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

by Gregory Ashe

  “Just answer the question,” Somers said.

  “There is no girl,” Darnell said.

  “Mary_sue123,” Somers said.

  “That’s me.” Darnell watched them, and some of Somers’s confusion must have showed on his face because Darnell grinned and shrugged. “Want to see a nipple again?”

  “Why don’t you explain what the fuck is going on,” Dulac said, “before we take you in?”

  “It’s a setup,” Darnell said. “There are all sorts of guys out there. They think they’re the big bad wolf. They think they can say a few things, snap a few dick pics, and then they’ll get a girl alone and do whatever they want to her.”

  He stopped, and when he didn’t continue, Somers said, “And?”

  “And I’m the big bad wolf.”

  Somers shook his head. “So you play your own version of To Catch A Predator? And you lure them back here and, what, shoot out the back of their heads?”

  “No, sir. The gun isn’t loaded. Take a look.”

  Jerking his head at Dulac, Somers said, “Then what’s the point? You mess with their heads? Think that’s going to scare them off? What’s to stop them from leaving and doing it again, and the next time, they’re mean because their egos are shattered and they need to feel like the big bad wolf again?”

  While Dulac broke the shotgun’s barrels, Darnell said, “I take pictures.”

  “He’s telling the truth: it’s empty.”

  Somers nodded. “What about the pictures?”

  “I send them around. Make sure I get them to as many people as I can. But I keep a couple of them back, the really—” He paused, his eyes flicking between the two police. “—creative ones. And I tell him I’ll send those too if he doesn’t stop bothering young women online. That’s the beauty of the internet; all I’ve got to do is press a button, and it doesn’t matter where he is in the world. Boom. I got him.”

  “Blackmail,” Dulac said, raising the broken shotgun. “And assault with a deadly weapon.”

  Somers considered Darnell.

  “I’m not going to apologize for teaching those men what it feels like to be a victim,” Darnell said. “If you need to charge me, you can charge me. My testimony won’t be admissible because I haven’t been mirandized.”

  Rolling his eyes, Somers said, “You play a lawyer on TV too?”

  “No, I have a J.D. from Princeton.”

  Somers blinked.

  All Darnell did was set his jaw again, but this time, he refused to meet Somers’s gaze.

  “So what do we do now?” Somers said. “I can’t have you assaulting people and terrorizing them, even if it’s only people who deserve it. That’s a bad road to go down.”

  Darnell stared at the worn carpet, but his voice was fierce when he said, “We could fight this out in the courts. You might nail me with a few things, but I’ll make you look like assholes the whole way.”

  Somers heard the unspoken offer. “Or?”

  “Or you take Tonda and pretend this never happened.”

  “You’ve got to give me something,” Somers said. “Your word: this is the last time; no more vigilante stuff.”

  Darnell looked up, a question in his face.

  “Consider it an unofficial parole,” Somers said. “You seem like a decent guy.” And this was true; Somers’s gut, the part of himself he trusted, and which Hazard treated like a built-in lie detector, told Somers that Darnell Kirby wasn’t a threat to anyone except pedophiles and predators. “But do this again, and I really will bring hell down on you. No law degree in the world can keep you from an assault charge.”

  Behind the beard, emotions warred in Darnell’s face. Then he shook himself and chuffed again. “Fine,” he said. “I won’t do . . . this again.”

  “That’s really vague,” Dulac said.

  Darnell looked like he would chew through a battleship before saying anything else.

  “Fine,” Somers said. “If Tonda presses charges, we’ll take it from there. Otherwise, as long as you drop the cowboy act, I think our business is done.”

  “He won’t,” Darnell said.

  Somers raised an eyebrow.

  “Tonda won’t do press charges. I got him with his willy like a shrinking violet,” Darnell said with another shrug. “Guy like him? He’ll be quiet.”

