by Mike Kilroy
Bray crossed his arms on his chest and sighed. “What do you want me to say?”
“Do you know her name?”
“No. Don’t want to.”
“Why? Because it will make her real to you?”
“She’s real to me. I don’t need to know her name to know she is real. Doesn’t matter. I did what I did and I’d do it again. I thought she had a gun.”
“How do you feel about the fact that she didn’t have a gun?”
“Shitty. But I got over it.”
“Don’t give me the tough-guy act, Mr. Bray. It’s safe here. Tell me how you feel. How you really feel?”
“Yeah, I feel bad, okay. But she wasn’t innocent. She was in there with those boys, helping them commit an armed robbery. Armed robbery. But, yes, I mourned for her. I ain’t no sociopath or psychopath or whatever.”
Dr. Hale smiled. “Never said you were.”
“I’ve been cleared, you know. Cleared of all wrongdoing. It’s not like I gunned her down in cold blood or without warning.”
“Never said you did.”
Bray sighed again. He felt his eyes well with tears. “This is fucking useless. All she had to do was yell, tell me she didn’t have a gun before she pulled her hands out of her pockets? It was fucking dark and foggy. I couldn’t see.”
“I know, Mr. Bray.”
“This won’t affect my job. I’d do it again if I had to. Protect and serve. Right?”
Dr. Hale jotted notes feverishly into his notepad.
“What you writing?”
“I have concerns.”
“Like what? I’m good at what I do.”
Dr. Hale leafed through Bray’s file, wetting the tips of his fingers every so often before returning to the flipping of the pages. “You barely passed your academy psychological evaluation. It says here you are quick to anger and when stressed, you react with force.”
“I’ve never had an incident.”
Dr. Hale peeked up from the file and raised one of his thick, black eyebrows. “Until now.”
“Anyone would have done what I did. Even that pansy partner of mine. If the roles were reversed, he would have shot her, too.”
Dr. Hale nodded and went back to reading Bray’s file.
Bray felt uncomfortable sitting there as the doctor dissected his life one typewritten line at a time. How can someone be reduced to a file, anyway? We are all more than the sum of our parts.
Hale cleared his throat and closed the file on his crossed legs. He looked at Bray without saying a word for a solid five seconds before he finally spoke. “If she was here right now, the girl you shot—Skye was her name by the way—what would you say to her?”
“I’d ask her what the fuck she was doing as part of a robbery.”
“No, Mr. Bray. What would you say to her about you taking her life?”
Bray pondered that question for a moment. “I’d tell her she was stupid for being there and she should have said something.”
“You wouldn’t tell her you’re sorry?”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“Well,” Dr. Hale said. He had a look of surprise on his face. “That would seem to be the logical thing to do.”
“Why? To make me feel better? To make her feel better? Or you feel better? I could say I’m sorry a million times and it wouldn’t matter. Not one bit. She’d still be dead and I’d still be the one who shot her. It is what it is, Doc. I did nothing wrong.”
Dr. Hale nodded and flipped the file open again. He began writing feverishly onto a piece of paper and signed it with a swirl.
“What did you write?”
“Nothing negative, Mr. Bray. The way you have dealt this incident was unorthodox, but I don’t see a reason why you can’t return to work soon.”
“Damn right!” Bray bellowed and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. It threatened to choke him, to squeeze him, to consume him, but he wouldn’t let it. He was a fighter and no amount of blood on his hands would dirty his soul. “I’m okay,” he repeated. “I’m okay.”
***
This was the only place where Paul Bray truly felt at ease: surrounded by the things he had killed.
Down here in the basement of his new home was his sanctuary. He had trophies—big ones like a bear and small ones like a ram. He had exotic ones like an African leopard and lion and run-of-the-mill ones like an eight-point buck.
He wanted to collect all of the Big Five, but was one short—a Cape Buffalo always eluded him. Still, he was content with what he had and spent hours down here admiring his work.
The only time he left his sanctuary was to walk the narrow steps up to the kitchen to snag a beer. I have to get a fridge for the basement. Then, I’d never have to leave.
The light from the fridge bathed his face as he grabbed the last beer. As he was about to descend the steps back into his shrine of all things killed, he heard the drone of the television anchor report the macabre news of the day.
“Maggie!” Bray yelled out to his wife. “Why are you watching that shit? You know it just depresses you?”
Silence.
“Maggie!”
Silence.
“Jesus Christ!”
Silence.
Bray stomped into the living room and stood between his wife and the television. She didn’t as much as blink. Her tired eyes stared forward, her morose face frozen. She was swaddled in her maroon robe with her hands tucked under her armpits.
Bray hated it when Maggie was in one of her “moods,” and she was most certainly in one of those moods tonight.
When she would become overwhelmed by melancholy like this, he urged her to get off her ass and do something, that the world had forgiven her and that she could do or be anything she desired.
But she didn’t listen. It angered Bray when people didn’t listen to him.
