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

by Gregory Ashe

  “I’ll have to talk to my client first.”

  “Shit, ok. Well, I’ll tell you what we know, and you fill me in when your client gives you the ok.”

  “You said we weren’t talking about open cases—”

  “I’m not worried about revealing sensitive information to you; today, with Naomi dragging you into this, that settled things. You’ve got Cravens’s seal of approval as far as I’m concerned. There’s a lot to talk about, but the important thing right now is to find Carl Klimich. He was part of this; I know he was, and when you see what we found at his apartment, you’ll think so too.”

  When they got into the minivan, Dulac was hanging up the phone. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “What?” Somers said. “Bad news?”

  “They found Carl,” Dulac said.

  The rest of it was written all over Dulac’s face, so Hazard just asked, “How?”

  “He hanged himself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NOVEMBER 3

  SATURDAY

  7:12 PM

  FOR SOMERS, THE REST of the day felt like being dragged through shit. He spent a lot of it working the crime scene: a storage unit belonging to Carl Klimich, where the adjunct professor had hanged himself from an exposed joist. He had used a belt, good leather, and the material had stretched and cut into his throat. Dr. Boyer came and examined the body, and then she had them cut him down. She wasn’t ready to pronounce it a suicide, not automatically, especially considering Carl’s connection to the recent murder. But she said it looked pretty open and closed.

  Now, at home, Somers ran a plate under hot water. In his mind’s eyes, he kept seeing Carl. Not his blackened, swollen face. His hands. Carl had wrapped his wrists in the bondage tape—not tying them together, but wearing the tape like bracelets. His nails were broken from clawing at the belt; at the last minute, he must have changed his mind, but it had been too late.

  Somers loaded the plate in the dishwasher and picked up the next one. They had gotten nothing valuable from the crime scene. No note. No explanation. And while Carl’s death did seem to indicate that he had played some role in Fabbri’s murder, it didn’t close the case. The man who had stabbed Jim was still out there, still free. And Somers’s one thread had just been snipped. All those hours spent in the storage unit, with the November sun like gold and the smell of shit lingering in the air, all for nothing.

  Hazard had gotten home shortly after Somers, unwilling to explain where he’d been because he still hadn’t been able to get in touch with his client. They’d eaten a quick dinner: pasta, a jar of red sauce, frozen meatballs, frozen broccoli. Somers had done most of the talking because he was going to count Hazard as part of the team until Cravens revoked her earlier decision. Hazard, for his part, nodded and frowned, occasionally interrupting to ask questions.

  As Somers loaded the last dish, he stretched up onto tiptoes, popping his back. Night had fallen, broken only by the starlight glow of a street lamp between the next row of houses. Against the darkness, the glass became a kind of mirror, and Somers could see himself: the messy hair, the cheekbones, the hollow of his throat. He could see the line of flesh where, on Carl, the belt had cut in. He wondered if this was why Hazard was always staring at the glass: it was a mirror, and it wasn’t. You could see yourself laid over the world like a transparency. It was kind of like being a ghost.

  Somers pulled the plug and let the soapy water drain from the sink. He ignored the window after that; suicides always fucked him up.

  He found Hazard sprawled out on the sofa, a stack of papers next to him, his dark hair held back with a rubber band. Somers climbed onto the sofa, stepped over Hazard, and squeezed in next to his boyfriend.

  “I’m reading,” Hazard said without looking up from the page.

  “I’ll be quiet.” Somers twisted and wriggled.

  “We have other couches. And chairs. And a bed.”

  “I’ll be really, really quiet.” More twisting, though, because he could feel his neck cramping. “I just have to—” He planted a hand on Hazard’s stomach to lift himself up. “Hold on, just let me—”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Hazard growled. Slipping an arm under Somers, Hazard shifted so they were lying together, his hand on Somers’s waist, Somers’s head on his shoulder. “Now stay still.”

