The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  Nickels tried to hold his gaze and then looked away; Carlson kicked a chunk of gravel the size of a golf ball.

  “We could go get some bottled water,” Carlson said.

  Somers nodded, and the women left.

  As Norman and Gross sent the younger patrol officers running out with stakes to mark the grid, Somers walked the gravel lot, studying Sexten Industrial Park. By day, with the remains of Susan’s gruesome murder removed, the place looked exactly like what it was: abandoned factories and warehouses, the older structures brick, the newer ones—newer being a relative term—out of corrugated metal. Pretty much every other small town in America had a Sexten, a reminder of the manufacturing industries that had built a middle class, industries that had been outsourced to China and India and God knew where else. A sad tale, but not a unique one, and Wahredua was luckier than most places because it still had the Tegula plant, still had the college, still had agricultural jobs, all three keeping the town’s heart pumping.

  He was finishing his survey when he remembered his conversation with Dulac. He moved toward the spot where the Keeper had staged Susan’s body, and he called up the satellite maps he had looked at, trying to imagine his position from above, superimposing memory onto the landscape in front of him. She had been posed as though running, head turned so that she was looking back, the same way Phil had been. But which way had she been facing? Which way had the Keeper made it look like she was running?

  Norman and Gross were standing in a clearing they had stamped into the waist-high weeds.

  “Do you have pictures from the other night?” Somers said, tipping his head toward where Susan’s body had been.

  Unslinging the camera from around his neck, Gross passed it to Somers. Somers activated the digital display on the back of the camera and clicked through the stills. Looking at the images wasn’t any easier today; the damage to Susan’s face had been horrendous, and taken at night, even with the dramatic lighting that the Keeper had installed, the errant bees became specks of light and shadow that, on another occasion, Somers might have dismissed as the grainy byproduct of a cheap camera.

  When he found an image with the right angle, Somers held it up, rotated, and tapped Gross. “Is that right?”

  After studying the photograph for a moment, Gross said, “More or less. You’re standing a lot farther away, though.”

  “But that’s the building?”

  “Sexten Motors,” Gross said.

  Norman bellowed, “Russell, get the lead out of your fucking ass, you lazy piece of shit!”

  “These guys shouldn’t have made it past the paper application,” Gross said, accepting the camera back from Somers. “You’ve talked to Riggle more than most of us. Is he some kind of retard?”

  “Can’t say retard anymore,” Somers said. “The chief is the chief; you know how the job is.”

  “Yeah,” Norman said, “we know.”

  “Cluster fuck,” Gross said, “we know.”

  Somers thought of his father, the tenuous position as a new mayor, and Riggle’s veiled threats. “Give him a chance. He didn’t exactly come in at an easy time.”

  “He hired these ass clowns in a day, Somers,” Norman said. Then, screaming, “Yarmark, if you stop to scratch your balls one more time, I will take them off with nail clippers. Get the fuck to work.” To Somers, “In a day. All of them. Like he had them coming off the conveyor.”

  “More like he swept them up out of the loony bin,” Gross said.

  “Hey,” Somers said. “Let’s give him a chance.”

  “You ought to say something to your dad,” Gross said.

  “Here we go,” Norman said.

  “You ought to tell him how fucking bad it’s getting.”

  “My father picked Riggle for a reason,” Somers said. “For now, I’ve got to trust that.”

  Norman looked at Gross. Gross looked at Norman.

  “Huh,” Norman said.

  Gross spat into the weeds.

  “Come on,” Somers said.

  “You should have said something,” Norman said. “If you were in Riggle’s pocket this whole time, you should have said something.”

  “You’re making us look like assholes,” Gross said. “You should have said you were playing pocket pool for Riggle.”

  “That’s not how it is,” Somers said. “I’m just saying we should give him a chance.”

  Gross took a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his pocket, unwrapped a piece of gum, and worked it into his mouth in two bites.

