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

by Gregory Ashe

  “His family—”

  “No.” Hazard shook his head. “That’s bullshit. He’s going to fuck you until he gets tired of you or until you push him too far, and then he’s going to break it off. And if you’re lucky, that’ll be the end of it. Or it might be like tonight, him knocking you around to make sure you don’t tell anyone. Or it might be worse. But he’s not going to come out for you.” Hazard knew what was next: the levers to pull, the buttons to press. He knew, and he hated himself for doing it anyway. “He’s never going to take you to dinner. He’s never going to walk through a park with you. He’s never going to introduce you to his mom.” He let a mocking grin, as sharp and thin as a razor blade, cut across his face. “Did he talk about getting married?”

  Wesley loosed a dry sob, and the pistol tumbled from his fingers.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Hazard said. “And you believed him? I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t think you were that stupid.” He released the handful of greasy hair and reached into Hilbert’s pocket, knowing now that he had been wrong about his first two guesses.

  No gun. No knife.

  Pulling out the wedding ring, Hazard spun it on the tip of his index finger so light caught the gold. “The asshole’s got a wife in there. He couldn’t marry you even if he wanted to. Why do you think he was so mad you tapped on the window? She’s in there, wide awake, probably losing her shit wondering what’s going on.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Wesley screamed, his high, thin voice carrying clearly. “I’m going to kill you, I’m going to—” The words cut off in a strangled scream as he charged.

  Hazard had been waiting for it. He was up, catching Wesley with one broad arm across the chest, letting Wesley’s momentum spin them around. He had a foot and a half on Wesley and probably twice the mass; he dragged him to the sedan and packed him into the front seat.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Wesley screamed, twisting to get past Hazard. “I’m going to fucking cut your balls off and feed them to you—”

  Hazard slapped him once. Just enough to get his attention. Wesley’s shout caught in his throat, and he stared at Hazard through glazed eyes.

  Up and down the block, lights were coming on in the trailers.

  “You were with him,” Hazard said. “The night Hoffmeister was killed, you got into a fight with Hoffmeister about Hilbert, and then you spent the rest of the night with him. Is that it?”

  Wesley’s eyes were dazed, but they were slowly filling with tears.

  Hazard slapped him again. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Wesley said, the word small, his voice broken. “He knew about us. He wanted me to pay him. He didn’t say it that way, but—then, after the fight, I went to see . . . to see this asshole.” A sob tore through his throat.

  “Later,” Hazard snapped. “And the night somebody took a shot at us?”

  Wesley was choking on tears, but he pointed at Hilbert and nodded.

  “Proof.”

  “Oh my God I want to die,” Wesley said, curling over the center console. “Why can’t I just die?”

  Grabbing him by the collar, Hazard yanked him upright and shook him. Wesley’s head bobbled. “Proof. Fast, dumbass, before we both get shot and everybody says it was one big tragic misunderstanding.”

  “The Tuscumbia Motel. He signs the registry John Wesley because he said—he said—” More tears threatened to drag Wesley under.

  Stepping back, Hazard slammed the door, almost catching Wesley’s hand against the frame. Hazard pointed down the street and said one word: “Go.”

  After another wild scream, Wesley keyed the ignition, gunned the motor, and the little sedan screeched as it whipped around and headed out of the trailer park.

  Scooping up the pistol, Hazard heard doors opening along the block, voices calling out questions, demanding answers. He gave Hilbert a last good kick in the ribs and then raced toward the Odyssey. He started the minivan and copied Wesley’s maneuver, flipping around and shooting toward the state highway.

  As he drove out into the night, one of the assholes fired a gun into the air like they’d won some kind of victory. Hazard felt his own surge of triumph; in spite of Wesley’s denials, Hazard had just figured out his motive: killing Hoffmeister got him out from under blackmail. Now Hazard just had to shred Wesley’s alibi and pin him at the murder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DECEMBER 20

  THURSDAY

  11:17 AM

  IT’S TOTALLY NOT A BIG DEAL,” Dulac said. The third time. Maybe the fifth.

