The Keeper of Bees ARC

by Gregory Ashe

  He worked his magical brick key on TRUDY KING next, and this time, he had a little more luck. The staff bathroom still had soap and paper towels, and he gave himself a spit polish. He left his face alone—he had a nice smear of dirt from one temple to his jaw, and he thought it might help with his new image—but even so, he still felt a million times better after washing up, rinsing out his mouth, and gulping water from the tap. In one of the desks in the front room, he found scissors, which he stuck in his pocket, a couple of Bics that hadn’t dried up, and a roll of duct tape; he slid this onto his arm like a bracelet. He was considering how well he’d do on a show like Naked and Afraid. He could practically hear Hazard’s snort.

  Just for the sake of thoroughness, Somers let himself into KLIMBING KOALAS and hit the jackpot. Someone had ordered clothing branded for KLIMBING KOALAS, obviously seeing another opportunity to monetize childhood (God, Somers thought, Hazard had really gotten into his head), and Somers found some of the clothes that hadn’t been sold in a cardboard box in what he assumed had been the manager’s office. The pickings were slim, but five minutes later, he was dressed in an XXL tee that had been designed to look like a panda’s face and in women’s track pants. He assumed they were women’s track pants because of the cut and the purple stitching on the KLIMBING KOALAS logo, but they made his ass look great and—unlike the men’s, which were also only available in XXL—they fit him at the waist and didn’t just slide to the ground. He even found a KLIMBING KOALAS cap, although it was so big that it sat on his head like a fishbowl. He transferred the essentials—wallet, keys, Glock, as well as his new gear—to his new clothing and shoved his old clothing into a dumpster at the back of the strip mall’s lot.

  The process of breaking and entering, searching, and having a small victory had allowed Somers’s subconscious to process some of what had happened to him. He wasn’t sure why Riggle had sent cops to arrest him, but in his gut, he knew two things: he’d been framed, and this had something to do with the Keeper. Hazard’s plan of a playdate at the park as a signal that it was safe to come home was a nice fantasy, and Somers would be sure to stop by the park that afternoon, just in case. But he knew Hazard wouldn’t be there. This hadn’t been a mistake, and if Hazard hadn’t been so damn smart, Somers would be sitting in a jail cell at county right then.

  The only other thing that Somers could think of, and something he didn’t like at all, was that the timing of this frame job was too convenient. The Keeper investigation had stalled until Somers and Hazard started making progress on it; Riggle had been satisfied with trying to pin everything on Wesley, and while Park had voiced suspicions early on, she hadn’t really focused on Somers until he had found the hidden room at Sexten Motors. It wasn’t until the case had started moving again that someone had tried to remove Somers from the equation. That made him very worried about what might happen to Hazard next.

  Somers set the thought to the side and made his plan. He needed food. He needed a phone. And he needed to find out what had happened to Nico and Dulac; that was the next best move, now that he was on the run. The faster they found the Keeper, the faster things would get back to normal.

  He knew where he needed to go. Sighing, he checked the cross streets and started walking toward Dynamo Dill’s.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  JULY 5

  FRIDAY

  1:23 PM

  WHEN HAZARD FINALLY got out of the station, it was early afternoon. His conversation with Glenn Somerset had yielded nothing except an awareness that Somers’s father shared Hazard’s agonizing helplessness—and, of course, the all-too-familiar experience of being blamed for everything that went wrong in Somers’s life.

  The sun shone in a clear sky, and asphalt and brick and glass trapped the thick, Midwestern heat. Sweat broke out across Hazard’s face and chest and back; it was worse when he got into the Odyssey. Rolling down the windows didn’t help much, although the breeze as he drove across town at least wicked some of the sweat from his face. He stopped to get more cash from the ATM, and then he kept driving. It was strange to see how life rolled on for everyone else: a woman struggling to walk a pack of dogs; a couple of teenagers playing catch in a weedy, gravel lot between Mansheim Shoes and The Petite Petunia; an older woman whom Somers would probably have described as snazzy, in a lime-green pantsuit with shoulder pads out of the 80s, jauntily making her way down the street. For all of them, today was just another day—an added holiday, maybe, if their employer had stretched out the Fourth and given them Friday as a bonus.

