Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  “You don’t want to do this,” Hazard said, “so let’s not do this. Let’s go back to the restaurant. I’ll call Nico. They might still be there; God knows they were having enough fun without either of us.”

  Somers shook his head. The anger in his face had dissipated. His eyes, a deep blue, like tide pools, looked darker than ever, like the water at the bottom of the ocean, where blue became black. Those eyes looked bruised. Haunted.

  “Somers, what did he—”

  “I’m sorry I was such an asshole.”

  Hazard tried to think of the best response to this. For all his openness and cheer, Somers still had boundaries—narrower than most, perhaps, but still strong. Finally Hazard settled for a copy of the smirk he normally saw on Somers’s face. “You got your five minutes. Now how do you explain the rest of your life?”

  A very small grin cracked the corners of Somers’s mouth.

  They turned off the state highway and onto a private drive. It carried them around a low hill, and then the Somerset home appeared. In darkness, after all these years, the place was nothing like what Hazard remembered. He had never been invited to Somers’s house; the school’s golden boy and the town faggot had crossed paths only—

  —in the locker room, with Hazard’s skin prickling under Somers’s caress—

  —when Somers and his friends had decided to make Hazard’s life hell. But Hazard had seen the house: an impressive, sprawling brick construction that, in hindsight he realized, had been meant to look Victorian. That memory of ruddy brick and black shutters could not have prepared him for the blaze of light that awaited on the other side of the hill. The Somerset home glowed like a fallen star: white tinged with blue and green and red, the bulbs pulsing and flickering in time to some unheard music. Somehow, though, it managed to remain tasteful; anyone else, Hazard guessed, would have ended up with something that looked like glowing Yuletide vomit.

  Expensive cars lined the circular drive, a series of darkly-colored BMWs and Mercedes that wore snow like ermine, the cars of rich old men who had gathered to enjoy the company of other rich old men. Somers slammed the brakes as they got to the middle of the drive, directly in front of the house, and he swung the Interceptor at an angle across the slush-covered asphalt.

  “Do you want me to handle this?” Hazard asked.

  “No thanks.”

  Somers had already come around the Interceptor by the time Hazard got his feet on the ground. Even outside the house, the air was full of the smells of pine and cinnamon and rum. Hazard hurried to catch up to Somers; his footsteps made squelching noises in the softening snow, and the sound made an odd counterpoint to the muffled music that came from inside the house. By the time Hazard had reached the porch, though, Somers had stopped.

  He had stopped dead, in fact, and his face had hardened. Then Hazard saw what had made his partner stop.

  The door was open, and shouts echoed inside.

  HAZARD PULLED HIS .38 SPECIAL from the shoulder holster where he kept it, while Somers reached to the small of his back and retrieved his Glock .40 caliber. The crackling tension between them dropped away; the familiar, unspoken precision of their movements took over. Extraneous details became muffled: the holiday jazz, the scent of pine boughs, the creak of the porch as Hazard shifted his weight. What came into focus were the .38 in his hand and the door.

  Hazard kicked the door, and Somers rushed past him. Hazard entered at a diagonal to Somers’s path, taking the opposite corner. As he entered the foyer, screams filled the air. Hazard found himself scanning a pair of older women in glittering evening gowns, both frozen with terror, and an older man who was howling like he’d had his balls shot off. The shouting that Hazard had heard from outside continued, although now Hazard could tell that it came from deeper inside the house.

  “What the hell is going on?” Somers snapped, easing out of a shooting stance and lowering his gun.

  Hazard continued studying the foyer, not quite ready to relax. Rooms opened in three directions, and a staircase led up to an open landing. One doorway led into a large room with sofas, a fireplace, and a Christmas tree surrounded by brightly-wrapped presents. The room opposite it seemed to be a formal dining room. Ahead of Hazard, towards the back of the house, the foyer opened onto a much larger space with an even larger Christmas tree and more sofas and chairs. Pine garlands ribboned down the staircase, filling the air with their fragrance, and the syrupy sweetness of rum threatened to drown the house.