  Somers rolled the pencil under the flat of his hand and stared at Cravens’s door. The stationhouse had all of its usual activity: Janie Carlson was walking Mrs. Lintz to a desk, where they’d have their monthly conversation about speeding, and Mrs. Lintz, a long way past eighty, would nod and smile and offer a butterscotch disc; Norman and Gross had wandered in during the middle of their shift without an explanation and were playing horse with empty creamer packets from the coffee station, both of them missing every shot and restarting the game every five rounds; Ehlers, who was supposed to be on dispatch, was trying to fit a family-sized frozen lasagna in the microwave. Somers took a breath and tried not to choke on the smell of hot toner; Foley and his dumb-ass cousin, Conor Kelly, had spent the last half-hour copying their asses and leaving BOLOs on every desk.

  At the desk next to Somers, Dulac rocked in his chair. He adjusted his monitor. He wiggled the mouse back and forth, as though testing the length of the cord. When he pecked out a few letters on the keyboard, he frowned like he was composing the Magna fucking Carta. Then, on some internal timer set to drive Somers crazy, he dropped back in his seat and said, “It’s nothing, bro. Totally nothing.”

  “Ok.” The hexagonal wood of the pencil clicked as Somers rolled it.

  “They’re just, like, talking. You know?”

  Somers ran his thumb over the crimped metal of the ferrule.

  “You know what it is? I bet it’s, like, a confession.”

  “It’s not a confession.”

  “I bet it is, dude. I bet he realized we’ve got too much stuff on him, and he decided to confess.”

  “We don’t have anything.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dulac leaned forward. “But they don’t know that.”

  An hour ago, Aniya Thompson, Wesley’s lawyer, had walked into the stationhouse and demanded a meeting with Cravens. They’d been in there, the blinds shut, for an hour. Talking about what? Somers didn’t know, but he knew it couldn’t be good. Not this long. Not with this quiet pressure building. He was surprised the door to the office hadn’t buckled under all that pressure. He was surprised the glass hadn’t blown out.

  As Somers reached for his coffee, the fax machine screeched. His hand jerked a fraction of an inch before he caught himself, but it was enough to send the pencil spinning, enough to knock the mug off the edge of the desk. Coffee arced, and Somers winced, already anticipating the shattering of ceramic.

  Instead, though, a big hand covered with fine, dark hairs caught the mug. The rest of the coffee slopped across the floor, and the hand set the mug back on the desk.

  “I’m guessing that’s not because you’re happy to see me,” Hazard said, pushing back his long, wavy dark hair to study Somers.

  “Oh. Hi.” Somers got up and gave him a quick kiss. “Sorry; kind of on edge. You were gone when I got up this morning. Where did you—”

  “Somebody’s going to slip,” Ehlers called, still trying to jam the frozen lasagna in the microwave.

  “Hold on,” Somers said to Hazard. “I’ll be right back.”

  Hazard caught his arm. “You,” he said to Dulac.

  “Hey Emery. Man, it’s awesome to see you, I just wanted to say—”

  “You were bragging about how well you know the supply closet. Paper towels. Now.”

  “Right, well, the thing is, I wasn’t actually the one who spilled it. And—” Dulac faltered, losi
ng volume as he pressed on. “I, like, totally don’t mind helping, of course, I mean, John-Henry is like my mentor, actually, like, a really great friend too, in fact, I’d even say he’s, like, my bro, but—”

  “Excuse me,” Ehlers was calling from the microwave. “Excuse me. That’s a real hazard. Excuse me. Somebody—hey, excuse me, Somers!”

  Somers took a step, or tried to, but Hazard’s grip was iron.

  “I just got here,” Hazard said. “I want to see you.” Then his gaze switched to Dulac. “Paper towels. Now.”

  Dulac got slightly paler, his freckles popping, and scurried toward the supply closet.

