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

by Gregory Ashe

  Downstairs, the smell of bacon wafted from the kitchen, underlaid by something earthier. Somers found Hazard at the stove, turning rashers in a pan and pausing only to stir a pot of oatmeal. It only took a glance for Somers to see that the armor was back; whatever vulnerability Hazard had displayed the night before, it was hidden again.

  “Honey’s on the table. Brown sugar too, if you insist on being gross.”

  “I do,” Somers said. He leaned over Hazard’s shoulder to kiss him and sensed the slight stiffness in his posture, the set of his shoulders like a wall. Somers had to fight back a sigh. Some days, it was easy. And some days—well, some days, Emery Hazard was Emery Hazard. “Cinnamon?”

  Hazard passed it back to him.

  “You didn’t sleep much,” Somers said as he ladled oatmeal.

  “I wasn’t tired.”

  Somers cleared his throat.

  “And I’ve got a lot to do.” Plating some of the bacon, Hazard added, “I’m afraid we’re going to have another fight.”

  “Why? Because you’re still going to investigate Hoffmeister’s death?”

  Hazard was suddenly paying very close attention to the bacon.

  “Sorry. I’ll pretend I didn’t already know that, and you can go through your whole spiel. And then we can fight. And then we can make up.” Somers hooked one of Hazard’s belt loops and tugged him away from the range. “Is that what this is about? Make-up sex?”

  “Get off me,” Hazard said, swatting at Somers’s hand.

  “Want me to tell you why you’re going to keep investigating?”

  “Not particularly. Get off me. I’m going to burn the bacon if you keep distracting me.”

  “I think it probably goes something like this: ‘John, he hired me to do a job, and I’m going to do it. Besides, no matter what the forensic evidence shows, based on what we know about Hoffmeister, there’s only a forty-two-point-seven percent chance that he died by suicide.’ Is that pretty close?”

  “I don’t sound like that. Like I’ve got a frog in my throat.” He wrangled Somers’s finger from the belt loop and moved back to the stove. “Damn it, John. Some of this is burned.”

  “I’ll still eat it. Answer my question: how’d I do?”

  “I don’t talk like that, either, like I’m a robot.”

  “Oh Ree.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

  “You know what? You can eat your fucking bacon burnt. I’m not making more.”

  Somers accepted the plate with a grin and carried the bacon and the oatmeal to the table. As he was squeezing honey into the bowl, he waited. This was the best part: letting the steam build until Hazard exploded.

  “And it’s not a forty-two-point-seven percent chance, John. That’s ridiculously high. Fucking ridiculously high. Ok? It’s ten percent. Fifteen, tops. And for the record, he did hire me; I do have a job to do.”

  Somers set the honey back and grabbed the brown sugar.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Somers spooned the sugar into his oats.

  “Do you know how many carbs you’re putting into your body?”

  “Five.”

  “Five? Jesus Christ, John, five? Do you even—”

  It sounded like a great, big breath of self-control. Somers didn’t look up, though; it was already hard enough to hide his smile.

  “No,” Hazard said. “Don’t look so fucking smug.”

  “Not smug.”

  “I am not predictable.”

  “You’re a vast, inscrutable enigma.”

  “I will—I will spank your ass, John.”

  “Ok, baby. Tonight.”

  “I am not a fucking party trick you can perform at will.”

  “Of course not. So are you starting with Savanna or Wesley?”

  The change in topic only threw Hazard for a second, and those scarecrow-gold eyes narrowed for an instant, fully aware of how Somers had derailed him. But that awareness, for Somers anyway, was what made it all so fun.

  “You left out Andy-Jack.”

  “I know. We need to talk about him. Can I finish my oatmeal first, or should I call Dulac now?”

  “Why Dulac?” Then, answering his own question, “You want him to pick up the files.”

  “It’s a little obvious if I’m the one who goes into the station; we’ve played fast and loose with Cravens before, and she’ll be on the lookout. She wants this handed off smoothly to the FBI, and I’m guessing she wants to give them enough rope to hang Lloyd and get the whole thing over with.”

