The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  Hazard frowned as he slid the cast iron, steaks and all, into the oven. He set the timer. “Maybe something big is going down. Did you miss a call?”

  Somers checked his phone and shook his head. “I guess I’ll call dispatch and see if something’s up. Maybe Ehlers just forgot to call me.”

  “That seems possible,” Hazard said.

  He was headed to the refrigerator to grab the pasta salad when the doorbell rang. Somers stood, still talking quietly into the phone, but Hazard waved him back into the seat. Heading for the front door, Hazard tried to decide if pasta salad was just too much carbs on general principle. Maybe he needed to stop including it in their meals. He was trying to calculate the day’s macros when he swerved, more from routine than anything else, and checked the porch from the window.

  Carmichael and Moraes, Wahredua’s other pair of detectives, were standing on the porch. They were both clearly still on duty. And Carmichael had her hand under her jacket.

  Gun, Hazard’s brain said. And then all the strange things Somers had mentioned fell into place.

  He backpedaled as quietly as he could to the kitchen, took the phone from Somers, and disconnected the call. In a whisper, he said, “Grab your shoes and run.”

  “What?”

  Hazard slid the phone into his pocket, grabbed his wallet, and pressed all his cash into Somers’s hand. “Shoes. Run. I don’t know why, but Carmichael and Moraes are here to arrest you.”

  Somers shoved his feet into his shoes and fumbled with the laces, no questions, and even through the fear and confusion, Hazard had never loved him more. Another knock came at the door, harder. Hazard grabbed the jacket, shoved tie and socks into one pocket, and threw it at Somers. The blond man caught it and sprinted to the back door.

  “John, if I’m wrong, I’ll take Evie to the park tomorrow after daycare. The one with the cement vulvas. You can just walk up to us, and this will never have happened. If I’m right, we won’t be there.”

  Somers nodded and ran.

  At the front of the house, knocking rattled the door in its frame. Hazard made sure Somers’s phone was turned off, and then he shucked the case and disconnected the battery. After throwing the whole thing into the drawer of the entertainment stand, he made his way to the front door. When he opened it, Carmichael still had her hand under her jacket.

  Moraes, young and black and handsome, who was easy going and always had a smile, wasn’t smiling now. “Emery, where’s John-Henry?”

  “He’s not home.”

  “Bullshit,” Carmichael said. “That’s his car in the garage, Hazard. What the fuck took you so long answering the door?”

  “I was upstairs, with Evie. I didn’t hear you until you two jackasses just about beat the thing down.”

  “Where’s John-Henry?” Moraes said.

  “Not home. You’re too young for a hearing aid, Moraes.”

  “We already looked in the garage,” Carmichael said, shifting her weight back and forth, hand still hidden under her jacket. “We saw his car. Both cars. They’re both in there. So where is he?”

  “What the hell is going on? You come here, talk to me like I’m some deadbeat and you’re about to drag my ass into the station. No, Moraes, don’t look away. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  Another cruiser pulled up to the curb. And then another. Hazard recognized Norman and Gross in one of the vehicles; Norman met Hazard’s gaze and dropped his head, shrinking into the seat.

  “We’ve got an arrest warrant for John-Henry,” Moraes said. “If you don’t help us, Emery, you’re an accessory. We’ve also got a search warrant for the house.”

  “He went for a run,” Hazard said. “That’s all I know.”

  “Call him.”

  “He doesn’t take his phone on runs. Why is he under arrest? What are the charges?”

  More cops were arriving, and some of them, mostly younger guys that Hazard didn’t recognize, were spilling out of the cruisers, laughing, bullshitting each other, ready to tear another unlucky son of a bitch’s life apart and have a great time doing it.

  “Step out of the house,” Carmichael said.

  “Let me see the warrant,” Hazard said. “And I want my attorney to look at it too.”

  “That’s fine,” Moraes said. “And, Emery, you’ll probably want to ask Cora to pick up Evie. We need you to come in with us.”