  “Ok,” Somers said, “now that—”

  “It’s not like the rest of us want to slip and fall, you know,” Ehlers was still calling. “It’s not—”

  “Stop talking,” Hazard said over his shoulder. “And stop trying to fit that lasagna in the microwave. It won’t fit. Use your spatial reasoning, for fuck’s sake.”

  Ehlers stared at him; the microwave lasagna slipped from her hands and hit the floor like a brick.

  “What I like about you—” Somers said.

  Hazard faced him and groaned.

  “—is that it’s always kicks and giggles. No serious stuff. We just play around. Have fun.”

  “Can we talk about something before Dulac gets back?”

  “It’s just rainbows and unicorns and everybody’s holding hands and dancing. When you’re around, I mean.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “It’s like this wild grace comes over everyone, transforming them into creatures of bliss and happiness. Prelapsarian. When you’re around.

  “Wild grace.” Hazard’s eyes narrowed. “Prelapsarian. You sound like you’ve been using your vocab flashcards again.”

  “I’m a man of letters.”

  “Sure. By the time you’re forty, maybe you’ll know all twenty-six. No, no more bullshit; I need to talk to you. Cravens called me in. I think I’ve got a break in the case.”

  “You’ve got a break?”

  “We. You know I meant we.”

  Somers pulled back, studying his boyfriend. “What did you do?”

  Rolling one shoulder, Hazard said, “That’s not important. What’s important—”

  “You kept investigating.”

  “I happened to see Wesley driving. I wasn’t planning on it. But I followed him.”

  “After my direct order—”

  “He went out to the Oaks and met up with this guy. They’ve been fucking. And Wesley tried to use him as an alibi, but the truth came out: Hoffmeister was blackmailing Wesley. That’s why they got into a fight two nights ago. Wesley claims he spent the night with a married man in a motel in Tuscumbia, but I drove out there this morning,” he reached into his coat and pulled out a sheaf of papers, “and guess what? Neither of them signed the registry. Not even with the pseudonym Wesley claimed they used. So I think—”

  Before Hazard could finish, Cravens’s door opened. The chief stood in the doorway, looking small in her uniform, her eyes dark and hard.

  “Detective Somerset. Mr. Hazard. Come in. Where’s Detective Dulac?”

  “He’ll be right back,” Somers said.

  “Ehlers,” Cravens said, “send him in when he gets here. If it’s not too much trouble for the detective to be present when he’s on duty.”

  Then she walked back into her office.

  Somers tried not to let his eyebrows climb, but Hazard had a terrible poker face, and he could read his own shock in Hazard’s features. The crack about Dulac, the pettiness of it—

  “What the fuck?” Hazard whispered.

  Somers shrugged and headed for the chief’s office.

  Aniya Thompson sat in one of the chairs, and when she saw them, she swept back her dark braids, the beads clicking together. It wasn’t much of a tell, but Somers recognized it from other cases he’d seen Thompson work. She smelled blood in the water.

  “Detectives,” she said.

  “Just the one,” Cravens said, dropping into her seat and futzing with one of the framed pictures behind her. Somers noticed the rearrangement of office equipment: Cravens’s computer had been turned, monitor angled so that he could see the screen, and everything else had been shifted to accommodate it. “In case you’ve forgotten, Aniya, I’ll remind you: Mr. Hazard no longer works for the Wahredua police.”

  “Of course. My mistake.”

  “Mrs. Thompson has some very troubling accusations.”

  “Just facts, Chief Cravens.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Turning toward Hazard—Somers didn’t miss the way her body language cut him out of the conversation—Thompson said, “Could you tell us where you were last night?”

  “Wahredua.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “So will you.”

  Thompson swept her braids back again. The sound of beads clicking filled the room. “From, say, seven o’clock p.m. until two in the morning.”

  “I was here for some of that time.”

  “Interrogating my client.”

  “That’s incorrect. I was present at the initial conversation, at Wesley’s home—”

  “Where you illegally entered by forcing your way into the home.”

