Custody battles, p.24
Custody Battles, page 24
part #2 of Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand Series
“Emery, bro,” Dulac shouted into the mic, “what’s up, man?”
The sound of a scuffle ensued. Then Somers said loudly, “Out! And shut the door! Go check on Keller—the last traffic ticket he wrote had so many four-letter words I had to toss it.”
Dulac said something—from the tone, a protest—but after a moment, the noise on the other end of the call faded.
“Trouble in paradise?” Hazard asked.
“Don’t start,” Somers said. “I’m up to my goddamn eyeballs in this shit.”
“It’s because you were their colleague and you still want to be their friend.”
“Oh? Is that the problem, Ree?”
An elderly woman shuffled out of the apartment building ahead; she was wearing a plastic shopping bag over her hair, and she was in a terrycloth bathrobe and bear-paw slippers. She looked around, saw Hazard, and for some reason, gave him the finger. Yeah, he thought. You’re not wrong.
“You know what? It’s none of my business.”
“Golly, no, Ree. You’ve got some wisdom to share about me being chief. Please, continue.”
“John—”
“Let me get Yarmark in here so he can write it down.”
“I’m sorry I said anything.”
Something rasped against the microphone. Something else clicked restlessly. A pen, maybe. “Forget it. It’s been—work has been shit lately.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hazard hurried to add, “Without commentary.”
When Somers laughed, the sound was both genuine and tired. “I know you actually believe you could manage that, which makes it so sweet. No, I’ll be fine. Thanks. I saw the videos, Ree, and I see your point, but I don’t know what you want me to do. And I was serious about—about what I said. I’m not comfortable giving you access to police resources unless you’re officially contracted onto a job. Before, when I thought the sheriff wanted you helping—”
“Yes, I understand. I wanted your opinion on the videos.” Honesty compelled him to add, “And I called Brendon. The videos from those hunting cameras? The footage from Slade’s and Kerigan’s are mysteriously missing. Brendon swears the cameras are functional, but the recordings are gone. So, I wanted to know if Kerigan Attaway has a record. I already checked Case.net, and nothing went to trial, but I was hoping you had something—an arrest, maybe—that hadn’t made it into publicly available materials.”
Keys clicked on the other end of the call. “I can’t give you her file, Ree.”
“I understand.”
“Even if I wanted to.”
“I’m not asking you to compromise your ethics—”
“Even if I wanted to,” Somers stressed, “I couldn’t give you anything on Kerigan Attaway or, maiden name, Kerigan Chaney.”
The old woman with the shopping bag hair accessory was smoking furiously, the smoke streaming away on the stiff breeze. If the cold bothered her, she gave no sign of it. She shifted her weight and scratched the back of one veiny calf with a bear-paw slipper.
“Oh,” Hazard said.
A grin laced Somers’s words. “Goodbye, Ree.”
The call disconnected.
Somers couldn’t give Hazard anything because there wasn’t anything to give. That was the implication, anyway. And that fit with what Hazard suspected—if Tony had been blackmailing Kerigan, which aligned with the details Hazard had gleaned so far, then Kerigan’s secret couldn’t have made it into a police report. If it had, it wouldn’t have been a secret anymore, and therefore wouldn’t have held any value.
Hazard’s next attempt was his contact at the county courthouse. Siggy Morris had hired Hazard to go after his ex, a much younger man who had taken off with a number of Siggy’s possessions. Among those items had been a collection of antique pulls and knobs and handles. Cabinet hardware. It was, in some fit of cosmic idiocy, apparently quite valuable. Hazard had retrieved it from the boy-toy, whom he had caught up with at a Denny’s outside Liberty. Instead of payment, Hazard had worked out an agreement with Siggy for occasional help accessing public-but-inconvenient-to-access records. Like, for example, divorce records.
“I can’t help you, Mr. Hazard,” Siggy said. He affected a faux-British accent even though he’d been born, Hazard had learned, on a mink farm south of Keokuk. “Those records are sealed, and I’m not risking my job to give you a look at them.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Hazard said, although he did some constructive swearing in his head. “They’re completely sealed?”
