Police Brutality Page 9

  “Just in case what?” Hoffmeister asked.

  “You get shot.”

  “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Hazard.”

  They got to the minivan; Hazard opened the front door and frowned.

  Somers sat in the passenger seat, checking the Glock holstered at his side. “I called the shooting in,” he said. “And I gave a statement. Somebody’s going to come over and pull the bullets out of the door, look for casings. I told them we’d be back when we could.” He shrugged. “They didn’t like that.”

  Hazard stared at him.

  Somers gave a single, slow blink and asked, in a voice Hazard had come to recognize as dangerous, “Something else?”

  “Fucking stubborn,” Hazard muttered as he got into the van.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DECEMBER 17

  MONDAY

  7:03 PM

  THE WINTER NIGHT HAD SWEPT everyone off the streets, and the tired, yellow sodium lamps on Hoffmeister’s street made it seem much later than it really was: some past-midnight hour when everything took on an unreal clarity. Somers didn’t like it.

  This part of Wahredua was old and worn out. The asphalt was broken; the sidewalks canted, heaved up by roots or sinking into shifting soil. The houses were small, and they all needed work. Chain link rusted in long red streams; when the Odyssey’s headlights swept across one house, the halogen bulbs picked out the granular texture of moss staining the siding. In one yard, a mountain of old newspapers was slowly disintegrating next to the porch; in another, a tricycle lay on its side, stripped of wheels and chain and handlebars, a corpse picked down to the bones by scavengers.

  Hoffmeister’s house didn’t look any better or any different. A length of the chain fence had been rolled and tied back, as though to admit a piece of machinery too big to pass through the gate, but the thick clumps of chickweed growing around the rolled-up fence told Somers that the project, whatever it had been, had happened a long time ago. Two of the risers on the stairs that led up to Hoffmeister’s porch were obviously jerry-rigged: boards on top of bricks, looking like the first misstep would knock them loose and send the whole thing tumbling. Beyond that, it was hard to see much detail; Hoffmeister’s porch light was aggressively bright, and Somers had to raise a hand, squinting to see if the house had any lights on inside.

  “Let’s go around back,” Hoffmeister said.

  So they crossed the lawn and cut down the side of the house. Dog shit in the yard. Dog shit along the side of the house. Somers stepped in it; Hazard did too, which Somers could tell because of an aggravated intake of breath and the sudden, sharp stink. Hoffmeister took the stairs up to the back porch. There was no light back here except the high, bright security floods behind his back fence. City lights, placed to illuminate the alley. Hoffmeister stumbled on the steps, knocked something over, and a can rattled. It clanged when it fell, the noise running through Somers like electricity.

  Another of Hazard’s aggravated breaths.

  Hoffmeister took a long time with the keys, fumbling them, dropping them once, swearing under his breath. Like he’d never unlocked this door in his whole life. Or, Somers thought, like he’d had more to drink than he’d admitted. Then, creaking, the door fell open. Hazard caught Hoffmeister and shoved him clear.

  Beyond the door, the house was darkness. Nothing moved. A soft ticking came out of that black space, barely loud enough for Somers to hear over the roar of his pulse.

  Hazard glanced over, and Somers met his eyes. At the same time, they drew their guns and turned on the matching flashlights they were carrying. Between them, everything slid into place. The way it always did. The way it always had, since their first day as partners. They could bitch and fight and hate each other for twenty-three hours of the day—and, at the beginning, they had, or at least Hazard had—but danger made everything click.

  Hazard went first; Somers went next. They cleared their corners—kitchen, Somers processed briefly—and kept moving, lights and guns combing the darkness. Bedroom. Bedroom / office. Living room. Basement. The furnace chugged to life while they were down there, and another of those electric jolts ran through Somers.

  “Clear,” Somers said.

  It took too long, maybe thirty seconds, for Hazard to say, “Clear.” And his voice was muzzy when he did. Like he’d dragged himself out of a distant place to say it.