  Hazard’s jaw tightened; the first thread of scarlet unspooled along his cheekbones. “—but I was not part of the conversations here at the station.”

  “You believe my client murdered Officer Hoffmeister.”

  “Not necessarily. It’s an active investigation; I’m pursing several leads.”

  “You personally? Maybe that explains my previous mistake. I thought you were no longer working for the police.”

  “As you pointed out, you made a mistake. Several, in fact. While I no longer work for the police, I am a contracted freelance investigator. I’m assisting Detective Somerset on this case.”

  “Your boyfriend.”

  “My relationship has no bearing on this case.”

  “If you’d like to be technical—”

  “For the love of God,” Somers said. “You two can keep getting more and more polite, frostier and frostier, using all your big words to show how smart you are, or we can figure out what the hell is going on. Ree, tell her where you were. Mrs. Thompson, don’t drag this out, please.”

  “After you and your client left,” Hazard said, “I worked here for a while with Detectives Somerset and Dulac.”

  As though on cue, the door clicked open and Dulac slipped into the room, taking up a spot along the wall.

  “Then I received a call from the sheriff’s department. A person of interest in our investigation had been arrested, and the sheriff wanted to give me an opportunity to speak to her. I did.”

  “What did she say?” Thompson asked.

  A sick, twisting heat wrenched Somers’s gut. Hazard had seen the sheriff? Had interviewed someone? Without telling Somers? True, Hazard had tried to call. And they hadn’t seen each other that morning because Hazard had left to investigate Wesley’s alibi—again, without telling Somers. The groundwork of the case had turned to mud underfoot; it was slipping away because Somers no longer had any idea what the hell was going on.

  “I’m not going to disclose that,” Hazard said. “After meeting with the sheriff, I completed some personal errands—”

  “What?”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “You followed my client last night,” Thompson said. Click-click-click went the braids. “I’d like to know how.”

  “My grocery shopping has nothing to do with it. I drove past his house; I was curious to see what he was doing.”

  “Near midnight.”

  “Yes.”

  “You weren’t sitting outside his home, watching him for hours?”

  Hazard didn’t answer, but the scarlet fringe on his cheekbones thickened. Somers prayed he didn’t try to lie; he was just such a terribl
e liar.

  “That’s all right,” Thompson said. “I assume you’ll tell the truth under oath, and it’s not essential for the current conversation.”

  “Under oath?” Somers said. “You’re talking about legal proceedings? What’s going on?”

  “It’s simple,” Thompson said. “The Wahredua Police Department has harassed my client. They are currently attempting to frame my client for a murder. Emery Hazard, as a contracted employee of the department, assaulted my client last night after a high-speed pursuit.”

  Hazard barked a laugh. “In a fucking minivan? Your client wasn’t—”

  “And when he forced my client to stop driving, he dragged him out of the car, punched him, and kicked him. He beat him in hopes of forcing a confession.”

  “That’s a fucking lie.”

  “So you didn’t pursue my client across town?”

  “I followed him because his behavior was suspicious. He didn’t know I was following him.”

  “You didn’t hit him?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t try to elicit a confession from him.”

  “No,” Hazard said. He stood. “This is all bullshit; I can’t believe we’re wasting our time on this.” Turning to Cravens, he added, “Are we done?” And then he headed toward the door.

  “My client claims—”

  “Your client is a lying sack of shit,” he threw back. “And he doesn’t have any witnesses.”

  That blow got through; Thompson immediately changed tack. “Regardless, considering your reputation and the way you have left two police departments under—”

  “Stop it,” Somers said, halfway out of his seat before he caught himself. “Right now, stop it.”

  Hazard froze with his hand on the door; the silence in the office was like the inside of a coffin.

  “Ree,” Somers said, “somebody must have seen you last night, right? Where did you and Wesley talk? The Oaks? Somebody must have seen part of it.”

  Hazard hesitated, the scarlet darkening his cheeks. Then he said, “No.”