by Gregory Ashe
“Mitchell, that doesn’t mean he’s coming back right away.”
“Oh my God, I’m going to die.”
“Mitchell.”
The waifish kid with the fiery orange hair looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him; he bent slightly at the waist, one elbow on the table, his eyes wide and cutting across wide swaths of the coffeeshop.
“For fuck’s sake,” Hazard said. “This is why I said to pull it the fuck together.”
“I’m not—” Mitchell seemed to make an effort. He put a hand over his face; his mouth was twitching spasmodically, an obscene struggle with tears that almost looked like laughter. “Oh shit, I know, I know. But this guy’s going to come back, and I—” He let out a shuddering breath. And then another. And then he peeled his hand away. He blinked at Hazard. “Ok, I’ll buy a gun. And, like, move. Right? I should move.”
“You don’t own a gun?”
“What? No, I mean, I—no. Why would I?”
“Yes. Buy a gun. Don’t move. Don’t quit your job. Don’t stop living your life. But be smart. How did he get you last time?”
“The same way he got Phil and Rory,” Mitchell said after a moment. “We were drinking together at the Pretty Pretty. Rory was telling everybody about how he met you, and of course, everybody was dying to hear because you’re like this recluse celebrity. When he finished, I told him I was your first paying client, and then we kind of hit it off, and we were in a booth, and we all had shots from a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and we blacked out.” Mitchell looked up. “I told you this before. I told the police all of this too.”
“Yeah, well, I want you to hear it again. From your own mouth.”
“Somebody drugged me.”
“Right.”
“So I’m never supposed to go out again? I’m never supposed to eat at a restaurant or—”
“Stop it. You’re being dramatic.”
Again, the splotchy maroon invaded Mitchell’s cheeks; he gave a sharp jerk of his chin. “Fine. I get what you’re saying. But I shouldn’t have to live my life like this.”
“No, you shouldn’t. And that’s why we’re going to find this guy.”
“How?”
“We know he was in contact with Cynthia Outzen; she was the one who delivered the message about the map. And we believe he was the one who provided her with the cyanide to die by suicide in the hospital. That means he had access to her in the hospital.”
“So you’ve got him on camera.” Mitchell’s expression slowly changed to shock. “Come on, you’ve got to have him on camera.”
“No comment.”
“Ok.” Then, more slowly, “Ok. So that’s it? Maybe you’ve got an image. Maybe. But you don’t sound convinced, so I’m guessing it’s not helpful.”
“He made other mistakes. He sees this as a game, and he sees himself as clever and perhaps . . . poetic. I’m not sure that’s the right word. Creative. Artistic. His choice of moniker, the Keeper of Bees, is unusual. It’s strange all on its own, but it’s also strange for its construction. Why not the beekeeper? Or the apiarist?” The tangles inside Hazard continued to unspool, his shoulders loosening, his posture straightening as he forgot about the debt he owed Mitchell and focused on the labyrinth of the crime. “The construction sounds antiquated.”
“The objective genitive.”
A smile quirked Hazard’s lips. “I knew I liked you.”
“So maybe he’s old?”
“He’s not that old. He was moving bodies and bees.”
“But he likes old things.”
“Maybe. When I looked into the phrase, I didn’t find much. There’s a book with that title by Gene Stratton-Porter. So it might be something to do with that.”
“With what?”
“Anti-war sentiment?”
“Someone drugged me and tortured me because they don’t like war?”
“The other possibility is Vergil. The Georgics. It seems like the most likely; Cynthia used the name Aristaios, and in the Georgics, the beekeeper’s name is Aristaeus.”
“Latinization of Greek.”
“Exactly.”
“So who’s Aristaeus? In the Georgics, I mean.”
“A beekeeper who tries to rape Eurydice. She runs away and—”
“A snake bites her and she dies.”
“What? You know the story?”
