Final orders, p.21
Final Orders, page 21
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand Series
The spurt of humor, though—which Somers had a way of conjuring up to break even the worst tension—ran dry, and something black settled over Hazard as he watched children hauling themselves up the broken side of the bluff and then launching themselves out into the water. Water that might be too shallow. They could break an arm or a leg. They could break their necks. They could hit their head and lose consciousness, and the river would drag them down and away, and nobody in this hellscape would notice or care until it was too late—if ever.
“He’s going to be fine,” Somers said, barely loud enough for Hazard to hear over the party’s din. He squeezed Hazard’s wrist, and Hazard realized his fingers were white where he was clutching Somers’s arm. As Hazard relaxed his grip, Somers offered a reassuring smile. “He’s upset, and he made a bad choice—”
“One bad choice, John? One? Because—”
He turned to face his husband and processed the whine of a four-wheeler’s engine too late. Somers let out a sharp cry and yanked Hazard to the side. A wall of air displaced by the four-wheeler’s passage slapped his back, and someone shouted, “Move, asswipe!” and someone else shouted, “Coming through!” and a third person squealed with laughter.
But all of that was registering at the back of Hazard’s consciousness because he and Somers were both off balance now, and the force of Somers’s pull, which had probably saved Hazard’s life or at least spared him serious injury, sent both of them toppling back into a mud pit. The landing was squishy, but firmer than Hazard had expected, and the cold mud oozed under his elbow and shoulder and back as he rolled into the fall. He ended up face-first in the muck, and he sat up, blowing air through his nose and wiping at his eyes.
“God damn it,” Somers said next to him. He had mud everywhere: staining his clothes, smeared across his face, even spiking his hair. “I just bought these jeans.”
“I didn’t see a receipt—”
“Ree—Colt!”
A part of Hazard’s brain floated the possibility that his husband, whom he loved dearly and who was, Hazard knew, perhaps as close to perfect as a human being got and indisputably much too good for him and who had, nonetheless, once spent eighty dollars on a pair of jeans, might be making a ploy to distract him. Then Hazard craned his head and saw his son on the lip of the bluff.
A four-wheeler was trying to climb the side of the bluff, and its headlights beat against Colt like a pulse. The boy’s face was strangely unfamiliar to Hazard, slack with whatever intoxicants he’d ingested. He’d hooked a jug of moonshine with one index finger. Under his other arm, he was carrying a blowup doll that looked from a distance like a Roswell grey. Colt was wearing what appeared to be a cowboy hat, and a line of mud striped the side of his neck, visible as he turned his head as though searching for something. He looked older. He looked very far away.
Then the four-wheeler’s driver got greedy and hit the accelerator. The vehicle lurched a few feet up and reached a critical tipping point and began to tumble backward. The driver threw himself free, and the four-wheeler did an almost cartoonish cartwheel back toward the bottom of the bluff. It lay where it fell, the engine idling, and as the clatter faded, Hazard could pick out the drunk-ass peckerwood driver laughing.
“If Colt jumps and gets himself killed,” Hazard heard himself saying, “I’m going to murder him.”
Somers opened his mouth, probably to point out the problem in that sentence, but before he could say anything, the age-old battle cry of the beer-brave white boy came from behind Hazard.
“Hey!”
Hazard’s body reacted automatically, all his training on top of good instincts, and he was already ducking and pulling back as he turned. The first punch missed him by a mile. The guy had a mud-matted beard and small eyes buried in fleshy folds. He was almost as big as Hazard, and his t-shirt said I MIGHT BE WRONG, BUT I DOUBT IT. He was already throwing the other punch, all the power generated in the shoulder, the blow telegraphed as soon as he started winding up. Hazard took it on the arm and, in exchange, hit the son of a bitch under the jaw. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he slithered down into the mud.
“Stop!” Somers shouted. “Police!”
