Читать книгу Dukkha the Suffering - Loren W. Christensen - Страница 10
ОглавлениеWe’re at the Kick Start again and I’m watching Tommy squeeze the last and the bitterest drops of Earl Grey out of his three bags. He gulps it down. Gross. Don’t know how anyone can drink that.
“What’s on the agenda this beautiful morning?” I ask, just as the cutie waitress, who’s flirted with us both days, lays the bill on the table and smiles, first at me and then at Tommy.
“If there’s anything else I can do for you boys…” She turns and wiggles her way back toward the cash register. “Just ask,” she says over her shoulder.
“You’re doing it now,” Tommy calls to her. She giggles but doesn’t look back.
“Earth to Tommy?”
“What? Oh, I got seventeen new business break-ins down in lower southeast. Could be the same guy. What do you got?”
I open a manila folder. “Three old cases I was working before I went off. Small jobs. One guy likes to steal silverware and women’s under things.”
“So there’s two of us who steal undies?”
“Yeah, but this guy swipes women’s.”
Tommy laughs, tosses a five-dollar bill on the table and scoots his chair back. “My treat. Ready to roll?”
Five minutes later, I’m driving and Tommy is slumped low reading a police report. A nice violin concerto wafts softly from the speakers.
“How are you sleeping after your shooting?” Tommy asks, flipping through reports.
“Much better now, thanks” I answer, impressed with the genuine interest in his tone. “It was rough for a while there but I’m coming to terms with it. I’ve been talking with a shrink and training extra hard. I actually slept last night.”
Tommy nods. “Glad you’re slipping back into the groove. I’ve worked with a couple other guys after they’d dropped the hammer. Both came out of it fairly quickly. But I remember an old timer at Central Precinct when I first came on the job. Jack Watkins, I think it was. He capped a teenager who had just shot his own mother. Kid shoots her and then sits down on the sofa and starts playing a video game, while mom lay bleeding out on the carpet ten feet away.
“Neighbor calls about hearing a gunshot. Jack responds, walks in the open front door and sees the kid playing Donkey Kong. You believe that? Donkey Kong! The kid picks up the gun from the coffee table—gun in one hand, game controller in his other—and points both at Jack. Jack was in his fifties and fat, but he drew fast and drills him in the five ring, sending the little prick to answer to his mom in the afterlife. Righteous shoot, but Jack never got over it. Resigned six months later, just two years from retirement.”
“Pretty sad,” I say. “Department was in the dark ages in those days, wouldn’t even give you a day off after a shooting. Thankfully, they know more about how to handle it now. Still, it’s no cake walk.”
“I bet,” Tommy says, reaching for the mic. “Wanna take a family fight on Yamhill? Beat car is tied up on an alarm.”
I didn’t hear the dispatch. I guess my brain’s still at home lying on the sofa watching Jerry Springer. “Sure,” I say. “Still like the uniform calls, huh?”
“Four-Forty’s close.”
“Thanks Four-Forty.”
“I might be wearing a pretty suit now,” Tommy says, replacing the mic, “but I still got the blue on underneath. Cool thing I like about working dicks is that you can pick and choose what calls you want to take.”
“And you like family fights?”
“We’re close, that all. Let’s see, sixteen seventy-two… there, that big house with the paint chipping off it. Look at that, you can’t even tell what color it used to be.” He clicks the mic: “Four-Forty’s arrived.”
“Four-Forty’s there.”
“Yup, this is it,” I say, acknowledging the obvious since we can hear fierce yelling coming from the place even with our windows up. “And you volunteered us for this.”
“That there’s the house,” an elderly white-haired woman calls out from the porch next door as we get out. She jabs her cane at the front door. “Just follow the screamin’ up the steps, that’s all you got to do. You cops, right?”
“We’re on it ma’am, thanks,” I say.
“It’s awful. Drunk as a skunk they are. Mutha fuckers been screaming all night. I haven’t slept a wink. I need my rest. I’m eighty god-damn seven next week.” She jabs her finger toward our car. “You got night sticks in your trunk? Might need ‘em. They’re nasty mother fuckers in that there house, for sure. Get your nightsticks and beat their hides like they’re Rodney King.”
“Beat ‘em like ol’ Rodney. Ten-four, Ma’am,” Tommy says. “We’re on it.”
The voices inside, loud and slurred drown out the old woman as we move up onto the big front porch.
“… shoulda never married your drunk ass…”
“… yabba yabba. You ever stop?”
“… least my first ex husband had all his teeth.”
“Yeah? Well, least my third wife had an ass smaller than a Hummer.
“This reminds me,” I say to Tommy. “Your wife wants you to call her first chance you get.”
Tommy rolls his eyes and pounds the warped door with the bottom of his fist.
“If I’d had a licka sense I would have stayed single,” shouts the man’s voice.
“Well, there you go. You ain’t got a lick of no sense, let alone nothin’ to go on.”
“‘Nothin’ to… That don’t even make no sense.”
“See,” the old lady on the other porch shouts, surprisingly loud for as old and frail as she is. “Drunker than two sailors on shore leave. Where’s your nightsticks? You never got your goddamn nightsticks!”
Tommy turns the handle and the door opens. “Police,” he says through the crack. “Portland Police. May we come in?”
The door jerks open all the way. “Who the hell called the cops,” a pajama-wearing, vomit-covered, fifty-year-old balding man sputters. “That old beater next door? Yeah, it was her. Always bitchin’ ‘bout something.” He leans around the door facing. “You call the cops, Annie? You old witch bitch. Witch bitch, witch bitch.”
‘I hope they beat you like Rodney,” the old woman shouts back.
“Hey you!” coos an equally vomit-covered middle-aged woman, slipping under the man’s arm and heading straight toward me, her well-fed body rolling like thunder under her short, pink transparent nightie. “You’re one fine-looking man. Look like that one on the TV, what the hell’s his name? That good lookin’ guy on… what the fuck is the name of that show? Except you’re thirty years younger. And you’re a white man.” She reaches for my arm. “I’m Hildie, what’s yours?”
I sidestep her and follow Tommy into the living room, or at least what used to be one before a Category Five hit it. There is a five-foot high pile of chairs and end tables against the fireplace. Broken flowerpots, dirt, and ripped-up houseplants cover the hardwood floor, torn curtains dangle from the windows, and at least three lamps lie broken next to a screen-shattered television. Part way up a staircase, a tattered orange sofa rests on its side and a few steps up from that a yellow and chrome upside down dinette table.
