Reasonable doubt, p.25
Reasonable Doubt, page 25
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset Series
Somers hit the brakes, and the Interceptor skidded to a stop in the middle of the highway. Smoke from the tires curled up, and the vents carried the smell of burnt rubber. Ahead, a black speck marked a car coming towards them. Somers ignored it.
“Hey, Mr. Robot: social prestige and calculation and analysis. What the hell are you talking about?”
Hazard’s eyes narrowed. Slivers of gold shone out at Somers. “There’s a car coming.”
“Good.”
“It’s going to hit us.”
“Great.”
“Will you at least get off the road?”
“Not a chance.”
Hazard was clenching his jaw now, one of the most visible signs he was angry. Red blossomed in his cheeks, beautiful crimson anger staining his pale skin. He looked hot like this. Hotter than usual.
“Move the fucking car off the fucking road.
“No. No way. Not until you tell me what you’re mad about.”
“I’m not mad. Your mom found a hot, rich doctor.”
“She didn’t say anything about him being hot.”
“So you are interested in him?”
“Jesus Christ, Ree. What the hell is going on?”
“Move the car. I want to go.”
“No.”
His jaw muscles tightened so forcibly that Hazard looked like he was biting through a sewer grate. “I’m not your girlfriend.”
“What?”
“I’m not your goddamn girlfriend.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m kind of intimately acquainted with what you’ve got under the hood—”
“And I don’t talk a lot. And I don’t complain about your time. And I don’t . . .” His hands fished the air for the right word. “I don’t pester you.”
“Pester?”
“You know goddamn well what I mean.”
Somers laughed, and the laughter was a hundred percent shock.
“You want to laugh at me? Fine. Fucking laugh. Fucking laugh until you get knocked off the face of the fucking earth by that trailer flying towards us.” Hazard fumbled at the seatbelt, jammed on the release twice. When the belt didn’t come free, he yanked at it, swearing, as though he could rip it out by force.
“Ree.”
He swore and jerked on the belt.
“Ree.”
This time, the release button worked, and the seatbelt snapped back. Hazard reached for the door.
Somers caught a handful of his collar. “Will you listen for a second?”
“I don’t want,” he knocked Somers’s hand off, “or need to listen to you.”
The trailer was streaking towards them now, and as Hazard dropped onto the blacktop, Somers had to fight the urge to drop his foot onto the gas. Hazard took a step and looked back.
“Move the fucking car, you fucking moron.”
Somers shrugged. “I only drive with my partner in the car.”
“You’re going to get killed.”
Sweat prickled under Somers’s arms. That trailer was moving, really moving, like someone had strapped rockets under it. Jesus Christ, if there was ever a time for a cop and a speeding ticket, this was it. But he shrugged again. The sweat under his arms was a river, was goddamn Niagra Falls, but he shrugged.
Hazard’s noise was somewhere between a growl and a scream, and he threw himself into the Interceptor. Somers tapped the gas, and the SUV lurched to the right. The trailer shrieked past, horn blaring, and Somers forced himself to stay cool, slouched in the seat, not a care in the world. Never mind the fact that he needed to change his shirt. And damn near needed to change his drawers.
But he focused on Hazard. “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I didn’t mean any of that. It wasn’t about you. But I should have thought about what I was saying. And I shouldn’t have pretended to be straight, shouldn’t have pretended I had a girlfriend, shouldn’t have said any of it.”
Hazard raked a hand through his hair, disturbing the careful part, and the dark waves spilled over his forehead. “Forget it.”
“You know I love you, right?”
“Can we just go?”
“And I’m proud that I get to date you. That’s a privilege. You’re amazing. Anybody who gets to be with you better play the fucking lottery, that’s the kind of lucky they are. That’s how lucky I am.”
“John.” Hazard shook his head, his eyes splashing gold. “You don’t have to—”
“You want me to prove it? How many lottery tickets should I buy?”
