Reasonable doubt, p.16
Reasonable Doubt, page 16
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset Series
The flamingo O reappeared. “I’m so sorry. I took them home last night.”
“Really?” Hazard said, and Somers heard a dangerous, prickling heat in the man’s low voice. It made Somers smile. “Do you regularly take store security footage home?”
“No.” Her eyes never left Somers’s face. “You could stop by tonight to pick them up. Say, around seven?”
“No fucking chance,” Hazard said.
Somers had to fight a laugh. “We’ll let you know if we need those videos.”
“You can come by anytime, Officer.”
“Detective,” Hazard snapped.
She hummed a little assent and ran her tongue over those flamingo lips.
Sapphira followed them to the door, and she lounged against it, her robe sliding open to expose the top of her sagging bosom. “I forgot you two were faggots.”
“Sometimes I do too,” Somers said.
“Too bad.”
“Life’s full of disappointments.”
Sapphira barked a laugh. Her eyes drifted to the glass, studying the tourist stretch of Osage Beach. “You ever work in a casino?”
“No.”
“Let’s go,” Hazard said. “We don’t have time for this.”
“The thing about the casino is most girls, they want the tables with the whales. Big fish, you know.”
“Whales aren’t fish.”
“They think that one of those whales will just flip them a chip, ten thousand dollars, like something out of a movie. And sure, maybe it does happen somewhere. But most of those guys, they got rich by being smart with money, not by tipping the girl that brought them a scotch and soda.”
“Where are you from?” Hazard said. “Vegas?”
Again she ignored him. Her eyes moved to Somers, and he was unsettled by the stark emptiness of her expression. He’d seen pictures before. War. Children who had starved, who had fought, who had killed. Their eyes had looked like this. But only in pictures. And now this woman was staring at him, and all he could think was a picture, black and white, a girl splattered with mud and crouched at the side of a road as a tank rolled past.
“It’s not the whales, though. You want to find the right table. I’m not saying you take anything. You’ve got to get the right one. But it’s not the whales. It’s the guys who’ve got more money than normal. The ones who don’t know what to do with it. They want to look big, act big, live big. They’re never millionaires, but they tip like they are. That’s what most girls never figure out.” She pursed her lips, as though she might say more, and then nodded at the glass. “That old bird, she’s a believer.”
“So it seems,” Somers said.
“You know what I think?”
From outside, a car horn punctured the silence, followed by the shrieking laughter of children who raced by on the sidewalk. Sapphira didn’t seem to notice them. Her eyes were locked on Naomi.
“There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who really believes.”
PULL IN THERE,” Naomi said.
“He has eyes,” Hazard said. He couldn’t stop himself. The words popped out, and he knew how he sounded: childish, petulant, small. He hated this. But he just couldn’t stop.
As Somers guided the Interceptor into the Price Chopper parking lot, Hazard forced himself to take a breath. Getting heated didn’t help anything. Getting heated meant losing control. Losing control meant losing rational thought. Losing rational thought meant danger, big-time danger. Reason was Hazard’s secret weapon. He was bigger than he’d been as a boy, stronger. He had a gun. But it was reason, thought, analysis that had always saved him. At the Valley of Elah Conversion Center, cold, logical reason had been the only thing that held him together.
But it was hard to hold onto reason when he spent his day around crazy people. Part of that was—
—that spandex, the way she kept flicking that damn spandex, the fabric thrumming across her breasts—
—Naomi, and the old woman’s craziness that infected everything. She didn’t talk like a crazy person all the time, but that only made it worse. One minute she’d be clear-headed. One minute she’d make a perfectly sound observation. And the next she’d be rattling on—
—the spandex snapping across those huge breasts, and Somers looking like a teenage boy throwing his first boner, staring at those breasts, like they were fucking cantaloupes, like they were fucking cantaloupes in a fucking spandex net—
—about Brother Jeshua, about how wonderful he was, about how he’d come back from the dead, about the Bible, about any goddamn thing. And it was getting into Clyde’s head. Hazard could see that. The boy, if Hazard didn’t do something, would go running straight back to Walden’s cult, and Hazard wasn’t about to let that happen.