  “Sure,” Hazard said. “Once I talk to my attorney. Once I personally make sure you don’t take a single thing not covered by the warrant, which you still haven’t fucking shown me. And once you assholes are out of my house.”

  “I ought to have you on interference—” Carmichael began.

  Moraes snapped a look at her, and Carmichael shut up. “Better make those calls,” Moraes suggested quietly, while uniformed officers approached the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JULY 4

  THURSDAY

  6:45 PM

  SOMERS RAN. The black oxfords weren’t meant for running, but he ran anyway, cutting across their backyard, vaulting the low cedar fence that separated them from the neighbors, and sprinting past a confused Cockapoo that stared at Somers and gave a single, wondering bark. He leaped the fence at the front of the house, sprinted across the suburban street, and barely missed getting hit by a Nissan Titan. Somers stumbled, offered a wave, and kept running while the horn blared behind him. He cursed himself, though, even as he put his head down and chugged on. That was the kind of shit that got people caught.

  The first decision he had to make was his initial direction. He knew Wahredua well, and he knew that he didn’t have a lot of places he could lie low—not without making someone he loved an accessory or risking being spotted. Another day, it would probably be funny; most of his life, he had enjoyed being one of the most recognizable faces in the small town. He liked knowing people and having them know him, shaking hands, laughing, exchanging a few words. Now, that was exactly what was going to get him caught and thrown in a cell.

  After cutting through two more yards, Somers changed course to a diagonal. The first thing he had to do was get out of this neighborhood and into a part of town where he’d draw less attention. A man cutting across suburban yards at dinnertime, on Fourth of July, right when people were about to start coming out for sparklers and Black Cats and Roman candles, well, that was bound to draw attention. He cut across two more lawns; in the next backyard, a man who had to be in his fifties was turning wieners on the grill. Somers was gulping air now, and he waved and tried to smile. The man waved back with the pair of tongs, still clutching a wiener.

  Another helpful citizen, Somers thought, who would remember him. When police started asking, wiener man would definitely recall seeing a guy in a suit running for his life.

  A short strip of cement cut between a line of old trees, and then Somers hit a narrow asphalt trail—a walking path that ran north-south through this section of town. The trees screened him from sight; anyone looking for him would have to come onto the trail to see him. Somers slowed his pace to a lope, then to a walk. He could already feel blisters rising on the backs of his heels.

  He stopped, braced himself with hands on knees, and gulped some more air. Then he started making adjustments. He dug the socks out of the pockets of his jacket, worked his feet loose from the shoes, and pulled on the socks. He’d been right about the blisters; in one spot, the stiff leather had actually cut into the skin, with blood running in a few lazy trickles down to his sole. Nothing to do about it now, though, so Somers tied his laces again. Then, as he walked, he unbuttoned the white shirt he’d been wearing. He added it to the jacket, which he was carrying in one hand. Then he stripped out of the white undershirt. Even this late, the day was hot, and sweat soaked Somers. The heavy, humid air still felt wonderful against bare skin. He tied the undershirt as best he could around his head. He fiddled with his belt until the trousers sagged, riding just below his butt. And then he rolled the jacket an
d dress shirt into a bundle and stuffed it under one arm.

  People tended to see what they expected to see, and every step Somers took was carrying him closer to Smithfield, the roughest section of town. Somers didn’t know what Hazard had told the police, but he knew that when people looked at a guy with a shirt tied around his head, covered in tattoos, and with his trousers sagging so low they looked like they should fall off, they were going to think he was a gangbanger—or, more likely, they were going to think he was a wannabe gangbanger. They weren’t going to think cop. They weren’t going to think John-Henry Somerset. They weren’t even going to think fugitive, not unless Somers started running again. When the whir of a bike approached behind Somers, he altered his stride into the slouching, exaggerated swagger he’d seen so many young men use. The woman who rode by, very prim with her helmet and glasses, didn’t even glance at him, although he could sense her disapproval as she rode past.