Hazard chuckled and wiped his mouth. Not his eyes, though; he didn’t touch his eyes. They were like a shipful of gold staring up from the bottom of the sea.
“A hundred? Two hundred?”
“God, all right. You made your point.” His hands were unsteady, and he gripped his knees, and then he ran fingers through his hair again, more of the dark locks working themselves loose. “John, I love you too.”
“But you’re an insane, jealous bastard.”
He glanced up, and when he saw the teasing on Somers’s face, he smiled. “Something like that.”
“You’re not going to kill that doctor, are you? It’s not his fault my mom thought he was attractive.”
Hazard shrugged. “That depends on you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. As long as you don’t talk to him, I won’t have to kill him.”
Somers grinned, but he knew jealousy wasn’t the problem. Or rather, it wasn’t the only problem. He didn’t mind Hazard being jealous. A part of him rather liked it, up to a point. But this was something else. This was something about the way Emery Hazard saw himself, saw the two of them. And Somers couldn’t put his finger on it, couldn’t name it. He saw it partially in his brain. Darkly, that was the word. He saw it darkly, and he thought of Paul. Through a glass, darkly. And he thought he could call it into daylight if he wanted to. But the truth was that Somers didn’t want to see it laid bare. He didn’t want to face it. Because deep down, he knew what the problem was: Hazard could only see the two of them through the past, through the avalanche of hate and hurt that Somers had put him through, and that was why Hazard was going to leave. Not today. But one day. And Somers knew if he looked that truth in the eyes, the hurt would cut so deep, so fast, it might kill him.
So instead, he smiled, and he skated past that dark glass, and he let himself hold Hazard’s hand and kiss his knuckles and smile at the smile breaking Hazard’s thundercloud expression.
The phone buzzed in the console, and Swinney’s name flashed on the screen. Somers snagged the phone and answered.
“We found him,” Swinney said, her voice tight with restrained excitement.
“Don’t tell me he really came back to life,” Somers said.
“What?”
“Walden. Where’d you find the corpse? If they were pulling some kind of Weekend at Bernie’s crap, I don’t even want to know.”
“Oh. No, still nothing on Walden. Son of a bitch genuinely disappeared.” A thoughtful note entered Swinney’s voice. “Damn, I never even think about Weekend at Bernie’s anymore.”
“If you’re not talking about Walden, then who did you—” Apprehension tightened Somers’s chest, and his eyes flicked to Hazard, and it was like Hazard was waiting for it, staring back at him, braced for the blow that was about to fall.
“That boy, Clyde. We found him.”
SOMERS PASSED ALONG THE MESSAGE, and Hazard still looked like he was waiting for somebody to ring the bell and the punches to start flying.
“Dead?” Hazard asked.
“Dead?” Somers said into the phone.
“Within an inch,” Swinney said.
“Hold on.” Somers tapped the screen and put the call on speaker. “Tell us about it.”
“Foley and Moraes picked him up. He was on foot, walking into town on Cherokee. He’s not good, but he’s alive.”
“What do you mean he’s not good?” Hazard asked. The last word had all the tension of a firing pin.
“Somebody hurt him bad.”
“What do you mean bad? Can you be specific? Do you speak fucking English?”
“Relax,” Somers said, settling a hand on Hazard’s arm. It was like grabbing marble.
“I don’t want to relax.” Hazard jerked his arm away. “I want Swinney to use all twenty fucking words in her limited vocabulary to tell me what happened.”
“You’re a real asshole,” Swinney said. “Somers, call me back when this jerkoff isn’t—”
“Hold on,” Somers said. “Swinney, just hold on a second.” Planting a hand on Hazard’s chest, he met those eyes like autumn sunlight and frowned. “Hazard’s upset. He’s done now.” And he raised his eyebrows in a question.
After a moment, Hazard gave a furious nod. One of his huge hands wrapped around Somers’s wrist like the big man was suddenly holding on for his life.
“He’s done,” Somers repeated. “Go ahead.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“All right. The kid?”