She was sitting there again in her favorite chair—maroon and velour with a pocket for the television remote and cup holder for any type of beverage—watching the nightly news. The news was so depressing on the best of days, downright appalling on the worst of days. People killing, beating, maiming. It’s what made Bray want to go into law enforcement to begin with.
He wanted to clean up the world, one scumbag motherfucker at a time.
Maggie used to be a scumbag. Heroine, crack, amphetamines. Meth had a particular grip on her. Bray, though, had pulled her out of that viper’s den. He rescued her. He fell in love with her and she with him.
She was reformed.
There were still times, like now, when depression gripped her tightly and wouldn’t let go.
Bray knelt before her, his eyes drilling into her, almost begging for her to look at him. Her eyes, red and bloodshot, never moved.
“Maggie,” he said, softly and tenderly. “What’s wrong, babe?”
He knew the answer. Knew it all too well. She got the urge again. It was strong, a force that pulled and tugged on her like an anchor, always threatening to drag her under and back to her old ways.
She was strong, though. She always fought it.
It appeared she was tired of fighting.
He feared she had finally succumbed.
He looked for needle marks on her arms, but couldn’t find any. He smelled her breath when she exhaled, but could whiff nothing.
He tried to console her. “It’s okay, babe. You’re human. You’re allowed to slip up. It’s a one-time thing.”
She stared at the television, and then a tear streamed down her left cheek and her lips began to quiver. Bray swiveled his head to see what had prompted her emotional reaction and saw a breaking news story scrawl across the bottom of the screen about a body found in an alley.
Bray turned back to look at Maggie. “It’s okay, babe.”
His cell phone rang.
“I’m sorry, babe. I gotta take this.”
***
Bray studied the pictures. The gruesomeness of the crime turned his stomach.
The woman,
nine puncture marks in her chest and stomach, had such a cold expression on her face, her lips curled in terror, her eyes wide and fixed, one filled with blood.
It was appalling.
Bray also found it exhilarating. It was his first major case as a detective, a high-profile murder that was sensational. News trucks lined the streets of the town and Bray was the point man in the investigation.
It was everything he wanted since his first day in the academy and it was here.
There was only one problem.
The man he was investigating was innocent.
“The jaggoff’s gonna get the chair, n’at.” Detective Cam Knott had an annoying, raspy voice that was made even more grating because his words dripped with Pittsburghese. It was a distinct dialect in which “house” was pronounced “haus” and downtown pronounced “dahntahn” and most sentences were punctuated with a rogue “n’at.”
Bray had lived in Western Pennsylvania all his life, but trained himself to jettison the dialect from his speech. He slipped into it on occasion—when he was in distress, mostly—but had done a fine job of stripping it from his tongue.
Knot didn’t seem to care that it made him sound stupid.
“Did you hear me, n’at?” Knott bellowed. He was an unshapely man, a gut as big as his voice and a caterpillar of a moustache crawling across his upper lip. Bray thought him a joke, but he was his partner and that garnered at least a modicum of respect.
Bray peered at the macabre pictures of the dead woman and sighed before clearing his throat. “I’m not so sure.”
Knott erupted into disquieting, mocking laughter. “What? A few days ago you woulda flipped the switch on the friggin’ bastahd yourself. What’s changed?”
Oh, so, so much.
Maggie was in one of her “moods” again. She hadn’t bathed in days. She really had a strong stench that was repulsive. Bray grabbed her and she resisted. He snatched her by the arm tightly, squeezing her arm so forcefully he left ruddy marks on her flesh that quickly bruised. He dragged her into the shower, turned on the water and bathed his wife, who cried and sobbed and protested. All the while she muttered, “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to do it.”
Bray had assumed that meant drugs. He soon came to wish to God that was what she meant.
He found the bloody bills at the bottom of the chest that rested at the foot of the bed, buried under blankets and comforters and quilts. The five was crumpled and stiff from the blood. The four ones had bloody finger prints on the front and back, one perfectly blotting out Washington’s face.
At first, Bray shrugged it off. “Doesn’t mean anything,” he said to himself over and over again, hoping it would stick.
It didn’t. No matter how many times he tried to deny it, he knew the truth.
He had the bills tested, slipping them into the lab and paying off his friend who worked there to keep it on the down-low.
The results proved his worst fears.
The finger prints were Maggie’s. The blood was the murder victim’s.
There was clear evidence tying his wife to the murder that had made national headlines because the husband and accused was wealthy—the winner of a lottery and a recluse.
Bray was still struggling with what to do with this knowledge. It consumed him for days. He barely ate. He didn’t sleep. Not even his basement sanctuary had given him solace.
His choice was impossible: condemn an innocent man to death, or the love of his life.
“Well, Bray? What’s changed?”
Bray slowly closed the file and peered up at his partner. “There’s no physical evidence tying him to it.”
Knott scoffed again. “The bastahrd did it. You know it. I know it. The jury will know it.”
“Maybe,” he said softly as he stood and slowly walked out of the room. He imagined the look that was on Knott’s face as he left, one of profound confusion. It was unlike Bray to be so introverted and his partner was sure to notice.
Bray could see no escape.
