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."
"Yeah, 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.