Color crept into her cheeks. “I don’t. If you don’t believe me, then you didn’t know my mom. She…liked to be in control.”

  “But you go around to all these author events with her,” Hazard said. “As far as I can tell, you don’t have a job. Aren’t you some kind of assistant? You must have some degree of access to her mail, at least.”

  “I’m not her assistant! I’m a writer!” She scattered papers from the top of the desk and came up with a pack of Dunhills, and she began to pace again, tapping the pack against the heel of her hand. A jagged laugh tore off from somewhere inside her. “Not that I can sell anything.”

  “Did you see the email?” Somers asked. “Or did your mom tell you about it?”

  She tapped the pack harder. “I saw it. No. I don’t know.”

  “Good fucking Christ,” Hazard said under his breath.

  “I don’t know! I don’t remember!”

  “That’s all right.” Somers offered an even smile. “We’ll get access with a warrant; it’ll just take a little longer. I’m going to ask you again: is there anyone who might have wanted to hurt your mother? I’m not talking about people who hated her because of her books or her activism. I’m talking about a specific person, someone you can name, with a specific reason.”

  Ayelet dropped her hands to her sides; her fingers clutched the Dunhills so tightly that the pack crumpled. She shook her head. And then she closed her eyes.

  “The picture,” Somers said to Hazard. Hazard nodded and brought out his phone; while he did so, Somers said, “Ms. Ames, there was something strange about how we found your mother. Did she have any sort of tattoos or identifying marks on her chest?”

  Her eyes fixed glassily on Hazard’s phone, a kind of horror show fascination holding her attention, waiting for him to show her a nightmare. She shook her head.

  “You’re sure?” Somers asked. “Nothing?”

  “No.” The word was a bone caught in her throat. She coughed and asked, “Why? What did they—” She stopped. The paperboard pack of Dunhills made a soft squeaking noise in her grip.

  “Someone, most likely the killer, used a knife to make several marks in your mother’s chest. It’s possible they’re letters or words, but it’s—well, they aren’t exactly clear.”

  She swallowed, her gaze still caught by the phone. Then she turned, a hand moving out blindly for support that wasn’t there, her hip bumping the desk, and said, “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “That’s all right,” Somers said. “I understand. Can you think of someone whose name starts with an L? We thought the word might be Loretta, but there are too many markings, and the T’s are in the wrong place.”

  She started to shake her head. Then her whole body tightened. “Where is the T?”

  “It’s hard to be sure, but the third letter. Possibly.”

  Yanking open the pack of Dunhills, she shook her head. “Those—those bastards.” She had to try twice to get a cigarette out, and when she did, it bent between her fingers. She knocked more papers to the floor before she came up with a silver-plated lighter. She rolled a spark, and the cigarette caught. “Those fucking bastards.”

  “You know who it is?”

  She drew hard. The cigarette’s cherry flared, and she tilted her head back, like the smoke was a river rushing through her. Then she pulled the cigarette away, her chin dropping to her chest as she exhaled. She still looked like something was pulling her tight, her body taut under the force.

  “Not who,” she said. And then she laughed. She waved the cigarette, drawing letters in the air with the tip. “It’s not a name; it’s a quote. From that fucking book. ‘Let us go down.’”

  Somers glanced at Hazard, slightly gratified at the mixture of shock and outrage on his husband’s face—at least he wasn’t the only one who’d missed it. Then he looked back at Ayelet and asked, “From Katabasis?”

  She nodded and opened her mouth.

  A knock came at the door—hammering hard enough to shake it in its reinforced frame.

  Hazard’s hand went to his hip, where that massive cowboy revolver was strapped.

  “Were you expecting someone?” Somers asked quietly.

  Ayelet’s jaw was slack, but after a moment, she shook her head.

  The hammering began again. Hazard stepped to the edge of the room, positioning himself at the mouth of the short hallway that led to the door. It was a good spot; he could pull back behind the wall for cover, and it was a natural chokepoint.

  “Ask who it is,” Somers whispered.

  She gaped at him, but when he pointed sharply to the door, she swallowed and called out, “Who is it?”

  Somers eased the Glock from the holster at his hip. He kept his steps as light as he could as he moved down the hallway. His back was pressed to the wall. If someone out there had the bright idea to shoot through the door, they’d most likely shoot through the center, which meant Somers would be out of the line of fire. Most likely.

  The pounding on the door cut off when Somers was less than a foot away. He barely noticed; blood hammered in his ears, and everything else was secondary. He glanced back. Hazard stood with the Blackhawk held low, and he nodded.

  Somers risked a glance through the peephole. It was a man—tall, thin. In spite of the late May warmth, he wore a satin baseball jacket and an adjustable Cardinals cap. The hat was pulled so low that the brim connected with the huge sunglasses he was wearing. What Somers could see of his face told him little: white, fair complexioned, a hint of freckles, wrinkles that suggested forties or fifties.

  “Police,” Somers said. “Sir, step away from the door and show me your hands—”

  The man turned and broke into a sprint.

  “Runner,” Somers shouted over his shoulder as he yanked the door open. “Call it in!”

  “John, wait!”

