Police Brutality (Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords Book 2)

by Gregory Ashe

  “You’re finished?” Dulac asked, the laughter dissolving into that cool façade. “Then it’s my turn. First of all, do you really think it’s smart to grab a police officer like this? You can act like a fucking ape whenever you want, I guess, but somebody else sees us, somebody who doesn’t know what’s going on, and there might be deep shit.”

  Hazard’s grip loosened, but he didn’t let go. Not yet. His blood was still on fire.

  “And I’m sure John-Henry would have something to say about it.”

  “You’re going to cry and tell him?” But Hazard released the collar, and Dulac dropped back down onto his heels. “There. Go bitch in his ear and let him know how mean I was.”

  “You weren’t mean. Possessive. And crazy. But not mean. In fact, I think you’re going to be nice to me. Right? Because we’re going to be friends, as far as John-Henry is concerned. We’re going to be buddies.” And then his eyes cut up, behind Hazard.

  Hazard didn’t have to look to know; a security camera was recording all of it. He hadn’t particularly cared when he came into the station. Nobody reviewed the tape unless they needed to, and even if they did, another camera in the jail would show that Hazard hadn’t done anything wrong. Except trespassing, interfering with an ongoing investigation, possibly a misdemeanor vandalism charge—

  “For some reason,” Dulac said, “you don’t want John-Henry to know you’re here. I guess it has something to do with you getting knee-deep again in police business; you saw how well that went for your boyfriend last time. You made him the laughingstock of the whole department.” That angelic smile played over Dulac’s mouth again. “Except me, of course.”

  “I don’t do blackmail.”

  “Then let’s walk out there together and see John-Henry. No?” Dulac slid a few inches, clearing the door partially. “Or you could go out this way, and for the rest of the time John-Henry and I are partners, we can be civil to each other.”

  “Don’t fucking press me on this,” Hazard said. “If you think you can hold it over my head, I’ll just tell John myself. I’m only doing this because I know John wants us to get along.” And, Hazard added to himself, because he had bigger battles to fight. The M word. He was fighting the relationship equivalent of World War I on that front, trench warfare, everybody digging in and holding their ground. He didn’t need a distraction.

  “Sure,” Dulac said. “Civil.”

  Toward the front of the station, the fax machine shrieked, and Hazard tried to make a decision. Then he shrugged. “Fine. Move.”

  “You know, Emery, a guy like John-Henry, somebody that special, you’ve got to move fast. A guy like that won’t wait around forever.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Right. But, you know, my collar’s all wrinkled. And I think a friend would help me out. Especially if he’s the reason it’s all messed up in the first place.”

  Growling, Hazard delivered a few slaps that knocked out most of the wrinkles and sent Dulac, laughing, back into the wall. Then he lunged for the door.

  “Bye, Emery. I can’t wait to spend more time together.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DECEMBER 17

  MONDAY

  1:36 PM

  THE HYSSOP BRANCH was a large building that looked more like a cineplex or a small stadium than a church. It sat at the heart of a dozen carefully manicured acres, huge fields of trimmed grass that had yellowed with winter. To one side of the church, some genius on the church activities committee had put together a maze and a castle and even what looked like slides—all built out of hay bales. The preschool attached to the church was making good use of it; kids squealed as they slid down mountains of hay, and more children popped up along the battlements, laughing as they chased each other.

  Hazard went in through the main doors, and it took him five minutes just to find somebody. When he did, he sighed; he recognized the girl, who was wearing daisy-print rompers that ended at mid-calf. She had on a sun hat. Her shoulders were bare. He wondered if she knew it was December.

  “I need to talk to the reverend or the pastor or whatever you call him.”

  That went down as smoothly as loose change. Her back stiffened; she folded her arms over her chest. Last time Hazard had seen her, she’d been wearing overalls; that was a better look.

  “And who are you?”

  “Emery Hazard. I’m a private investigator.”

  “I really don’t think Pastor Wesley—”

  “We met. You don’t remember?”

