Final orders, p.24
Final Orders, page 24
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand Series
In the act of lifting the phone to his ear, Somers froze. “What?”
“Yeah, a food truck. It had something on the side. Cowboys, I think.”
“The Ace in the Hole,” Hazard said.
“Exactly,” Ruff said. “I told you it was valuable information—”
The call connected, and Sheriff Engels’s voice came from the speaker, too soft for Somers to make out the words, although he could tell the tone was wrong. The sound broke the moment open again, and he pressed the phone to his ear. “We have a witness who saw someone putting Ashley Boone inside a food truck belonging to the Ace in the Hole.”
The sheriff’s silence came back at him.
“I’m going to take a pair of detectives and talk to Joyce and Derrick Sturgis,” Somers said. “But I thought you should know.”
“All right,” the sheriff said, and his tone was wrong again. “John-Henry, did you hear what I said?”
“Sorry; there’s a lot going on. What’s up?”
“Evan Pawloski tried to kill himself this morning.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MAY 17
SUNDAY
8:05 AM
BY THE TIME SOMERS parked behind the Ace in the Hole, the tidal wave of guilt had crashed over him. He’d gone to Hawaii with his parents when he’d been a teenager. That was where he’d learned the word swash—the rush of seawater up the beach after a wave broke. When the swash ran out of momentum, it ran back down the beach—backwash. What he remembered, fifteen and sun-bronzed, standing at the threshold of earth and water, staring out at the restless calm of the ocean, was the grains of sand washing out from under his feet.
He turned off the Mustang. He didn’t let his head fall back. He stayed there, staring out the windshield. The May sun was climbing steadily, the temperature climbing with it. He had parked next to one of the dumpsters, and a piece of foil wrapper was caught between the lid and the steel. Enough of a breeze stirred the foil, making light dance on it, and the same light left spots in Somers’s vision. He thought, maybe, he should close his eyes.
Evan Pawloski’s eyes had been open when his father found him. Why had someone told him that? Why was it relevant?
The steering wheel creaked under his hands.
“John?”
Somers blinked; the light rippled, and he turned his head toward his husband and blinked again. “Sorry. I need some sleep again.”
“Again?”
“I mean, I need some sleep, I guess.”
Hazard’s eyes narrowed. “Evan is going to be fine. You were doing your job, interviewing him. This is not your fault.”
Somers nodded.
Hazard hesitated. Then he cupped the side of Somers’s face. The lower part of his hand rested against Somers’s neck, and he had a sudden, vivid image of a bedsheet twisted into a rope. He startled, got hold of himself, and pulled away from the touch more slowly. Naturally. Coolly. Gotta look cool.
“I think—” Hazard began.
The crunch of tires on broken asphalt interrupted him, and Somers turned, opened the door, and got out of the car. He shut the door so he didn’t have to hear Hazard’s worried breath.
Light bounced off the Impala’s windshield, and Somers shaded his eyes to see Palomo driving, with Dulac in the passenger seat. He had called the detectives after his conversation with Engels. Then, after filling them in, he’d called the station and requested patrol officers to take Ruff and Ayelet into custody. Even if what they said was true and they had nothing to do with Loretta’s death, they both needed to be charged with a number of crimes, and Somers intended to see that they were prosecuted here and in New York.
The Impala came to a stop beside him, and as the engine cut off, the door opened. Dulac unfolded himself from the car. The detective looked like a wreck, his hair sticking up on the side, his face blotchy, and reeking like a mixture of booze-sweat and a drunk’s special brand of halitosis. What’s going on with you, Somers wanted to ask. What is it, this thing eating you up, that you won’t tell me? But he didn’t ask. He could still feel sand washing out from underfoot.
“Chief,” Dulac said hoarsely.
On the other side of the Impala, Palomo looked tired but alert, the house blend for a seasoned homicide detective. She nodded and said, “Chief Somerset.”
