Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  Somers turned to rejoin Hazard at the front of the apartment, but a click and a soft whir of air made him pause. He leaned over the bed, and the noise continued—the sound of a small fan that had almost blown out, its spinning interrupted by squeaks and stumbles and lurches. Grimacing, Somers climbed onto the bed, towards the noise.

  And then he saw it, tucked into a cramped alcove in the garbage at the foot of the bed: a computer. A hefty old Apple desktop, with an honest-to-God dial-up modem. The screen had a slight greenish tinge, and the keyboard shone with a grimy patina. Grateful for the disposable gloves, Somers shuttled the mouse back and forth.

  The greenish tinge on the screen flickered, and then a desktop appeared. Somers stared at the monitor, at the clunky icons, at the pixelated rendering of the images. Jerkily, the mouse icon followed his movements, and he clicked on the Safari icon. In fits and starts, the browser’s white box filled the screen, followed by blocky text. Somers scanned the text.

  It was a Craigslist ad, he realized. The posting was simple and straightforward: Wanted: Santa Claus to appear at a very adult Christmas party. No kiddies here, just a few lovely ladies looking to be satisfied. $200 cash on arrival. Men only; no little boys needed. Someone named ur_gurl_wants_it99 had posted the ad in the personals section under Casual Encounters.

  “Casual sounds right,” Somers said, scrolling down. That was all the information on the page, though, and so he eased himself off the bed—cringing as he passed over the sweat-stained sheets—and hurried back to the front of the apartment.

  Hazard knelt, a pile of burrito wrappers on one side and what looked like it might have originally been a toilet bowl, sans tank, on the other. Someone, presumably Stillwell, had glued two urinal cakes to the outer rim of the tank.

  “What the hell have you been doing?” Hazard gestured at the toilet. “I’m one bag in and this is already the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “Is that a face?”

  Hazard’s eyes narrowed; he was fighting the urge to glance at the toilet, Somers could tell, and it made Somers struggle to hide a smile. “Will you get over here and help?” Hazard demanded.

  “I’m serious. I think he made a toilet face. A toilet friend.”

  “I don’t care. Get over here. I’m not doing this by myself.”

  “Was there anything in the mouth? The bowl, I mean. Did it have a tongue?”

  “I don’t give a damn if it’s a face or if it’s a spaceship or if it’s the pope’s goddamn chalice. Quit dicking around.”

  “Craigslist.”

  For a moment, Somers had to fight a burst of laughter. Hazard was staring at him, a mixture of bafflement and fury growing on his face. A lock of his long, dark hair—really, it was so long it was obvious that Hazard was growing it out, even if he denied it—had fallen across his forehead, curling in a way that made Somers want to brush it back.

  “What are you—”

  “There’s all sorts of interesting things on Craigslist.”

  “So what?”

  “People post ads for all sorts of things.”

  Hazard’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “I was just thinking that if you wanted some extra money before Christmas—”

  “If you tell me that you were thinking we could sell this toilet on Craigslist, or these Santas, or anything in this goddamn apartment, I’m going to rip your head off your ass and leave it in this fucking abomination of a toilet.”

  “Toilet face,” Somers corrected.

  Anger blotched Hazard’s cheeks, and he was making a choking noise like he might have swallowed his tongue.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you that I just found an ad on Craigslist. An ad you might be very interested to see.”

  The choking noises grew, if possible, even more furious.

  “An ad asking for a Santa to appear at a Christmas party.”

  Hazard went silent. Somehow, it was much more terrible than the red in his face and the growling. He got to his knees. Then to his feet. His movements were stiff, hostile, like a man about to take a really wide swing and hope he hit as hard as he could.

  As Hazard shoved past Somers, Somers called, “If you’re thinking about answering, though, it’s too late.”

  Hazard shouted something back that was mostly incoherent—and about as foul as anything Somers had ever heard. He let a smile crack his face and trotted after Hazard.

