Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  The Sheriff’s Department, along with the county jail, was a long, low building. It buzzed with electric illumination. When Hazard passed through the automatic doors, the smell of burnt coffee whooshed out at him. At the desk, a tired-looking young woman wore a khaki deputy’s uniform.

  “Detective Emery Hazard. I need access to the evidence lock-up.” He passed her his badge.

  She nodded, barely seeming to see the badge, and produced a key with a large, plastic tag. “Don’t lose it,” she said. “Last guy from city PD lost it and we had hell to pay.”

  “Where do I go?”

  “Down the hall. On your right before you hit the jail.”

  That was it. Hazard’s bones were buzzing like fluorescent tubes. That was all it took. Just don’t lose it. He’d had plans. He’d had stories. He’d had a whole explanation worked out, and that was it: don’t lose it. Jesus, it was a small town, and somehow he kept forgetting that.

  The lock-up was where the deputy had said, and the key opened the door, and Hazard found himself standing in a room that, on first glance, could have been mistaken for a janitor’s supply closet. Bankers boxes sat on storage racks. Two light panels overhead thrummed; above them, darkness hung down. The linoleum stuck to Hazard’s shoe as he took a step.

  He moved between the racks, checking the dates, and moved towards the most recent cases. There, on the front of a single bankers box, were marked two investigations: Somerset, Glenn. And Stillwell, Wayne. Hazard slid the box from the shelf and opened it.

  Inside, a cardboard divider separated the box. On one side, evidence bags held Wayne Stillwell’s gun and the casings recovered from the Somerset home. Six brass casings. Five bullets had struck Glenn Somerset and he had lived. One had struck Hadley Bingham and she had died. Hazard withdrew from his pocket the casing that he and Somers had found in the garbage at the Somerset home. And that was seven. Seven casings. Because Wayne Stillwell had shot one of the ornaments. That had been his very first shot.

  In addition to the casings, that side of the box held miscellaneous evidence collected at the Somerset home: a fragment of glass from a broken ornament; photographs of different rooms in the Somerset house, a hundred different angles showing the blood-stained floor under the Christmas tree; a scant handful of witness statements. Evidence, but surprisingly little of it. Or maybe not that surprising. The sheriff had made sure that the investigation ended as soon as Stillwell died. Hazard took his time flipping through the photographs, reading the statements, and thinking. He even lifted the glass shard in its plastic bag, turning it, studying. No revelations came. No handcuffs, either. The cuffs that Somers had used to secure Stillwell were missing, just as Cravens had said. Who had taken them?

  On the other side of the divider, where a piece of Scotch tape read Stillwell, a revolver sat in an evidence bag. That was Lender’s gun, which was still being held as part of the official investigation. Next to it were the five casings from the hospital parking lot. Five shots. That’s what Lender had emptied into Stillwell’s chest. That was a hell of a lot to kill a man who was handcuffed. And where was the rest of the evidence? At the police station?

  There was something wrong here. Hazard knew it. He could feel it. His mind was turning the puzzle pieces, trying to make them fit. Something was wrong here, and at least in part, it went back to the casings. How had one of the casings ended up in the garbage at the Somerset house? Had it been an accident? Had one of the cops working the scene been careless or lazy? Or had it been more than that? Had someone intentionally removed the casing? And if so—this was what puzzled Hazard—why?

  For a while, he stayed there, lost in the cool flow of proposition, evidence, analysis, conclusion, and then beginning all over again.

  Nothing came to him, though. He was too tired. He smelled Nico on him, and his skin itched, and he wanted a shower and bed. Shoving the box back into its place, Hazard left the evidence lock-up and returned the key with its big plastic tag. The deputy didn’t even glance at him. A pale glow from the monitor played over her face, and she was lost in the shuffle of another game of solitaire.

  Then, instead of turning for home, Hazard went back to Nico’s apartment.

