by Gregory Ashe
She shushed him and patted his knee. “Your father wants to hear all about that serial killer you’re trying to catch. I told him it’s absolutely awful to dwell on something like that, but he talks about it all the time, and I know he’s so eager for you to tell him about it.”
“That’s enough, Aileen,” Frank said, his face turned away from them, his eyes half closed.
“He really does want you to tell him all about it,” she whispered to Hazard.
“He’s not a serial killer,” Hazard said. “Not yet, anyway. Technically, he’s just a spree killer. For now.”
A machine in the room beeped steadily.
“Oh,” Aileen said. “Well, I’m sure that’s very horrible too.”
“The boy’s right,” Frank said, his face still flat on the pillow. “Go home, Aileen.”
“Now, Frank, I—”
“Go home.” He coughed again, and Hazard’s whole body tensed, but it was a solitary eruption. “Get some sleep. No need for both of us to stay in this shit hole.”
“I’m perfectly fine here.”
“Go home, for the love of God. I’m not going to croak tonight. If something happens, the boy will call you.”
Aileen’s attention flickered between Hazard and his father.
Hazard nodded and squeezed her hand.
Squeezing back, hard, she said, “Well, if you insist. I won’t lie: I’ll be happy to have a real shower and change my clothes. But, bunny, are you sure? You’ve been up all day, and—”
“He’s a grown man, Aileen. For Christ’s sake, he can stretch out and sleep in the chair for one night so his mother can sleep in an honest-to-God bed.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hazard said. “Places like this normally have somewhere for family members to sleep, right? Or they can bring a cot up. Something. Go home and get some rest.”
“Well,” Aileen’s gaze darted to her husband again, and then she seemed to make a decision. “Walk me to the elevators, at least. I haven’t seen you in months.”
It took a few minutes for Aileen to gather her belongings—judging by the miscellany of bags, her stay at the hospice had lengthened and evolved, with friends dropping off more clothes and other supplies as the days dragged on. She shrugged into her coat, fussed over Frank, who lay unresponsive except for a few muttered comments, and then let Hazard take her elbow and walk her to the elevator. When the door to 503 closed behind them, she let out a breath. Hazard wasn’t even sure she was aware of it.
“He’s not doing well, Emery.” She stopped, turned, took both of his hands in hers. “He’s terrified, although he won’t show it. The staff will offer you a room, but . . . but please don’t take it. He doesn’t like being alone. And you can’t have the lights off, so—” She fumbled with the bags. “I’ve got a sleep mask here.”
“I don’t need it. Why can’t we turn the lights off? Is that some sort of state safety code or something? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“It’s in here somewhere, muffin.”
“Forget the sleep mask. Why can’t I turn off the lights? I’ll have them bring up a cot, fine, but the lights, that’s crazy.”
“Here it is,” she said, crowing a little. “Bunny, they don’t have any cots. They built this place with the bedroom suites so they wouldn’t need them. I think they might have a few, but they’ve already loaned them out.” She pressed a pink, lacy concoction into his hand. “He likes the lights on.”
Hazard’s hand tightened around the sleep mask until his knuckles popped out. “He’s afraid of the dark?”
“He’s sick and he’s hurting, muffin. He’s not thinking clearly.”
“This is the same son of a bitch who beat the shit out of me with a flashlight when I asked for a nightlight.”
“Muffin.”
“This is ridiculous. We’re both going home. Right now. That miserable old piece of shit can stay here, alone, with the lights on. We’ll come back in the morning.”
And that precipitated a whole dance about who was staying and who was going, with Aileen visibly worried that Hazard really did intend on following her home, and with Hazard trying to control himself while promising to stay and leave the lights on. Finally he dragged his mother onto the elevator, rode down to the main floor, and walked her to the front door. The sliding doors whooshed open; spring air came in, a blanket of dark, green smells that was cool against Hazard’s fevered skin.
“I really do think it would be better—” Aileen tried one last time.
“Good night,” Hazard said.
