“I’ve been thinking,” Hazard said, and it was like Somers had been waiting for the words, as though he knew they’d been coming, and the thought flashed through Somers’s mind: Here it comes. And he didn’t even know what it was, but he knew it was bad, a massive thunderhead on his mental horizon.

  He forced his voice to be normal, though. “Yeah?”

  “There’s someplace that Jesse might have taken Clyde. Someplace we haven’t looked yet. I thought of it last night when Peyton was doing her interview.”

  “And are you going to tell me?” Somers softened the words with a smile, but adrenaline was pounding, and a part of his brain was wondering, Why? Why did I think it was something else he was going to say?

  “The cave.”

  “What cave?”

  “That one outside of Branson, the one where they were staying when Britney and Peyton and Clyde were new to the cult. Remember? Clyde talked about it. And it came up in that news article—I think it was from the Star.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Somers thought about it, even though that black thunderhead was crashing along the skyline of his brain. “Didn’t they get run off the land?”

  “They did. But I still think they might have gone back. Geography and place are key components of religion. Look at the way Jerusalem has traded hands.”

  “This cave is their Jerusalem?”

  “I think so. Something like that.”

  “All right.”

  They collected the Interceptor—with fresh tires—and drove south, and the whole way, Hazard’s hand rode on Somers’s thigh. Like Somers might disappear if he let up. Or like Somers might fly away, and Hazard was pinning him in place. It was an odd mixture of gratifying and annoying, and Somers debated how long he was going to let this newly demonstrative Hazard keep going.

  The property where the cave was located fronted a state highway in the southwest corner of the state, marked only by a pressed-tin mailbox with a bleached flag and wire fence unrolling towards the north. They followed a gravel road away from the highway and stopped at a small ranch house behind a screen of twisted pines.

  At their knock, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman with a neatly pressed white shirt and slacks. She looked so out of place that Somers almost apologized, as though they’d come to the wrong house.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Herney?”

  The latticework of the screen pixellated her face.

  Somers continued, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. I’m Detective Somerset. This is Detective Hazard.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Mrs. Herney?”

  “What is this about?”

  “We’re working on a case, and we’d like to ask for your help. Is this the property with the cave that John Walden and his followers used?”

  She blinked slowly, as though he were speaking incomprehensibly, and then shrugged. “I’m sorry. Could I see your badges?”

  They showed them to her.

  “Wait here, please.”

  And they could hear her calling to check.

  When she came back, she still looked like she might chew up a kitten for fun, but she opened the screen door.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Somers said again, flashing her one of his best smiles. It skated off her like butter on a skillet.

  “Wait here, please,” she said, indicating the front room of the house, with a floral-patterned sofa and chairs that had probably been young about the same time as Liz Taylor.

  They sank onto the couch, and its springs groaned under Hazard’s weight.

  “I thought you’d dropped all that weight from when you were living with Nico,” Somers said.

  “I didn’t need to drop any weight.”

  Somers arched an eyebrow.

  Hazard shot him a look. “You’ve got a complaint?”

  “I’m going to have a complaint if this sofa breaks and I have to pay for a new one.”

  “I’m not fat.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “That’s what you’re implying. You didn’t seem to think I was fat last night.”

  “Ree, I love you just the way you are. Every pound.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “People find me charming.”

  “Not her.” Hazard jerked a thumb at the hallway.

  “She’s a lesbian.”

  “No. She’s not.”

  “She didn’t like my smile.”

  “Not every woman who doesn’t like your smile is a lesbian.”

  “Statistically? Yes. They are.”

  “Correction. You’re an arrogant asshole.”

  “Most people—”

  “Don’t,” Hazard said through gritted teeth.

  “I just wanted to point out—”

  Somers was halfway through the sentence when Hazard kissed him. Blinking at him, Somers tried to remember what he’d been going to say.

  “Finished?” Hazard said.

  Somers blinked again and made sure both feet were planted on the ground.

  “Thank God,” Hazard muttered.

