Hazard and Somerset Off Duty Read online

  “We can go back now,” Barbara said, her clompy pink platform shoes rocking on the gravel. “He just wants to see it and then he needs to go back and rest. Every time we come. He must have some wonderful memories in spite of everything else, don’t you think? When we get back I can show you—”

  Hazard caught Somers arm and tilted his head at the pool house.

  “Barbara, you’ll have to show me a little later,” Somers said, relinquishing the chair’s handles. “Emery is a local history buff, and I promised him we’d look at the outbuildings.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course. But, well, haven’t you looked at them? I mean, here we are.”

  “Yes,” Somers said, bending forward conspiratorially and dropping his voice, “but we haven’t looked at them if you know what I mean.” And he winked.

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, of course.” Barbara tittered a laugh and trotted back towards the house, wheeling the chair roughly across the gravel. “You two boys have fun.”

  “We’re not having sex in there,” Hazard said when Barbara had disappeared around the low hill back towards Grant’s Retreat.

  “Let’s not make any rash decisions.”

  Hazard started towards the unornamented brick of the pool house. “You implied that we’re going to mess around.”

  “Yes, Ree. I did. Because that’s what Barbara Keminsky and a million other people expect. It’s an easy way to get rid of her.” He smirked. “Besides, you still haven’t seen my shamrock undies.”

  The pool house door was rotten from years of exposure to the weather, and along the edges, wood had broken away from the frame. When Hazard nudged it with his toe, it rattled inwards, releasing a wash of cool, shadowed air with the smell of mildew, the smell of a long shut-up place. Hazard listened for a moment, heard nothing but the wind moving high in the oaks behind him, and set his phone to flashlight. Somers followed.

  With his first step into the pool house, Hazard understood why it had gotten its name. His phone’s light bounced back from tile, and the ceramic altered the acoustics of the space, so that every footstep, every rustle of clothing, every breath came back amplified and reverberating. Low walls, no higher than Hazard’s shoulder, divided the room into stalls, and rusted shower heads hung limply, their chrome plating flaking away. They walked the length of it, but it was empty, and there was no sign anyone had used it recently.

  “Well,” Somers said, setting his phone on one of the low walls so that the flashlight haloed up against the water-damaged ceiling. “Another dead end.”

  “We’ll move the search outwards,” Hazard said, taking a step towards the door. “Norwood Grant thought this person was still in the area, so maybe there is a cabin deeper on the property. Or maybe there’s—”

  Somers caught his jacket and pulled him back a step. “Yep. We’ll do all that.” Then he stretched up on his toes and kissed Hazard. He had a faint blond stubble today, and it rasped pleasantly against Hazard’s chin. “But first,” Somers’s hands slid under Hazard’s jacket and shirt, “I promised Barbara we’d fool around.”

  “You didn’t promise—ah, fuck.” Hazard twisted, bending to kiss Somers savagely. “You didn’t, uh, promise. Oh, God.”

  Smiling, his eyes like the bluest Caribbean waters, Somers popped the button on Hazard’s fly and dragged the zipper down. The brass stuttered, and every stutter rocked against Hazard’s erection, sending jolts of pleasure through him. Gripping the length of Hazard’s dick through the cotton, Somers squeezed.

  “You’re a goddamn tease,” Hazard whispered, staggering backward, guided by the pressure of Somers’s caress and by his own need to get something—anything—to support him because his knees had as much strength as hot butter.

  “Sure,” Somers agreed, dropping to his knees. “Now, I’m still getting the hang of this—”

  “Oh for the fucking love of God,” Hazard groaned as Somers’s mouth closed over him. His hands slapped the tile, skating down, searching for anything to hold him up. His knees weren’t hot butter. His knees had goddamn melted. He was about to fall flat on his ass if he didn’t—

  His hand closed over something hard and round and cold, its surface pitted and flaking under his touch. And through the waves of pleasure, the cold, analytical part of his mind stirred. No, Hazard told it. Go back to sleep. I’m enjoying this. But that part of his brain ignored him. And as he groaned again, his fingers curling around the metal, he felt its shape, a ring, and then the next ring, and then the next, and he let out a shuddering breath.

