by Gregory Ashe
“Fuck, man, what I need is someone to get this shit off my plate.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Another gust of December wind tore across the asphalt; this time, Hazard was the one to shiver, ducking into the heavy wool coat that he wore. As though the movement had been a cue, Hazard and Peterson nodded and split, Hazard toward the station, Peterson toward his cruiser. Then Peterson stopped, calling Hazard’s name.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” Peterson said. “With this case, you know what I keep remembering?”
Hazard turned and approached Peterson.
“This time in the lunch room. I walked in when Hoffmeister was going at Lloyd pretty hard. They didn’t notice me at first, and I kind of hung back, just at the door. Watching, you know? Because it was so weird. Hoffmeister kept knocking things onto the floor: a sandwich, an open can of Coke, some Cheetos, just sweeping them off the table with his hand. And he’d say, ‘Pick it up, dumbshit.’ And Lloyd’s just a Keebler elf, you know, and he’d pick it up, and then Hoffmeister would knock something else off the table.”
Nodding slowly, Hazard opened his mouth, not sure if he was ready to ask the question he thought he needed to ask.
But Peterson spoke first, canting his body toward the cruiser as though drawn by the sudden need to be away from Hazard, out of the conversation. He said, “Seeing that, it made me want to kill Hoffmeister myself.”
And then Peterson faced into the wind and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DECEMBER 18
TUESDAY
4:17 PM
SOMERS SHOOK HIS HEAD, TRYING to keep his attention on the road. “Peterson didn’t shoot at Hoffmeister last night.”
Next to him, Hazard sat in the Mustang’s passenger seat, one big hand buried in his tangles of long, dark hair. “I’m not saying Peterson did it. I’m saying it’s a fucking weird thing to say.”
“I mean, not if you’ve known Hoffmeister very long. I think everyone wants to kill him.”
“Not the way Peterson said it. Not that . . . intensely.”
“I’ve wanted to kill Hoffmeister a few times. Does that make me a suspect?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“That’d be kind of hot, actually. Maybe you should interrogate me. Maybe you should make me tell you what I know.”
Hazard snorted, turning to stare out the window.
“What does that mean?” Somers asked.
“Big challenge.”
“Holy hell, Ree.”
Hazard turned back, his gaze cool and assessing. “What?”
“That’s insulting.”
“What? I’m just being honest. It wouldn’t be a challenge. I could get you to tell me anything I want to know in . . .” He seemed to be calculating. “Fourteen minutes. Twelve if I have a bucket of ice.”
“Nope.” Although, to be fair, Somers was already resisting the urge to reach down and adjust himself. “No way. And that’s really insulting, by the way. I don’t know why you think I’m just going to crack at the first sign of pressure.”
Hazard blinked. The big, dumb oaf looked honestly confused. “John, come on.”
“What? Let’s hear it. What’s your big plan? Fourteen minutes? Damn it, Ree, I can last longer than fourteen minutes.”
“No, because if I had your ankles tied and spread and I got out the toy that you—”
Somers’s face was fire. “Jesus, Ree. That was one time, ok? I . . . it just took me by surprise.”
“No, because when I had those pillows under you and I was—”
“Ok.” Now it was a little harder to breathe, the air in the Mustang too thin.
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“Ok, Ree.”
“I actually think fourteen minutes is pretty generous considering that I know how much you like it when I use that little—”
“Stop. Right there. Right now.”
“You don’t have to get huffy.”
Somers thought he probably had a good answer to that, but instead he focused on breathing like a normal human. In. Out. Baseball. He could think about baseball; baseball was safe. Batting averages. Schildt had done all right with the Cardinals, but Somers wanted to wait and see how spring training went before deciding—
“Do you have a boner?”
“For Christ’s sake, Ree.”
“Is this about that whole interrogation thing? Because I thought we were discussing hypotheticals, but if you want me to—”
“If Peterson didn’t shoot at Hoffmeister last night,” Somers said, the words all in a rush, “who did? I mean, what about those people you were looking into? You had suspects, right? Run through it all again.”
