They sat, the two of them on a love seat that felt like it was built out of matchsticks, the polyester scratchy under Hazard’s hands. Slade took the ottoman. His whole body looked limp, as though someone had ripped out all his stitches.

  “I’m not gay,” Slade said thickly.

  Hazard snorted. “I don’t care.”

  “Last night, what they said—I’m not a homo.”

  “Slade,” Somers said, “is your mom here?”

  He shook his head. “We were just messing around.”

  “No,” Hazard said. “You weren’t. They were abusing you and on the brink of sexually assaulting you. The only way to make it stop is to file a complaint, tell everyone what they did, and learn how to stand up for yourself.”

  Slade looked up at the windows. Where the streetlights’ glow reached them, it tinted the glass the color of cataracts. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course I do. I’ve been there. I’ve been you. Or close enough.”

  Slade shook his head again. “My mom said she’d take care of it.”

  Somers’s voice was gentle when he said, “Why did you put those pills in the Coke?”

  Turning into his shoulder, Slade wiped his eyes. He let out a hiccupping noise. Then he was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was distant. “I thought it was Junior’s. I thought he would leave me alone. He’d get tired and forget about me.”

  “Or he’d die,” Hazard said. “You thought he might die, isn’t that right?”

  Slade sounded confused, almost like a child, as he answered. “I don’t…know. Maybe. A part of me. Nobody would think twice; he’s done it before. He gets them from his mom.” A strange smile cracked open. “I got them from his mom.”

  “What did you get from Junior’s mom?”

  “Valium. And Xanax. She used to be a PA. She could get whatever she wanted.” He shifted on the ottoman. “I didn’t mean for Colt to—I thought it was Junior’s. I just wanted him to leave me alone.”

  The apartment’s front door opened, and Kerigan appeared in the kitchen. Her head was down. She was juggling several Dollar General bags and a ring of keys. “They didn’t have the Swedish meatballs, baby, but I got you some of that garlic bread you like, and I know the toaster oven is out but I thought—what are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Ms. Attaway,” Somers said, rising. “We’re sorry to intrude, but we need to talk to you and Slade.”

  “Well, you can’t. I want you to leave.” The keys jingled as she adjusted her load. “I want you to leave right now.”

  “No,” Hazard said. “Put that shit down and take a seat. Your son has some more explaining to do.”

  “You can’t,” Kerigan said. “I told you to leave, so you have to leave. You have to!”

  “I’m not a child,” Hazard said. “You can’t steamroll me. I’m not a teacher who can be bullied into changing quiz grades. I’m not a coach who’s going to get scared because you take a baseball bat to my car. Sit down and be quiet.”

  Filtering down through the building, a distorted guitar solo wailed in the silence.

  Kerigan started up again with clockwork movements, shedding the bags and keys at the kitchen counter, coming into the living room with herky-jerky steps. She drew herself up behind Slade and rested her hands on his shoulders. The boy shrank down under her touch.

  “Slade,” Somers said, “you’re in a lot of trouble right now. What you did, putting those pills in Colt’s drink, that’s assault. That’s a felony. And another person at the party got it on camera. It’s you. There’s no denying it’s you. There’s no hiding what you did. Your mom can’t help you with this. The only person who can help you right now is you.”

  “We want a lawyer,” Kerigan said. Her face was the same color as the old Popeye wallpaper. “We want a lawyer before we say anything. Slade would never—there’s been some sort of mis—”

  “Mom,” Slade shouted, “shut up!”

  Kerigan froze. Her jaw hung open. Behind the wire-rim glasses, her eyes had the same milky sheen as the breadbox windows. With what looked like a great deal of effort, she pried her hands off Slade’s shoulders. “You can’t—” She gave a skipping-needle laugh. “You can’t talk to me—” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Around her hand, she said, “Slade, I am your mother.”

  Something heavy thumped, the force shaking its way through the building. The music above cut off. A girl screamed.