  A moment later, the woman returned, accompanied by an old man supporting himself with a walker. The man must have been past eighty, but his eyes were a clear, steady green. Frizzed white hair haloed his head, and one corner of his mouth drooped. Along the same side of his body, his arm latched rigidly onto the walker, and his foot moved heavily.

  “I’m Ted Herney.” He made it to the floral-print easy chair and dropped into it, and the motion reminded Somers of a child slipping back into the pool, trusting that the water would be there. “You’re reporters?”

  Somers flicked a look at the woman, who lingered in the hallway. “No, sir.” And he repeated his introduction.

  “Marjorie,” Herney shouted. “Marjorie!”

  “I’m right here, Father.”

  “You said they were reporters.”

  “I said they wanted to know about that cave.” Her hands pressed to her slacks, and Somers noticed the creases there, the perfect pleats, like they’d been steamed and starched until they could cut down a redwood. “My father is not well, Detectives. Can you ask your questions and go?”

  “Not well.” Herney cupped his halo of hair with his good hand, fingers brushing the ends as though making sure it was still there. “I had a stroke. That’s what she means. Work like a horse, eat like a horse, and now I’m goddamn going to die like a horse. Put me down and make glue out of me. That’s what Marjorie would like to do.”

  Marjorie didn’t respond, but judging by how she pinched the pleats on her trousers, how the pressure forced the blood from her fingertips, Somers thought Ted Herney might not be far off.

  “Mr. Herney, we’re looking into John Oscar Walden. We understood—”

  “Who?”

  “John Oscar Walden.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He called himself Brother Jeshua. We understood—”

  “Him. Oh, I know him. He lived here for a while. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Lived right here. They seemed like a nice family, all right. Husband and wife, two pretty girls, and that boy.”

  “A boy?” Hazard said. “What boy?”

  “Boys are more trouble than girls,” Herney said. “A lot more. Look at me. I had four boys and Marjorie, and here I am, and when I need help, who comes home? Marjorie. She never put a foot wrong when she was in school. I had four boys, you know. Ted, junior, he got into all sorts of scrapes. Peed on a school bus one time. I don’t know how that boy did it, but he damn near flooded the bus out. Some kind of prank, wasn’t it, Marjorie?”

  Marjorie’s eyes were the same clear, sharp green as her father’s, and she had her gaze fixed on Somers. Not in a sexual way, either. Somers knew what that felt like. Hell, the way Hazard looked at him, those long, smoldering looks, Somers practically had a third-degree sunburn every day of his life. That’s not how Marjorie Herney looked at him, though. She was looking at him like she meant to spatchcock him with a dull knife.

  “Brother Jeshua—” Somers began.

  “He was hard on that boy. Spare the rod, that’s how I raised my children. But that man took it a step further. I know what all the quacks say. They’ll tell you that spanking a child will turn him into a criminal or a delinquent or a homosexual. Quacks. They’ll say anything. You spank a kid, and he knows he’s done something wrong, and that’s the end of it.”

  To judge by the way Marjorie was clutching at her trousers, it didn’t look like that had been the end of it for her.

  “He hit the boy?” Hazard said, and his voice had dropped, the muscles in his jaw had tightened.

  “Oh Lord, yes. One time, that boy stole some milk. Just walked into the house like he owned it, took the milk, and walked out. And I went down there because I had a thing or two to say about that. That man hauled the boy out, took off his belt, and just about stripped him out of his skin. A thing like that shakes a man, you understand. Spare the rod, well, that’s no good. But the way he did it—” He sucked his teeth. “It shakes a man. After that, I didn’t want them on my land.”

  “Where were they staying?”

  “There’s some caves over west. And I don’t want you thinking I left that poor girl, pregnant and scared, in a damp, dark hole. Calling it a cave doesn’t really say much for the place, but it’s big and dry, and they made it halfway decent.”

  “Why did you let them stay?” Somers said.