The second man either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Now Hazard could make out what the improvised weapon was: an ancient dirt bike fender that had been repurposed—in a double-down on creative moves—as a beer-bong hat, with cans and tubing strapped on either side of the fender. And, now, for the hat trick, repurposed yet again as a weapon. The air whistled as the man swung the fender through the air. Somers stepped back, which turned into a stumble as the mud sucked at his sneakers. The man swung again. He caught Somers in the side, and it might have done more damage except Somers was already leaning into the stumble, and the fender skipped along his ribs instead of colliding directly.
“You stay away—” the man with the fender began.
That was when Somers came up and threw a handful of mud in his face. The guy with the fender let out a shocked, wet, muddy noise right before Somers clubbed him twice on the side of the head, and he went down.
Mud pasting his clothes to his skin, Hazard sucked in air, his chest rising and falling. He pushed wet hair out of his face. Somers’s waterlogged tee looked painted on, and his hands hung loosely at his sides, tattoos and veins cording his forearms. He looked over. The easygoing buddy was gone. This guy, the one looking back at Hazard, mud spattering his cheek, his pupils huge—this guy would fuck you up.
“Ok?” Somers asked in a low voice.
It startled Hazard out of the moment, and he nodded. “You?”
“Fucking fuckwads,” Somers growled. Then he shook his head. “Come on.”
As they climbed the side of the bluff, Somers had his phone to his ear. Hazard didn’t know who Somers had called at the sheriff’s department, but by the time Somers had finished, they were the proud owners of a freshly ripped asshole. Then Somers called back to the station. As they crested the bluff, Somers pocketed the phone in his soaked jeans, shaking his head as he did so. “They’re coming.”
A line of kids were queued up to take their turn at the jump—teenagers mostly, a lot of the boys shirtless or, even more daring, stripped down to their trunks or shorts, a lot of the girls in sheer tops translucent with water, and all of them laughing and looking and trying not to look like they were looking and touching and trying to look like it was on accident. Hazard recognized several of them, some even by name.
“So help you God, Thomas,” he said as he passed one of Colt’s friends, who was trying to hide behind a cluster of other teens. “Put on a fucking shirt.”
Thomas tried to get even smaller behind two girls Hazard didn’t recognize, but the boy must have realized it wasn’t working—or maybe he just wanted to cover all his bases because after a moment he said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Hazard. Um, how are you tonight, Mr. Hazard?”
“Jesus Christ,” Hazard muttered as they moved up the line.
Somers shook his head.
They found Colt at the edge of the bluff, and up close, Hazard recognized the cowboy hat as Ashley’s. Sometime during their climb, Colt had lost the blowup alien. He wasn’t in line for the leap; instead, he was pacing back and forth, his motions agitated in contrast to the loose blankness of his face as he stared down, surveying the throng of bodies below them. When Hazard got close enough, he could smell the shine on him.
“Give me that,” Hazard said, catching the boy’s arm with one hand and taking the jug with the other. He fought the urge to shake Colt. What he wanted right then, what part of him wanted anyway, was to scare Colt. To terrify him, the way he had terrified Hazard. “What are you on?”
“Pops?” He blinked drunkenly, his pupils adjusting slowly as he tried to take Hazard in.
“Colt, are you ok?” Somers asked. “Is it just alcohol, or did you—”
“Taking a swing at a fucking police officer?” The words boiled up before Hazard could put a lid on them. “Hitting a fucking sworn officer of the law? Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s assault on a special victim, Colt. That’s a felony. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Ree—”
But Colt burst into sloppy, ragged sobs, and if Hazard hadn’t been gripping his arm, he would have fallen. Hazard had to drop the jug to catch Colt, and the boy kept sobbing. “I looked for him. I looked and I looked. I said I wouldn’t leave him. I had to come up here. I had to see if I could find him because nobody would listen to me. Nobody would help me.”
“Bubs, what are you talking about? Leave who?”