“You’ll need to talk to Cardarelli and Ayelet Ames later,” Somers said, “but I didn’t want to do this without backup.” He gave Dulac another look. He thought, again, the same questions, and again he didn’t ask them. Look what had happened the last time he asked too many questions. And that was self-indulgent and self-pitying, and it made him ashamed, but it also felt pleasant, shockingly good, to feel so bad about himself.
“You look like you crawled out of a club kid’s anus,” Hazard said to Dulac.
Dulac was trying to flatten the hair on the side of his head, crouching to use the passenger mirror. “Bro, don’t be a nut-drip. And anyway, I’m out of practice. I haven’t done anything fun in, like, forever. Do you know the last time Darnell and I did anything besides go to work and eat dinner on the couch and have, like, straight-people sex in the dark?”
“I happen to like Darnell,” Hazard said. “He has a respectably diverse investment portfolio, he’s extremely economical with household management—including clothes, John, as an aside—and he has a five-year plan.”
“Yeah? Well, try dealing with that five-year plan every day.”
“Gray,” Hazard said in a surprisingly compassionate voice, “I can see that you’re going through something, and I’m sorry, but say something bad about Darnell and see what happens.”
Dulac opened his mouth, hesitated, and shut it again. He looked around from the mirror to glare at Hazard.
Whatever might have happened after that was prevented by the arrival of Joyce Sturgis in her white Escalade. She pulled close to the building and stopped by the employee door. When she got out of the car, she had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing a racerback sports bra, yoga pants, and Nike Air Force 1s, which Somers had sent Hazard pictures of three different times for gift ideas, and which he still hadn’t gotten. When Hazard had suggested—apparently with no sense of irony—that they buy them for Colt for his birthday, Somers had taken a walk.
“This is ridiculous,” Joyce said. She looked like she was trying not to frown as she moved to unlock the steel door—probably trying not to mar her makeup. “I’ve got people coming at nine to prep for lunch. This is my business, in case you forgot, and I can’t spend all day with the police trooping in and out because they don’t have anything better to do.”
“Was there some sort of misunderstanding, Mrs. Sturgis?” Somers heard himself speaking, but it felt like he was hearing it off TV. “A witness saw a missing boy being loaded into a food truck belonging to your restaurant.”
“And I’m telling you, someone stole the truck. It’s gone, isn’t it? Do you see it anywhere?” She paused and gestured around the lot, the keys jangling in her hand. “It’s not invisible, for gosh sake.”
“We appreciate you taking the time to let us walk through the premises.”
“And after this, you’re going to want to ‘walk through’ my house, I suppose. Well, everyone’s talking about Ashley Boone, and I can tell you right now, he’s not in my restaurant, and he’s not in my house.” She pulled open the door. “Don’t you think I want to find that food truck as bad as anybody else? Do you have any idea how much one of those things costs?”
When she took a step toward the door, Somers shook his head. “Mrs. Sturgis, I’m going to ask you to stay out here with Mr. Hazard, while my detectives and I inspect the building.”
“It’s a Sunday,” she said, already taking out her phone. “Do you have any idea how many people go out for lunch on a Sunday?”
“I still think it’s an oversight in the code that a killing is still technically murder even when it’s justified,” Hazard said in a not-quiet-enough voice, to judge by the noise Joyce made.
“Keep an eye on her,” Somers said more quietly. “Let me know if anyone else shows up. Anyone, Ree.”
Hazard nodded. His mouth tightened, and in a whisper, he asked, “John, are you ok?”
“Peachy,” Somers said and smiled his chief-of-police smile. He turned before Hazard could press the issue, and when he reached Dulac and Palomo, he said, “Ready?”
“Ready, Chief,” Dulac said.
Palomo nodded.
They approached the building, and Dulac and Palomo must have worked out between them who was going first because Dulac took the lead, then Palomo, then Somers. He was still outside the building, staring into the relative darkness of what appeared to be a storage area, when he heard Dulac toggle a switch.
“Damn lights don’t work,” Dulac said.
Palomo moved so fast that, for a moment, Somers thought she was attacking Dulac from behind. His brain caught up a moment later as two things happened simultaneously: Palomo yanked Dulac backward through the doorway, and inside the storage room, something exploded.