“Your housekeeper Typhoon Mary?” Tommy asks, scrunching his face at the old timer’s splattered blue pajamas.
The woman, whose see-through pink nightie leaves nothing of her two-hundred quivering pounds to the imagination, slurs, “Housekeeper? Shit, don’t need no damn housekeeper.” The puke starts in her hair, covers most of the nightie, with splatters here and there on her cellulite-covered legs and the tops of her bare feet.
I’ve seen homes trashed like this before in family fights, but I’ve never seen two people covered in throw-up. How did they even accomplish that? How did the woman puke in her own hair? Some of it is fresh and some of it’s dried from… last night? I’m this close to losing the peanut butter-covered English muffin I had for breakfast.
Hildie, advances on me again, her bloodshot eyes drunk and lusting. “God, you’re handsome,” she breathes on me. Stay down muffin, stay down. She places both palms on my chest and whispers something, but I sidestep away quickly, not hearing it.
“I’m thinking,” Tommy says over his shoulder as he sheepdogs the man next to the pile of furniture by the fireplace, “that you and Hildie could team up with me and that waitress at the Kick Start for a double date.”
“Are you two married,” I ask Hildie, ignoring Tommy.
“Hey, copper,” Tommy’s man shouts louder than necessary. “My wife fancies you. Take her. She’s pretty good; better when she’s cleaned up, I ought’a say.”
“So you two are married?” I ask again, brushing her hands off me. I so don’t want to touch her. Her stench makes my eyes water.
She nods. “But it’s okay. Bruce doesn’t care.”
“What are you arguing about? Has he hit you?”
“No one has hit anyone,” the man calls over to me. “We’re just arguing. Lover’s quarrel.”
“He’s right,” she says, crotch gazing me. “You’re built good. You got a good package, too?”
The man cackles at that. “Yup-a-roonie, Hildie loves a good package.”
“How long you been married?” I ask, feeling my face heat up.
“You like these?” she lifts her ponderous breasts that have been swaying about under her pukey nightie. She could knock someone out with those.
“Since Wednesday,” the man calls over, giggling at his wife. “Those are some big-ass hangers, ain’t they, officer?”
Tommy has stopped trying to talk to Bruce, apparently deciding that it’s more fun to watch my predicament.
“We got married Thursday, you dumb shit turd,” the woman snaps, letting her breasts drop. Seems like that would’ve hurt.
“Wednesday!”
“Thursday!”
“You guys talking about last week?” I ask. “You got married last week?”
“Five days ago,” the man says.
“Four, you damn ass turd!” Then cooingly to me, “You like a big ass?” She turns around and pulls up her nightie a little. Amazingly, she has puke on the back of her legs and her bottom. “More cushion to the pushin’,” she says over her shoulder.
I look at the ceiling for a moment to cleanse my eyes. Reluctantly, I look back at her. “How long have you been fighting?”
“All night,” she says, eyeing my package again. I’m starting to feel violated.
“That’s about right,” the man offers. He thinks about it for a moment. “Yup, ‘bout right.”
The woman reaches for me again, but I step around her and move to the center of the debris. Time to take charge. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. No one has hit anyone, right?’
“No, we don’t do that,” Bruce says.
“Big ass and big tits, all yours,” Hildie reminds me, sashaying my way.
Tommy isn’t even trying to keep his laughter in.
I thrust my palm toward her. “Hildie, Stop!” Incredibly she does, but with hurt in her eyes. “Okay, thank you. You been married a few days and—”
Hildie nods. “Three. Four, I mean.”
“—aaaaand you are supposedly on your honeymoon.”
“Yeah, we’re on our honeymoon,” she says, looking over at her husband.
“Then you know what you’re supposed to be doing, right?”
They both look at me, then at each other, then back to me again.
“Right?”
She nods first, then he does, both solemn.
“Where’s your bedroom?’
The man smiles and points upstairs.
“You wanna go up there?” Hildie asks me, with a look of anticipation and a nod of her head toward the stairs.
“Hildie, stop talking!”
She makes a zipper motion across her mouth and snaps to attention, which sets her mammoth breasts rolling about.
“Now, listen up you two. I’m going to give you an official police order. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”
They both look at me, their faces serious. They nod. I lift my right hand as if I’m going to administer an oath, which I am.
“By the power vested… lift your right hands, both of you.” They do, both sober as two judges, puke-covered ones. “By the power vested in me, an official of the Portland Police Bureau and an official of this city, I’m ordering you to go upstairs and do what you’re supposed to be doing on your friggin’ honeymoon.”
Tommy looks at me incredulously.
“Partner?” I prompt, nodding my head toward the couple.
“What? Oh, uh, yes.” He turns to Bruce. “He’s right,” Tommy says. “It’s official now.”
“But maybe you and I could—”
“Hildie, stop,” I say, putting my index finger to my lips. “I have just given you and Bruce an official—official—police order to go upstairs and go to bed. Now go!”
“Okay, okay,” Bruce giggles. He looks at Tommy, who gestures that he’s free to go. The groom walks over to his bride.
“Take his hand, Hildie,” I say. She does. “Now go upstairs. And don’t trip over that dinette on the steps. By the way, how did the dinette get… never mind. Just go upstairs.”
“Yes, sir,” Bruce says seriously.
“Yes, sir,” Hildie says, slipping her arm around her husband’s waist. They kiss, and for the third time in ten minutes, my breakfast muffin creeps up the back of my throat. They manage to maneuver around the dinette before stopping to look down at us.
“Go on, you’re doing fine,” I say with a wave of my hand. “We’ll just let ourselves out.” They smile and Hildie gives me a little wave. They stumble about, interlace their arms and head up the stairs.
“Ready?” I say to Tommy, heading toward the door.
“Incredible,” he says, following me. “You ordered them to—”
“You beat them mother fuckers?” the white-haired woman calls out from her porch.
“Within an inch of their life, ma’am,” Tommy says with a salute.
Three minutes later, I skid to a stop at a Shell service station restroom. Tommy bails out before I can and dashes into the restroom to wash every inch of exposed skin. I go in when he returns, though I’d prefer to take a complete shower or, better yet, go to a furniture stripping place and let them hose me down with scalding steam. I spent four years in college so I can communicate with puke-covered newlyweds?
Tommy is talking into the mic as I get back behind the wheel. “Don’t tell me we got a call back to the lovers’ house?” I ask.
He’s scrawling an address down in his notebook. “No, it’s an intruder call, about ten blocks over in that new Argay Park area. Twenty-three seventy-five on Oak.”