  SOMERS HAD TRIED. He really had. He’d gone for a run. He’d taken a cold shower. He’d swallowed a couple of Benadryl and shoved his head under the pillows, determined to fall asleep by force of will.

  It hadn’t worked. He’d been angry at Hazard for suggesting that the case might not be solvable. And he’d been horny. Horny because fighting with Hazard often ended with him feeling horny. There was something about the way the big man shut down, about the brooding silence he wrapped himself in, that really cranked Somers’s motor. He’d been horny, too, because of Dusty and Frank. Not because of them, the boys themselves, but because it had gotten him thinking about the past, and about what might have been, about—

  —love—

  —the mind-blowing, heart-pumping, nuclear-blast-furnace sex that he and Hazard could have been having. In high school. In college. And the thoughts and images had continued. He’d seen Hazard naked as a teenager. He’d seen him naked as a man. Somers had a good memory, and it wasn’t hard for his imagination to fill in the gaps. And there were a lot of gaps he wanted to fill.

  Finally he called Cora. It went to voicemail. He called again. Voicemail again, and this time he told her he wanted to talk. About finances. That had been a game, a code, something from early in their marriage when a fight about the water bill had turned into hot, steaming sex. And now, here he was, making a booty call to his estranged wife because right then Hazard and Nico were probably—

  Jesus, he just couldn’t finish that thought.

  Cora had texted a simple reply: Finances are all taken care of.

  And that had started the earthquakes again, those tremors so deep inside Somers that he thought he might be coming apart. Hazard had Nico, and that had been all right until now, until this moment. Finances are all taken care of. What did that mean? What the fuck did that mean?

  And he’d started to drink, because it was either drink or drive over to the little house that he still paid a mortgage on and pick a fight, and it was easier to drink, and it was safer, and he could pack all those sharp-edged, dangerous thoughts about Hazard and Cora and about this case in alcohol’s fluffy wool and not feel quite so shitty for a while.

  When his phone rang the next morning, the sound hurt his head. But it was more than a sound. It had a whining, piercing vibration to it. Like somebody had put a drill bit to one of his teeth. Blindly, Somers groped for the phone.

  “What?”

  “Happy birthday.” Cora didn’t sound angry, but she rarely sounded angry. She got angry, sure. Often. But she usually didn’t sound it. Unless you’d been married to her. Unless you could pick out those sharp slivers of silence.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Are you going to make an appearance?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Should I tell everyone to go home?”

  “No, I’m—” Somers lurched upright. A white star of pain took up one side of his head, and for a moment, the room tilted and wobbled. “I’m sick, that’s all.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll just tell everyone—”

  “No. You put a lot of work into this. It means—” He would have told her how much it meant to him, but the need to vomit overwhelmed him. For a moment, he fought the urge, and then he managed to control the bile rising in his throat. He struggled to speak, but all that came out was a short, sharp burp.

  “Happy birthday, John-Henry.” Cora ended the call.

  He brushed his teeth, dragged on clothes, and grabbed a bottle of water and two Tylenol on the way out the door. Even as a walking disaster, Somers noticed that Hazard hadn’t come home last night. Fuck him, Somers thought. His head hurt too much to even try to explain why his anger was justified.

  When he g
ot to the little house—his little house, technically, although he hadn’t slept under the roof in almost a year—the cars lined the street on both sides, and he had to go to the end of the block and park in the cul-de-sac. Trudging through the snow, shivering in the cold, Somers tried not to count the cars, but good Lord, how many people had she invited?

  The home that Somers had bought with Cora was, by any standard, small. Two bedrooms, one bath, an unfinished basement. The front of the house was a little more generously proportioned, with a substantial living room and a genuine, independent dining room (barely big enough for two grown men to play cards in). By Somerset standards, it had been the approximate size of a gardening shack.

