by Gregory Ashe
“Ree.”
Hazard’s thumbs slid under the elastic. The touch was maddening—a brush against Somers’s balls, against his inflamed dick. Somers bit down on a cry.
“Ree,” he whispered, not trusting his voice any more than that.
The pad of Hazard’s thumb ran over the tip of Somers’s dick, and this time, Somers did cry out: a short, sharp bark of need.
“Stop.” Somers could hear himself short of breath. Black spots whirled in his vision. “I should make you stop. Because you were an asshole tonight.”
Even with his pupils dilated with need, Hazard could be very expressive with his eyes. Right then, the scarecrow gold was bright with amusement. “Well,” he said, letting his thumbs slip out from under the elastic. “You stopped worrying about work for a while, didn’t you?”
It took a heartbeat before realization swept in, and then Somers started to laugh.
The laughter cut off in another cry as Hazard yanked down the briefs and took Somers in his mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOVEMBER 4
SUNDAY
6:26 AM
SOMERS’S PHONE RANG, DRAGGING him into the gray dawn; he dug it out of the pocket, saw the number, and answered.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Sheriff Engels said; his voice was tight and rough.
“No bother,” Somers said. “What’s going on?” Hazard rolled over, a big arm crashing down on Somers, and although Hazard kept his eyes closed, Somers could tell he was awake and listening. “Did Phil and Rory check in?”
The silence on the line was magnetic. And then Engels broke it, his words unsteady. “No. I . . . we found Phil’s car.”
“They were in an accident?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. This is beyond strange, John-Henry.”
Somers sat up, checked the clock, and rubbed his face. “Ok. Start from the beginning. They left town when?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Rory is . . . artistic, I guess. He changes plans at the drop of a hat. When they came down here for dinner with you guys, he kept saying they were leaving the next morning. Then, he liked you both well enough that he decided he and Phil should stay. Phil’s got a regular job, but he can work from home sometimes, so he tries to be flexible with Rory. Not that it doesn’t drive the poor man crazy sometimes.”
“So they were going to stay for a while?”
“Through the weekend, Rory told me. He didn’t have to be back for rehearsals until Monday evening. And Phil could work from home, and—God, I’m repeating myself.”
“But you thought they’d left?”
“They went to the Pretty Pretty Friday night. They wanted to check out the local scene. I was up early the next morning, just having my coffee and reading the paper, when I saw that both cars were gone. That was strange; they’d only taken Phil’s car to the club. So I guessed that, overnight, Rory had had some sort of change of heart. They’d packed up and left in the middle of the night. It was annoying and strange, but it wasn’t unheard of.” Another silence. “Rory has a temper. He likes to pick fights; the harder it is to rile Phil, the more he likes it. I thought maybe that’s why they’d gone back: they’d had a fight.”
“But they didn’t call.”
“Rory never calls; he forgets, you know. He gets caught up in something else and it slips. But Phil, always. He’s very considerate.” The sheriff’s breathing hoarsened. “One of my deputies spotted the car this morning. It’s in a ditch just off Highway 29; nobody’s mowed since August, and the grass hid it pretty well until this morning, when the sun was shining on the windshield.”
“Rory and Phil?” Somers asked.
“No. Nothing in the car. I mean, the deputies are going through it with a microscope right now, but it doesn’t look like anybody was hurt.” Another labored silence, and then the sheriff turned out two words that sounded like they cost him a lot. “No blood.”
“We’ll come out and take a look.”
“No.” Then, stronger, “No. Thank you, but there’s nothing you can do that my deputies aren’t doing. I just wanted to ask. I know I called. They say doctors make the worst patients, and I know I’m doing what we tell other . . . other parents not to do. But I just wanted to ask again, just to make sure: Rory and Phil didn’t say anything to you?”
Hazard’s eyes were slitted now; they glinted out at Somers, the color of autumn sunlight, as he shook his head.
“No,” Somers said. “We only talked to them at dinner.”
“You didn’t see them at the Pretty Pretty?”
“No. We weren’t there on Friday. I mean, we’ll ask around, but . . . we’ll ask around. See what we can turn up. Was that their last stop?”
“As far as I know.”
“Let me talk to Emery. I’ll get back to you.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you very much.” A muffled voice came across the background of the call. “I’d better go. Thank you very much.”
As Somers dropped the phone onto the bed, he asked, “How much of that did you hear?”
“All of it. You’re very loud in the morning.”
“You’re very loud at night.”
For some reason, that made Hazard blush, big beautiful scarlet blooms across his chest and neck. His eyes opened the rest of the way, and he said, “What are the odds?”
“That you’re loud at night? It depends. When I use my tongue to—”
“No.” The blush darkened, but Hazard’s voice didn’t change. “What are the odds that Rory and Phil go missing while we’re trying to close the Fabbri murder? Hell, what are the odds that they go missing at all?”
“Low.”
“Ridiculously low. It’s math: subset of a set. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”
“I agree it’s a ridiculously low chance,” Somers said. “But it is a chance. It’s possible.”
