Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  When he reached Josh’s house, he headed straight back, keeping his pace regular and his head up. Passing the garage, he glanced through one of the small windows set into the rolling door. No cars. Unlike Melissa’s house, with its fancy second entrance, the rear of the Dobbs house was pretty much what Hazard had expected: a deck, a stainless-steel barbeque grill, a cluster of outdoor seating, a chimenea. He walked the length of the deck, peering in through the wall of windows. The lights were off, and from everything Hazard could tell, nobody was home. Just to be sure, he took the stairs down from the deck and looked in through the sliding doors that led into the basement. Still nothing, although an urn full of cigarette butts and a webbed lawn chair told Hazard this was someone’s escape hatch. No fresh smell of smoke, though; the air had that mixture of wet wood and mud that he associated with lakes.

  Instead of going back up to the deck, Hazard decided to take advantage of his relatively hidden position. He checked the slider, decided it was standard, as far as security went, and got out one of the thin, flexible strips of metal he’d taken to carrying when he was on the job—variants of the slim jim. He worked it between the frame and the door, and then he inched it up, forcing the latch to rise and turn, until it gave and slid back into the door with a thunk. He rolled the sliding door open and stepped into the Dobbs’s basement.

  He moved quickly through the house. For one thing, he wasn’t sure how much time he had. For another, the residence reminded him too much of Somers’s childhood home: the dark wood, the wet bar, the easy sense of money and privilege. There was just so much wasted space, and for a boy who’d grown up in a two-bedroom home, sharing a bathroom with his parents, that seemed like the ultimate in self-indulgence. The basement was clearly some sort of den / man cave, and Hazard didn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle—nothing that had persisted, in any case—and so he moved to the main floor.

  Foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen. Breakfast nook, Hazard thought, taking in the space with a sneer. The master bedroom was on the main floor too. The laundry room. What struck him most as he padded through the house was the feeling that no one lived here. The master bedroom, which he passed through uneasily, could have been the set for a minor soap opera. Even the pictures—he recognized Josh growing up, accompanied in various settings by an icily pretty blonde and a man who went from athletic to stout to morbidly overweight as the pictures advanced chronologically—seemed impersonal somehow. Like they’d been bought off one of those stock photo sites.

  Hazard moved upstairs, and it was like the next layer in an archaeological dig, finally hitting pay dirt. Dirty socks on the carpeted steps; a Blues hat; a paper plate that had been folded over a cold stack of microwavable pizza rolls. Hazard could smell the grease as he passed it. At the top of the steps, he ran into a safety gate, the kind parents put up when they had young kids around the house. He braced himself on the wall and stepped over it.

  Then the sound of studio laughter reached him, and he froze.

  Heart pounding in his ears, Hazard reversed course, lowering himself over the gate and taking the first two steps back down. The swell and fall of voices didn’t change. TV voices. TV laughter. The garage had been empty, Hazard reminded himself. Logic told him that someone had probably just left the TV on. But that was a really stupid reason to get himself arrested for breaking and entering, trespassing, and whatever else the Dobbs might decide to throw at him.

  The soft sound of a child’s laughter came next. He still hadn’t seen the little girl at the center of the dispute, but he knew it had to be her. And if Dolly was home, then Josh—it had to be Josh, to judge by the pizza rolls—was home too. Hazard eased himself down the steps as carefully as he could. He headed down through the basement, pulling the slider shut behind him, and then he wiped the exterior surfaces he had touched in the process of opening it. Whoever came out here to smoke would probably wonder at finding the sliding door unlocked, but they’d most likely dismiss it as an oversight.

  Rather than risk going back up to the deck, where whoever was home with Dolly might spot Hazard, he went down the slope, cutting through the scraggly line of cottonwood and oak as he headed for the other piece of Dobbs property: the boathouse. He couldn’t imagine why Donna May and Josh would have come down here, but thoroughness was part of his nature, and that genetic predisposition had been reinforced by all his years on the force. Plus, a voice that sounded a little too much like Somers for Hazard’s comfort said, you’re a snoop.