  “If this isn’t just about fucking perfect,” Hazard muttered, and with his free hand he found Somers’s short, messy hair and pulled him off. “John, baby.”

  “What? Was I doing it wrong?” His lips were puffy, and the dark centers of those turquoise eyes had blown wide, and he ran the back of his hand over his chin.

  Groaning again, this time with regret, Hazard pulled up his trousers. “No. You were doing it perfectly. But—” He rattled the metal rings.

  Somers wiped his chin again, more slowly, this time, and said, “This isn’t a pool house.”

  “No.”

  “That’s a chain with a manacle on the end.”

  “Yep.” Hazard let the metal fall and clatter against the tile. He wiped the rust from his hands.

  “Ree, this was a school.”

  “It was a reform school.”

  “It was a school. They were supposed to be protecting these kids. Helping them.”

  “You heard Barbara: there were accidents.”

  “Chains aren’t an accident, Ree. They built this place to—God, I don’t even want to know. So they had a place they could beat the shit out of the kids, wash them up, and nobody would know?”

  “Beat the shit out of them? Probably only if those kids were lucky. Kids disappeared, John.”

  Somers eyes cut towards the door and, beyond, the manmade clearing that had once been an excavation. “That wasn’t ever going to be a swimming pool, was it? They were—fuck, they were burying them.”

  “That’s where my money’s at.”

  The blond man got to his feet, and he looked like he might say more, but a voice interrupted them. It was so close that, for a moment, Hazard thought it came from inside the pool house, but then he realized he was hearing it through the open door.

  “I don’t give a fuck if it’s dangerous. I don’t give a goddamn fuck if you’re not ready. I told you one night. One. I owed you that. But not this. You said you’d be gone today, and now you’re—no, I don’t care, you son of a bitch. You get the hell away from—oh. Oh. Is that what this is now? You think I’m going to do what you say because you—” The call must have disconnected because Norwood Grant let out an inarticulate scream and hammered against the pool house’s exterior wall. Clumps of moldy plaster cracked and fell from the ceiling, and then Grant’s muttered words began to trail off as the man moved away.

  Hazard let out a breath and met Somers’s eyes.

  “What the hell was that?” the blond man asked.

  VIII

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  12:42 PM

  IT’S A KIDNAPPING,” Hazard said.

  Nodding, Somers seemed to consider the statement before saying, “Last night, you hear a child crying. This morning, there’s no child anywhere to be found. Grant freaks out when we ask about another guest, and when we look in the manager’s apartment, we find a diaper. Then we start looking around the grounds and find this creep-hole, and Grant has that bizarre conversation.”

  “He has it out here, where he thinks none of the guests will overhear him.”

  “And he’s talking to someone that he knows but doesn’t like or trust. Someone he allowed to stay here for one night because this guy needed help and Grant owed him a favor. But he was supposed to be gone, and Grant is freaking out because he’s not.”

  “It’s a kidnapping.”

  “All right, explain that.”


  “Whoever this person is, he’s on the run. We know a child is involved. Statistically, it’s unlikely that this criminal is a single father who takes his infant child with him while fleeing crimes.”

  “Unlikely, but not impossible.”

  “What’s much more likely is that this is a kidnapping: either the small-fry kind, where a father is fighting a custody order, or the big, FBI kind.”

  “And from how much Grant was freaking out, this doesn’t sound like a custody squabble.” Somers sighed. “I agree. It’s starting to sound like a kidnapping.”

  “It would be nice,” Hazard said, “if I could use my phone.”

  “God, I know.”

  “Since we’re out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Turn the screws on Norwood.”

  Hazard smiled. “Maybe you do have a brain to go along with that body.”

  Lazily, Somers gave him the finger. “Why stay?”