Hazard shook his head and rolled off the bed. He padded over to the dresser and started to dress. “It’s a distraction. And possibly a hostage situation. The killer must have realized that, even with Carl dead, we still had a good chance of catching him. He’s desperate. He wants our focus divided. And if things get too hairy, he can hang out the sheriff’s son and disappear while we’re distracted.”
“That seems really complicated.”
“So?”
“Ockham’s razor.”
“And what is the simplest solution, John?”
Somers shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Is it more likely that one person committed two crimes, or that two criminals committed crimes near the same time and in the same small geographic region?”
“Well, when you put it that way.”
“Are you going to get dressed?” Hazard said, tugging his jeans into place and doing up the button. “Or do I get to take you outside naked?”
Somers sprawled on the bed and stared up at Hazard.
Hazard pitched a pair of slacks, and they caught Somers right in the face.
“I thought you liked me naked,” Somers called after his departing boyfriend.
“When I want you naked, John,” Hazard called back. “I’ll rip off your fucking clothes. Until then, get dressed.”
Somers groaned and scrambled out of bed. It wasn’t fun, getting dressed while sporting wood. And it wasn’t fair that Hazard could do that to him so easily.
They ate a quick breakfast and, against Hazard’s objections, drove together in the Mustang to meet Dulac at the station. From there, they drove together to the college.
“So what’s the plan?” Dulac said. “I mean, Carl’s dead. What now? I was thinking we could do another round of doors at the dorm, see if anybody remembered something new.”
“We’re going to meet my client,” Hazard said.
“Right,” Dulac said. “Totally.” And then: “Why?”
“Because I want to tell you what he told me, and I need to clear it with him first.”
But when they got to Mitchell Martin’s apartment, a top floor unit in a shiny new eight-story, nobody answered the door.
“So,” Somers said, glancing up and down the hallway and then checking the door again for signs of force. “This is weird, right?”
“The whole thing is weird,” Dulac said. “This is the kind of stuff you guys deal with? Give me a good old shooting any day. Simple. Clean. Get everybody locked up by the end of the shift.”
“Mitchell hires you to look into Fabbri’s death; he tells you we’re ignoring evidence. But we’re not. He never told us that.”
“Wait,” Dulac said. “What?”
Somers held up a hand. “Then Naomi reaches out.”
“And the skeleton,” Hazard said.
“Shit. And the skeleton and that creepy note. And then Phil and Rory disappear. And now Mitchell’s vanished.”
“What skeleton?” Dulac said. “What note?”
Hazard’s face remained impassive, but something had shifted in his voice. “You think Mitchell might be behind all of this?”
“He was at the party,” Somers said. “He grabbed the killer, but the killer managed to get away. He knew Jim Fabbri personally. He dragged you into this mess.”
“Why?” Hazard said. “What’s the motive?”
“For getting you involved?”
“For any of it. Why kill Fabbri? Why hire me to investigate? And then why disappear? It only makes him look suspicious.”
“I don’t know,” Somers said. “I’m just saying it’s weird. I’m saying there’s something happening here that we’re not seeing, and I don’t like it.”
A pair of heartbeats passed, and Dulac said, “Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NOVEMBER 4
SUNDAY
10:45 AM
BACK AT THE STATION, they went through all of it again: the witness statements, the recorded interviews, the security footage from the cameras around North Quad, the tips and calls that had been deemed slightly less insane than average.
Nothing.
Frustration built inside Somers like steam: he couldn’t grab it, he couldn’t pack it away. It just kept building, and an internal gauge kept rising.
At his desk, Somers played back the footage from the half hour following Fabbri’s death. He was back at square one. No, worse: he was at square zero. He had tried to work this case the right way. He had interviewed witnesses. He had tried to find the suspect. With Hazard’s help, they had found a possible murder weapon. They had found someone complicit in the killing—Carl Klimich. They had even uncovered a ream of possible motives.
And somehow, none of it led anywhere. Carl was dead. The motives were just that: motives. Nobody had ever seen the killer again—not campus security, not the people at the party. The Ozark Volunteers had even made a special effort just to distance themselves from the murder.
Somers hit the spacebar. Hard. He dragged the slider and rewound the footage. He was going to lose his mind. That’s what was going to happen. Frustration was going to keep building until his brain shut down. And, of course, Hazard would be left to pick up the pieces.
Now, more than ever, it felt like Hazard was picking up the pieces. It had been one thing for Hazard to solve the cases when they’d been partners; Somers loved him, and Somers was proud to work with him. But now, this was Somers’s job. And this was his first twisty case since Hazard had left—his first one solo, regardless of the fact that he was partnered with Dulac. And he was going to screw it up. That was what was really going to drive him crazy.
A big hand settled on Somers’s shoulder. “I want a coffee.”
Somers didn’t look up; he shook off Hazard’s hand. “You know where the kitchen is.”
“No, I want good coffee.”
Somers dug out his keys and passed them over his shoulder, his attention fixed on the screen. “Fill up the tank before you bring her back.”
“Maybe I’m being too subtle.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Just in case: I want you to get your ass out of that chair and go get coffee with me.”
