Paternity Case

by Gregory Ashe

  Hazard was already shaking his head.

  “What?” Somers said.

  “The faggots? One of them got her pregnant.”

  “That was Daisy’s word. For all the attitude and the act she put on, I don’t think she actually knows a whole hell of a lot.”

  “Oh?” Hazard’s tone was dry enough to crack skin.

  “Why don’t we at least talk to them? See what they can tell us about Hadley. No, hold on. You saw them at the party. You’re the one that noticed they were upset.”

  “One of them definitely was.”

  “I don’t think Bing or Daisy had a very clear idea of what their daughter was like.”

  “And you think these boys do?”

  “I think we have a better chance of learning the truth if we talk to her friends.”

  “Even though you think this is all my bullshit. Even though you think she’s not really involved.”

  “Will you not be an asshole about this?”

  Hazard didn’t answer, but he let the VW limp away from the curb, and when they were rolling down the street he asked, “Address?”

  Somers consulted his notepad, where he’d recorded the last of his conversation with Daisy. He rattled off the address, leaned back into the seat, and stared into the snow strafing the darkness. He knew, in his gut, that Mayor Newton was involved. He knew his father had been targeted for a reason. But he also knew that Emery Hazard was the smartest person he’d ever met, and he’d be a fool to ignore Hazard’s opinion. So for now, for the moment, he’d do this. He’d take a look. A part of him wondered what he’d do if push came to shove, if he and Hazard reached an impasse. No answer came to him; beyond that point in his thoughts there was only darkness like that darkness outside the VW.

  As they drove into the slow spill of snow, Somers heard Hazard mutter something.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.

  “No, what’d you say?”

  “Shut up and let me drive.”

  But Somers knew what he’d heard. And he smiled. He smiled so hard his cheeks came close to cracking because Emery Hazard had said to himself, in that dark, smoky voice like the best Scotch, two words: Meat case.

  ONE OF THE BOYS LIVED IN A SMALL HOUSE on the northeast side of Wahredua. Here, all the old rail services had once lived and died: hotels, motels, diners, warehouses, train yards, and the Missouri Pacific station. Even in the dark, Somers thought he could trace where the MP lines ran, like an invisible brace that kept the city from spilling out into the rest of the world. Here, that ferrous presence manifested in electric signage that hadn’t been updated since the 1950s, in rust-stains that dripped from old rivets, in brick that looked too soft and that sagged now, and, most interestingly, in a revival of urban chic stores, a chance at a second life for this portion of the city.

  It was here that the Pretty Pretty stood, Wahredua’s only gay bar. The only times Somers had been inside, he had been with Hazard. The men—and boys—inside had been nice. Friendly. Hell, they’d been plenty friendly. They’d bought Somers a few beers. They’d wanted to talk. About Hazard, sure, because everybody wanted to know about the local boy come back, about the city’s only gay cop. But they’d talked, too, about Somers. He wasn’t stupid. He knew why. He liked the attention. But that wasn’t the reason he thought about it, not deep down, not if he were honest.

  No, deep down, when memories flashed of the strobing lights, of the yeasty beer, of the press of hard, muscled bodies against his own, of the smell of a dozen different colognes and sweat, all that carried with it one other thing, like a spotlight shining on it, and then it didn’t matter what else Somers remembered because that spotlight was just so damn bright. He remembered Hazard looking at him. He remembered the look—

  —of jealousy—

  —on Hazard’s face. Like one of the searchlights that car dealerships used, that’s how bright it was. Like he couldn’t look at it too long, not without a hell of a lot of danger.

  Hazard said something.

  “Yeah, this is it,” Somers said, flipping through the pages of his notepad again.

  “I said what’s his name.”

  “Frank. Hold on—yeah. Frank.”

  “I asked you two times.”

  “Sorry. My head.” He left it vague, hoping that would be enough.

  It wasn’t. “What about it?”

  “Just a headache.”

  “So why’d I have to repeat myself?”

  “Jesus Christ. It’s like the inquisition. How about we go in there and do our job?”