  The girl had nice eyes; tawny, somebody probably would have called them if they wanted a roll in the hay. They narrowed now.

  “At the Trunk or Treat,” Hazard said. “The pastor had just been attacked by those Ozark Volunteer assholes. I gave you some water.”

  “Oh.” Then, louder. “Oh. Golly, I didn’t recognize you.” She was yanking on the romper where it had bunched between her legs, but Hazard was so distracted by the golly that he barely noticed. “Who are you?”

  “Emery Hazard.”

  “I’ll talk to him, Jamie.” The voice was high and clear; Hazard spotted the source a moment later. The pastor—Wesley, just Wesley, Hazard remembered—had a ginger quiff and a thin face. His shoulders were narrow, and even the blazer he wore over loose jeans couldn’t hide the swell of his hips.

  “Pastor Wesley, I was just going to tell him how busy you are, but—”

  “No, it’s all right. Why don’t you go check with the preschool? See if they need any help this afternoon.”

  Jamie brightened, yanked on her romper again, and scurried toward the door.

  “Don’t forget your coat.”

  She scurried back, yanked again, and then, coat in hand, she was gone.

  Hazard watched it all and then turned his eyes on the pastor.

  “Sometimes I think I’m going to be helped to death by this congregation,” Wesley muttered. Then, turning, he limped through the doorway he had come out of. “We can talk in my office.”

  The office wasn’t what Hazard had been expecting. For some reason, the ginger quiff and the tailored blazer had set him up to expect Byzantine crosses and Yankee candles with fragrances like Bitter Balsam or Hickory Home. Maybe a lot of pseudo Art Deco. Maybe a lot of pseudo mid-century modern.

  Instead, the office held a particleboard desk held together, on one side, by vigorously imaginative use of duct tape; a set of chairs with orange upholstery straight out of 1977; and an IKEA bookshelf slowly falling over—it had hit the wall, and now it looked like the legs were trying to slide out from under it. On the walls, a few mass-produced prints of Jesus, also from the 70s and 80s, showed familiar Bible scenes. Hazard recognized some of them as ones that had hung in the church where his parents had taken him as a kid. He took an experimental breath and regretted it; the whole place smelled like it had been shut up in an attic for about forty years.

  “Sorry,” Wesley said, wincing and limping as he moved around the desk. “It’s all estate sale stuff. I couldn’t afford anything else.”

  “From the outside, it looked like this place could afford pretty much whatever it wanted.”

  Wesley just smiled. “What can I do to help you?” But then he winced again and pressed a hand to his abdomen.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I’m a little sore today.”

  “Does that have anything to do with Sunday?”

  “Mr. Hazard, I know who you are.” Wesley delivered the line like an atomic bomb.

  After several seconds, Hazard opened a hand, asking silently for him to continue.

  “I’m not interested in becoming part of your private war.”

  “What exactly is my private war?”

  “I don’t know.” Wesley’s pale eyes flicked away from Hazard’s face, then back, then away again. “You seem to hate your own community. You have a position of prestige and prominence; you could do a great deal of good. But instead, you seem interested in tra
cking down people who need protection, punishing people who need healing.” Wesley’s eyes came back again, holding firm this time. “I’m not interested in being part of that.”

  “Are you talking about Cynthia Outzen?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. If there’s something I can help you with—”

  “No; don’t try to squirrel out of it now. You started something; you can finish it, unless they didn’t teach you how in the seminary. Are you talking about Cynthia?”

  “For one.”

  “And Lynn Fukuma?”

  “For another.”

  “And Columbia Squire?”

  “I don’t know that name.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “The amount of time I’ve—”

  “Not long, then. Six months?”

  “We’re not discussing my time in this—”

  “Three months.”

  “Four months,” Wesley snapped. “Almost five.”

  “So you were here for Fourth of July? When that lunatic kidnapped my partner and carved him up? You were here when he called in bomb threats? You were here when another maniac shot and killed an officer who had been on the force for almost forty years?”

