A Grant County Collection Page 35

  'We still don't know about Julia.'

  'Robert confessed.'

  'He confessed to a lot of things he didn't do.'

  'Don't know that I can trust his word after what we know about him.'

  'You're saying because he's gay, that makes him capable of murder?'

  'Makes him capable of anything in my book,' Hoss said, turning the page over to read the back. 'Might open a few of his cases and see what he was really up to.'

  This more than anything else sparked Jeffrey's anger. 'Robert was a good cop.'

  'He was a fucking queer,' Hoss said, still staring at the report. He picked up his pen and signed the bottom. 'No telling what else he was doing. We had a missing boy here a few years back. Robert worked the case like it was his own son.'

  Jeffrey managed to speak through clenched teeth.

  'You're saying he's a pedophile now?'

  He picked up another report. 'Goes hand in hand.'

  Jeffrey could only stare at him.

  'He coached the Little League,' Hoss said. 'I've already called some parents.'

  'That's bullshit,' Jeffrey spat. 'Robert loved kids.'

  'Yeah,' Hoss agreed. 'They all love kids.'

  Jeffrey tried to sum it up for him, to show Hoss how wrong his thinking was. 'So, he's a pedophile, has a thing for boys, but he killed Julia when they were both teenagers?'

  'No telling what a sick mind like that will do,' Hoss said. 'Choke an innocent girl, kill a man for banging his wife . . .'

  Hoss's words echoed in Jeffrey's head, and finally he saw it all laid out like a puzzle. 'I don't remember telling you she was strangled,' he said quietly.

  Hoss shot him a startled look. 'Your lady told me.' 'Did she?' Jeffrey asked, making to get up out of the chair. 'You want me to go ask her when?' Hoss faltered. 'Maybe I heard it in town.' Jeffrey couldn't believe how silent the room suddenly was. Everything fell into place. 'You know he didn't do it.'

  Hoss looked at Jeffrey over the report. 'I do?'

  'Eric Kendall has a bleeding disorder.'

  He looked back down, eyes moving as he scanned the page. 'That right?'

  'He's your kid, isn't he?'

  Hoss did not answer, but Jeffrey saw a slight tremor in the report he held.

  'You told me once how you tried to join the Army after your brother died, but they wouldn't take you on medical grounds.'

  'So?'

  'Why wouldn't they take you?'

  Hoss shrugged. 'Flat feet. Everybody knows that.'

  'You sure it wasn't something else? Something that would keep you off the force if it got out?'

  'You're just talking crazy now, boy,' he said in a tone that ordered this conversation to be ended.

  Jeffrey did not obey. 'You get nosebleeds all the time. Your gums bleed for no reason. I saw you get a paper cut once and it bled for two days.'

  He gave a weak smile. 'That don't mean –'

  'Don't lie to me,' Jeffrey demanded, anger boiling to the surface. 'You can say anything you want right now and it stays in this room, but don't you dare lie to me.'

  Hoss shrugged, like it was nothing. 'She was loose. You know that.'

  'She was only sixteen years old.'

  'Seventeen,' Hoss corrected. 'I wasn't breaking any laws.'

  Jeffrey felt disgusted, and it must have read in his face, because Hoss tried a different tack.

  'Look,' he said. 'Times were different. That girl needed someone to look after her.'

  Jeffrey felt sickened by his words. As a cop, he had heard that same excuse a thousand times from dirty old men, and to hear it now from Hoss was like a slap in the face. 'Looking after her doesn't mean screwing her.'

  'Watch your tone,' Hoss warned, as if he still deserved Jeffrey's respect. 'Come on, Slick. I took care of her.'

  'How?'

  'Kept her daddy off her, for one,' Hoss answered. 'Plus, you think her mama paid for her to go off and have that baby?'

  'Your baby.'

  He shrugged. 'Who knew? Coulda been mine, coulda been yours.'

  'The hell you say.'

  'Coulda been anybody's, is what I'm getting at. She went with half the damn town.' He took a wad of tissue out of his pocket and blotted at his nose. 'Coulda been her daddy's, for all I know.'

  Jeffrey could only stare at the telltale trickle of blood coming from Hoss's nose. He had always seemed so tough, but thinking back on it, every time the old man got stressed, his nose bled.

  Jeffrey said, 'You gave her that locket, didn't you?'

