The Rational Faculty (Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  “That’s not a whole lot of evidence. Anybody could have done that damage.”

  “Not anybody. That particular building locks after five, and you have to get inside with a faculty or staff ID card. Lots of them are that way.”

  “Ok. Your pool of possible perpetrators is still high.”

  Mitchell shrugged, setting the rim of Hazard’s cup to his lips and chewing the plastic. Then he pulled it away. “You work for me, right?”

  “Technically.”

  “You have to, um, do what I say, right?”

  “That’s a really fucking stupid question.”

  “No, no, no. I just mean, if I tell you something, you can’t tell everybody else, right? You have to keep it confidential?”

  Hazard folded his arms; he had a lot of inches on the kid, and a lot of mass, and he was vaguely aware that the beard and the tangled hair made him threatening to well-groomed people for some reason. Mitchell shrank a few inches, clutching the plastic cup to his chest.

  “That depends,” Hazard said. “Most importantly, I have a professional and ethical responsibility to report any illegal activities you might be planning, especially if you’re intending to hurt someone. On top of that, you need to know that I do keep clients and our conversations confidential.” Hazard could taste his own bullshit; he had one client, and the kid was currently looking scared to death. “But that confidentiality isn’t like the same protection you’d have with a doctor or a therapist or a lawyer. It’s not protected if you’re dragged into trial; I can be required to testify and disclose anything we’ve done or discussed.”

  “Oh.” Mitchell was slowly straightening again, his face settling into a pout. It was kind of cute on the kid, the way Hazard had found Nico’s pouting cute at the beginning. Hazard had the feeling that this was going to get old just as quickly. “I didn’t mean, um, like anything like that. Nothing illegal. I just don’t want Cynthia to find out I was talking about her. In fact, I want everything confidential.” The next words came in a rush: “Even from your boyfriend.”

  Hazard’s eyebrow shot up before he could control it, and he decided not to acknowledge the last part. “She won’t hear it from me.”

  “Because she’s kind of scary.”

  Hazard raised an eyebrow.

  “You know she was dating Professor Fukuma?”

  “I know.”

  “And she was like, there, I mean. When Fukuma died.”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  Mitchell opened his mouth to protest.

  “But,” Hazard added, “she did discover the body.”

  “Oh, right. That’s what I meant. Well, she kind of went off the rails after that. Like, bad.”

  “Did she come to school with BO?”

  Irritation flashed across Mitchell’s face. “Hey, I was just—”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Oh.”

  Hazard shrugged and looked south, where a group of boys and girls were spreading blankets on the lawn, giggling, a boy chasing a girl with a glowstick, two girls arguing about Marx’s views on women.

  “That was funny,” Mitchell said.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “No, it really was. I just wasn’t, um, expecting it.”

  “Let’s hear about Cynthia.”

  “Sure, yeah. But, you know, I really did think that was funny.” Mitchell tested a laugh as though to prove it. “You just, um. The hair. And the beard. And you yell a lot.”

  “What did you want to tell me about Cynthia?”

  “Maybe you just need to work on the delivery. Hey.” Mitchell snapped his fingers. “There’s this great comedian. He’s got a Netflix special. You could come over, and we’ll watch it, and then you can practice—”

  “No.”

  “Really? Because I think you’ve got a great sense of humor, and if you just smoothed out the delivery, I think—”

  “I’m here because you’re paying me to be here, Mitchell. Tick tock.”

  With a sigh, Mitchell said, “Right. Cynthia. Well, um, she really did go crazy when Fukuma died. Or something like it. She started drinking. She was using—I mean, that’s what I heard, but like, lots of prescriptions, and then buying from some local guys when the scrips ran out. She got in this huge fight with one of the chem professors, and she claims he pushed her down the stairs. A bunch of people were right there, and they all swear she did it herself.”

  “She threw herself down the stairs?”

  “I guess. And she got up and walked away. Drunks and fools, right? Then she disappeared. No warning. No explanation. She took W’s in all her classes.”

