Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  Running his hands along the closest seam in the drywall, Hazard searched for a gap, a fissure, something that would mark an opening in the wall. The blood-crusted gypsum on his fingers fell away like old scabs, and fresh blood welled up and ran down his wrist. Not here. He probed up and down the seam. Not here either. Not here. How could it not be right fucking here—

  And there it was. A section of drywall popped loose, swinging on invisible hinges. A secret door. A goddamn secret door. Another thrill surged inside Hazard. What would Somers say—

  He cut off the thought, but not fast enough. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t ever matter, ever again.

  As the panel swung open, Hazard slipped into the hidden room beyond. Immediately, a whiff of something like chlorine hit him. No, Hazard realized with a grimace, his stomach flipping. Not chlorine. Spunk. Fresh. His previous excitement faded, and his stomach dropped another inch as Hazard fumbled to find a light.

  Finally his fingers brushed a string, and Hazard jerked the bulb to life. It was a cramped space, and Hazard imagined it had been easy to keep it hidden. Daisy had seemed preoccupied with other things, and the disposition of the basement hardly seemed like something she would spend any time on, especially with such a slight discrepancy in the layout.

  Two small chairs stood nearby, painted white, and the pair was completed by a child-sized table set with a plastic tea service. Stuffed animals—unicorns, exclusively unicorns—were piled on the tiny seats. Hazard’s stomach flipped again. Bing’s little girl. That was the single, horrified thought that came to him: even at the end, Bing had wanted Hadley to be his little girl. And there, spilled onto the cement, lay a pink bag with white trim. A bag that could have easily been mistaken for something Santa Claus might carry if not for the coloring and the letters that said Victoria’s Secret. From the open mouth, panties had fallen across the floor. The reek of Bing’s spunk was thicker here, and some of the cotton was still dark and wet.

  Someone else might have laughed at the sickening mistake of it all: they weren’t even Hadley’s, the panties. Someone else might have forced a laugh, trying to escape the horror of it. Not Hazard. The irony galvanized him. He wondered what Bing would say when he learned that he had been jerking off to lacy underwear that had been meant for a sixteen-year-old boy named Frank.

  Hazard never knew what it was that alerted him. It might have been the scuff of bare feet on cement. It might have been breathing. It might have been something as subtle as a shift in air pressure or temperature. But in an instant, Hazard knew he was no longer alone, and a chain of realizations strung themselves out across his mind.

  One: the killer had unhandcuffed Wayne Stillwell.

  Two: the killer had keys for police handcuffs.

  Three: the killer was Bing.

  Four: Bing was free of the cuffs.

  As Hazard turned, he brought up an arm, but he was too slow. The bat cracked along his forearm, barely slowing before the blunt tip thunked against his head, and then everything went dark.

  SOMERS WAS TIPSY BUT NOT DRUNK. He’d finished the last of the Jose Cuervo and gone looking for more, but by then the mimosas had already dried up, and Cora had found and pitched the rest of the drink he’d stashed. After the fight, after that goddamn explosion with Hazard, Somers wanted a drink. Needed a drink. And he needed air, needed away from those people, needed away from that house. So he left. Cora was screaming, but he left. Everybody was staring, everybody in the whole house, especially that gelatinous Wiese woman that Cora insisted on inviting, all of them staring at him. He left. And he climbed behind the wheel of the Interceptor, took a few breaths, and told himself he was good to drive. A few swigs of tequila? He could handle a lot more than that.

  Driving aimlessly, Somers tried to relax. He felt like he was going to snap the steering wheel, that’s how hard he was gripping it. He pictured calm waters. He breathed through his nose. He sang the chorus to a pop song, he couldn’t even remember its name, and none of it helped. The fight, the memory of the fight, pressed its way to the front of his brain, taking up all his attention despite Somers’s best efforts to avoid it.