  They lay like that for a while. Somers enjoyed the heat of Hazard’s body. He liked his boyfriend’s smell: the coconut hair product, the faint hint of clean sweat, Persil on his clothes. He liked being next to him like this. That day, right then, he just liked touching something that was alive.

  “What’s wrong?” Hazard said, his eyes still fixed on the page.

  “Nothing.”

  Hazard lifted the page, finished scanning it, and set it down.

  “I hate working suicides. And the day was a total waste. And this case is starting to feel like a dead end.”

  Hazard picked up another page.

  “I mean, the guy who killed Fabbri is dressed like a Volunteer. Why? Maybe it’s a Halloween costume. Maybe it’s just a disguise to throw us off the trail and make us look at the Volunteers. Maybe he really is a Volunteer. Or a Bright Light. Or whatever they’re calling themselves. But then, no matter where I go, I get nothing. Not a scrap that points back to the Volunteers.”

  Hazard made an assenting noise in his throat and turned the page.

  “I like you like this,” Somers said, reaching up to touch Hazard’s face and trace his forehead, his eyes, the sharp line of his cheekbone.

  Hazard flicked a brief, questioning glance.

  “Your hair back,” Somers answered. “Your face. I miss seeing your face. And I like seeing you . . . I don’t know what the word is. Engaged. Interested. Working.”

  Hazard’s attention was back on the page.

  “This,” Somers said, tugging on the beard. “This is hot, with the whole caveman thing you’ve got going on. But I miss seeing your face.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “You’ve been growing it for, what? Three months?”

  “John, I’m really trying to focus.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Somers let his head fall onto Hazard’s shoulder again. He listened to his boyfriend’s heartbeat. Alive. Warm. Touching him in a way they hadn’t touched in a long time. Then he raised his head, running his fingers through Hazard’s beard again.

  “Keep doing that,” Hazard said, eyes scanning text, “and you’re going to lose a finger.”

  Somers tugged on the beard. And then again, a little harder.

  “I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” Somers whispered. “Can we—”

  Hazard turned his head sharply and bit, catching Somers’s fingers with his teeth.

  “Ow.” Somers tried to pull free, but Hazard bit down harder. “Jesus Christ, Ree.”

  Hazard released Somers, and Somers drew his hand back, shaking out the sting.

  “What the hell?”

  “You’re fine.”

  “I think you broke one of them.”

  Hazard spared his hand a glance and repeated, “You’re fine.”

  “I was trying to seduce you, dummy.”

  “I know.” Hazard turned another page. “I told you: I’m reading.”

  “I cannot believe this.”

  Hazard made another of those little noises; he was already back in the pages.

  “I honestly cannot believe this.”

  “Uh huh.” Another page flipped over.

  “Nobody turns down sex with me, Ree. Nobody. I mean, I’m me. I’m John-Henry Somerset. Nobody, Ree.”

  Those golden eyes came up. “But I just did.”

  “But you . . . but I . . .”

  “It’s probably because you’re getting older.”

  “What?”

  “Crow’s feet,” Hazard touched the corners of his eyes. “And some lines up here.” He touched his forehead.
r />   “You son of a bitch.”

  “Hey, what do you know about Jim Fabbri’s research?”

  “Oh no. No way in hell do you get to change the topic.”

  “I’ll fuck you later, baby. I promise. What do you know about his research?”

  “You’ll fuck me later? Like it’s a chore?”

  “No. I’ll enjoy it. And I’ll make sure you enjoy it.” Hazard blinked. “What’s going on? You’re mad. Why are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Your cheeks are red. You’ve got that little line I was talking about,” Hazard gestured to his forehead, “and you’re breathing thirty percent faster than normal. And you’re—hey, where are you going? I thought we were snuggling.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m not. I just—Ree, what the hell?”

  “What?”

  Somers scrubbed his hands through his hair. “If I have to tell you, it doesn’t—” He swallowed a howl. “And Jesus Christ, now I sound like my mother, thank you very much.”