Hazard was still sifting those thick, black tangles of hair. Somers could feel the weight of his gaze like gold fire, and Somers’s heart was responding to all of it, kicking like an engine running out of fuel.
“The one I like the most for it is Andy-Jack Strout,” Somers said. “I mean, Hoffmeister messed him up bad, and he’s got the most reason to hate Hoffmeister. A personal reason. Goes real deep. Visceral, you know.”
Hazard made a low, rumbling noise of assent.
“Of course, you’ve got those other ones. The pastor, right? Wesley. And Savanna. But they’re mad for political reasons. Ideological reasons. Nothing like good, old-fashioned personal hatred.”
“John,” Hazard said in that deep voice that made Somers’s skin prickle.
“I mean, we know ideological convictions can drive people to do some crazy-ass stuff.” Somers coughed a dry laugh. “Last case, right, I mean, we saw that in spades. But I still think nothing beats a vendetta.”
Hazard made that rumble again. His fingers shook their way free from his hair, spilling some of the dark tangles over his face, suddenly making him look wild, savage. Somers’s heart gave another of those thumping backfires. Those fingers found the back of Somers’s neck: the blunt, callused pads; the sharp pressure of his nails; the velvet burn of his thumb on the side of Somers’s throat.
“You don’t get flustered very often. It’s cute.”
“I don’t—I’m not—”
Hazard shushed him. His thumb continued the slow friction fire on his throat. His fingers tightened for a heartbeat, and then Hazard nodded and let go. “Ok. I’ve got it.”
Somers studied the road. He ran his hands around the steering wheel. He even, God help him, tried baseball again. Thirty seconds later, he said, “Got what?”
“What I’m going to do to you.”
“What—”
“Tonight.” Hazard settled back into his seat. “I feel the same as you: Andy-Jack is the logical one to keep an eye on. And I’d love to get ballistics on the casing from last night and the ones recovered from Andy-Jack’s trailer.”
“Hold on. When you say, ‘What I’m going to do to you,’ what does that mean?”
“How I’m going to take you apart, baby. Pay attention. The problem with Andy-Jack is that nobody will run ballistics when he was sitting in a cell in the Wahredua police station.”
“Just to be clear—”
“John, I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to wait and find out tonight. Now, stop trying to dig and help me work this case.”
Somers wasn’t really sure what was happening. He wasn’t sure what Hazard might be imagining, but he knew that his boyfriend was far too analytical, far too clever, and far too devious for it to be anything good. He’d probably drag the whole thing out, leave Somers panting and wrecked and—
“Mailbox.”
Somers jerked the wheel back.
“Maybe I should drive.”
“No, God damn it. I’m fine. Just—just talk about the case for a few minutes.” Somers could feel Hazard’s gaze, and his cheeks heated. “I’m fine. Swear to God. Just start talking.”
“The fact that Andy-Jack spent last night in the po
lice bed and breakfast doesn’t mean he’s innocent,” Hazard said. “I thought about that, of course. I even floated it to Peterson.”
“And?”
“He shut it down pretty hard. Apparently, Andy-Jack has been cut off by both the Ozark Volunteers and Bright Lights. His whole story about having friends help him—I’m starting to think it’s just more bullshit. The drinking, the fighting, those are signs of a man still spiraling.” Hazard shook his head. “Without help, there’s no way he could have been involved in the stuff at Hoffmeister’s house either.”
“The stairs,” Somers said; his brain was coming back on line, and he saw now that they were at the edge of Wahredua’s city limits. “No way he could have gotten inside to mess with stuff, not in the wheelchair.”
They drove in silence for a while, the miles disappearing in streaks of snow and earth and the faded reds of old leaves.
“I don’t have any leads on the other suspects, either,” Hazard said, breaking the silence. “I can’t get any answers out of Wesley; the interviews haven’t been productive.”
“Did you smash something bigger this time?”
