Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  What about Nico? The thought rang clear as a bell in Hazard’s head. Why didn’t Hazard fear those kinds of risks with Nico?

  “You’re making that face again,” Somers said.

  “It’s the coffee.”

  “The coffee’s fine. What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t focus on Newton.”

  “Because of Cravens.” Hazard nodded, but to his surprise, Somers continued, “And because everyone at the party is a suspect. Don’t look so surprised. It’s insulting.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “If your eyes got any wider, Ree, they’d drop out of your head. I get it; I’ve been focused on Newton for the last twelve hours, ever since Stillwell was shot. And I still think Newton is behind all of this. But the fact is that it could have been anyone at the party. Someone had to free Stillwell. Someone had to give him the gun. And someone had to blow the power. How am I doing?”

  “Someone at the party was involved, although they might have been working for someone else.”

  “And?”

  “And the killer couldn’t have been just anyone at the party. We actually have a fairly limited group of suspects.” Hazard cleared the center of the table, shook open a clean napkin, and sketched a diagram of the Somerset home. “Stillwell was back here, in the TV room. We were in here.”

  “The family room.”

  “Whoever untied Stillwell and gave him the gun had to pass through the family room and kitchen to get to the TV room. Unless there’s another door?”

  “There is. In the kitchen. It leads out to the garage. And one that goes to the back porch.”

  “Damn it. Were they locked?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Damn it.” Hazard studied his sketch and, after a moment, added the door. “That opens up the possibilities. We’ll have to consider that. But for now, we can start our list with the people we know had access to Stillwell.”

  “Mayor Newton,” Somers said, holding up a hand before Hazard could speak. “And Sheriff Bingham. They both were in that room at some point during the evening.”

  “After you handcuffed Stillwell?”

  Somers screwed up his face as though trying to remember. “Yes. Bing and his father went into the kitchen after I finished talking to Bing. Mayor Newton followed them in there.”

  “I didn’t see that.”

  “Probably because you were too busy sulking.”

  Hazard decided not to respond to that comment. Instead, he said, “The two boys—the ones who dragged the girl off your father—they went in there. And right before Stillwell started shooting, one of the boys looked like he was going to attack your dad.”

  “Six suspects: Mayor Newton, Sheriff Bingham, Bing, the two boys, and the girl.”

  “The girl’s dead.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”

  Hazard shrugged. “There are two more people. You’re not going to like this.”

  “My mother. I know she didn’t make a good impression on you last night, but she’s not the killer.” Somers held up a hand again. “I’m not arguing with you; we’ll look at her just like anyone else. I know the spouse is statistically likely. But I’m telling you it wasn’t her.”

  Nodding, Hazard said, “And Jeremiah Walker.”

  “Eight. Eight people who had access to Stillwell. But eight people who would want to kill my father? Eight people with a motive? That’s not likely.”

  Hazard peeled off a twenty and threw it down on the table. As he got to his feet, he gave Big Biscuit a long glance. He was a grown man now, not a scared, marginalized boy. He had fought hard, he had found a place in this world, he had made himself strong. No. More than strong. He had made himself invulnerable to the old hurts. And here was the proof: all these years later, eating in Big Biscuit.

  So why were the shadows of his thoughts about Mikey Grames, about the knife, about the scar still shiny on the flat skin of his belly? Why was he thinking about Bing, and his torn knees, and the lake? Why did it feel like nothing had changed in fifteen years and nothing would change in fifty?

  “Well,” Hazard said, forcing himself into motion, away from this place, away from the shadows of the past. “Let’s find out who might have wanted him dead.”

  HAZARD DROVE SLOWLY THROUGH WAHREDUA, angling the VW towards the outskirts of town and the quiet stretch of country where the Somerset home stood. Overhead, the sun had intensified, but the temperature continued to drop. Trickles of melt from the blackened piles of snow froze almost immediately against the asphalt, turning Wahredua’s roads into sheets of ice. The VW slid over the frozen asphalt like a soap bubble; Hazard was half-certain that he weighed almost as much as the car, and on days like today, he hoped that extra weight would provide much-needed traction.