  In this part of the country, avid fishermen and water sports enthusiasts might have their craft out as soon as the ice was gone, but from what Hazard had observed, rich people with boathouses rarely fit either of those two categories. He knew, from growing up in this part of the world, that rich people started boating around Memorial Day. They made a whole thing of it: banners, fireworks, and, of course, one of Wahredua’s busiest drunk-driving weekends all year. And they were still almost two months away from Memorial Day. Which led Hazard to believe that the boathouse probably hadn’t seen any attention since the beginning of winter.

  The structure had two doors: one intended for people, and one intended for boats. The first one was locked, just a push-button lock on the doorknob. The second had a padlock through a reinforced hasp. Hazard went back to the first door. He didn’t need any of his special tools; a flathead screwdriver, a little one Hazard had taken out of an eyeglass repair kit and stored with the slim jims and other useful things, did the trick with this door. He stepped into the boathouse.

  Most of the space was taken up by the boat, which was no surprise, and on his second step Hazard ran face-first into spiderwebs. He grimaced and wiped them away. The bright spring sunlight shone through gaps between the boards, and the stuttering effect of light was what Hazard remembered from the Haverford, running past windows, a target for Mikey Grames. Then he smelled it: decomp. The animal part of him went into overdrive; millions of years of genetic coding, warned that this smell meant danger, sickness, predators, death. As it had happened more and more over the last eight months, part of Hazard went back to the Haverford, that ancient brick building where a madman had hunted him. His hands shook, and he had to clamp down on that part of himself, hold himself together by sheer force of will.

  He took another breath of the foul air, and it prickled in his nose and turned his stomach. The rational part of his brain laid out possibilities: a dead squirrel or groundhog, a feral cat, a possum, a rat. He moved slowly down the length of the shed; a tarp covered the boat—a small speedboat designed for waterskiing and, more importantly, showing off your money. Nylon ropes tied down the tarp. Expert knots. Except, near the back of the boat, the tarp was askew, leaving most of the outboard motor exposed, and the knots were different. Granny knots. And the smell was much, much worse.

  The rational part of Hazard’s brain was trying to track weather patterns. When was the last cold snap? When had spring really started? When would decomp have set in, with the mild, wet weather accelerating a process that winter cold might have delayed?

  His hands were shaking so badly that he had to stand there a moment, pressing them against his thighs, no longer able to conjure dates or timelines or frost points when a dead body might have frozen. For a moment, he was frozen himself. And then he cracked his jaw, and out loud, he talked himself through Earth’s revolution around the sun, its axial tilt, its rotation, degrees of latitude, the principles and mechanics of spring.

  When he wasn’t in the Haverford anymore, outlined by summer sunlight, a madman taking potshots at him, he reached out and moved the tarp.

  A body, rotting on the deck of the boat, stared back at him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARCH 28

  THURSDAY

  11:31 AM

  WHEN THE CALL CAME, Somers knew. He didn’t really believe in psychics. He didn’t believe in auras or any of that. But his phone buzzed, and he saw Hazard’s name, and he knew something terrible had happened.

/>   “Are you ok?” he answered.

  “I found her body,” Hazard said. And then Hazard sketched the details, and Somers disconnected. He told Cravens, who blanched and started making phone calls, and then Somers grabbed Dulac and they headed out to Moulton Estates to preserve the scene as best they could.

  When they got to the house, Hazard was on the front lawn in a screaming match with Josh Dobbs. For a moment, from a distance, surrounded by the picket signs with various batshit political sayings, it looked like the two men were fighting in a cemetery.

  “So they’re really going at it, huh,” Dulac said as they pulled up to the curb.

  As far as Somers was concerned, that was an understatement. Hazard looked . . . unhinged. He wasn’t even comprehensible as he shouted at Josh, shoving the blond man back to punctuate his phrases. Josh, for his part, looked more on the side of terrified than angry, but he was shouting back, getting in Hazard’s face.

