The Rational Faculty (Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords Book 1), Page 3

  Somers was smiling broadly now. He wove his fingers between Hazard’s.

  “What?” Hazard said.

  Somers just rolled his eyes.

  Then the first wave of trick-or-treaters hit them, and they didn’t have time to talk. Most of the kids were content to take a single piece of candy from the bag Hazard offered. When a few of the older kids got bold and tried to take more, Hazard stared at them. That’s all it took. Just a stare. And then they’d forget about the extra three mini Twix and back away, their eyes wide.

  At some point in the chaos, Rebeca and Noah arrived, setting up their chairs while kids mobbed them for candy. Rebeca took a spot next to Somers, and Noah took the spot next to her. In a few minutes, even with the rush of children, the three of them were talking about preschool. Rebeca and Noah were asking about Evie’s school, already considering transferring their youngest—Rocio, Hazard heard them say, and for the hundredth time he told himself he was going to remember the names. More than once, Somers and Noah tried to draw Hazard into the conversation, but he refused to take the bait, and eventually they left him alone.

  He watched the groups of children flow across the asphalt, studying their movements. He thought he could see a pattern. Not anything obvious, but a kind of rhythm to the eddies in the stream of humanity. He’d been reading about self-driving car technologies and algorithms developed from studying schools of fish; it seemed like something similar might apply here. It was the kind of thing that, a few months ago, he would have wanted to read more about. But now the thought came, lingered like an imprint, a ghost. It had no force. No vitality.

  Then, like an intruder, another thought shattered his observations: Somers had been angry. Not just about the way Hazard had refused to take Evie through the trunk or treat but also about Hazard’s reluctance to come out tonight. Hazard had thought he was being subtle. He had framed the possibility of staying behind in purely practical concerns. Based on how Somers had hassled him into coming, and on the way Somers had parroted back Hazard’s excuses, Hazard guessed that Somers was beginning to notice. Somers was beginning to recognize the pattern. And, of course, Hazard had expected him to. Somers was a good detective. A great detective. Hazard just wished it hadn’t happened so fast. He just wished Somers would be a little more clueless when it came to his boyfriend.

  A boy with a wild cowlick in front sprinted down the center of the parking lot, waving something in one hand, and then a fizzing noise came over the hub of voices. Hazard had just long enough to see the bottle rocket, to recognize it, before it exploded overhead.

  He was halfway out of his chair, hand dipping under his arm to the spot where he had worn a gun for most of his career, heart pounding in his chest, before he was able to stop himself. He knew it was a bottle rocket. He had seen it before it went off. But sweat stung him between the shoulder blades, and his breath sounded thin in his throat.

  Somers’s hand found his arm.

  Shaking his head, Hazard dropped back into his seat.

  “Ree,” Somers said in a low voice, leaning close enough that Noah and Rebeca couldn’t hear. But, of course, it didn’t matter if they heard. They had seen. Rebeca, most definitely, had seen. “Are you—”

  Hazard shook his head and brushed off Somers’s hand. His face was heating, and he turned so that Somers and Noah and Rebeca dropped out of his field of vision. He heard Somers sigh, and then Somers’s hand ran over his shoulder, down his arm, and fell away again. The murmur of voices resumed, Somers saying something easy and funny and casual that made Rebeca and Noah laugh, and then the world rolled forward.

  But Hazard kept staring out at the parking lot. Somers thought he understood. Somers thought it was things like the bottle rocket, things that still sent Hazard into hyperdrive—if only for a few minutes before he could bring himself under control again.

  But it wasn’t just the explosion. It wasn’t just his reaction. It was . . . everything. Hazard’s gaze swept through the parking lot as his heart slowed and the sweat under his arms cooled. It was the fact that the kid with the bottle rocket had ignored a municipal code and committed a misdemeanor. It was the fact that, just from where he was sitting, Hazard spotted two expired vehicle registrations. It was the fact that a man two cars down had just finished a can of Miller Lite—against the city’s public intoxication law. Worse, instead of stowing the empty or walking it down to a recycling bin, the man crushed it underfoot and kicked it under his car. Littering. The problem that Somers didn’t understand—one of the problems—was that Hazard still saw the world as a policeman. And he wasn’t police anymore.