  Hazard raised an eyebrow at this.

  Flushing, Mitchell said, “Ok, yes. I looked at her grades. But only because I was worried.”

  “Why were you worried?”

  “I told you: she disappeared, and—”

  “No. Why were you worried about Cynthia? What was your relationship?”

  “Friends. Just friends. She’d gotten a thesis fellowship from the Center, and that’s how we met. We just hit it off.”

  “It looks like she’s ok. She came back to school. She’s working on her thesis.” Hazard shrugged. “Her girlfriend-slash-professor-slash-mentor had been murdered, and she discovered the corpse. I’d say it’s understandable that she needed some time away from this place.”

  “Yeah,” Mitchell said. “Well, I guess. But she came back different.”

  “How?”

  “She’s really extreme. She went out to Oregon or Seattle or somewhere—she told me Oregon once, and twice she said Seattle, so I don’t know if she’s bad at geography or if she’s lying—and was in some sort of commune. I don’t really know anything else about it. Honest to God. I tried looking it up on the internet, but you wouldn’t believe how many little retreats and sanctuaries and devotional centers are in the Pacific Northwest.”

  “And?”

  “And she’s extreme. Radical. I don’t really know the word. When she heard they were going to hire Fabbri for the position, she held a protest. She was out in front of the Social Sciences building with a sign that said Kill the Pig. My office looks out over the quad, and I could see the whole thing. She got up on the steps, you know, and it looked like she stabbed herself, and blood went all over the stairs. It was fucking insane. Pardon the language. She was fine, of course. It was all just a big show. But Jesus, I mean, I didn’t even know her anymore.”

  Hazard was turning over the information; it didn’t match with Somers’s account of Cynthia at all. Somers had described her as self-possessed—upset, grieving, maybe still in shock. But not angry at Jim Fabbri. Not gloating or satisfied. Hazard wanted to sneer at his own line of thinking; if Cynthia really had arranged the murder, and if she had any brains at all, she’d have tried to fake grief and shock. Still—it seemed impossible that Somers, who was so skilled at reading people, would have missed the underlying resentment.

  “Are you sure—” Hazard began to ask, but before he could finish it, the dorm’s front door flew open, and two figures shot out into the night.

  “This is it,” Mitchell whispered, and his hand caught Hazard’s arm again, squeezing.

  A third figure stumbled out of the dorm, staggering after the two people who were still fleeing.

  “You bitch,” the woman shrieked. Shriek was really the only word for it: the sound of the words was distended and shrill and hardly intelligible. “You fucking cunt. You selfish piece of shit.”

  Hazard shifted, and Mitchell’s fingers tightened. “Wait. It’s the same show every time. Like clockwork.”

  Farther along the quad, the first two figures who had burst out of the dorm passed under a security light. Hazard made out the features of Lena Brigaud twisted into hate and fear as she dragged the smaller, Asian-American girl along with her. They were moving pretty fast—Hazard wondered what Brigaud’s students would think if they saw their professor hot-footing it.
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  “I loved you, I fucking loved you. I gave you everything.” The shrieks continued as the third figure wove a zig-zag along the path, either too intoxicated or too upset to keep a straight line. It took her longer to get to the security light, and by then, Brigaud and her date had disappeared into the night. Hazard waited to see the third figure, but he didn’t need to. He recognized her voice.

  And he recognized her blond hair and her face. Cynthia Outzen was sobbing uncontrollably as she dragged herself into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  NOVEMBER 2

  FRIDAY

  11:14 PM

  SOMERS GOT HOME EARLIER than he expected; Norman and Gross had taken over processing Carl Klimich’s apartment. Somers had decided to go out looking for Carl, since the regular rounds of phone calls and home visits hadn’t turned up anyone who could tell them where Carl might be. Somehow Cravens had gotten word of this—Somers suspected Dulac—and sent Somers home. He’d tried to sneak back to Carl’s apartment, but Cravens had been ahead of him there too; Norman and Gross sent him packing.