  But Somers was already putting on the gas, tearing down the hallway after the man. The guy had speed, and he’d started with a good lead, one that had only gotten bigger because of the precious seconds it had taken Somers to open the door. He was headed for the end of the building, where fire stairs led down. Gun in hand, Somers raced after him.

  His heart pounded in his chest. His lungs sucked in oxygen. He knew he was lucky, knew good genetics had made him a natural athlete, but he also knew he worked hard, especially on the downhill thirties, to keep that edge. His muscles loosened as his body warmed up. The run became a kind of frenzied glide.

  A woman with an infant held to her shoulder emerged from a room. The man shouted something, and she stumbled back, but he still had to swerve to avoid her. It threw him off balance, and he slapped the wall to steady himself. It shaved off a half second, maybe a second. But it was something, and Somers was just getting started.

  When the man flew through the fire door at the end of the hall, it boomed against the concrete wall of the stairwell and then clapped shut again. Twenty yards. Ten. Somers angled his body to catch the door with his shoulder. Five yards.

  He hit the door, and it swung open, crashing hard against the wall again. He skidded on the concrete landing of the fire stairs, tapping the brakes, trying to turn. Down. The odds were ninety-ten that the guy went down instead of up, trying to get out. Somers had half a second to realize that he’d been stupid.

  The man came barreling down the steps from the next landing up. Somers was still trying to stop himself, the soles of his sneakers squeaking on the concrete. In what looked like something out of a movie, the guy grabbed the railings with both hands. He swung his upper body back, extending the reach of his legs, and kicked Somers in the face. It was like someone flipping a light switch.

  Somers was vaguely aware of colliding with the wall, his legs folding under him, the sudden coolness of concrete against his cheek when he fell to the landing. For a moment, it was like that girl in college, the one who had loved vinyl, messing with the speed and playing a record way too fast. Then things slowed down a little. He tasted blood. Light ballooned in one eye. Then his brain caught up enough for him to realize he was looking at the fire door, and someone had opened it. That was why there was so much light. This seemed like a pretty significant observation, so he decided he’d better explain it.

  “Mother of fuck, John, be quiet.” Hazard’s hands were gentle as he turned Somers’s head. “I know the door is open. I’m the one who fucking opened it.” There was movement, and then Hazard had the phone cradled between his shoulder and his face. “Yes, I’m with him right now. No. No, he got away. Yes, Yarmark, you should put cars on the street and see if you can still catch him. Well, what the fuck did you not understand about ‘he got away’? And get an ambulance over here; I think John has a concussion.”

  “Ree?” Somers said. His head was starting to throb, and the light was ballooning again, a huge, shimmering yellow swell of it.

  “I don’t know, Samuel,” Hazard was shouting into the phone. “Why don’t you check one of your fucking worksheets?”

  “Ree?”

  The phone clattered against the concrete. “You’re all right.” Hazard’s voice was a surprisingly soothing rumble, his hand soft against Somers’s forehead. “Do you need to be sick?”

  Somers tried to shake out a no and then groaned and pressed his fingers against his head, trying to hold his skull together. Thought began to coalesce. “Who was that? And what the hell is going on?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MAY 16

  SATURDAY

  12:13 PM

  WHEN THEY LEFT THE hospital, Somers had a bandage wrapped around his head. The worst of the throbbing was packed away under acetaminophen; the ER doctor had offered something stronger, but Somers had refused. Now, with the sun lancing down and every windshield turned into cut-glass kaleidoscopes, he regretted the choice. He should have asked for a morphine drip.

  They’d lost hours—not just with the ambulance and paramedics and the emergency room and the interminable waiting that seemed part and parcel of every so-called emergency, but with Ayelet and the sheriff’s detectives. It hadn’t mattered what they’d tried or how they’d asked; Ayelet swore up and down that she didn’t know the man who had come to her room and attacked Somers. She hadn’t seen him, and she didn’t recognize the description that Somers gave. Eventually, the doctor—a pleasant-faced young woman named Dr. Lee—had insisted that Somers lie down and that Hazard stop disturbing the other patients, and Brother Gary and Red Alvin had taken Ayelet back to her hotel.

  Now, sweat already starting on his nape, Somers shaded his eyes as they crossed the hospital parking lot.

  “You need to eat something,” Hazard said as he followed Somers around to the passenger door and helped him into the car.

  “I can buckle my own seatbelt,” Somers said with a smile.

  Hazard made a noise that definitely meant something.

  “Hey,” Somers said, catching his wrist. “I’m ok. I made a mistake, but everything’s ok. No concussion. Hell, I didn’t even split my scalp. I’ve had worse headaches from Colt’s Spotify playlists.”

  For a moment, the old Hazard was there, staring back at him—the one for whom rage was both arms and armor. Then, slowly, that Hazard dissolved. He slid free of Somers’s grasp and locked their fingers together again. He leaned against the van. He rested his head on his arm, and he closed his eyes, his face whiting out as everything caught up with him.

  Somers waited and rubbed his thumb along the side of Hazard’s hand.

  “It was a tactical decision,” Hazard finally said. “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “I should have considered the possibility.”

