Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  “Usually over here,” Somers said, squeezing up next to Hazard, the tightly corded muscles along his side flexing as he plunged one arm into the trash can. “Mother’s very intelligent, but she tends to repeat her—ha. See?”

  He dragged out another black trash bag. Unlike the others, though, this one was not stuffed full; it was almost empty, and when Somers lifted it clear of the bin, metal and glass chimed inside the plastic. Without a word, Somers opened the bag and tipped it out onto the concrete pad. At first, a silvery dust streamed out onto the slab, followed by slivers of glass—the ornament, Hazard realized, the ornament that Stillwell had shot before the lights went out. More glass followed, larger chunks, and then the flow of debris began to slow. Somers’s firmed up his mouth, gave the plastic bag a final shake, and something small and shiny clinked against the concrete.

  Hazard moved instinctively, planting his shoe so that the brass casing stopped against it. One of the casings. The only one, as far as they knew, that the police hadn’t bagged and, it was very possible, destroyed.

  “Oh,” Somers said, as though offering an afterthought, “you’re going to clean this up, right?”

  DO WE TAKE IT TO DR. KAMP?” Somers asked, studying the casing.

  Hazard collected the brass with the tip of a pen and deposited their find in an evidence bag. He hesitated before shoving the bag in his pocket. “Not yet.”

  “Because you think Cravens will shut us down?”

  Hazard shook his head. “I’d like to know if they have the other casings. If they held onto them. If they did, then we can have Kamp look at those when the time comes. If they didn’t—”

  “Then we’ve got a secret weapon.”

  With a nod, Hazard set to work sweeping up the broken glass and returning it to the garbage bin. At some point, Somers must have gotten tired of watching because he went back inside. The silence gave Hazard time to think. What Somers had said was the truth: having the casing was an advantage, a piece of evidence that the real killer might assume had been lost or destroyed. But things in this case were much more complicated than that. Ballistics normally helped identify the shooter; in this case, they already knew that Wayne Stillwell had done the shooting. The real killer, whoever he was, hadn’t touched the gun in Stillwell’s hands—not unless he was very stupid.

  No, the casing provided another advantage that Hazard wasn’t ready to admit to his partner. For some reason, Grace Elaine had hidden a piece of evidence. Why? Because she had hired Stillwell to shoot her husband? Maybe. Hazard wasn’t sure. He knew one thing, though: he was going to hold onto the casing.

  When he returned to the kitchen, Hazard was surprised to find that Somers had cleaned up the spilled trash and was now lounging against the counter, drinking some sort of bottled water that looked inordinately expensive. The way Somers’s lips hugged the mouth of the bottle—Jesus, the man could drive a nun crazy. As though hearing Hazard’s thoughts, Somers pulled the bottle away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You think I should talk to Bing?”

  “We need to talk to him eventually.”

  “No, I mean, should I talk to him? Not we. I.”

  “So you can throw back a couple of beers, turn on the game, chat about Jessica Riner and how she gave great head.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know: football buddies, tossing the pigskin, run a few plays, get wasted and scream at each other about how the coach doesn’t know his ass from an anthill.”

  Slowly, Somers set down the bottled water. A smile as bright as the moon curved his upper lip.

  “Get that damn smile off your face,” Hazard snapped.

  Somers just shook his head.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Ree, come on. You know—”

  “Yeah, why don’t you go talk to Bing? That’s a good idea.”

  Somers’s smile faded. “You have some kind of beef with him? What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, it’s not nothing. You do. Last night, I thought it was just—well, you know. All the old shit. But it’s more than that.”

  “It’s not more than that. And you don’t know anything about that old shit, as you call it.”

  “I know something about it.” That was all. All the humor had vanished from Somers’s face, and in its place was a gravity, like the weight of the past was strong enough to drag everything back towards it, even this moment, like a black hole, so much gravity even light couldn’t get away.