  But that hadn’t mattered to Somers. At least, it hadn’t mattered much. He’d put in the picket fence, and now he let his frozen hand slide between the slats as he walked. He’d rehung the front shutters. He’d painted the porch. Other things, too. Things you couldn’t see. Some of the wiring had been bad, and Somers had ripped it out and redone it. He’d learned a lot in shop class. Learned plenty, even if he had, at the end, called in an electrician just to be safe. He’d put in extra supports for the basements stairs, and he’d chiseled out a crack in the foundation and filled it with hydraulic cement. He’d done a hell of lot to this house, but right then, with most of the world buried in pigeon-colored snow, the house looked worse than ever.

  The thought put him in a foul mood. Maybe that was just the way of the world. Maybe that’s how everything was. You put time and effort and energy and love into something. You work on it from the bones up. You make it yours—not because you did something silly like pay for it, but because you worked for it, because you put part of yourself into it, and so it became part of you. And at the end, what? You stand outside in the snow, and everything looks like shit. And he didn’t know if he was thinking of the house or—

  —Hazard—

  —Cora or what. Maybe everything. Maybe that’s just how everything was.

  He stopped on the porch long enough to kick snow from his shoes, and the door swung open. Bing stood there. Inside the house. Inside Somers’s house. And again Somers felt the old need to please, to impress, to win Bing’s approval, and with it, he felt the old mixture of shame and fear. Because Bing knew. Bing just goddamn knew.

  Bing had a pale grin, but it was a knowing grin, and that old fear spiked inside Somers. “Rough night?” He clapped Somers on the shoulder. “Jesus, man, what were you doing?”

  “Just a couple of bad days.” Somers realized what he’d said and added, “Sorry, I didn’t—”

  “No. It has. It’s been a couple of really bad days.”

  They stood in silence there on the porch. Bing looked older than he ever had before. His cheeks sagged; the gray in his curls was more pronounced; his eyes were bloodshot.

  “You didn’t have to come,” Somers said, tipping his head towards the house. “What you’ve been through—”

  “You saw Daisy. What was I going to do? Stay home with that?”

  Somers didn’t have any idea how to answer.

  “Come on,” Bing said. “Cora sent me to find you.” His pallid grin sharpened. “I was afraid I was going to have to drag you out of someone’s bed.”

  “I was home,” Somers said, trying to make the statement without sounding defensive.

  “That’s exactly what I meant.”

  Fear and humiliation spiked again inside Somers, but before he could respond, Bing surged back into the house, and Somers trailed him.

  The house was packed, and cheers went up throughout the cramped space. Neighbors, friends, people from Cora’s work with the arts. Birthday wishes rang out as men pumped Somers’s hand and women planted kisses on his cheeks. Some of the kisses were boozy—Cora always served mimosas—and some of the kisses lasted a little longer than necessary. Some of the kisses, too, were followed by wandering hands, and Somers worked his way through the crowded space as fast as he dared. He knew he had a nice ass. He didn’t even mind having it admired. But the crush of people, the sudden heat, and the barrage of sound and smell had combined with the hangover to put Somers on the verge of a migraine.

  Bing cleared a path ahead of Somers, and eventually he completed the gauntlet of well-wishers. In the relative safety of the kitchen doorway, Somers finally had a chance to draw a breath and glance over the people assembled. This combination of birthday party and holiday celebration had become a tradition for Somers and Cora, and it was something that friends and neighbors had come to enjoy too—at least, Somers was fairly sure that they enjoyed it, based on how many mimosas they drank. Everything looked as it had every year: fir garlands, the Christmas tree moved back into one corner, a table laden with food—Somers noticed, his stomach flopping anxiously, that Miranda Carmichael had brought a variant of her onion-and-tomato salad. People were happy. People were singing. People were drinking. Wind back the clock 365 days, and John-Henry Somerset would have said that it was perfect.

  So why didn’t it feel perfect now? He was back in his home. He was with friends and family. Things with Cora were looking better than they had in months. In a little while, if things kept up, Somers would be back in this house. He’d be sleeping in his old bed. He’d be worrying his old worries: was the roof leaking? why had the water bill gone up? who was picking up Evie this Thursday?