  He found his partner in the bedroom, his huge form awkwardly crouched on the bed as he examined the computer. Without turning his head, Hazard said, “You’re an idiot.”

  “Who do you think ur_gurl_wants_it99 is?”

  “You’re annoying. And immature.”

  “But I’m not the one that had to discover the toilet face.”

  Hazard flicked him the finger, still studying the screen.

  “Seriously,” Somers said. “Who do you think could have posted it?”

  “Anyone could have posted it. That’s how Craigslist works. There are no filters—nothing serious, anyway. Unless someone complains, you can post just about whatever you want and get away with it.”

  “How’d you learn that?”

  Hazard grunted and scrolled.

  “Were you trying to buy something? A black velvet Elvis? New red pumps?”

  “That’s about the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “Gay sex? Were you trolling for sex on Craigslist?”

  “Never mind, that’s definitely the stupidest.”

  “I hooked up with a guy off Craigslist once.”

  Hazard’s face shot towards Somers, as fast as though someone had cracked him across the cheek. And then, blushing, he turned back to the computer.

  “I did,” Somers said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I literally cannot think of anything I want to talk about less.”

  “Turned out to be my roommate. Isn’t that weird? I don’t know if I would have gone through with it if it had been a stranger.” Somers paused. “Of course, if he had looked anything like you, he could have been from Mars and I probably would have—”

  “What the hell has gotten into you?” Hazard leaned back from the computer, his weight dimpling the mattress. “Your dad got shot. Why are you acting like this?”

  “Acting like what? I’m joking around, Hazard. Yeah, someone shot my father. But we’re on the case. We’re going to find the bastard behind this. So I’m excited. So I’m a little wired. So I’m joking.”

  “A joke? Don’t bullshit me. You want to get a rise out of me. How? By talking about sex? You want to talk about—what? Me? Us? Here’s an update on us: we were on a fucking double date last night, Somers. You were with your wife.” He let the last word hang in the air. Then he sliced one big hand through the space between them as if he could pare away what he’d just said. “Look, I know you’ve been through a lot. This is, what, some kind of compensation. You’re reacting to the stress, fine. You want to give me shit, fine. But don’t do this. We’ve already done this, and it doesn’t ever end well.” Hazard paused again. “For either of us.”

  For the last twelve hours, give or take, Somers’s emotions had run wild. Hate, fear, grief, self-loathing, guilt, despair. And, mixed in with all of that, underlying all of it, a magnetic current of something else: the need to fuck something up. And here he was. He’d done it. He’d done it again with Hazard. This wasn’t the first time in his life. He’d done it before, with Cora. When things got hard, when the stress mounted, when it looked like he might fail at something important, something he cared about—boom, there was an easy way out. Don’t fail; just fuck things up on purpose.

  He should apologize. He should open his mouth, say those two simple words: I’m sorry. That’s all. Hazard had proven willing to forgive in the past. Beyond all possible expectations, beyond reason, Hazard had been willing to overlo
ok Somers’s shitty behavior from their youth. So here it was, easy, just say it. Say those two words.

  Instead, though, Somers fixed a crooked smile on his face and said, “Who do you think could have posted that?”

  For a long moment, Hazard didn’t answer. He shook his head slowly and turned back to the screen. Somers waited, and the silence stretched out. It was broken when Hazard typed something. Then he clicked the mouse. He typed something again. His jaw was so tight that Somers was surprised he couldn’t hear teeth snapping.

  This was it, Somers knew. He’d finally pushed Hazard too far. And why? Because John-Henry Somerset was feeling shitty? Because he—

  —loved—

  —because he liked to see how far he could push? Especially how far he could push Hazard? And, deep down, because part of him knew that what he had said was true, and that he’d wanted to say it: that he’d spent the second half of high school wanting to have sex with Emery Hazard, and he’d spent the first half of college trying to make up for the fact that he’d never gotten to do it. And now, when Somers had a chance to apologize and set thing straight between them, what did he do? He opened his mouth and said something that he knew would push Hazard just a little further. This time, he’d gone too far. This time, Hazard wouldn’t let it slide. This time, Hazard would—

  “Take a look at this,” Hazard said.