She stretched up to buss his cheek, and Hazard had to fight not to roll his eyes. Nobody like parents to make you feel fifteen all over again.
When he went back inside, Rodrigo was watching from the reception desk.
“You can go home at ten,” Hazard said. “I don’t need anything.”
“Maybe I’ll wait around,” Rodrigo said, and then he shrugged. “In case you change your mind.”
Hazard took the elevator back up and found his father in the same position, head turned away, cheek flattened against the pillow. Hazard sprawled in one of the chairs, grateful for the silence. That was one thing he could count on with his father: silence. It ran between them like a river. It was, maybe, the best part of their relationship.
Hazard didn’t mean to, but he dozed. The last few days had been a constant drain, and the fight with Somers had sent adrenaline coursing through him, leaving him exhausted when it finally burned itself out. He didn’t sleep, not exactly, but he drifted at the edge of consciousness where dreams blurred with memories: his mother bussing his cheek, Somers hugging him, snatches of the fight, the long dark drive across the state, with mile markers flicking past like cards in a magic trick, then the fight again, the look on Somers’s face, the look that Hazard didn’t recognize, and the lack of recognition made Hazard scared, and the fear made Hazard furious.
He jerked awake then, retrograde anger and fear lingering after the dream. The back of the wooden chair had left a kink in his neck, and he massaged it as he cleared his eyes.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Frank said.
Hazard scanned the room for a clock; he found it on the wall by the door, digital numbers that read 11:19.
“Yeah,” Hazard said.
His father still lay with his face turned away. “It’s seventy-five miles. Eighty, tops. That’s an hour of decent driving. It took you two.”
“I had car trouble.”
“Big surprise, you driving that foreign piece of shit. A minivan, for Christ’s sake?”
Hazard’s phone buzzed, and he drew it out, hoping for a text from Somers. Instead, he saw a message from the Citizens for Glennworth Somerset as Mayor Committee, with a punchy little message reminding him to get out and vote next week. He lingered in the messaging app. He thought about writing something small. Just the groundwork for the bridge they’d have to build later.
He tapped out a quick message: I made it. Then, before he could reconsider, he hit send.
After two minutes, the screen timed out and went dark.
“Is that him?” his dad asked.
“No.”
“What, he’s too busy to come with you?”
“He is busy. He’s a detective. He’s got a lot going on right now. His dad is running for mayor, he’s got a daughter.”
“Bullshit. You’re getting married, aren’t you? Doesn’t he have any idea what that means?”
“He’s already done it once. He’s got to have some kind of idea.”
Frank rolled his head toward Hazard. The wasting thinness was worse than Hazard had realized in his first impression, and some part of him knew, in that moment, that his father really was dying. No second acts. No miracles. Nobody would walk into the room and accidentally wake Frank Hazard up from that long sleep.
“Marriage is about supporting each other. You want to talk about love, fine. But it’s a partnership, that’
s what it is. One hand washes the other. He’s so busy, he can’t come here and give you a shoulder to lean on?”
Hazard got up from the chair. His stride carried him to the window in two paces; he stood there, parting the blinds, looking out at a sea of yellow sodium light. Something moved near the dumpsters, and a moment later an opossum squeezed out from between the ill-fitting lids, dropped to the ground, and scurried into the darkness.
“So what’s this big case he’s working on? What’s so important that he can’t be here?”
“You know what?” Hazard said, his gaze fixed on that patch of shadow, trying to spot the opossum. He thought he could pick out its silhouette. “I don’t want to hear you talk about marriage.”
His dad drew out a long, hacking noise of disgust, and for a moment it seemed like he’d lose control of it and it would degrade into that racking, tearing cough. But then Frank said, “You think you’re so much better than me.”
“I am better than you.”
“Even as a kid, you were so full of yourself. So many fucking airs.”
Hazard withdrew his fingers; the blinds slid together with a metallic rustle.
“You know what I wanted? I wanted a son I could take hunting. I wanted a son I could take fishing. I wanted a son who’d drink a beer with me and listen to a Cardinals’ game. You’re so smart, you could be making a million bucks doing anything else, but first you’re a cop and now, who the fuck knows what you’re doing.”
