MAY 15
FRIDAY
6:59 PM
HAZARD REGRETTED WEARING THE jacket; it was lightweight, and it had a tactical design, with a lot of good-sized, accessible pockets, but the air in the school gymnasium was already stuffy and warm, smelling of floor wax and rubber and the impossible-to-eradicate PE funk that lurked under some sort of astringent cleaner. He was sweating, and Loretta’s talk hadn’t even started yet.
The gym was packed to capacity, every seat in the telescopic bleachers filled. There were kids, primarily teenagers. Colt and Ashley and the girl, Gwen, were there, high on the bleachers. Gwen had taken the spot between Colt and Ashley, and she had turned at an angle, her back making a wall between the boys. She and Ashley were holding hands, and when Colt said something and Ashley leaned over to try to hear him, Gwen leaned too, so that she and Ashley bumped heads. Presumably Ashley thought it was an accident because he laughed and kissed her. A long kiss. Long enough that Colt looked away, shoulders hunched, like he was trying to shrink inside his old Budweiser frogs t-shirt. Hazard figured a lengthy and loudly punctuated lesson to Ashley on public displays of affection was overdue.
The Sturgis family had gotten seats on the front row of the bleachers, not far from the portable stage where Loretta and Ayelet were sitting with Theo and Principal Wieberdink. Kirsta and Joyce had both obviously done their makeup again—Joyce with much better results—but Kirsta looked like she was glowing, and every few minutes, Joyce would turn around to say something to someone behind her, or stop someone walking in front of her, and she’d put her hand on Kirsta’s arm and Kirsta would glow a little brighter. Mommy’s good little soldier, Hazard thought. Joyce would milk the story of the arrest as long as she could; it looked like this might have been the happiest day of Kirsta’s life. Farther down the bleachers, Evan sat with his parents, his expression dour, arms folded across his chest. That was all of them, the whole teenybop cluster fuck except Cortez.
But Hazard was unsurprised to see that the majority of the people in the audience were adults. Like so many things that ought to be about children, this event had been appropriated by adults with their own political axes to grind. A heavyset, red-faced man who was sweating far too much to be healthy was sitting behind Derrick Sturgis, patting him on the shoulder every so often and leaning forward to say something he obviously hoped would be funny. The jokes didn’t seem to be landing. A pair of mommy bots with identical I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager haircuts stood in front of Joyce, crowding closer and closer. Pretty soon they were going to be sitting in her lap. Evan’s parents seemed to be getting their own fair share of approval and interest; Evan’s dad—or at least, that’s who Hazard judged the man to be—was shaking hands and occasionally patting Evan’s back. The family was new to the area, and Hazard was curious about the power dynamics being played out—why weren’t they sitting closer to Joyce and Derrick Sturgis? Was there an internal struggle for who got to be the biggest fuckwads of the crazy parents?
The only consolation was that the school had hired additional security: Somers was here somewhere, and Hazard had seen six different uniformed officers stationed in the gym. Signs and noisemaking devices—megaphones, air horns, some sort of preprogrammed sound effect device that made farting and vomiting noises—had been confiscated at the doors. It was possible that someone would be stupid enough to try something tonight, but if they did, there were plenty of people on hand to deal with it. Which left Hazard free to focus on one particular problem: who was behind the shitstorm starting to rain down on Wahredua.
Hazard studied the crowd, recording interactions, body language, what he could decipher of position and prestige. The most obvious suspect, of course, was Joyce Sturgis or someone in her family. Hazard wouldn’t have put it past her husband, who looked like his only role in life was to be a human-sized purse holder, or her daughter, who was some sort of mini-me clone. But then again, Evan Pawloski had attacked Theo at the board meeting, and his parents seemed pleased with the attention and approval that the rest of these numbnuts were showering on them. It was possible that one of them, or all of them, had orchestrated Theo’s arrest and arranged for parents to be waiting outside the school. Another option that was only slightly less likely was that Carmichael had done it all herself; her claim about the phone call from the county attorney’s office could have been just so much bullshit. Or Carmichael and Keller; Hazard wouldn’t put anything past the former police officer, who carried a grudge against Somers. The two of them seemed to be lying low; he didn’t see them in the audience.