  It wasn’t that Somers didn’t want to go home. That wasn’t it. Not exactly. But he found himself stopping at Walgreens to pick up a gallon of milk. And he stopped at the Conoco to fill up the Mustang. And he stopped at a red blinker and just stared red-red-red-red-red until a horn blared behind him, and then he gave the Mustang a little too much gas and felt his face heat when the tires squealed.

  Questions went through his mind. They were moving fast, and it was kind of like watching a train pass—the cars moving at just the right speed so that it almost looked like they were standing still, only he wasn’t seeing one car, he was seeing ten or twenty or however many sped past. But when he focused, the questions were gone, just a blur. They went through him like that red blinker. Red-red-red-red-red.

  Would Hazard be in bed, asleep? Would Hazard be on the couch, staring up at the darkness? Would Hazard be downstairs, working on the basement? Would Hazard be making more fucking eggs?

  One question kept running through. Red-red-red-red-red. And Somers refused to focus on it, refused to let himself look at it, so that it was just a blur. The cabinet in the garage where they kept the rat poison. The knives in the block on the kitchen counter. The rope—suddenly, viscerally, like a bad bout of cramps, Somers could see Hazard looping it around his arm after they’d used it to tie down a tarp.

  Suddenly he was driving faster. Suddenly he couldn’t get home fast enough.

  But the garage was dark and empty. No Odyssey minivan. Nothing hanging from the joists. And the house was dark. Somers was itching now, practically out of his skin, walking through the house and his shoes slapping the wood, not caring that he was making enough noise to raise the dead.

  Oh Christ. Oh Christ, Let that not mean anything, he found himself thinking. It was just an expression, just a stupid expression.

  The upstairs was dark. The hall was dark. The bedroom was dark.

  He braced himself. He flipped on the lights.

  Nothing. The bed was empty.

  He moved through the house now with hard, quick steps rapping out—the only sound besides the snap of light switch after light switch going up. He turned on every light upstairs. He turned on every light on the main floor. He almost hesitated at the basement stairs because he saw, in his mind, the open cabinet where they kept the rat poison, and then he charged down them so fast that he missed the last step and half-fell, half-sprinted the rest of the distance. Light after light came on as he hammered up the switches.

  No Hazard.

  Somers went back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, shoving aside bags of kale and a carton of eggs—so many fucking eggs—and a gallon of milk. They kept a six pack of Bud Light for the off night when Somers wanted a drink; in general, he drank a lot less than he had before Hazard, when his life was circling the drain. He picked up one of the bottles. Put it back. Dragged the six pack to the front of the fridge. And then he slammed the doors shut. They’d done that whole show the night before, hadn’t they? Nobody wanted a fucking encore.

  He was sitting on their bed, every light in the house blazing, when Hazard came home at half-past one.

  The steps moved through the house, heavy steps, and heavier tonight with their quietness. Up the stairs, down the hall, until Hazard stood in the doorway. He wore a Led Zeppelin tee that had barely fit him when they had bought it; now, with the weight he’d lost, it was perfect, clinging to him, exposing the hard lines of his body that the last few months had only exaggerated. That long, wavy dark hair was wilder than ever, and Hazard’s eyes, the color of straw at harvest or autumn sunlight, were bright. Alive. And that red blinker started up again inside Somers. Red-red-red-red-red.

  “Hi,” Hazard said.

  “Hi.”

  They were frozen like that for ten seconds, maybe. Then Hazard, not quite shrugging, crossed the room to the dresser. He unbuttoned the jeans, slid out of them, and held them up. He lined up the seams. He folded them. And then again. He set them on the dresser and made sure the crease was just fucking perfect.

  “Really?” Somers said.

  He looked up, the dark hair hanging over his face. “What?”

  “No fucking way.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Shoving aside some of the dark hair, Hazard narrowed his eyes. “Why are you home? I thought you were working late.”

  “Cravens sent me home.”

