Hush

by Anne Frasier

  "Ethan!" Max's hand lashed out, grabbing him by the ankle, pulling him down. Max had shouted his name, but it now occurred to Ethan that he hadn't sounded mad.

  Max's grip on Ethan's ankle relaxed. Ethan scrambled to his feet while Max rolled to his back, one foot on the grass, leg bent, arms spread out. The guy was laughing. Trying to catch his breath, but laughing all the same. Lying there on the grass, water soaking him, laughing. And then Ethan became aware of his own clothes, soaked, wet and cold, heavy, aware of a jet of water hitting him in the face, and he began to laugh too. He didn't want to. Didn't want to be sharing a joke with Max, but damn, he couldn't help it. And once he started laughing, he couldn't stop. He laughed until his knees went weak and he had to drop to the ground. He laughed until his stomach burned, until tears ran down his cheeks along with the water.

  Somebody called the cops on them.

  The cops didn't get there until after Max had extended a hand to help Ethan to his feet. They didn't get there until the two men had gone sloshing into the house, until Ethan had slipped into a pair of gray jogging pants, Max some plaid boxer shorts.

  Two cops came to the door. From his room, Ethan could hear Max talking to them in a low voice. Then they left.

  This round had turned out okay, but that didn't mean Ethan was going to cut Max any slack. And he knew it didn't mean their problems were over. Things would cool down for a day or two, but then they'd reach a flash point again. They always did.

  Max knocked on the bedroom door and silently handed Ethan his backpack.

  After he left, Ethan lit a couple of candles, cut the lights, and threw himself on his bed. Then he grabbed his Walkman from the backpack, put on the headphones, and cranked up the music all the way, so loud it should blow out his eardrums. But he didn't care. The music. He didn't know what he'd do if he didn't have music. Go crazy, maybe. But he did have it. Not the crap his friends listened to, but the good stuff, stuff that was too deep, too meaningful for radio, stuff that kind of tore a hole in your soul and left you aching for more.

  Ethan was sixteen years old and he didn't have a clue what he wanted to do with his life. Shit. In two more years he would be out of high school. What then? What then? He couldn't see past graduation day. He couldn't see himself doing anything but hanging out, playing video games, riding his skateboard, listening to music.

  One day not long ago, Max had told him he'd better start thinking about his future, making plans. Didn't the guy know you shouldn't say that to a sixteen-year- old? A real parent wouldn't have said that kind of crap. They'd say things like, "When I was your age, I didn't know what I was going to do either. Don't worry. It'll come. And when it does, you'll know it." But no, Max didn't say anything like that. Instead, he started grilling him, asking him what he was interested in. And Ethan would answer, "Hell no, I don't want to be a cop!" Or, "Hell no, I don't want to join the army!" And then Max would start talking about college, and how Ethan had better start studying for his ACT. And that would make Ethan's heart beat all the faster. He was just a kid. He'd spent his whole life doing nothing, and now, suddenly he was supposed to know exactly what he wanted.

  What he wanted was to find his father. All along, he'd had the idea that if he could find his dad everything would fall into place. Because his real dad would know what to say. He and his real dad would sit around in the backyard, drinking beer, shooting the shit. His real dad would show him how to clean a carburetor, and how to tune an engine just like his friend Tyler's dad had done. His real dad wouldn't talk about the importance of noticing details in case you were ever a witness to some kind of crime—which is exactly what had happened to Ethan a couple of years ago. He'd been in the Quick Stop buying some pop when it was robbed.

  "What'd they look like?" his dad had asked. "How tall? What kind of clothes?" He didn't say, "I'm glad you're okay." And when Ethan had said he didn't know, Max had gotten this look on his face, a look of confusion, then acceptance. Like he shouldn't have expected anything of Ethan in the first place.

  His real dad wouldn't have done that. His real dad would have just been glad he was okay.

  His mom . . .

  Sometimes he thought he remembered her, but how could that be? He was three years old when she died. Death—the idea of death—scared the hell out of him. First you're there, then you're not.