  “You and Mikey and Hugo, you think that was it? Jesus, Somers, what? Do you think your asshole is the center of the universe too?”

  “I’m not saying we were the only ones. I’m just saying I know how bad it could get. And I know that people change.”

  Hazard swallowed his frustrated reply. Instead, he said, “You go talk to Bing. I’ll look around here a little longer.”

  For a moment longer, the gravity in Somers’s face seemed to grow stronger, deeper, as though the past could suck them both back across the years. Then he smiled, and he was just Somers again, just a guy you could kick back and watch the game with, just so fucking perfect he could break Hazard’s heart a million times before the first commercial break.

  “And let my mother find you here alone? Not a chance. Let’s finish up. Then we’ll both check on Bing.” Somers took a step forward, until he was barely a foot away from Hazard, and the smell of powdered amber, the smell of salt and sun-warmed skin stung Hazard’s nostrils. Somers raised a hand, laid it carefully on Hazard’s shoulder, like he was afraid the other man would break, and Jesus, Hazard thought, he felt like breaking, like that goddamn ornament Stillwell had shot, that was how close he felt to breaking. “Ree, whatever it was, you can tell me—”

  “Whoever planned this must have had a way to turn off the lights,” Hazard said, his voice too loud and too harsh as he pushed past Somers and headed into the family room. “Where is the circuit breaker panel?”

  “The basement,” Somers said, trailing behind him. “It’s back this way, though.”

  Hazard paused, spun, and marched in the other direction.

  He found the door to the basement on his third try—bathroom, pantry, then basement, and what kind of kitchen had so many doors?—and the lights came on when he brushed the switch. Like the rest of the house, the basement was impeccably overdone. It had been finished in wood, slate, dark earth tones, with a massive television taking up one wall and a wet bar taking up the other, and the air smelled like stale cigar smoke and rum. There were enough bottles lining the wall to give Saint Taffy’s, the local cop bar, a run, and Hazard had a brief flash of what high school must have been like, with Somers and—

  —Bing—

  —his buddies sneaking down here, filching booze from Mr. Somerset, of parties with the music thudding over the built-in speakers and with half the school population grinding against each other in drunken, frenzied lust.

  “Back there,” Somers said. “That door past the pool table.”

  The room beyond that door was unfinished, with exposed cement and a single, metallic pole that must have been a structural support. The air smelled like heat-dried cardboard and dust. On one wall, the circuit breaker box hung with its door closed. Hazard approached and then, suddenly wary, pulled his hand back before touching the door.

  “You think it’s booby-trapped?” Somers wasn’t smiling. He didn’t sound like he was joking. That was the worst part of the whole thing, how earnest he was, as though everything that had passed between them—

  —for the last twenty years—

  —upstairs had never happened, and they were just working, just partners. “Somebody turned the lights back on,” Somers added. “I don’t think anything happened to them.”

  It was a good point, but Hazard wasn’t going to say so. Instead, he reached out and popped open the panel. Inside, two rows of breakers controlled all the electricity to the Somerset house. The
back of the door held a sheet of paper with labels scratched in blue ink. “Exterior one? Exterior two? Which one controls the lights?”

  “Exterior two. Look, it’s still flipped.”

  Hazard shook his head. “Why?” He ran a hand down the breakers, not testing them, just thinking. His hand came back up, levitating above the main breaker and then drifting back to the switch marked exterior two. Somers was right; it was still off, which explained why the Christmas lights had never come back on. Hazard pulled the breaker back into place. Nothing happened.

  “Want me to run upstairs and see if the lights are back on?”

  Hazard grunted, shaking his head. They stood there for a moment in silence. Hazard studied the panel, still thinking. He could feel Somers’s eyes on him.

  “If somebody wanted all the power to go off,” Somers said, “they could have knocked out a transformer.”

  “Too widespread. Our killer wanted the lights to go off at a specific place at a specific moment.”

  “He could have found a way to blow the transformer. A remote-detonated explosion. He could have controlled the moment.”