  “I didn’t know about them at first. They were sneaking in and out at night, coming in from the west. But one day I spotted them, and I got my rifle and went down there and told them they’d be moving on to the highway or to heaven, and that was their choice. But then that pregnant girl came out, could barely walk she was stuffed so full, and, well, I had five children of my own, and I knew that was the kind of trouble you can’t pack up and send on its way. If you do, it comes back at you.” He sucked his teeth again. “She liked me all right, I think. Even told me she was going to name the baby after me—oh, and her old man didn’t like that one bit.”

  “Which girl?” Somers said. “Do you remember who was pregnant?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Her name. What was her name?”

  “Oh no. Wouldn’t have been proper. And, truth told, I didn’t care to know; a name has a way of worming inside you.” His eyes moved to his hands, gnarled and swollen, and he tented his fingers. “She lost that baby. And then the old man went after his boy with the belt, and I didn’t want that on my land anymore.”

  Somers tried a few more angles, probing, hoping to get something more substantial out of the old man, but if Ted Herney knew anything else, he wasn’t going to give it up.

  “We’d like to see the cave, Mr. Herney,” Somers said. “If you don’t mind.”

  “No,” Marjorie said. It was the first thing she’d said, hard and cracking on the vowel, as though she hadn’t used her voice in twenty years instead of twenty minutes.

  “Damn good cave,” Herney said. “I don’t want you thinking they were cold and wet. I wouldn’t have done that. Not to a girl, not to a girl in the family way, not like that. You go down there and take a look.”

  “No,” Marjorie said. “No, Dad. They can’t go down there.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve got the forestry consultant down there. He’s looking at the west forty—”

  “God’s knockers,” Herney shouted. “I told you I didn’t want those pencilnecks down there messing around.” Spittle flecked his lips, and he rocked in the easy chair, his twisted hands scrabbling at the walker, trying to pull himself upright. “You don’t listen to a damn thing I say. I say I want steak, you bring home chicken. I say I want a shower, you draw a bath. I say I want to be cold in the ground before you chop up my livelihood and my father’s and his father’s, and you turn around and put the knife right in my back. Isn’t that a father’s greatest dream? Isn’t it? To have a city girl, to have a snake, a lawyer, hissing and slipping and sniffing around, waiting to cut up his life? You damn well knew—”

  Somers nudged Hazard, and they made their way to the door.

  “Mr. Herney, we’re going to leave you now. We’re going to take a look at those caves.”

  He waved one clenched hand in their direction, but his attention remained fixed on Marjorie. “You think I don’t have the sense to pull up my own drawers, but you’ve got another thing coming. I’m calling Arnie Stuck and I’m telling him exactly what I want. I don’t care if you think he went to a third-rate school. Arnie does what I ask him to do, and I don’t have to worry about a snake hissing and biting at my ankles every time I take a step. Did you think I’d be so soft in the head that you could swoop down and take what’s mine—”

  Somers eased himself outside, catching the screen door as it swung shut, but through the screen he could still feel Marjorie Herney’s eyes on him, like frozen blades of grass, green and sharp enough to cut.

  “Nice family,” Hazard said.

  Somers shook his head. “Let’s go before Marjorie finds a way to hustle us out of here.”

  They got into the Interceptor, and Somers urged the SUV west, following a dirt track away from the house and onto the expanse of Herney’s property. Some of the land showed signs of cultivation—a few dozen acres, maybe, planted with corn or soy or wheat, the furrows still fresh and damp, the dirt black enough to show grains of sand like stars.

  “He’s not exactly a reliable source,” Hazard said. “He thought they were a family.”

  “But the Star article only mentioned Walden and his wife and daughters. Not a word about Clyde. And not a word about a pregnancy either.”

  “Walden probably forced her to have an abortion. Cult sex-slaves are one thing. Raising a child is another thing entirely.” The muscles along Hazard’s jaw and throat flexed and tightened. One of his huge mitts clamped down on Somers’s leg. “Why didn’t Clyde tell us? Why didn’t he tell us that one of the girls had gotten pregnant?”