  Hazard’s face revealed nothing; as always, it was set in the cold indifference that he wore so well. But worry fluttered in Somers’s gut. Could he possibly have guessed? Could he—

  No. No, Hazard had no interest. None at all. He’d made that perfectly clear. And what the hell did it matter, anyway? What the hell did it matter with Cora and Evie and—

  “Are you coming?” Hazard stamped his feet. “What the hell is up with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m the one that got hit in the head. Twice. But you’re the one acting like you’ve got a concussion.”

  “I said nothing. I’m fine.”

  Still no expression in that pale, brutishly beautiful face.

  Somers sighed and followed his partner to the door. The house, a standard tract house that had most likely gone up in the forties, maybe the fifties, showed its age: the metal window frames had rusted and peeled, while the ancient green plastic canopy above the door looked ready to collapse under the snow’s weight. The lights in those windows were dark, but Hazard hammered again on the door, and then again.

  And the door opened. The boy standing inside was dark-complexioned, his hair messily tousled, his eyes bruised and hollow. Dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, he folded thin arms over a thin chest, and suddenly Somers thought of Hazard as a teenager, his slender frame, his defensiveness. There was some of that in this boy. Maybe a lot of that. It was in the way he cocked his jaw like he’d rather take a punch than open his mouth.

  “Frank?” Hazard said.

  Nothing.

  “Is that you? Is your name Frank?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Detectives Hazard and Somerset. We need to talk to you about Hadley Bingham.”

  “My parents aren’t home,” the boy said, and he slammed the door hard enough that snow cascaded off the plastic canopy.

  Hazard glanced at Somers, and Somers shrugged. “I’d say we found him.”

  With a grunt in response, Hazard leaned back, studying the house. “So we come back tomorrow when the parents are here?”

  “Unless you want to force your way into this house without a warrant,” Somers said, massaging one temple, “and interrogate a minor without a guardian present—”

  Before Somers could finish, the door swung open again. The boy who stood there, though, was not the one who had answered the door. This boy had dark hair too, although in a cleaner cut than the first one, and dark eyes with even deeper hollows dug around them. Where the first boy had been thin, this boy packed plenty of muscle. He stood with a kind of casual arrogance that Somers remembered. It was teen jock arrogance. Somers had been pretty damn good at it himself.

  “You’re here to talk about Hadley?” His voice was deeper. From the bottom of those dark hollows, his eyes looked feverish.

  “Are you—”

  “If you’re here to talk about Hadley, come inside. If it’s anything else, get lost.”

  The boy disappeared into the house’s darkness. Hazard glanced at Somers.

  “We do our job, right?” Somers said. Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, Somers opened the storm door and stepped inside.

  Within, the house seemed to hold only more darkness and cold. Somers walked deeper into the building. It wasn’t a big house. It wasn’t even an average size, not anymore, but the darkness and his unfamiliarity made every step seem longer. Wh
en Somers reached a short hallway, he saw light from under a door, and the bigger boy’s silhouette against the light.

  “Down here,” the boy said before stepping into the room. Light swelled for a moment before the door shut again, leaving Somers blinking spots from his vision.

  It was just nerves, Somers told himself, but his fingers were tingling. A dark house. Very dark. And this strange reception. Both of the boys looked like they might be on something. Drugs. Maybe just their dads’ beer. Inside that room, they could have a knife. Or a gun. In the darkness next to him, Hazard’s breathing was steady but harsh.

  “This was your goddamn idea,” Hazard whispered.

  Somers strode down the hallway. His fingers had gone number. He barely felt the splintered paneling on the door as he pushed it open. Keeping to one side of the doorway, he let his eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. His blood roared in his ears.

  And when he could see, pity washed over him. The room was barren: a twin bed without sheets, a black and white TV the size of a cereal box, and a pile of tangled clothing near one wall. Overhead, a bare bulb gave the only light, and that same light made a flat glare against a naked window, blocking out the night. In one corner of the room, something silver glittered in the corner as though thrown there. Somers focused on it. A surge of excitement ran through him. Yes, he’d seen something like that before.

