“Detective Carmichael, what exactly is going on?” Somers asked as he strode toward them.

  “Chief,” she said. Nothing changed in her face except maybe something around the eyes, around the mouth. It was like someone stirring the ashes of a cold fire, the embers coming back to life. “We’re arresting Mr. Stratford.”

  “Dr. Stratford,” Hazard said. His voice was dead, planed smooth from emotion. “On what charge?”

  Carmichael ignored him and pushed Theo into a walk again. Hazard moved into her path.

  “Detective what’s the charge?” Somers asked.

  She met his gaze. “Distributing pornography to minors.”

  “Bullshit,” Hazard said.

  “Can we do this somewhere else?” Theo asked quietly. He was composed, a hint of red in his cheeks, as he looked over his shoulder; several students in the classroom had their phones out and were recording everything.

  “This is fucking bullshit,” Hazard said more loudly. “Take the cuffs off him.”

  “Detective Carmichael,” Somers said, “where is your partner?”

  “I received a phone call from the county attorney’s office, asking me to investigate claims that pornography was being distributed to students at the high school.” She didn’t sound happy, but it was there in her voice, capped for now but ready to burst. “I couldn’t reach Detective Moraes, so I decided to come alone.”

  “Take those goddamn cuffs off him,” Hazard said.

  “Emery, John-Henry, this is not the right place to do this.” Theo rolled a shoulder as best he could. “Why don’t I go with her, and we’ll figure this out later?”

  “Because this is false arrest,” Hazard said. “This is a fucked-up political stunt so Carmichael can score points with her little neo-Nazi drinking buddies. Get those fucking cuffs off him right this fucking instant.”

  “Are you interfering with a lawful arrest, Mr. Hazard?” Carmichael gave Theo another nudge, and he stepped forward again. “Because if you are, that might be a new town record, the chief arresting his own husband two days in a row.”

  Hazard clenched his jaw. Scarlet threaded his cheekbones.

  “Who called you from the county attorney’s office?” Somers asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Hazard barked a laugh and turned away, hands on his hips, shaking his head.

  “Detective,” Somers said, keeping his voice as low as he could, hoping it wouldn’t be picked up by the kids and their damn phones. “I’m taking over here, and I’m ordering you to release Dr. Stratford. Then I’ll review the evidence that led you to this point. Then we’ll make a decision, after speaking to Ms. Daley, about charges. Dr. Stratford isn’t a flight risk. There was no need for you to handle this situation the way you did. And you can be sure that we’ll be looking into the identity of whoever called you, claiming to be from Ms. Daley’s office.”

  “It wasn’t anybody,” Hazard said, turning back. “She made that shit up. Or it was one of her fucknut Ozark Volunteers buddies.”

  An unfamiliar boy’s voice from inside the classroom asked, “Colt, did your dad just say fucknut?”

  Colt groaned.

  “I’m a sworn officer,” Carmichael said, catching Theo’s arm and urging him forward again. “I have a job to do.”

  For a moment, Somers stared at her. Then the slipped gear caught, and he said, “Did you not hear what I said? Uncuff this man. Then you can report to the station, where we’ll discuss this. At length.”

  Carmichael came to a stop. Her eyes flickered. She was gone, the woman Somers had written traffic tickets with and tossed back shots with and gone to grill-outs and weddings and softball games with. And a stranger was in her place, a stranger who looked like she was considering how far she was going to take this. A stranger with a gun.

  But then her shoulders relaxed, and she shoved Theo, releasing him so he could stumble free. “If that’s an official order,” she said loudly. “I do feel like it’s my responsibility to let people know that you prevented me from doing my duty because of your personal relationship with this man.”

  “That’s enough,” Somers said, dropping his voice until it was almost a whisper. “I’ve been giving you rope; quit trying to hang yourself with it.”

