Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  “Half day, Detective Somerset.”

  “No, Chief. We’re working on that vandalism case.”

  Cravens snorted. “Somebody spraying boobies on Margaret Pollard’s back fence can wait another day. Go home. Figure this out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “Whatever the hell is making you look like you had to take your dog out behind the barn and shoot him.” Cravens seemed to consider leaving it at that, but then she took another step closer, her voice dropping, and she said, “Can I add something personal, Detective Somerset?”

  Somers shrugged.

  “It’s a small town. People talk. You and Emery—” The first name sounded strange, after over a year of hearing her say Detective Hazard and then Mr. Hazard. “—you’re in the spotlight, you understand. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone to take. Early on, when I was trying for detective, there was a lot of talk about how I should settle down, raise a few kids, and come back to work when they were grown. Then, when I went up for chief, I was too old for anybody to talk about kids. Instead, they talked about my personal relationships. They focused on weak spots. They gossiped, because everyone wanted proof that a woman couldn’t be good police without being a lesbian or a cold-hearted bitch or having an iron pussy.”

  The word, from Cravens, shocked Somers, and he sat up a little straighter. He found himself answering without really meaning to. “Things between me and Emery are complicated, Chief. I can’t—I’ve got things pulling me in two directions right now.”

  “I’m sure you do, John-Henry. And it’s not a coincidence that it’s happening right now; I’m sure of that, too. I’m sorry that someone has forced you into this bind—no, we don’t need to go into the details, but like everyone else in town, I’ve heard that your relationship is on the rocks, that you’ve moved out. I’ve even heard from a few people that you’re pursuing a relationship with Cora again. No, John-Henry. I don’t want you to comment. I want to say my piece and send you home for the day, and when you come back tomorrow, you come back as a cop, and you’re ready to work. Right?”

  Somers nodded, but her words You’re pursuing a relationship with Cora again echoed inside him. What would Hazard do when he heard that rumor?

  “I’m not the right person to tell you that you shouldn’t let anything stand in the way of a relationship,” Cravens said. “I made my choices. For the most part, I don’t regret them. Love is a wonderful thing; I believe that. But it’s not the only thing. You need to think about what’s most important to you, and you need to make your decisions based on that—not based on how people are pressuring you. Even if one of those people is your boyfriend.”

  “Fiancé,” Somers said in a quiet voice.

  Cravens nodded, as though that had settled something for her. “Put your house in order, Detective Somerset. One way or the other.”

  And then Cravens returned to her office.

  Somers moved like a man underwater. He turned off the computer. He shuffled the papers on his desk into some sort of order. He picked up the jacket on the back of his seat and shrugged into it.

  One way or the other. What did that mean? Leave Hazard? How did that put anything in order? Or tell his father to forget the deal, forget the debt, forget the promises Somers had made? If Somers lost Hazard, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d survive the loss, sure. But surviving wasn’t living. On the other hand, though, Somers wasn’t ready to burn the last bridges with his family. They were selfish and occasionally heartless; they had caused him all kinds of trouble. But he also had good memories, happy times, and the knowledge that fierce love was mixed into the demands and expectations. They were his family.

  Somers drove home. Not to the Hare and Tortoise—he had a vision of putting the Glock to his temple while the March Hare made tea. He drove home, to the house he had shared with Hazard until two nights before. When he pulled into the garage and the door rattled down behind him, he got out of the car as fast as he could, moved toward the house, ran through the keys on his ring twice because he couldn’t seem to find the house key and his hands were shaking. What if Hazard had changed the locks? What if this wasn’t Somers’s home anymore?

  But the key slid in, and Somers stumbled into the kitchen. A neutral, lemony smell hung in the air—some sort of multipurpose cleaner that Hazard often used. The sink was empty; the drying rack was empty. In the little organizer on the countertop, Hazard had sorted the mail as he always did. It had only been two days, but Somers felt like he’d been away years, and coming back like this disoriented him, as though he should have found everything changed.

