His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  So he didn’t tell his mother that he’d sold a short story to a magazine. It was a small publication anyway—she’d never heard of it; no one had ever heard of it—and she wouldn’t be impressed. His father, at this point, wouldn’t even understand.

  But Sherry was ecstatic that his fiction was going to be published. He had called her right after opening the mail and reading the acceptance letter, and though he’d cringed on the other end of the phone as he told her, embarrassed, she was hugely impressed. They’d gone out that night to celebrate, eating at an expensive restaurant in Newport Beach and having some mildly kinky sex in her apartment afterward, a tradition he hoped to continue when the magazine actually came out.

  The story itself was nearly two years old, but he could have written it yesterday. Rereading it, Steve wondered why he had written about New Mexico. That seemed odd in light of recent events. Yes, his parents had met and married there, but they’d moved away before he was born, and the few scant memories he had were from those two ill-conceived trips to see Aunt Marion when he was young. The Land of Enchantment was as foreign to him as the Garden State, and since most of his short stories took place in Southern California, it was strange that this one had been set there.

  A Mexican prostitute was mentioned in the story as well, and while that had to be a coincidence, just thinking about it sent gooseflesh rippling down his arms.

  He was proud of his story, but the circumstances surrounding it definitely made him uneasy.

  Sunday dawned gloomy and cold. He’d spent all week avoiding the VA hospital, but he had finally decided that he should visit his father again. The gloom had turned to drizzle by the time he reached Long Beach, and he parked as close as he could, then ran through the parking lot to the entrance. He’d brought neither jacket nor umbrella, and his hair and shoulders were damp as he dashed between the slowly sliding doors into the lobby.

  He stopped, shook out his hair, and looked toward the bank of elevators. The lobby was warm, but that didn’t decrease the chill inside him. He was nervous about seeing his father again. No, not just nervous. Scared. Since the trip to Copper City, Steve had built up the old man in his mind as some kind of monster. He was, of course—although not in the horror-show way his imagination was conjuring up now. But emotion overruled reason every time, and he couldn’t help dreading the upcoming meeting and wishing he’d brought along Sherry or his mother for moral support.

  He went over to the elevators, took one up to the second floor, and when the doors opened walked down the long corridor, past the darkened barracks with multiple beds, past the patients in wheelchairs, past the rooms of screaming men.

  “I need my meds!”

  He slowed his pace as he approached room 242.

  Steve took a deep breath, licking his dry lips. He did not know the man in there. He thought he had, but the trip to New Mexico had shown him that he didn’t.

  Summoning his courage, he walked inside.

  The first thing he noticed was that there was someone in the second bed now, another man who was strapped down and didn’t appear to have any arms. He was young, probably Steve’s age, and he lay there moaning, moving his head rhythmically back and forth, eyes shut tight. His television was on and loud—some sort of travel show—and for that Steve was grateful. It helped mask the moans.

  He pulled the curtain between the two sections of room, wondering why no one had done so earlier. He was going to have to talk to the nurses or orderlies about that. He had no idea whether his father was even aware of the other patient, but he wanted that barrier in place.

  The fear had left him the second he walked into the familiar hospital room and saw that his dad was not a terrifying fiend but merely a fading shell of the man he had been. Now his father stared at him blankly, and Steve wasn’t quite sure what to do. Sometimes when he visited he just sat silently next to his dad. Other times he talked to him as a parent would an infant, holding one-sided conversations. Every once in a while, when he suspected the dementia had temporarily receded and thought he detected a glimmer of awareness, he attempted to engage his father in conversation. This time, though, the old man looked completely out of it, and while Steve could sit down on the chair next to the bed, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable doing so.

  His dad looked at him. “I suitcase the five and clown you.”

  He nodded at the old man as though he understood.

  “I suitcase the five!” his father said with more emphasis.

  Steve decided to be honest. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Suitcase!” his dad yelled, frustrated. “Suitcase!” There were tears in his eyes, and he screamed the word again. “Suitcase!”

  Steve stepped back. His father shouldn’t be getting this agitated. The medication was supposed to control these sorts of outbursts. Moving next to the door, he poked his head out, but saw no staff members anywhere near.

  “Suitcase!” his father screamed.

  “I’m going to get the doctor,” Steve said. “I’ll be right back.”

  But he couldn’t find Dr. Curtis, couldn’t find any doctor. He ran into an orderly at the nurses’ station, but the clearly overwhelmed young man told him in a frazzled voice that the only doctor on duty this hour was busy treating a newly arrived patient, and all of the other nurses and orderlies were dealing with an emergency involving two patients in another part of the ward. He’d send someone over as soon as it was feasible.

  “My father needs someone now,” Steve said.

  “I’m sorry,” the orderly told him. “There’s no one we can spare.”

  Steve walked back down the corridor toward his fathet’s room, angry—not at the orderly but at the system in general. They needed more staff at this hospital. Even after unending VA scandals, the politicians still hadn’t allotted enough resources to care for all of the admitted patients. So much for that “support the troops” bullshit.