  Hazard spoke into the breach, bluffing with an accusation. “Here’s what I think happened, Slade. I think Junior wasn’t the first time you tried to kill someone. I think you already got away with it once—or you think you got away with it.”

  Slade shook his head.

  “You hated Tony,” Hazard continued. “He treated you like shit. His son treated you like shit. They made fun of you. They called you queer. Junior made your life hell at school. Tony made your life hell at home. He’d come around, wouldn’t he? He’d tune up on your mom when something went wrong at work or when he couldn’t get his dick up. He’d knock her around to make himself feel better. And you just watched. You hated Tony. And you hated yourself, I bet. For letting him do it. For letting him get away with it. Over and over again.”

  Slade mouthed, No. He was staring at one of the dozens of pictures of himself. Eight-year-old Slade. Center part. Bowl cut.

  “You’re being too hard on him,” Somers said. “He didn’t know what was going on. He’s just a kid. Hey, even if he had known, what was he going to do?”

  “No,” Kerigan said. The word was stilted. A sound bite, pre-recorded. “No, that never—he never—”

  “Of course he knew,” Hazard said. “And he did do something: he waited until he had his chance, and then he shot Tony in the back.”

  “No,” Kerigan said.

  Slade shook his head hard, once.

  “And that’s murder,” Hazard said. “In the first degree. You planned it. You carried it out. And when you thought you’d gotten away with it, you tried again with Junior.”

  Shooting to his feet, Slade said, “I didn’t—”

  “He couldn’t,” Kerigan said. She clutched at Slade, hands like claws, trying to pull him to her. “You can’t. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. You can’t! He’s my baby, he’s my—”

  With a savage scream, Slade shoved her. She fell. She landed first on her butt, and then the force of the fall carried her into a half-somersault; it must have twisted her neck something awful. She ended up on her side, staring at Slade like she’d never seen him before.

  Hazard wasn’t sure, to be honest, if she ever had seen him before—not this Slade, his chest heaving for breath, his face twisted with rage under the thick-packed benzo insulation.

  “Yeah,” Hazard said quietly. “There he is.”

  “He deserved to die!” Slade shouted. “He’d come over and fuck her! And he’d hurt her! And he’d fuck her again! And I had to listen to her screaming. I wanted him to die. I just wanted him to die. But Junior was worse. Junior—Junior—” He seemed to be coming apart, unable to keep all the pieces of himself in that black gravity of hate that had held him together for so long. “I was going to find him. Junior. I went to find him. I wasn’t going to let him push me around anymore, and—and—and—” The fire in his voice died. He looked chalky now. The cataract-white of the windows. The blind-white of the sheen in his mother’s eyes. “And I knew I’d gone too far when I got to the fire tower. I saw Aunt Celeste, but she wasn’t herself. Something about her face. I was scared. I waited until she was gone, and then I went back to the blind.” He drooped, looking suddenly exhausted, and put a hand over his eyes. “I didn’t—I wish I had. He deserved it, and I wish I had. But I didn’t.”

  Kerigan picked herself up slowly. She was considering her son, the stranger—it must have seemed to her, anyway—who had taken his place. She adjusted the wire-rim glasses. Her ear looked puffy, and Hazard guessed she had hit it when she fell. Her breathing was thin and high; the music hadn’t come back on, and now her breathing was the only sound in the cramped apartment.

  “I think you’re lying,” Hazard said. “And I think we need to take you into the station. I saw the kill cam videos, Slade. Celeste didn’t leave her blind that day, but you and your mom—well, your videos are conveniently missing.”

  “I deleted them.” Kerigan’s voice was eerily cool. “All of them.”

  “What?” Somers asked.

  “I deleted the videos from the kill cams. I—Slade had never gotten a deer.”

  It took Hazard a moment to understand.

  Somers spoke first. “You shot that deer and let Slade take the credit. But in order for that to work, you had to delete the kill cam recordings. Otherwise, everyone would be able to see that you’d gotten it.”