  “Ree?”

  The only sound that came back was the house settling and then, from outside, the whine of a small motor. Somers moved to the kitchen window. The neighbor behind them, whose name Somers hadn’t learned, was running a rototiller through a small plot, obviously preparing a garden. The sound was so distant and small that Somers felt like he was on the moon.

  He walked through the house, looking for changes, evidence that Hazard had replaced him or displaced him. But everything looked the same. Slightly cleaner perhaps—no coasters spilling across the coffee table, no t-shirts left on the sofa, no clutter of books and magazines where Somers liked to stretch out and read. Otherwise, it was the same house Somers had left two days before.

  So why did he feel like an intruder, a stranger in his own home?

  He took the stairs up to the bedroom. Kicking off his shoes, his stretched out on the bed, burying his face in Hazard’s pillow. He was making hell out of the sheets, creasing and wrinkling everything, but he didn’t care. It had only been two days, but he’d forgotten this smell, forgotten what it felt like to wake up in a bed where he felt safe, forgotten what it felt like to wake up next to someone who wanted him there.

  He let himself lie there for a while, his whole body seizing, his face hot and stinging. And then it was too much, and he flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, looking for cracks in the paint, anything he could focus on.

  The thing was, Somers wasn’t a quitter. He wasn’t an idler. Hazard might dispute that and point out the list of chores and repairs around the house. Hazard might point out the hours of ESPN, or maybe Somers’s tendency to sleep in on the weekends, or how the laundry still accidentally got left in the washer sometimes. But when there was a problem, a real problem, one that Somers saw and understood, he didn’t just pick at his ass and wait for things to get better.

  Except now he didn’t know what to do.

  Instead of dwelling on the situation, though, Somers decided to step back from the problem. He couldn’t resolve the dilemma right now. Someone on the outside might think it was because Somers didn’t love Hazard enough, but that wasn’t the truth. It was the opposite, actually. Somers loved Hazard so much that he couldn’t picture life without him. And part of life, for John-Henry Somerset, was his family. Part of life, for him anyway, was the way family branched and spread and grew better as you added more and more people to it.

  So Somers stepped back. He tried to see it from another angle. Right now, the problem was the election. His father needed to put on a good enough show—he’s a tame faggot, ladies and gentlemen, that’s right, tame, nothing to fear, watch him jump through this hoop—to convince a portion of Naomi’s Ozark Volunteers base that he could be trusted to preserve family values, so on and so on. And a corollary problem was that someone was trying to blackmail Somers’s father into quitting the election.

  Somers took a breath. Now, that was actually very interesting. Why blackmail Glennworth Somerset? If the blackmail material was so damaging, why not simply release it? If it was evidence of an affair or some sort of sexual delinquency—Somers’s stomach flipped over at the thought—why not blast the pictures across the internet? It could be done easily, anonymously, and safely. Some people, certainly among the liberal sector of town, would suspect Naomi’s campaign. Most people wouldn’t really care. They’d be happy for some dirt
on one of Wahredua’s most prominent families. Happy as hogs at a fucking trough. And that would put an end to the Somerset campaign.

  After a few more minutes of turning the question over, though, Somers didn’t have an answer. But he did have a plan. His father had named Bob Sackeman, head of the Bright Lights movement and one of Naomi’s advisors, as the man behind the blackmail. It was time for Somers to do a little digging of his own—and he was going to start without Emery Hazard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARCH 27

  WEDNESDAY

  1:22 PM

  HAZARD JOGGED ACROSS THE STREET, heading for the trailer that corresponded to the address Courtney had given him for Daniel Minor. As Hazard walked, he reviewed the details that Courtney had given him about Daniel. He was a sheriff’s deputy, and Hazard estimated that he had started working for the Sheriff’s Department recently—most likely after Hazard left Wahredua’s police force, because Hazard hadn’t recognized the young man’s face, let alone his name. Aside from Courtney’s insistence that Daniel was super cool—and the look on her face that told Hazard her feelings for Daniel went beyond friendship—that was the extent of the information. Hazard wasn’t sure he’d find Daniel home, considering that he was arriving at the trailer in the afternoon.

