SOMERS GUIDED THE CAR BACK into Smithfield. He played it cool—or as cool as he could manage, with his head still pounding so hard he thought his brain was going to leak out his ears—and he tried to keep things light. He’d screwed up somehow by mentioning Jeff Langham. He’d sent Hazard into a rage. On anybody else, Somers would have called it a killing rage.

A dark panic flickered deep inside Somers, like a candle about to blow out. What was that all about? Did Hazard know the truth? If he did, how much? Somers racked his brain and couldn’t come up with anything. There was only the single-page report in the department records, and it hadn’t mentioned any names, but Somers knew that didn’t matter. Hazard was smart. Very smart. If he dug deep enough—Somers gave a mental shake, throwing off the dangerous thoughts. It had been a long time ago, and everything about the suicide had been hushed up. Buried along with Jeff Langham. That part of Somers’s life was over, and he wasn’t going to let it control him. And why did Hazard care so much? Had Hazard been—

—boyfriends—

—friends with Jeff?

As the town shifted around them, with the red brick buildings dropping into clapboard houses, with neatly trimmed yards giving way to rusted expanses of chain-link and weed-choked sidewalks, with trash mounded along the street like old victory monuments, Somers tried to make small talk, and Hazard wouldn’t have any of it. The more Somers tried, the more Hazard seemed to shut down. The other man’s anger was hardening, settling into an icy shell. His dark, brooding good looks were fixed towards the window. A lock of his long hair had slipped down over his forehead and hung in front of his eyes.

And for the hundredth time in the last two days, Somers asked himself why he was trying to so hard. Why did it matter if Emery Hazard hated his guts? Why did he care if Hazard thought he was still the same piece of shit he’d been back in high school? Somers hadn’t seen Hazard in fourteen, fifteen years. Somers had gone to college. He’d grown up. He’d seen a bigger world, with bigger and better ideas, and he’d come back to find Wahredua growing bigger and better too. He’d been a stupid kid, but he wasn’t that kid anymore.

That was part of the answer. Another part was that John-Henry Somerset liked people, and he wanted people to like him. He knew, just below the surface of conscious thought, that he was funny and likable and good-looking. He expected people to like him; it was normal, natural, it was just a thing that happened. Everyone liked him—everyone, that was, except Emery Hazard. It had pissed off Somers in high school, and he was starting to realize that it still bothered him. It didn’t make sense, especially when Somers was now going out of his way to be likable.

But the deep-down part of Somers, the part that crept out at night and stared him eye to eye when he couldn’t sleep in the early hours, that part told Somers that the rest of it was more or less bullshit, that the only reason Emery Hazard mattered to Somers was because Emery Hazard was a way of proving that Somers had changed, that the past could be redeemed. It was a pretty simple equation, even if Somers rarely allowed him to express it clearly: if he could make things right with Hazard, if he could prove that he could atone for the past with the kid he had tortured—

—with his hand on Emery’s neck in the locker room, feeling the wiry boy’s pulse like a hummingbird under his palm, feeling the mist of condensation on his skin, feeling something dangerously unsettled in his own chest, like the world had tipped over and spilled everything sideways—

—back in high school, if John-Henry Somerset could do those things, then he could make things right with Cora too. That, at least, was what he told himself when the world was at its darkest.

“You worked this part of town?” Hazard said, his rough, deep voice breaking Somers’s thoughts.

“Yeah.”

“Tough spot.”

Somers shrugged.

“That how you made detective?”

“Part of it.”

Hazard nodded, his dark eyebrows knitted in anger or thought or some other dark, stormy emotion typical of Emery Hazard. The loose lock of hair—too long, almost, for a detective—still lay across his forehead. It was at odds with the rest of Hazard’s neat, tightly controlled appearance. It made him look almost boyish.

“What are you smiling about?” Hazard asked in a dangerous voice.

“Nothing.” Somers pointed ahead. “Start at the trailer?”

Hazard nodded.

By daylight, the street—Villanova—looked like any other part of Smithfield. Two brick buildings stood like bookends on one side of the block; one had crumbled inwards, leaving a single wall standing, while the other looked more or less intact. The rest of the block was made up of prefabricated housing and single-wide trailers, all in various states of disrepair. A matted tangle of trash and weeds choked the curbs. Somers pulled the car to a stop and got out.

The police cordon was still in place, and for a moment, Somers thought the scene had been abandoned. As he and Hazard approached, though, a bull-necked man strode from around the side of the trailer. He was wearing a blue Wahredua FD t-shirt and jeans, and Somers knew him—he’d been three years ahead in high school and wrestled all the way to state. Redgie Moseby changed course when he saw them and stuck out a thick hand.

“Redge,” Somers said. “You know Hazard? Emery Hazard, went to school—”

“I know him.” Redgie, normally friendly, was wearing a sneer, and he bit off the words.

Somers waited; he could feel Hazard’s tension—the man was always coiled like a spring, it seemed—but nothing came of it.

“You here all day?” Somers asked.

“Somebody’s got to keep it sealed. Fucking arson scene, you know? Could be weeks of digging through that shit-heap, and got to have a real live person here the whole time. Fucking nightmare.”

“You got the sign-in? We caught it, and we wanted to take a look.”

Redgie grunted and jerked his head towards a truck parked nearby. “Can’t really go inside; most of the floor is burned through, and what’s left isn’t stable. We’re going to have to get scaffolding, go through the whole thing inch by inch.” He retrieved a clipboard and shoved it at Hazard, somehow managing to ignore Hazard while doing so. “You caught it, huh? Shit luck for you.”