  “Back here,” Bing said, interrupting Somers’s thoughts. “Before she kills me.”

  They worked their way into the kitchen, into the domestic heart of the party. Cora stood next to the stove, stirring the potpourri, which filled the air with the smell of cinnamon and cloves and blood oranges. Beside her, a champagne flute in one hand, stood Grace Elaine. And on the floor between them was Evie.

  She was bigger, and that hurt. But the hurt, even though it went straight to the core, wasn’t enough to mask Somers’s delight at seeing his daughter. She had Cora’s dark coloring, but she had Somers’s features—softened, of course, but very much the same. When she saw him, she screamed, “Daddy,” and bowled into him.

  Sweeping her up, Somers peppered her with kisses, laughing as she squirmed and tried to push him away. “Down,” Evie insisted, wriggling. “Down!” The last was a half-amused, half-frustrated scream, and Somers was laughing even harder as he set her on the floor.

  “What are you—” He started to ask, but Evie let out an animated shrieked and lit off towards her bedroom.

  “Twenty-four seven,” Cora said with a smile. “Like she’s running off Duracell.”

  This was always the most awkward part, the moment that betrayed the fissure in their relationship: the initial contact after sleeping a night apart. Somers tried to ignore the pounding in his head. He tried, too, to ignore the way Bing was watching him, as though waiting for the moment Somers slipped up. Somers smiled, kissed Cora’s cheek, and slid an arm around her waist.

  “You’re late,” Cora said, angling her body to force him away.

  “Lot going on.”

  She eyed him. The drinking had been a problem before their marriage had fallen apart, but not in the same way. Back then, drinking had been a way to escape—

  —home—

  —the monotony of it all. Drinking had been fun, not a black hole that he tried to crawl into. But Cora had known him since high school, and she knew what he looked like hungover. She didn’t say anything. She just turned her body, sliding free of his embrace, and kept stirring the potpourri.

  “Mother,” Somers said.

  “You didn’t bring him, did you?”

  “What?”

  Grace Elaine sipped at her mimosa. “You know who I mean.”

  Painfully aware of Bing’s attention, Somers fought to keep his voice steady. “You’re talking about my partner. My roommate. My friend.”

  “You’ve always been like this, John-Henry,” Grace Elaine said. “I really don’t understand it. You have these inexplicable predilections.” She paused. Grace Elaine was subtle. She’d
been dishing out poison for longer than Somers had been alive, and she didn’t do anything as crass as let her gaze slip towards Cora. But the message was clear: this woman, this one right here, she’s another of those inexplicable predilections. And to judge from how hard Cora was now stirring the potpourri—it was going to be a slurry if she kept hitting it like that—Cora had heard the insult as clearly as Somers had. “In any case, after what that boy did to you, I really can’t—”

  “That’s enough,” Somers said. Bing hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as goddamn breathed, but right then Bing felt like a magnet, and it took all of Somers’s willpower not to look at the other man. “That was a long time ago, Mother. It’s over.”

  “I still think your father should have gone after him. It was perverted, really, and to let something like that—”

  “That’s enough.” Somers hadn’t yelled. Not quite. A yell, an honest-to-God yell, that would have been louder.

  “You’re so touchy,” Grace Elaine said. She peered through the doorway into the crowded living room. “There’s Moody. I absolutely have to talk to her about the Pickens’ Christmas lights. They look like they’re putting on a vaudeville show.” Without further explanation, she glided out of the kitchen.

  Bing was still silent. Still staring. It raised prickles on Somers. Anything would have been better than that knowing silence. Anything. If only Somers hadn’t yelled. If he’d kept his voice cool. If he’d pretended he had no idea what his mother was talking about, or if he’d just passed it off with a laugh—anything but letting her get under his skin like that. Especially with Bing here, watching. Just goddamn watching. Why didn’t he say something?