  “I also feel like it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone in the community understands that you are in favor of distributing pornography to children. I assume this is part of your personal agenda to advance your lifestyle.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Hazard asked. “Shut your fucking mouth and get out of here.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It had obviously come from a standard computer printer—not, Somers noticed, torn from one of the books that she was objecting to. She held it out and said, “It’s my responsibility to protect these children. I’ll ask the city council to have you read this passage out loud at your next meeting with them, so that you can explain how you think it’s fitting for children: ‘We lay on our sides. My boxers had slipped, and I was vaguely aware of my bush scratching at his back door. He had to be aware of it too. His breath was even, but he wasn’t asleep. I started to get hard—’”

  “Knock it off,” Hazard said.

  “‘—and I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t hump him, don’t hump him, he and his buddies will fucking beat you to death, so you cannot fucking hump him,’ and I was getting harder and harder until all I could think about was grinding up against that thick quarterback ass, and then he pulled away and shifted and I knew he’d felt me chubbing up and I was a dead man. Only then he was back, pressing against me, his own boxers gone now, rubbing his bare ass against the thin, damp cotton and my rock-hard dick—’”

  Somers held up a hand. “That’s enough, Detective.”

  Carmichael looked like she might keep going. Then, with a tiny shrug, she pocketed the paper again. “Would you feel comfortable reading that at the next city council meeting?”

  “Detective—”

  “In open session?”

  Somers closed his mouth.

  “Because if you think this is appropriate for teenagers to read, then I can’t imagine why it would make you uncomfortable to read this in front of adults.”

  “That’s a bullshit standard,” Hazard said. “In the first place, the fact that something might be uncomfortable to say out loud doesn’t mean that it’s inappropriate—”

  A shout from the classroom interrupted him: “Don’t, don’t, don’t, that’s mine!”

  And then another shout: “What the fuck, man?”

  Somers didn’t recognize the voices, but he did recognize the screech of desks and chairs sliding across the linoleum. He fumbled the handcuff keys off his belt and passed them to Hazard. “Get him out of those,” he said as he headed into the classroom.

  The kids with their phones had lost interest in the adults and what was happening in the hallway. All their focus now was on an elliptical clearing in the center of the classroom, where desks and chairs had been shoved aside. A girl was on her hands and knees, picking up her phone from where it had fallen under one of the chairs. Somers thought he recognized her—the black, wiry hair; the bad complexion under thick, matronly makeup; the skirt and blazer that skated right on the line of corporate wunderteen. Then he placed her as Kirsta Sturgis, the daughter of the woman who had spoken at the school board meeting the night before.

  A boy was standing over her: dark complexioned, his hair in a quiff and skin fade, the kind of teen muscle that some kids just grew into, no effort required, and that probably made him feel tougher than hell. Somers recognized him immediately as Cortez Rios, the same boy who had gone after Colt and Ashley a few months before and, at the school Valentine’s Day dance, had tried to steal all the purses in the coat check.

  “Don’t rub your pussy on me,” he was saying to Kirsta. “I know you get all wet hearing about fags boning, but I don’t need your snatch stinking up my clothes, you fucking Betty Boop wannabe with your fucking old-ass hair and your fucking old-ass makeup.”

  “Get out in the hallway,” Somers said.

  But nobody turned to look at him, and only Colt, who was standing with Ashley and another girl in the inner ring of bodies, so much as glanced his direction.

  “Yeah,” another boy jeered. It was Evan Pawloski, the boy who had tried to attack Theo at the board meeting. “What’d you do? Go shopping in your meemaw’s closet?”

  “Hey!” Somers barked. “Everybody back in their seats. Cortez, get out in the hall.”

  A few of the kids spared him a quick look this time, but nobody moved.

  Cortez rounded on Evan. “Bitch, what are you talking about closets for? You’re the one still in the closet. On your knees in there, hoping somebody sticks his pecker in you.” He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek so that it bulged out, simulating a blow job.

  Red flooded Evan’s face, and he glanced around, not meeting Cortez’s look. At the same moment, Kirsta pushed herself up from the floor. She was bent over, trying to wipe dust from her skirt while she took unsteady steps toward the ring of students. Evan glanced at her, and then his gaze came back and settled on her. He lunged forward and shoved her in the back, and she went down again with a shrill scream.