  Hazard pulled out a chair and sat, sprinkling cinnamon—no honey, no brown sugar, nothing—over his oatmeal and taking a bite.

  Somers made a face.

  “It tastes fine if you haven’t accustomed yourself to eating sugar cubes for breakfast.”

  “Whatever you tell yourself.”

  “You could try it sometime.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not watching my weight.”

  Hazard paused, spoon halfway into the oatmeal. “I’m not watching my weight either.”

  “I know, I know. It’s not technically a diet. You’re just making healthy choices.”

  “I am making healthy choices.”

  “I know. And I know how hard it is for you. I’m so proud.”

  “It’s not hard for me.”

  “I really think it’s making a difference.”

  “I don’t need it to make a difference.”

  “Of course not; I love you just the way you are.”

  Hazard pushed the bowl of oatmeal away.

  “Ree, come on.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I was just teasing.”

  “I had some bacon while you were showering.”

  “Eat your breakfast.”

  “Later. I want to talk about Cravens.”

  “What about her?”

  Without seeming to realize it, Hazard stirred the spoon through the oatmeal again. “I thought she was going to change.”

  “She has changed,” Somers said. “She brought you on as a consultant, and no matter how angry she was yesterday, she’s not going to change her mind about that. I don’t even think she wants Lloyd to go down for the murder; I think she genuinely believes Hoffmeister killed himself. But she wants Lloyd to go down for the shooting and probably for a list of other stuff. Somebody’s got to pay for the shit show, and it might as well be Lloyd. Cravens is still Cravens. She’ll still do whatever it takes to hold on to her seat.”

  “Call Dulac.”

  “I’m only doing this because I love you,” Somers said. “For anybody else, I would have finished my oatmeal first.”

  He called, and when Gray picked up, he sounded out of breath.

  “What’s going on?” Somers said.

  “Uh. Just got back from a run.”

  “When will you be at the station? I need you to bring over everything we’ve got on Hoffmeister.”

  “I just have to run home, grab a shower—”

  The sudden silence was like a trap door dropping out from under Dulac’s voice.

  “Where are you?” Somers asked curiously.

  “I told you, still out on a run, need to—”

  “No, you said you just got back. Oh my God. You’re with Darnell.”

  The call disconnected.

  “That little fuckboy,” Somers said, staring at his phone.

  “Well?” Hazard said.

  “He’ll bring it over. It might be a little longer than I thought.”

  “Good,” Hazard said, stealing a spoonful of Somers’s oatmeal. “I’m going to finish the last fifteen minutes of Witches to Bitches: Wiccan Female Empowerment in a Post-Christian World. It’s due back at the library tomorrow.”

  “Sounds great. I saw it in the theater, so maybe I’ll—”

  “You,” Hazard said, “are going to do the dishes.”

&nb
sp; CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  DECEMBER 21

  FRIDAY

  8:22 AM

  DULAC SHOWED UP IN A trucker’s jacket, a thermal Henley, and ass-cupping jeans. The broken nose Hazard had given him looked puffy and painful, but Dulac still offered Hazard the usual grin, like he’d helped a widow across the street and then gotten every girl in a five-block radius pregnant.

  “You look like a slut,” Hazard said.

  “Oh.” Dulac scanned himself. “Thanks.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment,” Hazard said as he took the banker’s box and headed back to the kitchen.

  “Somers?” Dulac called behind him. “Please tell me you’re here.”

  “Ree, play nice,” Somers called from deeper in the house.

  Hazard decided to pretend he hadn’t heard that.

  In the kitchen, Hazard unpacked the box, which consisted mostly of reports.

  “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “Dude, do you have any idea how tightly locked down that place is? Cravens has it like a bank vault until the FBI get here and take over. There’s no way I could get any of the physical evidence, but there’s a catalogue in there, and pictures of—”

  “Fine. Be quiet.”