  They stood together in the darkness; the adrenaline made Somers feel like he could run up a wall. It made him want to puke. Hazard’s hand came out of the darkness, his fingers clamping down on the back of Somers’s neck. Too tight. Painfully tight. But Somers understood.

  Nothing he could say, though. Nothing that both of them didn’t already know, didn’t already feel in a way that went down to that sick heat in their guts.

  “Come on,” Hazard finally said, wrenching his hand away.

  “Are you ok?”

  Hazard stopped, just an outline against the fractionally brighter outline of the stairway. Then, his heavy steps carried him up and away.

  Somers found him in the kitchen. Hazard had holstered his gun and put away the flashlight. The back door was locked again, and lights were on all through the house. Somers tried to meet Hazard’s eyes, and Hazard looked everywhere else: the sink, the floor, the windows.

  Hoffmeister came back carrying a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Hazard said.

  “I’ve had a shitty night. I can have a drink.”

  “I’m not here for my fucking health, Hoffmeister. Let’s wrap this up. No signs of forced entry. No signs that anyone has been inside the house. No signs that anyone even tried to get inside the house.”

  Hoffmeister was pulling glasses.

  “Will you stop for a damn minute?” Hazard said.

  “I want a drink. I’m having a drink. My whole life is shit; you guys don’t understand. My life is shit and I’m having a drink.” He slammed down one of the glasses. “Christ, I’ve been on the force twenty years. I’m good police. I show up. I do my job. And now, because I did my job, I’ve got maniacs breaking into my house, throwing shit at my door, leaving threatening messages, trying to kill me. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even shit in peace because I keep thinking that’s when they’re going to come for me. So I’m having a drink. Somers, get me some goddamn ice. And get some for yourself. Hazard can go fuck himself.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Hazard said as Somers opened the freezer. “I’m going to look outside—”

  “No,” Somers said, surprised at how calm his voice was. “You should probably look at this first.

  The blood still hadn’t frozen, not all the way. Just a thin crust where the pool was thinnest at the edges.

  From within the freezer, a severed pig’s head stared back at Somers.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DECEMBER 18

  TUESDAY

  10:06 AM

  HAZARD SLEPT LATE; THE NIGHT had stretched on, first as Wahredua police invaded Hoffmeister’s home, tearing the place apart for clues about the severed head and the shooting. Peterson had directed most of it, although Carmichael and Moraes, as the detectives on scene, were nominally in charge. Nobody had any answers; when Hazard pressed Carmichael and Moraes, they dumped the whole thing on Peterson. When Hazard pressed Peterson, Peterson’s thin face contracted, and he repeated facts Hazard already knew: no signs of forced entry, none of the neighbors saw anything, they were still lifting prints from the refrigerator, hoping to get lucky.

  Then, when Hazard and Somers had finally extricated themselves, they had gone home and repeated the whole scene. Norman and Gross had already cut the bullets from the front door, and they’d even recovered a single casing from the street. But they wanted a statement. And then Cravens wanted to talk. And then Norman and Gross had more questions. Then, just when they had all finally left, Dulac had shown up, tousled and wearing sweats. He had grabbed Somers by the shoulders and hugged him and made the biggest fucking deal this side of the Resurrection that Somers was still alive.

  In bed the next morning, with light the same color as snowfall flooding the room, Hazard groaned and rolled into the pillow. He was pretty sure he should have killed Gray Dulac last night.

  But, like, dude. You could have died.

  That was the kind of shit Dulac kept saying. To Somers. And a lot of fist bumping. A lot of hugging: big bear hugs from the front; little shoulder squeezes from the side; abrupt bursts of affection when Dulac’s arm, which hung across Somers’s shoulders the whole time, would suddenly pull Somers against him, and Dulac would start laughing and pounding Somers on the back and swearing about how lucky he’d been.

  And more fist bumping.

  Somers just laughed and chattered and, if he’d had a tail, he would have wagged it like crazy. When Somers said something about a beer, Dulac finally pulled free and told them both to stay put; he’d get the beers.