  “Enough,” Somers said, grabbing Hazard.

  Hazard shook him off, jabbing a finger in Josh’s face, roaring something.

  “Enough,” Somers said again, grabbing again.

  This time, Hazard actually knocked Somers back a step, and Somers stumbled over a picket that said FUCK THE WHALES, I WANT MY LAMP OIL, and the whole thing was so fucking unreal that Somers just sat there, ass on the wet grass, staring at the sign for a moment.

  Then he got up and locked Hazard’s arm behind his back, using the big man’s size against him, forcing him over to the unmarked car and slamming him chest-down on the trunk. Hazard was still swearing and fighting, struggling like he might get free.

  “For the love of God, Ree,” Somers said, bearing down on him so that the car rocked under their combined weight. “What the hell is going on with you?”

  The transformation was so sudden and complete that it actually frightened Somers. Hazard shuddered, once, and went silent. He didn’t relax—the tendons and muscles in the arm Somers held were still hard as steel—but he was still. Then, in a cold voice, he said, “Let me up.”

  “No fucking way,” Dulac said.

  “Go take care of Josh,” Somers said.

  “Dude, he’s out of his fucking mind. Don’t you dare let him go.”

  “Just go check on Josh.” Somers waited until Dulac was gone before saying, “I ought to put you in the back of this car.”

  Hazard didn’t say anything, but he leaned slightly, as though testing Somers’s hold.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re going to break your own arm if you keep doing that.”

  Hazard grunted and tried again. His breathing was ragged with pain, and in a flash, Somers realized that Hazard didn’t care. He was so far gone in whatever had seized him that he would break his own arm trying to get loose, the way a coyote might chew off its own leg to get free of a trap. The shock of the realization, more than anything else, made Somers let go.

  Straightening, Hazard ran a hand through his hair, shoulders heaving. Without looking at Somers, he took a step away from the patrol car.

  “Oh no,” Somers said. “Stop right there.”

  Hazard stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Somers said, moving so he could look up into Hazard’s eyes. Hazard shifted his gaze to a point somewhere over Somers’s shoulder. “Hey, dummy. Talk to me.”

  In the background, Somers could hear Dulac sympathizing with Josh; their voices were growing distant as Dulac maneuvered Josh away from the confrontation.

  Somers took Hazard’s arm, probing his wrist, fingers moving up to the elbow. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you shaking?”

  “I’m angry.”

  “Yeah? Really? Temper kind of slipped? Gee, I hadn’t noticed. You don’t shake when you’re angry, Ree. Not normally, anyway. What’s going on?”

  “He left her alone.”

  Somers had to take a moment to process the thought; a breeze riffled his hair, smelling of cool lake water, and he tried, for what felt like the hundredth time, to understand what went on inside the head of the man he loved.

  “She didn’t care, Ree. She was already dead. I know—”

  “Not Donna May.” Hazard’s eyes snapped back to Somers’s. “His daughter. He left her alone. With the fucking TV tuned to some fucking kiddo shit. And then he went out for condoms, a bottle of Jack, and some kind of single-use vibrating cock ring.” The fire went out, and Hazard slumped against the car, gesturing at the driveway. A Mercedes convertible, a model Somers didn’t recognize, was pulled up toward the garage. Presumably, Josh had stopped the car when he’d seen Hazard. On the asphalt, a convenience store bag had split, spilling the items Hazard had listed.

  “You didn’t mention the raspberry zingers.”

  Hazard drew a shaky hand down his face; his color was bad—really, really bad.

  “You know what I think?” Somers said.

  Hazard’s hand had stalled over his eyes; his grip there was tight and pinching.

  “I think,” Somers said, “if I had to make a guess, I think maybe you were already really upset. I think maybe you were having an episode of post—”

  “Don’t,” Hazard whispered.

  Somers swallowed. “And I think when you saw Josh come home, when you realized he’d left Dolly inside alone, I think that was the perfect way to handle what you were experiencing.”

  Above them, hidden somewhere along the eaves of the house, a mourning dove called.