  Where was Somers? Where had he spent the night? Did he have water? Did he have food? Had he fallen and twisted an ankle? Or worse? Hazard could picture him now; Somers would have gone to Smithfield, because it was the only logical place for a well-known local boy to hide, especially if he didn’t have a car and didn’t have unlimited cash. And Smithfield was full of abandoned homes and stores and industrial buildings. The Bordello came to mind, although the old whorehouse had burned to the ground exactly a year ago. As a boy, Hazard had been told—and had believed—that the Bordello’s basement was flooded and full of snakes. He could picture Somers now, picking his way across an ancient, sagging floor, and the rotten boards giving under his weight. Snap. And then Somers would fall. He could break a leg. He could get impaled on a splintered joist. He could get caught in old wiring and hang there, the suffocation slow, minutes and minutes of agony while his legs kicked empty air. A flooded basement with snakes sounded like a fucking walk in the park.

  Hazard slammed on the brakes inches before he plowed into the 1972 Buick Estate that was idling at the red light. A horn blared behind him. For a moment, nothing made its way through Hazard’s daze, and then he managed to get his arm out the window and wave an absent fuck-off with his middle finger. A moment later, traffic rolled forward again.

  Iowa Street, Illinois, Checker Ave, Indiana Street. He made himself check each street sign until he saw the right one, and then he turned, and two minutes later, he was pulling into the parking lot at Dulac’s apartment building. He spotted Dulac’s car right away, and that surprised him. Hazard assumed that Dulac had fled in his personal vehicle before ditching it and switching to a stolen car. But Dulac’s car was sitting in the parking lot. Then Hazard saw more bad news: several police cruisers sat at the curb, and as Hazard cruised the lot, one uniformed officer jogged out to a cruiser, retrieved a cardboard carry-out tray with four cups of coffee, and jogged back to the building. Hazard found a visitor’s spot and parked.

  The minivan’s A/C was finally chugging, so Hazard rolled up the windows and let the cool air lick his face for a minute. The interview with Riggle and Park had been so much worse than Hazard had expected. At some level, he had assumed that the arrest warrant for Somers was a horrible mistake. Some kind of bureaucratic gaffe, maybe, that might end in a lawsuit that was quietly and quickly settled once everything got straightened out. The charge of possession with intent to distribute, though, was a felony. Even if they beat it, the damage to Somers’s reputation would probably be permanent. And they had Somers’s fingerprints on the drugs, so Hazard didn’t know, honestly couldn’t bring himself to believe fully, that they would beat it.

  What the fuck, he wanted to say, looking Somers right in the eyes. What the fuck have you been doing?

  That wasn’t fair; Hazard unbuckled himself, killed the minivan and headed to the building. The rational part of his brain knew Somers hadn’t done anything wrong; as Hazard had told Park, when she’d suggested a connection between Somers and the Keeper killings, this was a frame job. Somehow, Dulac had managed to get Somers’s fingerprints on the drugs. He had taken Mitchell, he had abducted Nico, and he had vanished. He had doubtless headed out to Golden City a few days before and killed Kleinheider, probably when he got the bees to use for Susan’s body. Leaving behind the drugs and the bloody underwear had been an easy way to neutralize Somers—and, possibly, Hazard, because Dulac might have assumed Hazard would be so upset by the a
rrest or involved in protecting Somers that he would be incapacitated.

  For Hazard, a lot of questions remained: had Dulac planned to take Nico as a victim all along? Or had Susan’s death been the only part that was planned, and the rest had all been a series of rash decisions motivated by fear of being discovered? In the end, it didn’t matter; it all boiled down to the next move, and the next move was to find Dulac. Fast. Because when Dulac ran, and he was going to run soon, he wouldn’t try to take Nico and Mitchell with him.