“Cars responding. Complainant’s hysterical. We think she’s saying that her son is still inside the house. Intruder kicked through a backdoor, struck the complainant… Okay, we just got this in: Another caller can hear a man yelling on the second floor. Units responding to twenty-three seventy-five southeast Oak, give me your numbers again.”
“Six-Forty, we’re stuck behind a disabled truck on the HawthorneB ridge.”
“Six-Fifty, I’m at least eight minutes away.”
“Six-Five-Five I’m there now.”
“Let’s do it,” I say, guiding our car back out onto the street.
“Four-Forty is close,” Tommy says into the mic.
“We ought to just put on uniforms and start taking calls,” I say over the roar of the accelerating engine.
“This is Six-Five-Five. I’ve got the complainant. A blind woman. Really out of it. What I’m getting is that the suspect, her sense is that he’s white and tall, smashed through her backdoor, kicked her in the stomach and charged up the stairs. Says her seven-year-old son is up there. Don’t know if the man is armed. Don’t know if he’s got the boy. How close is my cover?”
“Betcha it’s another family fight,” Tommy says. “If so, it’s yours. I bow to the master.”
Yup, that’s me. The guy who settles other people’s relationship problems all the while mine is nutso. “There’s Six-Five-Five. Flashing lights up there, mid block,” I say, pressing the throttle even harder. “And that must be the complainant standing by the marked unit.”
“Four-Forty’s arrived,” Tommy tells dispatch. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Sam, and Six-Five-Five. Wow, look at these houses. I haven’t been here since they’ve finished the area. At least a million five smackers each.”
“Where’s the officer, ma’am?” I ask, climbing out of the car.
She turns part way toward me, hugging herself, her eyes looking slightly off to the side, not focused.
“Ma’am, I’m Detective Reeves. Where’s the police officer?”
“House,” she sobs. “The man… he screamed. The officer… said he couldn’t wait.. Please, get my baby. He’s upstairs.”
“Is the man your husband,” Tommy asks.
“What? No no no. My husband is in California… on business. He—”
A horrific scream rips from a second-story open window, human, but beast-like. It’s like the scream of a bobcat my grandfather and I once found in the woods, its leg caught in a steel-toothed trap. Grandfather shot it to put it out of its misery. I was thirteen.
“That’s not… Jimmy,” the mother wheezes.
I take off at a sprint toward the house. “Come on, Tommy,” I call over my shoulder. “Dispatch,” I say into my portable radio. “Six-Five-Five is in the house and my partner and I are going in. Have the next unit secure the back and another secure the front.” We stop on the porch, each of us taking a side of the door.
“Be advised that the last we heard from Six-Five-Five was that he was standing on the stairs waiting for backup.”
“Copy that,” I whisper into the radio; I shut it off. “You got your radio off, Tommy?”
“Yup. Look, the door’s ajar. Probably from when mom came out or maybe when Six-Five-Five went in.”
I nudge it open another three or four inches and quick-peek around the frame: expanse of burgundy rug, edge of a black leather sofa, lit lamp. My heart is thumping hard but I’m in control. I thought I’d be a little rusty after two months away but I feel good. I’m on it.
I’ll go right, you go left,” I whisper, removing my nine from under my sports coat. Tommy already has his out.
“Now,” I whisper, gripping my weapon with both hands and angling it toward the floor. I push the door the rest of the way open and step quickly to the right. Tommy steps in behind me, moving left.
It’s a beautiful living room filled with rich leathers, marble, and expensive-looking art pieces. There’s an archway at the far side, through which I can see the bottom steps of a spiral stairway. As we move closer, I see black shoes and blue pant legs farther up the stairs. I nod toward them.
Tommy whispers, “Uniform pants, I think. Let me move over for a better see… Yes, it’s Six-Five-Five.”
We inch slowly across the plush carpet toward the archway, each step exposing more and more of the officer. Not until we’re all the way through the arch can we see all of him near the top of the carpeted stairs, his overweight body leaning for support against a richly varnished banister, his .45 semi-auto gripped in both hands. Name’s Mitchell Heiberg, mid forties. He looks down at us, the relief obvious in his face. He gestures with his head toward the hallway at the top of the stairs.
“One man,” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth. “First room, right there. Mom says it’s the boy’s room. Kid’s seven years old.”
“We heard a yell,” I whisper, moving up the curved stairs and bracing myself on the banister across from Mitchell. I look down at Tommy standing at the side of the archway; he’s holstered his Glock, probably because we’re between him and the threat.
I look toward the door in question and the hall that extends about twenty feet to the right. There are doors on each side, all closed except for one at the end of the hall, from which a rectangle of light falls across the carpet. Bathroom, probably.
“Don’t know what that yell was about,” the veteran officer says, breathing raggedly but more than ready to pounce. “It scared the shit out of me, though. Heard the boy’s voice after, whimpering. Haven’t heard anything for a few minutes.”
“How do you want to do it?” I ask, acknowledging that he was first on the scene and therefore calling the shots.
Mitchell looks down at Tommy under the archway. “Check with radio to see if SWAT and a hostage negotiator are on the way.” To me: “I think we should hold our positions and—”
A window-rattling bellow from the boy’s bedroom.
“Jesus!” Tommy gasps from below, as Mitchell and I crouch reflexively, thrusting our weapons toward the door. “What in holy hell was that?”
A nasally voice from the room. “I’m going to kill the little shiiiiit. Nowwww. Just you wait and seeeee.” Taunting voice, syrupy. Was he talking to us? He had to have heard us.
“We got to move now,” Mitchell says between clenched teeth.
My stomach churns a huge bubble of acid. Please don’t let this be a repeat of two months ago.
Tommy moves up behind us.
“Okay,” Mitchell says. “I’ll move to the other side of the door and you guys take up on this side. We’ll listen from there.”
We move up the last few steps and then quiet-walk over to the door. Mitchell places his ear against the wall and listens for a moment. He looks at me and pretends to rub an eye.
I nod that I understand. The child is crying and that means he’s still alive.
My heart thumps so hard that I wonder if the other guys can hear it. I don’t want to shoot again. I don’t want to shoot again. I don’t want… Damn. Kari said there was no greater chance of it happening again. She promised me. It can’t be my turn again.
Mitchell pantomimes that he’ll go right and that Tommy and I should go left. I nod and position my trembling hand just above the doorknob. Mitchell holds up three fingers, closes his fist, extends two fingers, closes his fist, extends one.
I twist the knob hard and push it forcefully. Mitchell slides around the door facing, moving to the right. I step in an instant later, moving to the left, my gun pointing into the room; Tommy’s on my heels.
