Father Figure Read online

  CHAPTER 6

  A day had passed quietly without a call from Blackstone. Conners was peripherally aware of this as he shuffled through other cases that sat unsolved in neatly labeled folders stacked on one corner of his desk. There was something that pulled at him, tugging his guts about this case — something that he felt strongly he did not want to know, as if the secret would devastate him.

  And it did. The call came from Blackstone early the next day, as he was waiting for his coffee at a Starbucks drive-through on his way to work.

  “In one of Father’s pants pockets in the closet,” Blackstone began, speaking slowly, “I found a business card.”

  When Blackstone said the name, Conners felt his throat go dry. The unsettled sensation he’d felt all those days surfaced.

  “Shit...” Conners said.

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind.” He was interrupted by a woman clad in a logo’d apron who leaned out of the small drive-through window to give him his coffee. Conners took it, gave her a nod and drove away, his ear still planted against the cellphone. His hands were shaking, he realized. He pulled into a slot of the parking lot.

  “Can you get hold of the super and have him meet me at his office in an hour?” “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “Working off a hunch. Could be nothing.”

  There was a momentary silence on the other end of the phone, most likely Blackstone contemplating whether or not he needed details or reasons, and then deciding he didn’t.

  “I’ll see you soon, Mr. Conners,” he said, and hung up.

  Conners tented the business card between his thumb and forefinger. He looked down at the card again, re-reading the name that was embossed in the center, under the police shield.

  “Do you know him, sir?” Blackstone asked finally.

  “Yes,” Conners answered, glancing over. “He’s one of ours.”

  Conners pushed himself off the couch and stood up. He walked over to the window and looked out.

  “Is this important?” Blackstone asked, rising from his seat to stand next to him, looking at what he’d been staring at —the apartment building that was across the parking lot.

  “Don’t know if it is,” Conners said, giving Blackstone a reassuring smile. “When there are no solid leads, all we can do is pull a thread to follow. Sometimes it means nothing.”

  “Why would my father know a cop?”

  “It wouldn’t be unusual for them to be acquainted. The apartment complex shares a common mailroom,” Conners said, patting Blackstone on the shoulder, giving it a squeeze before starting to shuffle toward the door. “I am going to see Lieberman for a few minutes and then return to the station. Can you go through more of your father’s things and see what else you can pull up for me?”

  “Of course,” Blackstone said. A pause, his voice softening. “You will tell me everything, right? Even if it’s not favorable? Even if it’s bad news, I think not knowing would be so much worse.”

  Blackstone’s voice wavered on the last sentence. Conners turned away then, allowing Blackstone to keep his composure.

  “I know,” Conners said. “I will not keep any secrets from you.”

  With that said, he strode through the living room and let himself out.

  “Are you sure?” Lieberman asked, even as he sorted through a handful of similar bronze-colored keys bundled in a large silver ring. They were standing in front of an apartment marked 3E. “Shouldn’t there be some kind of...warrant or something?”

  “We are not looking for or taking anything,” Conners said. “I just need to see one thing.”

  “Somehow this feels wrong,” Lieberman said, selecting one key out of the bunch. He slid it into the keyhole but hesitated before turning it.

  “I’ll take full responsibility,” Conners said, nodding for Lieberman to continue. “My only focus now is to find Mr. Blackstone.”

  Another few seconds of uncomfortable hesitation, Lieberman turned the key. The lock disengaged with a click and the door opened. Although it was still early in the day, the apartment was dark. The blinds were drawn. Conners clicked on the room’s light and stepped in first. Lieberman lingered by the doorway.

  The apartment had the same layout as Blackstone’s, Conners noticed as soon as he walked through the apartment, clicking on the lights in each room as he did so. Considerably less furniture and the extra room had been left empty. There wasn’t even a television or a stereo in the apartment.

  “Do you know very much about the resident?” Conners asked Lieberman, after he had made his round and had come back to the living room again.

  “Not very much,” Lieberman said. “I showed him a few units when he first came here, that’s all.”

  “Did he insist on this particular unit?” Conners asked as he parted the Venetian blinds. He let them stop halfway, just enough to see out the window and down to the buildings across the parking lot.

  “I suppose. There were better units with a nice view of the lake, but he favored this one.” Conners looked down at the parking lot. In the early afternoon on a weekday, the lot was nearly empty. Uriel’s black sedan sat alone among the neat rows of painted parking lines. He looked across at the building that faced the apartment he was standing in, and into the third floor unit, the one he had been in no more than ten minutes ago with Blackstone.

  The sinking feeling in his gut deepened. There was suddenly a weight to the business card in his pocket that bore a colleague’s name.