“I think he might be—”
“Because last time it was a chair, but I know you like to escalate. Did you chop up his desk with a fire axe?”
“You say very stupid things sometimes.”
“Really? You didn’t break anything today?”
Hazard shifted in his seat and glanced away. “After talking to Wesley, I think he—”
“Oh my God, you did. You broke something.”
“I didn’t break something.” Then, muttering toward the window: “On purpose.”
“Excuse me?”
“Damn it, John.”
“On purpose?”
“I might have . . . closed the door a little too hard. That’s all.”
“Does he even have a door anymore? Did it accidentally, mysteriously, break itself into pieces? Or did the whole church just fall over and—”
“It was one little door handle. That’s it. No big deal.” Hazard crossed his arms. “It could have happened to anybody.”
“Ok, so was this before the interview became unproductive or after?”
Hazard glared. He bit off both syllables. “After.”
“He didn’t give up anything in the interview?”
“No. But he’s got something with Hoffmeister. More than just a history of complaints. I think something happened between them, something . . .”
“Personal?”
“Yes. Wesley wouldn’t tell me what. And he wouldn’t tell me where he was last night.”
“Did you try the whole ‘somebody with nothing to hide’ line?”
Snorting, Hazard nodded. “Of course. He didn’t bite.”
“Maybe we’ll hit gold with Savanna.”
Hazard shifted again in his seat, his gaze flicking away.
Before Somers could press him, Hazard asked, “What about Lloyd?”
“Lloyd?”
“The way Peterson tells it, he’s probably got more reason to hate Hoffmeister than anyone. But look at them from the outside, and they’re best buddies.”
“It wasn’t Lloyd.”
“Why?”
“Same reason it wasn’t Peterson.”
“They’re cops?”
“Yep.”
Hazard made a disgusted noise.
“You don’t have to like them, Ree, but they’re still police. They wouldn’t do something like this. Especially not with someone else who’s police.”
“Everybody has a breaking point.”
“I’m not arguing about that. I’m saying if they did this, they’d do it differently. The last thing they’d do is tail Hoffmeister to our house and shoot him when we’re standing in the doorway.”
Hazard grunted.
“What?” Somers asked.
“I don’t like it. Last night.”
“I don’t like being shot at either.”
“No, I mean, it feels off.”
“You’re going with feelings now.”
“I’m evaluating inconsistencies and presenting them as part of an analysis of my own unreliable interpretation of last night.”
“It’s like poetry when you talk. Some guys probably want to hear about roses and throbbing, uh, parts, but give me a nice evaluation of inconsistencies and analysis of unreliable narratives.”
Hazard gave him a sour look and flipped the bird.
“I’m being serious,” Somers said. “You’re adorable when you get all robotic and mechanical.”
Ahead of them, the outline of a gas station grew on the horizon. To one side of the pumps, buildings sprawled: a convenience mart, a mechanic’s garage, and a strip club. Somers had visited a few times when he’d been home from college, carried out to the titty bar by stupid friends and cheap beer and the perpetual combination of being young and horny and dumb. His clearest memory was of vomiting into a ditch behind the garage while Bing held him by a belt loop to keep him from tumbling ass-over-ankles down the steep grade. The memory had been funny once; now, after everything that had happened with Bing, it lay under black lacquer.
“Why did they follow him?” Hazard said. “Hoffmeister heard them trying to get into the house. Ok. He freaks out. He decides to run, try to make it to our house, ask for help. That’s stupid, but Hoffmeister is stupid, so it holds together. But after that, everything falls apart.” His fingers worked through his hair again. “You know what I’d do? I’d be outside. I’d have a shotgun. Probably a twelve gauge. If I could get inside, I’d fire once in every room. The house is small; the rooms are small. The spread of the shot would make sure I killed everything in each room. If Hoffmeister heard me and tried to escape, easy: one shot when the door opens. He’s down. Ripped open about a hundred times. Jesus Christ, why let him run, chase him, and take a few bad shots from a moving vehicle?”