  “Jesus Christ,” Somers said, pushing his way through the knot of teenagers. “Sit down! All of you!”

  The girl who had been standing next to Ashley was helping Kirsta up now, and Somers reached them in time to take Kirsta’s arm and steady her. She wrenched herself free and backed away. Her gaze locked on Somers. She knew him; that much was obvious in her face. And she hated him.

  “Don’t touch me!” She rubbed her arm where his hand had been. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want your AIDS!”

  Evan sneered at her. “You can’t get AIDS if nobody wants to put their dick in your cobwebby old lady cunt.”

  “Evan, shut up!” That was the girl who had helped Kirsta stand.

  “Why, Gwen? You mad that I’m talking about your girlfriend that way? I bet you get that old cunt nice and wet, chewing on it every weekend.”

  The girl—Gwen—turned to Ashley. “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”

  Ashley’s face twisted. Colt must have sensed what was going to happen because he caught Ashley’s arm. Ashley shook himself loose, snarling, “Get off me, bruh.”

  “Ash—” Somers began.

  “You can’t talk to my girlfriend like that!” Ashley shouted and threw himself at Evan. The two of them went down, rolling across the linoleum until they crashed into the mass of desks. Cortez balanced on the balls of his feet until he saw an opening, and then he kicked Ashley in the back, hard.

  Colt’s face went blank.

  “Colt, don’t you dare—”

  The boy launched himself across the opening. The tackle was shit for form, but it had plenty of power behind it, and Colt’s shoulder connected with Cortez’s belly. Cortez let out a sharp, winded noise, and then both boys crashed into the desks.

  By that point, everyone else was screaming.

  Somers waded into the fray. He managed to get Colt off of Cortez, although it was harder than he’d expected—training for baseball, regular meals, and the continued progress of adolescence meant Colt was getting bigger and stronger almost every day. In the end, Somers had to wrap his arms around Colt, pinning his arms to his sides, and lift him bodily off of Cortez. Colt was still screaming.

  Hazard and Theo forced their way into the opening, and they separated Evan and Ashley. Then Principal Wieberdink appeared in the doorway, along with Liz Kirkman—technically a police officer, although she’d been the school resource officer almost as long as Somers had been on the force.

  “What is going on here?” Principal Wieberdink shouted over the din.

  “Get off me!” Colt was shouting, writhing in Somers’s grip until Somers released him, and the boy stumbled until he checked the whiteboard with his shoulder.

  “Chief?” Kirkman asked.

  Somers took a few hard breaths. Then, trying to smother the rage kindling in his chest, he said, “Get a couple of cruisers out here. They’re all under arrest.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAY 15

  FRIDAY

  4:54 PM

  HAZARD LOST HIS AFTERNOON at the Wahredua police station while his husband processed their foster-son and the rest of the delinquents into the holding cells. The first part, he spent sitting silently with Colt on a bench, the boy handcuffed to a steel ring set into the wood. Everyone knew Colt; he worked there, doing odd jobs and some custodial work, and of course, the whole department of grizzled men and women, hardened by the job, had taken to him like a bunch of mother hens. Yarmark came by twice to try to shoot the shit—he was some sort of gearhead, and he’d helped Colt with some minor repairs on his old truck—and Carlson brought him a cold Coke and wanted to see if he was available to babysit again, and Ruthie Bates, a civilian who brought in coffee and pastries and generally made the station better, kept bringing over a slice of cherry Danish and Hazard kept waving her away like they were in some sort of cutting-edge art installation or just an old Marx Brothers bit.

