Mick: Kingston Corruption, Book One

by Vester, Jennifer

  I rolled over and looked at the light peeking through the edge of the blackout curtains on my window. I’d never been able to sleep very well without complete darkness in my room but the problem with that was, I couldn’t tell what time of day it was when I first woke up.

  Alisa. The woman that had been on my mind when I left the bar and laid down to sleep last night wandered through my head.

  I wondered if she’d gotten home okay, even after threatening to murder the cab driver if he didn’t deliver her to her house in a reasonable amount of time.

  Reaching for my phone, I found her number and texted her.

  Mick: Home okay?

  I rolled out of bed with a slight headache, feeling like I hadn’t slept in a week. Which was probably close to the truth these last months. Every night was the same thing. Drink, go to bed, try to forget the past, and pray that the random faces of victims wouldn’t plague me. But every night they were there, some familiar and some I was convinced my mind had conjured up to torture me.

  I heard a ping on my phone and dug it out of the sheets.

  Alisa: Yeah. Came straight home and went to sleep.

  Mick: Good girl.

  I tossed the phone back on my bed and wondered if she felt as hungover and rung out as I did today. Probably not, since she wasn’t much of a drinker and I suspected that the girl slept better than I did on any given night.

  Guilt slid over me for trying to scare the piss out of her at the club. I both wanted her and wanted her to stay the hell away from someone like me. But those eyes of hers had been my undoing. So much beauty there that I could hardly resist needing to keep her close. In the end, I’d surrendered and given myself a small taste.

  I could have given her a ride home, but I knew that it would've been a mistake. My interest in her would have had me driving her to the house, into my bed, then pounding into her. She would have regretted it this morning. And although I was a masochistic fuck in a lot of ways, I didn’t want to see that reflected back at me from those beautiful eyes.

  Showering, I took care of myself while thinking about her underneath me, ruining her while she screamed my name. It’d been such a long time since any woman had piqued my interest, it was short, sweet and explosive. And as I clenched then convulsed into my hand, months of stress seemed to ease out of me as I came.

  “Alisa,” I mumbled. Fuck, she was better off staying away.

  When I stepped out of the shower, I heard another ping on my phone and smelled coffee. Throwing on a pair of sweats, I grabbed my phone and wandered into the kitchen.

  Mason was typing on his laptop at the large wooden table in the dining room. He had some sort of home office going on, but the scattered mess of papers and old coffee cups made it look like a disaster zone.

  “Made eggs,” he called out to me.

  I grabbed a plate, some coffee and sank down into one of the chairs across from him.

  “What time did you wake up?” I asked.

  He continued to type on his laptop as he answered. “Couple of hours ago. Kicked the girls out and got hungry.”

  Yawning between bites, I stretched again. “Why are you never hungover? I feel like shit this morning.”

  “That’s because you sleep like shit every night. If you had some cardio in your bed to work off the alcohol, then you might sleep better.”

  “No thanks,” I mumbled. “Maybe I should do laps around the block.”

  He smirked at me. “Not near as much fun, bro. You didn’t bring that blonde hottie home?”

  I gave him a hard stare. “Off limits. Don’t even look at her.”

  He titled his head and sat back in his chair. “Interesting coming from the demon of doom and gloom. Get anywhere with her?”

  I gave him a pointed look. “Just off limits, man.”

  He chuckled. “Okay. You have my word. If you’re digging her, maybe you can get out of the house a little bit. Seems like a good girl compared to those hellions last night. What’s she doing hanging out with them?”

  I shook my head. “A cousin or something and the cousin’s friends. Whatever. I gave her a lecture.”

  “Wow, you’re charming. Hey, girl, come sit in my lap and I’ll give you a fucking lecture on how slutty your cousin is.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t go like that exactly.”

  “Sure it didn’t,” he said with a laugh. “Gonna see her again?”

  I nodded and opened my messages. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Alisa: You feeling okay today?

  Mick: Not really.

  Alisa: Too much alcohol? Or just the late night?

  I nearly laughed. Neither the alcohol or the lack of sleep was really plaguing me now. Not after that shower. I wanted to see her. Find out if my inebriated brain painted her in a different light than my sober one would. She might not be half as intoxicating in the light of day.

  Mick: Didn’t sleep well. You weren’t in bed with me.

  I smirked. She’d run with that response, or should. The asshole inside me wanted her in the worst way. Putting her in a cab last night was one of the nicest things I’d done for someone in a long time. Part of me regretted it, but another part knew it had to happen.

  Alisa: Hmm. I’ll buy you a stuffed animal.

  I laughed deeply as I stared at my phone. What the fuck? This girl was strange and too fucking cute.

  Mason was eyeing me with interest when I glanced at him.

  “Stupid shit,” I said to his unvoiced question.

  “That’s the first time you’ve laughed in three months.”

  I threw him a dirty look and stood up. “I laugh. I laughed last night.”

  “Not like that, you didn’t. Tell stupid shit that I like her already.”

  I rolled my eyes and took my coffee with me to throw on some different clothes.

  Mick: As long as it looks like you in that tight dress.

  Alisa: I’ll have to check “Dirty Teddies”. They may be out of stock.