“He’s gone.” Colt seemed to make a massive effort to pull himself together, but it only lasted long enough for a few words before he dissolved again. “Ash. Somebody took Ash.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MAY 17
SUNDAY
1:15 AM
SOMERS BROKE TINY PIECES from the rim of the foam cup. White particles fell to float in the coffee, but it didn’t matter; it was burned as shit, and he wasn’t going to drink it anyway. He was too wired already, his whole body jittery. He’d felt like this before games, a kind of galvanizing current that he couldn’t find the breaker for. He’d felt it at times on patrol, in Smithfield: before a big bust, before taking down a door. And he’d felt it, of course, as a detective. It had run through his body, making him twist and turn and arch his back until he’d convinced himself it was tetanus, the night before Emery Hazard had returned to Wahredua.
The Dore County Sheriff’s Department, in the small hours, felt like something out of a Stephen King movie: the old linoleum; the flickering fluorescents; a bored-looking woman staffed the desk, buttoned into a Sheriff’s Department shirt that was too small for her, her hair in a droopy permanent. They had a Keurig station set up behind the desk—STAFF ONLY, a hand-lettered sign announced—and knock-off Dunkin’ Donuts pods marketed, inventively, as Morning Donuts. The woman, whom Somers hadn’t met before, either because she worked nights or because she was new or both, was doing her best to ignore Hazard and Somers. She was rifling through a partially crushed banker’s box on which someone had written, SEXUAL HARASSMENT COMPLAINTS—STICK IT IN HERE.
After the Wahredua PD had arrived en masse, the rave had broken up, fracturing into three primary groups: the ones who screamed and panicked and ran; the ones who left, but more slowly, in a grudging retreat; and the ones who for one reason or another had the bad luck to get picked up. By that point, deputies from the sheriff’s department had started to reach the development, and because they’d been in the sheriff’s jurisdiction, everybody had ended up back here. Everybody except Ashley. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody had seen him leave. His truck was still parked at the abandoned development. The only thing to do was wait and see how the sheriff was going to handle things.
As though summoned, Sheriff Engels emerged from the corridor that led deeper into the building. He was a thickset older man, his silver hair shining with pomade, with trim white mustache. He’d perfected, sometime in the last forty-odd years, the inscrutable expression that he wore now.
“John-Henry,” he said when he reached them, nodding at Somers. “Emery.”
“Busy night,” Somers said.
“Where is Colt?” Hazard asked.
“He’s all right. We put the kids in the holding cells. The rest of them, any that weren’t minors, we had to clear out some cells in the county jail. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a full house quite like this.”
“I want to see him.”
The sheriff nodded. Then he looked at Somers, and he tucked his thumbs behind his belt.
Somers sighed. “What are we talking about here?”
“Possession.”
It was one of those technicalities that lawyers loved; the fact that the alcohol was inside Colt’s body was a form of possession, which was illegal for minors. It was a misdemeanor. Somers nodded.
“No,” Hazard said.
Sheriff Engels glanced at him.
“Are you charging the rest of them?”
“Of course.”
“This is ridiculous. Colt’s a good kid; he made a mistake—”
“Ree,” Somers said, “could I talk to you for a minute?”
“No. I don’t understand why we’re even having this conversation. Both of you have let this kind of thing slide with nothing but a warning for other kids. Now it’s my son, and—”
“Emery, I’m doing you a favor by not including assault on a special victim. My deputies—”
“If your deputies weren’t shit at their jobs, it never would have happened.”
“That’s enough,” Somers said, taking Hazard by the elbow. “Dennis, give us a minute, please?”
Engels nodded. Towing Hazard behind him, Somers made his way to the vestibule at the front of the building. When the doors had closed behind them, Somers turned to face his husband.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Hazard said. “He’s doing it because he wants to look tough and because he doesn’t want anyone to say he was soft on the chief of police’s son. All he cares about is the next fucking election. And you’re going to let him do it because you’re worried about looking good as chief of police and because of your father’s next fucking election. And neither of you cares about the fact that we’re talking about my son!”