  But before Hazard could step onto the trailer’s lot, a door farther along the side of the trailer opened, and a man stepped out onto the deck—a wraparound feature that the other trailers lacked. He matched the photograph Hazard had seen: dark hair buzzed short, a baggy tee, cargo shorts, and flip flops. He was shorter than Hazard had guessed, but solidly built with muscle. Perhaps most importantly, he radiated the same intense magnetism in person that Hazard had sensed in the photograph—a kind of raw sex appeal that was only magnified by his features, so strong they bordered on rough. In one arm, he held a foil-wrapped tray, while his other hand held a selection of barbeque tools.

  Daniel turned and followed the deck toward the back of the lot.

  “Mr. Minor,” Hazard called.

  At the words, Daniel glanced back and then reversed direction. “Can I help you?”

  Hazard stepped onto the lot and moved halfway up the stairs, stopping before he reached the deck so that Daniel wouldn’t get the wrong idea. He waited until Daniel was close enough and then said, “My name’s Emery Hazard. I’m a private investigator, and I’d like to talk to you about Donna May Plenge.”

  “Uh, yeah. Ok.” He juggled the barbeque tools and the pan for a moment before giving a rueful grin and a shrug. “I’d shake your hand, but, you know. Come on back.”

  They followed the deck to the back of the lot; in the corner, hidden from the street, a gas barbeque grill stood against the railing. Terracotta pots—some with flowers already pushing up from the dark soil, others with plants that had obviously wintered indoors—lined the railing and the porch. Hazard wasn’t sure what Daniel was growing, but something smelled good. He moved to the edge of the deck and glanced down; at least one of the plants—some kind of ivy, Hazard guessed—was already knitting itself around the wooden lattice that closed off the area under the deck.

  Setting the pan on a faux-wood table, Daniel peeled back the foil, exposing two full racks of ribs, heavily seasoned with a dry rub. The smell of garlic and cumin wafted off the meat, mixing with the floral perfume. Hazard’s stomach rumbled.

  Grinning, Daniel flashed Hazard a look. “Yep. And they taste as good as they smell.” He set about turning on the gas burners, adjusting the flames, tapping a gauge on the front of the hood as though the needle might be stuck. “So, you’re that Emery Hazard, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Is it true you used a nail gun to kill that guy? You were in an old warehouse or something, and you crucified him.” Daniel grinned over his shoulder as he fiddled with the grill some more. “Sorry; I had to ask. You’re kind of a legend around the shop, and people tell the most bullshit stories.”

  Hazard didn’t know how to reply, so he grunted.

  “I started after you retired,” Daniel offered. “That’s why we never met. And I’ve got the day off because I picked up another guy’s shift over the weekend; it’s not like I got fired or anything.”

  “I didn’t retire. I resigned.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Mr. Minor, I don’t want to take up a lot of your time.”

  “Daniel.” He held up fingers crusted red with the dry rub. “And I still can’t shake your hand, sorry.”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Donna May.”

  “Is she in some kind of trouble or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Frowning, Daniel displayed dirty fingers again. “Hold on. I’m going to wash up and get a beer. You want a beer?”

  The answer was no, but Hazard heard himself say, “Sure.”

  Daniel jogged around the side of the trailer, and a moment later, Hazard heard the screen door wobble shut. He walked to the corner, where he had a line of sight to Daniel’s truck parked on the cement pad in front of the trailer. He didn’t exactly expect Daniel to cut through the structure, exit through the front, and race away in a clunky old Ford. But Hazard had seen weirder things happen.