  It was the way Hazard looked at him, Somers finally decided. And immediately he shoved the thought away. He wasn’t thinking about the fight. He wasn’t going to spend one more ounce of emotional energy on that selfish, pompous asshole of a partner. He wasn’t going to let Emery Hazard ruin his day—his birthday—by staying inside his head. Somers forced himself to concentrate on the street. Where was he? Jesus, how far had he driven? He’d just make his way over to Market, have a quick drink at the apartment, and head back to Cora’s. He’d smooth things over. She’d forgive him once he explained about Hazard. Once he explained that his asshole partner wanted to turn the shooting into something else, once he explained that Hazard wanted to take this case away just when Somers finally had a lead, Cora would understand. She’d have to, Somers thought with a kind of stupefied tranquility that was only partly due to the drink. She’d have to because it was Christmas Eve.

  But the thought kept coming back, kept jostling and shoving and elbowing its way to the center of his consciousness: it was the way Hazard had looked at him. That’s what it was. That’s what had made the whole fight go to shit. That’s what had made Somers lose control and say every single thing he knew he shouldn’t have said.

  They’d argued before, but usually Hazard was the one who instigated it. Never before had Somers seen that damn look on Hazard’s face. Hell, he’d never seen it in the past. He’d done every cruel thing he could imagine to Hazard when they’d been in high school. He’d shoved him. He spat on him. He’d thrown him in the mud. He’d kicked him when he was down, literally. He’d tossed him down a flight of stairs. For hell’s sake, he’d held Hazard’s arms while that psycho Mikey Grames tried to carve his initials in Hazard’s chest.

  And not once, not one of those times, had Hazard ever looked at Somers the way he had today. Sure, Hazard had been angry. People sometimes made the mistake of thinking that because Hazard was big and brooding that he had a long fuse, or a slow fuse, or that his temper took some monumental effort to get burning. But that wasn’t true. Hazard got angry as fast as anybody. Faster than most, truth be told. And he’d been angry today. He’d been furious.

  But he’d looked—Jesus, the thought made Somers’s stomach drop, and he slammed on the brakes, and fuck for whoever was behind him and had to stop. Hazard had looked frustrated.

  Voicing the thought, giving it shape and form, made it worse somehow. Somers groaned, nudged the Interceptor against the curb—Smithfield, he was definitely somewhere in Smithfield, and he’d driven here in some kind of blackout—and dropped his head onto the wheel.

  Hazard had looked frustrated. Under all that fury, under all the rage, under Hazard’s visible desire to break something, he had somehow looked frustrated. Not understanding. There hadn’t been a raindrop’s chance in hell of understanding in Hazard’s face. The man was about as sensitive as a pile of bricks. But frustrated.

  And that terrified Somers. It was, single-handedly, the goddamn scariest thing he’d ever seen in his life.

  Because it meant that Hazard cared. In spite of a history marked by hatred, pain, fear, and desire, Hazard still cared about him. In spite of all the horrible things Somers had done, Hazard still cared. At the beginning, when they had first started as partners, Somers had hoped Hazard could forgive him. When things had grown between them, after Hazard’s furious kisses, Somers had dared to hope that there might be something more. But after their nights together at Windsor, all that had vanished. Somers had screwed everything up, and then Cora had called, and it had been easier to try to work things out, easier to go back to what he knew, easier to choose something safe.

  Then Glenn Somerset had been shot, and everything in Somers’s life had gone to pieces. His usual calm had vanished. His underlying conviction that he led a charmed life had been shattered. Pressure had begun to build deep inside hi
m, pressure that shifted the foundations, and nothing looked the same anymore: not his parents, not his job, not his wife, not his partner. And there were a million things Hazard did that were irritating: the way he clenched his jaw when he was angry, the way his hair fell over his forehead at the end of the day, the way he cleaned out the fridge and tossed Somers’s leftovers, the way his knee popped when he rolled over on the sofa, the way he scrubbed the apartment, floor to ceiling, when Somers just wanted to watch a ball game. A million more annoying, exasperating, goddamn frustrating things Hazard did. His eyes were annoying, those eyes like wheat stubble at the end of autumn. His lips. His lips were fucking annoying, how firm they were, how full, how they bruised Somers’s mouth against his teeth. His hands. Jesus, his hands were like catcher’s mitts. And his ass—

  Somers thought of Frank and Dusty, and he thought of all the things that could have been right between him and Hazard, all the things that could have been perfect. And he thought of Jeremiah’s words. Love isn’t a choice. Love is collision. Love is catastrophe. Somers had thought he’d understood. He thought he’d known how dangerous those words were, he thought he’d sensed how deeply Emery Hazard had upset his life.