  “Because there must be a manhunt going on. That’s why this guy called in a favor: something went wrong with his plan, and he had to hole up for a few days.”

  “Right, I get that. But why are we staying?”

  “Because we haven’t found the child yet, and nobody else knows the kidnapper is here.”

  “Duh. But why both of us?”

  “Oh.”

  “Now who’s the brains?” Somers asked, pecking him on the cheek. “I’ll drive until I’ve got service, call the local PD, and come back.”

  “And I’ll talk to Norwood Grant.”

  Somers laughed. “Poor guy doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

  “No. No, he doesn’t.”

  They walked back to the main building, circled around to the gravel lot where the guests parked their cars, and stopped. Hazard swore and kicked at the stone, sending loose shards flying.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Somers muttered, kneeling next to the car. “Maybe we can borrow the golf cart.”

  All four tires had been slashed.

  IX

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  12:59 PM

  HAZARD JABBED the call bell at the front desk. It rang frantically, filling the empty reception area, but there was no sign of Norwood Grant.

  “He’s not coming,” Somers said, slouching against the desk. He plucked at his shamrock-covered sweatshirt. “Maybe these things don’t really work?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’re supposed to bring good luck. And I’m wearing a million of them. Maybe they don’t really work.”

  “You’re an idiot sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “A complete and total idiot,” Hazard muttered, still jamming the little bell.

  Sallow-faced Lorraine Willis poked her head into the room. “Really, that’s just not tolerable. My husband and I are trying to nap—”

  “Get back in your room,” Hazard roared.

  Lorraine Willis jumped so hard that she literally came out of one shoe, and she fled, limping, without bothering to recover it.

  “She’s not going to invite you to play bridge,” Somers said.

  “Be quiet, Somers.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  With a growl, Hazard swept the bell from the desk so hard that it broke against the wall with one last, pathetic chime. “There’s the phone. Call Swinney. I’m going upstairs.”

  “Not by yourself you’re not.”

  “Call Swinney.” Hazard didn’t wait for Somers to respond; he bounded towards the stairs and took them as fast as his long legs would carry him.

  “The line’s dead,” Somers shouted after him. “Ree, hold on. Something’s not right.”

  At the top of the stairs, Hazard slid around the banister and took off for the manager’s apartment. He had made it four paces before his brain processed the details in front of him: the door to the manager’s apartment hung open, yellow light veed across the floor, and he smelled gunpowder. He skidded to a halt, but not fast enough. His momentum carried him all the way to the door. His shadow snipped the vee of yellow light. He grabbed the doorjamb to stop himself, and the wood exploded under his hand, driving splinters into his palm. For a crazy moment, Hazard thought he had ripped the wood free with the force of his movement. Then the clap of a gunshot caught up with him, and his brain took in the fact that someone had fired at him and missed by inches.

  Hazard dragged the .38 from his shoulder holster, his eyes scanning the room for an instant before he ducked behind the wall for cover. In that instant, though, he took in the important details: blood on the wall, blood on the plaid couch, blood in sharp vees on the hardwood, dark, very dark, like shadow puppets cut out of the light. Norwood Grant lay on the floor, his head up against the plaid fabric of the couch like he was just crashing on the floor for a night. His mouth hung open, though, and a bullet had cratered his chest. The far window was open, and wind squalled against Grant’s Retreat, clapping the shutters in their frame. A wiry man with a soul patch and a wisp of mustache sat on the windowsill, a babe in a carrier on his chest.

  The babe was screaming. Even over the thunderous echo of the shot, Hazard could tell that the child was screaming hard enough to take his head off. No more than six months old, he had gone bright red with all that screaming, and his dark fuzz of hair stood straight up like he was carrying a static charge.