Hazard’s phone buzzed, and he reached to dismiss the call. When he saw Ramona Andrews’s name, though, he accepted the call. He thought he knew what Colt’s social worker was about to say, and he wanted to get it over with.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Hazard, but I’ve been with a family all day—” Ramona stopped herself; she sounded exhausted. “Anyway, this can’t wait. I understand that Colt was arrested.”
“It was a misunderstanding.” Hazard had heard plenty of shitcan parents use the line before, both when he’d been on patrol and as a detective. He thought maybe it was a kind of currency. “Everything’s fine.”
“Was he charged?”
A whisper of feedback came from the microphone, and Hazard glanced over. Principal Wieberdink stood at the podium, smiling with a teacher’s practiced patience: I can do this as long as you can. The crowd began to settle.
“Mr. Hazard?” Ramona said, her voice firm.
“No, he wasn’t charged.”
The silence on the other end of the call was big enough to fall into. When Ramona finally did speak, she sounded like someone with a lot of practice at giving bad news. “There have been concerns about Colt’s placement, both in terms of his safety and a pattern of behavior—”
“I’m sorry, Ramona, I’m at a meeting, and they’re starting.”
“Mr. Hazard, these are serious issues. We need to review Colt’s placement plan and consider if this is best for him.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Thank you.”
As Hazard disconnected, Somers approached the stage, catching Hazard’s eye long enough to wink. Hazard felt like he was watching it from the other side of a mirror, but he managed a nod and a reflexive smile. Somers grinned like a kid as he took the steps two at a time.
“Good evening,” Principal Wieberdink said. “It’s a pleasure to be here tonight. I’m excited to see the turnout for this year’s author visit. There has been a lot of discussion about our guest and her work, especially with regard to our community, and while I know those conversations haven’t always been comfortable, I believe they’re an important part of a democratic, open society. Thank you for joining us tonight as we continue that conversation and model for our children what it means to be good citizens of the United States and good citizens of the world. We’ll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, and then I’ll make a few comments about the format of tonight’s talk. Susan Rodriguez will lead us in the Pledge.”
As Wieberdink stepped back and a tall, strikingly dark-haired girl approached the microphone, Hazard slipped out the door and eased it shut behind him. He assessed the dark hallway, with only the security lights illuminating it at regular intervals, glinting on banners, warping along the glass of framed student artwork, pooling on the worn linoleum. No one else was in sight, so he turned and jogged toward the parking lot.
It wasn’t that much of a risk. Somers was on the stage with Loretta Ames. Six other uniformed officers were in attendance. If somebody wanted to take potshots at Loretta, Hazard wasn’t going to be able to do anything that seven police officers couldn’t. And, although he never would have put it this way to his husband or their son, he wanted to do some snooping.
Behind him, the crowd’s murmur of the pledge rose and fell, and then it ended. A moment later, Wieberdink’s voice picked up again. Hazard took out his phone as he jogged toward the double doors at the end of the hallway and sent a quick message to Colt: What kind of car do the Sturgises drive?
Colt’s message came back a moment later: Where are you?
What kind of car?
Composition bubbles appeared and disappeared. Then words came through: The dad drives a Silverado. Ash says it’s black, but I think it’s blue. The mom has a white Escalade.
And the Pawloskis?
The phone timed out. Hazard reached the doors, bumped the crash bar with his hip, and emerged into the evening warmth of May in Missouri. Behind a lattice of stubby pines, the sun balanced on the horizon, and the end of the day had the deep, textured light that Hollywood people scrambled to capture. The golden hour, or something like that. The air smelled fresh and sweet after the recirculated climate control of the school, with the taste of wild strawberries ripening; he could see patches of them, tiny red buds, in a native plants flowerbed near the school’s entrance. A breeze stirred the spears of purple coneflowers, heavy with nectar, and the green blades of prairie grasses still growing into maturity. And, up against the side of the flowerbed, where the custodians had obviously missed it, a small black bottle—Dewberry Cream vape juice. Another of nature’s miracles.