  “The Boones gave us access to the system.” She looked at her hands, as though taking inventory. “The recordings are stored in the cloud. I deleted them after I shot the deer. I didn’t know—I had no idea—”

  “All of them?” Somers asked sharply. “You deleted all of them?”

  She nodded. She didn’t seem to understand the significance of the question. “It would have looked suspicious otherwise. I thought about copying over the ones from the day before. No one would know—we wore the same outer layers, you know, coats and gloves and hats, every day. Then I realized that didn’t make any sense; I was so nervous I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She laughed. “Because he didn’t get a deer that day either.”

  Hazard glanced at Somers.

  His husband said, “A detective from the sheriff’s department is going to come and take your statements. Slade, I need you to think carefully about where and when you saw your aunt. Kerigan, you need to be honest about deleting the videos. You’re going to have to convince the Sheriff’s Department that you weren’t accessories to this murder.”

  “What about Junior?” Hazard asked.

  Slade blinked. Kerigan shook her head.

  “Where was he during all this? Did either of you see him?”

  Neither one seemed capable of answering, and Hazard found himself clenching his jaw.

  As Somers placed the call to Brother Gary, he whispered, “What?”

  Hazard shook his head. “She’s going to get away with it. Celeste. She’s going to take the blame, and Junior’s going to walk away scot-free. Again. Fuck if I’m going to let that happen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NOVEMBER 30

  SATURDAY

  7:02 PM

  BROTHER GARY CAME WITH two deputies. He left the deputies to keep an eye on Slade and Kerigan and followed Hazard and Somers outside to the Charger. He listened to their summary. He mumbled a few things under his breath—what sounded, to Hazard, like prayers that had never made it into any recognizable liturgical tradition—and once raised his face to heaven, doubtless beseeching divine favor.

  When Somers had finished his recap, Brother Gary said, “We’ll take it from here, boys.”

  “Boys?” Hazard said.

  “It’s your investigation,” Somers said. “Tony Urman is in your hands.”

  “Tony Urman, God bless and keep him, is in the Lord’s hands now,” Brother Gary said. “All we can do is our part in this valley of sorrow.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Hazard muttered and got in the car.

  When Somers dropped behind the wheel and shut the door, Hazard said, “You’re letting him take over this murder?”

  “I’m not letting him take over anything,” Somers said as he started the car. The vents belched out the smell of ancient puke and corn chips. “It’s his case—his and Red Alvin’s. They’ve had it from the beginning, Ree.”

  “It’s my case too,” Hazard said. “And I still want to talk to Celeste. I don’t trust that dumbfuck to prove she’s covering for Junior. If we leave it to Brother Gary, Celeste is going to get just what she wants: she’ll take the fall, and Junior will walk away from this.”

  “Well, since officially I have no part in this investigation,” Somers said, “I don’t think I can do that. I’ve been asked by the detective in charge of the case to stay out of it. I think I have to respect that.”

  “Fine. Drop me off, and I’ll talk to her myself.”

  Somers blew out a breath. “It would be nice if occasionally you remembered that I am your loyal and supportive and sometimes unbelievably patient husband.”

  “I understand that your official role—”

  “Since I can’t talk to Celeste in an official capacity about Tony Urman’s murder, I guess I’ll have to talk to her in an official capacity about the shooting at her mother’s house.”

  Hazard raised his eyebrows.

  “Which,” Somers said with a slightly too-cocky-for-his-own-good grin, “happened in my jurisdiction.”

  His first try was a misstep. Hazard knew that as soon as he started. “My inference was logical—”

  Somers held up a hand.

  After a moment, Hazard managed, “I’m sorry.”

  “And?”

  “I love you.”

  Which, of course, just made Somers’s grin even cockier.