  But he’d had no idea. He’d had no idea that it could make him feel like this. Collision? Catastrophe? Damn it, this was like an asteroid smacking the dinosaurs off the face of the earth. That’s what it was like: everything old gone, swept clean.

  Somers took a breath, propped his head on his thumbs, and realized he was smiling. It was a tight, hard, painful smile. But it was a smile. He’d tried running. He’d tried hiding. He’d even tried, in his own cowardly way, to brush up against the truth. But now it hit him full on, and there wasn’t anywhere left to run or hide. There was only the shattering impact of collision.

  Somers loved Emery Hazard.

  And what the hell was he supposed to do about it?

  HELLO?” NICO’S VOICE WAS THICK.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “What? Who is this?”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Were you asleep?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Was it a nap, or were you and Hazard—” Somers hesitated. The old jokes that used to come so easily now stung.

  “John-Henry? What are you—why are you calling?” Nico’s voice sharpened. “Is Hazard ok?”

  “What? He’s not with you?”

  “No. Well—hold on.” From the other end of the line, there was silence. Then: “No. He went out. I thought he was going to talk to you.”

  “He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Wait. He’s not with you?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. I wouldn’t be calling you if I could get Hazard to pick up his damn phone. Did he leave it at your place?”

  “No. He never leaves anything. What’s going on? He’s not with you?”

  Somers didn’t answer. His thoughts fired rapidly. When Hazard had failed to answer the phone, Somers had assumed that his partner was angry with him. When Hazard had failed to answer the third call, Somers had begun to suspect that Hazard and Nico were finding a creative way to spend the winter afternoon.

  That hadn’t stopped Somers. He wanted to talk to Hazard. Needed to talk to him, truth be told. It was as if all those years of waiting, all twenty of them, were suddenly pressing down on him. He felt jangling, like his nerves were piano keys and somebody was running a hand up and down the ivories. It was the kind of feeling that could make a man jump out of his skin if it went on too long. Twenty years. He’d wasted twenty years. What was another minute, another hour, another day? Somers didn’t know, but it felt like a goddamn eternity.

  But Hazard wasn’t with Nico. And Hazard wasn’t answering his phone. Maybe Hazard was still angry. God knew the man got angry like a burning junkyard. But—but there had been that look. That look in his eyes.

  “Call him,” Somers said.

  “What?”

  “Call him on your phone.” And Somers disconnected.

  A full minute passed. Eternity. That’s what it was like. Twenty years he’d spent dicking around, hiding, denying, protesting, pretending. Twenty years, and now every fucking tick of the clock was an epoch.

  As that minute ticked by, doubts filtered in. What the hell was Somers thinking? One argument. That’s all it had been. And that look in Hazard’s eyes—he’d imagined it. Hell, even if he hadn’t imagined it, it was just a look. Just Hazard being frustrated. It didn’t mean anything more than that. It didn’t mean Somers needed to throw everything away. It didn’t mean Somers needed to run after Hazard like—

  —Dusty and Frank—

  —a lovesick teenager. It sure as hell didn’t mean that Hazard felt anything like what Somers felt. With rising dread, Somers knew what was going to happen: he was going to talk to Hazard. And Hazard was going to laugh. Hazard was going to think it was some joke. Or he’d get angry. Or he’d—

  The phone buzzed, and Somers swiped the screen so hard his thumb slid off the edge.

  “He’s not answering.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “No.”

  “Is he that pissed?”

  “No. I mean, you saw him. But no. We talked. He calmed down. We came back here—” Something in Nico’s voice, in the thick hitch, painted Somers’s world red. So that’s what they’d been doing. Sure, they were dating. Sure, Hazard was entitled to screw whatever he wanted to screw. But it didn’t change the fact that Somers was seeing blood, didn’t change the way his thoughts went, first, to what it might feel like to break Nico’s teeth.