  He could almost remember her voice, and the way he felt when she spoke to him. Loved. That's how her voice made him feel. But how could he remember that? No, he was only filling in the blanks with his own imagination.

  Max. Max was the first person Ethan remembered. It was Christmas, and he and Max had gotten a tree. Max had lifted him up so he could put tinsel on the top. When Ethan remembered those times, he didn't hate Max. But that Max didn't seem like the high- strung Max he knew today.

  A person could almost think Max didn't have any feelings, but Ethan knew better. He'd never forget a night, years ago, when Max had picked him up from the baby-sitter's. All the way home, he didn't say a word. Ethan finally asked about the smell—a rotten, sweet, awful odor that seemed to be coming from his dad.

  Max didn't say anything for a long time, then asked, "You can smell it too?"

  "Yeah," Ethan said.

  "Rotten cantaloupe," his dad finally told him.

  And when they got home, Max took a long, long shower. When he came out he was wearing a clean pair of jeans, his wet hair smelling of lemons. In the middle of the night, something woke Ethan up. At first he couldn't place the noise, and then, with a sort of awkward embarrassment, he realized his dad was crying.

  When he got older, he found out that lemon shampoo was the best way to wash the smell of death from your hair.

  Chapter 8

  Abraham gripped the wooden podium, pulling his thoughts into coherence while the always solid, always dependable Detective Irving stood to his right. Also present at the press conference were Cook County State Attorney Roger Jacobs, Cook County Board President Jane O'Riley, and Deputy Chief of Area Five Grace Simms.

  Abraham had spent the entire morning on the phone. The mayor had called twice in three hours, with Abraham assuring him that this latest homicide could not yet be linked in any way to the homicides of sixteen years ago.

  He'd also had several conversations with hospital administrators who were expecting panic to erupt in their maternity wards.

  He could have let his assistant handle some of the lighter calls, but that wasn't what Abraham was about. Through his entire career, he'd made it a point to be accessible, even from his position at the top. He wanted the public to know that the murders were high on everyone's priority list, especially the Superintendent's. By the time the conference rolled around, Abraham had put away two pots of coffee and a roll of antacid tablets, and he needed something stronger than aspirin for his headache.

  Looking out into the auditorium, he was relieved to see that the majority of the seats were vacant. So far the mother-and-child homicide wasn't big news and wouldn't be unless a connection was made to the Madonna Murderer.

  Many of the faces were familiar. Chris Humes, from the Sun. Victoria Price-Rand, from the Trib.

  Abraham quickly gave them the facts.

  "What about the Madonna Murderer?"

  The question Abraham had hoped to avoid came from a shiny-faced young man Abraham had never seen before.

  The good reporters, the ones who didn't screw up a case by leaking information, were, in turn, respected by the police. In exchange for their cooperation, they were sometimes granted starring roles in the investigation process. They were sometimes given exclusive information that could eventually lead to a distinguished career in the newspaper business.

  Stalling, Abraham asked, "What's your name?"

  The reporter fiddled with the plastic press pass clipped to his shirt, as if Abraham could read the name from thirty feet away. "Alex Martin, sir."

  Irritated, weary, Abraham plunged in. "At this point, there's no evidence to draw any kind of connection
between this homicide and the homicides of sixteen years ago. Next question." He directed his gaze away from the new reporter.

  "B-but, sir," Alex stammered, his hand raised.

  Superintendent Sinclair ignored him, choosing instead to call on one of the more established reporters.

  The incident made Alex so angry that he sat in his chair biting his nails and obsessing over it while losing track of his immediate surroundings. Ten minutes later, the room came into focus as Detective Irving eased his way behind the podium.

  Alex settled back to listen to more bullshit.

  "What about the FBI?" someone asked.

  "The FBI's Chicago field office is involved in the case," Max Irving said.

  "Any plans to bring in other agents?"