  “What the hell?” another man’s voice called, growing louder as the shouting died. “This is absolutely ridiculous—oh. It’s you.”

  The man who stood opposite Somers did not really look like him, but Hazard still recognized Glennworth Somerset. He shared something of Somers’s chin and eyes, but otherwise he was quite different. Hazard remembered Glenn as a stout, dark-haired man who wore too-tight polos and too-shiny loafers. Over the last fifteen years, Glenn Somerset had grown even stouter, with the heavy stomach and thin arms and legs of a man who had eaten himself out of proportion. His dark hair had gone gray, and a second chin wobbled as his gaze settled on Somers. Yes, those ocean blue eyes were definitely Somerset eyes: once or twice, Hazard had seen the same cold, superior rage in Somers’s eyes that he now saw in Glenn’s.

  “It took you long enough, didn’t it?” Glenn snapped. “Shut the door. You weren’t raised in a barn.” And then, without waiting for a response, he turned to the other man, whose screeching had finally stopped, and added, “For heaven’s sake, Rudy, have some dignity.” With that comment, Glenn marched deeper into the house.

  Hazard hooked the door with his heel and shut it. More men and women began to drift to the doorways, observing the tail end of the scene that had just played out, and as the stragglers appeared, Hazard holstered his gun. There had to have been at least fifty people—some had even appeared on the upstairs landing, staring down in confusion—and they buzzed with low, excited conversation.

  “Come on,” Somers said, holstering the Glock and heading deeper into the house.

  As they passed through the building, Hazard found his initial impression of the Somerset home reinforced but also deepened: the sweetness of the rum was tempered by cinnamon and nutmeg and clove, by the smell of sweat and cashmere and silk; a woman’s deep voice swung on the stereo, rasping out Christmas songs; and sweat prickled on Hazard’s back in a mixture of warmth and adrenaline. Beyond the enormous Christmas tree, french doors looked out on an illuminated patio. Outside, electric heaters glowed cherry-red against the night, warming an expanse of winter where a few of the bolder party guests stood, their glasses glittering like stars in the darkness.

  Through the next door lay a kitchen full of gleaming marble counters and appliances big enough to feed a few dozen people, and Somers passed through the kitchen and into another large room with yet more sofas and yet another Christmas tree.

  Here, a smaller group had gathered—three men, all roughly the same age, all dressed in tuxedos and wearing the look of men who’d been serving up shit for everybody else to eat for the last forty years and made a real killing at it. Glenn Somerset was one of them, and the second man looked familiar, and the third, with a shock of snowy hair and liver spots along his jawline, was Sherman Newton, Wahredua’s current mayor and, Hazard was fairly certain, a man who had killed for profit at least once and who had also tried to kill both Somers and Hazard. All of the men were staring at a naked Santa Claus.

  Glenn’s eyes flicked at Hazard and Somers for a moment before returning to their object of contemplation. Seated in a straight-backed chair, naked except for the traditional red-and-white cap, sat a middle-aged man whose paunch spilled over his bare thighs. Several days’ growth of beard covered the man’s cheeks and jowls with graying stubble, and he reeked, a peppery, oniony smell that made Hazard’s eyes water. Twitching and muttering to himself, the man shifted on the chair, his dilated eyes roving around the room without seeming to see anything.

>   “I didn’t realize it was this kind of party,” Somers said.

  “Don’t act like a fool,” Glenn said, his eyes flicking to Somers for a moment before resting on the naked Santa again. “Will you get him out of here? Use the back door. I’ve been humiliated twice tonight; I don’t need a third time.”

  “What happened?” Hazard said.

  Glenn turned towards Hazard. His eyes were the same ocean blue as Somers’s, but hard, like the ocean had frozen solid. Those eyes stared at Hazard for several rapid heartbeats before moving away in silent, utter dismissal, as though Hazard weren’t even there. An uncomfortable silence filled the room.

  “I asked you—”

  Somers put a hand on Hazard’s chest. “What happened?”