  On the twin bed, the two boys nestled together, the smaller one sitting inside the vee of the bigger boy’s legs, the two of them cocooned in blankets. Here, in full light, the differences were even more striking. But so, too, were the similarities. The grief in their faces. Or was it something else? Fear? Shame? Guilt? Again, Somers found himself facing the ghost of the teenage Hazard as he looked at the slender boy with the windswept hair.

  “You can sit on the bed if you want,” the bigger boy said. “We’ll move.”

  Somers shook his head. Behind him, Hazard’s presence was like a fire. What was Hazard thinking? Did he feel the same mixture of sympathy and concern as Somers? Or was it envy? Or was it distaste? It was hard to know; Hazard was close-mouthed about almost everything personal, but he was particularly close-mouthed when it came to other men, other gay men. But he could feel Hazard behind him, feel the heat of him like a goddamn inferno, and Somers couldn’t push away the question: what was he thinking? Did he even see the similarities? Did he see what his own life might have been if he’d been born twenty years later? Without the hate, without the persecution, without the loneliness?

  “We’ll stand,” Somers said. “Thanks.”

  “Why the fuck,” the thin boy said, “did you invite them in?”

  “They want to talk about Hadley.”

  “Yeah. I know. That’s my point.”

  The bigger boy lifted a hand to smooth the other boy’s hair, and the slender boy jerked away from his touch. Unseen by the smaller boy, the bigger boy’s face contorted in a look of pain. No, worse than pain. Torment. His hand hovered in the air a moment longer before dropping to his side.

  “Frank?” Somers said.

  For a moment, neither boy spoke. Then the bigger one nudged the thin one. “He’s talking to you.”

  “I heard him. I don’t have to say a motherfucking word to him.”

  “Then that makes you Dustin,” Somers said.

  “Yeah,” the bigger boy said. “Dusty. Or Dust. Could you come in and close the door? It’s cold.”

  And it was cold, even in the stripped-down bedroom. Maybe the house didn’t have heat. Was that even possible? Somers imagined the pipes bursting in February. He shuffled into the room, careful to avoid the piled clothes, and made room for Hazard, who shut the door behind them. Then the room seemed too small, and Hazard seemed too big. The elephant in the room, Somers thought. Jesus, what an elephant. And Hazard still hadn’t said anything.

  “We wanted to talk to you about Hadley,” Somers said into the silence. Each word was like somebody throwing rocks at a frozen lake: the snap of the stillness, the plunge, the total disappearance of the source of the noise. Frank was staring off at the black-and-white TV like it had the cure for cancer, and Hazard was staring through the two boys at some point a few miles below ground. Dusty was the only one who seemed to have heard Somers; he nodded his head.

  Scrubbing at his clean-cut hair, Dusty said, “You guys were there.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “At the party. When she—” Suddenly, tears overflowed his eyes, and he swung a big hand around press against his face. His whole body jerked, and the movement rocked Frank. For a heartbeat, the slender boy’s eyes snapped down to the arms that held him. Then his cheeks colored and his attention went back to the TV.

  “Yes,” Somers said. “We were there.”

  “Sorry. I’m just—I can’t even think right now. I’m really sorry. I am. It’s like my brain is all mush.”

  “It’s called trauma,” Somers said, softening his voice.

  Dusty swiped at his eyes, and then he buried his face in Frank’s wild hair. Again, a moment of tenderness flashed in Frank’s face, and then it was gone as he schooled his features to emptiness.

  “She didn’t deserve that,” Dusty said. “Nobody deserves that.”

  And that, for the first time, brought out a lasting change in Frank’s face. The boy’s pale features twisted, and his knuckles whitened where he clutched at the blanket.

  “Can you tell us about Hadley?” Somers said.

  “Yeah, sure. What about her?”

  “Well, just to get started, can you tell me how you knew her?”

  “School,” Dusty said. He had a kind of simple earnestness to him, Somers was starting to realize. The cockiness was there too, the standard dose of teenage over-confidence that accompanied good looks, athletics, and a few successful sexual encounters, but underneath it, the boy seemed eager to please. “She moved in a few months ago, right after school started. She’s—” He paused as pain wrenched at his features, and then he forced himself to continue. “She was in our chem class.”