  “I was here. And I’m also perfectly aware of what you did. Killing that man before he could stand trial; you had a history with him, some kind of grudge from childhood. From what I can tell, you let yourself be driven by your past. The last sheriff, I understand you put his son in prison. And, no coincidence, he had bullied you when you were a boy.”

  “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Hazard’s hands wrapped around the arms of the chair. He could hear the mortise and tenon squeaking under the pressure. “You’re sitting on a cloud, looking down on the rest of us, without a fucking clue how the real world works. I track down murderers. Rapists. Torturers. People who do the worst things in the world to the people around them. I line up the evidence, and then I let the courts decide.”

  “Unless they fall in an abandoned building. Unless they get shot during the arrest. Unless they take a fast-acting poison, and no one can explain how they acquired it.”

  “That’s what this is really about. You knew her. Maybe you had some kind of thing for her. Here are the facts: Cynthia Outzen was a killer. She’ll never stand trial for it, but she murdered a man in cold blood. You know what? I’m glad she’s dead. I don’t have to worry about appeals or mistrials or hung juries. I know what she did, and she got what she deserved.”

  “There it is,” Wesley said, one small finger stabbing out at Hazard. “There it is. The unbelievable pride to say what one human deserves and another doesn’t. If we ever want to have peace in this world, Jesus teaches—”

  “Fuck Jesus. And fuck you. You spend your days here, sweating over your sermon. You drop in for tea at the homes of rich ladies. Maybe you talk about how the church needs a sand volleyball court or a Starbucks in the lobby. Or maybe the pastor needs a new car. And then you sip some more tea while they cluck and write a check, all in Jesus’ fucking name.”

  “You have no idea what I do. You have no idea about anything. You’re a godless, bloodthirsty killer, just like the people you claim you hunt. You perpetuate a cycle of violence. You think you’re judge, jury, and executioner, when the truth is that you were such a shitty cop, you got forced out of two departments.” Wesley was breathing rapidly, one finger stabbing out at Hazard again. “Get out. You are never welcome here again, not in God’s house, not in mine.”

  “Because they’re the same fucking thing,” Hazard said. He got up stiffly. He tried to push in his chair, like he wasn’t in any rush, but the legs kept catching on the carpet. His pulse was so fast that it made the world seem to flutter around Hazard.

  “Forget the damn chair,” Wesley shouted, “just get the hell out of here.”

  Gripping the back of the chair, Hazard ripped it free, swung it over his shoulder, and brought it against the wall with all the force he could muster.

  The chair disintegrated: legs and arms came free; the seat, with its orange upholstery, whipped sideways and cracked against a filing cabinet. Hazard was left holding a single piece of wood that had once been part of the back of the chair; his breaths were explosive. The only sound was the clatter of wood as he dropped the last piece of the chair.

  “Have a blessed day, Pastor.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  DECEMBER 17

  MONDAY

  2:14 PM

  HAZARD GOT TO THE MINIVAN. He clutched the steering wheel with both hands. The pulse in his head made him consider letting loose again, but a practical part considered the remaining car payments and decided to hold off. Besides, he’d acted like enough of an asshole already. December sunlight, bright and clear at this hour of the afternoon, played across the dash, and Hazard had to close his eyes.

  Private detectives were supposed to get information out of the people they talked to. Private detectives were supposed to build a network of informants, suspects, and witnesses, coaxing relevant details out of them, sifting truth from lies, until they could see the whole picture. Private investigators weren’t supposed to smash chairs against walls when a pissant religious zealot got under their skin. That specific example hadn’t been covered on the licensing exam or in any of the textbooks Hazard had studied, but he was pretty sure that was the rule.

  When he opened his eyes, the whole world glittered like it was frozen in quartz. Then he started the Odyssey and drove out to Paradise Valley.