  “John-Henry,” the mayor rumbled. He had a deep, patrician voice like he’d spent most of his life at Yale or God only knew where, and he used it to good effect. “Just look at him, son. What do you think happened? He’s high on who knows what, and he broke in here acting like a lunatic. Your father and Sheriff Bingham had to wrestle him to the ground.”

  The sheriff. Hazard knew he’d recognized the third man, but it wasn’t until now that the realization clicked. Sheriff Bingham was a tall man. Thin. He’d been sheriff for thirty years, maybe, and he’d been tall and thin for all of them, a kind of whipcord, rawhide thin, like a millstone had ground any traces of joy and life from his bones. In the months since Hazard had returned to Wahredua, he’d seen the sheriff once or twice, but for the most part the city police and the county sheriff’s department kept their distance from each other. Now it was something of a shock as the sheriff spoke up. “He had a gun, John-Henry. What were we supposed to do?”

  “No one said anything about what you were supposed to do,” Hazard said, but Somers was already shaking his head.

  “Please ask . . . him,” Glenn said, “to wait in the car. It’s bad enough that you brought him here.”

  “If you have something to say—” Hazard began.

  To his surprise, Somers cocked his head at the kitchen. “Let me talk to you for a minute.”

  Hazard followed, and when they had left that damn room with its third goddamn Christmas tree, Hazard planted himself against the goddamn marble counter and crossed his arms. “Did you hear what he just said?”

  “Can you let me handle this?”

  “He wants me to wait in the car. Like I’m what, your dog?”

  “Ree, it’s not that simple, I—”

  “It’s really simple. Either I’m your partner, or I’m a damn dog. Which is it?”

  Neither man spoke for a moment, and then Somers threw up his hands. “Christ, you’re my partner. Do I really have to say that?”

  “That’s not what it looks like in there.”

  “This is complicated, all right? My dad—”

  “How about I make it abso-fucking-lutely uncomplicated? Give me your keys.”

  Somers sighed.

  “Give me the damn keys.”

  “Can you just wait here while I talk to my dad?”

  “You aren’t going to give me the keys?”

  “I’ll find out what happened, we’ll take naked Santa to the station, and this will be over.”

  “Fine. I’ll stand in the snow.”

  “Don’t be like this, Ree”

  Hazard ignored him, marching towards the front of the house. In the largest room, with a Christmas tree that looked like it had been yanked straight off a mountain, Hazard stopped. Two large tables lined one wall, and food covered both tables: turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, potatoes au gratin, rolls, and on and on. More food than even the industrial Somerset kitchen could have produced. Hazard’s stomach grumbled; he hadn’t had dinner because of this damn interruption, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to eat Somerset food. He took another firm step towards the door. He was going to stand out in the snow until his feet froze off, and if Somers didn’t like it, he could—

  Pie. Hazard forgot where he was going. He forgot to keep walking. He had missed a third table. Pies upon pies upon pies. Enough pies to keep a clown college practicing their throws for a solid week. Before he realized it, Hazard found himself loading a plate with ham and potatoes and dressing, and then he loaded a second plate with pie: apple, pecan, chocolate cream. In one corner of the room, near a darkened hallway, an empty armchair stood by itself. Hazard settled himself in the armchair, grateful that the enormous Christmas tree provided something of a screen, and began to eat. It was Somers’s fault that Hazard had missed dinner; this made up for some of it. As Hazard chewed a bite of honey-baked ham, though, a finger found his shoulder. It traced the length of his collarbone and then outlined the swell of his bicep.

  “And who is this drink of tall, dark, and handsome?”

  SOMERS WATCHED HAZARD STORM out of the kitchen. The big man was always so careful with his movements, but right then, he looked like a hurricane on a bad day; Somers was half-surprised Hazard didn’t tear down the house on his way out. Swallowing a sigh, Somers turned back to face his father. Better that Hazard be angry than that Hazard learn what Glenn Somerset believed about him. Even Hazard in hurricane-mode was better than that.