  “That’s good, right? I mean, she wouldn’t have sent you home if they needed you right now. You can get some sleep.”

  “I was going to go to sleep. Only my boyfriend was missing.”

  “I had something to do.”

  “At one in the morning?”

  “Yes,” Hazard said. “At one in the morning.”

  The answer was like a slap. Somers could feel it, tingling along his jaw.

  “I thought you were hurt. I thought you might be dead. Jesus Christ, I was out of my mind, Ree. Where the hell were you?”

  “You were worried?”

  “Yes, God damn it. I just told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  Why hadn’t Somers called? He didn’t know. Hadn’t even thought of it—had he? Because he hadn’t wanted to know? Because he’d been too scared? Because he’d been angry and sick and upset and not thinking clearly?

  He wasn’t willing to say any of those things, so he said, “I knew you wouldn’t answer. You didn’t bother to text or leave a voicemail or tape a note to the door. Why would you pick up a phone call from your boyfriend in the middle of the night?”

  Hazard shrugged his way out of the Led Zeppelin tee, exposing dense layers of muscle and dark hair scattered across his chest. With the shirt hanging from one hand, he stood there in nothing but his gray boxer-briefs, studying Somers.

  “You’re tired. We’re both tired. If we’re going to fight about this, can we do it tomorrow?”

  “I’m tired?” Somers could hear the high pitch of incredulity in his voice. He hated the sound of it, hated how desperate and helpless it made him sound. “Fine. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Or, hey, better, let’s do what we always do: let’s talk about it never. How’s that?”

  Hazard just rolled those massive shoulders and started walking to the closet, shirt in hand. “If you’ve got some time tomorrow, the utility sink is still leaking. I know the case is a big deal right now, so I can always call—”

  Somers was moving before he realized his suspicions—a million tiny signals and clues—had crystallized. As Hazard opened the closet, Somers reached him, catching Hazard by the arm.

  “What—” Hazard began.

  Somers ripped the shirt from his hand, held it up, and smelled it. Hazard’s sweat. Cotton. Persil. Balling it up, Somers pitched it into the hamper. He grabbed Hazard’s hair, pulling, aware of the way Hazard’s eyes widened because it hurt and not caring.
A little hair-pulling, fuck, what was that next to how Somers was being ripped open inside?

  “Open your mouth.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hazard asked, trying to wrestle free.

  “You’ve been drinking.” Somers leaned in, running his face up Hazard’s chest, his shoulders, his neck, sniffing like a bloodhound. Just sweat. Just Hazard’s smell, his skin, the scent that still generated that dull ache of arousal deep inside Somers. “Where were you tonight? Where the fuck were you?”

  Hazard finally managed to get free of Somers, stumbling back a pace, his huge chest rising and falling like a landslide. Somers was panting, the sound foxish and feral, and he heard it from a distance.

  “John, whatever the hell—”

  “Are you having an affair?”

  The shock in Hazard’s face was total. It reminded Somers of alkali flats brushed down by a nuclear test, some grainy black-and-white he’d watched in school.

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “Are you cheating on me? Are you fucking somebody else? Are you being fucked by somebody else? Do you want me to keep finding ways to say it?”

  Shock crumbled into pain. Worse than pain. Hazard was shaking his head, stepping back, folding his arms as his shoulders curled inwards.

  “I can’t even believe you’d say that.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to think? You disappear in the middle of the night, conveniently when you think I’m not coming home. You won’t tell me where you were. Fuck, who cares about that because even when you are here, even when we’re sitting across the table from each other, you’re a million miles away. You don’t want to touch me.”

  “John—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You blew me last night. I forgot. Awesome. Fucking awesome. But you don’t want me to touch you. You can think up as many shitty excuses as you want, Ree. But I’m not stupid. You can tell me you have a headache or you’re dizzy or you drank too much. You can tell me you’re too tired. But fuck, give me a little credit. It’s a handjob, or a blowjob, or you say you want me to fuck you, and then, boom, lights out, show’s over.”