  I stared at my phone and blinked. So fucking strange. Even stranger was the fact that I felt relieved that she was still around.

  She was just a girl in a bar that spent some time in my lap. That wasn’t unusual, wasn’t even unique. She wasn’t the first woman that I’d jacked off thinking about, nor was she the only woman that had ever turned me on. It shouldn’t have mattered whether she was still talking to me or not, but for some reason this morning I was glad she was.

  I’d figure it out later and might text her again. I wondered if she’d go through with showing up Saturday. The possibility both excited and confused me.

  Grabbing my keys, I headed to my weekly appointment.

  After being back only a couple of weeks and finding myself facedown on the floor, drunk and nearly unrecognizable to myself in the mirror, I’d decided that some counseling might be in order. I was at least trying to move beyond what I felt like was a life sentence of depression and nightmares.

  I’d always heard of this happening, witnessed it happen to some of the men and women I’d worked with at the bureau. I didn’t ever think I’d need it. When I’d been on cases in my distant past, I compartmentalized my emotions most of the time. Shut down the people that were living and dealt with the dead.

  Then there was that one case that broke me at the end. There wasn’t a way to avoid finding what I had on that investigation. The darkest place I’d ever gone, had swallowed me whole one day, and the truths I’d discovered about myself had been devastating. To say it was a moment that changed my life would be spinning a fanciful angle on it. It killed me, or at least who I’d been. Nothing would ever be the same in this new reality for me.

  The therapist’s office was small for the number of doctors they had on staff. Six in all with some therapists, like mine, willing to work over a weekend. Which to me, indicated how many fucked up people lived in Kingston. But since it was only one of three offices in town, there weren’t many choices available except for the hospital. And no one ever wanted to go there.<
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  There were only a couple of people waiting. For whom, I didn’t know. No one ever made eye contact or talked to each other. It was like people were embarrassed to be there, just like all the other people that sat beside them. It wasn’t like we were getting tested for something. We were just all fucked up in some way.

  “Mr. Galloway, she’s ready to see you,” the receptionist said before I could sit down.

  I checked my watch as I made my way down the hallway. Five minutes early. She was prompt today.

  Opening the door, I found the older woman that had been crazy enough to take me on as a patient, sitting in her usual spot. Incense was burning somewhere in the room and she’d rearranged her antique rugs and furniture again. I wondered if it was for aesthetics, to throw her patients off, or an underlying dislike of sitting in this place for hours on end.

  She was a real ballbuster most of the time, which is why I liked her. And if my instincts were good, she was probably a wild one in her youth. She wore some strange tint of pink lipstick and was a believer in a dress suit with panty-hose. Her hair was thinning and looked like she’d either been a red-head or blonde in her younger days. It was always pulled tight in a bun that stretched the skin around her cheeks just enough to hide some effects of aging. Vanity for a shrink was interesting, given that she counselled against it.

  I glanced at the wall as I shut the door. She’d finally put her ceremonial accolades for providing law enforcement support on the wall. Something we’d talked about once and I’d dared her to do.

  Gesturing toward the frames I sat down on her couch. “So, you’re finally admitting you have a dirty side next to all that hippie college crap, huh?”

  She raised her eyes from her notepad and peered at me before rolling her eyes. “I thought I told them to call the police the next time you showed up. Obviously, a staffing error. I might have to fire someone.”

  “You’d miss flirting with me.”

  She grimaced. “Like a woman misses a pap smear.”

  I laughed, and she gave me a thoughtful look.

  “What happened?” she asked with a quizzical tone.

  “What?”

  “Did you shoot your brother or torture small animals today? You laughed.”

  “I laugh,” I said with a shrug. “It was funny.”

  She shook her head. “Are we going to bullshit each other today or are you actually going to talk? Thought we got past the mind games.”

  “Nothing happened. You and Mason are insane.”

  Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “So, you’ve laughed more than once recently?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  She put her notepad down and gestured to the door. “Get out.”

  “What?” I asked, glancing at the door.

  “Out. You have two honest relationships. Me and the dead. You want to lie to me, I’m done.”

  I sighed and sat back on her couch. I told her about my dad pulling me out of a blissfully buzzed sleep for a consult the prior night. Adding that he was still a dick and I still didn’t like him, but I wasn’t going to leave him hanging if he’d had honest chest pains.

  “So, did you get your fix with the corpse?”

  I scratched my forehead and shifted in my seat. “It felt good to know I was right.”

  “I bet,” she said a little sarcastically. “Just another case, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “Then?” she prompted.

  “I went out with my brother.”

  “Oh, Jesus. You left your safety zone? Were you twitching? On drugs? Forced by gunpoint?”

  “He asked, and I went, nothing crazy,” I replied. “He was doing his regular thing. We had some drinks.”

  “Interesting. Talk about someone who needs therapy. So, what happened?”

  Thoughts of Alisa drifted through my head. She’d happened, and I’d tried to scare her away.

  “Met a girl. She didn’t belong there. I tried to tell her. Warn her.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Does she know about you? Or did you scare her away?”

  “I tried. I wanted to scare her. She doesn’t know a damn thing.”