The Interceptor rolled to a stop. Somers cracked the windows; fresh air, which had warmed over the course of the day, carried the smell of frying chicken. Motor oil splashed rainbows across the Price Chopper’s parking lot.
“Where did you set up your table?” Hazard said.
“Right there,” Somers said, pointing to a table just outside the Price Chopper’s doors. Brother Paul, red-faced and square and built like something Soviet and meant to last through a nuclear war, manned a picnic table covered with baked goods. “He doesn’t look like he’s doing much business.”
Naomi made a faint noise of surprise. “You were right. He does have eyes.”
And somehow, the fact that it was funny only made Hazard angrier.
“I’m going to check with the store manager,” Somers said.
Hazard reached for the door.
“You’d better stay here,” Somers said. “Keep an eye on these two.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“No. I’ll go.”
Somers’s grin was like a flashbang, and by the time Hazard had recovered from it, the blond man was already trotting up the parking lot.
“Bastard,” Hazard called after him.
Somers, smiling, waved.
“Do you believe in anything?” Naomi said.
Through the windshield, Hazard studied the parking lot. The wind flattened a paper bag against the shopping cart corral.
“I knew you didn’t.”
“You don’t know jack shit about me.”
“I know what I see.”
Flapping in the wind, pinned against the corral’s sign, the paper bag tried to get free.
“I see a man who has rejected everything he doesn’t understand. I see a man who sees the world through a thimble and thinks he sees everything. I see a man who determined to hate and fear anyone who thinks differently than he does.”
Caught in a sudden gust, the paper bag tore free from the corral and lifted towards the sky. A second gust of air smacked it back to the asphalt, where it gave a few feeble twitches before it went still.
“Just because you haven’t felt God touch your heart yet doesn’t mean that He never will. One day, He will reach out, and his touch will be fire, and you’ll never be the same.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.”
“You take refuge in cutting words.”
On the seat next to Naomi, Clyde shifted, wrapping his arms around his legs. “Sister Naomi, he’s not bad. Can’t you just—”
“No. He needs to hear this. He needs to hear that his fantasies—”
“Fantasies?” The word ripped its way out of Hazard’s mouth. He couldn’t have stopped it; he didn’t really want to. “You want to talk about fantasies?”
“Let’s just all be quiet,” Clyde said. “Nobody’s got to yell.”
“I’ll yell if I goddamn want to yell. And if you want to talk about fantasies, let’s talk about yours. You’re an old woman. How old? Seventy? Seventy-five? Old, and you must be lonely, desperate for attention, for belonging, for security. And you must not have the brains of a dead cat, either, because you let John Oscar Walden hook you and land you. Even now, even after he’s dead, you’re still prattling on about how great he was. Great? He was fucking teenage girls. Does that sound like your Messiah? I’m glad he’s dead, you understand? A bastard like that, he deserved to be stabbed. For what he did to those girls. For what he did to Clyde.”
Naomi’s clouded eyes shot towards the boy, and he shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything, I wouldn’t—”
“Even after all the shit that you put Clyde through, he still wants to go back to you. You know what that’s called? That’s called programming. Brainwashing. That’s the kind of sick stuff you’re involved in. And you don’t care. All you care about is Walden. You want to talk about how he’s going to come back to life? Fuck him. If he comes back, I’ll kill him again myself. I believe that man deserves to have his head blown off. How’s that for belief?”
Hazard’s chest threatened to collapse; he needed air, and it wasn’t coming in fast enough. Sweat prickled along his back, and his collar was too tight, the shirt too small.
“Did you hear him?” Naomi said, speaking softly to Clyde now. “We told you, didn’t we? We said that these men would be the same. They want to hurt us. They want to destroy us. They are Herod’s soldiers slavering for slaughter.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
Clyde flinched at Hazard’s voice, drawing in on himself, trying to cram the whole of himself beneath his seat.
Somers tugged open the door and paused. Tropical blue eyes flicked from Hazard to Naomi to Clyde. “What happened?”