The last words were a shout that reverberated inside the vestibule.
Somers pressed the tips of his fingers against his thighs. When he spoke, he could hear fissures running through his voice like fresh ice under too much weight. “Our son.”
Hazard tried to meet his gaze. Pushing his hair back, he looked away.
“Say it.”
“Our son,” Hazard bit out.
“I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to pretend you didn’t say what you just said because I know the last few days have been hard and because we’re both in a weird place right now. So, instead, I’m going to ask: what about all that talk about holding Colt responsible and making sure he grew up knowing right from wrong, doing our best so that he wouldn’t turn out like the messed up, self-absorbed pieces of shit we’ve both seen floating around town? What about all of that, Ree?”
On the other side of the glass doors, the night was mothball lights and velvet. Hazard stared out into the grainy haze. His throat worked once, and he put his hands on his hips, but he stood slightly hunched, as though favoring a wound.
“What if they take him?”
Somers sighed and touched his arm. When Hazard didn’t pull away, Somers drew him into a hug and kissed the side of his head.
“Come on,” Somers said. “Let’s get this over with.”
When they reached the sheriff, he was reading something on his phone, cheaters perched on his nose. He glanced up, removed the glasses, and folded them slowly.
“We’d like to take Colt,” Hazard said. “I’m going to post bail.”
Engels nodded. “Could it wait a minute?”
“I apologize. I was in the wrong; you were only doing your job.”
A smile flashed under the white mustache, and Engels shook his head. “That’s not what I meant, although I appreciate it. It’s not clear whether we’ve got a missing persons case on our hands or not; nobody can find Ashley Boone or his girlfriend, which means—well, you both know what that means. But your son was worried about his friend enough that he fought off a deputy, and I think Colt has good instincts.”
“I suppose the constant sneaking out and rule breaking and, now, drinking are evidence of those good instincts,” Hazard said sourly.
Engels’s smile appeared again. “Good instincts about people, I should say. I know that I might be jumping the gun. I know Ashley might be with his girlfriend, and they might sneak home tonight, and tomorrow, the whole thing will be an embarrassment that’ll get funnier with time. But—”
“But it doesn’t feel right,” Somers said.
Engels sighed and shook his head.
“There were a lot of people there last night,” Hazard said. “I understand that it will take significant manpower to interview all of them, especially since many of them won’t know Ashley. I appreciate that it’s a logistical strain for your department. But to be frank, John and I would accomplish more continuing our own investigation, rather than taking statements from hungover ravers.”
Before Engels could speak, Somers knew: the pieces came together in that intuitive place in his brain that had always served him best. “You want us to talk to Evan.”
Hazard scowled at him before turning to look at the sheriff.
Engels nodded.
“Why?” Hazard asked. Then he answered himself. “He attacked Theo. He was involved in an altercation with Ashley at school. He has a personal connection to Loretta Ames and a reason to want her dead. It’s his property, or his family’s, and therefore it’s likely that he knew the area better than most people, including routes and places where he could approach Ashley unseen or, alternatively, sequester him. What else?”
“That’s about it,” Engels said. “And the fact that he invited everyone out there. Including Ashley. We figured that much out from talking to the kids.”
“You think it was a trap.”
“I don’t know, Emery. I think I’d like to talk to Evan Pawloski a little more thoroughly. And I thought John-Henry might join me because, of course, the boy is involved in the murder investigation.”
Somers nodded.
“We’ve got him set up in the interview room. Emery, you can watch from in there.” Engels indicated an unmarked door. “Chief?”
“Ready,” Somers said.
Somers had been in this interview room before—for joint investigations with the sheriff’s department, as well as for various personal reasons, namely, his husband and his son. The two-way mirror was streaky with cheap cleaner. A flattened paper cone water cup was trapped under the leg of a chair. Since the last time Somers had been in here, someone had gouged a scoreboard into the table, most likely with a contraband knife, although God only knew how they’d gotten away with it. The scoreboard was ASS VS TITS, and tits were winning. The closed-up space held an unpleasant smell that Somers associated with either someone needing Pepto-Bismol or, possibly even worse, a microwaved meal.