  Sighing, Somers motioned for Darnell to turn around, and he removed the cuffs. Then he headed back to the car with Dulac. Somers got behind the wheel and started back to the station. It wasn’t until then that he remembered the missed call from Hazard. He took out his phone, returned the call, and listened to it ring. When it went to voicemail, he dropped the phone on the dash and drove on into the night; Hazard was probably asleep already.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  DECEMBER 20

  THURSDAY

  12:07 AM

  HAZARD WATCHED THE PHONE’S screen light up, flashing Somers’s name. He turned the phone in his hand once and then slid the phone into his coat, where the light wouldn’t give him away. Then he looked out the Odyssey’s window and studied the townhouse.

  He should have been asleep.

  He should have gone straight home from the station; that’s what Somers had asked him to do. His brain had made that minor edit, correcting told him to asked him. Because sure, Somers was technically lead on the investigation while Hazard was a consultant. And sure, Somers was technically police while Hazard was freelance. And Hazard could admit, with his breath climbing the inside of the glass like the tide, with the world gone dark except for the hole-punch glow of a distant streetlight, with the air faintly vanilla and cinnamon from Evie’s crushed animal crackers in the booster seat—he could admit he wasn’t police. He could admit, in Somers’s position, he wouldn’t have hesitated to give a hired-on consultant orders.

  But things were different. So, it had been a slip of the tongue when Somers told him to leave the investigation for the night. Between the two of them, the dynamic couldn’t change that fast. It had really just been an asking.

  And, anyway, Hazard wasn’t doing anything. Technically.

  He was just sitting in a car. Passive. No action.

  Huddled in his coat, he blew out another breath and hated, fucking hated, sophistry.

  Then the porch light went on, like a signal in the crystalline clarity of the winter night. The townhouse door opened, and Wesley stepped outside, bundled in heavy winter clothing but still remarkable for the quiff of ginger hair.

  An ember of excitement rolled in Hazard’s gut, and he leaned over the steering wheel. Doing nothing, not yet. Technically, he was still doing nothing. Just watching.

  Wesley got into a beat-up sedan, dark, and started the engine. One taillight was out; another was dim and flickering. He backed up, swinging too fast out of the driveway, and when the little sedan lurched forward, the engine whined. A shitty car that had been driven until it was falling apart. Hazard wondered if money could be a motive.

  Hazard waited until the flickering taillight dropped into the blackness, and then he started the Odyssey and went after it. Wahredua was a small town—a college town, yes, but a small town. And at midnight, at the end of December, when the college kids had been whisked away by mommy and daddy’s money for a few weeks, the town might have been vitrified: everything glass, everything shining where the Odyssey’s headlights swept over it, gleaming halogen lines. Nothing living. Nothing moving. Just glazed lights.

  Except for Hazard and the pastor.

  For a moment, Hazard wondered if Wesley would catch on. The darkness, the cold, the silence: forget vitrification. Hazard had read about the moon. About lunar landings. Wahredua could have been like that, an abandoned outpost on another planet left to the empty vacuum of space. The two cars blazed through it like comets. How could Wesley not catch on?

  But the pastor didn’t slow, didn’t turn, didn’t try to shake Hazard or check to see if he was following. If he’d done any of those t
hings, maybe the spell would have been broken. Maybe, Hazard thought, maybe he would have rubbed his face and sworn and headed back home to Somers. And he could have shrugged and honestly said he’d been doing nothing. Ran out to pick up something at CVS. Or just needed to drive and think. All those thoughts went through his head, and he knew he should call Somers right then, call him and explain what was happening, take the anger and the frustration but at least nip it in the bud, before it got too big.

  This was different, Hazard told himself. This time was different. He wasn’t going to do anything. Just watch.

  Wesley drove out of town, where fields glowed with frost-tipped stubble. Hazard’s headlights caught an overturned wheelbarrow with KAYLOR AND KAYLOR LANDSCAPING flaking off the side. Farther along the road, at the edge of his field of vision, something moved at the tree line, the moonlight hitting at the right angle to limn antlers, a nervous kick, quivering muscles. And then the deer was gone, startled by something, and two more shadows bounded after it, and Hazard let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He felt dizzy. He wiped his face and found sweat.

  This was stupid; he knew where it was going, where it had gone before, and he shifted his hands on the wheel to turn.