  And that was the other problem. It wasn’t the simple matter of not being police. It was what he had become instead. Hazard might not have had the intense social intelligence that Somers displayed, but he wasn’t an idiot either. He saw the way people looked at him. Four cars down, a group of soccer moms huddled together, wearing sporty vests and yoga pants and chafing mummy-thin arms. They were talking about him. That wasn’t vanity, although Somers might have blamed Hazard’s ego. It was deduction: their voices pitched too low to carry, their frequent gazes in Hazard’s direction. Another time, Hazard might have thought they were lusting over Somers, but their body language was that of a threatened pack: close together, fencing out a danger. And tonight, that danger was him.

  It wasn’t just the soccer moms. Up the line of cars, a man sat in an old aluminum webbed folding chair. He was a big guy, and the webbing had frayed over the years; thin whiskers of polypropylene stuck out from under his ass. One more beer, and the guy was liable to split the webbing and drop right through the seat.

  But the guy didn’t seem worried about his ancient folding chair. He was staring at Hazard. When Hazard’s gaze swept over him, he didn’t blink or turn away or pretend he had been looking at something close to Hazard, something else that had drawn his attention. No, this guy locked gazes with Hazard, his eyes hard and flat. That was another old trick that went back all the way to caveman days. A threat. A challenge. After a moment, Hazard looked away.

  Hazard could have played the game all night, letting himself look for the ones who were looking. But he didn’t need to. In spite of his best efforts to avoid leaving the house, he still had to get groceries. Sometimes. He still had to run errands that Somers needed him to run. He saw these looks all the time.

  He didn’t blame the people who feared him and hated him and suspected him. What did they know? Just a simple string of facts: Emery Hazard had gone into a building with Mikey Grames, his old high school bully. Emery Hazard had left that building alive. Mikey Grames had not. And then Emery Hazard had resigned from the police force. A kid could connect the dots.

  “Better?”

  Somers’s voice was barely more than a whisper, and his fingers curled around Hazard’s arm.

  “Huh?”

  Somers’s gaze was tropical blue and steady. Calm.

  “Yeah,” Hazard finally said.

  “We’re almost done,” Somers said. “People are packing up.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “John, please don’t—” Hazard managed to stop himself from saying, please don’t do that. Please, he wanted to say, don’t be nice about it.

  Somers cocked his head, but before Hazard could come up with a lie, a white truck swung into the parking lot. The beams from its headlights bounced across the crowd, and Hazard saw shocked faces, then fear. The truck was coming too fast. Parents screamed for kids to get out of the way. A few of the more agile adults sprinted toward their children, grabbing them by the arm, by the tail of a costume, by whatever they could reach. Hazard glanced down the line of cars, already shooting up from his seat. Ten cars down, Raquel had squirreled herself between a Jetta and a Subaru, with Evie and Rocio pressed tight against her legs. She watched the truck, one hand holding onto each girl.

  The white truck was blasting music. Country. Not Emmylou Harris and Gillian We
lch like Somers enjoyed. Not Dolly. Not even the country pop that had blown up on the radio lately. This was something else, and it sounded hard and angry. A furious bluegrass that had rage behind it instead of its normal wild energy.

  By some miracle, the truck didn’t hit anyone. It slowed, although not by much, and then, as it approached Hazard and Somers, several men riding in the bed of the truck dropped a banner across the side paneling. STRAIGHTEN UP DORE COUNTY.

  Then the men in the truck started shouting.

  “Queers.”

  “Snowflakes.”

  “Cocksuckers.”

  “Sheeple.”

  “Faggots.”

  “Trannies.”