  “What was your relationship like with Hadley?”

  “Fuck off,” Frank burst out.

  Dusty stroked his shoulder, pulling the thin boy against his chest. “C’mon—”

  “No. Fuck off both of you, why don’t you? Stop, Dust. I’m just—no, I’m not going to calm down. What the fuck do they want?”

  “We just want to know about Hadley,” Somers said, locking eyes with the furious boy.

  Frank tossed his head, his long hair dancing in front of his eyes. “What do you need to know? She was an arrogant, selfish, psychotic bitch. There. Is that all? Can you get real busy and go fuck yourselves somewhere else?”

  Throughout this rant, Dusty had been whispering warnings in Frank’s ears, rubbing the slender boy’s back and shoulders as though trying to gentle a startled horse. Now, though, his hands tightened on Frank, and genuine pain sparked in Frank’s face. He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t try to pull away. But the pain was there, and Somers was starting to think the skinny boy was tougher than he’d realized.

  “That’s enough. That’s just enough, all right? Cut it out.” Red suffused Dusty’s face, and he gave Frank one hard, furious shake.

  Frank fought furiously, struggling against Dusty’s grip, his legs whipping free of the blanket, his nails raking the lean, taut muscles in Dusty’s arms, his head cracking backward against Dusty’s shoulder loud enough to make Somers wince.

  “She’s a bitch,” Frank shouted, writhing in Dusty’s grip. “She’s a stupid, selfish cunt. She’s—get off me. Get off me you fucking pussy, get off, get the fuck off, get off!” The last words erupted in a scream, and then Frank dissolved into sobs. Shaking, Frank tried to free himself one last time. Dusty whispered something in his ear, drew him back against his chest, and this time Frank turned inwards, his cheek pressed against Dusty’s smooth, muscled chest as he wept.

  Somers tried to keep his eyes on the moment before h
im. He tried to think, tried to process what he saw. And part of his brain was successful. Part of his brain noticed the red lines of blood on Dusty’s arms, part of his brain noticed the mixture of fury and—what? despair?—in Dusty’s face. Part of his brain noticed the strength and gentleness in Dusty’s embrace.

  But another part of his brain had gotten tangled in memory, and again he found himself back in Windsor, in that attic room, where he had pressed himself against a naked Emery Hazard, only to be rejected. A fight. It had all started with the phone call to Cora, and she’d been angry that he was missing Thanksgiving, angry that after all the hard work to reconcile, the same old problem cropped up again: work interfering with his family life. And then Somers had found hooch. And then he had drunk himself stupid. Too stupid. Stupid enough to think about Emery Hazard, upstairs, naked, in the bed they shared, and stupid enough to think maybe—

  —that kiss in the locker room, the stripped-down desire in Hazard’s eyes—

  —there was a chance, maybe he wouldn’t feel so shitty if there was just a chance between them.

  That had been stupid, of course. Hazard had made it perfectly clear that there was nothing, no interest, no reason for Somers to think otherwise. But now, watching the tenderness between these two boys, Somers felt a knot in his belly: self-pity, arousal, and a furious jealousy. Because it should have been like this, that night in Windsor. It should have been this, and it should have been more: to finally touch Hazard, really touch him, to finally feel those stiff, sparse hairs across his chest, to feel the ripple of corded muscle, to smell his skin and his hair and his sweat. And with an effort that was physical, that tore at his gut, Somers pushed the thoughts away because he had Cora, because he had Evie, because Hazard didn’t want a goddamn thing to do with him, not after—well, Jesus, just look at today. Not after today when Somers had gotten plastered and punched him in the face. Twice.

  “You want to explain all that?”

  It was Hazard’s voice, icily cold, and for a terrible moment, Somers had the dizzying impression that Hazard knew, that he had spoken his thoughts out loud and that now Hazard was demanding justification. Then, clarity returned, and he realized Hazard was addressing Dusty and Frank.