  But Wesley turned first, cutting right onto a narrow, paved drive.

  The moment of uncertainty unbalanced Hazard, and then the moment was lost. He cut the Odyssey’s headlights and followed. Even without the lights, he could read the words on the sign: THE OAKS AT EMERALD POINT. Another trailer park. But unlike Paradise Valley, the Oaks wasn’t an Ozark Volunteer stronghold. At least, not entirely. The Oaks was a battleground, with shifting lines drawn as people came and went. Some of the population was old guard, and many of those people had affiliations with the Volunteers—or with the Bright Lights movement. But the Oaks also had other kinds of people: black people who hadn’t been able to get away from the small town, migrant Latinos who had come for work in the Tegula plant, even a niche of Bosnian refugees who had come in the 1990s. So it was a battleground between the Volunteers and everyone else. And Hazard wanted to know why Wesley was driving into a battleground at a frozen midnight.

  The single, fading taillight drifted ahead of Hazard, winking out at turns. And then it stopped. Hazard parked the minivan and killed the engine; a soft tick of cooling metal accompanied the slight rocking of the vehicle as he eased his foot off the brake. When a gust of wind slammed the car, he couldn’t hear anything but the white roar of air and his own heartbeat. His vision crumbled to blackness at the edges; part of him thought he was running between pools of light in a hotel, waiting for the shot that would send him tumbling, forever, into the dark. He wasn’t in a hotel, though. He was in the Odyssey. He could smell the animal crackers. But his left leg bounced, jumping once, hard, and cracking against the steering wheel. He let out a woof of breath that sounded strangled as he tried to pull himself back into this moment. Animal crackers. A few strands of blue artificial hair caught in the plastic frame of the clock radio—evidence of Evie’s latest obsession with mermaid dolls. The smudges of tiny handprints on the glass when she had insisted on ‘driving,’ climbing over the seats while the van was parked in front of the house. Here. Nowhere else. Just here.

  Wesley emerged from the car ahead, just visible at the edge of a streetlight’s pool. Hazard dragged himself away from that hallway of light and shadows in his mind; he shuddered against the cold glass and forced himself to focus. The same gust of wind that rocked the minivan now flattened Wesley’s ginger quiff. He took two steps away from the car. Then he wheeled back. For a moment, he stood with his shoulders hunched, his back to the wind, a ginger speck about to tumble into outer space. But instead, his shoulders came down, he turned, and his arms swung at his sides as he marched toward a drab, olive-green trailer.

  Instead of going up the steps to the door, though, he found a plastic bucket, turned it upside down, and planted it along the side of the trailer. He climbed up and tapped on the glass. Then he dropped down, kicked over the bucket, and hurried back to his car. The taillight stayed dark, though, and he didn’t move.

  Hazard leaned over the steering wheel, his tapestry of excuses and justifications unraveling as he tried to figure out what was going on. This was the key; he could tell that much. This was Wesley’s secret, the one that he had been so desperate to protect. Hazard’s next thought was conjecture, but he thought he might be right: maybe this was what Wesley and Hoffmeister had fought over, the night before Hoffmeister was killed. Maybe the argument hadn’t been settled; maybe Wesley had found a way to finish what he’d started.

  Another gust of wind hissed against the minivan, and as though that were the cue, the trailer’s front door opened. A figure came out, bundled against the cold. A man, judging by the build and the bulky winter clothing. The figure stopped on the steps, glanced up and down the street, and tugged his hat lower. He came down the rest of the stairs, jogged to the sidewalk, and repeated the process. Quick, furtive glances. Head tucked down. Shoulders curling in. Before he started moving again, he touched his coat. A gun, Hazard thought. Or, best case, a knife.

  The taillight sputtered on and then, after a moment, died.

  Hazard’s mouth drew into a line. This was a new development; Wesley was getting a surprise. He had thought they were driving off together, had thought they were—

  The sedan rocked violently on its suspension. The distance and the dark made it impossible for Hazard to distinguish the details, but behind the glass, both figures struggled in a flurry of movement. Hazard thought of the way the man had checked his pocket, just once, before getting in the car.