  When they reached the Somerset home, the pseudo-Victorian brick structure looked as it always had: a sprawling display of wealth and power, its black shutters and red brick a violent contrast to the blankets of snow. In the daylight, the lights strung along the brick and slate and the iron fence looked dull and tiny. Hazard slowed as they approached the gate, which was shut; today, the Somerset home was not receiving visitors.

  “Nine-five-four-six-eight,” Somers said, but his eyes hadn’t left the fence.

  Hazard keyed in the code at the gate security box, but he hesitated before accelerating. “What are you looking at?”

  “The fence. The lights are off.”

  “It’s daytime.”

  “Yeah, I know. They were off last night, though. After the power went out.”

  Hazard studied the fences and its strands of blank, blind bulbs. “What do you think happened?”

  Somers shook his head. “I don’t know. But someone wanted the power to go off at a certain time.”

  After another moment, Hazard eased the VW forward, its tires throwing up chunks of re-frozen snow. They parked, and Somers led Hazard into the house. Hazard paused in the entry hall. Then he swore and hammered the door shut behind him.

  The house was clean. Not just clean. Spotless. No crime scene tape marking off the area where Glennworth Somerset had been shot. No evidence markers. Even the goddamn punch bowl was clean and sparkling. The only sign of the violence and death that has visited the Somerset home was the careful rearrangement of the family room: someone—certainly not Grace Elaine herself, although she had just as certainly given the instructions—had moved the enormous Christmas tree so that it sat directly on the spot where Glenn had been shot and where Bing’s daughter Hadley had died. Hidden now by the crimson tree skirt and the metallic shimmer of the wrapping paper, Hazard knew that blood stained the wooden floor.

  “What the fuck happened?” Hazard said.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” Heels clicked in the hallway, and a moment later, Grace Elaine appeared on the landing above them. Head cocked, she was putting in an earring as she looked down. “Oh.”

  “Mother,” Somers said. “What is going on?”

  Grace Elaine didn’t look like she was going to the hospital. She didn’t look like she’d spent the night grieving and worrying. She looked like she was headed to a charity luncheon or a ladies’ society or a very elegant house of prostitution: black pumps, a grey wool dress with seed pearls and amethyst stones, and enough silver around her neck to sink the Titanic. What she was wearing, just what she was wearing, had doubtless cost more than everything Hazard’s own mother had ever spent on clothes in a lifetime. His own mother, who had worked away her life at a sewing machine, growing smaller, growing more hunched, growing more furrowed and squinting by the year.

  “What are you doing here, John-Henry? I have to run out. The arts conservancy has their Christmas luncheon in twenty minutes, and I wasted half my morning trying to find that bluebell brooch that Emilie made.” She paused at the bottom of the stairs, fixing the second earring, and then kissed the air near Somers’s cheek. “You look tired, darling.” Then her gaze shifted
to Hazard, and her voice took on its kitty-cat tone. “Detective, if I’d known you were coming I would have made plans to entertain you. I could just tie you up for hours.”

  In spite of himself, Hazard felt a blush growing. Somers spoke first, though, his voice quaking with that same seismic anger Hazard had heard earlier. “I look tired.”

  “Yes, dear. You look horrid. Cora won’t have you back if you can’t bother to brush your hair. And I won’t blame her, John-Henry, I really won’t.” She paused, tugging the silver collars into place. “Is that blood? Oh, John-Henry.”

  “Yes, Mother. It’s blood. It’s Father’s blood. And Hadley Bingham’s blood. She’s dead, you know. And Father’s in the hospital, in case you hadn’t heard.”

  “Don’t be sensational. You know perfectly well that I went to the hospital last night.”

  “Really? That’s strange because I sat with Father all night, and I didn’t see you there.”

  “You did?” Grace Elaine blinked. “Why?”

  “Because he almost died, Mother. Because he still might die.”

