The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  “I want to see his apartment,” Hazard said.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Then good luck finding him yourself.”

  “No, no, no. Wait. Why do you need to be inside his apartment? That’s weird. Can’t you just make sure he’s ok?”

  “Why did you call me Marcus?”

  “You told me to call you back.”

  Hazard held in a sigh. “Why did you call me the first time?”

  “Because Nico didn’t pick me up. I was supposed to go with him to help Gray move.”

  “So what? Nico misses a lot of appointments. He gets busy shaving his legs.”

  “God, you are such an asshole.”

  Hazard wiped sweat from his forehead, trying to make out the sign on the next cross street through the sun’s glare.

  “Now I know why he broke up with you.”

  Squinting, Hazard made a bet with himself. Wyatt. It was Wyatt Street. But when he got close enough to read the sign, it was Parcell. Hazard hadn’t walked this part of town in a long time, and the blocks were farther apart than he remembered. In the next yard, the splash of the hose accompanied children’s excited screams. That sounded pretty good to him too: stick his head under the hose for about ten minutes.

  “I mean,” Marcus was still saying, “I always knew you were an asshole, but—”

  “Why did you call me when you were worried he was missing?”

  “Because the police won’t do anything. They said they’re sorry, they’re very busy with a high-profile investigation right now, and they can’t do anything until he’s been gone for at least two days. It was bullshit; they just don’t want to help because he’s gay.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “There are a lot of other people you could have called. And we already established that Nico isn’t always the most reliable.”

  “I don’t know. I hear what people are saying. That woman, the one who got killed. I heard that it’s the same person who killed those gay guys in the fall. And now Nico’s gone, and . . . and he’s friends with you, that’s what he says, just friends, but I thought maybe you’d, I don’t know.”

  “Come pick me up,” Hazard said. “I’m turning on Parcell now; just head out Market and cut up. Then we’re going to Nico’s, and you’re going to use your spare key to let me in.”

  “Why do I need to pick you up? Why don’t you—”

  “A/C on cold, Marcus,” Hazard said. “Absolute zero.” Then he disconnected.

  He made it four blocks before Marcus picked him up in a lime-green PT Cruiser. Marcus’s dark hair was longer now, and Hazard wondered if he was trying to imitate Nico’s shaggy mop.

  “I said absolute zero,” Hazard said, reaching to depress the temperature control. “Christ, you’re as bad as Nico.”

  “This is why I don’t understand,” Marcus said, turning at the next intersection and heading toward Wroxall College and the newer part of town. “This is why I have absolutely no idea why Nico wants to spend any time with you at all.”

  “You can drop me off, then,” Hazard said.

  Marcus made a little sound of disgust and kept driving. “You’re absolutely horrible to everyone. You think you’re so much better. You talk down to people. You pretend you’re so smart.”

  “Anywhere is fine. Right here works.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Marcus screeched, straightening in the seat. “Don’t you even dare touch that door. You owe this to Nico after the hell you put him through. Do you know that he’s in therapy because of you?”

  “Yeah,” Hazard said, “I saw the support group.” Thumbing the catch on the glove compartment, Hazard began sorting through Marcus’s unmentionables: a strip of four foil-wrapped condoms, prepackaged lube, a miscellany of Allen wrenches, God knew why, registration, insurance, and two ripped out pages from the owner’s manual showing how to change a flat.

  “You don’t know how to change a flat on your own?” Hazard said.

  “Do you know that when you and Nico were dating, he was going through a really hard time?”

  “And why rip the pages out? What happened to the rest of the manual?”

  “He was losing modeling jobs. He was too skinny. He was wasting away because he was so distressed about you—”

  Hazard snorted.

  “—and things were really bad with his mom. She needed money. And he liked spending his summers in New York, but he made plans to stay here because he liked you so much, and—”

  The litany of Hazard’s sins faded into white noise as Hazard considered the Allen wrenches, which had clearly come as a set, and of which two, minimum, were missing. Had Marcus taken the Allen wrenches to use somewhere else? Had he lost them? What had he needed Allen wrenches for in the first place? Had he been assembling shitty furniture in the back of the PT Cruiser?