  Before Hazard knew what he was doing, he had thrown open the Odyssey’s door and was sprinting toward the sedan. The fight inside the small car was escalating; Wesley’s dark shape was drawing back, and the other figure was leaning forward, trying to take advantage of size and positioning in the cramped space. He was over Wesley now, raining down blows, and through the glass came muffled shouts.

  “—fucking stupid—told you never to—queer-ass motherfucker, someone could have—”

  When Hazard reached the car, he threw open the door, grabbed the man’s coat, and hauled him out of the car. Surprise worked to his advantage, and the man spilled out onto the patched asphalt with a surprised squawk. He rolled away, trying to come up on hands and knees; Hazard kicked him in the gut and strolled after him, hands in his pockets, kicking him every time he tried to get up. Once the man jerked sideways, his feet catching a trash can and toppling it, spilling flattened boxes and TV-dinner trays across the ground. Not until the man was curled up against a telephone pole, arms wrapped around his head, did Hazard stop. He shook dark hair out of his eyes, gave the man a final kick, and went back to the sedan. This time when he opened the door, Wesley was waiting for him, staring up at Hazard from behind new bruises and a freshly split lip. Blood ran down his chin. It dripped steadily across the front of Wesley’s coat.

  “No,” Wesley moaned, struggling to push past Hazard. “Oh my God, what did you do?”

  “He’s fine. Are you?”

  “Oh my God.” Wesley shoved at Hazard, planting both hands on Hazard’s waist and trying to dislodge him. Hazard knocked him away, and Wesley dropped back into the seat, covering his face with his hands. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

  “Call the police,” Hazard said. “I’m going to ask this asshole a few questions.”

  “No, please, you’re ruining everything—”

  Before Wesley could finish, Hazard turned away and moved back to the fallen man. He rolled him onto his stomach and said, “Nothing stupid, ok?”

  The man was crying, but he mumbled something and gave a nod.

  Hazard shimmied the stocking cap off the man’s head. Fortyish, with brown hair graying at the temples, a boxy head, average features. Hazard had seen him before, and it only took him a moment to place the man: first, at the tree-lighting ceremony, shouting obscenities at Wesley and his
church group; then, again, coming out of the Hyssop Branch, when he had crashed into Hazard.

  “Name,” Hazard said.

  The guy was crying into the winter-dead clover growing around the telephone pole.

  Hazard grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the ground.

  “Name.”

  He cried harder.

  Hazard grabbed his hair again.

  “Stop,” Wesley said.

  Hazard glanced up; the winter air came alive on his next breath, full of the smell of microwave macaroni and frozen garbage and blood.

  Wesley was holding a gun on Hazard, a little thing that probably shot .380 ACP, and most days Hazard would have said it wasn’t big enough to shoot through a bad fart. Tonight, though, with that microwave-macaroni taste clotting every breath, the gun looked plenty nasty.

  “Put it away,” Hazard said. “You’re not going to shoot me.” He tightened his grip on the man’s head and pulled back, ready to slam him into the ground again.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Nah.”

  “I will. I’ll shoot you.” The tremor in Wesley’s voice shook the words to pieces. “Maybe I killed Officer Hoffmeister. I’ll kill you just like I killed him. Just—just go away and leave us alone.”

  Hazard snorted. “You let this asshole work you over while you had a gun? Jesus Christ, Wesley. You’re not going to shoot me.” He shifted, still gripping the man’s hair. “What’s his name?”

  Something almost like relief passed over Wesley’s face: a way out. “John.”

  “John?”

  “John Hilbert.”

  Hilbert groaned and said, “Why the fuck did you—”

  Hazard slammed him face-first into the clover again.

  “Let me make an educated guess: he’s fucking you,” Hazard said to Wesley.

  Wesley’s mouth made a little O, and the pistol’s barrel dropped.

  “Ok. That’s one. Here’s number two: he wants to keep it secret for now because he’s not ready to come out.”

  For a moment, Wesley’s mouth worked silently. In that moment, Hazard hated himself because he saw everything Wesley had dreamed—God, how long? weeks? months?—go up in smoke.