  At the door to Dulac’s building, Hazard buzzed the manager’s unit. He got no response. He tried a couple more times, and then he tried an old standby, running his hand down the panel, buzzing just about every unit in the building until a voice answered: “Yes, hello?”

  “This is Emery Hazard. I’m part of a police investigation into the disappearance of Gray Dulac, who lives in this building.”

  “I don’t know Mr. Dulac, so—”

  “This is police business, sir. Buzz me up, please. Right now.”

  “I don’t really—I mean, I’m kneading bread right now, so it’s not exactly an ideal time.”

  “Great,” Hazard said. “I’ll be sure to explain to Detective Dulac’s family that we tried our best with this investigation, we really wish we could explain why that cartel broke into this apartment building and cut their son’s face off like it was a Halloween mask, but the investigation stalled out pretty early because one potential witness was kneading bread and it wasn’t really a good time. You know what? I’ll tell his mom right now. Just stay on the intercom, sir, I think you’ll want to hear this.”

  The door buzzed, and Hazard went inside. The next few steps were crucial; he’d seen the cruisers, spotted at least one uniformed officer. If he crossed paths with them, nobody was going to believe he just happened to be in the building as a coincidence. They’d throw him out on his ass. Worse, they might charge him with interference—what some states called obstruction of justice. Hazard didn’t like the idea of spending up to a year in county while his fiancé tried to evade possession charges. Hazard wouldn’t be able to get inside Dulac’s apartment; they’d have that place locked down tight for the next few days at a minimum. But that didn’t mean that Hazard couldn’t get other, equally important information. He just had to be creative.

  He walked all around the first floor, looking for apartments that had a door open, because he wanted to find the manager and Hazard assumed that he was currently doing odd jobs around the building. When Hazard didn’t see any open doors, he found the fire stairs and went down to the basement. He made his way past the laundry room, where an ancient man was holding up long johns to the light, examining them with unwavering attention. Hazard checked the boiler room, found the door locked, and hammered on it a few times. Nothing. He made his way to the other side of the basement, which was divided up by wire mesh panels into individual storage units. It was like a bizarre zoo for suitcases and standing fans and, in one case, an enormous, rolled-up rug wedged into the cage at an angle. Two strips of masking tape marked the rug, with black letters on each: GRANDMA on one, and on the other SEX RUG. Hazard was curious, but he decided he didn’t want to know.

  He worked his way up floor by floor until, on the third floor, he spotted a man coming out of an apartment. A bucket stood in the hall, and in one hand, the man held a plunger. The guy was probably in his late twenties, and he looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight since high school. He was wearing a faded Versace t-shirt, and he already had a potbelly.

  “Are you the manager?” Hazard asked.

  “Days,” the guy said.

  “I need to see your security footage for the last week.”

  “Oh man.” The kid—he looked more like a kid now—swung the plunger back and forth, studying Hazard. Hazard tried not to flinch at the thought of all the micro-droplets that were going everywhere. “Oh man,” the kid said again.

  “This is a police—”

  “They told me about you, man. They showed me your picture and told me I couldn’t talk to you.” The kid gave the plunger a few more lazy waggles; he was obviously torn about something, although Hazard had no idea what.

  “This is important,” Hazard said. “I can pay. A hundred bucks. I don’t need to take it with me, I just need to look at it.”

  “Oh man,” the kid said, and with a kind of despair, he shoved the plunger into the bucket and trundled away.

  “Nobody’s saying I can’t walk right here with you,” Hazard said, jogging to catch up. “Right? Nobody said I couldn’t just walk here. And if you say something, maybe you’re not even saying it to me.” He dug out his wallet, grabbed the biggest bills, and fanned them out. “Two hundred bucks. That’s as much as I can pay you.”

  The kid gave a sidelong look at the money and kept going. When he got to the stairs, he stopped.

  “Kind of weird, talking to myself like this,” the kid said, before giving Hazard a sidelong look that had so much exaggerated significance that Hazard had to squash an internal groan.

  “There’s nobody here,” Hazard. “You’re not talking to anybody.”

