some states called obstruction of justice. Hazard didn’t like the idea of spending up to a year in county while his fiancé tried to evade possession charges. Hazard wouldn’t be able to get inside Dulac’s apartment; they’d have that place locked down tight for the next few days at a minimum. But that didn’t mean that Hazard couldn’t get other, equally important information. He just had to be creative.
He walked all around the first floor, looking for apartments that had a door open, because he wanted to find the manager and Hazard assumed that he was currently doing odd jobs around the building. When Hazard didn’t see any open doors, he found the fire stairs and went down to the basement. He made his way past the laundry room, where an ancient man was holding up long johns to the light, examining them with unwavering attention. Hazard checked the boiler room, found the door locked, and hammered on it a few times. Nothing. He made his way to the other side of the basement, which was divided up by wire mesh panels into individual storage units. It was like a bizarre zoo for suitcases and standing fans and, in one case, an enormous, rolled-up rug wedged into the cage at an angle. Two strips of masking tape marked the rug, with black letters on each: GRANDMA on one, and on the other SEX RUG. Hazard was curious, but he decided he didn’t want to know.
He worked his way up floor by floor until, on the third floor, he spotted a man coming out of an apartment. A bucket stood in the hall, and in one hand, the man held a plunger. The guy was probably in his late twenties, and he looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight since high school. He was wearing a faded Versace t-shirt, and he already had a potbelly.
“Are you the manager?” Hazard asked.
“Days,” the guy said.
“I need to see your security footage for the last week.”
“Oh man.” The kid—he looked more like a kid now—swung the plunger back and forth, studying Hazard. Hazard tried not to flinch at the thought of all the micro-droplets that were going everywhere. “Oh man,” the kid said again.
“This is a police—”
“They told me about you, man. They showed me your picture and told me I couldn’t talk to you.” The kid gave the plunger a few more lazy waggles; he was obviously torn about something, although Hazard had no idea what.
“This is important,” Hazard said. “I can pay. A hundred bucks. I don’t need to take it with me, I just need to look at it.”
“Oh man,” the kid said, and with a kind of despair, he shoved the plunger into the bucket and trundled away.
“Nobody’s saying I can’t walk right here with you,” Hazard said, jogging to catch up. “Right? Nobody said I couldn’t just walk here. And if you say something, maybe you’re not even saying it to me.” He dug out his wallet, grabbed the biggest bills, and fanned them out. “Two hundred bucks. That’s as much as I can pay you.”
The kid gave a sidelong look at the money and kept going. When he got to the stairs, he stopped.
“Kind of weird, talking to myself like this,” the kid said, before giving Hazard a sidelong look that had so much exaggerated significance that Hazard had to squash an internal groan.
“There’s nobody here,” Hazard. “You’re not talking to anybody.”
“I mean, I’m just standing here, thinking out loud. I’m thinking about this crazy-ass motherfucker I’ve heard about, keep seeing him on the news. I was reading the comments on this news story, and holy shit. I think this guy, I think he killed like fifteen people last year. Just lined them up in this old hotel and went down the line, popping them in the back of the head, pop, pop, pop. And they were so fucking afraid of him that they didn’t run away, they just stood there.” The kid mimed a gun, mimed a little recoil as he repeated, “Pop, pop, pop.”
When he gave Hazard the next sidelong look, his eyes were glowing.
The kid started down the stairs, and Hazard followed. They went down to the basement, and the kid was still glancing over Hazard, his eyes shiny, his pupils dilated. Hazard had met people like this kid before, although usually they were older, usually they wanted to buy him a beer, usually they’d figured out that they needed to mask their interest under the