  Hoss looked at the tissue before putting it back to his nose. 'It was my mama's. I guess I was feeling generous that day.'

  Jeffrey wondered how Hoss had really felt about the girl. If you were using someone to get laid, you didn't give the woman gifts, especially something that had belonged to your mother. He pressed, 'Why didn't you marry her?'

  Hoss laughed at the suggestion, a tiny spray of blood escaping around the tissue. 'Wake up, Slick. You don't marry something like that.' He pointed toward the door, toward Sara. 'That's the kind of woman you marry.' He dropped his hand. 'Somebody like Julia, that's the kind of woman you fuck and hope to God she don't give you something you need a shot of penicillin to get rid of.'

  'How can you talk about her that way? She's the mother of your child.'

  'Pretty ballsy coming from you.'

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'Nothing,' he answered, though Jeffrey was certain he was holding back. 'Look, we just had a good time.'

  'She was too young to know what a good time was.' Jeffrey stood up, thinking he had sat idly by long enough. 'Did you kill her?'

  'I can't believe you're asking me that.'

  Jeffrey kept silent. He had seen the answer in Hoss's eyes. Everything was turning upside down. The man he thought was good and decent was actually the kind of punk that made Jeffrey glad he was a cop who could put them away. If he had Hoss back in Grant County, shut in the interrogation room, he would be doing everything he could not to haul off and hit the fucker.

  'You don't know how it was,' Hoss tried. 'I've done good by this town for over thirty years.'

  'You murdered a seventeen-year-old girl,' Jeffrey said, fighting the emotions the words brought. 'Or are you going to tell me it was okay because she was eighteen by then?'

  Hoss threw down the tissue as he stood. 'I was trying to protect Robert.'

  'Robert?' Jeffrey demanded, incredulous. 'What did Robert have to do with any of that?'

  He put his hands on the desk, leaning over toward Jeffrey. 'She said he raped her. I couldn't let that tramp ruin his life.'

  'That blew over in a week,' Jeffrey countered. 'Less than a week.'

  Hoss looked down at his desk. 'People still talk. That's all this town is made up of, people talking, telling lies on each other, thinking they know what's right, when the fact is, they don't know shit.' He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a thin streak of blood smearing across the skin. 'I've got a reputation to uphold. People in this town need me. They need to know who's in charge. I was doing it for their sake.'

  'You fool,' Jeffrey said. 'You selfish old fool.'

  His head snapped back up. 'You've got no right –'

  'What'd she do?' Jeffrey asked. 'You sent her away to have that baby, but she came back. Did you think she wouldn't come back?'

  Hoss waved him off, walking over to the window so that his back was to Jeffrey.

  'You think you're untouchable. You think hiding behind that badge is going to protect you.'

  Hoss did not respond.

  'She came back and what, Hoss? What'd she want? Money?'

  Hoss rested his hand on top of his brother's flag case. 'She thought I'd marry her. Some piece of work, huh? Thought I'd marry her.' He laughed. 'Shit.'

  'So you killed her?'

  'It wasn't like that.' Hoss finally looked contrite, though Jeffrey knew it was because he had been caught, not because he felt any remorse. 'It was an accident.'

  'Ye
ah, people get strangled by accident all the time.'

  Hoss's voice took on a high, unnatural pitch. 'She was threatening to tell,' he said. 'Came back from having that baby like she was the damn Virgin Mary. Said she wanted me to make an honest woman of her. Can you beat that? Me marrying her, buying a pie every man in town's done stuck his finger in for a taste? I'd be a laughingstock if I married a whore like that.'

  'Don't call her that,' Jeffrey warned. 'You've got no right.'

  'I got plenty of right,' Hoss shot back. 'She was nothing but trouble. She accused you of raping her. How did you like that?'

  'So,' Jeffrey said, seeing where this was going. 'Let me get this right, you killed her for me?'

  'And for Robert,' he added.

  Jeffrey tried to quell his astonishment long enough to get the story out of him. 'What happened?'

  'She came to the office.' He indicated the room, indignant at the memory. 'Here, to my office.'

  'And?'

  Hoss turned back to the flag, tracing the wooden case with his fingers. 'It was late, kind of like now. Not many people here.' He paused. 'She got kind of frisky with me like she does, and then just stopped. Little prick tease is what she was.'