  “Maybe the transformer is in a public space. Maybe it’s too exposed. Maybe he doesn’t know how to work with explosives.”

  “He could have knocked out the power lines to the house,” Somers said. Again, not arguing. Not pushing. Just that same annoying earnestness like a goddamn Boy Scout.

  Hazard grunted again. “What did he do to the lights?”

  “He made them go out.” This time, Somers’s voice slanted into amusement.

  “But the power is still on. Everything’s still on. So why not reset the outside lights last night?”

  Somers didn’t answer; there didn’t seem to be an answer. The closest thing to an answer was the unmistakable fact that the whole house still had power. Whatever the killer had done, however he had managed to make the lights go out, the answer didn’t seem to be here.

  Leaving the basement, Hazard climbed the steps two at a time. Somers trotted behind him. From the family room windows, Hazard could see that even in the morning sun, the exterior lights were on again. He left through the front door. The wind had settled, and the day was calm. The sun was warm on his back, and the snow seemed to double the sunlight, as though the light were radiating from opposite directions. It made everything seem disconnected, directionless, suspended. There wasn’t a shadow for a mile in every direction, and it made Hazard’s eyes hurt.

  He followed the Somersets’ wrought-iron fence. Snow, gathering on his eyelashes, melting on his lips, tasted like rust. Somers tromped through the drifts behind Hazard, whistling. It sounded familiar. The tune was clear, fast-paced, simple. Hazard stifled a groan when he recognized it.

  Somers burst out laughing. “Took you long enough.”

  Not answering, Hazard knelt, examining the lights. He’d chosen this spot out of convenience, as a way of avoiding Somers. There was nothing to see; the lights looked like any other strand of outdoor lighting. No evidence of frayed wires. No evidence of tampering of any kind.

  As Hazard straightened and continued along the fence, Somers came alongside him. “Well?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  “For God’s sake, Somers. What?”

  “That’s our fight song,” he said, slugging Hazard in the shoulder. “And don’t try to pretend you don’t remember. I know you were at our games.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You sat top center. On the south side of the press box. Every. Damn. Time.” He slugged Hazard to punctuate the last three words.

  “If you hit me again, you’re going to lose that hand.”

  “Dude, even my mother knows you were at my games—”

  Hazard whirled on Somers, catching a fistful of the smaller man’s jacket. “First of all, they weren’t your games. They were high school football games. Second, who gives a damn if I was there? And third, what the hell has gotten into you? You’re acting insane. Again. I get it; this is some kind of coping mechanism. But it’s still bat-shit crazy.”

  A smile trembled on Somers’s lips with manic glee. He poked Hazard in the gut, his smile spreading into a grin. “You were there, big boy.”

  Growling, Hazard loosed Somers’s jacket and proceeded along the fence. Somers tagged along, humming the fight song again.

  As they turned the corner, following the fence towards the back of the Somerset house, Somers broke off his humming long enough to say, “You know what? For my birthday, I know what I want.”

  Hazard said nothing.

  “I want you to sing the fight song.”

  “Grow up, Somers.”

  “It’s my birthday.”

  “Drop it.”

  “Ree, I’m just saying it’s my birthday and I want you to sing the fight song. On my birthday.”

  “I will swallow a bullet before I sing that song.”

  “That’s a little extreme. It’s just a—”

  “How did you know?” Hazard spun towards his partner again. Somers was still grinning. The sun bounced off his blond hair, his golden skin. It made the blue of his eyes infinitely deep. Twenty thousand leagues nothing. You could dive for a hundred years, a thousand years, and never hit the bottom of that blue.

  “I was just thinking I’ve never heard you sing and—”

  “No. You knew where I sat. How did you know?”

  “So you were at my games.”

  “I was at the high school games, Somers. How did you know where I sat?”

  Some of the brassiness seemed to fade from Somers. Some of the glee rubbed off, tarnished. His smile became pained—still a smile, but very close to a grimace—and he rolled one shoulder. “Come on, Ree.”