  In that last instant, the wiry man raised the pistol again, and Hazard slung himself out of the door. Somers was clearing the stairs, the .40 caliber Glock held high, but Hazard knew it was too late. The man’s landing was muffled by the ringing in his ears after the shot, but it wasn’t silent, and Hazard knew the risk had passed—for the moment. He jetted into the apartment, jinking right to throw off a shot in case he had made a mistake, but the window was empty. And when Hazard reached it, he let out a swear and drove the butt of his .38 against the frame. Ancient white paint fell in scallops against the back of his hand.

  The wiry man had the golf cart and was already disappearing into the woods.

  X

  MARCH 17

  SATURDAY

  1:03 PM

  HAZARD TOOK THE KEYS from Grant’s pockets, and the gesture must have disturbed a pocket of air lingering in the dead man’s lungs because pink froth rose around the sinkhole in the center of his chest. Then Hazard and Somers galloped down the stairs, down the length of Grant’s Retreat, through the closed-up portion of the building, and into the garage.

  “Fuck no,” Somers said when Hazard stripped back the dust cover from the Ducati.

  Hazard tossed him the key to the salt-eaten Ford Pinto and swung a leg over the bike. The black metal was ice cold under him. Ice cold, and smooth as ice too. Like one beautiful frozen sculpture. It was a damn beautiful machine.

  “You don’t even know how to ride that thing.”

  “Get out there and call for backup. Then swing around; this place has a back road somewhere, and that piece of shit is going to make a break for it; no more hiding and waiting for the search to die down.”

  “Ree—”

  Hazard kicked down, and the Ducati choked and spat.

  “Ree, get off the damn bike.”

  Hazard fiddled with the throttle and kicked again.

  “You are one big dumb piece of shit, Emery Hazard. Get off the bike.”

  This time, Hazard gave it just enough gas, and the Ducati roared to life. “You’d better get going,” Hazard shouted over the bike’s roar.

  Somers shouted something back, his face red and contorted with anger, but Hazard just walked the bike out of the garage, settled himself, and took a breath. He’d ridden a motorcycle before. He’d even gotten his permit. Sure, it had been a piece of shit Kawasaki with about as much power as a lawnmower. Sure, he’d just about knocked his head off on a street sign. Jesus Christ, this was a bad idea. Then he eased the bike forward, lifted his legs, and opened up
the throttle.

  The Ducati wasn’t a Kawasaki, and it wasn’t within a goddamn mile of a lawnmower. It rocketed over the uneven ground, and for the first hundred yards, Hazard stayed on by a combination of muscle memory, reflex, and instinct. Most of his brain was too busy shouting shit, shit, shit for him to do anything else.

  Then, after those first hundred yards, a semblance of rational thought came back to him in six distinct words: You’re going to hit that branch. Hazard twisted the handlebars, and the Ducati almost slid out from under him. He corrected, and the bike snapped too far in the other direction, bringing the rear around so fast that Hazard thought he’d given himself whiplash. He was laughing, he realized. Huge, whooping laughs, like he’d run the full hundred yards for a touchdown. He knew the laughter was crazy, but he couldn’t stop. He just hunkered down over the handlebars, let the Ducati fly, and laughed like a goddamn maniac.

  Ahead of him, the golf cart’s passage through the thick growth was clear: broken branches, freshly torn turf, a clearing of winter grass flattened by its passage. It was easy to follow, and after two agonizing minutes, Hazard glimpsed the white plastic frame ahead. The golf cart had been a smart choice on the kidnapper’s part, but it was still a golf cart, and the Ducati was definitely a fucking Ducati. The wiry man glanced back once and then again, as though unable to believe what he was seeing, and then he bent forward in his seat as though he could lend more speed to his vehicle.

  Hazard wasn’t sure what had brought the man back to Grant’s Retreat. Most likely it had been Norwood Grant’s threatening phone call. The kidnapper, unwilling to leave and risk being caught by an ongoing manhunt, wanted to stay at Grant’s Retreat. Norwood Grant, most likely because of Hazard and Somers’s inquiries, knew that his own ass was on the line. They had fought. Grant had insisted the man leave. And the man had shot and killed him to cover his tracks. That, at least, was Hazard’s best guess.