“I’m going to killllll the little shit. Wanna watch?”
I hear and understand the words before my mind fully comprehends the image before me.
A man, skinny, mid twenties, head shaved, and naked, sits spread-legged on the corner of the bed. Between his legs, a blond-haired little boy, also naked, struggling weakly against the forearm that pins him within a tight embrace. The man looks in my direction, but his eyes—gray, opaque—seem to look trance-like into another world.
“Let us help you, my friend,” Tommy says. “I’m coming over to sit next to you so I can hear you better. I—”
“I’m going to killllll the little shiiiit,” the man repeats in that same slimy voice. The boy stops struggling and looks at the uniformed officer, his eyes impossibly large. The man’s vacant stare seems transfixed on me; I don’t think he’s blinked once. “They want the little shiiiit in the bowels of hell, you seeeeee. I’ve been sent by the legion to bring—”
“Show your other hand,” Mitchell says, stepping toward the man, his gun angled to the side. “Show me your muther fuckin’ hand. Do it now!”
“Mommy,” the boy utters softly. Then screams, “Mommy!”
“This one?” the man says, bringing his arm out from behind the boy’s back, a large kitchen knife white-knuckled in his grip. He places the cutting side against the child’s thin neck, casually, as if he were going to cut a melon for lunch.
“Jimmeeee!” the blind mother screams desperately from outside.
“Mommeee!” the piercing return.
“Drop the blade!” I command, my voice vibrating. His unblinking, lifeless eyes look at me as if I’m the only one in the room. Almost imperceptibly, his mouth begins to smile—knowingly? What… What does he know? What the hell does he know?
Then, like a gut punch, it hits me. There is no way out of this. He’s in charge and there is no way in hell he’s giving up. It amuses him that we’re all locked into this moment… a moment that will be forever in our minds. He wants us to shoot him. His eyes smile into mine, communicating. To me. Not to us. Me. He wants me to shoot him.
Oh please, please, this can’t be happening again. This can’t be happening again. Thiscannotbehappeningagain.
“Drop the blade, asshole!” my voice is high-pitched, like a girl’s. “Drop the blade!” Then I hear myself begging. “Don’t make me do this again. Please, please drop the blade.” I don’t want to be here. Idon’twanttobehere.
“I’m going to cut the little shit on onnnnnne,” the voice oozes as slowly as tree sap, his fish eyes locked on mine. “Tennnnnn, ninnnnnne, eeeeeeight…”
Mitchell’s gun and mine point at the man’s face. There is just enough clearance above the boy’s head for a shot. A dangerous one but it’s all we—
Tommy brushes past me toward the bed, holding up his empty palms as he did with the street boxer yesterday.
“Tommy, no!” I urge hoarsely. “He can’t be talked out of—”
“Let me help you, sir,” my partner says, as if talking to a confused elderly person who has walked away from his care facility. “First give me the knife.”
The man’s eyes are empty, like a dumb animal’s. “… sevvvvvven, siiiiiiix…”
Tommy stops three feet in front of the man’s knees. “Just give me the knife.”
I sidestep to see around him. “Tommy, back away. Damn-it, Tommy…”
The naked man turns his head slowly, mechanically like a robot. His eyes widen and he grins ugly. “Heeeere’s my knife, Tommy boyeeeeee.” His knife hand quick-flicks out and back, a soundless streak of silver.
Tommy yelps, jerking his hand upward past his head, a fan of red droplets in its wake.
What the hell?
He spins toward me, his hand in front of his face, his eyes staring in disbelief at three cleanly severed fingers dangling by thin flaps of skin. Blood arcs from the raw meat.
The smiling man returns the knife to the boy’s small neck and then rotates his head toward me, staccato like, until his eyes meet mine. Jimmy has moved to the side just enough that I can see the man’s—shit!—erect penis.
I aim at the freak’s nose, just as I did at the tweaker two months earlier. Got to stop his brain so he doesn’t cut as he dies.
The man’s mouth turns up into a malevolent smile. He resumes counting, but faster. “Fivefourthreetwo—” The blade begins to slice.
Mitchell’s gun explodes.
I’m squeezing my trigger—
Movement off to my side. Tommy’s hand. Waving in the air. Something splatters across my nose and mouth. Wet.
I fire.
I’m seeing everything in ultra detail, in living color, in high definition, in 3-D. The man remains upright, his smiling face now blood-spotted. Red oozes from a hole in his shoulder. The butcher knife has stopped cutting but remains against the boy’s neck. I fire at the man’s left eyeball but I can’t hear my shots. I hear Mitchell’s but not mine. He fires three rounds in succession. Or am I firing?
Holes appear in the man’s face: one over his left eyebrow, one in the center of his forehead, one at the corner of his mouth.
The knife drops to the rug and, clutching the boy tightly against his chest, the man falls back onto the bed, his dick still hard. I want to shoot it. Shoot it off. Empty all my remaining rounds into his crotch.
“Cease fire, Mitch! Cease fire!” My voice, I think.
From cacophony, to a vacuum of silence. The silence is worse.
Acrid smell of gun smoke. Eyes watering.
Mitchell and I shuffle-step toward the edge of the bed, our guns thrust forward. My face is on fire and it’s hard to breathe.
Blood rivers from the man’s neck, down onto the boy’s face still nestled under the unshaven chin, and down onto the lad’s small chest. More blood pours from holes in the man’s forehead and left eye.
Those must be my rounds.
From behind me, Tommy’s pained voice: “Damndamndamndamn!” From in front, the boy whimpers.
“Come on, son,” I say softly, prying the dead arms away from him. “It’s over. You’re safe now.” I quick-glance at Tommy; he’s leaning against the door frame looking at his hand. “Tell radio to get us an ambulance for the boy. Neck cut. And one for yourself. Ask for a shooting team. Tell them the suspect’s fatal.”
I glance at Tommy’s severed fingers; I can taste his blood and feel it on my face.
“The boy okay?” Mitchell asks, his voice suspicious, desperate. I lift the boy into my arms. “That blood on him… it’s the perp’s, right?”
“Yes,” I snap. “Of course it’s the perp’s.” I pull my head back so I can see the boy clearly. “He’s just in shock. The cut looks superficial…”
A cold chill shivers my body.
“What?” Mitchell asks, stepping toward me. “Oh… my… God!”
Blood trickles from a hole a couple inches below the hollow of the boy’s neck. It mingles with the other blood that was streaming down onto him seconds ago.