He moved out into the parking lot and the suffocating smell of rubber and exhaust, where the heat of the day still baked off the asphalt. He kept himself at a normal walk, just a guy looking for his car. The sound of his steps clipped back to him. Lots of trucks, of course. Lots of American brands, of course. A Tesla, of course.
His phone buzzed, and Colt’s message said: Evan has a gray Range Rover.
Then there was a pause.
Another text came through, and although it was hard to read emotion through text, Hazard thought he sensed a certain annoyed reluctance in the words that followed: Gwen says his dad has a Tesla and his mom drives a Lexus, the SUV kind.
Gwen says. Hazard thought about that as he looped back toward the Tesla.
Another message came from Colt: Where are you?
And then, almost immediately, another: This blows. I want to go home.
And then another: Can I leave? Ash wants to get a ride with Gwen anyway.
Hazard paused long enough to send back: You’re staying. And pay attention. Then he turned his focus to the electric car.
Silver, with the sleek, low profile that he’d seen on the street before, it had—although Hazard didn’t like to admit it—a techno-future appeal. He tried the handle; locked, of course. He’d never had to break into a Tesla before, and he wasn’t sure if a slim jim would do the job and, if it would, how difficult it would be to disable the alarm.
He was opening a browser on his phone for a quick search when one of the school doors crashed open. Hazard moved backward, taking advantage of the bulk of a panel van—BLECHNER FLORISTS—WE KNOW FLOWERS—to hide. His first thought was outraged parent, so it took him a moment to recalibrate when he saw Kirsta Sturgis. She was on her phone, and she walked to the edge of the native plants flowerbed and sat on the retaining wall. Not texting, Hazard decided after another moment’s observation. Swiping.
For the moment, he gave up on the Tesla. He continued his sweep of the parking lot, glancing occasionally to check that Kirsta was still occupied with her phone. No Lexus. No Escalade. An ancient, boxy Volvo puttered down the street, and its headlights picked out the plated, barrel-shaped silhouette of an armadillo trundling across the road. Then the Volvo was past, the engine sounding like a lawnmower in need of a tune up, and gloom swallowed up the armadillo again.
In the next aisle, Hazard found a dark blue Silverado. It wasn’t just a nice Silverado. It was a ridiculous luxury-trim model, with what looked like every electronic upgrade possible, high-quality leather seats, a sunroof, even some sort of in-cab entertainment system. It wasn’t hard to imagine Derrick—or, for that matter, Joyce—driving this behemoth. But Hazard’s favorite part was that they’d left the windows down. It was a small town. It was a beautiful night. No rain in sight. Sure, why the hell not?
Hazard pulled on a pair of disposable gloves from the tactical jacket. Then he stepped up onto the running board and leaned through the driver’s window. He didn’t want to risk setting off the alarm by opening the door, so he settled for a quick scan of the cab: receipts were trampled on the floor, crumpled in the cupholders, drifting between the seats; a flattened can of cotton candy-flavored Bang energy drink had rolled up against the door; flattened cardboard takeout containers peeked out from under the passenger seat. The air had the unmistakable aroma—well, unmistakable ever since a teenage boy had taken up residence in Hazard’s life—of chicken fries.
He grabbed a few of the closest receipts, the thermal paper slick through the gloves. The Kum & Go on Jefferson. Taco Bell. Riverside Burgers. Vape juice and gum and chalupas and two chocolate malts. Hazard considered the fuel receipt again and offered a small prayer to whatever god or goddess decided his fate, thanking them that his husband’s adolescent choice of vehicle had been a Mustang and not a half-ton pickup with a twenty-four-gallon fuel tank.
