P. Parrish - South Of Hell

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Shockey looked up, keeping one hand on the back of Brandt’s neck. Margi was backlit by the open door, but he could still see the splash of bruises on her thin face. A cut over her left eyebrow was so swollen it left her eye shut.

Shockey banged Brandt’s head against the wall. “You do that?”

Brandt twisted to look at Margi. She quickly faded into the shadows. Shockey slammed Brandt’s head a second time against the wall, then jerked him back by his T-shirt.

“Answer me. You do that?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Brandt asked.

Shockey spun Brandt around and slugged him. Brandt’s body smashed into the wall behind him. He never got his hands up before Shockey hit him again.

“Did you do that?” Shockey yelled.

“Why do you care?” Brandt said, wiping his lip. “You wanna fuck her, too? You like my leftovers, cop? Then take her, take her like you did Jean.”

Brandt’s ugly face blurred in a flash of white rage. Shockey started swinging. His fist busted into Brandt’s jaw, nose, eye — anywhere he could hit him.

“She wasn’t nobody’s leftovers!” Shockey shouted. “You hear me, you stupid sonofabitch? You hear me?”

Brandt crawled along the counter, ducking the blows. “Stop it!” Brandt yelled. “I can’t hit you back. You’re a fucking cop. Leave me alone!”

Shockey grabbed Brandt’s T-shirt and flung him to the floor. He kicked him in the gut before he could get up. Brandt groaned and tried to slither away, but there was nowhere for him to go. “She wasn’t nobody’s leftovers!” Shockey said. “She was a good woman, and you killed her!”

“She was a fucking whore!” Brandt shouted.

Shockey kicked him again. Brandt threw out his hand, trying to protect himself, but Shockey smashed his knuckles with the toe of his shoe.

“Shut up!”

“She was a fucking whore when I married her,” Brandt said, crouched now against the cupboard. “Seventeen years old and already fucking pregnant with some other bastard’s kid. You didn’t have nothing special with her nobody else didn’t have.”

Shockey stared at him. “What did you say?”

“What?”

“What did you say about her being pregnant?”

“I said she was already a whore when I married her. Her father paid me to marry her.”

“So that kid isn’t yours?” Shockey asked.

Brandt looked up slowly, hand at his mouth. Blood dripped from his nose. His eyes were swimming with a different kind of fear, something more powerful than the fear of getting kicked again.

Shockey dropped to one knee and put his gun to Brandt’s temple. “Is Amy your kid or not?” Shockey demanded. “Answer me!”

“Please, mister, please don’t kill him.”

Shockey looked to the kitchen door. Margi was watching them, one hand on the wall, the other at her mouth. Black mascara tears cut through the bruises on her face.

“Please don’t kill him,” she said again. “Cops can’t just shoot people, can they?”

Shockey drew away from Brandt and rose to his feet. He knew he could have done it. And a second ago, it might have been worth it. But not now.

“You wanna press charges for what he did to you, lady?”

Margi shook her head, her nervous gaze going to Brandt, then coming slowly back to Shockey. She was the most pitiful thing he’d ever seen. And he had a horrible feeling about leaving her with this monster.

He reached into his pocket for one of his Ann Arbor PD business cards, then realized he didn’t have any. He had a pen, though, and he scribbled his home phone on the moldy yellow wall.

He looked at Margi. “When you get tired of being a punching bag, you call me,” he said, pointing to the wall.

Her eyes pleaded with him to leave.

Brandt was pulling himself to his feet. “Get out of my house, cop,” Brandt said. “’Cause you’re finished. I’ll make sure of that.”

Shockey gathered up his small evidence envelopes and pushed out the back door. The gate was ajar when he reached it with his wagon, and he drove right through it, busting it from the post.

He was a mile down the road before he finally slowed to a safe speed and took a breath.

Seventeen years old and already fucking pregnant with some other bastard’s kid .

Louis opened the door of the hotel room. He was expecting the pizza delivery man, but it was Shockey.

“Look, Jake-”

“I’m sober,” Shockey said. “Let me in. We have to talk.”

Louis glanced behind him at Joe and Amy. They were at the coffee table, playing a game of Yahtzee.

“You want to go downstairs?” Louis asked.

Shockey was looking at something over Louis’s shoulder and Louis turned again to see what was so interesting. Shockey seemed to be staring at Amy.

“Jake?”

“I need to talk to both you and Joe,” he said. “It’s about the custody hearing. Can we send the kid — Amy — to the bedroom for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure,” Louis said. “Joe?”

Joe rose and took Amy to the bedroom. Louis heard her turn on the television. Joe returned a few minutes later and closed the door behind her.

Shockey dropped into a chair. “I went out to the farm today,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?” Louis asked.

“Just listen,” Shockey said. “I gathered up these scrapings from the kitchen.”

He laid the envelopes on the coffee table. “I’ll pay to find out if there’s any blood in them,” he said. “I knew when I did it I couldn’t bring it into court, but I had to know, Kincaid. I just had to know.”

Louis shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

“But that isn’t all,” Shockey said. “Brandt came back while I was there. I knocked him around when he started running at the mouth about Jean.”

“Aw, man, Jake,” Louis said. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

“Nah, he didn’t even fight back,” Shockey said. “He’s scared of going back to jail. And that woman, that Margi woman, she was all beat up.”

“And she didn’t want to press charges, right?” Joe asked.

“Right,” Shockey said. “I have a bad feeling about her being out there all alone with him.”

“And you think telling a judge that you were out there doing an illegal search and you saw a beat-up woman will help keep Amy away from Brandt, right?” Joe said.

“No,” Shockey said. “But I think telling a judge she isn’t Brandt’s kid might.”

Louis leaned forward. “What do you mean, not his kid? How do you know that?”

“He told me himself when I was using him for a punching bag,” Shockey said. “He said Jean was already pregnant when he married her.”

Joe started to the box in the corner where they kept their files and notes on the case.

“If you’re going looking for the date Owen and Jean got married, don’t bother,” Shockey said. “I already know it. It was November 1972.”

For a long moment, the room was quiet. Joe came back to the sofa and sat down next to Louis. Louis was looking at the closed bedroom door. He broke the silence.

“That makes Amy sixteen, not thirteen.”

“Louis, do you really think someone that young could just lose three years of her life?” Joe asked. “Surely someone was able to keep better track than that.”

“Maybe she was so underdeveloped the schools kept putting her back,” he said. “Maybe Geneva just lied to her. I don’t know.”

Louis looked back at Shockey. “But how do we even begin to find Amy’s real father?” he asked. “Do we even know where Jean grew up?”

“She grew up in Unadilla,” Shockey said. “It’s a little town near Hell.”

“I didn’t see that in the report,” Louis said. “Did she tell you that?”