  Hazard eyed the men. He recognized the class and species, even if he didn’t know any of them by name. These were the classic Ozark Volunteer type, the local paramilitary group, a kind of neo-Nazi lite. They were all white. They ranged in age from young adult to middle age. Most of them were thin, wiry, although the older men had started to sag around the middle. All of them wore white T-shirts with the words STRAIGHTEN UP on the chest and back. All of them wore trucker hats with the same two words. All of them looked like they hadn’t eaten a vegetable since last year.

  As the truck drove past Hazard and Somers, Hazard squared his shoulders. He wanted to at least look these sons of bitches in the eye. But to his surprise, they didn’t even glance at him. Or Somers. Their shouts were directed somewhere else. Somewhere down the line. Which didn’t make any sense at all.

  Hazard jogged after the truck, which had slowed as the men in the back switched from jeers to a simple chant: Straighten up. Straighten up. Straighten up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Somers asked, running alongside him.

  “Evie.”

  The truck continued to roll through the crowd. Hazard and Somers stopped by Raquel and Evie and Rocio. Fear was painted on all three faces, and Hazard realized, with a start, that the trunk or treat crowd had gone completely silent. Fear was infectious; he knew that. And right then, it was racing through the men and women and children in the municipal parking lot.

  At the corner, the parking lot turned into an L, with the second leg exiting onto a service drive behind city hall. It made the parking lot ideal for trunk or treat; two exits meant that people could leave quickly when the event was over, without everyone getting jammed up. Tonight, Hazard realized, it was going to provide these assholes with an escape route.

  “Straighten up. Straighten up. Straighten up.”

  The chant was whooping, ferocious, barbaric. It raised the hairs on the back of Hazard’s neck, and he realized he was hearing hate, pure and distilled.

  And then a slender form darted forward at the end of the L. Maybe five feet tall, barely. Because of the distance, Hazard used the height of the panel van behind the figure to estimate. But the man didn’t seem intimidated, even when the chant switched back to jeers.

  “Faggot.”

  “Queer.”

  “Cocksucker snowflake.”

  “Tranny.”

  “Get out of here, assholes,” the small man shouted. “This is for kids, all right? Have some goddamn respect.”

  One of the men rose up from the bed of the truck, his arm whipping back and forward. Hazard couldn’t see what he threw, but he saw the small man stagger back, a hand going to his head. Whoops and jeers and laughter exploded out of the back of the truck.

  From somewhere down the road came the chirp of a siren.

  As the Ozark Volunteers broke into their chant—Straighten up. Straighten up. Straighten up—the white truck lurched toward the service exit, and in another minute, it was gone.

  Gathering up Evie, Hazard cradled her to his chest. She wasn’t freaking out, but her heart was going a mile a minute, and she buried her face in his shoulder. One pudgy hand had a death grip on the pumpkin bucket.

  “You did great,” Somers was telling Raquel, who had burst into tears. “You did perfectly.”

  Hazard rubbed Evie’s back. “Did you get any candy?”

  Snuffling once, she turned toward him, her head still resting on his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Hazard said, still rubbing her back, slow and steady. “Because I’m going to eat it all.”

  “No!”

  Hazard let a grin slip onto his face, and after a moment, Evie giggled.

  “Let’s get them back to Noah and Rebeca,” Somers said, one arm around Raquel’s shoulders, Rocio cradled in his other arm.

  “You go on.” Hazard took a step toward the small crowd that had formed at the end of the lot.

  “Ree?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Somers hustled Raquel toward her parents, and Hazard, adjusting Evie’s weight, carried his daughter toward the crowd. It was already fragmenting, splitting apart as people realized the action was over. Taillights went on, red and then white, painting the asphalt. Parents gathered up kids too quickly, and buckets spilled, spraying Jolly Ranchers and Dum-Dums and Tootsie Rolls across the ground. Lots of kids were crying now. Everybody, Hazard guessed, wanted the hell out of there. A perfect night had been ruined.

  By the time Hazard had reached the small man who had shouted at the Ozark Volunteers, the crowd had dissolved. The man sat on the ground, a piece of cloth held to his head. He was obviously bleeding. Hazard saw the object: a flat, sharp-edged rock the size of his hand. Two women, one gray-haired but stylish, the other young and wearing corduroy overalls, knelt next to the injured man.