“He’s going to be fine,” Somers said, barely loud enough for Hazard to hear over the party’s din. He squeezed Hazard’s wrist, and Hazard realized his fingers were white where he was clutching Somers’s arm. As Hazard relaxed his grip, Somers offered a reassuring smile. “He’s upset, and he made a bad choice—”
“One bad choice, John? One? Because—”
He turned to face his husband and processed the whine of a four-wheeler’s engine too late. Somers let out a sharp cry and yanked Hazard to the side. A wall of air displaced by the four-wheeler’s passage slapped his back, and someone shouted, “Move, asswipe!” and someone else shouted, “Coming through!” and a third person squealed with laughter.
But all of that was registering at the back of Hazard’s consciousness because he and Somers were both off balance now, and the force of Somers’s pull, which had probably saved Hazard’s life or at least spared him serious injury, sent both of them toppling back into a mud pit. The landing was squishy, but firmer than Hazard had expected, and the cold mud oozed under his elbow and shoulder and back as he rolled into the fall. He ended up face-first in the muck, and he sat up, blowing air through his nose and wiping at his eyes.
“God damn it,” Somers said next to him. He had mud everywhere: staining his clothes, smeared across his face, even spiking his hair. “I just bought these jeans.”
“I didn’t see a receipt—”
“Ree—Colt!”
A part of Hazard’s brain floated the possibility that his husband, whom he loved dearly and who was, Hazard knew, perhaps as close to perfect as a human being got and indisputably much too good for him and who had, nonetheless, once spent eighty dollars on a pair of jeans, might be making a ploy to distract him. Then Hazard craned his head and saw his son on the lip of the bluff.
A four-wheeler was trying to climb the side of the bluff, and its headlights beat against Colt like a pulse. The boy’s face was strangely unfamiliar to Hazard, slack with whatever intoxicants he’d ingested. He’d hooked a jug of moonshine with one index finger. Under his other arm, he was carrying a blowup doll that looked from a distance like a Roswell grey. Colt was wearing what appeared to be a cowboy hat, and a line of mud striped the side of his neck, visible as he turned his head as though searching for something. He looked older. He looked very far away.
Then the four-wheeler’s driver got greedy and hit the accelerator. The vehicle lurched a few feet up and reached a critical tipping point and began to tumble backward. The driver threw himself free, and the four-wheeler did an almost cartoonish cartwheel back toward the bottom of the bluff. It lay where it fell, the engine idling, and as the clatter faded, Hazard could pick out the drunk-ass peckerwood driver laughing.
“If Colt jumps and gets himself killed,” Hazard heard himself saying, “I’m going to murder him.”
Somers opened his mouth, probably to point out the problem in that sentence, but before he could say anything, the age-old battle cry of the beer-brave white boy came from behind Hazard.
“Hey!”
Hazard’s body reacted automatically, all his training on top of good instincts, and he was already ducking and pulling back as he turned. The first punch missed him by a mile. The guy had a mud-matted beard and small eyes buried in fleshy folds. He was almost as big as Hazard, and his t-shirt said I MIGHT BE WRONG, BUT I DOUBT IT. He was already throwing the other punch, all the power generated in the shoulder, the blow telegraphed as soon as he started winding up. Hazard took it on the arm and, in exchange, hit the son of a bitch under the jaw. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he slithered down into the mud.
“Stop!” Somers shouted. “Police!”
The second man either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Now Hazard could make out what the improvised weapon was: an ancient dirt bike fender that had been repurposed—in a double-down on creative moves—as a beer-bong hat, with cans and tubing strapped on either side of the fender. And, now, for the hat trick, repurposed yet again as a weapon. The air whistled as the man swung the fender through the air. Somers stepped back, which turned into a stumble as the mud sucked at his sneakers. The man swung again. He caught Somers in the side, and it might have done more damage except Somers was already leaning into the stumble, and the fender skipped along his ribs instead of colliding directly.