Face heating, Hazard shook his head. “Nothing.”
Somers swung himself into the Interceptor, shoved the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it.
“Well?” Hazard said.
“Yeah, they were here Saturday. All day.”
“As I told you,” Naomi said.
“What’s going on?” Somers asked in a low voice.
Hazard said, “Another one of them was in St. Elizabeth Saturday. Jesse. He was proselytizing.”
“Evangelizing,” Naomi said. “Proselytizing is a false and hollow witness. It intends only the glory of the world.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Hazard muttered again.
“Where was he evangelizing?” Somers asked. “Was he knocking doors? That kind of thing? Like a missionary?”
“A godly woman has opened her home to us. Brother Jesse spends his days with her, welcoming those who are interested.”
“Do you know where she lives?” Somers said.
Naomi nodded.
“Let’s go, then.”
The Interceptor rolled forward, and as Somers turned towards the street, the tires crushed the paper bag Hazard had been tracking. Hazard knew how it felt.
THE HOUSE WAS A MOLDERING GINGERBREAD CONSTRUCTION: turrets and pinched windows and decorative woodwork that had gone green and fuzzy after decades of Midwest humidity. Through the mossy scum, Hazard thought he spied a face. Yes. It was a face. A face, and a halo, and wings. An angel. Hazard fought a groan, and then he saw that there was more. The woodwork stretched above the porch, and it had something else, something strange about the angel’s mouth. Something long, its shape difficult to discern through the green crud.
“Is that what I think it is?” Somers said. His cheeks had pinkened, and his eyes were sparking.
“Yes,” Naomi said from her seat. “Yes, that is one of the four angels sent to preach the gospel, just as John foresaw in the Apocalypse.”
“John probably didn’t foresee the need for bleach,” Hazard said. Then he noticed that Somers’s face had only grown redder. “What did you think it was?”
“An angel.”
“You thought it was an angel giving a blow job.”
“I did not!”
“This is the most obscene sacrilege,” Naomi said, and Hazard could tell she was just starting to turn her crank. “To say such a thing—”
“That’s ok,” Hazard said, nudging Somers. “I did too. Although I’d hate to be that guy; that angel’s biting down hard.”
Clyde squeaked a laugh, and then he clapped his hands over his mouth and sank down again.
“From Gentiles,” Naomi said, “from Philistines, I would expect this kind of talk. From Herod’s soldiers, who would murder children and pave the streets with their skulls.”
“Too slippery,” Hazard said.
“But from you?” Naomi turned away from Clyde. “Perhaps you really are lost to us, just as Brother Jeshua said.”
Tears gathered in Clyde’s eyes, and he dashed them away with both hands. “I didn’t mean to laugh, Sister Naomi. I didn’t. I just—what he said, it just caught me by surprise, that’s all. I’ve seen that angel before, and one time I thought maybe—”
“I’m very disappointed in you,” Naomi said. The Interceptor rolled to a stop, and Naomi flung open her door and slid out of the SUV. “And Brother Jeshua is too.”
The old woman couldn’t see them, but fresh tears marked Clyde’s face, and he buried his head in his elbow.
“Clyde,” Hazard said.
The boy shook his head furiously.
Somers, touching Hazard’s arm, said, “Let him be for a minute.”
It was bullshit. The boy didn’t need to be left alone. He needed someone to shake all the cobwebs and horse dung out of his brain. He needed someone to point out that Brother Jeshua was a fraud and Sister Naomi was a judgmental old bitch. He needed someone to show him that logic and reason and analysis could prove those things, that he didn’t have to kowtow to stale superstition about an invisible, unknowable God and his minions who just happened to have all their personal prejudices conveniently supported by the God they parroted. Hazard twisted in his seat. He’d just lay it out slowly for Clyde, and the boy would realize—
“Ow,” Hazard said, shaking his arm. “Why the hell did you pinch me?”
“Because you’re being stubborn. Leave him alone for now.”
And with that, Somers got out of the SUV.