  “Somers,” Dulac called again.

  Somers joined them in the kitchen, glancing at each of them before saying, “I thought I told you to play nice.”

  Hazard didn’t bother replying; he was still sorting the reports and documents.

  “We’ve still only got three suspects,” Hazard said. “Savanna Twilight, or whatever her real name is; Wesley; and Andy-Jack.”

  “And they’ve all got alibis for the time of death,” Somers said. “Wesley was in that church meeting and then out at lunch. Savanna Twilight was on someone’s Facebook live feed, plowing down mailboxes in a stolen tow truck. And Andy-Jack was in court.”

  Hazard cocked his head. “That’s where Hoffmeister was supposed to be too.”

  “Bro,” Dulac said, “apparently it was a total shit fest. I talked to the bailiff and to a couple of the court officers. Judge Platter was already on a tear, ready to give everybody a new asshole if they so much as sneezed. He went after the lawyers, read Daley the riot act for not being prepared, just about slapped Andy-Jack with contempt for playing some stupid game on his phone, had the stenographer sobbing because she wasn’t as pert and perfect as he liked.”

  “And Andy-Jack was there the whole time?” Somers said.

  “The whole time.”

  “It doesn’t matter, even if he wasn’t,” Hazard said. “He couldn’t get up the stairs to Hoffmeister’s house, not in that chair. No, our killer is Wesley. We just have to prove it.”

  “Ree—”

  “I told you about the blackmail. I told you Wesley had a lot to lose, right? Well, he’s sleeping with a married man. A married man who’s part of the Bright Lights / Ozark Volunteers fuckshow. If that went public, Wesley wouldn’t just be in danger of losing his job; some of the Ozark Volunteers might decide to make an example of him. And of the guy he was sleeping with.”

  “Dude,” Dulac said. “Heavy.”

  “Not to mention their fistfight the night before Hoffmeister was killed.”

  “But he was in meetings the whole time,” Somers said. “There’s no way he could have gotten inside the house that morning with no one noticing, set up the winch and noose, and hanged Hoffmeister while he was sitting in front of the church executive board talking about the next Christmas pageant or whatever they were planning.”

  “So we go through this again,” Hazard said, indicating the reports. “All of it. And we figure out who was helping him. Maybe this married guy. But we start with the evidence and move from there.”

  They sat down and looked through the separate sets of documents. Hazard gave Somers the ME’s report, while he took the list of physical evidence gathered at Hoffmeister’s home. Dulac stared at the stack of statements from neighbors, friends, colleagues, and general wackadoos who called in with “extremely important information.”

  As Hazard read through the list of evidence, he reconstructed the crime scene in his mind, referring back to the photographs that Norman and Gross had taken. Collected at the scene: the electric winch; the bolts that secured it to the floor; the wire rope that had been used to hang Hoffmeister; Hoffmeister’s clothing—seventy-six cents in one pocket, a roll of Breathsavers and a used handkerchief in the other. Hazard stopped. He went back and looked at the clothing again. The photographs showed black trousers, a white shirt, beat-up oxfords, athletic tube socks that had yellowed with age.

  “Why is he wearing tube socks?”

  “I’m reading,” Somers said, waving the report.

  “Everything else was dirty,” Dulac said, shoving aside the stack of statements. “Or they had holes in them.”

  “Holes in the sock wouldn’t bother Hoffmeister. Even dirty might not bother him.”

  “He had a court date. He wanted to dress up; he was charged with assault and battery, and he wanted to look professional, conservative, restrained.”

  “With tube socks?”

  “Nobody would see them. Or he thought nobody would see them, and they were better than stinky socks.”

  “Were the rest of his socks dirty?” Hazard asked.

  “No clue. Want me to go check?”

  “No,” Somers said, pointing to the stack of witness statements without looking up. “No skipping out on the hard part.”

  “But Emery had this great idea—”

  “Hell no,” Hazard said. “Don’t put me in the middle of this.”