Hazard turned slowly, his eyes moving across the room, letting his dad be another piece of furniture his gaze could skate over. “Life’s full of disappointments.”
“What a fucking joke.”
“What?”
“You. This. Me.” His dad fell back against the pile of pillows. “You think this is about you being a fag?”
Hazard wanted to close his eyes; he didn’t allow himself to do it. Instead, he ran through a litany that had gotten longer over the years: you’re a grown man; you’ve got people who love you; you’ve been a cop, a detective, and now a private detective; you’re smarter; you’re stronger; this is one tiny part of your life weighed against all the good things. He crossed the room, grabbed his coat, and slid one arm into a sleeve.
“What? Now you’re leaving? Jesus Christ, Emery. Grow some balls.”
“I’m getting my bag from the car.”
“You think I care anymore if you’re throwing your sausage to the Somerset boy? Who the fuck can care about something like that?”
“When I come back, I don’t want to hear you say his name again. I don’t want to talk about him at all.”
He took the elevator down; Rodrigo was gone, and a sloe-eyed girl with a mop of seaweed green hair waited at the desk. When Hazard passed her, she hailed him and handed him a slip of paper.
“Rodrigo wanted me to give you this.”
Hazard opened it to see a Snapchat handle. He snorted, wadded it up, and tossed it into the wastebasket. Then he went out to the Odyssey, got his duffel, and carried it back to 503. Even before he opened the door, he could hear his father’s racking cough. He let himself into the room, where he saw his dad hunched over in bed, tears streaming down his face as he choked and gasped into a handful of tissues. Hazard dropped the duffel and raced over to the bed.
“Where’s your inhaler?”
Frank just kept coughing, his whole body shaking.
Hazard dug through the bedding, found nothing, his hands scraping his father’s bony shanks that had wasted throughout the illness. Then he yanked open the nightstand drawers, trying to find it. A Gideon Bible. A stick of chewing gum. A paper clip with a shopping list, the date in the corner from 1997. Hazard’s dad was still coughing, and panic wormed through Hazard.
He forced himself to take a breath, tasting that over-mentholated air again, and think: his mother had held it for his father, had waited for the fit to pass, and then she had—
Jogging around to the other side of the bed, Hazard tossed a spare box of tissues to the ground and spotted the inhaler. He bent over his dad, holding out the inhaler.
“Ok, come on. You need this, you need to—” Hazard tried to get the inhaler into position, but his dad was shaking so hard that he couldn’t manage. Finally Hazard sat on the bed, wrapped an arm around his dad’s shoulders, and steadied him. Together, they managed to get the inhaler settled, and Hazard compressed the cartridge once, feeling more than hearing the slight hiss as it ejected the atomized medicine.
The coughing went on for a while longer, but it was slowing. Frank leaned into Hazard, too weak to keep himself upright. Hazard became aware of the micro-tremors working their way through his father even after the spasm had passed.
Finally, voice ragged, his dad said, “Ok.”
An old diesel engine was trying to turn over, a distant chugga-chugga-chugga that set Hazard’s hackles on edge.
His dad was still shaking so hard that if Hazard moved, he’d probably collapse onto the pile of pillows.
“You don’t have to sit here,” his dad said. “I can sit up all by my own fucking self.”
Chugga-chugga-chugga. A shrill whining had joined the engine’s cranking.
“For fuck’s sake,” Frank said. “Get a tune-up.”
Hazard started laughing. And then his dad laughed a little—a wheezy laugh, a short laugh, one that ended with the blood-specked tissues clasped to his mouth again. Then the old diesel grumbled to life, and the whine of a fan belt eased off into the night. Hazard helped his dad settle back against the pillows, and then he moved to a chair.
“Well,” Frank said, “are you going to catch that son of a bitch maniac or not?”