  Nico lived in the newer, trendier side of Wahredua, where growth over the last twenty years had built a college-town community around Wroxall. Unlike the fieldstone and brick of so much of the rest of Wahredua, this part of town had glass and steel and stucco, with high-rise (for Wahredua) condos and lots of mixed-use spaces. They passed a barbershop aimed at young men who needed curly mustaches; they passed a clothing exchange; on the corner, in what Hazard assumed was a misunderstanding of the word irony, stood a restaurant called the Un-Diner. It clearly had a 50s kitsch theme: an Airstream aesthetic, lots of chrome and red vinyl upholstery. Through the glass, Hazard could see a woman dressed as Elvis working the griddle; when she bent over, her pompadour brushed the hot slab of metal, putting her in danger of bursting into flames.

  “What?” Marcus said.

  “I said, I hate people your age.”

  Nico’s building sat in the middle of all that bullshit, and Hazard followed Marcus up to Nico’s unit. At the door, Marcus sorted his keys and then hesitated.

  “Should I knock?”

  “Do you think that’ll help us find him?” Hazard asked.

  “I meant—in case, I don’t know, I made a mistake, or—”

  Hazard hammered on the door. “Nico, get your scrawny ass out of bed this fucking minute. We’re coming in.” To Marcus, he said, “Now he’s prepared.”

  Groaning, Marcus let them into the apartment.

  Hazard grabbed Marcus’s shoulder and stopped him before proceeding into the apartment alone. Aside from a fried-egg smell, the apartment didn’t seem any worse than usual. In the kitchen, the usual dirty dishes were piled in the sink, including a melted tub of Food Club Rocky Road ice cream. The dirty frying pan on the stove might have explained the egg smell; Hazard guessed Nico had eaten something before heading out for the day. He set that thought to one side, though; he didn’t want to make any assumptions about a timeline.

  Moving deeper into the apartment, Hazard spotted the usual chaos: textbooks stacked on the table next to a spread of primary-color jockstraps; a trail of socks and ripped t-shirts and athletic shorts heading into the bedroom; a cushion on the sofa pulled out and turned on its side, presumably because, as usual, Nico had lost his phone or his wallet or his keys and had, at the last moment, scrambled to find them. Hazard walked through the bedroom, checking the unmade bed, the bedside tables, the closet.

  No blood. No signs of a struggle—although it would be hard to tell; Nico could have battled for his life, and it would still just look like a troupe of college freshmen had taken up residence here for the weekend. Nothing, Hazard had to admit, that made him think something had happened to Nico here. He flipped on the bathroom light, and something lunged at him.

  He yanked the Blackhawk out of the holster and stopped himself, barely, from firing.

  The big, fat tabby arched her back, looked at him, and swished her tail once, apparently having decided Hazard was not worth further attention. She strolled past him.

  Hazard barely noticed; the aftermath was bad. He was shaking, and he had to try twice to get the Blackhawk holstered. Lean
ing against the wall, he let himself close his eyes. Just an overreaction, he told himself. When he opened his eyes, though, he could see himself in the mirror.

  Footsteps from the front of the apartment told him Marcus was coming, so Hazard scrubbed his cheeks and moved back into the bedroom.

  “You didn’t tell me he had a cat,” Hazard said.

  “Princess isn’t just a cat,” Marcus said, scooping up the tabby. “She’s royalty.”

  “Nico can’t even take care of himself. Exhibit A, this whole fucking apartment. Why the fuck does he have a cat?”

  “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

  “I almost shot the damn thing. It would have been nice to have a little warning, Marcus. For fuck’s sake, I could have killed it.”

  “God, you’re such a drama queen,” Marcus said, nuzzling into Princess, who batted at his face and obviously wished she still had her front claws. “If you even cared about Nico, like, ten percent as much as he cared about you—”

  “For the love of Christ, Marcus, I get it. I’m shit. I was a shitty boyfriend. I’m a shitty friend. I never deserved Nico. I understand. Get it all out of your fucking system and then shut the fuck up. It’s not my fault he’s not into you.”