  “Ok,” Hazard said, starting to get up from the sofa. “We can fuck now.”

  “Oh no.” Somers held out a hand. “No way, buddy.”

  Sinking back onto the sofa, Hazard eyed Somers with suspicion. “So I can keep reading?”

  “Yeah. Read. Read as much as you want.”

  “Because I told you I was reading when you got on the couch.”

  “Yes, Ree. I remember. Vividly. It was right before you snapped my finger off.”

  “Well, if we’re not going to fuck right now, and you’re not going to snuggle, maybe you could go fix the sink in the utility room?”

  Somers managed to swallow the second howl a little more gracefully than the first. He turned and walked out of the room. He didn’t even stomp.

  “John, your tools are the other way. In the garage. John?”

  Somers went upstairs. He listened to some Gillian Welch on his AirPods, he watched some TV. After a while, when he didn’t feel like a cartoon stereotype of a hysterical woman, he went back downstairs and got out the ice cream.

  Ok. Maybe a little bit of a stereotype.

  On Somers’s way back through the living room, Hazard said, “Did you know Jim Fabbri did performance work?”

  Somers dug out a huge chunk of cookie dough from the ice cream and bit into it.

  “His research, it’s all gender study stuff. A lot of it’s equity related. In theory, I mean, it’s all stuff that we support.” Hazard’s brow furrowed. “You’re going to tear the carton if you keep digging in with the spoon like that.”

  “It’s my ice cream. I’ll eat it however I want. Especially now that I’m old and fat and unattractive.”

  “I never said you were fat and unattractive.”

  Somers bore down with the spoon again, trying to get another chunk of cookie dough.

  “Anyway,” Hazard said, “it’s the method that’s unattractive about all his work. Really ugly stuff. He loved to orchestrate scenes where people would end up looking like fools or like extremists. When all those women’s marches were happening around the country, he went to—Christ, now I can’t remember the name of the town.” Rapid shuffling of pages. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. He changed road signs. He hired people to move the barriers along the route. And so the marchers ended up going in a big circle, and they got a huge fine for not following the approved parade route, and just about every conservative pundit in the country got a half hour’s worth of laughs talking about women being bad at directions.”

  “So he’s an asshole,” Somers said around a mouthful of ice cream. “Pretty much every academic ever is an asshole. You have to be; the job basically demands that kind of ego.”

  “One of his early ones, maybe the first one, was when he infiltrated a drag king contest and won.”

  “He was a drag queen?”

  “Drag king. Female, or mostly female, performers who take on a male persona.”

  “But he is male. Or was.”

  “Right. So, kind of makes sense that he won, right? But that wasn’t even the whole thing. What he really wanted was material from the dressing room. He planted recording devices and caught the performers saying all sorts of horrible stuff. Sexist stuff about men. Racist stuff. Making fun of gay men, straight women, on and on. He milked those conversations for years. Multiple articles. Speaking engagements. He even broke them down into individual sound bytes and created a website where you could weave them together. He called it the Hate Speech Soundboard, and he kept adding to it. Stuff from the women’s march. Stuff from a biker bar he wormed his way into. On and on.” Hazard put down the pages. “This guy built his career by showing that minorities can be just as hateful as white supremacists.”

  “So he wasn’t just a regular asshole. He was a huge asshole.”

  “Yeah, but—” Hazard frowned. “I don’t know. Doesn’t it make you think of the Ozark Volunteers?”

  “Bright Lights.”

  “Whatever the fuck they want to be called now. This is the first thing that actually, maybe, ties back to them. This is the kind of shit the alt-right eats up. I don’t think the Ozark Volunteers would want Jim Fabbri dead. I think they’d want to give him a research grant.”

  “No wonder Lena Brigaud was so mad the college hired him. You think that had something to do with the murder?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So Carl is an accomplice; he switches out the DVD, provides a distraction. Jim was planning one of his performances—that’s what Lena kept saying—and Carl ruined it. But Carl’s not the only one who’s angry about the hire. So he’s working with Lena Brigaud?”