  Uriel Blackstone...did you have a secret that found you?

  He no longer cursed nor fought me. His limbs lay where I had splayed them open. He flinched when I pressed into him, but that was it. He swallowed the screams that wanted to come. I could sense this, although I couldn’t see him very well in the dark. I didn’t need to. I just needed to feel him, to have that connection to him.

  The bed moaned, the frame creaked with each stroke. The sound was obscene and loud in the small space. I fucked him harder and harder, determined to have him cry out. Beg. For him to react to me. He didn’t. His face was turned to the side, his breathing labored and his fingers clenched the sheets.

  “Would you be able to cum all by yourself with just me fucking you?”

  I pictured in my mind how his face must have reddened at the remark. Even if he was being violated, he was still modest. He still blushed at the dirty words. It endeared him to me even more.

  “Would you like for me to touch you? Or — ” I asked him, slowing down then to take his good hand and lower it. He resisted and pulled away before his hand touched his crotch.

  “Haven’t you done enough to me?” he hissed. His first words to me in hours. “Just finish doing whatever — “

  He didn’t finish the sentence. He turned his head away again. He had become like a manikin, letting whatever happened take its course. A man who had been hollowed out. There was nothing more I could take from him, although I needed so much more from him.

  I pushed myself off him. The disconnect made him wince and he looked up at me. In the darkened room, his features were shrouded, but I imagined how he would look.

  “Do you love me?” I asked. It was a question I found myself asking him, again and again. Sometimes he answered. Most of the time he didn’t.

  “Does my answer matter?” he asked. “You do as you like regardless of what I have to say.”

  He didn’t sound angry or bitter, in spite of his words. I lay on top of him and pressed the side of my face against his chest. I could hear the vague tempo of his heartbeat. Briefly, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be inside a comfortable womb, sealed from the world except for this single thread of life joined with my parent.

  We were quiet for a while. There was no notion of passing time, except that I was in the kind of warmth that I had never known before. I wished he would wind his arms around me or stroke my hair.

  He didn’t move.

  “What will you do in the coming days?” he finally asked. His voice was sof
t, but it filled the space of the cabin. “Do you intend to throw away your former life and stay like this?”

  “Being with you is the most important thing in my life. I don’t need or want anything else.” “That’s a ridiculous answer,” he said. “Eventually, they will start to track you....”

  “Yes,” I answered him. “And there are people already looking for you.” I rose and sat up. “Do you miss them?” I asked him. “Do you pray for those people to find you soon, as you lay here with me? Do you wish for your other son?”

  He let out a sigh that I didn’t know the meaning of. I began to lose my temper again. Irrational thoughts started to deluge my mind. I left the bed and took a shower. When I finished, I clicked on the lights in the cabin. He was still lying on the bed as I had left him, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. “Are you hungry?” I asked as I pulled fresh clothing out of my suitcase.

  “No.”

  He always said “no” whenever I asked. He hadn’t had any kind of appetite since he’d come to the cabin. For all of his meals, I had to seat him at the small table and only allow him to leave after he drank and ate what I gave him.

  As I dressed, I studied him. It had only been a week and already there was a discernible change in him. His skin had gone pale and he’d lost his healthy luster. He’d lost weight. He looked tired. He wasn’t the man who had offered me a genuine smile as he spoke about his family sitting in his living room only months before. I wasn’t certain what I felt. But one of the horrible sensations I felt seizing my chest in that moment was shame and guilt. I loved him so much that I had ruined this man. Yet, I couldn’t let him go.

  “I would die without you,” I said as I pulled on my pants, a pair of battered denims.

  He rolled his head to the side to look at me. There was the slightest amusement in his face.

  “You won’t die without me,” he said. “The world will still continue to exist without me, without you. Just as you grew up and chose a career without me.”

  The next question that occurred to me I waited to ask until a period of silence went by. Cleansing the atmosphere. I slipped on a long sleeve shirt and took a seat at the table.

  “Do you hate me?” I asked him. It was a frightening question. I wasn’t certain how I would react to his answer, but I wanted to know, even if it wouldn’t change anything.

  “No,” he said after a while. “I understand why you’re doing this...although I hope you comprehend the consequences of your actions.”

  “I do.” I pulled on my boots. “I just choose to dismiss them.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “I’ll go into the town and see what I can find to fix your finger,” I said, standing up from the chair. “There are signs of gangrene setting in. I’ll need to speak to a doctor about options.”

  He pressed his good hand over his eyes and shook a little. I thought he was upset, crying. Instead, he was laughing.