  Somers craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the screen, but the stacks of garbage blocked it from view. Easing his weight onto the soiled mattress, Somers crawled towards the computer. Hazard, with shoulders like a goddamn gorilla, took up most of the space, and Somers had to crowd next to him to see the monitor. Their shoulders brushed, and Hazard’s movement was swift, mechanical, passionless: he scooted away from Somers as though he’d touched a hot plate.

  “His email,” Hazard said. “That’s how Craigslist works. You have to contact the poster through an email address, usually one that Craigslist provides. That way it’s anonymous, or close to it, but the website isn’t handling all the messaging.” Hazard scrolled and clicked. “Here. Here’s the messages back and forth about the Santa job.”

  Somers scanned them. There were half a dozen messages, and the styles of each sender marked them: misspellings, randomly capitalized letters, and a tendency towards unsubtle sexual advances marked Stillwell’s emails; the other emails, in contrast, were compact, carefully formatted, and filled with dense lines of instructions and requirements.

  “That’s my address,” Somers said.

  “That’s your parents’ address.”

  “That’s what I mean. Look—she says that she wants him to show up with only a Santa hat at seven o’clock.”

  “Either he was late or your dad waited to call us.”

  Somers ignored the comment. He scanned through the messages again. Ur_gurl_wants_it99 had made the event sound sexual, as though Stillwell would be arriving at a bachelorette party—or at an orgy. Stillwell’s replies made it clear that Stillwell, at least, thought he was up for the job. Aside from those facts, though, there was relatively little to glean.

  “What’s missing?” Hazard said.

  “There’s nothing in there about a gun. Or about killing somebody.”

  “Exactly. So why did your dad tell us Stillwell arrived with a gun? And if your dad was telling the truth, why did Stillwell take a weapon?”

  “If my father was telling the truth?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “If my father was telling the truth, then Stillwell did it because he’s a goddamn lunatic. He was probably planning on raping ur_gurl_wants_it99 and whoever else was at the party. Maybe he was planning on killing them when he was done. He was sick in the head, Hazard. Take a look around you.”

  “Yeah. Take a look around.”

  “What?”

  “Take a look around. What do you see?”

  “Garbage. A lot of garbage. And my partner who’s wasting my time.”

  As Somers scrambled off the bed, Hazard followed him, hounding him with questions. “And what did you notice about Stillwell last night? What was he like? What doesn’t fit?”

  Twisting through the narrow space between the stacked garbage, Somers shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Hazard’s fingers gripped his elbow. “God damn it, Somers, will you use your head?”

  Somers knocked Hazard’s hand away. Turning in a circle, he ran his fingers through his short blond hair. What was Stillwell like? Who the hell cared? Somers didn’t want to think about what Stillwell was like. He wanted to go straight to Cravens and demand that she come look at the emails. He wanted to sock Hazard in the face. But he didn’t want to think about Wayne Stillwell, naked and coked up, his belly overflowing his thighs.

  “Dammit.” Somers dragged his fingers through his hair again. “He was high, all right? And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to point at that goddamn Christmas plate he hammered to the wall, or to that Santa that’s fucking his reindeer, or some other damn thing, and you’re going to say that an addict doesn’t hold on to stuff like that. An addict sells his stuff so he can get dope.”

  Hazard folded huge arms across his chest.

  “So what?” Somers continued. “All that means is that he wasn’t an addict. That doesn’t mean he didn’t get high every once in a while. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t want to get amped before his big night with all those lovely ladies.”

  The stitches in Hazard’s jacket creaked as he flexed his shoulders.