Somers fought to keep anger out of his voice. “Yeah, bad luck.”

As though Somers hadn’t answered, Redgie’s gaze drifted to Hazard, and his sneer deepened. Redgie didn’t have to say what he was thinking; everybody for about three blocks could have read it off his face.

But, Redgie being Redgie, he spoke anyway. “You really a cocksucker—”

Somers didn’t let him finish. He grabbed a handful of Redgie’s shirt, popped Redgie once in the nose, and when Redgie stumbled in shock, he marched Redgie backward to the edge of the cordon. Somers popped him twice more and then let Redgie fall. Adrenaline tingled all over him like Somers had dipped his toes in lightning, and he stared at Redgie’s bloody face.

“You stay on that side of the cordon,” Somers said, his voice sounding loud even in his own ears, “until you’re not bleeding anymore. We don’t want any contamination.”

Redgie—big, old, state-wrestling Redgie—stared up at Somers in shock.

Somers flashed him a smile. “You ever talk about my partner like that again, I’ll do more than twist your nose. You tell every other fucking redneck the same thing, all right?”

By now, Redgie’s face was coloring, and he looked ready to charge.

“If you try to get up,” Somers said, “I’ll put you back down. Understand me?”

Redgie didn’t answer, but he stayed down.

“Well?”

“I heard you.”

“What are you going to tell all the other jerk-offs?”

It took a moment, but finally Redgie said, “He’s your partner.”

“All right, Redgie. We’ll give you the clipboard after we sign out. Stay here, right? Until you get yourself cleaned up.”

Somers didn’t wait for an answer; he headed back to Hazard, took the clipboard, and scribbled his name and time in.

Hazard was staring at him.

“What?”

“Don’t do that.”

Tucking the clipboard under one arm, Somers crossed the lot towards the trailer. A set of portable metal steps had been erected by the fire department, and Somers climbed to where he could see into the burnt wreckage.

Hazard was only a step behind him, and he grabbed Somers arm and turned him. “I’m serious. Don’t do that. I don’t need anyone fighting my battles for me.”

Somers snorted. “Fighting your battles? Trust me. I’m not fighting any battles for you—you look like you can take care of yourself just fine.”

“What you just did—”

“What I just did was what any good partner would have done. That’s what this is, right? We’re partners?”

“Yeah,” Hazard said. “But—”

“Then that’s all there is to it.”

For a moment, Somers waited for Hazard to say something else, to object or protest or complain or, more likely, to take a swing. Instead, something passed under Hazard’s icy mask—a ripple, or maybe a tremor, like something coming just before an earthquake. And then it was gone.

“Can I have that back?” Somers said, glancing at his arm.

“Oh.” Hazard flinched and peeled back his fingers. Then, in a voice so muffled Somers barely heard, “Sorry.”

Holy hell, Somers wanted to shout. An apology from Emery Hazard? But all he did was shrug and turn his attention back to the burnt-out trailer.

After a moment, Hazard stepped up next to him, their shoulders rubbing together. Somers thought back to the threat of an hour before—if you so much as bump me in the hallway, wasn’t that it?—and fought a smile. Well, maybe he was making a little progress.

When Hazard spoke, it was with the same crisp, cool detachment he had shown in the mortuary. “The barrel,” he said, pointing to a circle of twisted metal at the center of the trailer. “That’s where the accelerant was stored. It must have had a lot of it—what did McClinckie say they used?”

“Paint thinner, I think. Mineral spirits?”

Hazard nodded. “It kept the fire going even when they tried to put it out. Kept it hot, too.”

“Hot enough to make sure the body was destroyed.”

“Exactly what the killer wanted.” Hazard pointed. “What’s that?”

On one of the remaining scorched floorboards, melted plastic made an irregular puddle.

Somers shrugged. “A kid’s toy? I don’t know. Look at all the shit in there: the stove, the microwave—that looks like it’s from the eighties, can’t believe I can still recognize it—that was the sofa, you can see some of the springs.”

“But that’s close to the barrel.”

“You think that’s where it started?”

Hazard shrugged. “It just seems strange.”

With a nod, Somers took another look at their crime scene. Once the fire department gave them clearance, they’d begin processing it for fingerprints and any other trace material evidence; until then, the best they could hope for was that it didn’t rain.

They stood there for a few more minutes. The day was already hot, and the sweltering air stuck to Somers’s skin, pasted his shirt under his arms, and made him wish for a cold beer. The smell of burned meat and overheated metal lingered near the wreckage, and Somers’s stomach turned queasy. Then, on an eddy of fresh air, he smelled Hazard’s sweat and the clean, shampoo-smell of his hair.

“Ready?” Somers asked.

They signed out of the scene and, as they made their way to the car, Somers waved the clipboard at Redgie and dropped it on the grass. Redgie, who was now holding a wadded napkin to his nose, gave them the finger, but he didn’t cross the cordon. Maybe he was taking seriously the warning about contaminating the crime scene. Or maybe he didn’t want to tangle with both of them.

“What now?” Hazard asked as they approached the Impala.

“Now we look for someone I know.”

They got into the car, and Somers cranked the air condition. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hazard catch a glimpse of himself in the glass. One of Hazard’s hands straightened the fallen lock of hair, and just like that, Hazard was back to his perfectly groomed GQ look.

“What are you smiling about?” Hazard asked, echoing his earlier question with slightly less heat.

“Nothing,” Somers said, no longer trying to hide his amusement, and pulled away from the curb.