  As Somers returned to the TV room, as it was called in the Somerset house, he forced himself to take a deep breath. And then another. It didn’t do a thing. Not a damn thing. But he did it anyway, hoping to ease the strain in his chest, where he felt as if someone had wrapped rebar around his ribcage and was clamping it tighter and tighter. Yeah, right, a deep breath. What the hell was that?

  Somers’s father still stood with Sheriff Bingham and Mayor Newton, forming a triangle around the naked Santa. Santa was high; that much was obvious. He was also, to judge by his condition, either unstable or mentally ill. He seemed to have no idea where he was, and he also seemed untroubled by his current situation. Somers approached the man, lowered himself to eye level, and asked, “My name is Detective Somerset. Can you tell me your name?”

  The naked Santa smacked his lips and rolled his head on his neck.

  “Hey,” Somers said, raising his voice, “your name. Who are you?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Glenn said. “Can’t you do this at the station? You know how important this party is, John-Henry. You know the kind of work that goes into it—not that you ever troubled to help, but still, you know what your mother goes through trying to put this together. I’d think the least you could do is get this thing out of here so that we can try to salvage the rest of the night.”

  “Now, Glenn,” Mayor Newton said in his thousand-dollar voice, “take it easy on the boy. It’s not his fault this happened.”

  As though in response, Santa smacked his lips again.

  “Take care of this,” Glenn said. “Morris. Sherman. I’m not standing here a moment longer. My son,” he laid special emphasis on the word, “can handle things from here.”

  The sheriff eyed Somers as he followed Glenn out of the room. Mayor Sherman, however, lingered. As always, the mayor wore a genial expression, as though he were an elderly uncle with a soft spot for rascals. Somers had seen that expression for most of his life—the mayor was an old family friend—and Somers had known, for most of that time, that the mayor’s good-natured appearance was just that: an appearance. Mayor Sherman Newton might look like he spent his days puttering around his office, handing out gumballs to small children and kissing babies, but the reality, Somers knew, was that Sherman Newton had cut plenty of throats to get where he was. And he’d likely cut plenty more if he felt it necessary.

  Somers’s most recent case, carried out while he and Hazard had been trapped at a vacation property known as Windsor, had touched one strand in Mayor Newton’s web: the murder of a wealthy real estate investor had led to Mayor Newton’s own development firm gaining control of valuable intellectual property. Someone—Somers and Hazard were unable to prove who—had sent a hired killer to eliminate everyone at Windsor, as a way of erasing any possible witne
sses. And this man, standing in front of Somers in a two-thousand-dollar suit and shoes that had been hand-made in Italy, was most likely the one who had sent that killer.

  As though sensing Somers’s train of thought, Newton gave a quavering smile, produced a cough drop from one pocket, and unwrapped it. He popped it between his lips, and his jaw closed with a crack. Then, without a word, Newton nodded at Somers and sauntered out of the room.

  Somers, alone with Santa Claus, stared after the trio of old men. Then he turned to Santa Claus. The naked man was picking at scabbed sores, muttering to himself as his head jerked up and around, trying to catch sight of something invisible to Somers.

  What now? Take this poor guy into the station, lock him up in the drunk tank, and keep him until Christmas rolled past? Somers blew out a frustrated breath. Glenn Somerset probably would have preferred for Somers to take Santa out back and put a bullet between his eyes. Less mess, that’s what his father would have said. And where the hell had Hazard gone?

  Casting a last glance around the TV room—God, what a pretentious name—Somers gave Santa a conspiratorial grin. “Hang out here for a minute, all right?” Then he snapped a cuff around one of Santa’s wrists and fastened the other end to the chair.

  Santa didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he gave a triumphant cry, plucked something from his thigh, and held it up to the light. It looked like an ingrown hair.

  SOMERS MADE HIS WAY THROUGH THE KITCHEN and back into the family room, which was big enough for a family of about two hundred. The Christmas tree was twenty feet tall. Maybe taller. It was hard to tell, and Somers couldn’t bear the thought of asking his father. Glenn Somerset wouldn’t lie about something like that. Glenn Somerset might not lie about anything. That was the whole goddamn problem.