with his middle finger. A moment later, traffic rolled forward again.
Iowa Street, Illinois, Checker Ave, Indiana Street. He made himself check each street sign until he saw the right one, and then he turned, and two minutes later, he was pulling into the parking lot at Dulac’s apartment building. He spotted Dulac’s car right away, and that surprised him. Hazard assumed that Dulac had fled in his personal vehicle before ditching it and switching to a stolen car. But Dulac’s car was sitting in the parking lot. Then Hazard saw more bad news: several police cruisers sat at the curb, and as Hazard cruised the lot, one uniformed officer jogged out to a cruiser, retrieved a cardboard carry-out tray with four cups of coffee, and jogged back to the building. Hazard found a visitor’s spot and parked.
The minivan’s A/C was finally chugging, so Hazard rolled up the windows and let the cool air lick his face for a minute. The interview with Riggle and Park had been so much worse than Hazard had expected. At some level, he had assumed that the arrest warrant for Somers was a horrible mistake. Some kind of bureaucratic gaffe, maybe, that might end in a lawsuit that was quietly and quickly settled once everything got straightened out. The charge of possession with intent to distribute, though, was a felony. Even if they beat it, the damage to Somers’s reputation would probably be permanent. And they had Somers’s fingerprints on the drugs, so Hazard didn’t know, honestly couldn’t bring himself to believe fully, that they would beat it.
What the fuck, he wanted to say, looking Somers right in the eyes. What the fuck have you been doing?
That wasn’t fair; Hazard unbuckled himself, killed the minivan and headed to the building. The rational part of his brain knew Somers hadn’t done anything wrong; as Hazard had told Park, when she’d suggested a connection between Somers and the Keeper killings, this was a frame job. Somehow, Dulac had managed to get Somers’s fingerprints on the drugs. He had taken Mitchell, he had abducted Nico, and he had vanished. He had doubtless headed out to Golden City a few days before and killed Kleinheider, probably when he got the bees to use for Susan’s body. Leaving behind the drugs and the bloody underwear had been an easy way to neutralize Somers—and, possibly, Hazard, because Dulac might have assumed Hazard would be so upset by the arrest or involved in protecting Somers that he would be incapacitated.
For Hazard, a lot of questions remained: had Dulac planned to take Nico as a victim all along? Or had Susan’s death been the only part that was planned, and the rest had all been a series of rash decisions motivated by fear of being discovered? In the end, it didn’t matter; it all boiled down to the next move, and the next move was to find Dulac. Fast. Because when Dulac ran, and he was going to run soon, he wouldn’t try to take Nico and Mitchell with him.
At the door to Dulac’s building, Hazard buzzed the manager’s unit. He got no response. He tried a couple more times, and then he tried an old standby, running his hand down the panel, buzzing just about every unit in the building until a voice answered: “Yes, hello?”
“This is Emery Hazard. I’m part of a police investigation into the disappearance of Gray Dulac, who lives in this building.”
“I don’t know Mr. Dulac, so—”
“This is police business, sir. Buzz me up, please. Right now.”
“I don’t really—I mean, I’m kneading bread right now, so it’s not exactly an ideal time.”
“Great,” Hazard said. “I’ll be sure to explain to Detective Dulac’s family that we tried our best with this investigation, we really wish we could explain why that cartel broke into this apartment building and cut their son’s face off like it was a Halloween mask, but the investigation stalled out pretty early because one potential witness was kneading bread and it wasn’t really a good time. You know what? I’ll tell his mom right now. Just stay on the intercom, sir, I think you’ll want to hear this.”
The door buzzed, and Hazard went inside. The next few steps were crucial; he’d seen the cruisers, spotted at least one uniformed officer. If he crossed paths with them, nobody was going to believe he just happened to be in the building as a coincidence. They’d throw him out on his ass. Worse, they might charge him with interference—what