  “Were you cruel? You always seem to think you are.”

  I shook my head. “No, but I wanted to be, I guess. I wanted her to go home, she didn’t need to be there. I told her some really messed up things. She should have run, but she didn’t.”

  “Is that scary for you? Wanting to be cruel to help someone? Or was it scary that you actually cared that she was there?”

  “I don’t know. I just kept thinking of all the bad things that could happen to someone like her. And wondering if I was going to be the bad thing. It’s sick, right? I didn’t ask to be like this.”

  “No lies, Mick. You asked the day you joined the FBI. You knew when you joined the Behavioral Sciences Department that you wouldn’t come out clean. No one does.”

  “It was okay being there. It was afterward that…”

  She waited on me to finish. That part of my life, we hadn’t discussed much. She’d never pressed me to tell her about it and likely never would. She’d been a criminal psychologist before she’d retired and opened her own office in the public sector. She’d heard it all by this point. The honorary awards that hung on her wall, proved that she’d seen more than her fair share of the darker aspects of life.

  Changing the subject, she asked, “So, last night, when you were trying to get your friend to leave, did you enjoy scaring her, or feel like you had to scare her? You and I both know there’s a distinct difference.”

  “No. I mean I enjoyed talking to her. She’s beautiful, turned me on. I just think she needed to hear the truth. This man tried to hit on her when I first saw her, and it honestly made me want to punch the guy for no reason at the time. Then she explained what happened later. The guy had followed her to the bar. As soon as she said it, I wanted to take him out to the alley.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Not right then. I mean who follows a girl from one bar to the next? Did I mention he was eyeing her when I put her in the taxi? I followed him to the parking lot and let him know about it. It took a couple of punches to convince him.”

  Her eyebrow raised. “How bad was it and how drunk were you?”

  I shrugged. “I’d had a few. After the first blow he pulled a knife. My anger took over from there and he’s probably waking up in the hospital this morning. He wasn’t just some lovesick guy following her.”

  “You don’t know that, Mick.”

  “Doesn’t matter now. He won’t do it to anyone again.”

  She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “So, you’ve laughed more than once today, which is unusual to say the least. You beat up her pursuer without knowing if he was maybe just some random man. Sounds like you might be interested a little more than you’re admitting to yourself. Why are you so conflicted?”

  Sighing, I sat back on her couch. “Bottom line, it was confusing. She shouldn’t have trusted me any more than the guy that hit on her. And yet, there she was, buzzed and sitting in a dark corner on my lap, where I could have drugged her or worse.”

  “Are you going to see her again?”

  “Doc, I’ll just corrupt her. She won’t ever be the same.”

  She cleared her throat and sat forward giving me a smirk. “You know what your problem is, Mick? You don’t think you’re worthy of being liked by a sweet woman. Which is completely wrong.”

  “Doc...”

  She held up her hand. “You’re not so lost that you can’t find your way back, Mick. Those faces in your dreams won’t be going away anytime soon, but it doesn’t mean you’re completely gone or broken. You could easily be a cruel and corrupting man, you’ve seen enough of the evil in this world to ensure that. That’s always going to be there, like we’ve discussed. You’re going to have to figure out how to handle it. However, for now, don’t confuse cruelty, or what you think you did, with just being a plain old horny jackass.”

  I
chuckled.

  She gave me a sideways glance. “Ahh, a semi-laugh. I’ll take it. See where it goes, you might surprise yourself. When you come back again, tell me about it.”

  “I thought I was barred from the office,” I smirked.

  “Well, if the police ever show up, you’ll know that someone listened to me. Now get out of here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said as I stood up and shook her hand.

  She smiled and walked to her desk as I shut the door.

  When I got to my car, I looked at Alisa’s last text again, but didn’t respond yet.

  Instead I dialed my brother, who picked up after two rings.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he answered.

  “I’m out, you want to do lunch?”

  “Uhm, yeah. Jack and I were headed to meet someone, but we can eat.”

  “Where are you at?” I asked, pulling out of the parking lot.

  “Mayfair and Haskell. Let’s go to Randy’s place and get a burger. Meet you there.”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up and drove to meet them.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in a booth with Mason and Jack who both looked excited about something.

  “Okay, what’s the deal? Both of you look like you’ve had nine shots of pure adrenaline and you’re itching to run five miles.”

  Mason’s eyes flashed, and he gave me a smirk. “Well, we’re working on a case.”

  I stopped chewing my burger for a minute, then swallowed hard. “Are you back on the force?”

  “Fuck, no. You know I’ve been working some side jobs, right?”

  I nodded. “Uh huh.”

  “So, a few months ago, I went in to see Alexander King. He’s a defense lawyer that was helping with my case when the fucking charges against me got dropped. Seemed like a decent man. I think you went to school with him. Anyway, he says something like, all it took was a record lookup from another state to prove I was innocent or something like that.”

  “That’s where I came in,” Jack interrupted. “It was easy enough to dig through some old public records down at county for Mason. I was still working at the time and found the guy’s record on file.”

  “Right,” I said. “The guy had an obscure prior for falsely accusing a police officer of abuse. I remember.”