“Ohshitohshitohshit!” My voice sounding like there’s a pillow over my face. My legs begin to buckle, but I fight it and move toward the door, still cradling the boy in my arms. Tommy moves out of my way. “He’s been hit!” I scream. “He’s been hit!”
I bolt across the hall, down the stairs, across the burgundy carpet and out the front door, nearly slamming into two uniform officers on the porch.
“He’s been hit! No time to wait for an ambulance. Let’s get him to Emmanuel.”
“Over here,” the larger of the two officers says, pointing toward their marked car.
“What’s happening?” the boy’s mother calls out, as another woman guides her hurriedly across the lawn. “Is Jimmy okay?” The friend says something to her and the mother stumbles, dropping to one knee. “My boy? Oh my God! My Jimmy! Is he all right?”
I can’t tear my eyes from the mother. There’s a windstorm in my head, a hurricane. No a twister. Is there that much difference, sound wise? The survivors on the news always describe the destructive wind as sounding like a freight train. They’re right. It does.
“Take Sam and the boy to Emmanuel, Ed,” the big officer says, his hand reaching for my shoulder. “Sam, you don’t look so good. Let Ed take the boy.”
“No!” I say. Maybe I screamed it.
The officer jerks his hand back as if burned. “Okay, okay. Follow Ed, then. I’ll call for another car to take the mother.”
He turns and walks quickly toward the two women as I drop into the passenger seat. “Ma’am, he’s going to be fine,” I hear the big officer say calmly. “We’ll have a car here in a moment to take you to the hospital.”
I maneuver Jimmy so that his back is against my chest, his mop of brown hair below my chin, just as the naked man had positioned him minutes earlier. The boy’s hair smells of blood and shampoo. His mother probably insisted that he take a bath this morning. If he’s like I was at seven, he probably tried to negotiate his way out of it. My mom always won, just as Jimmy’s must have. What is it with boys and baths? Why do kids always—
The side of my head whacks the passenger window, snapping me back to the boy’s limp weight against my chest and the car’s acceleration that’s pressing me back into the seat. My head fills with the awful sounds of squealing tires, the incoherence of the police radio, and the hysterical wail of the siren. I’m not crying but my eyes are tearing so heavily that I can’t see anything clearly.
The driver shouts something into the mic. “Shot boy,” is all I can make out. The words bounce in my skull like a ping-pong ball: Shot boy. Shot boy, shot boy, shotboyshotboyboyboy…
Did the driver just call my name?
I look over at him.
He points at the boy’s chest.
I peer around Jimmy’s head. My forearm, which had been pressing against the bleeding bullet hole, has slipped down a few inches. His blood has filled the space between my arm and his body, and it’s cascading over my wrist and down onto his bare legs. I snatch a pocket notebook off the dash and press it against his chest wound.
“It’s going to be fine, son,” I say into his ear. “You’re okay. Just hold on…”
The boy suddenly becomes heavier. I twist about to better see his face.
“Oh shit shit shit. I think he’s stopped breathing.”
We slide around a corner and the officer literally stomps the throttle, pressing me back into my seat so hard that I have to struggle against the invisible force to turn the boy around far enough so I can see his face. Slack mouth. Partially shut eyes. Chest not moving.
I tilt his head back and breathe into his mouth. I pull away. Nothing. “Come on, son.” I breathe into him again. And again.
Impossibly, the siren screams louder, more desperate. We careen around a corner.
“I think I saw his chest rise,” the officer shouts, fighting the steering wheel as he corners again barely slowing.
“Come on,” I whisper, searching for a pulse on the boy’s wrist. “Comeoncomeoncomeon.” I feel my chest tightening. Hard to breathe. I gasp for a moment… got to get some air… got to give it to the boy. I’m breathing raggedly. Can’t… get… enough… oxygen.
“Half a block, Sam,” the uniform officer yells. He touches my upper arm. “You okay? Hey Sam! Stay with me. Keep working on the kid. Come on; stay focused. One more turn. Okay, we’re here. There’s ER people out front.”
*
“What were you thinking, Tommy?” I shout at the big detective, as I lean over the front of his desk, my hands gripping the edge to keep them from attacking him. He stares wide-eyed at my blood-soaked shirt and slacks as he scrunches himself deep into his chair, holding his heavily bandaged hand and trembling like a fall leaf. It’s all I can do to restrain myself from leaping on him and unleashing my rage. “Gun holstered, stepping in front of Mitch and me like that? What the hell were you doing?”
Tommy’s eyes dart to the other detectives who sit motionless behind their desks. “I… I thought I could talk to the man.” To me, his voice like a child’s, “I’m a good… talker. I…”
“You-fucked-up-my-shot,” I whisper. “You got in the way and you flung blood in my face.” I bellow: “You screwed up my clear shot!” I charge around to the side of his desk, my hands formed into claws.
“Sam!” Mark’s voice. “Sam, get in my office. Now!”
I spin around and see my friend standing outside his office door. “Did the hospital call?” I shout. Every detective turns toward the lieutenant. It’s been four hours since the shooting.
“No. Not yet. Now, get in here.” Mark looks at the others. “Everyone get back to work. I’ll let you know when I hear something.”
I feel every set of eyes on me as I walk toward the boss’s office. Are they waiting for me to go totally nuts? Roll around on the floor, maybe? Wail? Thump the dog shit out of Tommy? Where the hell is Mitchell? They still interviewing him?
I’m teetering on the brink. Don’t know if I want to cry or leap out the thirteenth floor window. I left a message with Tiff at the Public Defender’s office but she hasn’t called back. Why did I call her, anyway? I wish I hadn’t.
I keep seeing the little boy’s ghostly-pale face. The streaming blood. His partially closed, unseeing eyes. His unmoving chest.
My arms felt so empty when an ER nurse reached into the car and took him from me and laid him carefully on a gurney. How small he looked lying there, so fragile. So sad. A moment later, I was half running behind the gurney as the white coats slammed through the double doors into the ER. One of the nurses, a woman, called out “We got a pulse” followed with “But not much of one to brag about.”
But not much of one to brag about?
Just as I thought that those were an unprofessional choice of words to use and that “but not much of one” is better than none at all, which is what I got when I checked his pulse in the police car, my knees buckled. An orderly and a uniformed officer prevented me from curling down to the floor.
They guided my stumbling self to a couch in a small room just off ER; it might have been a little chapel. My memory is fuzzy now, but I vaguely recall hearing the mother screaming out in the hall and an assortment of voices trying to calm her. I started to go out there, but the officer stopped me with a gentle hand on my arm, saying kindly that it wasn’t a good idea. He held onto me until I sat. He was a good cop but I don’t remember his name, or his face.