  "Not at this point. We have our own excellent profiler, Special Agent David Scott, who has been instrumental in the apprehension of several criminals over the last four years," Irving told them. "He has a remarkable success rate."

  "But he's only one man. What about his caseload?"

  The reporter, Victoria Price-Rand, had brought up an ongoing problem. Everyone in the police department and FBI was overextended. Last Max heard, Agent Scott was juggling 150 different homicide cases. Max himself was overseeing about the same number. Too much crime, not enough law enforcement, not enough crime labs, not enough manpower. And it was only going to get worse. DNA labs could now process results in as quickly as two weeks, a vast improvement over the time it used to take, but technicians were so backed up that it could still take months to get results.

  And to get an FBI agent sent down from Quantico—well, the only way that would happen was if this last case could be linked to the Madonna Murders.

  Two hours later, Alex Martin sat in the belly of the newsroom, fingers flying over his keyboard, typing up his condemning piece on Superintendent Sinclair, getting more pissed as he wrote. Around him, other reporters sat in front of computers, keys clicking, phones ringing, printers spewing out stories that were coming in off wire services.

  Journalists just getting out of college always imagined themselves doing human-interest stories. Or commentary. Or starring in a column dealing with life, the United States, the world. A column where the person would become famous and readers would wait in anticipation for the next thought-provoking article.

  Those were the kind of things journalists dreamed of. That and of course a billion-dollar career writing more than one Great American Novel. Nobody ever said, I'm going to cover high school basketball. I'm going to write obituaries—which were tough as hell to do. Alex knew that for a fact because that's where he'd started out. And nobody said, I'm going to go to college, major in journalism, so I can hang around police stations, so I can sift through daily logs of domestic arguments, public intoxication, traffic arrests, and report it. Day after day after day.

  Wouldn't win a Pulitzer that way. No, to win a Pulitzer, you had to dig and dig, you had to uncover everything you could uncover, expose every corner to light.

  He was paying his dues, he knew that, but he wanted a story. A real damn story. He also knew that wasn't going to happen either, because cops had their favorite reporters, guys they'd worked with for years. Those were the ones who got the stories, those were the ones who got the exclusives. Not somebody like him. That much was made obvious when Sinclair ignored him in front of his peers. It was hard enough to earn the respect of fellow reporters without someone publicly humiliating you like that.

  And so he typed, hitting the keys with hard, angry strokes, wondering if he'd ever get a decent story, if he'd chosen the right career. But with four years of student loans hanging over his head, he had to stick with it. Even if it wasn't right. Even if he'd made a mistake. That was the heartbreaking thing about college. You had to make a choice—a guess, really— about what you wanted to do with the rest of your life. It was a roll of the dice, because there was a big chance you could be wrong, a very big chance. And unless you were independently wealthy, once it was done, it was done.

  More and more, Alex was thinking he'd made a mistake. And that was a hard thing to deal with. That feeling of knowing you didn't belong somewhere, that what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here feeling of mounting desperation.

  Alex gave his story a file name: Abraham Sinclair.

  He was still staring at the article when his desk advisor stopped by.

  A few years back, the Herald had hired a new CEO and gone through massive restructuring. During that time, some lamebrain had come up with the idea of changing everybody's job title. Gone were the more militant-sounding titles like "chief' and "deputy." Now people were "directors," and "advisors," and "overseers." In effect, they'd edited the edit out of editing.

  His advisor's name was Maude Cunningham. Maude was probably called a broad in her younger days. She could have been anywhere between sixty and seventy. She'd started when the paper was a male-dominated ship and female reporters had to be tough and resilient. She smoked, and Alex suspected she drank fairly heavily because she had that dried-up-prune look people got after indulging for decades. Her voice was a harsh rasp, and the air that came from her lungs was as stale as a mausoleum's. Alex figured she was one X-ray away from a cancer diagnosis.

  "We can't run that." She was perched on the corner of his desk, tapping a long red fingernail against a yellow front tooth.

  Alex reread it.