  There was rage in his voice, like steam building in a boiler, so much steam that it might shoot the roof off the building. Somers recognized the rage—he’d seen Hazard angry plenty of times before—but not its quality. This was new. And it was frightening. So Somers resorted to what he usually did with people. He trusted his gut and followed a spiderweb of thought.

  “You didn’t tell me about dinner with your dad.”

  “What?”

  “Your dad. How’d things go last night?”

  “What the hell does that matter?”

  It mattered a lot, Somers wanted to say. It mattered a lot because Emery Hazard was a bundle of contradictions. He ranted and brooded and thundered his way through life, but he was about the most gentle, caring person Somers had ever known. He had built himself up like a stack of bricks, and he prided himself on his rationality and logical view of the world, but his best decisions—the decisions that were most true to the man Somers knew—all sprang from deep wells of emotion. He claimed he didn’t want children, claimed he didn’t like children, but Somers could picture the way Evie had draped across Hazard’s chest, the drying green curry on his nose, the way he had cradled her, and the look on his face. It was, in many ways, the inverse of the look Hazard wore now: the fury he felt, the helplessness, the concern for a boy abandoned and abused. It was too Freudian, too reductive, too simplistic to claim that all of that came from Hazard’s father. Somers knew that he had played his own part in shaping the man that Hazard grew up to be. And he knew that Hazard had made his own choices. But Somers trusted his gut, and his gut told him that inside the man he loved, a chasm opened up where his father should have been.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Somers said.

  “And what does that mean?”

  Somers glanced at Hazard’s hand gripping his thigh.

  “I like touching you. You told me you like me touching you.”

  “Ree, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Not without me you’re not.”

  “Ree, I’m not. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’re a fucking broken record, you know that?” And he peeled his fingers away and cracked the window and stared out at the fields, overgrown here with weeds, showing years of neglect in the purple thistles popping across acres of farmland. The Interceptor creaked and bounced along the dirt road. Through the cracked window came the cry of a hawk, and then Somers saw it circling lazily, waiting for the kill.

  “He’s different,” Hazard finally said, his voice soft, but soft that went only an inch deep, and underneath was stone. “And he’s the exact same if that makes any sense.”

  Somers flexed his hands on the steering wheel. The trickiest part, the hardest part of loving Emery Hazard was knowing when to keep quiet.

  “He wanted to talk about you.” And Hazard turned towards him long enough to flash a dust-dry smile. “How’s that for your ego?”

  “Everybody wants to talk about me.”

  Still smiling, Hazard shook his head. “You know what that girl’s thinking?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Marjorie.”

  “She’s a grown woman.”

  “She’s still a little girl. And you know what she’s thinking?”

  Somers reached for Hazard’s hand, and Hazard pulled away and looked out the window again.

  “She’s thinking how much better her life will be when he’s dead. She’s been thinking that for a long time. You can see it, can’t you?”

  Somers nodded. He wanted to stop the car. He wanted to wrap his arms around Hazard. He wanted, with a kind of roiling turmoil throughout his mind, to cry, and he didn’t even know why, not exactly.

  “Jesus,” Hazard said, “what kind of kid grows up thinking that? Only that. Always that. You can’t—” His big hand twitched once, as though he wanted to reach for Somers, but he didn’t, and Somers wanted to say Hazard could do it, wanted to say that he was right there, wanted to say that he’d grab Hazard’s hand back and never let go. And he knew that if he did any of those things, this moment would end, and the walls would go back up, and the man he loved would brood and storm inside his tower where Somers couldn’t even see. So he kept his hands on the wheel. He kept driving. And Hazard finished with his voice burled by emotion. “You can’t ever be happy, wanting that. It’s like tightening a noose around your own neck. When you slip up, when you forget, you can breathe again, but as soon as you remember, you start pulling the rope tight, and then you’re on fire, every inch of you, and you know what the worst part is?”