Hazard followed his partner to the gingerbread door, where Sister Naomi was already waiting. A moment later, it swung open. The woman who stood inside looked even older than Sister Naomi. She was ancient by any measure. Her wispy white hair exposed a scalp speckled with age. Her shoulders had practically melted into her body, and time had pared away her flesh, leaving only skin taut over bone. When she saw them, though, she smiled, and something about that smile, well, fifty years ago, Hazard guessed that middle-aged men had fought their pissing contests to take this woman for an early dinner, and seventy years ago, Hazard guessed that a hell of a lot of boys had knocked out a hell of a lot of teeth for a chance at that smile.
“Sister Naomi,” the old woman said. “What are you doing out here? I heard about Brother Jeshua. Terrible. Just terrible.”
“He will rise again.”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“He is the reborn son of God. Do not doubt. Only believe that his power is great enough to break the bonds of death.”
“Of course.” The old woman’s face wrinkled into a frown. “But don’t you think he might have stopped that man who killed him before he managed to do the job?”
“That kind of question is one that I would expect from the faithless. It is not worthy of you.”
“I’m so sorry. Really, I am. I only meant—now who are these gentlemen? Oh, my. Now he is lovely, isn’t he?”
“I’m Detective Somerset, and—”
“Yes, yes.” She batted at Somers with her hand as though shooing a fly. “Yes, look at him. Absolutely magnificent.” She took a tottering step and glanced up at Hazard. “I suppose you get all the ladies.”
Hazard glanced at Somers helplessly.
Somers, the bastard, started to laugh.
“If I were twenty years younger, I’d make a pass at you myself. Not now, you understand. For your sake. I worry about these younger men. I just don’t think they have the stamina our boys did back when I was growing up. They worked outside, you see. Stamina.” She tapped Hazard’s chest. “I’m afraid I’d give you a heart attack. I’d wear you right out.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Hazard managed.
“She’s making a good point,” Somers said, and the miserable fuck had managed to make his face perfectly serious. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your stamina. I have some of those same concerns.”
Tonight, Hazard thought. Tonight he would kill John-Henry Somerset. Kill him dead, right there in the apartment. Dead.
Laughing, the old woman took Hazard by the hand and tugged him towards the house. “I’m Sirkaa. Sirkaa Hastback. You come right inside. Sister Naomi and the others are trying to cure my crooked ways, but I figure there’s nothing crooked about sex if you’re doing it right. Why one time, there was a lovely man, about your size, who came through on his milk route, and I’d been practicing a certain move—”
“Sirkaa,” Hazard said, the word practically strangling him. “That’s a Finnish name.”
“Yes,” she said, picking up the thread as easily as she dropped the other. “My parents were Finns. They came here almost a hundred years ago. Do you believe it? They’re dead, of course. But Papa worked very hard. And Mama did too. Of course, Mama worked much harder after Papa was dead. And I’m not talking about housework.”
Without slowing, Sirkaa led them into the moldering heap of the gingerbread house. Inside, the house showed signs of care. Ornaments and trinkets and furniture filled every available space: glass and ceramic and porcelain figurines; framed paintings and photographs; candles that smelled like cinnamon and fir; wicker cages holding bird’s nests of iridescent shredded plastic; pewter dishes in need of scouring; on and on like that. On the wall, a clock marked half-past nine; it looked like it hadn’t been set since Reagan. Hanging from the ceiling were more of the ornaments, most of them shaped like birds or decorated with birds. A narrow aisle of carpeting squeezed between overstuffed sofas and chairs. It was hard to breathe in the cramped space, and that was only in part due to the cloyingly thick smell of cinnamon.
Sirkaa Hastback settled herself on a settee with worn red velvet upholstery. She crossed her legs at the ankle, and the gesture was markedly proper, ladylike, and Hazard saw in her face, in her folded hands, in the peacock shawl fanning across her skirt, that Sirkaa still thought of herself as a lady, and that thought amazed him. Not because of her words but because of her age. She was just so old, and he wondered what that felt like, that immense age, from the inside. He wondered if it was cavernous: a kind of shell, echoing and vast, that grew with every year. He didn’t feel it yet, not yet, not at—