I was still sitting there when all the brass arrived. First, I told Mark what happened, then the Deputy Chief, the police chaplain, and I think a couple of others. When I said that I was going to remain at the hospital, Mark and the DC shook their heads, and Mark ordered me back to Detective’s to make a statement. A hospital spokeswoman said she would call with updates. We have yet to hear a word from her and it’s been four, almost four and a half hours.
I know deep in my gut that my bullet hit Jimmy and the thought of that has doubled me over with intestinal cramps a couple times. Yes, Mitchell fired, but I know—I know—it was my bullet. I had a perfect shot, just as I had two months earlier with the tweaker. I aimed my first one at the man’s medulla oblongata, just below his nose so that the bullet would stop the scum fuck dead in his tracks, stop him from reflexively cutting the boy. Then Tommy bumped my arm.
It had to be my shot that did it. It had. To be. My shot. Not Mitchell’s. Mine.
“Sit down, Sam.” Mark says, his voice addressing me as a friend, not a subordinate. “You were about to unleash your Bruce Lee on Tommy?”
I sit heavily, arms crossed, like an angry, defiant teen. I look through the blinds out into the work area at the detectives mingling about in groups of twos and threes. Mitchell, still in uniform, comes in and sits at one of the empty desks. The others look at him but quickly turn away when he looks back. I wonder how his interview went. Is he writhing in guilt, too? Or is he blaming me? Yeah, that’s probably it. He knows I shot the boy. He knows—
“Sam?”
I jerk my head toward my friend, surprised that I’m sitting in his office. My brain quickly plays catch up.
“You got to keep it together, Sam. A lot of shit’s coming down in the next few days and weeks. The press is going to eat us like free hors d’oeuvres. The other coppers look up to you. Do it for you and do it for them, too.”
I look at him, fighting unsuccessfully to hold back tears. After a moment, I nod. “I understand, Mark… but a child… it’s… it’s too much to bear. Too much…”
He nods compassionately, his eyes glistening. “Your interview went well. I know it’s hard when Homicide grills you and you’ve gotten it twice in two months. That’s why I sat in this time. There will be more, you know the procedure. They’ll grill the hell out of you so there are no surprises for the press to salivate over. There will be a grand jury, too. Maybe a public inquest. It won’t be cut and dry like last time. They’re going to come at you hard. Count on it. And count on the media stirring the citizens into a feeding frenzy.”
I’m trying to listen to Mark but it’s hard to focus with all the images, sounds, and smells ripping through my skull. When he said “grand jury,” I heard the gunshots in that bedroom. When he said “the media will,” I felt the little boy’s limp body against my chest.
“Tiff ’s here.”
That I hear clearly. Mark is looking behind me and making a come-in gesture with his fingers.
I stand, spin around, and nearly collapse into Tiff ’s arms. “Tiff…” I’m sobbing like a toddler and trembling within her embrace. I lean my head on her shoulder.
She pats my back, no doubt confused. “Sam? I’m sorry I didn’t get your message sooner.” When she leans back to better see me, I burrow my face into her neck. “What’s…? I was in a meeting and…” I feel her head turn. “My God, Mark, I can’t believe what has happened. I just heard on the radio about a police shooting. I don’t understand… what’s going on with the police department?”
I feel my face tense. From over her shoulder, I see a few of the guys glance over at us, no doubt uncertain as to how to take her question. Oblivious, Tiff leans her head back. “Sam? What on earth?” Then, without compassion, “Why are you crying?” She looks back at Mark, and says, as if I’m not in the room, “I’m not understanding. Sam left a message that he needed me to come down. Does this have anything to do with that little boy who was killed?”
I jolt as if electrocuted and push back from her.
“Killed!” Mitchell shouts from across the room. “What did you say?”
Confused, Tiff looks at my face, toward the guys out in the work area, and back at me. Her eyes drop to my bloody clothes. “Sam! What in the hell…”
“What did you hear,” I whisper.
Her eyes stare at my shirt and pants. “Why are you covered—”
I enunciate each word. “What. Did. You. Hear?”
She takes a step back from me “They said on my car radio that a boy had been taken hostage and that he had just died in the hospital. An anonymous source said the police…” Her eyes travel up my body to meet mine. “… killed him.”
“What the fuck!” I hear Mitchell bellow. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him through the window spring to his feet and hurl something across the room. “What the fuck!” he shouts again.
I pinch my eyes closed and cover my face with my hands. Other voices are shouting. There’s pounding, like a fist on a desk. I’m dizzy. I lower my hands in case I fall but I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to open them. I don’t want to see anything. So dizzy.
Why are Tiff and I dancing? Why is she leading me…
“Sam?” Tiff ’s voice. I open my eyes.
“Wha…” I’m slumped against her, my face pressed into her chest as she struggles to hold me up.
From behind me, Mark is shouting. Into the telephone?
“Nononono!” Pederson’s voice, I think, from out in the work area. “We have to hear it from a citizen who hears it on a car radio?”
“Sam?” Tiff ’s voice. “Sam, what is it? Mark? Help me. Damn-it! Would someone please talk to me?”
Hands on me. Mark’s and Tiff ’s guiding me to a chair.
“Trash can,” I manage.
Mark grabs his wastepaper basket and thrusts it under my chin just in time for me to dry heave into it.
In my peripheral, I see Tiff step back from me. “I don’t understand…” She sounds like she’s a mile away. “Was Sam…?”
I feel Mark’s hand on my shoulder. “Sam, Tommy and Mitchell, that uniform officer out there, were at the scene of a hostage situation. Sam and Mitchell fired. The perp was killed and the boy was hit. We’ve been waiting for a call from the hospital on his condition. We hadn’t heard anything until now, until you told us.”
I look up at Tiff. Her face is pale and twisted ugly as if she just smelled something awful. “Sam… was there.” A statement. She takes another step back and clasps her hands against her chest. Is she going to wipe them off on her blouse?
From behind me: “Excuse me, lieutenant.”
“What?” Mark snaps.
I twist around. It’s the Public Information Officer, a ridiculously handsome man with a spray-on tan, neatly trimmed gray hair, and wearing his usual gray Giorgio Armani.
“What do you need, Adams?” Mark barks.
“The press is on my ass,” he says around a wad of gum. “Can you give me enough for a press release? I need a few details to do what I can to sugarcoat the bad shoot.”
Bad shoot.
I spring out of my chair, slamming both my palms against Adam’s chest, and push him through the doorway and onto the closest desk, scattering papers, files, and a stack of mug shots.
