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"Yep."
"You feel no obligation to keep in touch with your father? Your sister says she never hears from you either.”
"What do you want, Dad?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know." His voice tightens. "You wanted to wish me a good day?"
"You know damn well why I called!” Conrad snaps. “You're in water hot enough to boil a crayfish. Is there anything you care to tell me?"
"I don't care to tell you shit. That's why I never call."
I can practically feel Conrad's anger through the phone line. My palm around the phone starts sweating as Hunter’s dad growls, "You don't want to talk? Then allow me. You are being investigated for the murder of a woman named Sara Meyer. Does that ring a bell?" Conrad's voice has gotten more Southern; he's practically drawling. "Sometime between the night you engaged her services and the next morning, she disappeared. Right out of your bed. She was found dead last night in a ditch in Arizona, with your cuff link in her cold, dead fingers.”
“I didn’t—”
“That is immaterial, Hunter. You can't be investigated. Do you understand how badly you've fucked up?"
I wait for Hunter to come up cursing like he normally does, and I'm surprised when the line is eerie quiet.
"Okay, then let me spell it out” Rita is dead because of you. She died before her time because of you. Because you couldn't learn to quit pushing that woman's buttons.” I don’t understand what exactly Conrad is saying, but I’m shocked. “Do you want to see your hands in cuffs, Hunter? Are you intentionally trying to ruin your life, because you're doing exceedingly well?” Hunter says nothing, and his dad continues. “You tend to do that. Ruin things. Well let me tell you, this sort of scandal is below our family.
"You know, for years after you moved to Vegas I had patience with you. I, too, had some oats to sew, but unlike you, I moved forward."
Hunter's voice warbles on the line, then comes through loud and strong; condemning. "You fell in love with a hooker. And she died. That's how you ‘moved forward.’ Because my mother died. Rita weaseled her way back into your life and you took her, and you pretended she was my mom, too. This scandal's not below our family. This scandal is our family."
"No it’s not the only scandal comes from you!” Conrad snaps in a rush of anger.
"I'm not the one who hit a little fucking kid!"
There’s a pause, and then Mr. West’s voice lowers, soft and deadly. "Neither am I, but sometimes I wish I had. Clean this mess up, Hunter. Pay off the cops. Do whatever you need to do to bury this. But let me warn you, you may have to go farther than I did for you. Priscilla Heat is close enough to Carlson to suck his fat, red cock, and she is covering for him. From what I’ve been able to gather, this somehow goes back to one of Carlson’s mistresses. This is hearsay now and I'm working to find evidence, but I am not going public with it. It will hurt my career. You need to find someone who can. Check your e-mail. Check it daily. Check it hourly. Right this course or so help me. Goodbye."
Chapter Thirty-Four
~HUNTER~
I've been pounding the bag so long that things have started getting blurry. When I hear my name, it's like a salve, but I can't stop what I'm doing. My knuckles are bleeding, the scabs from the charity fight split open, and I need the blood.
My father is right. I do have her blood on my hands.
I was playing cards online in the basement that afternoon when Rita came in. For months, it had been the only place I knew she couldn't reach me. The cancer had advanced. She couldn't make it down the stairs. I remember how I thought it served her right. She had come to find me in the basement playroom so many times before. The walls had always muffled the sound of her palm against my cheek. When she screamed and raged, the sound bounced off the tile, magnifying in my ears. But my father could pretend he didn't hear.
These were different days, though. Rita was quiet more than she was speaking. When I got hungry or wanted to go outside, I typically only had to avoid the sitting room, where I could hear her the Darth Vadar puffs of her little blue oxygen machine.
So when I heard her creeping down the stairs, hanging onto the bannister, gasping freakishly without her oxygen, I'd half wondered if she'd died and come to haunt me on her way to hell.
She was skeletal, with dry bald patches between short tufts of black hair, but I remember feeling anxious when I saw her reflection in the monitor. She might have been weak as hell, but she still hated my guts.
She raised her bone-thin arm and I whipped around, my arms already up in front of my face. But she wasn't trying to hit me. She had a hot pink shirt. As she shook it out, I noticed spots of bleach.
“Did—” gasp— “you—” gasp— “do this?”
“No.”
She held the shirt out, her frail hand shaking. “You...lie.”
“No I'm not.” Her eyes were bugging out. Her gasps getting louder. My heart was racing, so I tried to curb my fear and keep things light. “You should go back upstairs.”
