Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  But pretty didn’t make up for petty, and the kid had shown himself petty as shit. So Somers laughed as he thought of the way Nico had screamed at him. He laughed as he thought of how easy it had been—candy from a baby—to poke the kid into a fit. He laughed as he thought of that bozo look on Hazard’s face because Hazard knew, he knew this kid was on a whole different planet when it came to what mattered: being an adult, being a man. The laughter came in spurts, though—never hard and heavy, never a belly laugh. And then the spurts slowed like a motor that wouldn’t quite turn over. And then Somers found himself on a dirt road a mile outside of Wahredua, head on the steering wheel, fighting back a sob that was trying to crack his breastbone.

  And when he could breathe again, when that pain wasn’t splitting him down the middle, he drove back to Wahredua Regional. He parked the Interceptor at the back of the lot, near a snow-dusted pickup, and walked through the flurries into the hospital. He found his father’s room. Glenn Somerset looked bad. Not as bad as the day before, or the day before that, thank God, but bad. His skin was yellow in the hospital lighting, and his hair was listless and snarled, and everything sagged, his face worst of all, as though he were fighting twice the gravity as everyone else. He’d been shot five times in the chest, and that number meant something. Wayne Stillwell had been shot five times in the chest as well. Five times wasn’t a coincidence.

  Somers thumbed through the contacts on his phone and sent a text.

  He waited hours in the darkness, with the smell of an old man and the muffled sounds of castors and voices and a TV somewhere running episodes of Night Court. Hazard wasn’t far, and that thought was tempting. Not far at all: a hallway, two flights of stairs, an odd-number of doors. Just a few hundred yards, all told. A few hundred yards and one giant roadblock. That was ok, as far as tonight went. Somers needed to be here. He had a meeting.

  Shadows had swallowed the room. They had swallowed the tan-colored walls. They had swallowed the chrome bed rails. They had swallowed the clock. It was only by his phone that Somers saw the minutes ticking down towards midnight.

  The door opened. Light from the hallway sliced a wedge out of the darkness, and a figure moved through that light, and the door shut. There were three men breathing in that room, and the beep and rattle of the machines, and the old man smell and now something else: leather, sweat, brass.

  “You might as well turn on the light,” Somers said. “Unless you’re planning on shooting me in the dark.”

  There wasn’t an answer, but a moment later, the lights came on. Somers blinked against their brightness. As his eyes cleared, they settled on the gun held in front of him. It looked very small. Like a toy, like it might fire caps but nothing else. Sheriff Bingham, behind the gun, looked small too. He had shrunk over the past twenty-four hours. A few stray white hairs curled at the end of his chin; they were so small Somers might not have noticed, but they were surprisingly luminous in the fluorescents.

  “You might as well sit down too.”

  Vinyl squeaked. The gun never wavered.

  “If you shoot me in the hospital, they’ll hear it.” Somers smiled a hard, tight smile. “If you have your son’s luck, they’ll probably just patch me up while they drag you to jail.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I said shut up.” The gun jabbed forward. For a minute, maybe more, Somers was silent. Then the sheriff spoke again. “I didn’t know. If that’s what you’re thinking, you don’t understand jack.”

  Somers didn’t bother answering. He knew the sheriff’s reputation. He knew you’d need more than Ivory soap to get the stains out of this old man. And anyway Somers had learned how to wait. He’d watched Hazard, hadn’t he?

  “We called him Moe.” The sheriff paused; the gun tilted towards him, and for one bizarre moment Somers thought the sheriff might be planning to kill himself. Then the sheriff seemed to realize his mistake, and he set down the gun and scratched the back of his neck. “Bing, that started in high school. Everybody needs a name, but Moe—he never liked that.”

  “I’d heard the stories,” Somers said. “Your deputies talk. Not all of them, but some. When they get drunk, then they really talk. I’d heard about people who had an extra hand tying a noose in their cells.”

  One of the machines beeped steadily between them.