Mark’s voice: “Sam!”
Tiff ’s voice: “Sam, what are you…?”
I push myself off Adams and spin toward Tommy, who stands quickly and begins walking hurriedly in the opposite direction.
“Sam!” It’s Mark from somewhere outside of my head. “Get back in here.”
I do a fast zigzag around the desks to cut off the big detective. “You fucked up my shot,” I hear someone say, menacingly. “You fucked up my shot!” It’s my voice.
Mark from somewhere: “Sam, stop! Harrison, Pederson, get Tommy out of here!”
Several detectives scramble to block me, tentatively, like men having to corner a dangerous animal. I stop. Tommy is hustled across the room, out into the hall and probably toward the elevator.
As quickly as my rage erupted, it ebbs. Within half a dozen seconds, I’m back in the moment. My arms relax and my fists unclench. I stare unseeingly at the floor.
The remaining detectives form a loose circle around me, every face fearful. Some of these guys are very old friends and I’ve just forced them to have to corral me like a berserk stallion.
“I’m sorry,” I say, so softly to the floor that they probably don’t hear me.
“Take him home,” Mark says, as he and Tiff move up on each side of me. Apparently, now I’m something that has to be dealt with, a wild and out-of-control thing. “I’ll call you later, Tiff. He’ll have to come in for more interviews, but take him home and make him sleep. No coffee, no stimulants. Milk and rest only.”
“I’m sorry, Mark,” I mumble. I look over at the PIO who is standing now and shakily straightening his suit. “Adams, sorry to you, too.”
“Go home, Sam,” Mark says. “I’ll call you later.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
*
The kitchen phone is ringing as we come through the living room door; seems louder than usual. Tiff goes into the kitchen and grabs it.
“It’s Mark.” She extends the receiver toward me, avoiding my eyes, then turns and heads toward the bedroom.
Tiff ’s been quiet all the way home. At one point, I started to tell her what had happened, but she interrupted me and said it might be best for me to just sit calmly and not talk about it. Good concept, but it was how she said it: acerbic with an almost imperceptible wrinkle of her nose. Almost imperceptible.
“Mark.”
“Sorry to call so soon, buddy.”
“But?”
“Is Tiff there? Will she be staying home with you?”
“I don’t think so.”
Long pause, then, “The deputy chief just called.”
“Yeah?”
Silence.
“Come on, Mark.”
“There were nine millimeter hits in both the suspect… and the boy.”
I claw at my face, as if doing so might stop my flesh from burning. My phone hand is shaking so hard that the receiver is tapping a Morse Code message against the side of my head: Y-o-u d-i-d i-t.
“Mitchell carries a Forty-Five,” Mark’s voice says from the bottom of a fifty-gallon barrel of oil. “There were six Forty-Five rounds in the perp, and two Nines. There was only one round in the kid… I’m sorry. It was your weapon. That’s unofficial but—”
I smash the receiver against the refrigerator, sending hundreds of pieces of plastic raining down on the tile.
*
I’m in my garage, slamming my fists over and over into the hanging heavy bag, each hit landing on the brown leather harder and faster than the last, my bare upper body dripping sweat, my shoulders, elbows, and wrists aching. I ignore my bleeding knuckles and I ignore Tiff when she steps out the kitchen door and leans her shoulders against the wall.
“I just talked to Mark,” she says flatly, her arms hugging her middle as if she were cold. “I called him back when you wouldn’t tell me what he said.”
I change to triple blows - jab, cross, hook; jab, cross, hook. Blood from the torn flesh across my knuckles splatters the leather, my chest, the cement floor, and the scattered dumbbells lying about.
“My God, Sam…”
I clinch the bag with one arm to keep from collapsing and look at my other hand, blinking dumbly at the bloody mess. My lips curl back as the pain from the raw flesh finally penetrates my dull brain. I take a couple of deep breaths to will it away. I look at Tiff and start to tell her that my hands hurt, but I have no energy to speak. Instead, I rest the side of my face against the side of the bloody bag.
“That boy is dead,” she whispers, shaking her head.
I jerk my head back as if she’d slapped me. Never have her eyes looked at me as they are now… as if I were loathsome, something… vile, like dog shit on the floor.
Her beautiful face twists ugly. “I don’t understand, Sam. Talk to me. What hap—”
“Shut up,” I hear myself whisper, without thinking it first. I look away for a moment. Then I feel that extraordinary heat in my face again, growing ever hotter. I look back at Tiff and feel my eyes narrow, burning like embers. Then just short of yelling, I say it again. “Shut up!”
If my intensity frightens her, she doesn’t let on. Instead, she drops her arms and looks at me, dazed. “Talk to me, Sam.” When I don’t respond, she says, “I can’t even begin to fathom—”
“Shut up!” I scream. “Shut up!” I slap the bag, leaving a bloody palm print on its side. Tears stream down my cheeks. “Why are you looking at me like that? I…”
I want her to hold me.
I want her the hell away from me.
“Just… get out! Get out!”
“My God, Sam. What’s happened to you?.” She turns and rushes back into the house.
I step toward the door, then stop, my body rigid, chest heaving as if I had been running sprints. I turn back toward the bag, my arms hanging limply at my side, my eyes unfocused, unseeing. My heart thumps a hundred miles-per-hour, each beat clarifying the image of the naked man drawing the knife across the boy’s neck.
The boy. The boy. The feel of his body… limp.
I’m unraveling. My life. My mind.
I slam a front kick into the hundred-pound bag, sending it nearly to the ceiling before it comes rushing back toward me. I angle step and meet it with a hard roundhouse kick, smashing it with my shin and sending it into a spasm of bucks and jerks.
Inside the house, the phone rings and rings and rings, just as it’s been doing nonstop ever since we got home at seven o’clock. Tiff was answering it—the one in the living room, since I’d trashed the kitchen phone—telling people that I’m not available. Now it just rings and rings and…
Clicking footsteps out in the driveway.
“Tiff?” I poke the red button by the kitchen door, which sets the big garage door into upward motion. When it’s high enough, I see her shoes, part of a suitcase, and the bottom of her open white car door.
“Tiff. Wait.” By the time the garage door rolls all the way up, she’s behind the wheel and pulling her door shut. A few weeks ago, I would have run to the driver’s window and begged her to stay. That was a few weeks ago.
She starts the engine and turns on her headlights, laser beams that pierce into my eye sockets, which I try to shield with a bloody hand. When the Honda begins backing down the driveway, I step backwards, stumbling over one of my dumbbells. My arms flail madly as I sway like a drunk, but somehow I stay upright. Tiff backs out into the street, stops, and accelerates away.