  Paradise Valley, in spite of its name, was neither paradise nor a valley; it was a trailer park. Or a mobile home community. Or a cesspit. Whatever term you preferred. The last time Hazard had been to Paradise Valley, he had been responding to an invitation. He had found a tightly controlled community, already in the process of militarizing, turning the trailer park into a defensive holdout: dead-end streets, easily blocked with old cars; gunner hideouts built into woodpiles and the shells of old trailers; a maze of streets to lure invaders into traps. None of it was immediately obvious; none of it violated code. Hazard couldn’t point to anything and say, that, that, and that, they all have to go. Last time, he had driven out of Paradise Valley grateful that he had pulled his neck from the trap. He wondered how it would feel this time.

  Nothing had changed for the better in the months since Hazard’s last visit. Rusting chain-link fencing still ran between the aluminum frames of mobile homes. In many places, the small patches of lawn were overgrown, weeds so high they would have come to Hazard’s chest. In other places, the earth was bare, as though it had been hosed down with glyphosate to clear away any possible hiding spot. From the rotting, canted deck of a porch, the gnarled figure of a ceramic troll stared at Hazard as he drove through the compound. On another stretch of gravel road, a spotted dog kept pace, barking wildly and lunging at the wheels. Everywhere hung the white banners of the Bright Lights movement.

  Bright Lights was a new wrapper on the same shit. Supposedly, it was an entirely separate organization from the Ozark Volunteers. In reality, it was nothing more than a reboot; a more palatable, public-image-conscious version of the same white-nationalist, neo-Nazi insanity. It had fueled Naomi Malsho’s rise to political power in the last mayoral election. They had done this by capitalizing on a broader, national sentiment in politics. Dissatisfaction led to people saying and doing stupid things, and these days, dissatisfaction ran through the United States like a seismic fault. Here, in Wahredua, the first tremors were already happening.

  When Hazard stopped the Odyssey in front of a double-wide trailer, he took a moment to study Andrew Jackson Junior Strout’s home. The aluminum was a blue closer to gray, any vibrancy washed out of it. In many of the windows, louvers were missing, replaced by cardboard held in place with yellow packing tape. The porch looked as bad as anything else Hazard had seen in Paradise Valley, the supports rotting, the stairs warped, one of them peeling away like a bent playing card.
But Andy-Jack’s home had one shiny new feature: an outdoor wheelchair lift.

  Hazard climbed the steps, careful to avoid the worst ones, and knocked on the door.

  From the other side came labored breathing, muffled swearing, and a few thumps. Then the door opened. The man in the wheelchair had obviously been physically fit before his injury. He was broad-shouldered, with well-developed arms. His hair was short and looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while; his facial hair, thin and patchy, made him look ten years younger than he probably was—and desperately trying to look older.

  He smiled when he saw Hazard and held out a hand.

  “Andy-Jack Strout. Sorry about that. Dang chair barely fits down the hall.”

  “Emery Hazard.”

  “No shit,” Andy-Jack said. “No shit. You’re that detective.”

  “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  “Buddy, all I do is talk. Come on in.”

  With some more banging and swearing, Andy-Jack backed the chair down the hallway. Hazard followed him, closing the door at Andy-Jack’s instruction. The trailer wasn’t much different from others he’d been in: the double-wide feature added to the width of the rooms, but the hallway was cramped, and Andy-Jack had been telling the truth about the chair barely fitting. Black marks and broken paneling marked his difficulty navigating.

  In the living area, Andy-Jack breathed a sigh of relief and spun the chair around. He wheeled himself toward an empty spot of carpet in front of the TV where the wheels of the chair had made semi-permanent depressions in the pile. Tools covered the coffee table: voltmeters, electrical tape, screwdrivers, pliers of all varieties. A car battery sat there, caps off the terminals. Someone, presumably Andy-Jack, was either spooling or unspooling a thin gauge of copper wire. Hazard half expected to see a toaster ripped open to expose its guts.

  “Can’t afford to move,” Andy-Jack said. “Yet. Jesus, I’d be dragging myself up the stairs every day if some friends hadn’t thrown their money together to get me that lift. You want to sit down?”