  Holding back a sigh, Somers said, “Can you push the grid all the way up to Sexten Motors? The killer might have wanted to make it look like she was running towards the building. He has a whole fantasy behind this that he’s acting out, and that might be part of it.”

  “Anything you say, Detective Somerset,” Norman said.

  “Jesus, Ronnie, I didn’t say that to piss you off.”

  “Loud and clear, boss,” Gross said. “Extend the search all the way to the Sexten Motors building. Inside too?”

  “You want to make the assignments for the grid, Detective Somerset?” Norman said.

  Behind them, a tractor trailer pulled out of the Tegula plant, the muted roar of its engine rising as it accelerated. The window was down. The driver, who had to be fifty, and those fifty years had been hard, was listening to Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.”

  “No,” Somers said. “You guys can do it. Just tell me where you want me.”

  “You better stay over here,” Gross said. “Make sure we don’t screw anything up.”

  “Might want a hat,” Norman said. “Sun’s intense today.”

  “Especially when you’ve had your head up somebody’s ass lately,” Gross said.

  “I’ll take back left,” Somers said. “That all right?”

  “Better check with Riggle,” Norman said.

  “Better call your dad,” Gross said.

  Shaking his head, Somers got gloves from the car and headed out into the overgrown weeds.

  They searched all afternoon. The thing about a grid search was that it was thorough, effective, and grinding work. Excruciating. The initial search of the crime scene itself and the perimeter had been conducted by specialized techs and overseen by Special Agent Park and the FBI. That was where the most significant finds almost always were. And while Somers knew that extending the crime scene and processing it like this could turn up important evidence—ten years before, they’d brought a man to justice because after strangling a girl in a forested stretch of a state park, he’d stopped by the side of the road to pee and polish off a bottle of peach schnapps—he also knew that, most of the time, it was shit work and it yielded absolutely nothing.

  It was also Missouri in July, the sun hammering his back, the humidity thick enough that he felt like he was swimming. The t-shirt was soaked within the first half hour; burrs and seeds from the weeds caught on his sneakers and jeans, and some of the nastier plants sliced his arms or, in the case of a patch of nettles that he overlooked, left his forearm itching and burning from wrist to elbow. He drank water as much as he could, but he didn’t need to pee once. It reminded him of two-a-days in high school, football practice in the morning and then again in the late afternoon. Chris Kearney, Somers remembered, who had played linebacker and had a habit of dropping the weights after a set and loosing a victory scream, had passed out on two separate occasions during those practices. When Somers stopped, wiped his face, and chugged water, when he looked at the heat warping the air above the brick hulk of Sexten Motors, he thought about Chris keeling over in the middle of hundies.

  Shift change was coming up when Somers stopped in the middle of the section of grid he was working. It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing.

  “Yarmark, are you sitting down?”

  “Lay off. It’s almost time to go home, and this has been a total fucking waste of day.”

  “Stand up,” Somers said, p
ushing toward the edge of his section, marked by a stake with a neon tassel. “Right now, Yarmark, get on your feet.”

  Yarmark got up. Like Russell, he was skinny, a cluster of blackheads on either side of the bridge of his nose. His spikey hairstyle, which he probably thought made him look tough, had melted in the heat, and now the dark strands drooped over his forehead. He kept scrubbing his hands on his uniform.

  “You’ve got a job to do.”

  “Come on. I’m done for the day, man. I’m wiped out.”

  “Finish your section,” Somers said, turning to retrace his steps.

  “This is such bullshit.”

  Somers stopped. He looked back. “I don’t think I heard what I thought I just heard.”

  Yarmark flushed, but he said, “Nobody came back here. Nobody’s been back here in forever. Look at the weeds, man. You and I are the only ones who’ve been walking around back here. This place is totally abandoned, and this is a waste of time. It’s stupid. We should be out there doing this the right way, for fuck’s sake.”

  “What’s the right way?” Somers said.

  “Not wasting our time picking up cans like we’re a fucking chain gang doing road clean up.”

