by Lee Thompson
The man looked at her, wide-eyed. He shook his head. She wanted to ask him what that look was supposed to mean because it was unacceptable. She looked at her son for a few moments and sat down heavily and held on to his left leg, just below the knee. She said into the phone, in a toneless, faraway voice, “He’s gone, Raul. Gone…”
10
Captain Philips read Hazzard’s statement again. His face was pinched more than normal. He rubbed a finger between his eyes and said, “The kid died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Do you want to leave this part?” The captain turned the paper toward Nathan and pointed at a sentence. “The car, the Impala, vanished.”
“It did vanish.”
“Into the fog?”
“No, it just vanished.”
“You were chasing a ghost car.”
“It vanished into the fog, sir,” Nathan said, nodding.
“What were you doing pursuing someone at that speed in dense fog?”
“Trying to do my job.”
Philips nodded. He leaned back in his chair and perched his elbow on the chair and rubbed the corner of his mouth. “Were you the only one in your vehicle?”
“You know I was.”
He nodded as if it affirmed a suspicion he had. Nathan said, “Did you hear someone else in my dashboard cam?”
“No. Only you.”
“I hadn’t been talking.”
Philips frowned again, squinted, coughed to clear his throat. He said, “This is from your car, Nate. This very morning. Tell me, after listening, if it’s you.”
He hit a button on his keyboard and the computer screen flashed to life. After a second the speakers blared to life as well, and it was as if Nathan were in the car again it sounded so real. He closed his eyes and pictured himself behind the wheel. His voice on the recording startled him. He grabbed the arms of his chair tightly and straightened up as if someone had poked him from behind with a sharp knife.
All these fucking idiots, trying to fuck up my world… Don’t they know, don’t you know, you piece of shit, that there are penalties you gotta pay when you’re on my goddamn streets? When I catch you, I’ll tear your car apart for fun. I’ll strip-search you on the side of the road. I’ll stick this baton up your ass and make you dance like a puppet, because that’s what you are, what everybody is, most of you just don’t know it. Not yet. But I can teach you the error of your ways. Distill your life to its essence. Fuck stripping your clothes, I want to strip your soul. It’s my right, out here, buddy, I’m God. Even assholes like Philips and Commissioner Warren can’t extinguish this motherfucking furnace I got stoked. So look—
(There was a scream that rattled the speakers on Captain Philips’s desk.)
Christ! What was that? What did I hit?
(Then there was the sound of a man crying, slowly at first, then faster, louder. Nathan had cried like that when he was young, when he knew he was going to get punished for some rule he’d broken.)
Philips interlocked his fingers, placing them against his stomach. “That was you, do you contest that?”
Hazzard laughed.
“You think this is funny?”
“In all my years on the force I’ve never met one such as I.”
“You’ll be talking to Dr. Stone. Next week. Monday. Oh-eight-hundred.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“I’ll let him make the judgment on your character.”
“Tell me what you think, sir. I’d really like to hear it.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Next Monday at eight sharp. Be at his office.” He slapped the desk and pointed at the closed door and said, “Dismissed.”
Nathan didn’t move. “Do you think I should get something for the family?”
“What family?”
“The boy’s family. Flowers or something like that?”
“Stay away from them and stay away from reporters who come sniffing around. You hear me? Dismissed.”
Nathan saluted him and left the office. Everybody ignored him when he walked past them to reach the exit. He drove home in a daze, snippets of his insane self-talk right before the accident coming back to him. He had been thinking that stuff, because he believed it, yet he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t heard himself speaking it. No big surprise though. Everybody around him was crazy, and he’d done his best to protect himself from their influence, their corruption, but it was only a matter of time until he was as crazy as the rest of them, wasn’t it?
He felt more sane than ever, thinking he might be a lunatic. How many people could do that, he wondered? He had been crazy when he was younger. But he’d matured. He drove home in a daze, and it was 3:15 p.m. when he parked his Buick next to Barb’s Pathfinder. She wasn’t waiting at the door for him. He shivered and didn’t know why. Then he thought: How can I tell her about the psych exam with Dr. Stone?
No big shock if she already knew he talked to himself when excited—maybe he’d done it for years in the sack, maybe to her it was normal. One could hope. He wanted a beer, something to take the edge off enough so he could work on getting smashed without feeling guilty.
Barb was in the living room crying. He stood in the doorway, mystified—everything she’d had to lose she’d lost before they’d ever met. He groped for any other reasons a woman might cry. He cleared his throat. The phone rang. She didn’t move. He said, “Are you okay?”
“No! People won’t quit calling!”
“Who’s calling?”
“Who hasn’t?” she said, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook and he wanted to touch her but she seemed so fragile, so not herself, and he couldn’t move for a second anyway.
“People calling about the kid?”
“They’re calling me horrible things. And they’re calling you even worse.”
“It was an accident,” he said.
She looked up at him with angry red eyes. “Does that make it any better? They’re going to hang you and hang me with you and I didn’t do anything!”
“They’re not going to hang you with me. All that’s going to happen is they’ll fire me to make themselves look good. That’s it.”