“The only public information is the decree itself: in 2017, Kerigan Chaney Attaway was officially divorced from Ian Thomas Attaway, with full custody of Slade Ian Attaway given to the mother.”
“Is it common for divorce records to be sealed like that?”
“It’s not uncommon,” Siggy said. “Often they’re sealed to protect the privacy of a minor. Or if there are instances of abuse.”
“All right,” Hazard said. “Thank you.”
The call disconnected. Bear-paw lady shuffled back inside, the butts of three cigarettes fresh on the concrete slab where she’d stood. A breeze stirred the last rust-colored leaves on the maples lining the street. One fell and spun down the sidewalk like a rowel.
Ok, Hazard thought. What could he conjecture based on the details he’d collected? Tony had some sort of hold on Kerigan. It was somehow connected to Kerigan’s ex, Ian—perhaps because it was also connected to the divorce records that were now sealed. And although Tyson, the baseball coach, had suspected that the secret had something to do with a sexual relationship between Kerigan and Tony, perhaps an extramarital affair, Hazard didn’t think so. Kerigan’s divorce would have been finalized long before, and if there had been a sexual component to the relationship—setting aside, for a moment, the obvious ick factor of Tony sleeping with both sisters—Hazard trusted that Somers would have sensed it and said something.
Hazard listed out the details again in his mind and then stopped. Tyson had reported Tony’s threat, and something about the phrasing didn’t make sense. Tony had referred to Kerigan’s secret as your after-school special. What the hell did that mean?
He placed another call. It rang six times before going to voicemail, and he said, “If you don’t call me back, I’ll ask Auggie to help.”
The phone buzzed in his hand thirty seconds later.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Theo whispered.
“Hello, Theo.”
“Do you know what he’s like? Do you know how easily he gets dragged into trouble like this?”
“He did seem eager to look for those videos.”
“What did I ever do to you? I’ve been nice to Colt. Hell, I’ve been beyond nice. I’ve been polite to you. John-Henry and I have always gotten along. And now twice—twice!—in one day you call me, and the first time you tell me Auggie’s family is dead—”
“No, I implied—”
“—and the second time, you threaten to drag him into your investigation.”
“I need your help, Theo. You weren’t answering your phone. I chose expediency.”
Theo made some sort of strangled noise, and then several loud claps came across the speaker—presumably because Theo was slamming the phone against something hard. Hazard winced and pulled the speaker away from his ear.
“This is blackmail,” Theo whispered when he came back on the call.
“A few questions, Theo. That’s all. Oh, and I did need to follow up with you about the semicolons on Colt’s essay.”
Theo made that noise again. Then he managed to say, “Fine. Quickly. Auggie’s got a goddamn spidey sense for this kind of thing.”
“Do you know who Kerigan Attaway is? Mother of Slade Attaway?”
“I know who she is. I’ve heard the stories, anyway. I haven’t had Slade in class.”
“What kind of stories?”
“She’s your classic lawnmower parent. Anybody gets in her baby’s way, she runs them down. That includes teachers who don’t give him an A on every assignment. She’s up here at every parent-teacher conference, and she’s notorious for her emails. She’s relentless, apparently. A chem teacher told me she replied forty-seven times until she wore him down and he waived a quiz for Slade. It doesn’t matter what the trained professionals think; if she says her baby deserved an A, then he’s going to get an A.”
“I hardly think a correspondence degree from an ag college qualifies someone as a trained professional.”
“Oh my God,” Theo said. “You’re the one who emailed with the exam corrections?”
“He was rounding to the nearest integer, for fuck’s sake. Tell me one self-respecting scientist who rounds to a fucking integer.”
“Oh my God,” Theo breathed again.
Face heating, Hazard said, “We’re getting off track. What else do you know about Kerigan?”