  “Yes, dear. I know.” From a closet on the side of the entry hall, she retrieved a heavy wool coat, which she held out to Hazard. “Help me with this, won’t you?”

  Hazard’s fingertips tingled as he held open the coat for her. This is what a mouse feels like, he thought. Right before the trap clicks. Right before that wire snaps his back. This is what it feels, not quite knowing, but knowing.

  But no wire snapped his back. Grace Elaine shrugged into the coat, buttoned it, and turned to face Hazard. She smiled at him—a cat, Hazard thought, a kitty cat with a mouse’s tail between its teeth—and ran a finger down the curve of his arm. Then she turned to Somers, kissed the air above his cheek, and drifted towards the kitchen and, beyond that, the garage.

  “And don’t make a mess, John-Henry,” she called back to them. “That woman, the deputy, she said I could straighten up, and it took poor Margarita all night to get things looking even halfway decent. I swear, if you track mud on her floors, you’ll have to deal with her. You really will. Now I’m off. Wish me luck, Emilie’s going to kill me for not wearing that brooch. Much love, darling. Bye.”

  And without another word, she was gone.

  “A deputy told her she could clean up the place?” Somers said, as though not quite believing his own words. He turned slowly in a circle, examining the rooms around him as though seeing them for the first time.

  “The sheriff must have taken possession of the scene,” Hazard said. “Cravens would have left somebody to make sure the place wasn’t disturbed otherwise. She wouldn’t have released it. Not even with Stillwell dead, she wouldn’t have done something like that.”

  “You know why Cravens did. You know why she went along with it, I mean. The mayor. He’s got his wingtips on her neck, and so she smiled and nodded and handed everything over to the sheriff. And he just destroyed our crime scene.”

  Hazard shrugged, but he didn’t answer. He could feel that tingling again, that sense that he had crawled too close to the cheese and that the next movement, the next breath would be the end. Snap. Just like that. He wasn’t normally given to flights of fancy, and he blamed it on this house, on these people, on the whole damn mess.

  “Let’s see if they left anything for us to work with,” Hazard said.

  The family room—that enormous, echoing space with a Christmas tree two feet taller than the Empire State Building—offered no answers, however. In fact, it offered few questions, aside from the most obvious one: why had Cravens withdrawn her officers and allowed the Somerset family to clean up the crime scene? Hazard didn’t know, but he didn’t think he’d find answers in the room. He shifted furniture, combed the bookshelves and the mantle, adjusted pewter knickknacks that showed no trace of dust, and he found nothing. He crawled under the enormous Christmas tree, scooting along his belly so that the crimson tree skirt bunched up as he went, and he found only a purplish stain on the wood. Did it feel wet still? No, that was more imagination—imagination that, until recently, had never troubled Hazard. Under the tree, the air smelled like pine and like the stale, greenish water that had stood in its basin for too long, and the air was warm, too warm, so warm that sweat dampened a triangle on Hazard’s back as he wriggled out from under the branches.

  “What did they do?” Somers muttered, pacing a circle. “Have Margarita run a vacuum and mop? Where’s the broken glass? Where are the bullet casings? Where is the damn gun?”

  “Let’s ask Margarita.”

  Somers called his mother, but she didn’t answer. “I don’t have Margarita’s number. I don’t even know her, not really.”

  Hazard stepped into the hallway, giving himself the widest possible view of the family room. It wasn’t just clean; it was sparkling, like someone had spent extra money for that Pine-Sol glow. Was that just good housekeeping? Or was this a cover-up?

  “We could call some cleaning services,” Somers was saying, running a hand through his blond spikes. “See if they know a Margarita. See if maybe they referred her to my parents.”

  “You leave the dishes in the sink.”

  “What?”

  “At home, you leave the dishes in the sink.”

  “I don’t—well, just until I’m ready to load the dishwasher.”

  “And you don’t take out the trash. The first time I went to the apartment, you’d left a bag of trash in the front room.”