*
It’s three a.m., I’m in bed, and I just realized that I can never leave my house—ever.
After Tiff drove off a few hours ago, I slumped to the garage cement and laid there for an hour, maybe three or four, I don’t know. I didn’t weep and I didn’t get angry; I just closed my eyes and breathed in the raw night air that drifted in through the open garage door. After a while, I opened them and stared hard at the bare light bulbs hanging from my ceiling, enjoying the punishing throb in my head. I eventually fell asleep, a cold, wet, slipping-in-and-out-of-consciousness slumber.
Sometime after midnight, maybe one o’clock, a white cat strayed through the open garage door and poked its wet nose into my ear, startling the hell out of me, and getting me to my feet faster than I could have on my own volition. After I caught my breath and shooed it away, I went to poke the button to close the big door, but something gave me pause: a feeling that someone was watching me.
I peered out into the dark but didn’t see anything. I walked part way out onto the driveway and looked back at the porch, around the yard, into the deep night shadows made by the giant fir tree near the sidewalk, and up and down the street. Nada. Just my paranoia running Code Three, I guess. So I shut the big door, went through the kitchen, down the hall, and into my bedroom where I crashed onto the top of the covers.
That’s where I am now, a couple hours later and still awake.
I like to think I’m good at compartmentalizing; that I can focus on whatever I’m thinking about and nothing else. But this time—I killed a child. It’s just so overwhelming. How can I ever put the shooting into its own terrible box so I can think about anything else?
I roll onto my side and draw up my knees. I can smell Tiff on my sheets. Damn, that was an ugly scene. Ugly, but not a surprise. Was I wrong?
A few months ago, several weeks before the first shooting, I joked with her that if we were ever confronted by an angry outlaw biker clutching a kitchen knife, she would try to understand his sad childhood, give him a big, warm hug, send a fruit basket to his family, and offer him free legal representation. Then the guy would stab her.
Tiff argued that without hesitation, I would shoot the armed guy dead with all the rounds in my weapon before learning that he was simply an upset, leather jacket- and black boots-wearing gourmet chef, who had just cut into his prize-winning soufflé to discover that it’s raw.
It was our fun inside joke until I capped the tweaker.
“Did you have to kill him?” she said to me on the phone. That was a gut punch. I would expect such a question from a blockheaded citizen, but not from my girlfriend.
Hey, look at me. I’m doing it. I’m compartmentalizing.
Tiff and I were no longer an item when the shooting happened but she was somewhat supportive in the weeks that followed, mostly with an occasional phone call or email. There was always a theatrical flavor to it, though, as if she were playing the role of a sympathetic friend, ex partner or whatever the hell we were. Are. One time when she called, she quizzed me for more details than what little I had initially told her and what had been on the news. Actually, it had been more like an interrogation. I somehow managed not to react to her accusatory, left-wing attorney questioning style. Instead, I just answered her straightforward in hopes that she might see the light and understand that sometimes there are dangerous predator types who need killing so that others can live. But people like her will never let reality get in the way of what they deem to be the truth.
I couldn’t see her face on the phone but I swear I could hear it scrunch up when I told her about deliberately aiming at the tweaker’s medulla oblongata. I said that had I shot him anywhere else he would have still been able to shoot the old man. I told her killing the medulla oblongata instantly kills the trigger finger. By then I could tell that she was no longer listening. I was hurt and angry by Tiff ’s reaction and she was upset by what I had told her. I decided not to continue. Of course, not talking about it made things just as tense as talking about it. So we both resumed our acting roles, me pretending that everything was okay and Tiff continuing her phony supportive role.
The booty calls were pretty darn awesome, though.
Now I’ve killed two more people. One—God, I can hardly even think it—a child. Why couldn’t Tiff have at least faked a little support for a day or two instead of being instantly revolted by me? Frightened by me. Why couldn’t she have… oh forget it. Water under the bridge.
Okay, I’m done thinking about this. I’m closing the Tiff compartment.
I sit up, scoot over to the edge of the bed and gaze at the backs of my raw hands under the nightstand light. My big knuckles show some abrasions, but they aren’t as bad as all the blood around the garage would indicate. Man-oh-man, do they ever ache, though. All the way to my elbows.
I walk over to the bedroom window and peer out into the night, but it’s my reflection that dominates the view. My face is a carnival exhibit.
“Right here folks,” I say aloud, sounding like a midway barker. “The face of a real-life killer in captivity. Throw him a peanut… .wait, wait, throw him a bullet and he’ll kill again for you. It’s what he does.”
I back away from the window, breathing hard. “I can’t go outside,” I say aloud. “If I do, I’ll kill again. ‘It’s what he does.’”
Twenty-eight years of martial arts training, six black belts, two national championships and I’ve never hurt anyone in anger. I’ve used my training on the job hundreds of times, and one time off duty when I rescued a woman being attacked in a movie theater parking lot. I’ve avoided many more fights by being aware of what’s going on around me, knowing how to read dangerous situations, and knowing how to talk the biggest and meanest suspects into the backseat of my police car without having to resort to force, something I’ve always been proud of.
So how did I go from that, to killing three people?
I look beyond my reflection, at the street and sidewalk bathed in the puke-yellow streetlight. Maybe I’m being forced to do it. Yeah, that’s it.
No, that’s stupid. What kind of force would it be?
Don’t know, but it’s obviously out there and it’s obviously making me kill. The evidence is in the morgue, they’re stacking up in there.
So if it’s out there somewhere, it’s probably waiting for me. Come on out Sam boy. And don’t forget to bring your gun. You got more killin’ to do.
Bite me. I’m not going out.
There, that was simple. Like my approach to the martial arts. Keepin’ it simple. I’m staying in because when I’m in, it, that big, evil it out there can’t make me shoot anyone.
I turn around and lean against the windowsill. “Okay, this is ridiculous,” I say to my reflection in my closet-door mirror across the room. “I’m not even going to think about how little sense that makes.”
Still, it’s true. Don’t leave the house, don’t leave the house, don’t leave the house.
I turn back to the window. As if to taunt the beast outside, I lean my forehead against the cold glass, fogging it with my breath. As the fog dissipates, the only beast I see is that same white cat out on the sidewalk, walking slowly, sensuously, ever ready to pounce or to flee. It alerts on a blue car that passes slowly under the streetlight, a Toyota, I think.
I turn and flop down onto the bed, face first. Ahh, sweet blackness.