“I know the Orpheus and Eurydice story, and I remember someone tried to rape her. I didn’t remember that he was a beekeeper, though, or that his name was Aristaeus.” Mitchell popped another piece of cookie in his mouth. After chewing, he said, “So he wanted to rape us or something?”
“We don’t know that there’s any connection. It might have been an irrational choice. Or it might have a logic that we don’t understand.” But Hazard didn’t believe that; now, after working through the details again, he was more convinced than ever that he saw a connection. It just wasn’t one he was going to tell Mitchell. “The important thing is that it might be a lead.”
For a few minutes, they sat in silence, Mitchell picking through the cookie fragments. The whirring and shrieking and whistling from the various machines started to give Hazard a headache; he was starting to come down from the adrenaline of the fight with Cravens and Dulac and Somers, and he felt jittery and nauseated at the same time. He slid a piece of Mitchell’s cookie towards himself and ate it without thinking, and the sugar bombed his gut and made him feel like he needed to puke.
“I should go,” he said, pushing back the chair.
“Yeah. Yeah, me too, I guess.”
It was a whole production, getting the crutches out from under the bench, getting Mitchell on his feet, getting both of them to the door. And then, when they stepped outside the coffeeshop, Mitchell didn’t move. He stared out at the white knife’s edge of the horizon.
“I should go,” Hazard said again.
“It’s just weird, ok? I mean, it’s really weird, but it’s just a weird coincidence, right?” Then Mitchell looked at Hazard, full in the face, his watery blue eyes full of something Hazard couldn’t decipher. “I thought of Orpheus and Eurydice when I heard about you and Somers. Everything that happened in that old hotel in Smithfield.”
The Haverford, Hazard thought. Where Mikey Grames had almost killed both of them. Where Hazard would have fallen into darkness if not for Somers. His lips felt like they were cracking in the December air when he said, automatically, “It was an apartment building.”
Mitchell didn’t seem to hear him. He said, “That’s the whole point of the story, right? Would you walk into death to save the person you love?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
DECEMBER 20
THURSDAY
6:02 PM
SOMERS SPREAD THE TAKEOUT MENUS on the counter. The strangeness of the hospital had taken the edge off his anger, and he was thinking about the best way to go forward tonight. He and Hazard would have to talk. He knew, from close association, how much Emery Hazard hated talking, and he also knew that Emery Hazard hated talking, with any sort of significance attached, more than he hated regular conversation. If that were possible. But tonight, they’d have to talk. And Somers was in a good place now to talk about it rationally. He thought Hazard would be too. They’d both had time to cool off.
When the garage door rattled as it went up, Somers scanned the takeout menus one more time and grabbed the ones from Thai, Chinese, and Mediterranean places and shoved them in the drawer. On the counter, he left pizza, burgers, and wings. Comfort food. Fatty, heavy food. Food that, hopefully, would sedate Hazard. Soothe the big man before he could really get going.
Except that Hazard came inside like a controlled implosion. He threw open the door, stomped inside, and slammed it behind him.
“Hey,” Somers said.
“Hey.” Hazard didn’t stop, didn’t look over. He stomped out of the kitchen; the stomps shook the boards under Somers’s feet.
Don’t say anything, Some
rs thought.
Then he called, “It’s an old house; we still have to pay for it if it falls over.”
The stomping ceased.
Then slow, controlled steps retraced their way to the kitchen.
Oh, Somers thought. Fuck.
“What?” Hazard said.
“It’s an old house,” Somers said again, trying to smile, but everything from the station was coming back to him: the fight with Cravens, the fight with Dulac, the fact that, once again, Hazard had pursued the investigation without Somers. A small voice reminded Somers that Hazard had tried to call this time, had tried to do it the right way, but Somers walled that voice away.
“I’m going upstairs,” Hazard said.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“No, we already played this game. We’re supposed to be talking about things now.”
For a moment, Somers thought Hazard would leave; they’d be back to where they’d started. But instead, Hazard took a step into the kitchen. “I ran into Mitchell. I had to buy him coffee.” He shook his head, but words kept tumbling out. “And a cookie, but it was the wrong fucking cookie. And I had ten bags of frozen peas sitting in the car. My hand is fucking killing me.”