  He slowed as he neared room 242. His father’s nonsensical sentence kept repeating in his brain: I suitcase the five and clown you. Clown you. It made him think of the dream he’d had where the dirty clown had been crawling through the backyard toward the body of a woman he had murdered.

  His dad was smiling as Steve walked into the hospital room, watching the door and grinning as though he’d been expecting his return and waiting for it. Chilled, Steve looked away, not wanting to see that face. The blankness was gone, replaced by what looked like not only comprehension but craftiness, and the collusion between those eyes and that smile sent shivers down his spine.

  His father spoke, and it was in a voice Steve didn’t want to hear, the dry, raspy voice that had been haunting him for well over a week.

  “I killed them.”

  It was suddenly hard to breathe. Them? Steve forced himself to look at his father, who was still grinning.

  “The first one in the room where she plied her trade.”

  Plied her trade?

  Prostitutes, Steve thought instantly. His dad had killed prostitutes.

  That whore in Copper City hadn’t been deported back to Mexico.

  His father had killed her.

  He waited for the old man to continue, but as quickly as cognizance had come, it was gone. That was it. The show was over. The smile faded from his fathet’s lips, and his eyes closed as he sank into sleep.

  Them.

  It couldn’t be true.

  No. That wasn’t correct. He didn’t want it to be true.

  He thought back. They’d moved several times when he was a child, Steve recalled. He had never been quite sure why. His parents were not the type to confide in their son, to explain the family’s financial situation, and he had no idea whether his parents had wanted to move because his father had gotten a better job offer or because he’d been fired from the job he had . . .

  . . . or because he’d killed a prostitute and didn’t want to hang around and get caught.

  Them.

  If he searched through ol
d police records, would he discover that hookers had been killed in the same cities that they’d lived in at the same time that they’d lived there? How many could there be? Salt Lake City, Flagstaff, Tempe, Tucson, San Diego. Even allowing for only one per city, that meant five more deaths.

  His father was not just a killer.

  He was a serial killer.

  No, Steve thought.

  Yes.

  He stared down at his father’s sleeping form. What should he do? Telling the police was no longer an option. The killing of an ex-wife forty-some years ago could be understood as a crime of passion, but a series of murders was an entirely different story and would take down not only his father, but his mother and himself. These killings had occurred on their watch and, fair or not, the media and the public would convict them of complicity. Not outright, perhaps, not to their faces, but the two of them had been there when the murders happened and they weren’t victims. The stain from his father’s crimes would be on them.

  He could not live a normal existence as the recognized son of a serial killer.

  His dad stirred, muttering something unintelligible. Steve looked at that ravaged face, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Whatever had happened, his father had kept it to himself all these years and at the same time had managed to build up a respectable life. Steve needed to keep the secret now too. He couldn’t tell anyone. Not even his mother. This was something he had to take to his grave. In fact, the best course of action would be to forget everything he had heard, learned or suspected, just put it out of his mind and pretend the previous week hadn’t occurred.

  But that was not going to happen.

  His father stirred again, unable to turn over because of the straps. His muscles strained, then relaxed. What was he going to say when he awoke? “I suitcase the five” or “I killed them”? It was impossible to predict, and Steve thought that he needed to find some way to shut his dad up, to keep him from blurting out confessions to anyone else.

  Of course, no one would believe anything the old man said, which was one of the advantages of being diagnosed with dementia. That might buy Steve some time, allow him to talk to the doctor about upping some of the medications or at least come up with some sort of plausible explanation should anyone start to believe his father’s revelations.

  He peeked out the door again to see if any doctors or nurses were on their way, but the corridor was empty. There was no one in sight, not even the usual wheelchair traffic, although from one of the nearby rooms came a high-pitched yelping that sounded like that of a dog in pain.

  The death of a prostitute was not as bad as the death of a regular woman, he rationalized. A lot of them were thieves and junkies. Some of them were murderers. That woman Charlize Theron had played in Monster really had been a monster—and she was based on a real person. So perhaps he shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

  He knew that he was making excuses—but this was his father. Joseph Nye might have been a demanding, intolerant, insensitive asshole, but he was still Steve’s dad, and as strained as that tie might be, it was still there.

  What if they hadn’t all been prostitutes?

  Better not to go there, Steve told himself.

  There were voices in the hall, and suddenly he saw nurses and orderlies, doctors and interns. Whatever emergencies there had been were apparently resolved, and moments later a young doctor Steve did not recognize knocked on the metal doorframe and stepped into the room. “What seems to be the problem here?”

  Steve described the overreaction to his inability to understand the meaning of “suitcase,” and said that the medications his father was being administered were supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

  The doctor looked at the chart at the head of the bed. “These are pretty high dosages, so I’m surprised such a thing occurred. Or could occur. He’s pretty heavily sedated.” Pulling a small penlight out of his pocket, the doctor opened his dad’s eyelids and checked the pupils. “He’s out now.”

  Steve suddenly felt defensive. “You think I’m lying?”