  At night, the house appeared first as glimmers between the trees: sparks and flares of warm, yellow light dancing between oak and pine. Then, when Somers turned up the driveway, the house took on lines and substance. Every window blazed brightly against the night. It had a blind, manic domesticity at odds with the trees, the stone retaining walls, the bend of the river. When Somers parked and Hazard opened the door, the smell of cedar and running water met him. The light from the windows made him cast a dozen shadows against the ground. The wind picked up, and the branches overhead creaked as they stirred. The darkness came alive, a thousand shifting pennants.

  Hazard walked to the garage and stretched up to look through the small windows set high in the door. The Toyota that he had seen Junior driving the other day was gone, and the garage was empty.

  When he returned to Somers, he shook his head. “Somebody took the car.”

  “Well, let’s see who’s home.”

  Somers knocked.

  From inside the house, the sound of steps came toward them. Then the door opened, and Celeste stood there. Her red-gold hair was clipped back. Her eyes were red. She wore a long cardigan, and she wrapped it tightly around herself, cinching it shut with her arms below her breasts. She smelled faintly of body odor; the next gust of warmer air from inside the house carried the same artificial freshener Hazard had noticed on his first visit—Winter Bullshit, he suspected it was called.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Urman,” Somers said, “do you have a few minutes? We’d like to talk to you.”

  She shook her head.

  “We can do it here,” Somers said, “or we can have this conversation at the station.”

  “I don’t have to go. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “He’s saying he’ll arrest you,” Hazard said.

  Somers’s face was gentle even in its seriousness. “Mrs. Urman—”

  “Don’t call me that. He’s dead. That’s not my name anymore.” She wiped her face with both hands, letting the cardigan fall open. Under it, she wore pajama pants patterned with reindeer and a gray cami stained with what Hazard took to be chocolate ice cream. “Fine. Whatever. Come in.”

  They followed her into the house, and she led them to the combined living room and kitchen where Hazard had visited last time. It was how he remembered it, although the lights were low and the shadows strange: the same silk flowers, the same porcelain animals, the same huge windows. Only now the windows were mirrors facing inward, reflecting the living room, reflecting them. A cage of mirrors. A place where you could control everything. In the dimness, the poppies on the wallpaper looked more like bullet wounds. Potpourri simmered on the stove, and Hazard offered a mental retraction about the air freshener. Cinnamon sticks and orange peel. Comfort for the cozy murderer.

  “Could you call Junior?” Somers asked. “We’ll need to talk to him too.”

  “He’s not here. He went out with friends.” She dashed at her cheeks again. “We had a terrible fight about it, if you have to know. He’s—he’s very strong-willed.”

  “No,” Hazard said. “He’s spoiled. In every sense of the word.”

  Celeste’s mouth opened in an indignant O, and for a moment, she seemed to forget that she was supposed to be crying.

  “Call him,” Somers said. “He needs to come back here.”

  Taking out her phone, Celeste gave Hazard another outraged glower, but she placed the call. “Junior, sweetheart, you need to come home. Right now. The police are here.” She listened for a moment and said, “Love you too.” Then she disconnected.

  “I suppose he was too scared to tell you to stuff it?” Hazard asked. “Don’t bother answering that.”

  “You can’t say that kind of thing. You can’t!”

  “Celeste,” Somers said, “do you know why we’re here?”

  She started to cry. The tears ran down her cheeks. In the low light, they glinted gold. Hugging herself more tightly, she gave a wobbly nod.

  “You’re not under arrest,” Somers said, hand in his pocket, doubtless starting the voice recorder on his phone, “but time is running out. We found your hair tangled in the barbed wire. We know about the videos. You can still get ahead of this. You can help yourself. You can help Junior.”

  “Leave him out of this. Please leave him out of this.” She shook her head and blinked up at the ceiling, trying to master her tears. “He’s my baby.”

  “He’s not a baby anymore,” Hazard said. “He’s not even a child. Based on his past behavior, I think a strong case can be made to try him as an adult. Do you know what that means?”