“The wrong cookie?”
“I don’t get it. There’s a house garbage cookie and a regular garbage cookie and a house special and a regular special and, fuck, if you want the house garbage cookie, then fucking say the house garbage cookie.”
“And the frozen peas?”
“My hand.”
“I bet you spent a lot of money on those frozen peas.”
“They’re a dollar each, John. That’s ten dollars.”
“You could buy two coffees with ten dollars.”
“Two coffees? Two fucking coffees? Where are you buying coffee, John? Are they serving it in fucking gold cups? Ten dollars, that’s like, I don’t know, almost a week of groceries.”
“Ten bucks? Come on. It’s half a hamburger, tops.”
“When I was living alone, I could spend sixty dollars a month on groceries and be fine.”
“So ten dollars isn’t quite a week. You’d need, what, fifteen dollars? And that would be fifteen bags of peas.”
“Don’t fucking do this right now.”
“Let’s make a shopping list. Fifteen dollars. I bet you bought a lot of dried beans, right?” Somers opened the drawer again, rooting around for a pen and a scrap of paper. “What else? Greek yogurt, maybe? No, too expensive. Bananas. I bet you bought a lot of bananas. How am I doing?”
One hand shoved back the long waves of dark hair that tumbled over his forehead. “The whole thing with Mitchell was shitty, ok? At the end, Jesus, he said—” He stopped, shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He turned and headed toward the living room again.
“Right now.”
Hazard stopped.
“I think you meant to say, you don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Hazard still hadn’t moved, but Somers was suddenly very aware of how much anger could be communicated while remaining entirely motionless.
“Is that right?” Somers asked.
“Don’t do this. Don’t poke me. Don’t tease me. I am not in the fucking mood.”
“Oh, right. I’ll just wait for one of your good-humor slots. Let’s see, 2019, 2020, oh, here. I think there’s a half hour in September of 2021. Can I pencil myself in? I’ll pencil Dulac in too; maybe this time, you can spend half an hour around him without breaking his nose.”
Hazard spun and came back to the counter, moving so fast that for a moment, Somers almost took a step back. He held his ground, however, and even managed an apologetic smile.
“That was a crappy thing to say,” Somers said. “Let’s calm down. Let’s get something to eat. And then let’s talk about today.”
“Yeah,” Hazard said, shoving the take-out menus so hard they fluttered up against the wall and drifted back down to the counter. He shoved them again. “Let’s order something. Hey, what sounds good?” He shoved the menus again. “What are you in the mood for, babe?”
“Stop it, Ree.”
With one hand, Hazard caught one of the menus. With the other, he swept the rest into the drawer and slammed it shut.
“How about pizza?”
“Jesus, what’s wrong? You saw Mitchell. Ok, I get it. I know that couldn’t have been easy. But you’re being a real dick right now. Talk to me; tell me what happened.”
“What? I’m in a good mood, right? You got me in a good mood, riling me up like that. Just like you always do. You just wanted to laugh and tease and play around. So let’s laugh. Let’s have a great time. You know what? You love pizza; let’s get pizza.”
“I need a break,” Somers said, pushing past him
Hazard caught his wrist and jerked him back toward the counter. “No, we’re going to order pizza and we’re going to have a fucking fantastic evening.”
“Get the fuck off me.”
“Oh? You’re not in the mood for pizza now? Huh. I wonder what that must feel like.”
“God, you are such an asshole sometimes.”
“You know what? You’re right. I’m an asshole. Not just sometimes; all of the time. So here’s an idea: instead of you and I getting pizza, why don’t you call your buddy Dulac and have pizza with him? You guys can have a fucking fantastic night, just like the last time he was here.”
Everything inside Somers became particulate: shifting, electric, like a swarm of bluebottle flies and a stroke of lightning all at the same time. He was suddenly very aware of the sound of his own breathing, of the bruising tightness of Hazard’s hand around his wrist. He reached down and peeled off Hazard’s fingers.