  Marcus’s eyes screwed shut, and he buried his face in Princess’s side. For a long moment, he stayed like this, his shoulders shaking. Princess stared at Hazard over Marcus’s head; her golden eyes made it very clear what she thought about this whole situation and, more importantly, who was to blame. Then Marcus hugged Princess against him so tight that Hazard was surprised her little kitty eyes didn’t bug out, and he shuffled back into the room and sat on the sofa, one hand over his face.

  Hazard walked through the apartment again. He shut the front door. He searched the fridge, found a jug of sweetened iced tea, and poured a glass. When he carried it over to the sofa, Marcus still had his hand in his face, and his whole body was shaking.

  “Come on,” Hazard said. “Have a few sips of this.”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “Come on,” Hazard said. “I, uh. I shouldn’t have said that. I was mad about something else, and I took it out on you.”

  Marcus mumbled something into his hand.

  “What?”

  “I just don’t get it,” Marcus said in a slightly louder mumble. He delivered another eye-popping hug to Princess, who meowed a little, her back legs pedaling air as she tried to get purchase. “You’re so mean to him, and it doesn’t matter, he still—he still—he still loves you!” The last few words, delivered between choking sobs, shot up into a wail.

  Hazard sat very still for a moment, the iced tea cold in his hand, running his thumb through the condensation collecting on the glass. He tried to calculate the odds that a meteor would hit Earth in the next five seconds. Not a big one. It could just be the size of golf ball. It could just come hurtling down and hit him right in the back of the head; everybody else could be fine, no collateral damage, maybe just a broken window to reglaze.

  “Marcus, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sorry I’m an asshole to Nico. I’m sorry Nico’s an asshole to you. Life’s just . . . complicated like that. If things never work out between you and Nico, I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’s great.” Hazard didn’t really believe that, but he’d heard enough of Somers’s bullshit to parrot a line or two.

  Princess meowed violently, expressing her own opinion on the matter.

  “Here’s the thing,” Marcus said. “We were so good when we were together—”

  “I really don’t think we have time to get into this,” Hazard said.

  “But then, out of the clear blue, he said, ‘I think we’ll be better as friends.’ What does that even mean?”

  “Let’s focus on where Nico might be. Do you have any ideas?”

  “I mean, how does that make any kind of sense? ‘Better as friends.’ We already were friends. We were just adding something great on top of it, right?”

  “Marcus, focus. Could Nico have disappeared last night?”

  “And then I told Alexandra, and she said she thought maybe he just needed some space because, well, you were in his life again. This was right after he got arrested and they thought he killed that woman. So I think it was just an excuse, right? Like, he was really confused, and he didn’t know what to do, so it’ll probably be fine, right? He and I, we’re going to work it out.”

  Hazard thought of the way Nico and Mitchell had been awkwardly flirting for weeks now. “I think if someone says you’re better as friends, it probably means he doesn’t have romantic feelings for you.”

  Marcus’s eyes welled, and he squeezed Princess so tightly that she let out a long, drawn-out kitty groan.

  “Right at that particular moment, I mean,” Hazard said. Someone at the back of his head was watching this whole shitshow and shaking his head in disappointment.

  Wiping his eyes, Marcus grinned and said, “Yeah, exactly. Like, that just wasn’t the right moment. That’s exactly right.”

  Before Hazard could betray any of his other values, he said, “When was the last time you talked to Nico?”

  “This morning. Hold on, he—” Marcus went for his phone, and Princess seized the opportunity to leap out of his arms and disappear into the bedroom. “He sent me a snap. Look.”

  It was a classic Nico picture: lying on the bed, his shaggy hair carefully tousled, no shirt, arm behind his head to expose a tastefully shaved pit, which was a phrase Hazard hadn’t been familiar with prior to dating Nico. Across the lower third of the picture, Nico had scrawled GOOD MORNING.