  Jeffrey waited for him to continue.

  'So,' Hoss continued, 'we had a conversation about that.'

  'Did you rape her?'

  'She was willing,' Hoss said. 'She was always willing.'

  Jeffrey felt sick, but still, he asked, 'So, then what?'

  'She said she wanted me to marry her. She didn't want her mama raising Eric'

  Jeffrey looked at the flag case. He had seen the brass plaque screwed to the top a thousand times, but never made the connection. JOHN ERIC HOLLISTER. Julia had been pushing him, but she had no idea that she had pushed too hard.

  'You got into a fight?' Jeffrey prompted.

  'Yeah,' Hoss nodded. 'I offered her some money. She threw it back in my face. Said she would have it all when we were married, anyway.' He gave a harsh laugh. 'Can you believe how stupid she was, thinking I'd do that? Thinking she was good for anything other than a fuck and suck?'

  Jeffrey felt his jaw start to ache from clenching his teeth together. Every time Hoss opened his mouth, he had to fight the urge not to throttle him.

  'She kept goading me. Kept threatening me. Nobody threatens me.'

  'So you killed her?'

  'It wasn't like that,' Hoss said. 'I was trying to reason with her. Trying to get her to see logic.' Hoss turned around, an awkward smile on his face, as if he expected Jeffrey's approval. 'I tried to get her out of the office. Kind of roughed her toward the door. Next thing I know, she jumped on my back. How do you like that? Jumped right on my back, kicking and screaming and clawing. I knew somebody would hear. I knew somebody would come and want to know what the hell was going on.'

  Jeffrey nodded, like he understood.

  'Next thing I know, my hands are around her neck,' Hoss said, holding his hands out in front of him. Robert had done the same thing when he confessed to killing Julia, but Hoss reenacted the scene with the passion of a man who had been there. He was facing his demons head-on, trying to strangle the life out of the memory. A steady trickle of blood came from his nose, but he did not seem to care.

  Hoss said, 'I was just trying to get her to shut up. I didn't want to hurt her, just make her stop screaming. And she finally did.' He stared at a point over Jeffrey's shoulder. 'I tried to help her. Gave her mouth-to-mouth. Pushed on her chest. She was gone. Her head just kind of . . . lolled . . . I guess I broke her neck or something.'

  Jeffrey let his words hang in the air for a few seconds, trying to understand what had really happened. A few years ago, he would have taken Hoss's words at face value. He probably would have even helped cover his tracks. Now he saw the story for what it was: a lie bent around the truth so that the old man could still get to sleep at night.

  Jeffrey narrowed the space between them. 'You strangled her.'

  'I didn't mean to.'

  'How long did it take?' Jeffrey asked, taking another step closer. He knew from a case last year that manual strangulation was not as easy as it seemed, especially when someone was fighting tooth and nail, as Julia must have done. 'How long before she passed out?'

  'I don't know. It wasn't long.'

  'Why'd you take her to the cave?'

  'Wasn't thinking,' he said, but there was a flash of unmistakable guilt in his eyes.

  'Everybody knew that's where we went,' Jeffrey told him. 'If she was ever found, people would make the connection that it was me or Robert. Or both of us.'

  'That's not what –'

  'She said we raped her,' Jeffrey interrupted. 'She said it less than a year before. It'd make sense, wouldn't it? We were just getting her back for telling.'

  'Hold on,' Hoss said, finally looking him in the eye. It took effort, that much was obvious. 'You think I was trying to frame you and Robert?'

  Jeffrey did not hesitate. 'Yes.'

  He finally lost control. 'I said it was an accident!'

  'You tell that to the town,' Jeffrey countered, and Hoss's face went pale. 'You tell that to Deacon White and Thelma down at the bank and Reggie Ray when he gets back with Jessie.'

  Panic flashed in the old man's eyes. 'You wouldn't.'

  'I wouldn't?' Jeffrey asked. 'I don't know about you, but that badge I wear means more to me than free breakfasts down at the diner.'

  'I taught you to respect that badge.'

  'You didn't teach me a damn thing.'

  Hoss jammed his finger in Jeffrey's face. 'You'd be down at the prison right now mopping floors with your daddy if it wasn't for me, boy!'