  For the first time since leaving the house, Somers took what felt like a full breath. The whir of the bicycle faded; in its place came the droning song of crickets, the high-pitched whine of gnats hovering near his ears, drawn by his sweat, and then—Somers slapped his shoulder, and spotted a black-and-bloody smear on his palm. Mosquitos, of course. Because it was central Missouri in July.

  It was going to be a long night.

  As he walked, his brain turned back the last hour, trying to figure out what had happened. Why was there a warrant out for his arrest? Park. That was the only answer. One minute, Somers had been with Hazard, having the first pleasant moments of his day, and the next, Hazard had practically shoved him out the door. Somers wasn’t even sure what had made Hazard guess that Moraes and Carmichael were there to arrest him. Sure, the fact that nobody had been answering Somers’s calls had been annoying and, frankly, strange. But it wasn’t proof positive of anything except a streak of bad luck.

  Somers turned the problem over and over in his head, trying to figure out what the charges might be, and why anyone would believe them. He tried to tell himself to let it alone. He tried to tell himself it was a mistake—Hazard might have overreacted. It might have been something with his PTSD. Tomorrow, Somers would go to the park—with the cement vulvas, he thought, trying not to roll his eyes at Hazard’s description—and he’d see Hazard and Evie there, and Hazard would apologize and explain it was all a misunderstanding.

  The only problem was the little niggle in Somers’s gut. The niggle that told him Hazard was right. The niggle that had made him run, when the right thing to do, the safe thing to do, would have been to stay and let them take him in to the jail, wait for the arraignment, post bail, and deal with this like an adult. Somers knew all those things. If anyone had come to him and asked his advice about a situation like that, he would have told them to go into the system and resolve it the right way, or risk having their life messed up forever.

  But when it had happened to him, when he’d felt that niggle telling him that something was really, truly wrong, he’d run. Somers trusted his gut, and right then, his gut told him to keep running.

  So he made his way to Smithfield, swatting mosquitos, fending off a horsefly the size of a baseball, and listening to the whistle and zing and pop of fireworks as people started celebrating.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  JULY 5

  FRIDAY

  8:03 AM

  HAZARD WAS STANDING at the sink, staring at a bowl of oatmeal he hadn’t touched, when the knock came at the door. He sighed, dumped the oatmeal in the trash, and made his way through the wreckage of his house to answer the door.

  The night before had been a total shit show, especially after Cora came and took Evie. Warrants, in theory, were limited in both the object and extent of their search. A warrant authorizing the police to look for firearms in a gardening shed, for example, would exclude much of the property. In reality, warrants could be much more flexible. The warrant on Hazard and Somers’s house, which authorized the police to search the house for drugs or drug paraphernalia or evidence of drug-related activity, had essentially meant open season for the police. Because drugs could mean something as small as a tenth of a gram in a tiny plastic baggie, they searched everywhere. They had torn the house apart—in some cases, such as the sofa cushions, literally.

  Some of the cops, like Moraes, Norman, and Gross, had tried to be respectful. For the most part, though, the younger breed of assholes in the department, uniformed officers whom Hazard didn’t know, went through the place like they were determined to fuck everything up as much as possible, just on general principle. He kept a list of their names: Russell, Lansdown, Stina, Daughaty. Hazard kept his own record, too, of everything that had been taken from the house, and after the police finally left, sometime around four in the morning, he had sat in the chaos and checked his list against theirs, item for item. There hadn’t been much for them to take, of course: a few bottles of prescription painkillers, a tobacco pipe, a vape pen Hazard hadn’t even known Somers owned, a bottle of prescription cough syrup, and, of course, Somers’s phone.