“You stay away—” the man with the fender began.
That was when Somers came up and threw a handful of mud in his face. The guy with the fender let out a shocked, wet, muddy noise right before Somers clubbed him twice on the side of the head, and he went down.
Mud pasting his clothes to his skin, Hazard sucked in air, his chest rising and falling. He pushed wet hair out of his face. Somers’s waterlogged tee looked painted on, and his hands hung loosely at his sides, tattoos and veins cording his forearms. He looked over. The easygoing buddy was gone. This guy, the one looking back at Hazard, mud spattering his cheek, his pupils huge—this guy would fuck you up.
“Ok?” Somers asked in a low voice.
It startled Hazard out of the moment, and he nodded. “You?”
“Fucking fuckwads,” Somers growled. Then he shook his head. “Come on.”
As they climbed the side of the bluff, Somers had his phone to his ear. Hazard didn’t know who Somers had called at the sheriff’s department, but by the time Somers had finished, they were the proud owners of a freshly ripped asshole. Then Somers called back to the station. As they crested the bluff, Somers pocketed the phone in his soaked jeans, shaking his head as he did so. “They’re coming.”
A line of kids were queued up to take their turn at the jump—teenagers mostly, a lot of the boys shirtless or, even more daring, stripped down to their trunks or shorts, a lot of the girls in sheer tops translucent with water, and all of them laughing and looking and trying not to look like they were looking and touching and trying to look like it was on accident. Hazard recognized several of them, some even by name.
“So help you God, Thomas,” he said as he passed one of Colt’s friends, who was trying to hide behind a cluster of other teens. “Put on a fucking shirt.”
Thomas tried to get even smaller behind two girls Hazard didn’t recognize, but the boy must have realized it wasn’t working—or maybe he just wanted to cover all his bases because after a moment he said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Hazard. Um, how are you tonight, Mr. Hazard?”
“Jesus Christ,” Hazard muttered as they moved up the line.
Somers shook his head.
They found Colt at the edge of the bluff, and up close, Hazard recognized the cowboy hat as Ashley’s. Sometime during their climb, Colt had lost the blowup alien. He wasn’t in line for the leap; instead, he was pacing back and forth, his motions agitated in contrast to the loose blankness of his face as he stared down, surveying the throng of bodies below them. When Hazard got close enough, he could smell the shine on him.
“Give me that,” Hazard said, catching the boy’s arm with one hand and taking the jug with the other. He fought the urge to shake Colt. What he wanted right then, what part of him wanted anyway, was to scare Colt. To terrify him, the way he had terrified Hazard. “What are you on?”
“Pops?” He blinked drunkenly, his pupils adjusting slowly as he tried to take Hazard in.
“Colt, are you ok?” Somers asked. “Is it just alcohol, or did you—”
“Taking a swing at a fucking police officer?” The words boiled up before Hazard could put a lid on them. “Hitting a fucking sworn officer of the law? Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s assault on a special victim, Colt. That’s a felony. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Ree—”
But Colt burst into sloppy, ragged sobs, and if Hazard hadn’t been gripping his arm, he would have fallen. Hazard had to drop the jug to catch Colt, and the boy kept sobbing. “I looked for him. I looked and I looked. I said I wouldn’t leave him. I had to come up here. I had to see if I could find him because nobody would listen to me. Nobody would help me.”
“Bubs, what are you talking about? Leave who?”