  “Bing wasn’t a bad boy. He wasn’t a good boy, not by Jesus, but he was just a boy like you’d expect a man like me to have. I didn’t think anything else. Sometimes—” The sheriff’s hand came down from his neck, and he held it out in front of him, studying it, as though he hadn’t seen it before. “There were girls. Nothing serious, not really, but they made a stink. Could have set him on a bad path. We had to clean things up. Once or twice, that’s all. Any father would have done it, but I never . . .” He trailed off.

  “I’d heard about women who couldn’t pay their speeding tickets,” Somers said, his voice getting hotter in spite of his best efforts. “I’d heard about that place you keep out off 23, your private work camp. I’d heard about heat stroke, and hypothermia, and dehydration. But I had my own shit to deal with.”

  Again, between the two of them, there was only the steady beeping of the machines.

  “This, though.” The sheriff turned his hand palm up, waiting for something—grace, intercession, spare change. “Nobody thinks about this. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen the worst you can imagine, and I didn’t think about this.”

  “Until she told you.”

  The sheriff flinched.

  “She came to you,” Somers said. “She told you. She told you everything.”

  “Not everything,” Sheriff Bingham said, his voice loud and cracking at the end.

  “You didn’t know she was pregnant. Fine. Maybe that’ll let you sleep at night. But you knew enough. You knew what he was doing to her. You knew, and what did you do?” Somers waited, and when Bingham didn’t answer, he said, “You bought her a phone.”

  “She told me that was all she needed. She told me she could—she could leave.” The sheriff’s hand spasmed, and then he snatched up the gun jerkily. “I couldn’t. Not my own son. This place, the town, I might as well cut my own throat. I said I’d send money. We had a plan. We were going to figure it out.”

  “You ought to put that to your head and blast out your brains. That’s what you deserve.”

  A shaky laugh escaped the sheriff. New light came into his eyes, and his hand steadied, and the gun rested firm on Somers again. “Is that it? I kill myself, or I let you drag me into a cell? For what? Neglect? You’ve got nothing. Stories. Imagination.”

  Somers produced Hadley’s phone from his pocket. “I’ve got this.” He flipped over the phone, displaying the fingerprint sensor on the back. He tapped the case where a brown smudge marred the plastic. “I’ve got Hadley’s blood on her phone. Under the case. Isn’t that interesting? No blood anywhere on the outside. That makes sense since she had the phone in her clutch. But right here, near the fingerprint sensor, there’s blood under the plastic. Her blood.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “It’s a pretty straightforward test.”

  “You planted it. You’ve got no chain of custody. You—”

  “You bought her the phone. You agreed to help her—not a lot of help, but something. And then it all went to shit. You said it yourself: you didn’t know. Bing had the whole thing planned out, and you couldn’t do anything but watch. How soon did you know? Did you know when Stillwell got to the party? Did you remember what had happened in Chicago?”

  No answer from Bingham. The gun might have been held by a statue.

  “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. When the shooting was over, when the lights came back on and Hadley was dead, you knew.”

  Bingham’s mouth cracked. Breath rasped between his teeth.

  “And you did what you’d always been doing: you covered up Bing’s shit. You were hugging him. I remember t
hat clear as day. Hugging him. Comforting him, I thought. The first human behavior I’d seen out of you in my whole life. I should have realized then. You weren’t hugging him; you were getting the gun from him. Hiding it. Everyone’s attention was fixed on Stillwell. I saw you with the gun. Can you believe that? I goddamn saw you, and I just thought it was your service weapon.”

  “This one?” Bingham said, the words barely more than a creak.

  Somers ignored the threat. “And then you got Hadley’s phone out of her purse. You used her fingerprint to unlock the phone. That was the mistake—the blood, remember. And then you called Lender and told him what he had to do.”

  “And what,” the sheriff said, his voice growing stronger, “was Albert Lender going to do?”

  “He killed Stillwell. Shot him with the same gun that Bing used to kill Hadley. It was the perfect way to get rid of the gun. The only way you could be sure we’d never find it. Even if we chanced onto the different ballistics, we could have spent a hundred years looking for that gun and never found it because it was already sitting in the sheriff’s evidence lock-up. That was good. That’s pretty damn close to genius, especially for something you cooked up on the spot. Of course, you’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Plenty,” Bingham said, his teeth suddenly shining huge, his voice as hard as those yellowed teeth. “That’s it, then? What’s it going to be? Conspiracy? Obstruction? Murder?”