For a long moment, Swinney was silent. Outside, a fresh April breeze trembled across the hills. The tender green stalks shimmered, the last of the morning’s dew vibrating, opalescent in the sun. When the wind hit the miles of fencing, the wire pulled taut to the west, and Somers thought he could hear it thrum.
“He got beat up,” Swinney said. “Broken nose. Orbital socket fracture. Scrapes and bruises like somebody dragged him a few laps around a Go-Kart track. The doctors say he was dehydrated, and he isn’t talking.” The wind ripped at the fence, and this time Somers knew he could hear the wires keening.
“Dehydrated?” Somers said. “He hasn’t even been gone a day.”
“Twenty-five hours,” Hazard said in that firing pin voice. When the force behind that voice finally punched forward, there was going to be one hell of an explosion.
“What?”
“He’s been gone twenty-five hours.”
“Listen,” Swinney said. “It’s not all new.”
“Excuse me?”
“Somebody’s been hurting this kid for a long time. He’s got a lot of cuts on him. He’s got at least a couple of broken ribs, but they aren’t from the last twenty-four hours. Cigarette burns.” She sounded like the next breath came from the bottom of her shoes. “Lots of those. Lots of them healed over.”
“He had a bad home life,” Somers was saying, heard himself saying, and he hated himself for saying it. “Maybe that’s where . . .” And he couldn’t finish it because it tasted like so much bullshit, and at least Swinney and Hazard had the decency not to respond.
All Hazard did was pop open the door, and the gravel on the shoulder of the road crunched underfoot, and the wind clapped up against the Interceptor and slammed the door shut as Hazard picked a path off the road and towards the fence.
“You still there?” Swinney asked.
“Yeah.” Somers watched Hazard through the glass.
“The kid’s not talking, Somers.”
“You said that.”
“He’s doped to hell, but he just lies there and ignores me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I think you should talk to him. See if he’ll tell you anything, who did this to him.”
“We know goddamn well who did this to him.”
On the grassy slope below the road, Hazard was pacing back and forth, head down, as though searching for something.
From the other end of the call, a new voice murmured, and then Swinney said, “Cravens wants you both back here as soon as possible. Kelley Jane Walden is supposed to be leading all her new crazies in a march.”
“Like a protest?”
Swinney snorted. “More like a demonstration of power. Can you believe they’ve got people who are walking here? Honest to God. Like Wahredua is some kind of shrine. There’s not a damn thing here but the Tegula factory.”
“Maybe they worship ceramic tiles.”
“You know what I want to do?”
“Start your own church?”
“I bet it pays better than being a cop. I want to find Walden’s corpse and do my own Weekend at Bernie’s routine. Walk him up and down Market Street until those crazy sons of bitches realize he’s dead as a dog and not the Almighty Son of God.”
Below the Interceptor, Hazard stooped and raised something from the grass. It was as long as his arm, and the April sunlight cast a dull gleam on it. Metal? Plastic? PVC tubing, maybe. Somers leaned forward to get a better look.
“Well, when you find the corpse, you’ll find the guy who did that shit to Clyde. Brother Jesse, or whatever his real name is.”
“Nah.”
“What?”
“Not our guy.”
“He’s the one who took Clyde. I watched him do it, Swinney. He knocked the kid around while he was loading him in the car.”
“Oh, sure. He’s probably the piece of shit that beat up the kid. But he’s not the one who stole Walden’s body.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you: he didn’t take the body. He’s got a solid alibi. Some old lady in St. Elizabeth, sterling reputation, all the good stuff. It’s the kind of alibi that holds a lot of water.”
“Sirkaa Hastback?”
“How’d you know?”
“She’s Jesse’s alibi for the murder too.”
With a whistle, Swinney said, “God damn.”
Holding aloft his length of pipe—yes, now Somers could make it out, a piece of old lead pipe—Hazard approached the fence. He planted himself sideways, shoulders up and back like he was channeling Babe Ruth and the next one was going to be a home run.
“I’ve got to go, Swinney.”