“He’s gone.” Colt seemed to make a massive effort to pull himself together, but it only lasted long enough for a few words before he dissolved again. “Ash. Somebody took Ash.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MAY 17
SUNDAY
1:15 AM
SOMERS BROKE TINY PIECES from the rim of the foam cup. White particles fell to float in the coffee, but it didn’t matter; it was burned as shit, and he wasn’t going to drink it anyway. He was too wired already, his whole body jittery. He’d felt like this before games, a kind of galvanizing current that he couldn’t find the breaker for. He’d felt it at times on patrol, in Smithfield: before a big bust, before taking down a door. And he’d felt it, of course, as a detective. It had run through his body, making him twist and turn and arch his back until he’d convinced himself it was tetanus, the night before Emery Hazard had returned to Wahredua.
The Dore County Sheriff’s Department, in the small hours, felt like something out of a Stephen King movie: the old linoleum; the flickering fluorescents; a bored-looking woman staffed the desk, buttoned into a Sheriff’s Department shirt that was too small for her, her hair in a droopy permanent. They had a Keurig station set up behind the desk—STAFF ONLY, a hand-lettered sign announced—and knock-off Dunkin’ Donuts pods marketed, inventively, as Morning Donuts. The woman, whom Somers hadn’t met before, either because she worked nights or because she was new or both, was doing her best to ignore Hazard and Somers. She was rifling through a partially crushed banker’s box on which someone had written, SEXUAL HARASSMENT COMPLAINTS—STICK IT IN HERE.
After the Wahredua PD had arrived en masse, the rave had broken up, fracturing into three primary groups: the ones who screamed and panicked and ran; the ones who left, but more slowly, in a grudging retreat; and the ones who for one reason or another had the bad luck to get picked up. By that point, deputies from the sheriff’s department had started to reach the development, and because they’d been in the sheriff’s jurisdiction, everybody had ended up back here. Everybody except Ashley. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody had seen him leave. His truck was still parked at the abandoned development. The only thing to do was wait and see how the sheriff was going to handle things.
As though summoned, Sheriff Engels emerged from the corridor that led deeper into the building. He was a thickset older man, his silver hair shining with pomade, with trim white mustache. He’d perfected, sometime in the last forty-odd years, the inscrutable expression that he wore now.
“John-Henry,” he said when he reached them, nodding at Somers. “Emery.”
“Busy night,” Somers said.
“Where is Colt?” Hazard asked.
“He’s all right. We put the kids in the holding cells. The rest of them, any that weren’t minors, we had to clear out some cells in the county jail. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a full house quite like this.”
“I want to see him.”
The sheriff nodded. Then he looked at Somers, and he tucked his thumbs behind his belt.
Somers sighed. “What are we talking about here?”
“Possession.”
It was one of those technicalities that lawyers loved; the fact that the alcohol was inside Colt’s body was a form of possession, which was illegal for minors. It was a misdemeanor. Somers nodded.
“No,” Hazard said.
Sheriff Engels glanced at him.
“Are you charging the rest of them?”
“Of course.”
“This is ridiculous. Colt’s a good kid; he made a mistake—”
“Ree,” Somers said, “could I talk to you for a minute?”
“No. I don’t understand why we’re even having this conversation. Both of you have let this kind of thing slide with nothing but a warning for other kids. Now it’s my son, and—”
“Emery, I’m doing you a favor by not including assault on a special victim. My deputies—”
“If your deputies weren’t shit at their jobs, it never would have happened.”
“That’s enough,” Somers said, taking Hazard by the elbow. “Dennis, give us a minute, please?”
Engels nodded. Towing Hazard behind him, Somers made his way to the vestibule at the front of the building. When the doors had closed behind them, Somers turned to face his husband.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Hazard said. “He’s doing it because he wants to look tough and because he doesn’t want anyone to say he was soft on the chief of police’s son. All he cares about is the next fucking election. And you’re going to let him do it because you’re worried about looking good as chief of police and because of your father’s next fucking election. And neither of you cares about the fact that we’re talking about my son!”
The last words were a shout that reverberated inside the vestibule.
Somers pressed the tips of his fingers against his thighs. When he spoke, he could hear fissures running through his voice like fresh ice under too much weight. “Our son.”