  A few minutes later, though, Daniel was back, holding out a bottle of Baba Black Lager. Hazard’s thumb slid over the little sheep on the label as he held it up for inspection.

  “Great with burgers,” Daniel said. “Or ribs.”

  Hazard took a drink, surprised by the slight smokiness of the beer, and surprised again by the fact that he liked it.

  “Pretty good.”

  “Yeah, right? So what’s the deal with Donna May? Did she change her name again? Set the Empire State Building on fire? Try to live with the bears on Kodiak Island?”

  Hazard smiled; charm wasn’t a traditional weapon in his arsenal, but he had a beer, and Daniel seemed decent, and he suddenly had the intense urge to prove that he had absolutely no need of John-Henry Somerset in his life.

  “Is that her kind of thing?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods?” Daniel said with another of those grins and then giggled, sounding surprisingly childish. Hazard wondered how old this deputy was—the same age as Josh and Donna May, he guessed. Early twenties. Barely more than a kid. “She’s always got a crazy plan. What’d she do now?”

  “She hasn’t done anything,” Hazard said. “As far as I know. But her family wants to track her down, and I’m trying to help.”

  “You mean Courtney wants to track her down.”

  Hazard raised an eyebrow and took another pull of beer.

  “I mean, that’s who hired you, right? Damn it. I told her not to do this.”

  “You talked to Courtney about this?”

  “Yeah.” Daniel set his beer on the rail and wiped his mouth. “No offense, but I thought it was a really bad idea.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Look, I’m brown, right? On my mom’s side, anyway. So I’m not, like, racist, or whatever. But that little girl is better off with Josh’s family. No matter how much Josh bitches about it.”

  Hazard set the bottle to his lips again, but this time he only pretended to drink while his brain played catch up.

  “That’s what this is about, right?” Daniel asked, leading the way back to the grill. “Dang. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Why’d you think this was about the custody battle?”

  “Because Josh’s parents have made it so intense. Yeah,” Daniel said, laughing at something he saw on Hazard’s face. “His parents. Not Josh. You should see the way they go at him. Hammer and tongs, man. That poor guy never had a chance.”

  “He didn’t want custody.”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t want it, but, I mean, he’s Josh.”

  Leaning against the rail, Hazard took another drink of beer and waited.

  Daniel laughed again as he opened the grill; smoke swirled out, carryin
g the smell of searing meat, cumin, garlic, caramelizing sugar. He played around with the long metal turner, poking at the ribs, but he didn’t really do anything and after a minute he shut the hood and tapped the gauge on the front of it again. Finally he seemed to run out of ways to procrastinate and he swirled the beer in his bottle.

  “You’re really good at this.”

  Hazard allowed himself a smile. “Drinking beer?”

  “No, the whole thing. It’s not fun being on this side of it. Look, Josh is Josh. You remember being fifteen? That’s how old Josh and I were when we became friends. Kind of a weird friendship, I know. I grew up here—my parents still have a place a couple of streets over. Josh grew up there.” Daniel pointed with the bottle of Baba Black. “Moulton Estates is close enough to walk to, even though it doesn’t look like it. The assholes over there actually put up a security fence, and some prepper asshole got out his personal stash of concertina wire and ran it along the top of the chain link. The city made them rip it down, though, after someone got cut up pretty bad. Back when we were growing up, no fence. We could just walk to each other’s house. Although, you can probably guess who went where.”

  “Josh’s parents didn’t like him coming over here.”

  “Hell no, buddy. They didn’t like me going over there either, but I guess it was the lesser of two evils. Jesus, the times Josh did come over, you should have heard my mom going on and on about how cute he was, blond hair, blue eyes. He ate it up.” He frowned and took a sip of beer. “Where was I?”

  “Fifteen years old.”

  “Yeah, ok. So, fifteen-year-olds. They’re lazy, they’re slobs, not all of them understand the right combo of showers and deodorant.”

  “Yeah,” Hazard said. “I remember. I was fifteen once too.”