“Ree, I’ve got a lot of work to do, and this case just keeps getting more and more messed up, and—”
Hazard’s big paw came to rest on the back of Somers’s neck this time. He squeezed once, and Somers fell silent.
“Come on,” Hazard said.
They walked out into the November sunlight and bought coffee across the street, in the little cafe that had gone in next to the Family Video. Then they walked to the park. The flowers were dead, but the fountains were still running, filling the air with the smell of water and their soft music. They found a bench; leaves scuffed under Somers’s shoes.
When they sat, Hazard took Somers’s hand.
“This is kind of our park,” Somers said.
Hazard turned Somers’s hand and began to massage the palm, rubbing one massive thumb into the tender flesh.
“This is nice,” Somers said. “What’s with the cutesy stuff?”
“You told me you liked me to touch you.”
“I do.”
Hazard shrugged: there you go.
“I like that you care about stuff like that. What I tell you I like.”
Hazard shrugged again. When he spoke, he said, “Tell me the best thing you’ve ever done as a police officer.”
“Convinced Cravens to hire you and let me be your partner.”
Hazard’s face was turned down, but Somers could hear the almost-invisible Emery Hazard smile. “Second best, then.”
“Getting wasted right at the beginning of working with you and letting you take me home.”
Hazard’s head came up. “John.”
“I’m serious.”
“Police work.”
“Somers leaned back, enjoying the feel of Hazard’s thumb digging into his hand. The sun warmed his back. The sky was a blue that bleached to white.
“Our first case together. At the end. When I realized I trusted you, and you trusted me, and we took down Upchurch.”
“That’s your best moment as a police officer?”
“That was transformational, Ree. That’s when we became, well, us.”
“I got shot.”
“I know. I kind of liked that part too. Only because you’d been such an asshole.”
Hazard’s hand froze; then his thumb started working again, and he turned his face down, attention on the task. When he spoke, his voice was thin ice. “I think the best thing you ever did was escape that fucking psychopath and save my life.”
“Ree.”
The next minutes were filled with sound: a noisy mallard proclaiming his domain; a woman walking by briskly, phone to her ear, asking if thirty-six donuts would be enough; the breeze flipping over red leaves like mosaic tiles.
Hazard stopped the massage. Taking Somers’s hand in both of his own, he turned it over, held it up to the light, studied it.
“Five fingers,” Somers said, his voice a tangle of yarn. “Just like everybody else.
With the same slow care, like a man inspecting a high-value purchase, Hazard ran his index finger over each of Somers’s fingernails. They were still too small, still growing back from when they had been ripped out. When Hazard got to his ring finger, Somers shivered; instinct made him try to jerk away. It was too much. But Hazard held on, his grip steady and soft but firm.
“One night at dinner,” Hazard said. “I don’t know, two weeks ago, I felt like I was going crazy. I hadn’t been thinking about anything, really. About the day. About what I needed to pick up at the store. We were talking about Evie’s fall play, I think. And then, like someone had turned a switch in my brain, I had to—I had to see. I wanted to do this. Just hold your hands and check. Make sure.” Emotion rolled through the big man,
twisting his body. He held on to Somers for another moment and then, with a squeeze, let go.
“You can hold my hand whenever you want,” Somers said.
Hazard leaned back, tilting his face up to the sun, his eyelids shuttering.
“You can count my fingers and toes.”
Sunlight exaggerated the black of Hazard’s beard and hair against his fair skin, drawing out glimmers that looked almost blue. Then, with a suddenness that startled Somers, Hazard opened his eyes.
“You’re a great detective.”
“Come on, Ree. I know I’m good. But all our really tough cases, all the crazy ones, you solved them.”
“We solved them together.”
“Thank you for including me, but I was just the ride-along.”
“John,” Hazard said, “we solved them together.”
It took a moment, but then Somers nodded.
“If you were coming at this case again, totally blind, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
Somers shrugged. “Lock down the crime scene. Secure the witnesses. Try to run down the killer before he jackrabbits. By the way, that’s exactly what we did. Carlson called it in, and Cravens had everybody moving on it before I’d even left the house. Fat lot of good it did us: we didn’t catch the killer, and the witnesses couldn’t give us anything helpful. One of them turned out to be an accomplice, in fact, and now he’s dead.”
“What would you do next?”
“Ree, this is stupid. I don’t want to talk about hypotheticals. I want to work this case. And I want to work it with you, even if that means we’re just running the investigation into the ground because we don’t have anywhere left to go with it.”
“What would we do, John? If we were working this together from the beginning, what would we do?”
“We’d do what any good detective would do: we’d start gathering evidence, information. We’d look at the crime scene. We’d look at footage from security cameras.
“Exactly,” Hazard began. “And do you know—”
“I’ve just spent the last couple hours going through that shit. You know what I saw? You know what’s on security footage? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. People go in the dorm all night; lots of them don’t have a key, and normally, that would be a reason to look closer. Big deal, though. It’s Halloween. Ninety percent of them are in costume, so I can’t tell who they really are, and the dorm doesn’t have security personnel, so no one kept a record of who came into the building. The killer could have walked into the dorm in another costume. He could have walked inside in his street clothes, for that matter, and I wouldn’t know.”