“Nothing, really. Like I said, I haven’t had Slade in class.”
“Damn it.”
“What’s this all about? Auggie said something about a murder.”
“I think the victim was blackmailing Kerigan with something, but I don’t know what. There was some sort of comment about an ‘after-school special.’ I hoped that it was literal and that Kerigan had done something at school that Tony was using against her.”
Theo’s silence was charged.
“What?” Hazard asked.
“There was something weird. I don’t know that it was Kerigan Attaway. In fact, I hadn’t even guessed it might be connected to her—and trust me, we had a pool going, and we discussed just about every possibility.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was last spring. Somebody demolished the head baseball coach’s car.”
“An accident? Do you mean the car was totaled?”
“Uh, no. I mean someone slashed the tires, busted out the windows, cut Xs into the upholstery, and dented just about every inch of the body. We were all pretty sure it had something to do with baseball tryouts, and we went through every kid we knew had been cut. Slade wasn’t even on the radar, and Kerigan definitely didn’t come up.”
“Why baseball tryouts?”
“Because whoever did it left a baseball bat stuck in the windshield. There were pictures.”
“All right. Has that happened before?”
“No, Emery. Someone smashing a car to pieces is not a school tradition. I’m surprised you don’t know that, considering you’re a graduate.”
“I hear the sarcasm, but I’m not going to respond to it. I meant, have other cars been vandalized? Does the school not have cameras in place?”
“I’m sure there has been vandalism before, but not like this. And while the school does have cameras, the only exterior ones are near the building entrances. They don’t cover the parking lot. Plus, the coach was parked by the baseball fields, which are on the far side of campus—during an evening practice, it’s definitely possible that the car would have been unattended with only a small risk that someone might pass by and see what was happening.”
Hazard tried to map the sequence of events. “I assume there was an investigation.”
“Well, kind of. From what I heard, the school resource officer and a couple of uniformed officers showed up and took a statement from the coach, took photos, took the bat—presumably to get prints. But that’s all. A couple of days later—I’m talking literally a couple of days later—the coach showed up in a brand-new truck. One of those sixty-thousand-dollar ones. And he said it was all resolved, there had been a private settlement, and he couldn’t talk about it. End of story. I mean, it was basically the only thing people talked about for the rest of the school year.”
“That’s unusual.”
“No kidding.”
“All right. That was useful.”
“You’re welcome,” Theo said.
“Now, regarding the half point you deducted from Colt’s essay: the Chicago Manual of Style suggests the following acceptable uses for semicolons—”
Theo’s battery must have died, or the network must have dropped the signal, because the call disconnected. Hazard decided he would worry about the half point later. Before quarterly grades were due. Preferably in person.
As he got out of the car, an aging Pontiac sedan rolled to a stop ahead of him. Two heavyset white women got out, both of them loaded down with bags from Walmart and Target and Tractor Supply. Hazard had forgotten about Black Friday shopping. Thank God Somers had gone into work; the year before, he’d come home with a six-dollar electric griddle.
The Pontiac’s driver cracked his window and blew out a jet of weed-scented smoke. He turned too sharply when he pulled away, and his tires squealed, and the white ladies laughed as they lugged their haul toward the apartment complex. They went up the stairs. Hazard went down.
When he reached Kerigan’s door, he set his phone to record and knocked. The holly berries rattled. The distant light glistened on the scarlet paint so that it looked wet. Something flickered behind the peephole again, and Hazard pictured—for one vivid instant—a shotgun pressed up against the inside of the door.
“At this point,” he said, fighting to keep his tone as uninflected as possible, “the Sheriff’s Department is desperate. They can’t find Dunkie. They’ve got an unsolved murder, a detective in critical condition, and a shooter who apparently has more victims in mind. What do you think they’re going to do when I tell them that Tony was blackmailing you with evidence that you destroyed the head baseball coach’s car?”
The locks rattled. The deadbolt thumped back. When the door swung open, Kerigan was standing there, her eyes bulging. “You can’t!”