In the next instant, as Palomo stumbled back, barely missing Somers, he had a glimpse of Dulac: shards of glass pierced one side of his face, glittering in the sun. He hadn’t started bleeding yet. He hadn’t made a sound.
Then Dulac screamed, and Palomo was shouting, “Help me get him down, help me get him down,” and Somers had to shout over her, “Not on that side—the glass, for Christ’s sake.” Dulac reached up to check the injuries, and Somers grabbed his arm. It turned into a struggle, Dulac’s panic fueling him, making him ridiculously strong as he tried to wrench his arm free from Somers’s grip. Blood was welling up all over his face. So much glass. Even his eye was full of blood. And then there was too much blood to identify individual injuries; gore masked one side of his face.
“Gray, Gray, Gray,” Somers tried. “Calm down. You’ve got to calm down or you’re going to make it worse. Gray, you’ve got to—Gray, God damn it!”
Dulac screamed again, thrashing, his head whipping from side to side. He clipped Somers on the forehead, and Somers rocked back, his vision shuttering for a moment as he tried to shake it off. Somehow, he held on to Dulac, and then, a moment later, shock must have set in because Dulac’s legs folded, and the sudden weight threatened to topple Somers.
Together, he and Palomo eased the younger detective onto the asphalt, his uninjured side resting on the blacktop. Somers looked around for something to pillow his head, but Hazard was already there, handing him his wadded-up windbreaker. Dulac was shaking. He had stopped screaming, but now he was hyperventilating. Somers lifted his head long enough to place the windbreaker under it and put a hand on his shoulder. More glass was embedded there, Somers realized, pieces of it stuck in Dulac’s shirt and jacket, running down his arm. Somers found his hand, which only had a few nicks and scratches, and gripped it.
“Gray, can you hear me? You’re going to be ok. Squeeze my hand. Come on, let me know you can hear me. You’re going to be just fine. Squeeze my hand, bro.”
“The Ace in the Hole,” Hazard was saying, phone to his ear. “Yes. Yes.” He tore the phone away long enough to whisper, “En route,” and then put it back to his ear and said, “Yes,” again.
“Deep breaths,” Somers said. “You’re not getting any air, Gray. Take a big, deep breath. They’re coming. You’re going to be fine. Can you give me a squeeze? Don’t make me feel like an asshole, bro, talking to myself like this.”
A moment later, Dulac’s hand tightened around Somers’s until it hurt. Somers didn’t care, barely felt it. He closed his eyes and drew his own deep breath.
That was when he heard the screaming from inside the Ace.
His eyes shot open, and he found Hazard staring back at him. The bigger man tossed his phone to Joyce, who caught it with a fumbling look of amazement.
“That’s Ashley,” Hazard said.
Wisps of smoke drifted out through the doorway.
“Ree, we can’t go in there—”
Hazard eased the Blackhawk out of the holster and started toward the restaurant. Then he reversed course, jogging back to the Mustang. When he came back, he was carrying a flashlight.
“Ree, we have no idea—”
“That’s Ashley,” Hazard said again flatly. “If someone set that place on fire, I’m not going to stand here and listen to that boy scream while he burns to death.”
Somers grimaced. The stream of smoke was thin, barely visible in the day’s brightness. But it was there.
“Gray, I’m going to be right back. Yolanda’s here. She’s going to take care of you until the ambulance gets here. You’re going to be fine. I need you to relax, take deep breaths, and stay strong.” Somers tried to think of more; all he could come up with, though, was, “I’ll be right back.”
Dulac squeezed his hand and, somehow, managed a sharp nod, the windbreaker rustling as his cheek slid along it.
Palomo kneeling next to him, took his hand as soon as Somers released it. Her other hand was on her service weapon, and her gaze flicked between Joyce and Dulac.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Somers said when her gaze flicked to Joyce again, and she rocked the service weapon in its holster.
Her voice was brittle. “No, sir.”
“But don’t take any fucking chances.”
Harder now. Flint. “No, sir.”
As Somers moved toward the building, Hazard held out a hand. “No, John—”
“This is not a conversation,” Somers said and snatched the flashlight.