  “I’m going to help him,” Hazard had said, launching after Dulac.

  No sooner had they both passed into the kitchen, out of Somers’s line of sight, then Hazard grabbed Dulac, twisting the sweatshirt into a noose around Dulac’s neck, and dragged him up against the pantry door.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Hey Hazard. Man, where’d you come from? Have you been here the whole time? I was just telling Somers—”

  “Don’t fuck with me, you little—” Hazard cut off, trying to come up with a different word.

  “Fucker?”

  Hazard shook him once; the pantry door rattled. “Stop touching my boyfriend.”

  “Dude.” Dulac squirmed free. “You’re kinda cute when
you get crazy. Did you know that?”

  “Leave,” Hazard growled.

  “What’s the hold up?” Somers had called from the living room.

  “You want to tell him about your whole day?” Dulac said. “You want to tell him about all the exploring you did?”

  Hazard thought about it. Thought about the fight that would happen. It might not have been a fight if he’d come clean up front, but now that he’d tried to hide it—and had gone along with Dulac’s plan to hide it—Somers would be furious.

  “So we’re just going to have a beer,” Dulac said. “Like friends. And then I’ll take off.”

  “One beer,” Hazard said, releasing his grip on the sweatshirt. “And we’re not friends.”

  Now, head throbbing, he pressed the pillow over his eyes to keep out the harsh light. One beer had turned into many, and then Dulac had found the bottle of vodka in the freezer and insisted on doing shots, only they didn’t have shot glasses, and Dulac kept dumping more and more of the vodka into the glasses.

  Hazard patted the bed next to him. Empty, but warm. A minute later, the shower hissed on. When the shower stopped, wet footsteps came across the room, and Hazard could smell Somers: clean, soapy, and that essence that was just John.

  “I think I died last night,” Somers said. “I feel like I should have died last night.”

  Hazard groaned into the pillow.

  “I should have been at the station hours ago.” Somers’s head, hair still damp, came to rest on Hazard’s chest. Hazard combed his fingers through the short, blond locks, still holding the pillow to his face, calculating how much time he had left before he needed to sprint to the toilet and puke.

  “What the fuck,” Somers moaned, turning into Hazard’s hand, “did Dulac put in our fucking drinks last night?”

  Hazard’s stomach gurgled.

  He barely managed an, “Oh shit,” before stumbling out of bed and shooting for the toilet.

  When he’d finished emptying his guts, he noticed Somers was wetting a wash cloth at the sink, which he passed to Hazard. Then Somers picked up his phone and swiped at the screen. Without any sort of greeting, he spoke into the phone as Hazard wiped his face and mouth.

  “This is your fucking fault. Get over here and fix it.”

  Hazard groaned. “I do not want to see that asshole.”

  “Take a shower,” Somers said. “You’ll feel better.”

  “Do you feel better?”

  “I feel like I want to die.”

  “There you go.”

  “That’s actually an improvement.”

  So Hazard showered. He dressed. When he got downstairs, Dulac’s voice spilled out of the kitchen, bright and shiny as a disco ball.

  “—and then Tee Ball said there was no fucking way he was drinking a gallon of old man piss, and Berto—we called him Berto then, then Berty, then Birdie, but back then he was still Berto—Berto said if Tee Ball wasn’t going to do the dare, he had to sleep on the roof for the rest of the summer, so Tee Ball—”

  “Shut up,” Hazard said as he walked into the kitchen.

  “Hey man,” Dulac said, bright eyed and grinning like he’d slept with the saints. “I was just telling Somers about—”

  “Shut up,” Hazard repeated, digging in the greasy paper sack on the counter, “or I’m going to kill you.”

  Dulac mimed zipping his lips, but he was grinning so loudly it made Hazard’s head want to explode. He ate the breakfast sandwich in three huge bites, standing over the sink while cheese and some sort of gooey, delicious sauce dripped over his fingers, and then he found the coffee Dulac had brought and started working on it.