“What about—”
Somers disconnected the call. He hopped out of the Interceptor, and as he came around the SUV, Hazard swung. The pipe hit the fence post so hard that the metal rang like a bell. An RV the size of a small house rattled past on the highway, and its speed forced out a burst of air that flattened the grass and pasted Somers’s jacket to his back. Even over the roar of the RV, though, Somers could hear the length of pipe whining.
Hazard reared back, Babe Ruth really going at it, and swung again. No home run, this time, no, this was a grand slam. The crack of the fence post sounded like a gunshot. Splinters flew into the air. The pipe made a shimmering, chiming noise, and Hazard rocked to the side from the force of his own movement. He pulled back and swung again.
This time, the lead crumpled, and the pipe’s note was muffled, more of a groan. More splinters flew. He struck, and the top third of the fencepost ripped free, exposing dry rot and a rusted quarter-inch nail and spinning motes of dust into the air. He hit again. The pipe had bent at a thirty-degree angle, folding under the force of the blows. When he hit the next time, the swing was slower. The muted chiming was softer. A pair of motorcycles buzzed past, and this time, the sound of their motors swallowed everything else. When the two bikes had made it another half mile, Somers could hear Hazard’s breathing.
“I bet you broke open those cuts on your hand again,” Somers said.
Hazard dropped the twisted metal. His shoulders rose and fell. There was something tidal about the movement: rhythmic, yes, but also savage and wild. When he turned around, his long, dark hair hung over his eyes, but spring sunlight glowed through his curls, electrifying those two amber chips. Blood stained the bandage wrapped around his hand, and he curled those fingers loosely, as though unconsciously aware of the pain.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Somers said, and he went back to the Interceptor and found the first aid kit. He made Hazard sit on the tailgate. A brown-and-white VW bus creaked past them, driven by a woman who looked like she’d never left 1968, and a sun-peeled hearse rolled opposite—probably the county coroner going to claim Britney Cowper’s body. The thorn punctures hadn’t gotten any worse, but they bled like a bitch. Somers worked on them pretty hard with the alcohol pads, hard enough that Hazard grunted once and tried to pull away, but Somers just slapped a palm against Hazard’s chest, and after that the big man was still.
When Somers had fastened the fresh bandages, Hazard flexed his hand. “They feel a little loose.”
“Why don’t you call your paramedic friend? He can check your ribs again while he’s at it.”
Hazard hadn’t combed his hair into place; it still hung down, a dark, wavy curtain over those scarecrow eyes. “He wasn’t checking my ribs. He was groping me.”
“I know what he was doing.” Somers slammed the first aid kit back into place and marched towards the driver’s seat. “And go find a goddamn comb.”
When Hazard climbed into the passenger seat, the Interceptor rocked under his weight, and the suspension creaked, and the big man cupped his hands like he was trying to catch a drink of water with them.
“Why are they hurting him?” Hazard said.
“Because they can. The same reason Walden was sleeping with two teenage girls, the same reason he takes money from his little cult, the same reason he makes a seventy-year-old woman sleep in a house that’s half burned down. People do this stuff because it makes them feel powerful.”
Hazard’s fingers spasmed.
“Ree, we’re going to figure it out. You always figure it out.”
“I can’t.”
“What?”
“I can’t, Somers. I can’t think. I can’t even breathe. As soon as we start talking about them, about Walden, about all that . . . insanity, I go out of my mind. At first, I thought I could lock it away. Then, I thought I could use it. Like you said: think like them, use it against them. But now—” A shudder ran through him, and again Somers thought of water, of the shockwaves when something heavy, terribly heavy, crashes down. “That gate at the cave. They had someone in there. They had someone trapped. I’ve been trapped before, Somers. I’ve been there, in the white, where I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—” Another shockwave, like a boulder dropping into a mirrored river. “Jesus, Somers. I can’t. I’ll tell Cravens, and she’ll put Swinney with you. I’ll make sure it’s Swinney. Just until this is over.”