When Somers stepped into the storage room, he smelled what he thought was gun smoke. After the bright day, the room was dark, his eyes still trying to adjust. Overhead, the broken necks of bulbs showed where the improvised explosive had detonated. He could make out the shelves lining the walls, the paper towels, the cleaning supplies, the bag-in-boxes of syrup for the fountain drinks. One door was set into the wall opposite him; another door led off the room to their left. Ashley’s cries for help were louder, although the words themselves were still indistinguishable.
Somers shone the light on the path in front of him, looking for anything irregular. He saw nothing—no tripwires, no pressure plates. Then reality struck; if the person behind this was high tech, the whole place could be crisscrossed with infrared beams, and he’d never see them.
“They used a light switch as the trigger,” Hazard whispered with that uncanny way he had of tracking Somers’s thoughts. “And the bomb itself was simple—gunpowder inside a bank of incandescent bulbs. Whatever else we’re dealing with, it will most likely be low tech.”
Something in his voice made Somers turn. Hazard was gritting his teeth, probably unconsciously, the muscles in his jaw standing out; his color was chalky in the faint light. They had been in places like this before, places engineered to kill. Hazard still carried the scars, inside and out.
When Somers opened his mouth, though, Hazard shook his head and said, “I’m fine.”
“What do you think is on the other side of that door?”
Hazard shook his head. He glanced around the room and pointed to a mop and bucket against the far shelves. Somers moved slowly, using the flashlight to check each step. Sweat soaked the back of his shirt by the time they reached the mop. Then he retraced his steps. When he was sure they were both clear, he used the end of the mop to depress the door handle. It took a few tries before he managed to open it. The door swung open an inch. Somers breathed out in relief.
The blast from the gun—shotgun, his brain suggested—tore through the interior door like it was paper. The shot dimpled the exit door and its steel frame and threw up puffs of plaster dust where it struck the wall. Chunks of wood had been chewed from the length of the mop.
Ears ringing, Somers shook his head and said, “Fuck.”
Hazard nodded in his peripheral vision.
After a moment, Somers forced the door open the rest of the way. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and now he could make out the shotgun mounted with duct tape to the back of one of the dining booths. Wire around the depressed trigger completed the simple setup. Low tech, sure, but it still would have ripped a human being in half. As he eased forward into the dining room, studying the floor in front of him, Somers felt part of his brain drift back to Joyce. He had missed her initial reaction to the lightbulb bombs; he had been focused on Palomo’s sudden movement and then on Dulac’s injuries.
“She seemed surprised,” Hazard said unprompted. “Scared enough to shit those yoga pants, actually.”
“But was it real?” Somers asked. “Or is she just a good actor?”
Hazard didn’t answer because, of course, there was no answer. Not yet.
As Somers moved farther into the dining room, he could make out more and more of it. Motes of dust danced in the bars of light that came through the windows. The smell of gunpowder was strong, but with undernotes of bleach and something else, a mustiness that suggested bar towels that needed laundering. Even with the sun coming through the windows, shadows pocketed the large room, and in those shadows, the acrylic cutouts took on life, shifted their weight, readied their guns. Somers blinked and tried to keep his eyes clear, but the strain of looking for wires or other traps was already starting to tell, and when he risked a glance up, the rest of the room seemed to swim.
“This is worse than a fucking shooting gallery,” Hazard muttered.
Somers nodded. The river-stone hearth yawned on his right. Light glinted on the bottles racked behind the bar, turning them into fox eyes. Ashley was still shouting—one word, over and over again. Help, Somers decided, even though the word was still muffled.
“Does this place have a basement?” Hazard asked.
“Are you kidding me?”
Hazard made a weird noise, and Somers heard it then, the note of untrammeled frustration, and suddenly he was on the brink of laughter too. It was the stress, the unrelenting tension, the roiling grief and fear for Dulac, all of it stirred up and trying to find relief. Hazard’s hand closed over Somers’s shoulder. Somers squeezed Hazard’s fingertips. Then they moved on.