  “It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing, Hazard. Stop it.”

  “But it’s worth thinking about.”

  Somers shook his head and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  Somers took the stairs two at a time. Slush splashed underfoot; his leather soles threatened to slide out, but Somers just gripped the handrail and plunged down the cement well.

  “You’re out of your damn mind,” Hazard said.

  Somers kicked open the fire door, trampling snow as he made his way up the block. The day had brightened. The angle of the sun had changed. The early morning light spilled down like an anvil, turning everything gritty and flat.

  When Somers reached Hazard’s cherry-colored VW—the color was even more ridiculous against the grimy snow—he reached for the door. Hazard’s enormous paw flattened against the glass and forced the door shut again.

  “You’re being rash.”

  “I’m being rash. That’s great.” Somers tried to drive his elbow into Hazard’s stomach. “You sound like a Hallmark special.”

  “Somers,” Hazard said, in that low voice that thrummed inside Somers’s chest. That big paw came up and grabbed Somers by the shoulder. “You want to tell Cravens. You want her to see the emails. You think she’ll change her mind and open the case.”

  “You’re goddamn right. Now get off me before I break your hand.”

  “Breakfast.”

  The word was so unexpected that Somers stopped struggling. “What?”

  “Eat breakfast. Let’s talk about this. Then, if you’re determined to tell Cravens, I’ll back you up.”

  Hazard’s scarecrow eyes glittered in the sunlight. His big mitt was surprisingly gentle. Wind teased the long lock of dark hair that curled across Hazard’s forehead, and Somers could hear himself back in Stillwell’s apartment, could hear the snide, childish tone, Of course, if he had looked anything like you—

  Letting out a breath, Somers nodded.

  HAZARD DIDN'T TRUST HIMSELF TO SPEAK as they drove across Wahredua. There were too many things to say—and too many things to say wrong. Too many emotions. That was the real problem. Why couldn’t things be simple?

  Around them, Wahredua drifted past like the backdrop for a forgotten 80s movie. The town was much older than the 80s, of course, but this part—safely away from Smithfield, and yet not participating in the trendy revival on Wahredua’s southwest side—looked like somethi
ng out of a John Hughes film: ranch homes with carports, with blocky wood siding in creams and tans and browns; expansive, snow-covered yards; and an adobe-colored strip mall. The strip mall itself was nothing remarkable. The plaster was crumbling. The neon sign near the street flashed HERRY CHISTM S. The parking lot snow had a distinctly yellow color, as though every dog in ten miles had decided to combine efforts here. But the strip mall did have one thing that nobody else in Wahredua had: Big Biscuit.

  Big Biscuit was a diner. That was the short of it. The long of it was a tangle of memories, smells, tastes, and, for Hazard, a knot in his gut. Big Biscuit meant high school. It meant popular kids, kids like John-Henry Somerset. It meant danger—brighter, flashier, even more impossible to miss than the strip mall sign. The old thoughts ran through his head: watch out; they’ll see you; keep quiet; don’t move.

  Once, and only once, Hazard had gone to Big Biscuit. He had made Jeff go with him. They had been dating then—if you could call it dating when nobody knew, when you didn’t hold hands in public, when you didn’t kiss except in the basement with the door closed, if you could call that anything but a joke—and Hazard had insisted. He was tired of feeling ashamed. He was tired of feeling like an outsider. Everyone went to Big Biscuit. John-Henry Somerset went to Big Biscuit. And Hazard wasn’t afraid—he remembered telling Jeff that, repeating it, insisting on it until Jeff’s shoulders had rolled forward and he’d nodded and squeezed his hands together until his knuckles popped. And right then, with the VW bouncing over the broken asphalt in the parking lot, Hazard suddenly felt tired. What a joke. The whole thing had been such a joke.

  “You know this place?” Somers asked. He still didn’t sound like Somers. He still had that edge in his voice.

  “I grew up here, didn’t I?”