  “We’ve been having the most unnatural relations as father and son for days. My thoughts were on this finger often, because it hurt so badly. All I could think about was begging you to cut it off. Now, all I can think is how appropriate it is for you to go into town to buy a knife and a bottle of liquor to take care of this.”

  I slipped on my jacket.

  “How appropriate that the sum of our beginning has come to this,” he said, removing his hand from his eyes and lifting up his injured hand to look at the bandaged finger. “This is my punishment.”

  I said nothing, only watched him. As he spoke, his voice grew softer and tears slipped from his eyes and disappeared into his hair.

  “This is my punishment for failing you, for the hate that is inside you now, ruining you and your future. If only losing this finger is enough payment to save you.”

  I went to him and bent down to kiss him on the forehead. “Get some rest,” I told him, lowering his arm and pulling the sheet over him. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “You are not going to tie me down?”

  “No,” I said. I wiped away a tear from one of his damp eyes with my thumb and straightened. I looked down at him for a few moments longer, until his eye lids lowered, then I left.

  It was past two in the afternoon when I walked out to the snow-covered SUV. Father’s words echoed in my head as I scrubbed the ice from the windshield, the engine running. I didn’t know how to feel or even what to feel. I understood what he said, but I didn’t know what he meant. I was still thinking about it as I drove toward town.

  I called my nurse friend in the city about Father’s condition as I sat in a small diner that still had a few customers lingering from lunch. I ordered coffee that I didn’t drink. It sat next to a small bowl of individual creamers and a small basket of sugar packets. I held onto it to warm one hand while the other held the phone to my ear. As the nurse spoke in her usual cheerful, high-pitched voice, I watched out the window as people walked by.

  “He has to have surgery as soon as possible to save his finger, if it can even be saved at this point,” she said. “The greater danger is for the gangrene to spread...he may lose his entire hand if left untreated. Or arm. He could die from blood poisoning.”

  “I see,” I said. I knew the answers even before I called her. Reconfirming it only made me feel bad because I knew I couldn’t take him to a hospital. I would need to buy something to sever his finger after my call.

  “Your friend sounds stubborn, not to want to see a doctor even with that severe a condition. He must have a high pain threshold to ignore it for so long.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He does.”

  “So when are you coming back? I miss you.”

  “Soon,” I said. My interest was lost. I didn’t want to talk to her anymore. “I’ll come and see you when I get back.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes,” I said. I hung up, after telling her I had another call waiting. It was my partner.

  “Glad you picked up finally. I’ve left dozens of messages on your voice mail,” he began. He spoke fast, almost in a hushed tone. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but your name’s been mentioned a lot around here in the past two-three days. They won’t tell me anything. I just wanted to tell you now in case...eh...something happens.”

  “Who’s been mentioning my name?”

  “People from other sections. I walked in on Conners looking into your locker with the Captain yesterday. They’d cut the lock. Are you okay? Why are they sniffing around you?”

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Thanks for giving me a heads up.”

  “Sure, sure. Let me know if I can help, okay?”

  I thanked him and hung up. I lay my phone next to the cup of coffee that had turned lukewarm. I watched the cup — an anchor to my reality as my mind churned the scant information I’d been given.

  I knew what the search meant. Conners had figured out Father’s connection to me. If they had started looking in my locker, he’d probably already backtracked the paper trail I’d left behind. It wouldn’t take him long to find that intra-departmental mail from the lab. The information in the mail was long gone, but my friend’s name as the sender would be logged as its origin.

  The waitress came by and took my neglected coffee without a word. She returned later with a fresh cup and left to attend to a family of four that had come in.

  I was more surprised by the fact that I didn’t feel the panic that I should have. I had, in some capacity, prepared for it. That small bottle of cyanide I had taken from the evidence room a month ago when I’d planned this reunion, was my insurance.

  I was uncertain if I would take my own life or Father’s. I had a gun but I wouldn’t use it. The little bottle of poison held more finality than a gun did. It was located in a small box locked in the rental car’s trunk. I had forgotten about it until then, as I deliberated my options and watched the new customers’ kids being unbundled from puffy winter coats and scarves by their parents.

  I called Conners. He sounded surprised when I identified myself.
r />   “Is he still alive?” was his first question.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Not even a ‘who are you talking about?’ eh?” he said. “So you know that I know.”

  “I wouldn’t insult you with a blatant denial. You’re good at what you do. You’ll know everything, eventually.”

  “Glad you are taking it well, kid,” he said. “Come on home. All of this was just a terrible misunderstanding. I am sure Uriel won’t press charges. After all he is your....”