  “Dude, you should probably have some water and some ibuprofen. Lots of water, actually. You know, hangover is really a form of severe dehydration, and—uh, what are you doing?”

  Hazard slid the knife out of the block, still sipping his coffee.

  “Hey.”

  Crossing the kitchen, Hazard brought up the knife.

  “Hey man. Just be cool, ok?”

  “I’m cool,” Hazard said, setting down the coffee and grabbing Dulac’s arm. He started dragging Dulac toward the front door.

  “Yeah, um, but with the knife, you know, you don’t seem like you’re very cool right now. You—Hazard, fuck, slow down—you kind of seem like you’re, uh, maybe a little heated.”

  “I’m absolute fucking zero,” Hazard said. “That’s how cool I am.”

  “Jesus Christ, what are you—dude, stop.”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “I brought you a breakfast sandwich. If you want to drink coffee, drink coffee. I was just trying to help.”

  “You helped. You helped so fucking much.” Hazard lined him up against the front door. “Stand up straight. Ok. Sleeve or collar?”

  “What?” Dulac’s eyes were huge and staring at the knife.

  “I’m going to pin you to this door so you don’t keep fucking bothering me while I’ve got a hangover that’s your fault. Sleeve or collar?”

  “Uh.”

  “Do you want me to put this knife through your sleeve or your collar?”

  “Don’t do this, man. We were getting along so well. I don’t want to have to tell Somers—”

  “You overplayed that. Sleeve or collar?”

  “Somers? Hey, Somers, a little help?”

  “Collar,” Somers shouted from the kitchen. “Easier to stitch up, and nobody will be able to tell.”

  Hazard raised an eyebrow.

  “Um. Collar. I guess.”

  Working the collar up, Hazard flattened it against the wood and then drove the tip of the knife through it. The blade wobbled when he released it, its edge an inch from Dulac’s pretty, freckled face.

  “Stay,” Hazard said.

  Back in the kitchen, Somers’s face was carefully blank.

  “One fucking word,” Hazard said, picking up his coffee again, “and you’re joining him.”

  After that, Hazard’s head felt a lot better.

  Somers tossed the trash from breakfast and kissed Hazard on the cheek. “You’re going to be careful today, right?”

  Hazard rumbled something that he very carefully didn’t intend to be an answer.

  “I know you’re going to keep looking into it,” Somers said. “I’m not expecting you to drop it. But you’re going to be smart about it, right?”

  “I’m always smart about what I do.”

  Somers was intelligent enough to catch the wiggle room. “Smart and careful, right?”

  Another grunt.

  “Ree.”

  “Fine. I’ll be careful.”

  “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Probably. It depends on how things go.”

  Somers kissed him again, said, “Careful,” like he was telling a dog to sit, and headed toward the front door.

  Dulac’s voice picked up almost immediately. “Holy shit, dude, is that what he’s like all the time? Because fuck, that was scary.”

  Somers said something too low for Hazard to hear, and Dulac laughed.

  “Ok, it was scary, and, yes, it was also seriously fucking hot.”

  The front door opened, and the voices faded as the two men stepped outside.

  “Does he ever get like that with you? When you’re about to bone, I mean? Because, fuck, I’d probably fucking die if he just looked at me the way he did when he was about to—”

  Then the door shut, and the voices cut off.

  When the sound of the car engines rumbled away, Hazard dumped the coffee, poured himself a huge glass of water, and started looking for the ibuprofen.

  Sometimes, with fuckboys, you just had to make a point.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DECEMBER 18

  TUESDAY

  10:44 AM

  THE FIRST STEP, FOR HAZARD, was to check out everything at Hoffmeister’s again.

  By daylight, the place looked worse. Darkness had covered the jagged cracks in the house’s foundation, the missing mortar between the chimney’s bricks, the tar patches that webbed the back patio. Hazard checked the back door first, examining the door itself, then the lock. It wasn’t anything complicated; in fact, the opposite. It was ancient, and Hazard barely had to fumble around with a pick before the mechanism turned and the door swung open.