  “I thought Snapchat deleted messages and images after you saw them,” Hazard said.

  “You’ve got Snapchat too? Oh, you should follow me. I’m—”

  “No, for fuck’s sake. I’m not a twelve-year-old girl. But I understand the basic premise.”

  “Well,” Marcus said, “in theory, yeah.”

  “But?”

  “I, um. Save some pictures. Some of Nico’s, I mean.” Marcus was studying the sofa cushions. “It’s just, like, you know. In case we ever get together I mean.”

  “I don’t care,” Hazard said, “just don’t tell me what you really do with them. But I thought Snapchat alerted people if you screenshotted their pictures.”

  “You can get around that,” Marcus said. “Like, a screen recording app. Stuff like that.”

  “And you’re sure he sent it this morning?”

  “Yeah. See? It says, ‘Good morning.’”

  “I mean, he couldn’t have faked it? Or someone else couldn’t have faked it?”

  “Like, used an old photo? No, that’s his new haircut. And anyway, you can’t do that on Snapchat. It has to be a photo you take right then; that’s the whole point.”

  Hazard stared at the supposedly new haircut, which looked the exact same, and tried to think. “So he definitely was home this morning?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Is there anywhere he could be?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I told you: he was supposed to pick me up so we could go help Gray move. He was going to drive us to the U-Haul rental, and then he was going to get the truck and I was going to drive separately to Gray’s in his car. But he never came, and I messaged him, but he didn’t respond. Then I messaged him and said it was an emergency, and he knows that’s code for emergency.”

  Hazard blinked at that piece of sophistication.

  “Finally,” Marcus said, “I tried calling him. Nothing. I tried to tell myself it was just a fluke, but . . . but that woman just got killed, and . . .” He shrugged, staring at the sofa cushions again. “And it’s Nico.”

  Hazard thought of how he’d reacted a year before when Somers had gone missing. He let out a slow breath and nodded.

  “Ok,” he said.

  “Ok? You know where he is? What do you mean?”

  Shaking his head, Hazard said, “No. But I think you’re right. I think Nico�
�s been taken.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JULY 3

  WEDNESDAY

  5:17 PM

  SOMERS STARED INTO the open doorway to the Sexten Motors plant, the doorway that had been made to look like it had been boarded up. The air that rushed out of the shadowy interior was cool and smelled like rust and brick and mold.

  “Holy shit,” Yarmark said, hand on a can of pepper gel. “That’s creepy.”

  Somers nodded. Undoing the snaps on his Glock, he drew out the weapon and said, “Go tell Norman and Gross.”

  “Yeah, but—” Yarmark’s eyes were fixed on the darkness. “Let me go with you. Please.”

  Nodding again, Somers said, “You spotted it. But tell Norman and Gross first. And grab flashlights.”

  Yarmark stumbled through the weeds, shouting for Norman and Gross. Somers barely heard him; his attention was focused on the opening in front of him. He could make out very little; the July sun was still too bright, and the darkness inside too deep. He could tell that he was looking into a large space, though; to his right, massive double doors farther down this same wall provided another access point, although one that was clearly meant for industrial use. He guessed that he might have been looking at the final stage of the production line. Somers followed the outer wall until he came to the huge doors, and then he toed the weeds until he found the iron rails embedded in the ground. Either they had loaded the finished cars onto siding here and then moved them out to the main Missouri Pacific lines, or they had accepted raw materials here, or both.

  By the time he got back to the exit door, Yarmark was there, his neck patchy with a flush.

  “They said radio in every fifteen minutes.” He juggled the pepper spray and looked longingly at the Glock in Somers’s hand. “Do you think—”

  “Not until you hear me fire a shot,” Somers said. “After what I saw today, that stays in the holster.”

  “I’m a full officer—”

  Somers rounded on him, and Yarmark swallowed and took two steps back.

  “Yeah, man,” Yarmark said. “I mean, yeah, um, Detective Somerset. You’re the boss.”