“You realize you just explained how you’d commit a brutal murder? You didn’t even need to think about it.”
“An effective murder,” Hazard said absently. “It’s not even the most effective possibility. If I had more time, I’d tailor the method to the individual.”
Somers couldn’t help himself. “For example?”
Hazard waved a hand, his mind obviously still elsewhere. “With Hoffmeister, the easiest way would probably be a cocktail of opioids. They’re readily, albeit illegally, available, and Hoffmeister has a drinking problem. Wait until he’s blacked out, force him to take a lethal dose of the pills—probably suspended in his drink of choice.”
“Which is?”
“Bourbon.” Hazard’s eyes flicked once in calculation. “He’d be dead in about two hours, I think. Best to leave the body in the car in his garage. Don’t want an overzealous bartender to spot him in the parking lot and call it in.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Hazard blinked, as though coming back to the conversation. “What?”
“You can be really scary sometimes.”
“It’s simple planning and attention to details.”
“I know it’s wrong,” Somers said with a sigh. “I know it shouldn’t be so hot. The whole bad-boy-robot-serial-killer thing you do sometimes. It shouldn’t be such a fucking turn-on.”
Hazard cocked his head. “I don’t see why not. Evolutionarily speaking, we’re programmed to respond to evidence of high achievement in potential sexual partners, in hopes of passing those traits to our offspring.”
“That’s right,” Somers said, reaching down to adjust himself and grinning as they pulled into the broken asphalt lot of Slick’s. “Talk dirty to me.”
“You’re such an idiot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DECEMBER 18
TUESDAY
5:00 PM
SLICK’S DIDN’T LOOK ANY BETTER up close. Hazard studied the broken pavement, the ancient pumps, the peeling aluminum banding on the convenience mart. Electric s
igns sent pink and green light skating across wavy glass. SKOAL CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. EBT ACCEPTED. CHECKS CASHED. COLD BEER HOT SMOKES. Even inside the closed car, the thud of the club’s bassline echoed inside Hazard’s chest, and a row of trucks and sedans nosed up to the curb like pigs at the trough. It was five o’clock on a Tuesday; he hated to think what this place would be like on a Friday night.
“Walk around first?” Somers said.
Hazard nodded. “Hoffmeister said he came out of the convenience store, two guys grabbed him, and they dragged him around the side of the building.”
They got out of the Mustang and walked together, first a broad loop of Slick’s, encompassing all its outbuildings, and then a tighter loop around the convenience mart. On the other side of the plate windows, a stringy-haired tweaker counted pennies in the register drawer. They drew to a stop, their bodies a vee aimed at the chipped ramp leading up to the convenience mart. Dark had settled, and their breaths mingled in clouds that blazed, luminous under the sodium lights. They hadn’t needed to speak, not once. Hazard was pleased at how easily everything still flowed between them; when they worked, they still worked so damn well together.
“Cameras,” Somers said.
Hazard nodded. He had seen them as well: two pointed out at the pumps, capturing intersecting angles of activity. Several more cameras lined the walls of the bar and the club and the ramshackle maze of passages that connected the buildings.
“They’re more worried about trouble in the parking lot,” Hazard traced invisible lines from the cameras, “or at the doors to the club and the bar. They’ve got plenty of coverage. But only two cameras for the pumps, and nothing on the door to the convenience mart.”
Somers nodded, and as one, they headed inside the c-store. The clerk stood behind a partition of bulletproof glass, still counting change, and he had all the most easily stolen items back there with him: chew, cigarettes, condoms, vape juice. He didn’t look up when the door dinged. Hazard broke left, passing the slushee machine and the fountain drinks and the hot dogs on rolling heaters, the smell of slightly burnt meat making his stomach rumble, and he thought of Dulac’s asinine extortion: he invited me to dinner tonight. Great. Perfect. Hazard would pour a bowl of dog food and let the dumbass eat on the porch.