“Are you done?”
“Not even close. What the fuck is wrong with you, rolling over like that today in front of Cravens? That case is a fucking murder. Somebody killed Hoffmeister and got away with it. And just because Cravens is scared somebody’s going to can her ass, you don’t have to go along.”
“You want to talk about the case?”
“I—”
“You want to talk about my case? My goddamn case that you went off and fucking ruined because you can’t do one fucking thing I tell you? That’s what you want to talk about?”
“It was my case—”
“No, Ree. It was mine. I’m police. I’m the detective. You’re a consultant—”
“Here we go.”
“Yeah, here we fucking go. We could have wrapped up that case. We were close. We could have done it together. But I tell you to leave it for one night, to just hold off, and what do you do? Instead, you go out, you beat the shit out of our lead suspect—”
“I didn’t touch him.”
“Really? Why won’t you even talk about what happened then? Jesus, Ree. You’re a fucking terrible liar, ok?” Somers was shifting into fight mode, adrenaline opening all the floodgates, his lungs taking in more air, his vision narrowing so that Hazard filled his view. “You went out, against my direct order, and you get into shit with our lead suspect, and then what happens? The case goes sideways. Just like last time—”
“This is not like last time. I called you. I tried to—”
“You called me? Jesus fucking Christ, Ree. Listen to yourself. You weren’t supposed to be doing anything. You were supposed to be here. Calling me doesn’t make any difference. You can shit on me if you want. You can say I rolled over, tell me I’m bad police—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Don’t. Just don’t, Ree. You don’t have to insult my intelligence, ok? I know what you meant. But here’s the thing: you can say that stuff, and maybe you’re right. But it doesn’t change the fact that if you’d done what I told you, I’d still have a case.” Somers wanted to stop there; he knew it should stop there. But he heard the nasty little scoff escape him, heard himself talking even when he tried to pull back. “But I should h
ave known that’d be too much to ask from you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Move. I want some air.”
“You want air? Fuck what you want.” Hazard pressed in, trapping Somers between his body and the counter. “What in the fuck was that last comment supposed to mean?”
“You’re always in charge, Ree. You’re always making the decisions.” Somers’s eyes were hot, but he refused to turn away. “Fuck, I guess I should feel lucky I get to tag along, looking like a desperate fucking idiot, feeling fucking ridiculous, until you decide what you want to do with me.” And he laughed again. That laughter came out of the violent buzz inside Somers, the feeling that he was being shaken apart. He wanted to call it back, wanted to stop the rest of the words, but he couldn’t. “I guess I know how they all felt, Nico and the rest of them. Just crazy, you know? Fucking crazy, all of us making time while you try to decide if you’re going to give us your attention.”
Hazard reared back; his expression was wide and blank. Somers saw his opening and squeezed past him, heading for the bedroom.
A knock came at the front door. Just leave it, Somers thought. Just leave it. But then he thought of how it looked, how he was running away, and he couldn’t stand to give Hazard that kind of satisfaction. He turned toward the front of the house; Hazard’s footsteps came behind him.
When Somers threw open the door, he was surprised to see Noah. Tall, goofy Noah, his cheeks tinged red, his hands shoved in his pockets. On the sidewalk, Rebeca and three of the kids—Raquel, the oldest, Robbie, next in line, and Rocio, the youngest—were huddled against the cold, watching Noah like he’d rattled the lion’s cage for giggles.
“Uh,” Noah said. “Hi. Sorry to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting,” Somers said. “What’s up?”
“Oh, uh.” Noah looked back at his wife. “We were just walking by and thought maybe you guys would want to come over for dinner.”
Somers’s face heated; he could barely look Noah in the eyes. They had just been walking by. Just out for a walk. And heard . . . what? How much?
“You know,” Somers said, “I think we’re ok. Ree was just about to run some errands, I think, and I—”