Hazard glanced over at the school. He couldn’t see Kirsta from this spot; too many vehicles blocked his line of sight. But he didn’t hear anything, and after another moment, he shuffled along the running board and poked his head through the rear driver’s-side window. A small cosmetics bag lay on the seat, half unzipped, tubes of lipstick and mascara visible through the opening. A pair of discarded heels lay on the floor. Papers littered the driver’s side of the bench. Hazard grabbed these.
They were printouts, he saw. Notes, some of which might have been written by Derrick or Joyce, but also articles from websites, posts from Facebook, even tweets. He flipped through them, scanning. The word redpill showed up in many of them. That’s your goal: to redpill as many people as possible. And, We’re going to redpill every parent in this state. And, My responsibility as a parent is to my children first and to every other child second, so I won’t rest until we’ve redpilled the good people and opened their eyes to the threat these freaks pose to our children.
It wasn’t exactly original. Hazard had been a few weeks shy of fifteen when The Matrix came out, and although what he mostly remembered was losing eight dollars and more than two hours of his life, he did recall the red pill / blue pill scene. So, no. Not exactly original. But then, what did you expect from a group of people who were the walking equivalent of washout from the gene pool?
Other papers in the pile had more concrete suggestions. In addition to outlining the importance of state and national efforts, post after post and article after article suggested the same thing: local action was where the next battle was going to be won, and the best forum for that local action was the school board. Run for election, the papers suggested. Threaten to sue. Throw up every obstacle and roadblock and hurdle that you can, to make the lives of board members impossible. The most recent set of papers suggested something Hazard had never even considered: filing claims against the private bond companies who issued public official bonds, in hopes that they would withdraw the bond, and through some sort of legal arcana, force the elected official to be removed from office.
Pages and pages of that. And the subtext of every page, every word, was the same: scare the shit out of other parents so they’ll vote the way we want them to.
And the last page was a screenshot of a tweet, printed out in color: a white woman holding an assault rifle, American flag bikini top, denim cutoffs, cowboy boots, hair that had obviously required extensive use of a curling iron, and the words WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN?
The sound of the school door crashing open startled Hazard. He returned the papers to the rear bench and dropped down from the running board. Voices came—someone saying something, Kirsta responding, her voice plaintive and childish.
Stripping off the gloves, Hazard cut back along the Silverado. Hard footsteps clapped against the asphalt. Hazard turned away from the sound, walking up the aisle. He was just a guy looking for his van. No big deal. Shoulders loose, keys hanging from his hand, glancing from side to side. Maybe his husband had—in a hypothetical example—dropped him off and then parked the van and, even though it was a two-hundred-stall underground parking structure, hadn’t bothered to write down where the van was parked, and now it was hours later and their daughter was exhausted and she’d thrown her drink in the food court and all he wanted was to get home but of course nobody knew where the fucking van was.
Purely hypothetical.
The steps stopped somewhere behind Hazard. A door opened. He glanced back—casual, ordinary, a new stimulus prompting a normal response—and almost fumbled his keys. Evan was opening the door of the Tesla. His back was to Hazard, but in the evening light, Hazard had no trouble identifying the boy. He kept his gaze turned back as he walked, watching as Evan dug through a backpack. He was watching when something fell and clattered against the asphalt. He was still watching when Evan bent and picked up the knife.
Then he had reached the end of the aisle, and Evan looked sideways, as though he had heard something, so Hazard turned and cut between two domestic sedans and made his way up to the next aisle. He stopped at the Odyssey long enough to discard the disposable gloves, and then he made his way back through the parking lot. When he drew even with the Tesla and glanced over, Evan was gone. Hazard did a quick check, but he couldn’t see the boy anywhere in the parking lot. He considered trying the Tesla again, but he figured he was pressing his luck. He hurried back toward the school. When he reached the entrance, Kirsta was gone.
Hazard stepped inside, back into the air-conditioned cool and the smell of cafeteria fry oil and dry erase markers and all-purpose cleaner. He followed the darkened hallway toward the gym. Through the double doors, Loretta’s voice reached him clearly. She was reading from the book, her voice rhythmic and smooth. Hazard wondered if he’d missed the riot.