  “Did one of you call for an ambulance?” Hazard asked.

  Overalls looked up, blinked owlishly at Hazard, her mouth a big O.

  “Ambulance,” Hazard said. “He needs an ambulance.”

  The older woman brushed back gray hair and glanced up long enough to say, “I called.”

  “That’s a class C felony. Second-degree assault.”

  The gray-haired woman was digging through her purse. Overalls was still staring up at Hazard, her mouth giving little, guppy-like flutters.

  “Don’t let them bullshit you into anything less,” Hazard said, shifting Evie to his other arm. “If they give you boys will be boys, tell them you’ll hire an attorney and sue the city for every nickel.”

  Gray-hair glanced up again. “Thank you.”

  The slender man was shaking his head. He said, “Stop, Ruth. I’m not taking aspirin.”

  His voice was high and clear. He looked up and met Hazard’s gaze for a moment. Thin face. Hair cut into a low fade, a ginger quiff at the front. Narrow shoulders but wide hips.

  Hazard did the math, and then he understood some of the Ozark Volunteers’ shouts.

  “Jamie,” the man said, and Overalls perked up like a Labrador. “Could you find me some water?”

  “I’ve got some,” Hazard said. “Bandages, too. Disinfecting wipes. But you need a hospital.”

  The man just nodded. After a moment, Hazard turned. Overalls—Jamie—trotted behind him. He wondered, if he tossed a bone, if she’d play fetch.

  He’d barely gone ten feet before he ran into Rebeca and Somers, who were coming towards Hazard at a steady clip.

  “Evie, baby,” Somers said, sliding his daughter off Hazard’s shoulders and into his arms. “Are you ok?”

  “Dee Dee eat all my candy.”

  Somers raised an eyebrow.

  “It was an idle threat,” Hazard said.

  “Idle.”

  “I don’t even like candy.”

  Somers’s other eyebrow went up. “I’ve seen you try to fit into your jeans.”

  “Water,” Jamie panted, the buckles on her corduroy overalls jangling as she shifted from foot to foot.

  “Who’s this?” Somers said.

  “God only knows,” Hazard muttered. “I’m getting water.”

  Somers peered over Hazard’s shoulder. “And who’s that?”

  “That,” Rebeca said with a smile, “is our
new pastor.”

  “What do the Volunteers have against him?”

  “With Wesley?” Rebeca frowned as though trying to pick the right thing to say.

  “Aside from the obvious,” Hazard said.

  “I don’t know,” Rebeca said. “He’s a good pastor. He’s active in the community. He’s friendly and welcoming.”

  “Hey, Ree, can we get out of here?” Somers said.

  Jamie was still shifting from foot to foot, her buckles clattering as loud as a brass band.

  “Yeah,” Hazard said with a sigh. “Let me just help them first.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OCTOBER 31

  WEDNESDAY

  5:10 PM

  SOMERS SLAPPED THE GARAGE door clicker to close the garage door behind them and got out of the car. He managed not to slam the door, but only because the car was new, because it was gorgeous, and because Hazard, who had almost swallowed his tongue when he saw the monthly payments, might actually kill him if Somers so much as dinged it. He stopped at the door that led into the house. Work was work. Work stayed at work. So he shook himself out, put on a smile, and opened the door.

  “You’re home early,” Hazard said. He was already at the stove, stirring something that smelled like garlic and onion and tomato.

  “Come on,” Somers said, holding up a Piggly Wiggly bag. “I was going to cook.”

  “You bought groceries yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but then I thought I’d get home early and make you dinner, so I picked up some more stuff.” Somers came the rest of the way into the house and closed the door. He made his way over to Hazard, kissed him on the cheek, then rebounded and kissed him on the lips.

  Hazard made an appreciative noise.

  “You liked that?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Let me cook and I’ll give you another.”

  Pulling back slightly, Hazard said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Ree. I want to cook you dinner.”