  “You went back there?”

  “I fell asleep. He left. I mean, I knew he left, but I thought he was going to work things out with you.”

  They’d reached the end of useful conversation, Somers realized. Nico was just repeating what he’d already said. Forcing himself to speak calmly—it wasn’t Nico’s fault, Somers reminded himself, that he was dating Hazard—Somers said, “He didn’t say anything else?”

  “We talked about the case. We agreed that you’d come around once Emery found something solid, something he could show you.”

  It was like someone pulled the plug on a drain at the bottom of Somers’s stomach. Everything began to swirl, sliding down that invisible drain, leaving Somers shaken and cold and empty. “I’ll call you in a few.”

  “John-Henry—”

  Somers disconnected the call. He glanced around, blinking, as though suddenly waking up to the world around him. Smithfield. Yes. Ok. But where the hell in Smithfield was he? Flooring the gas, he launched the Interceptor out onto the street and swerved right at the next stop sign. Ballas. Ok, he recognized Ballas. And the next intersection was Jamieson—no, Landry. Another hard right, and then Somers knew where he was, and he punched the gas again. The Interceptor shot across icy roads. The sky had hardened into a perfect, crystalline blue. It looked like something that would shatter if you breathed on it. The whole day could shatter. Just like that, Somers realized, with fear and sickness still draining out of his stomach. A whole life could shatter if you so much as fucking blew your nose.

  Bing’s house. There were other places that Hazard might be, equally logical places, some perhaps even better choices: the sheriff’s evidence lock-up, the station, the ME’s office, the Somerset family home, Stillwell’s apartment, on and on. But Somers didn’t care about logic. He knew what his gut was telling him, and his gut was telling him that Hazard had gone back to Bing’s house.

  Why had Hazard been so insistent? The question turned with startling clarity in Somers’s mind. It was hard to recall, though, what Hazard had explained. Somers had been so angry. Angry that Hazard had tried to take away his case. His case, the case about his father. And angry that Hazard had, once again, seen something that Somers hadn’t. And angry—this was the most shameful, the one buried at the bottom of Somers’s consciousness—that Hazard had contradicted Somers where Swinney could hear, where th
e other guests could hear, where Nico could hear. Nico. Somers’s hands tightened on the wheel. That, that alone was enough to make him shove the pedal down harder.

  Bing’s house, when Somers reached it, looked pristine. A new house with new snow on a new street. It could have been something out of Midwest Living: the clean lines, the pristine windows, the glow that spoke of hearth and home—that was the only word for it, a glow, like this was the last warm spot before you hit an endless tundra, like you could put your feet up here and be happy. Wife, kids, Rover. The good life.

  The hideous VW wasn’t out front, and Somers took a shaky breath and eased up a little. That was something. Maybe Hazard had gone back to the sheriff’s. Maybe he’d gone to the station. Maybe he was at the apartment, brooding. Maybe he was sitting there, waiting to talk to Somers. Somers let the Interceptor slow. He could roll past Bing’s house. He could head back to the apartment. Hazard would be there, taking up the whole sofa by himself, bulky and brutish and brooding, and they would talk. For the first time in twenty years, they would really talk. Somers turned the Interceptor.

  And then he saw the tire tracks in the fresh snow. Tire tracks on Bing’s driveway. Again, the Interceptor slowed to a crawl. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe it was a friend, maybe it was out-of-town family, maybe it was a pizza delivery guy. It didn’t have to be Hazard who had made those tracks.

  But Somers knew it had been. He knew it in his gut, and he steered the Interceptor up Bing’s drive and shifted into park. His legs had gone to lead. His feet too. His feet, his legs, his gut, all gone to lead, and he had to drag himself out of the Interceptor and up the stairs. By then, his hands had gone too. He could have lifted a mountain as easily as he lifted his hand. Because he was going to have to see Bing. And Bing knew.