Hazard tried to meet his gaze. Pushing his hair back, he looked away.
“Say it.”
“Our son,” Hazard bit out.
“I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to pretend you didn’t say what you just said because I know the last few days have been hard and because we’re both in a weird place right now. So, instead, I’m going to ask: what about all that talk about holding Colt responsible and making sure he grew up knowing right from wrong, doing our best so that he wouldn’t turn out like the messed up, self-absorbed pieces of shit we’ve both seen floating around town? What about all of that, Ree?”
On the other side of the glass doors, the night was mothball lights and velvet. Hazard stared out into the grainy haze. His throat worked once, and he put his hands on his hips, but he stood slightly hunched, as though favoring a wound.
“What if they take him?”
Somers sighed and touched his arm. When Hazard didn’t pull away, Somers drew him into a hug and kissed the side of his head.
“Come on,” Somers said. “Let’s get this over with.”
When they reached the sheriff, he was reading something on his phone, cheaters perched on his nose. He glanced up, removed the glasses, and folded them slowly.
“We’d like to take Colt,” Hazard said. “I’m going to post bail.”
Engels nodded. “Could it wait a minute?”
“I apologize. I was in the wrong; you were only doing your job.”
A smile flashed under the white mustache, and Engels shook his head. “That’s not what I meant, although I appreciate it. It’s not clear whether we’ve got a missing persons case on our hands or not; nobody can find Ashley Boone or his girlfriend, which means—well, you both know what that means. But your son was worried about his friend enough that he fought off a deputy, and I think Colt has good instincts.”
“I suppose the constant sneaking out and rule breaking and, now, drinking are evidence of those good instincts,” Hazard said sourly.
Engels’s smile appeared again. “Good instincts about people, I should say. I know that I might be jumping the gun. I know Ashley might be with his girlfriend, and they might sneak home tonight, and tomorrow, the whole thing will be an embarrassment that’ll get funnier with time. But—”
“But it doesn’t feel right,” Somers said.
Engels sighed and shook his head.
“There were a lot of people there last night,” Hazard said. “I understand that it will take significant manpower to interview all of them, especially since many of them won’t know Ashley. I appreciate that it’s a logistical strain for your department. But to be frank, John and I would accomplish more continuing our own investigation, rather than taking statements from hungover ravers.”
Before Engels could speak, Somers knew: the pieces came together in that intuitive place in his brain that had always served him best. “You want us to talk to Evan.”
Hazard scowled at him before turning to look at the sheriff.
Engels nodded.
“Why?” Hazard asked. Then he answered himself. “He attacked Theo. He was involved in an altercation with Ashley at school. He has a personal connection to Loretta Ames and a reason to want her dead. It’s his property, or his family’s, and therefore it’s likely that he knew the area better than most people, including routes and places where he could approach Ashley unseen or, alternatively, sequester him. What else?”
“That’s about it,” Engels said. “And the fact that he invited everyone out there. Including Ashley. We figured that much out from talking to the kids.”
“You think it was a trap.”
“I don’t know, Emery. I think I’d like to talk to Evan Pawloski a little more thoroughly. And I thought John-Henry might join me because, of course, the boy is involved in the murder investigation.”
Somers nodded.
“We’ve got him set up in the interview room. Emery, you can watch from in there.” Engels indicated an unmarked door. “Chief?”
“Ready,” Somers said.
Somers had been in this interview room before—for joint investigations with the sheriff’s department, as well as for various personal reasons, namely, his husband and his son. The two-way mirror was streaky with cheap cleaner. A flattened paper cone water cup was trapped under the leg of a chair. Since the last time Somers had been in here, someone had gouged a scoreboard into the table, most likely with a contraband knife, although God only knew how they’d gotten away with it. The scoreboard was ASS VS TITS, and tits were winning. The closed-up space held an unpleasant smell that Somers associated with either someone needing Pepto-Bismol or, possibly even worse, a microwaved meal.