  “All of it. As much as I can.”

  “You want a confession? You’ve got this all on tape?” Bingham leaned forward, and again the gun jabbed the air. “I’m not as good a shot as I used to be. My eyes are still good. My aim, too. But speed, that’s where age gets me. You’ll move. I’ll still get you, but it won’t be clean. Lots of ways to make it look like a man shot himself, though. At my age, easiest just to make it look like an arrest went bad, and then the other fellow went for the gun, and that’s the whole story.”

  “I keep my mouth shut,” Somers said quickly. Uncertainty froze the sheriff, and Somers spoke again. “I don’t say a word. And neither do you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You sent that message to Hazard. You’re threatening him. Us, I suppose, but you’ve got him in your sights.” The figure of speech, as Somers stared down the barrel of the sheriff’s gun, made his stomach flip. “I thought at first it was the mayor, but that was before I put the rest of it together. You want him to keep quiet. You want both of us to keep quiet. And don’t bother denying it.” Somers grinned. “I’m a dumb son of a bitch, but I’m not stupid.”

  Bingham didn’t move. He didn’t speak. The gun didn’t look like it shot caps anymore.

  “I don’t say anything about your part in this. I’ve got my lines rehearsed: Stillwell died escaping arrest. Good riddance. He shot my father. We’ll never know how Hadley got that second phone. That’s it. That’s all. You go on being sheriff.” Somers paused. His mouth felt dry. His breath felt like a sandblaster. “Bing goes down for the rest of it, and you leave Hazard alone.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Glenn Somerset, he’s a dirty bastard. Dirty every way you can imagine. Shit up to his armpits. But all the talk says you’re clean. Guess that’s just talk.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Your dad getting shot, that was an accident. You know that, right?”

  “It might have been an accident, but I think Mayor Newton will still find a way to turn it to his advantage. That’s my father’s problem, though, and he can deal with it on his own.”

  “It’s your problem too. Yours and that faggot partner. Mayor’s got his teeth into this now. Even if I keep my mouth shut, he might still talk. He’s got a hard-on for the faggot.”

  Somers displayed two fingers and then reached carefully into his pocket. He withdrew the digital recorder and tossed it to the sheriff. “Give him that. Tell him that’s for staying quiet about Emery Hazard’s past, but he’d better stay quiet for a real long time.”

  Sheriff Bingham turned over the recorder, studying it, and then pocketed it. “You queer for him? That what this is about?”

  “As a three-dollar bill,” Somers said. He got to his feet and pushed past the sheriff, ignoring the gun and the old men. “If you don’t like it, go fuck yourself.”

  SINCE THAT DAY IN THE HOSPITAL, Somers hadn’t seen Hazard. Not for lack of trying: Somers had driven to the hospital six times. Six. Hands locked on the wheel, he’d driven to the hospital and parked the Interceptor and stared up at Wahredua Regional. Then the sick feeling, like a lead balloon plummeting inside him, would grow worse, and then all he could think was the same old things: what will everyone say, what will my parents think, what will I tell Cora, what am I doing, and, loudest of all, what will Hazard say? He’d had fifteen years of those thoughts, fifteen years to perfect them in all their different versions, and now here he was, facing them again and finding them as sharp as they’d ever been. The clarity that he’d felt on Christmas when facing Sheriff Bingham had melted. And six times, every single time, he drove out of the parking lot and back into Wahredua.

  Today, he’d waited until it was late, with the half-formed idea that maybe he could screw up his courage a little better in the dark. He’d sat in the Interceptor. He’d watched the sun go down. And in the darkness, staring up at the hospital’s lighted windows, he’d still been a coward.