Hazard thought about the question. He thought about what his mother had said. “I’m going to try. Most of our leads have dried up.” And then, piece by piece, he laid out the Keeper case, all the work that had gone into it, all the dead ends they had run into. Frank interjected a few questions, but mostly he listened. He had turned his face to the window again.
When Hazard had finished, his dad said, “You might as well tell me about this detective agency.”
“It’s called Astraea.”
Frank grunted. “You think of that name?”
A wild grin caught the corner of Hazard’s mouth and he said, “No, that was John.”
“You know fifty percent of small businesses go under in their first year.”
“Twenty percent.” Then Hazard added grudgingly, “Fifty percent in the first five years.”
Frank grunted again. “Who’s keeping your books?”
“I am. They’ve got good computer programs for most of that now.”
“Shouldn’t do your own books. Bobby Kessler, that’s how his whole operation fell apart.”
“Bobby Kessler’s business failed because he was selling knock-off Macintosh computers he shipped in from Taiwan.”
“You should always have somebody else doing the books.”
“Yeah. Ok.”
“Who’s doing your taxes? You get the right guy, they can save you a bundle on taxes. Rudy Miller, he’s a whiz.”
“Rudy Miller lives in Florida now.”
“That son of a bitch.” Another heartbeat. “You know, they’ve got these places that’ll sell discount office supplies. Cheap, too. You’re throwing your money down the drain if you’re going to a regular store.”
It went on and on like that, until Hazard’s dad wore down. He fell asleep in the middle of explaining why semi-synthetic motor oil was a con job by the automotive industry, and for a moment Hazard thought it had happened, and he snapped forward. Then he heard his dad’s rough breathing, and he drooped in his chair, not sure why he was crying or how to stop.
He slept on the floor, using the duffel as a pillow, with the lights on. Sometime around four, he broke down and used the sleep mask.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MARCH 30
SATURDAY
8:54 AM
&nbs
p; HAZARD WOKE FEELING BRUISED all over, as though he’d gone ten rounds with the vinyl flooring overnight. For a moment, he was disoriented behind the sleep mask. Then he remembered: the fight with John, the night drive, the hospice. His head was pounding, and he wanted to sleep another hour. He thought he could manage it, if everyone kept quiet; the mask allowed only a faint sliver of light at the edges, and he was so worn out that he was already drifting when a giggle hooked him at the edge of consciousness.
He recognized that giggle.
And then he heard his dad, who was trying to speak quietly and doing a terrible job of it, say, “Well, I’ve never seen anybody do their hair like that. We can call that the electric-do.”
And then more giggling.
Evie’s giggling.
He dragged off the mask, sat up, blinded for a moment by the morning sunlight. As his eyes adjusted, he felt a hand at the back of his neck.
“John?”
“Hi.” Somers’s face was set in a smooth smile, but the worry was there, etched around his eyes. “Sorry we woke you up. I didn’t know what to do. Your mom told us to come here.”
“It’s ok.” Hazard scrubbed his face, and then he suddenly tasted his own mouth. “God. Ok. Good morning. Give me a few minutes.”
He got to his feet, fished his dopp kit out of the duffel, and was halfway to the ensuite bathroom when he remembered Evie. He glanced back, and his fingers relaxed with surprise; he barely caught the dopp kit.
Evie was sitting on the bed with his dad, who now wore an oxygen mask. She had brought her collection of toys—LOL dolls were the latest craze—and she was babbling to Frank about their names, their clothes, the surprise pearls that they had come packaged in. None of it made any sense, the way she told it, unless you were acquainted firsthand with the toys, but Frank just nodded and laughed and teased one doll’s hair into new styles that made Evie dissolve into helpless giggles.
Frank Hazard was playing with dolls.
Somers cleared his throat, and Hazard jolted back to himself, catching the small smile on Somers’s face as his fiancé waved him toward the bathroom. He did his best to make himself human again—brushing his teeth and washing his face went a long way—but his head was still pounding when he left the bathroom. His eyes went straight back to the bed. Frank and Evie had abandoned the dolls, and they were playing patty cake. Frank Hazard was marking it with a B and throwing it in the oven for baby and me.