“Of course I can. And I will. Unless you give me a good reason not to.”
The weak light from behind her threw a caul over her face. She turned her head. A tear track glittered salt-silver. Where the light glowed along her neck, the flutter of her carotid pulse was visible.
“Come in,” she said.
The front of the apartment was a combined kitchen/living area. The walnut veneer of the cabinets was peeling. The laminate countertop was chipped. Too many years of traffic had worn the ivory-colored linoleum down to the backing in places; where it gave way to carpet, the pile was shiny and matted. Pictures of Slade, year upon year of them, did a poor job of covering the Popeye wallpaper. A piece of wooden word art advised, Live, Laugh, Love. Above the hallway that led off the living area, stenciled vinyl letters insisted, Love Makes This House a Home. The smell of decades of cabbage and tuna boiled up from every soft surface.
“I’m sure it’s not up to your standards,” Kerigan said when she came to a stop in the center of the kitchen. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the breadbox window on the opposite wall, where light the color of undyed wool spooled into clouds. “I’m sure you’ll tell everyone how bad it is. Ian would be thrilled.”
“What happened with Tony?”
“I didn’t kill him!” The shout bounced back from the scuffed linoleum. “I hated him. I wished he was dead. But I didn’t do anything to him.”
Hazard pushed back his hair. He watched her, the restlessness of her eyes, her arms, her feet.
“It was going to be jail time. That—that asshole coach was the one who ruined Slade’s life, but I was the one who was in trouble.”
“You took a baseball bat to his car. That’s generally frowned on.”
“He wouldn’t even give Slade a chance! He said Slade would have to start with the freshmen, and the next year he could try out for JV. It wasn’t fair! Slade would have done better than half the boys on JV, but he wouldn’t even let Slade try. And all the boys knew. That coach made Slade a joke. Can you imagine the things they said? A sophomore playing on the freshman team? And Junior didn’t help, of course. Junior was the worst of them.”
“And after you decided to pay the coach back, Tony found out.”
She gave a tiny shake of her head. The fluorescent light made her strawberry-blond hair lusterless and flat. Oily rainbows arced along the gold-wire glasses. “I knew I’d made a mistake. I knew—I knew they’d figure out it was me, and they’d arrest me, and then Ian would get Slade. I asked Tony, and he said he’d take care of it. Do you know what we went through to get away from Ian? Do you know what he made me give up so that I could have full custody? And whenever he wanted something—whenever he wanted to humiliate me or hurt me, which is what he always wanted—he’d come back, and he’d threaten to sue, and I’d let him do whatever he wanted again and again and again. If he’d found out about this—” She pressed her hand to her lips. It should have looked stagey, but instead, there was something raw about it, perhaps the most honest thing Hazard had seen from her yet.
“Only Tony was worse.”
Kerigan shook her head.
“I saw how he treated you,” Hazard said. “It’s like what you said about Ian—he humiliated you. He took your money. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d taken advantage of you sexually.”
She flinched so slightly that, on another person, Hazard would have thought he’d imagined it. When she spoke, her voice was drained of life. “He left Slade alone. That was worth it.”
“Was it?” Hazard asked. “What did you do, Kerigan?”
Her face grayed. She pressed her fingers to her mouth again. The nail polish was cherry red and, on her index finger, chipped. From pulling a trigger, Hazard thought. From knocking up against the trigger guard over and over again.
“I saw you come back from the evening sit the day Tony died. You were practically sprinting. You were frightened. I know you killed Tony. Tell me how you did it.”
Her head came up sharply. Red mottled her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and hard and glittering under the kitchen lights.
“What’s going on?” Slade, barefoot in black sweatpants and a black hoodie, stood in the hallway. His hair was lank and greasy. Whiteheads rashed his jawline. He had his arms wrapped around himself. He advanced a step, his gaze skipping off Kerigan’s when she turned to look at him and landing on Hazard. “Why are you here? Mom, what’s going on?”