  Hazard made another of those meaningful noises. Then he pushed off from the van and, as he started to swing the door shut, said, “And since you insist you’re capable of fastening your own seatbelt, I assume that we won’t have to have any more discussions about why you need to buckle up even when, quote, ‘we’re just going down the street.’”

  “Be nice to me. I’m the walking wounded.”

  “Most accidents happen within five miles of home. I don’t care if you’re just moving the car out of the driveway; you buckle up.”

  “And give me a kiss.”

  Hazard did. And then another one that felt like a bonus because it had a little tongue.

  “All right, maybe not that nice,” Somers said with a laugh and put a hand on his chest. “Not unless you want to go home and take care of another medical emergency.”

  Hazard snorted, but he had one of those invisible Emery Hazard smiles as he shut the door and came around to the driver’s seat. He was still wearing it when they pulled out of the parking lot, and that went a long way toward easing the headache jackhammering through Somers’s skull.

  “Are you sure you’re feeling well enough to go back to work?” Hazard asked a few blocks later. “I could drop you off at home.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “To talk to Joyce Sturgis.”

  “Uh huh. And you thought you’d do that without me?”

  “I think you have a head injury—”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “You could coordinate things from the station.”

  “I have highly trained officers who are capable of doing their jobs.”

  “All of them?” Hazard muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “I said yes, I’d love for you to go with me.”

  “Uh huh,” Somers said, settling back against the headrest. He might have said more, but his phone buzzed, so he worked it out of his pocket. When he saw the name on the screen, he groaned. Then he answered on speaker. “Hello, Father.”

  “John-Henry, why do I have the lieutenant-governor calling me again?”

  Somers thought, briefly, about disconnecting. Bad connection. The lieutenant-governor had applied the thumbscrews on their last major investigation, when two controversial political figures had been killed in a seedy motel. He shouldn’t have been surprised that the phone calls were coming again after an icon from the culture wars had been murdered. As quickly as he could, he sketched out the events leading up to the murder and the course of their investigation so far.

  “Good Lord,” Glenn Somerset snapped. “I told those morons to stop making such a big deal about it. I told them the more wood they threw on the fire, the worse they’d look.”

  “Told whom?” Hazard asked.

  The silence was a breath too long. “I see that I’m on speakerphone, John-Henry.”

  “You have some sort of back-channel communication with these parents?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Emery, we’re not talking about the Cold War. They’re my constituents. I’m available to speak with them in both official and unofficial capacities.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “The point I’m making is that I warned them not to escalate things; they were going to lose this fight, and they were going to make themselves look worse for having tried.”

  “Apparently someone didn’t take that message to heart. That’s surprising because fundamentalist knob-jobs are notorious for listening to reason.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take me off speakerphone, would you, John-Henry?”

  “Nice try,” Hazard said.

  “Father, at this point, there’s not much else to report. We’re headed over to the Sturgis home—”

  “They aren’t home.”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Because, as I said, they’re my constituents. They’ll be at that restaurant they own, holding court. The Ace in the Hole.”

  “And that name doesn’t suggest any degree of sexual repression,” Hazard said to himself.

  Somers slapped his thigh and ignored the scowl that came back at him. “I’ll keep you updated, Father—”

  “Why would someone take her out to that development?”

  Somers blinked, and Hazard spoke before he could respond. “Were you involved in that?”

  “I don’t understand that question.”

  “InnovateMidwest, that scam you were tied up in with Mayor Newton. Was Okashka Heights one of your projects?”

  The thrum of the tires underscored the silence. When Glenn spoke again, his voice was so neutral it was like a razor blade. “I was not ‘tied up in’ a scam with Mayor Newton. I am a businessman with investments in a number of enterprises—”

  “Father, Evan Pawloski, the boy who attacked—tried to attack, really—Theo at the board meeting, his parents own that property. That’s what the sheriff’s detectives told us.”

  “That’s right. I understand they purchased that development shortly before they moved here. To hear Forrest Pawloski tell it, he could have managed the project remotely, but he prefers to work hands on. He also was vocal about finding a place with decent family values where he could raise his son.”

  “Great,” Hazard said. “Another family of psychos.”

  “Why would they buy that place?” Somers asked. “It’s a ruin.”

  “For the same reason I tried to buy it,” Glenn said drily. “Although I was outbid. There’s a substantial state subsidy for remediating abandoned properties; the county is going to match it. At this point, they could build an entirely new neighborhood and make a profit without ever selling a house.”

  “You’re joking,” Hazard said.

  “Only barely.”

  “Do you know anything about the family?” Somers asked. “Were they vocal about Loretta Ames coming to town?”

  “I know they’re wealthy, John-Henry. And I know that they’re extremely conservative. They’re involved with various state-level campaigns, and their positions are…extreme. Joyce Sturgis and her group of concerned parents make a lot of noise and stir things up around town, but the Pawloskis are the truly dangerous ones.”

  “Jesus. Ok.”

  “Which is why,” Glenn said, as though speaking to himself, “I have no idea why that boy made a public spectacle of himself.”

  “If you find out,” Hazard said, “let us know. It’d be nice to have somebody else do some actual work for once.”