  “Ree, if this—”

  “I’ve got it under control, John.” He dragged his hand down, exposing the dark hollows under his eyes, the ghastly pallor. He looked like he was exhausted or on the verge of going into shock—or both. The side effects of your body using up all its resources, again and again, without any way to turn it off.

  “It’s getting worse. Can we please—”

  “I’m fine.” As though to prove it, Hazard pushed off from the patrol car and squared his shoulders. “I’m managing it.”

  “Yeah,” Somers said. “I can see how well you’re managing it.”

  Hazard angled his body away from Somers, as though setting himself to take another blow, but he only said, “Come on, I want to show you—”

  “Just stay here. I need a minute.”

  Somers headed down to the boathouse, where the door was clapping in the breeze off the lake. He caught the door, wedged it open with a broken slat, and moved into the dark space. Sunlight filtered through gaps in the boards, strobing Somers; the smell of decay made him gag, and he covered his mouth and nose with his arm, breathing through his sleeve. It wasn’t hard to guess what had set Hazard off—the small space, the loud bang of the door, the feeling of being outlined or spotlighted, lit up like a target. Part of Somers knew this, had catalogued the triggers. Part of him was so fucking angry he wanted to go back up there and drag the whole thing out, right now, screaming and kicking. Fuck, he’d resort to biting if made anything better.

  The smell of decomposition was strongest at the stern of the boat, where the tarp had been loosened and pushed back. Somers took a glance; he didn’t have photographic ID for Donna May Plenge, but the woman in the boat was definitely dead. She wore a white top and jeans, and she’d obviously been there for some time. From outside the boathouse came the sound of sirens, and Somers went to the door to wait.

  Norman and Gross were uniformed officers who’d been partners for as long as Somers had been on the force. They even looked like they came as a package: the same pot bellies, the same balding pates, the same uniforms dusted with pastry flakes. They were also the closest thing that the Wahredua PD had to a forensic unit; they’d secure the boathouse and begin processing it, and they’d do a damn good job of it.

  “What’s your ex doing here?” Norman said.

  “He looks pissed,” Gross said. “What’d you do?”

  “Fuck off,” Somers said. “We didn’t split up.”

&
nbsp; “Come on,” Norman said with a glance at Gross. “I saw your car at the Hare and Tortoise. Unless—you getting a little on the side?”

  “I used to go to this little motel out in St. Elizabeth,” Gross said. “You could pay by the hour.”

  “You’re both disgusting.”

  “Hey, you’re the one shitting the bed,” Norman said with a shrug. “Me? I’d hold on to Hazard. Looks strong. Looks like a good kisser. Besides, I could use somebody to help me move the sofa to vacuum.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gross said. “I bet he’s like a great big teddy bear. My kind of guy. Me, I’d hold on to him too.”

  “Yeah? The two of you have eight divorces between you. What the hell do you know about—Jesus Christ, why am I even having this conversation? You’re not even gay.”

  “I know a catch when I see one,” Norman said.

  “My third wife kind of looked like Hazard,” Gross said. “Best thing that ever happened to me. But you know what? I shat the bed.”

  Norman nodded. “He really did. Just like you’re shitting it right now.”

  “I’m not—will you do your job, please? And just for the record, everything’s fine. We’re just taking some time apart.”

  “Aww,” Norman said, reaching out like he wanted to give Somers an avuncular set of noogies. When Somers pulled back, Norman grinned at Gross. “Spoken like a total virgin, right?”

  “Yup. Classic divorce-virgin talk. We’re just taking some time apart. We’re just trying to learn who we are as individuals. She’s just visiting her mother.”

  Both men burst out laughing.

  “Assholes,” Somers said. “I already am divorced.”

  “Yeah,” Norman said, “but your gay ass has never been gay divorced.”

  “We’re not even married yet.”

  “You call us when he kicks you to the curb for real. First drink’s always on your buddies.”

  With that parting offer, Norman stepped inside the boathouse, but Gross lingered.