  “I mean, I’m just standing here, thinking out loud. I’m thinking about this crazy-ass motherfucker I’ve heard about, keep seeing him on the news. I was reading the comments on this news story, and holy shit. I think this guy, I think he killed like fifteen people last year. Just lined them up in this old hotel and went down the line, popping them in the back of the head, pop, pop, pop. And they were so fucking afraid of him that they didn’t run away, they just stood there.” The kid mimed a gun, mimed a little recoil as he repeated, “Pop, pop, pop.”

  When he gave Hazard the next sidelong look, his eyes were glowing.

  The kid started down the stairs, and Hazard followed. They went down to the basement, and the kid was still glancing over Hazard, his eyes shiny, his pupils dilated. Hazard had met people like this kid before, although usually they were older, usually they wanted to buy him a beer, usually they’d figured out that they needed to mask their interest under the guise of something else—just a sincere respect for law enforcement, the boys in blue, thanks for your service. But he knew what they wanted to hear. And he knew what this kid was trying to ask.

  “It’s an awful feeling,” Hazard said. “Sometimes. And sometimes, I don’t feel anything except that they deserved it. It depends on a lot of things.”

  “That feels good, right? When they deserve it? When they get what’s coming to them? You’re like, the hero. And they deserve it.”

  Yes, Hazard wanted to say. With some of them, the ones who deserved it, the satisfaction was so deep and visceral that, if he were honest, it was hard to distinguish it from feeling good. But he sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell this little ghoul that.

  “That story about the hotel is bullshit,” Hazard said. “It was an apartment building. And it was one guy. And he fell, he didn’t get shot.”

  Disappointment painted the kid’s face, and then, as Hazard had expected, it hardened into disbelief. Ghouls, young or old, already knew what they wanted to hear; if they didn’t hear it, it’s because you were a cocksucker or a pussy or a liar.

  The kid stepped off the last stair, his whole body communicating that Hazard had ceased to exist. Hazard grabbed the little shit by the throat. He swung the kid into the wall of the stairwell, and the kid squawked as the bucket hit the floor and clanged.

  “Ok,” Hazard said. “You wanted me to talk about it, so I talked about it. Now I’m going to tell you something, and then I’m going to ask you about the security footage again. Here’s the first part: if you ever get a little boner when you think about shooting someone, if you ever get a little wood when you’re playing with your guns, remember that I know you and I know your face and if you do anything like that, I will find you and make the last hours of your life so fucking miserable you’ll pray for death. Is that clear?”

  The kid was spitting and gurgling, and Hazard realized his gr
ip was a little too tight, but he decided consistency was probably the most important virtue of the moment.

  “Now, I want that security footage.” He gave the kid a shake and then released him.

  For almost a full minute, the kid moaned and wheezed and massaged his throat. One of his legs was shaking so badly that he had to lean against the wall to keep himself upright.

  “Five seconds,” Hazard said.

  The kid mumbled something, still palpating his throat.

  “Louder,” Hazard said.

  “We don’t have security cameras.”

  “You’re fucking joking.”

  “None. Inside or outside. We don’t have any.”

  “For the love of fuck.”

  The kid pulled up the Versace tee to wipe his face. “I’m going to tell the cops that you—”

  “Go!”

  With the sound of metal scraping concrete, the kid grabbed his bucket and took off into the basement.

  Hazard went back up to the lobby. He spent a few minutes looking around the main floor, checking for cameras. Then he went outside and checked the building, the parking lot, the whole perimeter. This was a nice area, relatively close to Wroxall’s campus. A safe area. And not a fucking camera anywhere in sight.

  The clock was ticking, so Hazard got in the minivan and pulled out of the lot just as a pair of uniformed men emerged from the apartment building—young guys, ones he recognized as the fresh assholes Riggle had brought in. They were scouting the parking lot; both of them glanced at the minivan and moved on. Dumb, dumb, dumb fucks. Hazard drove past them, merged into traffic, and tried to ignore the pounding in his chest. Dumb fucks, sure, but dumb fucks who could still throw him in the back of a cruiser if they wanted to.