He opened the door, and the too-warm air from the gym pressed against him. A quick check showed him that Kirsta wasn’t with her parents, and Evan wasn’t with his. Hazard wondered, briefly, where they’d gone—after the things Evan had said to Kirsta in the classroom, he had a hard time imagining them together, but then, teenagers were impossible to understand. Exhibit A: his son, currently trying to get Ashley’s attention by flicking Tic Tacs at him while Ashley and Gwen whispered and giggled and kissed.
On the stage, Somers sat straight in his seat, his attention roving the crowd. Loretta stood at the podium, barely tall enough to see over the top; they’d had to lower the mic for her after Susan Rodriguez, Hazard guessed. No sign of Ayelet; she’d been seated next to her mother when Hazard had left, but at some point during Loretta’s talk, she’d apparently left. Hazard was about to slip inside the gym when a sound from farther down the hallway caught his ear. A scuff, almost a squeak, like a cheap sole catching on the linoleum.
He listened.
“—what it means to wear a mask,” Loretta was saying, “is that you start to believe everyone else is wearing a mask—”
Hazard let the door fall shut again. He turned toward the sound. He knew this building, knew its layout. That direction was the weight room, the gym teachers’ offices, the coaches’ offices—never mind that the gym teachers were usually the coaches, and that therefore they had two offices when the rest of the teachers in the building had none—and then double doors that were, nominally, emergency exit only, although Hazard didn’t think they were wired to the alarm—in a high school, the alarm would be going off every day. Doors, he thought, that somebody could have propped open, just a little, just enough that nobody would notice unless they inspected the latch, just enough that someone could slip in from the outside.
It was silly. Nothing so far had suggested that there was a genuine threat; everything had been showboating and politics.
But a frisson ran down Hazard’s spine.
As quietly as he could, he padded down the hall. The pools of darkness between the emergency lights were deep and long. He felt like he was swimming, buoyant in the murk, his feet not quite touching bottom. Ridiculous, he told himself. And then he would reach the next island of light, the glare in his eyes making him lower his head as he tried to take another deep breath.
He was ten yards out when he spotted something in the deeper shadows of the intersection ahead. It was a narrow side hallway. From what he remembered, it was primarily used by the custodians and the potheads, and it connected to the rear of the cafeteria. It was hard to tell what Hazard was seeing; the uneven lighting had ruined his night vision. It might have been nothing, just a patch of darkness against the relative gloom. It might have been a man. He slowed. Loretta’s voice droned in the background. He brought his arm up, slowly. The tactical jacket rustled, barely more than a whisper, as his hand found his pocket and the pepper gel within.
In the intersection, something—someone—burst into motion. A figure launched itself out of the hallway, sprinting away from Hazard—toward the weight room, the offices, and the emergency exit. In the cobweb shadows, Hazard had only a brief impression of a large head and a flapping trench coat. Then he shot after the figure, his boots hammering the linoleum.
He ran a lot these days. He ran because it was part of his job, and he ran for distance, and he ran for speed. The gap between him and the figure began to close. The weight room blurred by. Then the offices. Ahead, the double doors showed oblongs of blue twilight through their safety glass. An emergency light gave Hazard his second glimpse: the big head, the frizzy hair, the trench coat.
Then the figure collided with the door. They stumbled once, spinning in a half-circle as they passed through the opening, and then slammed the door shut. They were doing something with the door, but Hazard was five feet behind, and he focused on increasing his speed. He hit the crash bar a moment later, and the combination of his momentum and the door’s resistance made him stumble back. He hit the door again. On the other side of the glass, the figure was retreating. Hazard hammered on the steel. Nothing. No give. Then he saw the length of two-by-four wedged behind the handles, preventing the doors from opening.
He swore as the figure climbed into a car. Hazard spun, racing to find another exit, already pulling out his phone and then not knowing who to call or what he’d report. His last glance back as he turned the corner told him he was too late: headlights flared, and then they were gone.