  “You’re new,” Somers said, “so I’m going to forget what I saw today in the jail and do you a favor. This is the job. Whether you’re in uniform or not, whether you’re on traffic or a detective or a lieutenant or chief. You do unpleasant work, you do it for no money, and you do it even when you don’t want to. You do it because nobody else will and because it needs to be done. That’s the whole job, Yarmark. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either lying or bad police. If that’s not what you signed up for, I get it. No hard feelings. But clock out, turn in your badge, and don’t come back tomorrow. You’ll be happier in the long run.”

  Yarmark tried to hold his gaze and failed; as his gaze slid to the ground, he muttered, “Fucking bullshit, picking up shit that doesn’t matter, fucking shit work.”

  “How do you know it doesn’t matter?” Somers snapped. “You’re some kind of genius? How do you know that the killer didn’t lose something, drop something, forget something? How do you know an animal didn’t pick something up and carry it over here? Or the wind? Shut your mouth and do your job. I don’t want to hear another word. When you finish your section, you come tell me. I’ll let you know when you’re off duty.”

  Yarmark’s face was an ugly red, and his eyes came up long enough to stab daggers at Somers. Somers stood there, the breeze tickling the back of his neck, a seed-heavy stalk of grass bending to brush the inside of his palm. Every breath was heavy with the smell of broken vegetation and sunscreen.

  Stomping a line through the grass, Yarmark started the next section. After another moment of waiting, just to be sure, Somers went back to work as well. He was starting to think he should find a new job. Maybe teaching. Teaching wouldn’t be so bad. He liked kids, and he could do some coaching. If he were a teacher, high school, he definitely wouldn’t have to deal with arrogant, know-it-all, asshole pricks like Yarmark. Maybe, after this case, he’d talk to Hazard. Maybe he’d just say it flat out: I think I need a change; I think I’d be really good at teaching.

  Somers was bagging and tagging his one millionth can of Natty Light when Yarmark shouted, “Hey.”

  Not bothering to raise his head, Somers glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Yarmark. Looks like you’re earning overtime today.”

  “No, uh. Hey! I mean, Detective, uh, Somerset.”

  “I don’t care if you need to pee. I don’t care if you forgot your grandma’s birthday. I don’t—”

  “Detective Somerset, you’ve got to take a look at this.”

  Somers stifled a noise of irritation, stood, and made his way toward Yarmark. The young officer was standing at a boarded-up door that led into the Sexten Motors building, and he was examining the door. As Somers approached, he took a glance at the section of grid Yarmark had been working. The lines marking Yarmark’s movement through the thick growth were clear and orderly, and it looked like he’d done a decent job of working methodically through the section, in spite of all his complaining.

  “What?” Somers said as he got closer.

  Yarmark held up something in one hand, and Somers walked a little faster until he could make out the object: a nail. When Somers reached Yarmark, he took the nail and turned it over in his hand. It had obviously never been used; the metal was straight, the head perfectly even. There was no sign of corrosion. It looked brand new. It looked like the nails Somers had bought for the loose board in the back fence.

  Now that Somers was closer, he could see what had puzzled Yarmark about the door. Weathered boards crisscrossed the door, but although the boards were clearly old, the nail heads were still shiny. Somers touched the edge of a board. It didn’t extend across the jam, and the edge, where he touched it, was raw and freshly cut. That didn’t make any sense. If the board was as old as it looked, nobody would have sawed the edge recently. And the nails shouldn’t have looked new. But what really troubled Somers was that the boards were only across the door proper, because if the boards were only nailed into the door itself and not into the jambs or the frame—

  Yarmark gave an experimental push, and the door wobbled open.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JULY 3

  WEDNESDAY

  12:56 PM

  AFTER DROPPING THE MUSTANG in the hospital’s parking garage, Hazard considered getting an Uber back to the house. In the end, he decided not to. Although the day was hot and humid, he wanted to walk. Walking cleared his head, and it gave him time to think. So he walked.