  Waving Ruthie away was all he could manage. His jaw was tense. It ached, in fact. Probably from clenching it shut. He didn’t trust himself to speak, not with the shout building in his throat. Building and building, and his knuckles popping as he clenched the bench more tightly, and something in his head like an avalanche gaining speed and mass, which was Physics 101 for a hell of a lot of momentum. And then, when he thought he couldn’t hold it back anymore, when that whiteout was carrying him toward a crevasse he wouldn’t be able to climb out of, right when he was turning to his son to ask why, what were you thinking, Colt had leaned forward, elbows on knees, to bury his face in his hands. His spine and shoulders had the cut of an arrow. His fingertips were white where they pressed against his hairline.

  “It’s ok,” Hazard said quietly and then sighed, rubbing the boy’s back. “It’s going to be ok.”

  Then, after Colt had been transferred to the cells at the back of the station, Hazard had spent a good thirty minutes explaining to Patrick Foley, the redheaded Irish lug in charge of the cells, the potential personal consequences if anything—anything—happened to Colt while he was in custody.

  That lasted until Somers caught him by the shirt and dragged him down the hallway, back to the bullpen.

  “I was making sure he understood—”

  “If I have to deal with you right now, it is not going to go well,” Somers said. The tone was even but brittle. “Do you want to say something?”

  Hazard had read a lot of good research about nonverbal communication. He decided in this case, shaking his head was the most efficient response.

  “My husband,” Somers said. “And now my son. In two days. How do you think that looks, Ree?”

  “Well, if we want to be positive, it shows that you’re willing to enforce the law even when your own personal—”

  “Do you want to be positive right now? Is that what you want to do?”

  Certain facial expressions, Hazard had read, had universal meaning for humans. He was fairly sure at least one of those facial expressions—I am at my fucking limit was the scientific name for it—was staring back at him right then.

  He shook his head again.

  Somers made a noise in his throat, went into his office, and slammed the door.

  The silence in the bullpen—in the whole station, as a matter of fact—had the quality of children watching their parents fight.

  Then, from behind Hazard came a whispered, “Bro.”

  Hazard squeezed his eyes shut. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was not, under any condition, going to get involved with Dulac. Not today.

  But then—sharper, more urgent, but still a whisper—it came again: “Bro!”

  Squashing the groan, Hazard turned around.

  Dulac and Palomo sat at desks that backed up to each other. Palomo spared Hazard a brief, pitying look before returning to her work. Dulac, his freckled face fixed in an expression of tremendous earnestness, waved. As though, in some other, better universe, Hazard might have missed him.

  Hazard had the vivid mental image of Dulac chasing him down the street, whispering, “Bro,” every ten yards. Better to get it over with quickly, like ripping off a bandage. He passed through the swinging gate into the bullpen and approached the detectives.

  “Bro,” Dulac said yet again when Hazard reached him. “That’s some heavy shit.”

  “Goodbye, Gray.”

  “No, no, no, dude, hold on. For real!” When Hazard didn’t say anything, Dulac said, “Are you, like, ok?”

  “Yes, Gray. I’m fantastic. I was arrested last night in front of half the town. Then, today, I learned that my son has all the maturity and self-restraint of a street brawler, and now he has been arrested. And my husband is rightly furious with both of us. So, I’m wonderful. Thank you for asking.”

  Dulac nodded. Then a big grin split his freckles. “But, like, dude. You’ve got to admit it’s awesome that Colt is, you know, a fucking take-no-shit stud like you, right? I mean, like father, like son. That’s balls-deep awesome, you know?”

  “Of course. Balls-deep awesome. I’ll be sure to have that recorded in the divorce paperwork.”

  “He’s pissed off with the situation, Emery,” Palomo said neutrally, her gaze still fixed on the screen. “Not with you.”

  “Oh, he’s pissed with me.”

  “All right. Maybe a little. But that’s not what it’s really about.”

  “You guys are solid,” Dulac said. “You’re, like, my rock. He’ll cool off. He’ll see you didn’t have any other option.”

  “I did have another option. And so did Colt. And instead of taking those options, we made his life more difficult.”

  “Maybe.” Palomo pushed back from the desk and stood. “But you’re not giving him a lot of credit if you think he doesn’t understand.”