  He drove home now in silence. No swearing. No ranting. No chewing himself another asshole. Just silence where those sharp questions could dart in and slash at him. And the worst of it was that none of the questions, not one, was all that bad on its own. Somers knew it didn’t matter what anyone else said. He knew it didn’t matter, in the long run, what his parents thought. Even Cora, he was fairly sure, could be handled in a way that would ultimately make them both happier. But the questions had been with him so long, and they had worked on him all those years, and it was like death by a million paper cuts. That’s what it was: it was insane.

  This is pathetic, he told himself. This whole thing, this whole act, driving around, keeping your head down, what’s the word—skulking—yeah, skulking like you’re a dog that’s just got rapped on the nose with the newspaper. Pathetic. Kid stuff. High school stuff. And then he groaned, and his hands flexed on the Interceptor’s wheel, and he thought maybe if he banged his head hard enough he’d finally have some quiet.

  Pathetic, that’s what it was. Pure and simple pathetic.

  He’d go to the hospital tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d tell Ree everything. For sure this time. No more excuses. Tomorrow.

  From the underground garage, Somers rode the elevator to the fourth floor, and he let himself into the apartment. To his surprise, the lights were on. The dishes, which Somers had left piled in the sink, were washed and drying in the rack. A week’s worth of dirty socks, which Somers had left like confetti tossed around the room, had vanished. The TV was on, and grainy black-and-white footage passed across the screen. Somers squinted, trying to decipher the images. Was that a snake? God, he hoped not. A DVD case on the table bore the title Lesser-known Footpaths of the Italian Alps, Traveled 1929-1935.

  And then another groan escaped him before Somers could muffle it. He was home. Ree was home. He was here. Nobody else in the entire damn world would be watching something like that. Ree was here, in the apartment. The groan deepened; it found the bottom of Somers’s stomach. Why hadn’t he done the dishes? Why—Jesus—why hadn’t he picked up those socks?

  “Somers,” Hazard said, poking his head out of his room. He was running a towel through his hair. Normally so tightly styled with comb and product, the long—too long, really, for a cop—locks curled across Hazard’s forehead and around his ears. He studied Somers for a moment. “You going to come in?”

  Somers tried to stifle the groan. He tried to swallow it. He tried to stomp it out. But as he hooked a heel behind the door and pulled it shut, he was still groaning. Just a li
ttle. But still.

  “Are you sick?”

  “You did the dishes.”

  Hazard came out into the room. He was dressed in tight-fitting gray slacks—tight didn’t really do them justice; they were painted on, every curve of that slab he called an ass perfectly defined—and he was shirtless. Again, Somers was struck by how big Hazard was: massive, really, with dense layers of muscle. So different from the boy that Somers remembered. But perfect, too. Brutishly perfect, with that dark scattering of hair across the definition of his chest and stomach. And with his hair curling in front of his eyes, Hazard looked wild. Like he could do anything. Like he might take hold of Somers’s shirt and rip it off in one movement, the way he had months ago, popping every button—

  “You’re flushed,” Hazard said, scrubbing the towel over his head one last time and then slinging it around his neck. “And you’re making that noise again. Is it your stomach?”

  “What? No. I’m fine. You did the dishes.”

  Hazard shrugged.

  “You washed my socks.”

  “Somebody had to.”

  “You’re hurt. You should be—I don’t know. Lying down. Resting. Eating soup. Not washing my dirty socks.”

  “I had to throw in a load.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Hazard rolled his huge shoulders, and Somers felt giddy at the rush of desire that ran through him. How long had he hidden from those feelings? How long had he tamped them down? Since college, when he’d met Ricky Wade in the men’s room and let Ricky slide his thumbs under the elastic waistband of Somers’s briefs and slide them down to his knees, and that was the first time for Somers? Since senior year of high school, when he’d cut a picture of Emery Hazard out of the yearbook? Since—since before all of that? Since he’d touched Emery Hazard once, just once, in the locker room and seen raw need in the other boy’s eyes? Somers wanted to laugh. If that’s where it had started, the universe had one sick sense of humor, because everything had flipped, and Somers didn’t know if he’d ever wanted anyone, anything, the way he wanted Hazard. Raw need. That’s what it was. Somers would have laughed, would have busted a gut, except his mouth was a gravel pit.