laughter. “Did you need something?”
“He’s in the study.”
She didn’t move though. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, and she didn’t budge, didn’t shift, didn’t turn towards the door. She stood there, that one arm still folded across her chest, the other hand still covering her mouth. She was different from the night before—different, but still the same. Different clothes. The sleek, dark dress had been replaced by a man’s corduroy shirt, black work pants, and rugged winter boots. Different hair. It was still short, but instead of the artful curls, it curved naturally along the planes of her face. The rest, though—that beauty like something out of a children’s book, out of a fairy tale, like someone had been spinning starlight—that hadn’t changed. That was Somers’s shirt, Hazard realized, and somehow that made everything worse. The next thought was half-buried, almost hidden from his conscious mind, but it was as fierce and furious as anything: can’t she just leave us alone?
“I was stopping to see if Grace Elaine needed anything.” Cora shivered, tucking the heavy, too-large shirt around her. “She wasn’t at the hospital, and neither was John-Henry.”
With a grunt, Hazard slid the drawer shut; he’d never be able to straighten everything, not with Cora in the room. He turned. He’d go—