***
Bray snarled at the bear. It was mocking him, casting judgment on him. So were the ram and the buck and all the other animals he had killed.
He was about to kill another animal just as innocent as the one he mounted to his walls. This one, though, wasn’t to be taken by sport, but by malice.
Bray was going to have to go against everything he believed in. He was going to have to condemn an innocent man to death.
He couldn’t live with that. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t live with it. Bray had done a good many unsavory things in his life and was able to shrug it off. But not this.
Why can’t I get past this?
Bray reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys, fishing for the right one. He unlocked the gun case and grabbed his old Ruger Single-Nine revolver.
The stainless steel cylinder was polished to such a shine that Bray could see his distorted reflection in its surface. He stared at that image, his right eye pulled up into his scalp, his left eye pushed down into his jaw, his mouth curled like a comma, his nose rounded. He looked like a beast, a strange monster full of evil. Contemptuous. Loathsome. A blot on humanity.
He grabbed one .22 caliber bullet and loaded it into the cylinder. He spun the cylinder several times, listening to the clicking sound. It almost sounded like a melancholy song, the sad tune of condemned man.
Bray placed the muzzle to his temple and pulled the hammer back with his thumb. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He thought about all that he had done and all that he hadn’t and couldn’t find peace with any of it. He feared a bullet in his brain would be his only solace.
He heard a girl’s voice whisper to him, “It’s not time.”
Bray ignored the voice; he’d leave his life to fate.
He released the hammer and heard a loud click and then listened to only the rapid thrumming of his heart and the rush of blood into his flushing face.
Bray pried his eyes open and returned the revolver to his gun case—until tomorrow.
Paul Bray would live at least one more day.
Chapter Two
The Ejection
Bray had seen swirls of light like this before, but that was in Alaska. It was one of the highlights of his hunting trip, that and the large grizzly he harvested.
He had never forgotten the awe he felt as he stared up at that clear, arctic sky and saw the waves of reds and yellows and purples and greens that rippled and churned like a cosmic river.
Now, as he looked up at this aurora on a warm night in Western Pennsylvania, all he felt was fear and dread.
Knott took a gulp of his diet Pepsi and peered up at the light show with his own perplexed look. “What the frig?”
The sky turned angry and red as Bray felt the hairs on his arms stand up. The streetlamps blinked out and he heard explosions rock and vibrate all around him. Then the wail of car alarms announced to Bray that the shit had most definitely hit the fan.
“Is Henshaw around?” Bray asked with his eyes still turned up to the red, surly sky.
“I think he went home n’at.”
Bray lowered his eyes to Knott. “You better call him in.”
People had begun spilling into the streets. Some stumbled into the middle of the road, their necks craned to see the light show above. Cars veered out of their lanes and horns cried.
There was a din of nervous conversation as uniformed police spilled out of the station to keep order.
Things were calm now as Bray scanned the throng of citizens, all with worry and concern filling their faces. Some already had begun to ask when the power would be restored and grumbled about missing their favorite television show.
Bray feared the worst. It was perhaps his failing, or his biggest asset. His distrust of people ran deep and he knew a desperate populace was a dangerous populace.
Maybe everything will be okay.
Bray feigned a smile as people approached him, asking for answers. He told them eve
rything was fine and that power would be restored shortly, that he had seen a display like this in Alaska and it was nothing to fear.
Deep down, though, he knew this was not normal.
It was anything but. He once craved the unusual, but not now. The unusual, he had come to understand, meant peril.
***
Bray chugged his Mountain Dew as he trudged up his walk and toward his home. He dreaded going home on the best of days. These were the worst of days.
Maggie greeted him at the door with a warm smile. Her brown hair was straight, clean, combed and framed a face that had color and vibrancy. It had been a long time since Bray had seen his wife look so alive and beautiful. It reminded him of why he fell in love with her to begin with. When she had suppressed her many demons, the true Maggie came out and that Maggie was the only person who had ever been able to tame him.
He thought it odd that she would now find that spark again.
“You look dreadful,” she said as she leaned in and kissed his stubbly cheek. “Come in and rest. I hope you don’t have to go in again soon.”
Bray was rarely at a loss for words, but he was now. “Maggie …” Nothing more came out.
“Yes?” She asked, expectantly.
“I’m gonna go lay down. I’m exhausted.”
Bray found it difficult to even lift his foot high enough to get it over the edge of the step, but he did, each one pounding on the hardwood as he made his ascent upstairs.
He didn’t even bother to remove his clothes: khaki pants, crisp white buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up and yellow rings under the armpits, necktie—red with blue stripes—loose around his neck. He just flopped onto the mattress, closed his eyes and slipped into sleep.
***
Blood. So much blood.
Pouring and undulating over her curves.
Bray turned sharply away from her, closing his eyes so tightly they throbbed.
He placed the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession.
Click. Click. Click.
He paused, exhaled and pulled the trigger again, three times like before.
Click. Click. Click.
And again.
Click. Click. Click.
Surly he should be dead, like her. Surly it was time to go.