  Then, unable to sleep, he had tried to put the house to rights. At six, he had stopped, and then he had lain on the couch for an hour, staring up at the ceiling. At seven, he had showered and dressed: shirt and tie and jacket, and then fifteen agonizing minutes of trying to tame his too-long hair with a comb. A seven forty-five he had made oatmeal. Thank God someone had knocked; looking down into that oatmeal, trying to figure out how he could force himself to eat it, had been enough to make him want to kill himself.

  When he opened the door, Aniya Thompson was standing there, immaculate in a cream silk blouse and a skirt printed with a band of geometric designs. She cocked her head, looked up at him, and her beaded braids clicked together.

  “I was going to come to your office,” Hazard said. “They don’t want me at the station until nine.”

  “May I come in? You said the search was excessive, and I’d like to take some photographs.”

  Grunting, Hazard stepped back, and Thompson followed him inside.

  “I should have thought of that,” he said.

  “That’s all right; most people don’t.”

  “It’s not all right. I’m supposed to know this kind of shit.”

  Thompson already had her phone out, and she was moving through the house, snapping pictures: the broken door on a hutch, the damaged trim on a sideboard, a jagged hole in the upholstery of a seat cushion. On this last one, she made sure to angle the camera so that the zipper, which would have provided non-destructive access, was visible.

  “It’s not about knowledge,” she said, moving from room to room, still snapping pictures. “And it’s not about expertise. It’s not about smarts.” She lowered the phone and met his gaze. “It’s about these people getting in your space, getting in your head, and fucking everything up. Nobody’s brain is wired to handle that. That’s why lawyers don’t represent themselves at trial.”

  Hazard leaned against the wall and scrubbed his face. “That . . . makes sense.” When he pulled his hands away, Thompson was smiling as she bent to take a picture of a register that one of the officers had smashed. “What?” he asked.

  “Is it unprofessional to admit I was surprised when you called me?”

  “Why? You’re good at your job, you’re local, and your rates aren’t exorbitant.”

  Thompson straightened, and for a moment, she smiled. “You’re not much different on this side of the table, are you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I assumed you would be upset about how our interactions have gone in the past.”

  “You mean the times you’ve handed me my ass?” Hazard snorted. “That’s the person I want working on this. Whatever John’s being framed for, I want the best person I know to take care of it.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to make much progress on the arrest warrant today,” Thompson said. “I’m not Mr. Somerset’s attorney of record, so the best I can d
o is offer to help bring him in safely and then, if he chooses to hire me, help with his defense.”

  Hazard waved a hand. “I want you in there with me. Today. That’s where we get started.”

  Thompson nodded. She moved around the house for a while longer, and then, pocketing the phone, she came back to Hazard. “If you know where he is, I don’t want you to tell me. My advice to you is to tell the truth, but of course, I’ll also advise you not to answer questions that might be prejudicial to you.”

  “I understand.”

  “You are not in custody, so you do not have to talk to them, and you do not have to answer any questions if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to get whatever information I can out of them,” Hazard said.

  “It might not work like that.”

  “I want to try.”

  Thompson nodded once. “I’ll drive.”

  “No, I—”

  “Mr. Hazard, I’m going to drive us over there. We’re a team. Until you decide to fire me, I suppose.”

  After a moment, Hazard motioned for her to go ahead of him. As he followed her to the door, he muttered, “I do not like teams.”

  “Too bad,” Thompson said crisply.

  When they got to the station, most of the day shift officers had already headed out on patrol. George Orear sat at the front desk, his hair heavy and shiny with pomade, and he mumbled and shuffled papers and tried to pretend like he had no idea who they were until Thompson snapped something too low for Hazard to hear. Then Orear shot out of his seat and scurried down the hall.

  Thompson noticed Hazard looking at her and raised her eyebrows. “What?”

  “You’re already worth every penny.”

  “The show just gets better,” Thompson said.

  Orear was coming back down the hall, followed by Moraes. The detective looked exhausted—eyes bloodshot, clothes rumpled—and Hazard could spare fuck-all sympathy.