  They went back to reading. Norman and Gross, who had processed the scene after photographing it, documented nothing else of interest: no fingerprints besides Hoffmeister’s, no mysterious hairs or fibers caught on Hoffmeister’s clothing or in the wire rope; no blood; the only biological matter they had collected came from the abrasions to Hoffmeister’s neck. Someone had shoved a brief ballistics comparison between the pages of the report, analyzing the casings Hazard had retrieved from Andy-Jack’s home against those retrieved from the street outside his house. It was no surprise that the ballistics didn’t match, especially now that Hazard knew Lloyd had been behind the shooting. He looked over the evidence list again: Norman and Gross had collected the tape around Hoffmeister’s hands, his phone, the empty bottle of Maker’s Mark, the chipped tumbler, the empty prescription bottle, and broken plaster from the ceiling.

  What was missing?

  Half-closing his eyes, Hazard forced himself to walk through the crime scene in his memory. He started at the front door, where he had first seen Hoffmeister. Then he moved around to the back of the house. He spoke with Cravens. With Somers, he went inside. In the kitchen, they spotted the suicide tableau: bourbon and sleeping pills.

  “Did he have anything in his system? Alcohol? Benzodiazepines?’

  Somers glanced up from the report. “He still had some alcohol in his bloodstream, but not much. And none of those sleeping pills showed up in the bloodwork.”

  “So we’re supposed to believe he drank a bottle of Maker’s Mark, dumped his pills down the sink, and decided to do a home improvement project?”

  Shrugging, Somers turned his attention to the pages in front of him.

  Something still tickled the back of Hazard’s mind. He went through the catalogue again, this time looking at every place they’d lifted fingerprints and matched them to Hoffmeister. All the obvious places: the doors, his phone, the bottle of Maker’s Mark, the tumbler, the chair he had been standing on. Hazard ran through the list again. And again.

  “No fingerprints on the winch.”

  “Oh thank God,” Dulac said, shoving the papers away again. “I thought you weren’t going to say anything and I was going to have to—”

  “How does he bolt a winch to the floor without leaving fingerprints? Hell, for that matter, how does he turn it on?”

  �
�Awesome points, bro. Totally awesome. You’re nailing this case.”

  “Be quiet.” Hazard’s heart was beating thirty percent faster. He was going over the scene again, forcing himself to go slowly even though he wanted to race ahead. “The tape.”

  “Yeah, dude. Exactly.” Then a little furrow appeared between Dulac’s eyebrows. “Like, around his hands?”

  “They didn’t lift any prints from it. None. How is that possible? Ok, let’s go with an extreme: Hoffmeister suddenly has an urge to clean up, so he wipes down the winch and activates it without leaving a fingerprint. Fine. But once he’s got his hands taped, how does he wipe the prints off the tape? He should have left some partials, even if they were smudged and incomplete.”

  “Totally, totally. You’re like fucking Sherlock, dude. Somers, this guy is like fucking Sherlock.”

  “Will you do your job, please?” Somers said. “He didn’t solve all those cases alone.”

  “Right, man. Right. You were there too.”

  “Damn right.”

  “Like, getting him coffee and stuff.”

  Somers’s tropical eyes came up, iced over. “Please shut up.”

  Dulac mimed zipping his lips, but he was grinning.

  Hazard ignored them and tried to walk through the house again. The kitchen. The tableau of pills and booze. The—

  “The toaster.”

  “Yeah, man, absolutely, that fucking toaster.”

  “Stop letting him distract you,” Somers said, “and get back to work.”

  Dulac grumbled as he dragged the pages toward himself, but the words skipped across the top of Hazard’s mind, barely registering. Someone had removed the toaster from Hoffmeister’s kitchen. Why? The most obvious answer was that it was somehow incriminating. Hazard suppressed a sigh; searching for the toaster meant trawling every dumpster and trash can and landfill in the area—just to start.