  It was an out-of-control defamatory piece, full of adjectives and qualifiers used to describe Sinclair's callous treatment of Alex. There wasn't a newsworthy bit of information in the entire thing.

  "I was just shitting around." He clicked the cancel button, then tried to exit the program, but the software wouldn't let him off the hook so easily.

  Do you want to save file Abraham Sinclair?

  The question blinked at him.

  He hit the "no" button, deleting his article.

  "I'd like to do some research on Sinclair, find out what he had to do with the Madonna Murders," he said.

  "Are you talking a revenge piece? That's not what this paper is about. I don't want you using the paper to carry out a personal vendetta. You have to grow a thicker skin if you're going to stay in this business. Every day you're going to run into people who don't even know you, but hate you because you're a newspaper reporter. That's because writers have power. Don't abuse it. Go ahead and look in the archives, but stay off Sinclair's back. I can tell you he was in charge of the Madonna case years ago. It cost him his marriage and he ended up having to go to a treatment center in Minneapolis to dry out. Try to see it from his side for a moment, and maybe you won't resent him so much."

  "So I have your approval to see what I can dig up?"

  "I want you to have something ready in case we need it. If any more murders occur, or if the police come up with a solid connection between these new cases and the Madonna Murders. In the meantime, just try to stay abreast of the current situation without making enemies of the entire police force." She smiled at him in a tough-broad, I-like-you sort of way. "I realize those two things might be a little hard for you to accomplish, but please make an effort."

  Chapter 9

  The lady Ethan was trying to serve couldn't decide what she wanted. She stood staring up at the wall menu, waiting for something to hit her in the face, as if expecting the menu to change or start flashing or something. Who knew?

  Ethan wished lightning would strike them all.

  It was a bagel shop, for chrissake, not some five-star downtown snobbery where Ethan's next step would be to suggest a hundred-dollar wine. Why couldn't people make up their minds?

  He waited impatiently while the line behind her grew until it reached the door.

  Finally she said, "I'll have a plain bagel with cream cheese."

  That's how it was with the people who couldn't decide. They always ended up ordering the most boring thing on the menu.

  "Light or regular cream cheese?"

  "Huh?"

  "Light or regular cream cheese?" He shou
ldn't have asked, but customers like her were also the ones who would return the bagel to demand a different cream cheese. He got off in a couple hours, but he wasn't looking forward to it. His dad was picking him up and they were going to a movie. Didn't Max get it? Couldn't he see Ethan didn't want to hang around with him? The phoniness of it all—he couldn't take it anymore. That Max was going out of his way for these father- and-son outings enraged him. When Ethan was little and would see something on TV that scared him, he would chant to himself, This isn't real. This isn't real. That's what he did now with Max.

  The indecisive woman moved down the counter, where she would probably spend another hour trying to decide if she wanted a latte or an espresso, raspberry or chocolate-almond flavoring.

  "Can I help you?" he asked the next customer.

  He and his dad had always been close—that's what made the truth sit in his gut like a bunch of mold- covered rocks. One day not long ago, Ethan had a fight with a neighbor. In retaliation, the kid tauntingly told him that the reason Max adopted Ethan was because his dying mother had begged him to take him in and be his father.

  Which made Ethan a charity case.

  It was hard enough finding out you were adopted, but you could always tell yourself that your dad wanted you, wanted a kid, otherwise he wouldn't have done it. Now he couldn't even believe that. ...

  At first Ethan had tried to deny the charity thing, but in the end he couldn't put it from his mind, and he was eventually forced to recognize it as truth. It made perfect sense. He felt stupid for not seeing it before. He knew Max hadn't known his mother long, so why else would he have adopted him? Max was the kind of person who always wanted to do the right thing. "Duty-bound" was the phrase Ethan had come up with to describe him.

  But it was hard and depressing knowing his entire childhood had been a sham. That his past was a rug that had been pulled out from under him. That all the times they'd spent together had been done out of duty.