  Hazard started for the center of town and the little Arts-and-Crafts neighborhood where he and Somers had bought a house. He kept to the sidewalks where possible, although once he left the hospital grounds, the sidewalks were few and far between; this was an older section of town, and even on the residential streets, apparently sidewalks had been optional, or at the owner’s discretion. A little brown bungalow would have thirty feet of sidewalk, and then Hazard would hit grass again. Or a telephone pole would be planted right in the path. Or the resident asshole would park his Thunderbird half up on the curb, which, although Hazard didn’t know much about cars, looked like it would be hell on the suspension. So he’d duck back onto the street, cutting around the Thunderbird or the recycling bin or the telephone pole. Or, on one memorable occasion, the CPR dummy with a leopard-print thong and a sign hanging around its neck that said USE ME AND ABUSE ME.

  As he walked, he let his mind go blank in the front; weaving around the obstacles in his path was just taxing enough to keep that part of his brain from running rampant. The back of his brain, where logic flowed in cold channels, ramped up. He was fully committed to finding the Keeper, but without access to the crime scene or the forensic information, his options were extremely limited. Even the search for Mitchell had hit a dead end. So, Hazard went back to the facts. What were the facts? Someone had killed Susan Morrison. Someone had taken Mitchell, perhaps killed him as well. And now someone might have taken Nico, if Marcus was right. Darnell, from what Hazard had learned recently, had a seemingly solid alibi. It would have been very difficult to fabricate that kind of backstory for his employment, and so Hazard was willing, provisionally, to accept that Darnell had been traveling back from Albany during the exact time that Susan had been killed and Mitchell abducted.

  But.

  A cool spike interrupted the flow of thoughts.

  But Darnell had said that Nico was supposed to pick up the second moving truck and meet Dulac at his apartment. And Dulac was AWOL. And Nico was missing, according to Marcus. And Dulac had been on the list of suspects that Hazard had made.

  Hazard made himself bring that train of thought to a halt. He was willing to admit that he didn’t like Dulac; he could understand that his feelings, to some extent, might prejudice him. But if the killer really had infiltrated Hazard’s life, then Dulac made a compelli
ng suspect. He was clearly fixated on Somers; he seemed emotionally unstable; and he had an obvious need for stimulation and escalating levels of excitement. Those were all classic traits of psychopaths.

  On the other hand, Hazard thought as he skirted a plastic tub full of brown glass bottles, on the other hand, Dulac was Somers’s partner. And Somers had an uncanny ability to read people. If Somers had ever had the slightest whiff of suspicion, Hazard believed he would have said something. And so far, Somers hadn’t said anything.

  For the moment, Hazard put a pin in the thought, not ready to dismiss it, but not ready to move any further without talking to Somers.

  The next rational step, in Hazard’s mind, was finding Nico.

  An elementary school ahead provided a long stretch of sidewalk, and as Hazard moved up onto the cement, he took out his phone and made his first call. The call went to Nico’s voicemail, and Hazard said, “Call me back right fucking now.” He didn’t wait for the return call, though; he placed a second call, and when it went to voicemail, he said, “This is Emery Hazard. Call me back in the next five minutes.”

  He started the stopwatch on his phone and kept walking. School was out for the summer, but a handful of kids were out on the playground. One girl was hanging upside down from the monkey bars, swinging back and forth by her boney knees and then slowly coming to a halt. The other kids screamed with excitement; Hazard thought they’d really get a kick out of knowing some of the math behind parabolas and air resistance.

  When his phone rang, the stopwatch said 4:47.

  “Cutting it close, Marcus,” Hazard said.

  “What do you want? Did you find Nico?”

  Marcus was—had been?—Nico’s boyfriend. Hazard wasn’t entirely clear on the timeline or status of their relationship, partially because it was complicated, mostly because he couldn’t bother to give a single fuck. What Hazard needed to know about their relationship, he already knew: Nico had never liked Marcus as much as Marcus liked him; Marcus had been insanely jealous of Nico’s other relationships; and Marcus had called Hazard to report Nico missing.