  'Makes no difference,' Jeffrey said. 'I'm still standing in the same room with a murderer.'

  'Somebody had to protect you,' Hoss said, his voice shaky. 'That's all I was doing was looking after you and that pansy friend of yours.'

  Jeffrey recoiled at the word and Hoss picked up on this.

  'That's right,' Hoss said. 'How'd you like it if I let it out that you and Robert were more than friends?'

  Jeffrey snorted a laugh.

  'For all I know,' Hoss continued, 'maybe you were.'

  'Right.'

  'You two fuckbuddies?' Hoss goaded, desperation pouring off him. 'You want everybody in town to hear that? You want your mama to find out? Maybe somebody'll tell your daddy down at the prison?'

  'You can tell my daddy yourself when you see him, you pathetic old fuck.'

  'You watch that mouth.'

  'Or what?'

  'I protected you!' Hoss yelled. 'You think your father would have done that? You think that worthless bastard would've helped you?'

  Jeffrey slammed his fist into the desk. 'I didn't want your help!'

  'You sure as shit needed it!' Hoss screamed back. Blood dripped from his nose, but he kept screaming, his face turning red with anger. 'I raised you, boy! I made you the man you are today!'

  Jeffrey jabbed his thumb at his chest. 'I made me the man I am today. I made myself despite you.' He felt dirty being this close to him. 'I thought you were a god. You were everything I wanted to be.'

  Hoss's lip quivered, as if he wanted to take Jeffrey's words as a compliment.

  Jeffrey made himself clear. 'You molested a teenage girl. You took a mother from her child.'

  'I didn't –'

  'You make me sick,' Jeffrey said, walking toward the door.

  Hoss put his hand on his desk as if he needed the support. 'Don't leave like this, Slick. Come on.' His tone took an edge of desperation. 'What are you gonna say? What are you gonna tell people?'

  'The truth,' Jeffrey said, feeling his calm return. What he saw before him was no longer his mentor, his surrogate father, but a criminal, a lying old man who had destroyed the people he was meant to protect.

  'Come on, now,' Hoss said, begging. 'You can't do this. You'll ruin me. You know what'll happen if you go out there and . . . please, Slick. Don't do this.' He took a step forward as if to stop Jef
frey. 'You might as well put a gun to my head.' He tried a weak smile. 'Come on, son. Don't look at me that way.'

  'Look at you?' Jeffrey asked, putting his hand on the doorknob. 'I can't even stand to see your face.'

  He did not slam the door behind him, but in his mind, Jeffrey heard a resounding crash. Sara stood up, wringing her hands.

  He did not know what to tell her. There would never be the right words to describe how he felt. Rudderless, that was a good one to start with. He had lost the thing that gave him direction.

  'Are you okay?' she asked, and the concern in her voice was better than anything she had ever done for him.

  'He came to see me after Dad was arrested,' Jeffrey told her.

  'Hoss?'

  'I was at Auburn, just about to graduate. I remember everything about it,' he paused, picturing the multicolored leaves on the trees that beautiful fall day. Jeffrey was sitting in his dorm room, trying to figure out how he would pay for his doctorate if Auburn accepted him into the program. He wanted to be a teacher, something respectable with a steady paycheck. He wanted to give something back.

  'He knocked on the door,' Jeffrey continued. 'Nobody knocked. They usually just came in. I thought somebody was playing a joke.' He leaned against the wall. 'He kept knocking, and I finally opened the door and there he was with this look on his face. Told me Dad had taken a plea. Turned on his friends so he wouldn't get the death penalty. You know what he said?'

  Sara shook her head.

  '"Some kind of coward,"' Jeffrey finished. 'He told me I had to be a man now, that playtime was over. Playtime, like that's all I had been doing in college, just having fun. He handed me this application. It was already filled out.'

  'The police academy?'

  'Yeah,' he nodded. 'I just took it and signed it and that was it.' For the first time in his life, Jeffrey found himself wondering what would have become of his life if he had told Hoss no. He would not have met Sara, for one. He would probably still be living here in Sylacauga, dealing with the same snide remarks and secretive looks that had chased Robert away.

  He said, 'I don't know how I'm going to do this.'

  'I'll be here as long as you need me.'

  'I can't even think about it,' he told her, and that was the truth. How could he do this? How could he repeat what Hoss had told him?