  “I don’t know.” Hazard was already lost in the pages again.

  “Ree, you know, that actually might make sense. You know what we haven’t really thought about? Lena is the only one who actually claims to have seen the stabbing. Everybody else saw Jim right after it happened.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So she could be lying. She might have stabbed Jim and then screamed and pointed everybody at some kid in a bad costume.”

  “I already thought of that.”

  Somers could feel his pulse about to blow out his carotid. “You did?”

  “Yeah, when you told me about the eyewitness statements.”

  “The first day?”

  “Technically it was the second day; the murder happened the night before.”

  Gripping the spoon, Somers jabbed at the ice cream. The paper carton split, and the spoon punched through it.

  “Told you,” Hazard said as he turned another page.

  Somers took the ruined carton of ice cream back to the kitchen.

  “If you’re done with dessert,” Hazard called from the living room, “you could take a look at the sink.”

  Somers went back to the living room. He stood there, hands on his hips. He was going to wait, but it would be like trying to wait out a mountain. Finally, he cleared his throat.

  When Hazard looked up, it took a moment before comprehension flashed through his eyes. “Ok. I’ll call somebody about it in the morning.”

  “I’ll fix the sink.”

  “No, don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m going to fix the damn sink.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Not really. I just thought—”

  “I’m going to fix that sink, ok? As soon as things settle down, I’m going to fix it.”

  “Yeah, John.” Hazard was already lost in the pages again. “Of course.”

  It was unacceptable. It was unbelievable. The whole night, everything, was like Hazard turning up every dial on Somers’s switchboard just to put the needles in the red.

  Somers went upstairs and looked in the mirror.

  Then he went back to the bedroom. He did some pushups. He did some crunches. He stripped down to his skin and checked the mirror in the bathroom again. Nice pump. Nice swell. Biceps
and abs and pecs all fucking awesome.

  He leaned in a little closer, examining the skin around his eyes.

  Before he could reconsider, he went back to the bedroom. He dug around in his drawers until he found a pair of white briefs, which he never wore, and white tube socks that came to the middle of his calf.

  He checked the mirror again. The white against the gold sheen of skin looked good. He looked good.

  Jesus, Somers thought with a moment of disorientation. Crow’s feet.

  Then he went downstairs. Hazard was still on the sofa, the stack of documents spilling onto the floor now. Somers stepped over it and stood next to Hazard, the bare skin of his thighs inches from Hazard’s arm, the bulge in his briefs just above Hazard’s head. No subtlety tonight. No finesse. Fuck finesse, Somers thought. Who had time for finesse when his boyfriend told him he had crow’s feet?

  “Ree.”

  For a moment, nothing. Hazard kept his eyes on the document in his hands. He wasn’t even blinking. And then, Somers watched as it went through Hazard: a ripple of desire transforming Hazard’s face, his posture, his grip on the pages. He looked up and let out a breath like he’d been punched.

  Somers felt himself harden at the sound.

  “Fuck,” Hazard whispered. His pupils were blown wide; he had crumpled the page he was holding without seeming to realize it, and now he dropped it, reaching for Somers.

  “No,” Somers said.

  Hazard’s hand froze.

  They stood like that; Hazard was making a sound in his throat suspiciously like a whimper. Somers was trembling, but he forced his voice to be steady.

  “Well?”

  “You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

  Somers shivered.

  “You are the only one I’ve ever really wanted.”

  Somers’s breath built like a fire in his chest.

  Now Hazard reached out, running his hands up Somers’s legs, drifting over the traces of golden hair, and then they stopped. His thumbs toyed with the elastic where it met Somers’s thighs.

  “Every minute I’m with you, I want to be touching you, kissing you, fucking you.”

  Somers had to lean forward now, bracing himself on Hazard’s shoulders.