  “Yeah, Ree. I was in a bad spot back then.”

  “No, you still do it.”

  “I do not.”

  “How many times have you taken out the trash since I moved in?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “How many times have you washed the dishes?”

  “Last Sunday. I washed everything last Sunday.”

  A smile cracked the corners of Hazard’s mouth, and he walked towards the kitchen. “Nico spent about six hours making dinner. Milanesa. That cabbage salad. The bread pudding.”

  “I did the dishes, Ree.” Somers trailed after him. “Listen, if you’re pissed about how things are going at home, fine. We’ll make a chore chart.”

  “A chore chart?”

  Somers flushed. “Or whatever. But this isn’t really the—what are you doing?”

  Hazard moved down the length of the kitchen, pulling open the lower cabinets and drawers. Somers followed, sliding them shut, twin slashes of red showing on his cheekbones.

  “You grew up with a maid.”

  “She came once a week to clean,” Somers said, the red lines darkening. “I wouldn’t call that a maid. Will you—Hazard, stop it. What’s going on?”

  Under the sink, Hazard found the trash can. He didn’t bother with niceties; he was too angry. He was angry about Grace Elaine’s casual disregard for the crime that had been committed under her roof, angry about the neglect, the criminally closed eyes that Cravens had turned away from the case, and, truth be told, Hazard was angry about the damn dishes back at the apartment. He toppled the trash can with his foot, upending it and strewing garbage across the floor. Dust, an empty can of sweet corn, the plastic shrink wrap from a tray of gourmet cookies, what looked like the thighbone from a chicken—ordinary trash. The kind of trash, Hazard thought glumly, that Somers never bothered to take to the Dumpster.

  “You honestly think someone would just toss incriminating evidence in the kitchen trash?” Somers leaned back, arms folded across his chest, a skeptical gaze moving from Hazard to the trash can.

  “It seemed like a possibility.”

  “You were thinking that because I occasionally don’t take out the trash—”

  “Is once a year occasional?”

  “—that my family might be the same? That—what? My mother might have picked up the murder weapon and tossed it in with last night’s leftovers.”

  “It was a possibility, Somers.” It didn’t sound quite as good, Hazard had to admit, when Somers said it out loud
.

  For a moment, the skeptical look lingered on Somers’s face. Then it vanished, and a grin snapped into its place. “You know what my mother did with her old bras? And with the Fit / Fitness / Fight magazines that she used to buy? You know the ones I’m talking about, they always had a bunch of pictures of shirtless guys.”

  Hazard shook his head.

  “You’re a damn liar. You used to keep some in your locker at school.”

  “How did you—” Hazard cut himself off, but it was too late.

  Somers’s grin had magnified. “She had one with Josh Hartnett. Like, 2001 Josh Hartnett. I know because I, uh, borrowed it.”

  “Jesus. Somebody kill me, please. Right now.”

  “Anyway, you know what she did with it? You know, so my father wouldn’t see it?”

  “I don’t know, Somers. Please drop it. I don’t want to talk about your mom’s old bras.”

  “She wrapped it up in an old newspaper and shoved it to the bottom of the outside trash can. You know, the one you put at the curb.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in. “How do you know this?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to let Josh go that easily. He and I had become too close.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I was seventeen. I had my hands full. Kind of literally.”

  “You’re sick. You’re definitely messed up.”

  Hazard didn’t wait for Somers to say any more and started towards the garage. He wasn’t sure if he could stand more of Somers’s innuendo—or his more blatant sexual commentary. It was one thing for Hazard to work and live with Somers: to see him, to smell him, to talk to him, and somehow to pretend for sixteen hours a day that he hadn’t been crushing on him since they’d hit puberty. It was quite another thing to hear about—

  —Josh Hartnett, 2001, shirtless, Jesus, I think I owned that copy of Fit / Fitness / Fight—

  —Somers’s raunchier activities.

  In the garage, a big blue rolling trash can sat near the door. Hazard swung open the lid and was met by stacked black garbage bags.