  “Come on what?”

  “It was you. I always knew where you were.”

  Hazard waited for the rest of it, for the smart-assed remark, for the sizzling sexual innuendo, even for the simple recitation of the past: of Mikey Grames and Hugo Perry and how they had tormented Hazard. Anything to explain Somers’s remark, to make it safe, to take away the threatening undercurrent. But it didn’t come. Somers stood there, as though waiting for something, and then he rolled one shoulder again and kicked at the snow and marched ahead without looking back.

  And what the hell, Hazard wondered, had just happened?

  He bent his attention to the lights and found nothing, and Somers stayed ahead of him, his gaze fixed on something distant, scanning something impossibly simple or incredibly complex, a degree of attention that disconcerted Hazard. By the time Hazard had reached the back of the Somerset house, his back ached from bending to check the lights, and his head ached from the glare of the sun on the snow, and his hands ached from balling them up and not shaking an answer, any answer, out of Somers.

  He paused, stretched his back, and studied the rear of the Somerset home. Sunlight turned the windows into opaque, white squares, and the same sunlight gleamed on the snow-covered trellis, on the lawn furniture, and on a row of four compact metal boxes. Somers stood at the center of the porch. His feet had trampled an oblong circle in the snow, and he was staring at his snow-covered shoes. He looked like he’d gotten lost a few miles back and was in danger of giving up. It took a hell of a lot of willpower, but Hazard ignored him.

  Instead, he made his way to the metal boxes. They were, as he had suspected, electrical heaters. The coils were dark, but as Hazard approached, the air warmed. Soft, puddling snow confirmed that, until recently, the heaters had been active.

  “Did you turn these off?”

  Somers blinked. The sun filled the hollows of his eyes, making his expression impossible to read. His voice, though, sounded normal. “What? No. Why?”

  “They were on. They were putting out a decent amount of heat, I’d guess. But they’re off.”

  “My mother—” Somers began. Then he shook his head, canceling his own suggestion. He moved towards the house
.

  “The extension cord is over here,” Hazard said.

  Somers just shook his head. He disappeared around one of the sections of the house that protruded, and he emerged a moment later with something in his hand. As he came towards Hazard, he tossed it through the air. Hazard caught it, turning it over and studying it. It was a plastic timer, the kind that people used to turn a Christmas tree on or off on a schedule. Or, in this case, a bank of electric heaters.

  “My father does that at parties,” Somers said. “He doesn’t want to come out in the cold and turn the heaters off, so he puts them on a timer.”

  “They weren’t plugged into the timer, though.”

  “Exactly.”

  Just to be sure, Hazard followed the heaters’ extension cord and found where it was plugged into the house. There was no timer. The Christmas lights were plugged into the other socket.

  “So, what? The killer unplugged the heaters and plugged them in here. Why?”

  “To trip the circuit breaker. The load from the heaters plus the load from the Christmas lights would definitely have been enough.”

  “And this?” Hazard displayed the timer.

  “He forgot. He didn’t notice. He didn’t care. Take your pick.”

  “But overloading that one breaker shouldn’t have affected the whole house.”

  Somers didn’t answer, but he nodded at the enormous window that looked in on the family room. Through the mullioned glass, the Christmas tree was dark. No lights, no sparkles, no glitter. Just dark strands of lights against the dark fir.

  “What the hell?” Hazard muttered. He started for the house, but Somers’s voice caught him.

  “Those are a man’s prints.” Somers directed a finger at a line of tracks that led through the crisp snow. “There’s another set going to the plug where I got the timer.”

  “So either a man or a woman who had time to put on a man’s shoes.” Hazard didn’t say anything, but he guessed Somers would reach the same conclusion: Grace Elaine would have had easy access to men’s shoes—all the shoes in her husband’s closet. No one would have noticed her slipping in and out of her bedroom or, for that matter, in and out of the garage.