  “No. Of course not. Mr. Nye, I’m only saying that the medication he was given this morning at”—he checked the chart again—“six seems to have kicked in. I’ll mention this to Dr. Curtis, however, and the two of you can perhaps agree on some adjustments to the schedule.” His eyes met Steve’s. “I assume Dr. Curtis has discussed with you the severity of your father’s condition?”

  Steve nodded.

  “And you realize that at this point we can only manage his condition, not cure it.”

  He sighed tiredly. “I know.”

  “Very well, then. Is there anything else you need? Because I have a lot of patients waiting to see me.”

  Steve waved him away and sat down heavily in the chair next to the bed.

  I killed them.

  He looked over at his father’s face, placid in its medicated repose. What was he going to tell his mother when she asked how the visit went? Or Sherry?

  He thought for a moment.

  Nothing, he decided. Nothing at all.

  Seven

  He put the poison into the glass carefully, along with the milk: one drop, one pour, one drop, one pour. The milk had been heating on the stove and was warm but not hot, a condition the pharmacology book said would not affect the efficacy of the toxin. When the glass was full nearly to the brim, he placed it on a tray. He’d never known anyone other than babies and grandmothers who liked warm milk, but she did, and this had become sort of a ritual with them.

  She was already upstairs, in bed. He had had her earlier, and afterward she’d claimed to be tired, but the sex had been quick, and he knew that it was not he who had tired her out. The thought of that enraged him, as it always did, but he’d never let on before, and he didn’t this time either. The knowledge stayed with him, though, and he imagined her in different positions with different men, energetic and not tired, enjoying herself far more than she did with him. He’d known she was a whore when he met her—that was how he met her—but he hadn’t expected to fall so hard for her and hadn’t expected it to matter.

  He heard her asking for him from the bedroom, calling out his name in her thick, sexy accent. He liked that accent. He was going to miss it. She called out to him again, but he did not respond, just kept walking slowly up the stairs, balancing the tray before him. He stared at the milk in the glass. He didn’t have to go through with this. He could put a stop to it right now. He could go back down, dump the contents of the glass in the sink and heat up some more milk for her, some fresh milk, undiluted.

  But he continued walking up the stairs.

  At the top, he turned to the right and went into the bedroom. She was lying down, eyes nearly closed, and he was not sure she even wanted a drink anymore. But he made her sit up against the headboard and, smiling kindly, handed her the glass of warm milk. She pulled up the right strap of her flimsy nightgown and smiled back at him. “You’re so good to me,” she said.

  “Drink it,” he told her. “Drink it up. It’s good for you. It’s what you need.”

  Eight

  There was a message on his answering machine when he got home from work on Friday, and, listening to it, Steve was thankful that Sherry hadn’t invited herself over tonight to make dinner. Since Christmas, she’d been hinting around about moving in together, but his little freakout when she’d touched his mail seemed to have made her wary of coming over unannounced, despite his apologies, and lately she’d been much more cautious about overstepping boundaries. For that he was glad.

  He’d met his friends at the bar after work, pretending all was normal, but it had been a tough week, and it was getting harder and harder for him to act as though nothing were wrong. Will had been an asshole as usual, making fun of everyone and everything, and somewhere around his second beer, Steve had realized that he didn’t really like his friend very much. Looking around at his companions, he wasn’t sure he liked Dennis any better, and he thought that if he’d met them n
ow instead of back in college, he probably wouldn’t hang out with either of them.

  Although he’d still be friends with Jason.

  He felt like a fraud, keeping the secret of his father from them, acting as though everything were the same as it had always been despite the fact that his entire universe had been turned inside out, and he wondered how the old man had done it all those years, pretending to coworkers, friends and family that he was just an ordinary middle-class guy—and not a cold-blooded murderer.

  Steve was slightly buzzed when he arrived home, but he was dead sober by the time he finished listening to the phone message.

  He didn’t recognize the voice on the answering machine at first, but the caller identified himself almost immediately. “Hello? Is this Steve? Steve, uh . . . Nye? This is Lyman. Lyman Fischer? I met you at Jessica Haster’s potluck?” There was a long pause. “I been thinkin’ about what you said about your dad and, uh, Ruth. You might be onto somethin’ there. About your dad bein’ differnt after he came back, I mean. Maybe we should talk about it.” There was another long pause. “Yeah. I think we should talk.”

  Steve’s breath caught in his throat.

  He knew.

  No. How could he? It was impossible. Still, Steve was possessed by the uneasy feeling that the old man was suspicious, that he’d had time to mull things over and had realized how odd it was that Joseph Nye’s son had flown all the way out from California just to attend a potluck and ask questions about his father’s first wife’s death.

  Steve listened to the whole message, listened to it again, then got out a pen and a promotional notepad that some real estate agent had left on his doorstep, and wrote down Lyman’s number. He stared at it for a few moments, thinking, but it was getting late—it was an hour later in New Mexico—and if he wanted to catch the old man tonight, he should probably call now.