“And we’re supposed to still live in this town? You expect me to go out there, by myself or with you, and to what? Ignore their stares? You expect me to ignore what they’ll say? I’m not doing that, Nate.”
“What are you saying? That we have to move away?”
“It’s horrible what happened, to that kid, his family, and to us, but now all we can do is make a choice and live with it. I’ve made my choice, Nate. I made it after the first ten strangers called.”
“Goddamn it, it was an accident!”
“I’m going to miss what we had. It was good, sometimes great.” She studied her hands. They were shaking. Hazzard tried to hold one of them but she jerked it away and said, “Don’t, that’ll just make it harder on us.”
“You can’t leave me.”
“Listen to yourself.”
“I don’t care how I sound. It’s the truth.”
“You’re marked now. I can’t stay.” She exhaled and her shoulders slumped. He stood and rubbed the back of his neck, thinking: You can’t abandon me when I need you most…
Standing by the refrigerator, more ready for a beer than ever, he said, “Where do you plan to go?”
“It’s best if you don’t know. We need a clean separation.” She walked stiffly to the sink and turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face, cursing to herself when the phone began ringing again. Hazzard moved up behind her and she must have sensed him because she started to look over her shoulder. In profile, the eye he could see trapped the light over the sink. She’d been the most beautiful girl. He’d given her all he had, exceeded his duties—he did the same in his career—and the two things he’d always counted on had evaporated as naturally as that morning fog.
Her hair was soft in his fingers, her scalp twitching as he closed his fist. He shoved her face i
nto the dirty dishwater. He’d always hated how she let it settle there and fester, too lazy to drain the sink, rinse the steel. She bucked against him as hard as she could. He kept his hip pressed firmly against her backside, trapping her. She gurgled, her hair fanned out, her fighting splashing dirty dishwater over them. Her hands were pressed against the counter. The pink nail polish looked fresh and bright and he wondered if she’d painted them that morning. The fight went out of her in the smallest of increments. She seemed to heave and swell. He held her face under the water for another minute, until she stilled, and he glanced casually out the window and saw birds in the feeder hanging from a birch tree.
He felt good when he turned her around and lowered her to the floor, leaned her back against the cabinet where they stored cleaning supplies and garbage bags. He said, “I’m going to miss you.” He stood, grabbed a beer and drank it in two gulps, burped, wiped his mouth with a steady hand. Captain Philips would not approve his course of action, not a one at the department would have, but who cared? It was his life, not theirs. They were fools. He, on the other hand, judged no one.
11
While Nathan Hazzard murdered his wife, Raul sat on the couch in the living room. Regina was helping Geneva in the kitchen. His parents had just left and his ears were still ringing with condolences and disbelief. It was 4:30 p.m. Too early in the day for tragedy. Things such as this, he believed should only happen in the dead of night, where one could not study them too closely, or be able to spot all the places such a loss ruptured in a marriage, and in one’s heart.
Daylight would fade in another hour and Raul didn’t know what to do with himself. His mother had held Regina and Geneva and cried endlessly. He and his father had gone out on the deck and shared two shots of whiskey, his dad believed it would help, but all it did was make Raul angrier, heightened his every sense to the point it felt like his clothing were constructed of broken glass. He threw up too, off the deck, into the yard, and his father knelt by him and patted his back, squeezed his shoulder, asked if they were going to have Dominic’s service done through his chapel. It had been too soon to ask, would have been too soon after a year had passed. He said, “He was three years old.”
“A good boy,” his dad said, “like you were.”
Then Raul couldn’t hear his mother weeping inside anymore because he was sobbing and his father embraced him and buried Raul’s head against his neck. His father smelled of Irish Spring soap and his jawline felt as smooth as Dominic’s arm had. Sitting there, alone in the living room, there was no question he’d want his father and Luther to help him bury his little boy. He hadn’t been able to walk into Dominic’s bedroom yet. He was unsure if his wife had. It felt, as it always did since his affair with Regina started three years ago, odd to have her and his wife in the same house. They tiptoed around Geneva, unless it was one of those rare occasions for genuine celebration. And that was how it had all started for them—Geneva gave birth to his son. That night she’d had one drink and retired to bed early. Regina had stayed up with Raul, drinking wine in the living room, the two of them on the couch, in the soft glow of the lamp, the house surrounded by dark trees, night sky, bright stars. They had laughed, their heads thrown back, their glances longer, and they grew more inebriated. Until the point they were slapping each other’s arms and thighs, it had all seemed so harmless, like they were nothing more than playful teenagers. He could not remember if she had scooted closer to him first, or he to her, or if it were a joint effort. But his head lingered on her thigh, just above her knee, and he’d been talking quietly about how his life had been forever changed with the birth of his son. She’d placed her hand on the side of his face and he could feel the heat radiating from between her legs and he’d turned onto his back, looked up into her face, such a lovely face, so much like his wife’s. And Regina touched his face, her fingers traced his lips. When they kissed, his lips tingled, and he drew her closer, so he could feel the rampant heat of her core, up onto his lap, his arms struggling around her, heavy, his breath coming too fast, palms sliding up her back, beneath her shirt, fingers fumbling with the strap of her bra. Her lips were softer than his wife’s, her mouth smaller, and they giggled, trying to discover how the other liked to be handled. Whenever he thought of her, he relived those moments, her tongue, gentle and probing, her eyelashes so long and dark, the feel of her silken hair tickling his bare chest, the rubbery feel of her nipple against his tongue.
Geneva and Regina coming in from the kitchen drew him from the only thoughts he could latch onto in an effort to avoid the unquestionable burial. Regina held his wife’s arm, and cupped a glass of vodka in her other hand. She led Geneva to the couch and placed her gently between them and said, “How does a movie sound? Maybe a Robin Williams flick? Something light and fun?”
Raul handed her the remote. She found Good Morning, Vietnam on a classic movie channel. Raul and Geneva watched the screen blankly, unable to focus on it, or each other. He wanted to ask her what was going through her head yet was afraid of how she might answer. As the movie played he tried to laugh in the places he thought were supposed to be funny, but every time he did, Geneva flinched. After a half dozen times, Raul excused himself and went into the dining room, scrolled through his phone looking for someone he might call, somebody who could and would listen to what he had to say, but Regina was in the living room, keeping his wife in one piece. He was inadequate for that role. He grabbed the phone book from the nook and opened it, placing his finger on a random name and number. He dialed, hurried to the back door, and out it, leaving the light off on the deck as the stranger’s phone rang three, four, five times. He was about to hang up when a man said, “Yeah?”
“Hello,” Raul said.
“Who is this?”
“My name’s Raul Spencer.”
“I’m not interested in buying anything.”
“I’m not selling anything. Do you have a minute?”
“Go ahead.”
“My son died today. This morning. A police officer ran him over with his car in the fog and killed him—”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“No. No joke. I was on my way home because my dad laid me off work. And then my truck wouldn’t start. I was walking when my wife sent me the text. But before that I’d been thinking that getting laid off was the worst thing in the world, you know? I was a fool. I don’t know how to handle this, who to blame—”
“Maybe you should blame your wife. Shouldn’t she have been watching him? Maybe you should also blame yourself, or maybe you’re innocent. I don’t know you, but you’re right, you’re a fool.”
Raul didn’t know what to say. He’d imagined that there was a fifty-fifty chance whoever he called would lend a sympathetic ear, simply listen.
“Are you there?” the man said.
“Who is this?”
“What? You called me. And this game you’re playing is a stupid one.”
“What game?”
“You’re telling me you called me on accident?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me that when I see you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Raul said. It took him a moment to realize the man had hung up. When he turned around, Regina was on the deck behind him. She said, “Who were you talking to?”
“I have no idea.”
“Hacklers?”
“What-lers?”
“Some people are cruel, Raul. They’ll call and say in a little kid’s voice that they’re Dominic, or they’ll just call you Daddy. Ignore them. Keep Genny away from the phone. Maybe I should stay a while, until you two can function again.”
“How long will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hacklers,” Raul said, shaking his head. “No, this guy knows me. He wasn’t some kid playing a prank.”
Before she could reply the doorbell rang and Raul jumped. Regina had her hand near her heart and licked her lips and said, “Expecting guests?”
�
��I’ll get it. Stay with Geneva for a minute, will you?”
“You got it.”
He grabbed a rolling pin from the kitchen, leaving the knives alone, unable to fathom any more blood, and went to the door just as someone pounded on it. He called, “Who is it?”
No one answered. When he tried looking through the peephole, all was black, as if the man standing outside had pressed his thumb to the glass. Regina and Geneva were in the hall behind Raul. His wife said, “It’s Isaac.”
“Your brother?”
“If you can call him that,” she said, and turned away. Regina raised her eyebrows, her hands out to her side, palms up, and shrugged. She mouthed I’ll be with her, then she left the hall, her shadow stretching long upon the wall. The man outside laughed, said, “Open the damn door already.”
Raul didn’t know Isaac was supposed to visit and he was a little hurt that Geneva hadn’t told him. He said, his face close to the door, “Isaac?”
“What?”
Raul hesitated a moment longer. It was stupid to think that it might be the man from the telephone call outside, but he couldn’t help worrying over it. He’d never been in a real physical confrontation, he was neither a lover nor a fighter, he just was, which, upon thinking about in his anxious, melancholy way, only led toward the mouth of depression. He unlatched the dead bolt, opened the door. Isaac grinned at him. He wasn’t much taller than Raul’s five-foot-six, but he was compactly built, muscled and lean. It had been easy to misjudge him when he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, much the way Raul had at his and Geneva’s wedding reception in Houghton Lake. But Raul had seen him at the pool of the motel, shirtless, rippling, and it made him feel like a much more miniscule man. Geneva had never known what her brother did in the military, although she suspected he was a Navy Seal or in Special Forces. Raul had only talked to him for a minute all those years ago, but it was enough time to learn they had nothing in common. Isaac was cocky and liked to give orders. He said, standing on the porch, the shadows set deep in the hollows of his eyes, “You going to leave me standing out here? Move aside.”